The Indignity of Mortality (Sebasclaude)

21. Sebastian

All horsey terminology with an * next to it will be explained up here.
*Thoroughbred - a fancy breed of horse that's generally a little taller and more fine-boned. They're mostly intelligent and move in a collected way, so they're often used for things like dressage, but are also very spooky and tend to have a bit of sass
*Three day eventing - A horse type place will hold three days of riding competitions, I guess, and on each day there'll be a different sort of riding - either dressage, cross country or jumping
* Cross - the cross or mixture of two breeds
* Stable-name - Most horses that compete have a stable name, the name they're called normally, and a competition name, that they're called in competitions. I would recommend looking up horse competition names if you want a good laugh.
* Head-collar and lead-rope - It's functionally the same as a dog harness and lead, except you put the head-collar on the horse's head (duh). You don't ride with a head-collar, but it's easy to put on and you can tie the horse to the wall with the lead-rope to stop it running off. Normal lead-ropes are roughly two feet long, but you can get longer ones that are about six or seven feet.
*Tack - saddles and bridles and suchlike.

Following the laundry and making the beds, Ciel had a horse riding lesson. Frankly, I was dreading it. I didn't think Ciel would hurt himself, Ciel was perfectly competent on a horse, it was more the horse itself that was concerning me. Ciel's new favourite horse was a *Thoroughbred in every sense, and for those less knowledgeable about horse breeds, Thoroughbreds are very frequently insane. This particular horse used to do *three day eventing and hunting until his previous owner fell off and injured their back, so was by all accounts experienced, but that didn't make him any less nutty. Now, whilst this was fine when I was a Demon and was easily five times as strong as him, and shattered ribs were barely something even worth acknowledging, I wasn't a Demon any more, I was a human, which was what worried me.
Of course, once Alois found out that Ciel was doing riding, he refused to do his maths lesson and demanded to do riding instead. Much to my disapproval, Faustus caved.

As such, I found myself headed up to the horse's field next to Faustus. Faustus was to collect the horse Ciel had first ridden - a slightly saner Thoroughbred-Welsh Pony *cross called Blue - and I was to collect the nightmare in horse form that was called Arthur (this was of course just Arthur's *stable name, but King Arthur of Camelot was far too long). I personally thought Arthur was far too kind of a name to give that beast, but that was just my opinion.
Claude, of course, caught Blue with no issues, and stood scratching her muzzle by the gate. I trudged up to the top of the field, were Arthur stood, stock still, his eyes wild and focused solely on me. I put the *lead-rope over his neck and he put his head up, and held it there so I had to stand on my toes to get the *head-collar on him, before he broke into a trot. I managed to do up the buckle and hall on the rope, and Arthur came to a complete halt, his ears back and his body stiff. I was scared to even move for fear of how Arthur might react. "Arthur, walk on," I growled, feeling my own heart racing. I could hear Arthur panting, as he glanced about the field. I pulled on the lead-rope to get him to walk on, and Arthur bolted, ripping the lead-rope out my hands and galloping towards the gate at a breakneck rate.
Cursing under my breath, and with the rope-burn starting to sting (I had taken my gloves off to stop them from getting dirty) I dashed after him, in hopes of getting him to stop before he reached Blue. I was almost certain he'd bite Blue, or Blue would kick him, and then one of them would end up with a broken jaw or an injured leg. Still, however fast I went, I wasn't even half as fast as Arthur as he raced towards Claude and Blue, his hooves thundering against the ground. Just as I was certain I was about to witness blood shed, Arthur stopped, just stopped, a few feet away from Claude and Blue. Loosely, Claude took ahold of his lead-rope, whilst I stumbled the rest of the way back to the gate, panting.

I felt dizzy and sick, not to mention I had that jittery feeling you got after something dangerous had just happened. It's hard to describe to someone who's never been around a horse just how terrifying it is when a horse bolts, but it's perhaps best comparable to if you were having a campfire, and suddenly the wind changed direction and the sparks started flying towards dry bush. A horse can kill a person with little to no effort, and every now and again they like to remind you of that. Still, I took Arthur off Claude, as Claude undid the gate. Arthur stamped and tossed his head because I wouldn't let him eat the grass whilst Claude was closing the gate, and even when we started walking Arthur broke into a trot, leaving me little choice but to run along behind him and haul on the lead rope.
"Sebastian." I turned briefly to look at Claude. "Stop, take Blue down, and bring me up a long lead rope."
"You think I can stop him?" I snapped back. Claude sighed, put the lead-rope over Blue's neck before running over to me and taking Arthur's lead-rope, before turning and heading back towards Blue. Arthur swung round and took off at a trot towards Blue, but a slightly slower one, and agreed to walk circles around Claude instead of actually stopping, albeit his ears were pointed straight back and he was tossing his head again.
I grabbed Blue and jogged back to where we tied the horses up and kept the *tack, before tying Blue up and grabbing the long lead-rope Claude wanted. I had no idea what he wanted a long lead-rope for, Arthur was out of control as it was, but frankly I was in no frame of mind to question it.
The sight of Arthur trying to trot back up to the field, and stamping when he didn't get his way was enough to make me want to throw up. Still, I passed Claude the lead-rope, and watched as Claude clipped it onto his bridle. To my confusion and mild horror, Claude gave Arthur a long rope, and Arthur took off towards the field again. Claude called Arthur to get him to go in the opposite direction, before moving to the side so the lead rope was against the back of Arthur's legs, so Arthur couldn't carry on without tripping. Arthur turned, and went back the way Claude had wanted him to, but just as fast as he had been going. "Give me five minutes," Claude instructed, and I was more than happy to oblige.

I stood up against the wall, trying to calm down, as Blue demolished the handful of hay I'd given him. Frankly, I felt awful. It wasn't just Arthur being awkward, I'd felt like shit pretty much since the afternoon of the previous day, but I'd been trying to ignore it. I was a bizarre mixture of incredibly awake and completely exhausted.
I looked up when I heard Claude coming down the path with Arthur, and spotted that Arthur had clearly given up on trotting, and was instead walking behind Claude with his head down. I was beyond hoping Claude would have found Arthur impossible to manage purely so as to avoid bruising my pride, and was instead hoping Arthur would start behaving from then on. Claude, thankfully, kept quiet and groomed Arthur himself and left Blue to me, and even though it was slightly irritating to see Arthur behaving so well for Claude unlike he had ever done with me, frankly it was just nice to have ten minutes where nothing horrifying happened.

Claude helped Alois (who had never ridden a horse before) on, and I helped Ciel on, though I was painfully aware that the help part of that was only really customary, as I wasn't much help at all. Ultimately, Claude ended up taking both of them, and Ciel told me to go and polish the silverware and see if anyone needed help. I suspected he could tell that something had happened, but I wasn't about to complain.
I made my way inside, nursing the splitting headache and wishing the day was over so I could just go to bed. Unfortunately, I had about a hundred and fifty million things to get done before then, so goodness knows when I'd actually be stopping for the day. I stumbled when my hip hit the wall, before making my way back into the middle of the hallway. Thankfully, the kitchen was empty and the door was open, so it was at least cool and quiet. After nearly tripping on one of the stool legs, I realised I'd forgotten to grab the silver polish, so headed back towards the cupboard with all the cleaning supplies in it. By the time I arrived in the kitchen again, Baldroy was there, and for as much as I knew he wasn't doing anything and hadn't done anything I just wanted him to leave. I grabbed one of the knives out the draw, and found it coming out of focus.
"Sebastian, are you alright?"
"Of course," I snapped, before sighing and reminding myself to be polite. "Sorry, I didn't get much sleep last night." Baldroy shrugged.
"I don't think any of us did." I hummed, and put the knife on top of a cloth to keep it from scratching again, before pulling out another one.

I was looking up at Baldroy from the floor, the back of my head throbbing. I had no idea how I got on the floor, I had just grabbed another knife to polish. I hissed, and went to sit up. "I wouldn't advise you don't do that," Baldroy instructed.
"Why?" I muttered, before my stomach lurched and I only just about held back the urge to be sick. Baldroy knelt down beside me and rubbed my back, and instead of pushing him away I sat still and desperately hoped he wouldn't leave.
"You're alright, you just fainted." Trembling, I nodded, though I didn't entirely believe him at the time. In retrospect, it was obvious that was what had happened, but at the time it had seemed oddly impossible.
"Why?" I stammered. Yes, I had felt awful, and I still did, but...
"I don't know. You tell me." Baldroy helped me to my feet and let me lean on him, as my legs felt ready to buckle at any second. "Are you going to throw up?"
"Yes, probably."

Well, I wasn't wrong about that. There wasn't much to throw up, obviously, I hadn't eaten anything in probably a few centuries, but it did burn slightly, which I can earnestly say did not help my mental state at the time. I am embarrassed to admit Baldroy held my hair out of my face as I wretched, and I clung to him like a child, panting and shaking, for a good minute or so afterwards. At the time it was legitimately scary, mostly because I still wasn't sure what had happened.
I lay down afterwards, and I think I may have gone to sleep, it's either that or I just was just unfocused enough to have not actually registered anything that was going on for most of the proceeding five minutes; regardless, it was all a bit of a blur, for as cliché as that sounds. I eventually braved the nausea to get up and close the curtains, because the sunlight desperately wasn't helping, but didn't stand up for some time after that, and mostly just lay with my eyes closed, listening to what was going on outside. It was oddly relaxing to hear voices or footsteps in the hallways, at least once people had stopped talking about me.
I eventually noticed someone had left me some water, probably Baldroy, and it was only at that point that I realised I was intensely thirsty. I was somewhat hungry as well, and but also felt too sick to even consider eating anything. After that, I stared into space for a while, not really thinking about anything, or at least not consciously, and so I had no idea how long it was before someone knocked on my door.