AN: This is my first fic, writing it largely to procrastinate completing my two documentaries due in a week. But I've had this idea in my head for a couple of weeks and now I do believe it is complete enough in my head to publish.
Nothing you can recognize belongs to me.
This starts a couple of days before Wild Magic begins
Reviews: I'm never going to beg for reviews, but they'll most likely help me refine my process and story, seeing as this is my first time on here.
The end of March was the perfect time for a horse fair. The time of spring when everything was too muddy to begin planting, and no one had an excuse not to attend the fair, where the fair was about as much about horses as a ball was about dancing.
The people who attended the fair were as varied as the horses themselves- in the midst of a string of flighty racing-horses, weathered men checked the teeth and legs of the fillies and colts, nonplussed by the kicks and bites the young stock would try. Lesser nobles puffed themselves as large as they could be to barter on fancy, sleek, well-trained horses that were guaranteed to never spook or throw their precious cargo. Mud-covered children darted into pens of ponies with less-watchful owners to snip off locks of horsehair and sell them to the switchmakers in exchange for a coin. Young boys chased their crushes through the puddles and into the quiet tents full of hay and feed. Old women gossiped while selling hot foods to the masses.
For Onua Chamtong, the horse fair was both an end and a beginning: an end to the long journey to Cria, the sleepless nights spent in cheap inns with scratchy sheets and drafty windows, and the seemingly endless rides, where the green-gray landscape said nothing for the beauty of Galla. It was also the beginning of an even longer journey- herding her chosen stock the same way she had come, dodging bandits, sleeping in the same muddy fields she had looked on with disdain, and missing her companions in Corus. She couldn't believe that she was looking forward to meeting the new crop of unbroken riders, but she was almost counting down the days.
Yet the horse fair, which was the true middle point, was always a delight to Onua. She loved watching the scores of unusual people, eating the warm bowls of soup, and watching the young people race the horses on the outskirts of the fair. She had picked up some rather expensive charms meant to keep horses from becoming footsore or getting colic as well as a pair of soft, watertight boots before she began her search for horses.
The process always took several days, as Onua needed horses that were smart enough to pick up on cues the inexperienced riders would teach them, but not too smart to try and assert themselves against their rider. Once such horses were found, the K'mir needed to select a variety of horses in sizes that would fit the various rider sizes. Horses were then checked for soundness, confirmation, and age. Color and breed didn't matter, so the horses chosen usually were shaggy mountain horses and ponies, which were cheaper and more sure-footed than the sleek horses bred for nobles' hunting parties.
Though the process took several days, with Onua's wild magic and general horse sense, as well as her hard bargaining skills, and her well-trained assistant, finding horses was a rather painless, if not fun, process. After going for many years the K'mir had made friends with a number of the horse traders and was often treated, along with her assistant, to a hearty mountain meal made by the traders' families.
This year, however, was proving to be difficult. The stock was easy to select, as always, and the sun had managed to faintly shine enough to dry most of the nagging mud from the paths and corrals. But Rowan, Onua's faithful assistant had approached her in the middle of the second day of the fair, an expression of excitement and worry on his face. After stumbling over his words for a few minutes, Onua was able to piece together what he had said- that a well known breeder had asked to take Rowan on as an apprentice, to take over the successful trade in a few years, and to have a home much closer to his family than Corus had been. Onua, after all, had found Rowan in the same way, at the horse fair, several years earlier.
A look of delight crossed the sturdy young man's face as Onua embraced him and sent him packing to his new life. The same smile left Onua's face much more quickly. She still needed an assistant. Only eight horses had been purchased and brought to her corral, and she needed someone strong, quick-witted, and pleasant to be around, so the search for a new assistant began.
She spread the word first among her friends, the horse traders and charm sellers, and the plump, cheerful woman who made the best bread that Onua had ever tasted. Within hours, she was being approached by a number of men of all ages (which isn't the most concerting thing in the world, especially to the K'mir, who had a dark history with untrustworthy men), being asked about the position.
Just as she had checked the horses for soundness and saneness, Onua went through a similar process with her potential employees. Her gift helped test for lies and that trustworthiness, and that eliminated almost half of the applicants. Others just did not fit what she was looking for, and she mentally began to sort through the group as she did with a herd of ponies:
"Too old, much too young, looks as if he would mistreat the horses, looks as if he would take advantage of me, laughs too much, knows nothing of horses, alcoholic (most likely), girlfriend clings to him like a barnacle, much too quiet, etc, etc, etc.
This year's crop of assistants was turning out to be miserable. "Much easier to find a good horse than a good man," Onua mused.
So, she gave up, beginning the easier process of selecting and bringing horses to her pen, and praying to the gods more often than ever, that she would be able to get the horses home safely without aging more than a year or too.
She had packed what little she had brought with her and was spreading out her bedroll in the lean-to besides her corral when Robert, a trader and old friend peeked his head into the shelter and whispered loudly,
"Onua- you must hear what happened to me today!"
"Odds bobs Robert- can't your stories wait until next year . There will be plenty of time for that later, when I don't have to escort twenty-seven horses to the next country single-handedly."
"But Onua, that's the thing, I think I've found you an assistant."
The K'mir rolled her eyes at the old man, ready to be disappointed by a less-than-adequate assistant proposal, until the man began his story of the hooligan who had unlocked the gate to some of the stallion pens, including some of his own, allowing the sleek, expensive animals to intermingle, which inevitably led to the kicking, biting, and screaming of the powerful animals. The men that owned the animals ran around the area as frantically as their animals, attempting to gain control, but being kicked and bitten in the process. Robert showed Onua a deep cut surrounded by a large bruise right above his eyebrow- proving he had been in the midst of the madness.
A crowd of onlookers gathered around the pel-mel of animals and their owners, mostly young boys egging the chaos onward. But in the midst of the dirt, hooves, and shouting of male voices, Robert heard a female voice, seemingly coming from the middle of the confusion, speaking to the horses in a practical, stern voice.
"She wasn't yellin or nutten, she was scolding them- the horses- just as my own ma used to scold me." Robert said, running his callused hands through his hair. "She just was telling them to mind their own business and act like civilized folk. The couple of people that could hear the lass began laughing at her, but soon they realized that she was the only person not gettin kicked, and that the horses were actually listening to her, they were walking as calmly as my grandmother's cart horse, back to their pens.
Now nobody knew where she come from, and she and the pony she had with her looked as if they were wanting some food, so I took her back to my tent and my wife filled her with some good bread. She seemed awful shy, but I was able to get out of her that she is from Snowsdale, and that she is in want of horse work. I'm all the way up to my ears in assistants, as my wife decided to give me too many sons than I know what to do with, and she didn't seem keen on marrying any of them, handsome as they are, as I suspect she's younger than the fifteen that she claims to be. So I told her about you, and where to find you, and if I were you, I'd recognize that the gods are smiling upon me and wait around tomorrow until she gathers enough courage to approach you. I have a good feeling about that one there."
Robert chuckled, and left Onua to her thoughts. The K'mir wrestled with the many questions that had so quickly been presented to her. "a child?, that kind of horse sense?, is she some kind of joke that Robert is playing on me, or are the gods truly being kind to me at last?"
Not knowing quite what to do, Onua said a quick prayer to the gods, then let sleep take over and tomorrow decide its own destiny.