November 25, 2010
~*~ GR ~*~
For the first time in a while, breakfast is solely quick-fix foods - oatmeal, muffins, and some egg/sausage mix that Glenn's fairly sure is from the freeze dried buckets they've stockpiled as they found them that just need hot water and no babysitting. He's not going to complain, since he knows everyone with any sort of skill has been working in the various kitchens on the property since yesterday to produce a feast that will probably put the wedding food to shame. Maggie hooks her leg around his almost as soon as he sits down and he still feels the thrill of that contact.
Breakfast tends more than any meal to be less family, more team or workmates, letting everyone wind up for the day ahead. Those without any strong team usually drift to their partners, like Rosita and Eugene eating with Abraham since he joined Jacqui's team after Bryce decided he was going to cycle over to the building crew for a while. While he knows Merle eventually wants Abraham on his crew, maybe even leading a second, separate construction crew, it's fallen to Glenn to make sure the big man knows the ropes on moving outside the walls. He works surprisingly well under Jacqui's direct leadership, and the other two women on the team seem to enjoy his addition to their numbers.
He has to laugh softly because they don't have a run today. Thanksgiving would fall on his teams' true off-duty day, but he doesn't mind. Even Scout's big conglomerate of teams is staying put today and only essential work crews are running - animals, farm, and food.
Tara plops down with a grin and the biggest bowl of oatmeal he thinks he's ever seen anyone eat. "Fun part about Thanksgiving is getting to raid cranberries for oatmeal," she announces. "Wonder if they could grow those here, because it's gonna suck when we run out of the dried ones and the canned sauce."
Maggie shakes her head. "Gets too hot here to do much with them, I think, even if we could find the bushes to get started with. It'll be raisins for us next Thanksgiving. Cherries might be close though, if you dried them."
"Do you have cherry orchards near here?" Rosita asks. "Like those apple orchards Carol had you raid?"
Those are actually a lot more fun than Glenn expected, rolling his team through the closer orchards. Abraham's first run had been to do the final picking at one of the farms up by Ellijay. Apples were certainly always going to be a big staple of the Homestead, as long as they could get teams out to pick during the harvest season.
"If we ever find one, we'll probably be pushing way up into the mountains," Maggie said. "I remember when my stepmom would go through the seed catalog, Dad would always tell her they wouldn't do well where we were in South Georgia. Kinda like cranberries - they need the cold and don't like the heat much. Might find trees here and there in people's gardens versus an orchard. The Eldridges would know best. Daddy raised cattle, so our food growing was just the personal garden really."
"They've planted everything we dragged back from the box stores and plant nurseries," Glenn says, remembering his orders to grab everything. "The greenhouses even have citrus trees, kiwi, and pomegranate."
"Can't say I understood being on a supply run team that I'd be grabbing fruit and plants as much as cans and boxes," Abraham muses. He's done with his breakfast, disposable bowls and spoon stacked and two empty muffin wrappers on top.
"Planning for the future, man. Gonna run out of canned goods one day and no more coming." Glenn shrugs. He doesn't mind, because it livens things up to not just always be loading up boxes, boxes, and more boxes.
"What's the weirdest farm thing you've brought back that wasn't for your zoo?" Rosita asks. She smirks at his grumpy look for the zoo comment.
"Earthworms. I never knew that people farmed the things before, much less used them to help with compost."
"Vermicomposting. They have that underway here? I would be interested in how it compares to other types of composting." The Dixon encouragement of Eugene's odd collection of knowledge has the man bouncing around the property faster than some of the not-yet-apprenticed teenagers trying to find their niche. The fact that he's usually got Honey, still off building duty, tagging along seems to further settle his comfort level. The man's damned weird at times, but Glenn really can't criticize. His life before all this was a bit weird too.
"Ask Honey to take you down to the farm when Lenore's available. That woman will give you all the facts you need about farming and probably a bunch you never wanted to know."
Eugene nods and turns back to the textbook he has with him. He's eating more slowly than everyone else, reading as much as he eats, so the conversation continues around him of foods they're going to miss and foods they're glad will stick around. It's the staring off into space that finally gets everyone's attention, so much so that Jacqui reaches across the table to nudge his book and get his attention. "You okay?"
He startles and actually blushes a little. "I was thinking. There are hostile groups out there that might hear things over the radio, positions, hauls, and people, correct?"
Glenn nods. "Yeah. We try to be careful, but monitoring the channels we use is only good if someone's dumb enough to talk on them. People being on ham frequencies is less likely, so that's why we use it as well as the distance being better."
"Perhaps a language that's less common for the masses?" the man suggests. He tilts up the book he has with him, showing the cover of a Chamorro textbook. "It has a lot in common with Spanish, but this textbook doesn't indicate it to be a creole. The original base language is like nothing most denizens of Georgia would ever know. Enough people here are bilingual in other languages, so they're already wired to learn a third. So as long as the watch and the run teams all have at least one person, it would work as a code language."
"Like the Navajo code talkers?" Jacqui asks and Eugene nods.
"It's worth talking to Shane and Scout about it. He's been learning himself, so he'd have a good idea of the learning curve." Glenn mulls it over, exchanging a look with Maggie and Tara, who he knows has just started picking it up because Cricket uses both English and Chamorro with the baby. "We don't have anyone on our team, but I'm betting Tara and I could pick it up. And there might be others we could use as well, although I suspect with Cricket and I being the only Korean speakers, that's limited."
"How many languages does your partner speak?" Eugene asks Tara. "I know that Hannah only speaks three and calls herself the lazy linguist of her siblings." Eugene's insistence on calling Honey by her given name is another quirk that puzzles Glenn a little, but since Honey doesn't care, no one's asked him why.
"Five, if you count sign language. She grew up with English, Chamorro, and Spanish. Took sign language as her language credit for high school and then Korean in college. The joke about Honey being lazy is because she took classes in high school for a language she already spoke for an easy A. Pretty sure Merle's only got the three too."
"What about the others?" Rosita asks. "If three is lazy, and Cricket speaks five, I'm afraid of the rest."
"Scout's got seven. The usual three, French, Arabic, Turkish, and Pashtu. Jazz has four, sorta. He was taking Mandarin Chinese in high school. He still practices it with Honey's roommate, so she's not so homesick. Not sure on Daryl, but Jamie and Glynnis speak Chamorro and Spanish both."
"He knows four fluently," Honey says from behind Glenn, grinning when she startles him. "The usual three, as Tara calls them, plus French. He used to help Scout with her homework and learned it that way."
"The Chamorro makes sense, but how did everyone end up fluent in Spanish?" Rosita asks.
"Daryl and Scout had a Spanish-speaking babysitter when they were young and just soaked it up. The rest of us just learned because they liked to use it, I guess."
It makes sense to Glenn, more so than just being forced to learn something for high school credit. His Spanish class was picked as the easy option since he couldn't follow Honey's footsteps and use his native fluency in Korean. Most of his classmates struggled, coming to a new language in their mid-to-late teens, but it really was an easy class for him, although he let his fluency lapse badly once he was out of high school until he needed it again as a delivery driver. The sucky discovery then was that most high school Spanish is based on European Spanish, at least where he went to school.
She reaches over and steals one of Glenn's muffins and drapes an arm around his shoulders to wink at Maggie. "Why are we talking about languages this morning?"
"Eugene has an idea about using Chamorro as a code language for the radios."
"Huh. Kinda surprised no one's thought of that before." She drops her wrapper in Glenn's empty oatmeal bowl, keeping the muffin she's bitten into, and lets him go. "C'mon, Eugene. Let's go make our erstwhile security leaders work their brains this morning."
It's all the encouragement the other man needs. Rosita reaches out with a laugh and takes his bowl, giving him time to save his own muffin before he hurries off at Honey's side.
"Every time I see those two wandering around, I keep thinking they'd make a great plot for an odd couple type show," Maggie muses.
"Not sure I'd guess which one's Felix and which one's Oscar," Jacqui adds.
Glenn takes note that Abraham is not only quieter than usual, but disconnected from the conversation after his earlier comment about runs. He's not had any of the violent outbursts that characterized his first day, and if Merle didn't want him for a construction foreman, he'd suggest Scout and Shane give him his own team in a few weeks. He's a solid worker and an absolute menace the few times they've had to clear wandering walkers who moved in after the big team blew through.
Glenn glances over his shoulder to see what has his attention, if anything, and it's Abby, who ended up between Lori and Quinton's pregnant wife for breakfast, to her obvious delight. He wonders, not for the first time, who the big sergeant lost, and he suspects from his expression as he watches the blonde girl chatter, that there's a child among his losses.
He's debating if he should say something when Rosita startles Abraham back to awareness when she takes his bowls and bumps his arm. Abraham catches him looking, and he sees for a brief glimpse, the sort of grief he has no personal concept for. But the man looks away, attention toward the others, pretending nothing happened, so Glenn lets it be.
He thinks this is a wound that needs more experience than he has to offer.
Maggie catches his own distraction and nudges him, arching a brow. He shakes his head, but then leans in to softly say, "Can you ask your dad to maybe talk to Abraham?"
She looks toward the redhead and nods thoughtfully. He hopes that Hershel, who endured losing his wife and son to the disease, can offer insight Glenn can't.
~*~ MD ~*~
"Not supposed to be working today, mister, yet I find you out here staring at a half-built building."
Merle turns and smiles as Cricket makes her way to him where he's leaned on a saw horse, not truly seeing the scene in front of him. It's a school house, actually. He considered bringing in another portable from somewhere, but after hearing some of the women muse about the beauty of the old time school houses, he figured why the hell not. There's room for beauty among the usefulness of what they build.
So, the building before him looks like something out of a Laura Ingalls Wilder book, although it's not a true one room schoolhouse. The teachers will have the option to divide the room as class size needs or allows, and it does actually have a small shared office and storeroom space in the back. Below the building is something that certainly didn't exist in old school houses - a reinforced storm shelter.
They've got twenty-six kids between five and twelve now, and while he thinks the odds they'll get more declines with each passing month, being prepared is how they survive here. Andre and Christian will need school one day, and the four babies due soon will only be the first.
"You know me, sweetheart. I always think better around the smell of sawdust."
She slips arms around his waist, leaning into him. It's what he missed the most when his kids were missing, the random sweet hugs they all deliver as easily as they breathe.
"You need me for something?"
"Not really. Just left the community center and saw you leaned up out here." She tilts her head, studying the school house. "You gonna paint it red and give them a bell?"
He laughs. "Should I?"
"Might as well, although I'd personally prefer green or blue. Put a pretty fence around it and it'll be perfect for the kids."
"Carol's already got a run earmarked for next week to fetch playground and classroom equipment. I'm almost thinking I should have made it twice this size and put a daycare on one side."
"Maybe, but not really enough kids for a dedicated daycare yet. The casual system works for now. She sending them to the elementary school in town?"
He shakes his head. "We decided stripping too much in Conns Creek is a red flag. They noted a playground equipment place down in Canton that should have what we're looking for. Playground for the school, smaller stuff for the little kids to go over by the nursing home. Amuses the hell out of those old biddies to watch the kids play. Carol's so excited by the idea that she's going out on the run."
"That'll be an interesting experience for her."
"She's looking forward to it. Time gets away from you. Realized last night that Sophia's been out when she hasn't, going on the fishing runs with Daryl's teams."
"She ungrounded yet?"
Merle laughs. "Yeah, her mama finally had mercy last night and let up so she can go on tomorrow run with Daryl. Getting grounded off the runs was about the worst thing she could imagine."
"Best part of all those roommates on both sides, you don't really have to worry."
"Day I gotta worry about that with your brother is the day the world's really gone round the bend. It's your sister that's going to worry me bald."
"She's just sowing her oats. You should probably be glad you weren't really around for mine or Scout's phases like that, although neither of us were nursing a bruised heart behind it."
"She talk to you much about what's going on in her head right now? I got no real objection to her taking up with Tim, even if she decided it was a long-term thing."
"She's still avoiding the subject. Not sure if it'll pass or she'll crash, but I'm sure glad you revised those upper level porches so both sides have access. She and T-Dog are awkward as hell without her having to trek by his door to go home when she does. Lydia says that's only about every other night."
"Just watching and waiting then." He tugs her up for a hug of his own. "All this worrying about your sister. How are you adjusting to surprise parenthood?"
"He's a really good baby, just like Jazz was. Other than this new habit of staring right at you and dropping toys and expecting them to be picked up. Then he reminds me more of you."
"You implying I'm ornery, baby girl?"
"With every fiber of my being, daddy." She giggles. "I hate that his mama died, especially the way she did, but hopefully there's some sort of afterlife and she knows he's still loved and cared for."
"Tara still good with it? I know the baby fever was more you than her. Awful early in a relationship for a baby."
"Yeah. She's still a little stunned sometimes about how happy she is with it, but it does help that he's so content and we have an army of help. Her sister and niece think they got Christmas early."
Merle thinks about how much time he spends with all the kids except Cricket, whose duties and studies keep her near the infirmary and rarely with time for the other work crews. "I do actually need to check on how some of the new fences are holding on the horse farm. Want to ride with me?"
"I haven't been on a horse since we got home."
"Best to remedy that before you forget how. Still got Moonshine. She's probably missed you." The buckskin mare's getting up there in age, enough so that Hershel hesitated to use her as a brood mare at first. But she's a healthy Morgan likely to throw a strong working foal from that Percheron frozen sire they chose, and none of her three prior offspring are on property. She's also the first horse he ever bought the kids, then a three-year-old filly who loved kids and hated trailers so much she couldn't be regularly transferred.
"You gonna ride Imbri then?"
"Damned horse would hunt me down offended if I rode any of the others." The black 17-hand Friesian/Percheron cross is a puppy in nature, but she decided Merle was her person and only hers when he adopted her and two others from a rescue society. He's been relying less on the Polaris or work trucks and more on the mare, even if she is two months in with a Clydesdale-cross foal. None of the future horses at Homestead were bred just for riding.
"I'll go tell Tara we're going out and grab some water bottles."
"Meet you at the barn." The only hard part of getting the two mares up from pasture is making the third mare stay put. With Hershel's horses here too, he's sent all but the three expectant mares to the old horse farm. Best thing about that expansion so soon is that it came with barns Merle didn't have to build. And when the pretty paint horse from the Eldridge farm dances prettily, he figures what the hell, she can go too.
It's a beautiful day for a ride and once his task done, he'll be better settled for the sheer mass of people sharing the holiday.
~*~ LG ~*~
Lori finds her rhythm as she trims, rinses, and slices her way through the bushel basket of brussels sprouts. Abby's still giving the task a disbelieving look, because she isn't yet convinced the vegetable is an edible one. The first harvest came in just in time for Thanksgiving, with Lenore arriving pink-cheeked from her chill morning in the field with Lori's prize.
It probably won't be the most popular dish today, but she's always had brussels sprouts at Thanksgiving, and the Eldridge children are certainly excited about them. The fact that thirteen-year-old Anne is assisting enthusiastically is keeping Abby's attention.
Their vegetable will be one of the last ones prepared, since she wants them fresh and tempting. They hit a motherload of still good prosciutto in one of the markets, so after she steams them in the big commercial steamer for a few minutes, they're going on the flat griddle en masse in the drippings from browning the prosciutto.
Although she has to admit this is the first time she's ever cooked twenty-five pounds of them at once.
"What all goes with these on the griddle?" Anne asks. The petite redhead, Lenore Eldridge's oldest child, looks like she's younger than Abby rather than two years older. But Lori's seen the girl shifting bushel baskets of vegetables that make her wince, so there's power in that tiny frame. "Mom usually does creamed ones."
"I used to as well, but I saw this recipe on TV and it actually gets Carl to eat brussels sprouts."
"See, Abby, if Carl will eat it, it'll be good."
Abby looks a little more lively in her task of mincing garlic with the little hand chopper, so Lori answers the original question. "Just garlic and onions while it's on the griddle, then mix it with the crisped prosciutto in the serving bowl."
"And we get to help with that part too?" Abby asks.
"Sure. It's a lot of sprouts, so extra hands will be good." Both girls are old enough to safely be near the griddle.
"There's Daddy."
Lori looks up to see Daryl carrying in a double stack of covered pans that he carries to the steam table and slides into place. It's getting closer to time for lunch, and more and more dishes are appearing like those. She's guessing his are Carol's, which is confirmed when the woman appears with two pie carriers on top of a casserole dish that Lori knows is a massive peach cobbler. Today's big meal is somewhere between a potluck and a cafeteria style meal, and Lori's looking forward to the variety.
He swings by the table, taking care that she pauses with her knife before he kisses her and Abby. "Need an extra set of hands? Can wash up and help. Carol and Patricia are done up at the house and Jazz ran everyone off while he's finishing up.
"Sure. You can dice up the prosciutto." The meat is in slices in a container, waiting on Lori to finish the sprouts to dice it since neither of the girls helping has the knife skills yet. He detours over to the kitchen hand station to wash up and comes back with a knife of his own.
"Glad we're using disposables tableware while we have 'em. Dish duty's still gonna be huge," he remarks. His work with the prosciutto is with the same precision he does any knife work, and Lori finds herself a little distracted watching his hands for a minute until a giggle and nudge from Abby brings her back on track.
"What did Carol make?" Anne asks.
"Glazed carrots in one pan, that mashed turnip and apple thing in the other. Plus pecan pie, sweet potato pie, and peach cobbler."
Lori looks to the long table beyond the steamer tables that is starting to run out of space as pies, cobblers, and desserts make their way in. Even the small container apartment ovens can just fit a pie, so dessert duty was shared out more than the rest.
"Did you make a pie?"
Abby answers before Lori can, actually excited about the pie, even though one of its ingredients is fairly new to her palette. "Strawberry rhubarb. It's gonna be yummy."
"Which one?"
"The blue pie pans in the front corner closest to the steam table," Lori answers. "There are two." The pie is actually Rick's favorite, and when Carl brought it up, Daryl encouraged her to make it. She has to admit he's probably right that his own favorite will overload the tables. It is pecan pie in Georgia, after all.
"What's Jazz bringing?" Lori asks. The boy was still assessing his purple binder yesterday when Lori called it a night, and with Carol's access to food stores, the indecision didn't matter much.
"He's waiting on it to come out of the oven, but it's a pasta lamb dish. Kinda like the moussaka from his birthday but with pasta. Got both ovens full and running while he preps those little hand pies everyone likes."
"Nothing sweet then?"
"He taught Beth and Carol how to make baklava earlier. There's like three trays of it on the table waiting to come down when Beth does." He smirks at her. "I may have snuck a couple of pieces away for later."
It's a new favorite for her. With Carl, she craved tart, sour foods, including a weird stage where Rick made three or four midnight runs for sour gummy worms and finally just started buying them ahead of time. With Asskicker, it's honey. Not just sweet foods, it has to be honey. Luckily, it's something they have an indecently large supply of. She can't imagine if it was those damned gummy worms again. The forethought earns him a kiss, especially since she knows he and others will make sure she ends up with some at lunch today too.
"Every time I see Patricia, I'm glad we have ultrasound, because I'd swear she's having twins otherwise." Lori's words come as the older woman makes her way across the cafeteria toward the permanent table with the better chairs. Her fosterlings are following with dishes as well. Lori's most curious about the banana pudding, between the rehydrated freeze-dried bananas and the homemade vanilla wafers, it's bound to be different, but Patricia's a wiz with adapting recipes, so it's probably good.
Patricia's thinner frame, much like Lori's, carries the pregnancy prominently. She's got the healthy glow they use in all the old advertising, but looks like she should have given birth last week rather than six weeks from now. But it doesn't seem to phase her as she oversees her kids settling their contributions in the correct places. Her arrival makes Lori check the clock and now she's glad Daryl helped.
"Let's get this started. Griddle's clear."
Daryl helping is still a sweet addition to her routine. He's a decent enough cook himself, claiming he didn't want to live on frozen meals and takeout, enough so he's cooked for her a few times when they both wanted to dodge the hustle and bustle of the community meal. It's always included some sort of game he's taken while out on a run, but despite the fact that she never ate quail or grouse before, both were quite appetizing. Although if she's really honest with herself, the man could walk in with the much beleaguered tree rats again and she'd eat them just for the thrill of watching him move quietly around the small cabin kitchen.
The fact that he reserves his cooking nights for times the children are occupied elsewhere might have a lot to do with that.
Watching him work under her direction with his two young 'sous chefs' makes her regret it'll be hours before she can whisk him away home for privacy. So, when the sprouts are on the steam table and the girls dismissed to go have a little fun before lunch, she lures him out of the path of various bustling folks and kisses him til he's grinning silly and a passing Merle can't help but quip at them to "get a room".
"Having a good day then?" he asks softly.
"The best, so far."
His grin fades to the softer, crooked smile she adores. "I'll make it even better later, mamacita."
And with that unusually coy remark, he escapes, leaving her to go join Patricia and squirm a little in future anticipation.
~*~ EP ~*~
Eugene eyes the massive horse warily, wondering why he didn't escape faster when he realized Honey was going to offer to take the horses when Merle and Cricket came riding back into the main Homestead from their fence check. She's got the smaller two horses by the reins and leading her into the barn, expecting him to lead the behemoth along as well. As if the horse knows he's losing his mind a little, she headbutts him with that skull that makes him think some big dinosaur is in her bloodline. T-Rex maybe. But she's intent on making sure he follows the other horse and young woman into the barn, so he does, before she demonstrates the T-Rex suspicion is correct.
The horse needs little direction, going to a stall that he assumes is hers and waiting patiently for the slow-on-the-uptake human to open the door for her. Honey's in the next stall, already taking off the riding gear and chattering to the horse as if she understands every word. He sees that the third horse is unbridled and in her own stall, content to nose at the water available. That bit of inattention earns him a nibbled shirt from his own charge and he turns, thinking it shouldn't be rocket science to get her bridle off at least.
It's not until he hears Honey giggle a little that he admits it's not as easy as TV makes it out to be, but he's got it off the mare and she hasn't eaten him. The solid black animal is nearly as tall as he is at the shoulders, and he wonders just what breed she is.
"Give me a minute and I'll help with the saddle," his friend calls out. "It weighs a ton, custom made for her."
"You're sure she's a horse?" He has to admit she's beautiful, solid black and with intelligent eyes that are judging him quite a bit at the moment. She nuzzles at her feed bin and then huffs at him.
"Yeah. Just a really big one for a mare, but that's because she's half Percheron. Draft horse, kind of like the Clydesdales. If you go check that shelf by the tack room, there's some horse treats and probably a few apples left from what Beth brought up yesterday. She's not a nippy horse, so you can just put one flat on your hand and let her nibble it off your palm."
The idea is testing his resolve to not hide from new experiences. Compared to flesh-eating humans, an overly friendly horse should be easy, right?
So, he takes both an apple from the little basket and one of the treats from the Tupperware container, realizing they're homemade, some sort of oat and carrot mix by his best guess. The mare's watching him intently, but patiently, from her stall when he returns. He offers the smaller treat first, gathering up more courage than it ought to take to let the horse grab the snack.
"I did not expect it to tickle that much," he says in response. The mare just chews happily, flicking her tail.
"That's part of the fun. At least she's not slobbery, like some can be."
"What's her name?" She's nuzzling him now, apparently smart enough to know his concealed hand holds another treat of some kind.
"Mare Imbrium."
"Like the lava plain on the moon?" It does suit her.
"Sorta. It's from a book series, but the mare in the books is named after the moon feature. We call her Imbri."
"What about the other two?"
"This pretty lady is Moonshine. She was our first horse here, the one I learned to ride on when I was six. The little paint belongs to Lenore Eldridge's son. He's a bit horse mad, but young enough her name's actually Spinda, like the Pokémon." Honey finishes brushing the horse in her stall and comes to rescue him from the affections of the giant horse. "These are the only three up here in the main barn anymore, because they're all in-foal. Dad, Hershel, and the other farm-oriented types are planning for future transportation when fuel's scarce or gone."
"You have the biodiesel unit at the farm that you showed me." He even offered a couple ideas for improvement that Gage Eldridge made notes about and thanked him.
"True, but biodiesel's dependent on crop production we don't need to eat. I know they'll try to work acreage not under protection for that, but it's always a good idea to have multiple plans, right."
He moves to take the saddle from the horse now as she's ready for it, grimacing a bit as he realizes she got the saddle off the other horse without his help. He gets it on the saddle rack outside the stall and returns to watch as she brushes the horse. Even with her height, she looks dwarfed by the mare. She works quickly, keeping a running commentary to him or the horse, he isn't sure which. The brush seems a secondary part of the grooming, as she's using her hands as much as the brush on the dark coat, so he asks about it.
"It's more to check for injuries or strains and the brush is more brush out any tagalongs or dirt she's picked up. Gotta check her feet too." She lifts one of the mare's hooves, motioning for him to look. "Healthy here, shoes in good shape. No stones or debris. If there was, I'd use a hoof pick." The remaining three hooves check out similarly, and she steps out of the stall and does a wipe down of the tack outside the stalls.
"Are they going to stay in the barn?" He notices that none of the stall doors are closed, although neither of the other two seems interested in anything other than their water and hay.
"No, we'll take them down to pasture and turn them back out until nightfall. No sense in keeping them cooped up or having more to muck out than the morning critter crew has to."
"And they'll just follow you like puppies?"
"More or less. They like being out there, just like they like coming to the barn because they're going to get a bit of grain and maybe some treats." She goes into Moonshine's stall and guides the mare out. It's a signal to the other two, because the smaller horse follows almost immediately.
Imbri nudges him in the shoulder as if she is taking him to the pasture. He figures it's wisest to follow and marvels at the easy walk of big animals down to the gate they wait patiently to be opened. All three trot out into the field with undisguised joy, Spinda even taking a roll in the grass, before trotting off to the pond. Honey latches the gate before curious poultry can escape.
"You wanna be worried about any of the critters, it's those geese to keep an eye on. They can be mean little bastards sometimes." She's smiling, so he's not sure how much worry he should actually have.
But perhaps his Alice in Wonderland approach is going to pay off. The experiences he's tried so far would have fallen under believing in impossible things before, but now, they're possible, and he's starting to feel like he might one day leave the coward behind who led Abraham and Rosita across multiple states.
"C'mon, Tex. We don't hurry, the really interesting stuff will be eaten."
At least friendship with Honey isn't an impossible thing.