Trustfall || Sanders Sides Equestrian AU

Chapter 24 - Anchor

Logan had always been an early bird. Waking up early made him feel productive even before he did a thing, and that precious, rare half-an-hour a day to himself before everyone wakes up was the very anchor of his sanity. Some people ran on caffeine, others on music, and Logan survived each day fuelled by those thirty minutes alone that he would get in the mornings. He would sit in the kitchen with his cup of coffee and clear his mind from any unnecessary trace of dream to prepare his brain for all the information it would have to process and people it would have to endure throughout the day.

And yet, something felt unnatural that morning when he woke up into the blue silence of his room. Logan could almost see himself from an outsider perspective as he sat up in his bed and stared at the wall. What was different? Today was an important day, yes; but competition days never felt any different to him.

The thought dragged back the reminder, and he stood up and made his quiet, ghostly way to the window. Today was that stressful day that comes once a year, when the team would clean the tack and load the horses onto the trailer, and set off to the place where they would be staying during the first show of the season. Logan pushed the curtain aside only to be met with a dark sky that stared back at him, as if it's daring him to display his displease at the given conditions.

He glanced over at the large, digital clock that hung on the wall across the room. Four in the morning. Four in the morning? Yes, four in the morning. Why on Earth was he awake?

But now he was out of bed, and now he couldn't sleep. As soon as Logan's routine began, nothing could stop it. And so he settled his glasses onto his face and left the room lonelier than it was before.

The decision wasn't made as he brushed his teeth, nor as he prepared his coffee. It wasn't even made as he started his car and drove out of the driveway, the first trace of sunlight climbing up the horizon and escorting him down the road.

He was at Daybreak before he even decided to go.

There was something a bit eerie about being alone at the stables at this hour in the morning. The planks and the fences would acquire a blue hue, and the light fog would paint the horses' coats dull. Each would stand in its stall like a ghost and stare at Logan as if there was something here they were guarding and he wasn't allowed to see. The air carried a cold yet young scent, like the one you would smell after the dew.

Nexus blinked at him respectfully when he approached her. She accepted the halter the same way she'd accept everything; unquestioning, unresisting, uninterested. In a way, a bit like Logan. Maybe that's why she was the first horse he'd ever been able to almost understand.

Nexus was the only horse who liked being alone in the pasture. They would turn the others out together; if a horse ended up there alone, it would call out for its friends until someone would come and get it. But nexus didn't mind. She accepted the pasture still unquestioning, still unresisting, still uninterested. Logan slid off the halter, closed the gate and stuffed his hands into his pockets to watch her from the other side of the fence as she stood rooted to the ground and breathed the fog in and out. The new sunlight flicked off her jet-black coat and made him almost jealous. She was so effortless. Logan looked effortless. But that was his job.

Nexus exhaled a small cloud of cold steam that rolled around in the fog and disintegrated into nothingness. She shook her neck, and her full black mane shook together with it and reminded Logan that she was a living being. The clearance of the early morning gave her skin a contour that emphasized her muscles and made her eyes look like bottomless dark pools. A bizarre sensation of affection towards the horse threatened Logan's brain quietly, almost as if hoping he wouldn't notice its warning and just let it exist.