#p: ale001

[solreznik]

Starter for: @alexbrookes Location: a day's ride west, the remains of a barn

There are only so many contingencies a man can plan for.

Sol and Ginny set out yesterday morning, well-packed, well-stocked, and in adventurous spirits. Tristan had followed along to their surprise, off to suss out a lead on some strange tracks. Their journeys were twined for the better part of the day until he dipped off down a dirt path just before dusk.

It was beautiful out, the sky all pink and orange, so bright you could almost smell the colors. It was humid as hell, but not too hot, so they were in no particular rush to set up a camp. Then like destiny itself, a barn cropped up in the distance.

Sol checked it for tracks and clues to any possible occupants, but it looked as abandoned as much of this backcountry did. So they hitched the horses and broke out the MREs and settled into their pleasant shelter.

Ginny was nice company, actually. Sol hadn't minded the solitude of his first trip. He didn't need conversation over dinner or chatter to pass the time. But when she wasn't stressing out, Ginny was funny as hell and a pretty decent listener, too.

They'd gotten an early start and ridden steadily, so once the sun went down, they rolled out their sleeping bags and snuffed out their fire.

--

He woke to the heaviest weight he'd ever felt crushing his lungs. A heart attack, maybe? He'd heard them described as an elephant on your chest, the inability to get a full breath. Hearing came next--the wailing of winds and horses screaming and wood cracking. And then the sharp, cold sting of rain, maybe hail, pelting his cheek. He shifted, trying to duck away from it, and then the lancing pain in his leg rang out like a shot.

The barn was gone.

The barn was in pieces. Piled atop him, crushing his chest, pinning a leg. Shelter had become shackles and he was trapped.

Ginny.

He called her name out as loud as he could, but he couldn't hear himself over the storm. A fucking tornado, for all he knew. But there was nothing else to do. So he screamed her name, over and over again, until the world went dark.

--

He woke a second time to dead silence. Light. The lancing pain had bloomed into an all-encompassing throb that turned him more animal than human. He tried yelling Ginny's name again, but there wasn't much voice left. And then he heard it...

An unfamiliar voice in a newly familiar tongue, "liniști," murmuring softly not twenty feet away from him. He cracked an eye open and in his sideways view spied a tall man petting the horses.

Cass's boys.

"NO. Nononono, you get away from 'em, you leave 'em alone."

He didn't sound like himself, all beastly and shaky-breathed as he tried and failed to get up. But the figure heard him and started walking over.

"Where's Ginny, what did you do with Ginny?"

[ijemmaokafor]

Starts for: @alexbrookes

Location: Beckett farmhouse

Horse lessons were going…well, they were going. On one particularly hot, high summer day, Cass insisted on breaks out of the sun every 30 minutes, which seemed like barely enough time to make any progress. But if Jemma was sweating her ass off, she couldn’t what the big hairy animal must’ve been feeling, so she agreed.

They had lunch in the farmhouse which was still gorgeous, in Jemma’s estimation. Maybe not as grandly furnished as it might once have been, but still worthy of a Better Homes & Gardens spread. She took a few extra minutes of rest while Cass sorted something out with one of the other horses, only to see one of Redwood’s newer arrivals wander into the house on autopilot.

God, he was handsome. Old Hollywood handsome, like he could’ve been the hero in one of those spaghetti westerns, or played a pirate alongside Errol Flynn. But there was a listless melancholy in his eyes, too, like he was being eaten up inside by something.

She’d never find out, sitting in silence. So she walked toward him like you might approach an injured animal.

“Alex, right? I’m Jemma. Your sister’s undertaken the gargantuan task of teaching me how to not be irrationally terrified of horses. Which is why I’m here—I didn’t wanna startle you.”