The snow deepened as the day wore on, soft as breath, falling in a hush that swallowed the sound of everything but what mattered. The wind didn't howl—it held. And the world beyond the pasture blurred to watercolor: white, gray, silver, memory.
Piper's shrieks of laughter rang out from the hill behind the barn, the same one we used to race down on feed sacks back before things like death and taxes and drought lived in our mouths. She and James had dragged out a pile of the old ones—real burlap, fraying at the corners. The sacks were stiff with age, but the kids didn't notice. They flew down the slope with cheeks flushed and mouths open wide enough to swallow the sky.
I didn't join them.
Instead, I fed the horses.
The barn was warm in the way barns always are this time of year—quiet, low, alive with breath and the rustle of coats shifting against wood. Spice lifted her head as I walked in, the muscles of her neck flexing once beneath her mane before she recognized my steps and went back to chewing. I moved slowly between the stalls, dragging my gloved fingers along the edges as I passed—Honey, then Hush, then Junebug, who tried to nibble the zipper of my coat with all the subtlety of a thief in broad daylight.
Spice nudged at the grain bucket with the flat of her nose before I'd even finished latching the stall. Pushy thing. Always a little ahead of the moment, always hungry in the way animals are when they've had to learn not everything comes easy. I poured slow—made her wait, just long enough to remember the world didn't owe her anything, but maybe I did.
The grain hit wood with that soft, round sound I'd come to know better than most people's voices. She dipped her head, chewing like the edge had finally worn off her panic. Not gone. Just dulled. Her ears stayed half-turned toward me, alert but not flinching.
"You're lookin' less feral," I said, reaching to scratch her withers. "Holiday spirit must be settlin' in."
She blinked once. Didn't move away.
Progress.
Behind me, the door creaked open—long and slow like someone entering a church who wasn't sure if they still believed.
I didn't turn.
Boots moved through straw. Familiar ones. A little too light to be Ty's. A little too hesitant to be sure of where they were stepping.
Then—soft, steady: "She's smaller than I pictured."
I didn't look at her right away. Just watched Spice's ribs lift and fall under my palm. "That's 'cause I took the photos from her good side. Real flattering angle."
Laney came up beside me, tugging off her gloves finger by finger, breath rising in front of her in little ghosts. She smelled like cold air and pine sap and gingerbread, and maybe that ache that comes from showing up late to something you meant to never miss.
She studied the mustang like she was reading something private in her—something half-hidden beneath the bone and bristle, something she wasn't sure she had permission to see.
"She's pretty," Laney said, not looking at me. "Not in the way horses usually are. More like... she earned it."
I let my palm rest along Spice's neck, just behind the ear where her coat was thickest. "Neither of us are the usual kind."
That got a huff of a laugh from her, dry and fond. "You clean up better though. No offense."
"None taken." I scratched just behind the mare's jaw, where she liked it most. "You should've seen her the day she got here. Spine sharp as a fence rail. Eyes like glass about to crack. Kicked a hole clean through the side gate and didn't even flinch."
YOU ARE READING
Firefly Nights
Phi Hư Cấu▍ AN ORIGINAL ╱ western romance There's a kind of wild you can't outrun. Lemon Odell knows this better than anyone-the kind that lives under your skin, that shapes the way you move, the way you fight, the way you break. Born into a bloodline stitch...
