Night Rider

3: Sitdka and Tuffy

One of them was a larger smoky, grulla gray gelding with white spatters up his neck, body, and face.  The other was a very familiarly colored seal brown mare. She had no white on her save for a small rectangular blip on her back right hock and a salt dash in the middle of her forehead. Both of them stared at me distrustfully from the back fence, but I called out with a musical voice.

"Hello little ones, why do you stay away?"
Far from assuring them, my call seemed to put the mare on sudden alert. Her ears glued to me and she whirled around so fast that I jumped a little.

Behind me Damian snickered, "I told you Walker, they don't trust anyone."

But the mare was still staring me down with an intensity that made me itch. Something in my gut said I knew that look, but I couldn't quite place it. She took a step and whickered softly, a quiet feminine call that finally lit up the thing I was missing.

Very nearly I almost choked on my next intake of air.
"Tuffy?"

Light flooded the mare's gaze. She nickered louder, stepping away from the gelding swiftly as if I had said something magical. Light filled me too as I quickly remembered the mare standing in front of me.

"Tuffy! Goob, holy crap- it's you!"

"What the hell is going on?"

I didn't really hear Damian as I threw my arms around the seal brown mare and she wrapped her neck over my shoulders.

"Tuffy! I thought I'd never see you again!" And then I was crying and Tuffy kept nickering and the other horse shuffled in. Damian kept trying to figure out what was going on- and I didn't care one bit.
...
"I trained this horse Damian. I taught her everything, ever since the moment she was born. I thought I'd never see her again after she was stolen, but here she is and she remembers me, and, and, DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?" I was babbling hysterically.

Damian didn't know what to do with any of my insane emotion. His blue eyes were huge with confusion, sweatshirt glowing In the golden dust of the barn.

Come to think of it, the whole barn was glowing. It was like someone had wrapped me in a cloak of pure sunshine. I wasn't alone anymore! Tuffy knew me. She knew me like a close friend, not just a familiar face but a familiar heartbeat. Everything was thrumming as if I'd just ingested four shots of coffee. I couldn't stop the laugh the bubbled into my chest like a release of toxic pressure.
In that moment I was so freaking happy that I did the unthinkable- I threw my arms around Damian in a rib crushing hug.

"I don't know how to thank you, I mean, you couldn't possibly have known this was my horse, but you brought me out here- and just thank you!!"
...
Damian's POV~

What. The. Hell. Just. Happened.

As the son of Bruce Wayne, the Batman, Damian was used to handling a great number of oddities everyday. But this? This was WAY out of his area of expertise.

Father had suggested taking Walker out to the barn the day she arrived, but Damian had deliberated along time. He had wanted to befriend them himself first, preferably avoiding the moping blonde haired girl now sharing the mansion. But when he couldn't get close to either equine (not for lack of trying) he had admitted to himself the girl might know what to do. Considering her background and all-three years in college for equine science and twelve recorded years working with them in her free time. She was an accomplished horse person.

But right about now Damian was regretting that decision because she had him in a strangle hold of a hug! Not even Grayson hugged him this spontaneously!

And that didn't even cover the coincidence of Walker knowing this particular horse. He and Father would have to look into the matter.

Once he got out of her strangle hold that was.

"Unhand me! This is childish behavior!" He demanded, using his best glare.

Her beaming smile caught him off guard. It lit up her face so brilliantly that it occurred to Damian, perhaps she wasn't normally the annoying gloomy person he had first thought. She let him go, though her storm blue eyes were still gleaming.

"Who cares? Be who you are and say what you like, cause those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. If rules were put on being happy, smiling would be a crime at some point in history," she was utterly unfazed by his glare, "quit scowling would you? If you can improve your mood, I'll let you ride my horse."
She whirled around and kissed the mare's nose before frolicking back into the barn. Tuffy nickered and followed her through the doorway, leaving a stunned Damian and the gray gelding , who quickly abandoned the boy and followed Tuffy's steps inside as well.

It was like someone had replaced the blonde with a female version of Grayson, in a really good mood.
And it was horrifying.

"Oy! Damian, you coming?"
...
After a months of being unable to even touch either horse, Damian found himself dumbfounded as Walker tacked up not only Tuffy, but the gray gelding as well without so much as a frustrated hoof stamp. It was if Tuffy's relationship to Walker made the gelding completely okay with her too. She had raided through the recently stocked tack stall, selected a pair of saddles and halters and nimbly geared up without pause. He watched her skip back to the stall and slide back over carrying two bridles, which she slipped over first Tuffy's then the gray gelding's obliging head.

Finished, she turned around holding both sets of reins.

"Alright, I don't know if you have any riding experience so you're going to be on Tuffy and I'll ride Sitdka. Tuffy will take care of you, it's just that I don't know what Sitdka's like yet because I don't know him. What?"

Damian had no idea what the hell had just happened. Five minutes ago he couldn't touch either horse but now they were both tacked up to ride, not a hint of mistrust in their eyes.

This was the most amazing person he had ever met.
But there was no way he was going to tell her that, so instead he asked a question.
"How do you know the gray's name is Sitdka? He wasn't your horse like Tuffy was," Damian crossed his arms with a squint.

She shrugged and handed him Tuffy's reins.
"He just looks like a Sitdka to me and I have a thing against calling him 'horse' until we discover his 'proper' name. Come on, we can discuss the points of making later, but for now let's ride!" She pulled the gelding- Sitdka now- behind her and opened the arena gate to walk through.

Tuffy tugged on her reins eagerly and Damian followed with reluctance, uncomfortable at the massive plot twist life had just thrown at the two of them. Walker closed the gate behind the four, put her foot in Sitdka's stirrup and pulled into the saddle with uncanny ease. It was evident she had been doing this for a long time.

"Um," Damian started. Tuffy nosed him in the ribs, turning her neck to peer calmly at him as he contemplated mounting up. Come on human, she seemed to say, we've got places to be and things to do! Let's go!

"Just put your left foot in the stirrup and your hands on the horn and the back of the saddle," Walker was saying, still beaming.

"I don't..." Damian let his sentence trail off.

"What was the rest of that?"

"I don't know how...." He mumbled again.

"One more time?"

"I don't know how to ride a horse."

Far from her laughing at his discomfort, she shrugged.
"I'll teach you. But the first step is still getting on. You got this dude, first time's the hardest and after that it gets easier."

Well, if she could do it, certainly the boy wonder himself could learn how to ride a horse.
He put his left foot in the stirrup, hands on the saddle parts she had said, and pulled himself onto the back of the horse.