Firefly Nights

CHAPTER 14

-MY FINALS ARE COMING UP. WISH ME LUCK! I THINK IM STRESS WRITING AND PUBLISHING-

When Laney was fifteen, she brought a wild thing home.

Not the kind that wanted saving. The kind that charged the fence line with its ears pinned back and its eyes black with rage. Its coat was the color of fire muted by dust, its hooves churning up the earth like it meant to outrun the world that had tried to break it. And maybe it had. She had found it near the south ridge, where the fence sagged and the grass grew tall enough to hide secrets. It had slipped past the boundary lines like smoke, grazing just outside the land we called ours—but only because no one had challenged it yet.

The moment Laney saw it, something in her stilled. I remember how she slid through the tall grass like a whisper, not even a rustle to betray her presence. And when the horse lifted its head, nostrils flared and breath sharp with warning, it was like time held its breath to see what she'd do next.

I was watching from the fence line, bare knees pressed into splintered wood, the kind of still you only learn when awe takes hold of your limbs. I'd never seen her move like that before—not fast, not slow, just steady. Her hand reached out like she wasn't reaching for an animal at all but for something buried. She didn't call to it. Didn't force. Just stepped forward inch by inch, her palm offered open, like she was handing over her trust before asking for any in return.

The horse reared once, hooves lashing the air, mane blazing against the fading sky like fire given shape. It should've turned and vanished into the trees. Should've run like every feral thing does when it meets the press of a human gaze. But it didn't. It looked at her. Really looked. Like it saw something in her it recognized. And then, against every rule of logic and fear and instinct—it stepped forward.

The breath caught in my throat and never let go.

When her fingers brushed its nose, it was like she'd reached inside its chest and gripped the wild there. Not to steal it, but to say, I see you. You don't have to run anymore.

That was the magic of my sister.

She didn't tame things. She didn't break them. She just saw them so clearly they forgot they were supposed to be afraid.

I remember the way the light hit her then, the soft spill of golden hour catching in her hair, the dirt streaked on her jeans, the calm in her eyes that didn't belong to a fifteen-year-old girl. And I remember thinking—this wasn't something she learned. This was something she was born with. Odell.

Me—I never had that.

I kept to the cattle. There was honesty in their chaos. Calves came into the world bloody and wailing and tangled in afterbirth, and there was no poetry in it, no grace. Just work. Just hands and knees in the mud and the sharp relief of hearing that first ragged breath rattle out of lungs that had never tasted air. It was a mess you could understand. A rhythm you could follow.

But horses... horses required something else. They didn't just ask for your strength. They demanded your quiet. Your stillness. Your belief that they owed you nothing.

And I—I've never been good at asking for things that can be taken back.

Laney used to laugh at me, all teeth and sunburnt cheeks, brushing the hair from my eyes with hands that smelled like hay and lavender balm.

"You're not scared of horses," she'd say. "You're scared of being seen by something that won't pretend it didn't see you."

She taught me how to still the tremble in my fingers when a colt's breath stung hot against my wrist. How to quiet the parts of me that flinched and hesitated, how to stand steady enough that a creature built to run might choose, just once, to stay. Her hands—firm, patient, sun-warmed—would rest over mine, guiding them in slow arcs down trembling flanks and sweat-slick manes. "Not too soft," she'd murmur, "or they won't respect you. Not too hard, either. They'll bolt the second they feel control without kindness."