• WATTYS 2022 WINNER •
When Iris Monet married millionaire Jared Darling, she had only one rule - that he could cheat on her with anyone except the household staff. This arrangement of theirs would have gone on quite happily if she hadn't caught him...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
akai 👁
IT'S 10.30 AM, and the new farm helper is late.
Turning to Maiko, I heave a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness for that, huh?" The pregnant mare nuzzles into the palm of my hand. "You were really stressed out yesterday, weren't you?"
Maiko whinnies, almost as if she's chiding me.
"Don't blame me," I mutter. "I told your owner I didn't need help. He's the one who insisted. Said he didn't want me to overwork myself. But it's not overwork if you're doing things you love, is it?"
Maiko snorts.
"You don't think she knows what she's doing?" My mind flashes back to yesterday, when Iris almost punched a hole in the wall with her pitchfork. And how she couldn't differentiate between soiled and unsoiled bedding.
"I don't think she knows what she's doing too," I agreed. "I don't think she was a farm helper at all. If she was, she was a bad one."
I give Maiko's bulging belly a light pat. "Any day now, you. You tell me if you need anything, okay?"
I move away to check on the other horses. Kuroo, our black Hanoverian, is already tossing his head impatiently, wanting a good round of galloping on the grass. Next to him, Shou is just as eager. The second I unlock their stalls Shou makes to canter out, but I lift a hand and shoot him a look.
"No running in the stable, Shou," I warn. He backs off a little, admonished.
I walk to the stable doors, Kuroo and Shou keeping pace behind me. The second their heads clear the building, they're off, dashing across the meadow like the majestic beasts they are. Coats sleek and shiny, manes streaking away behind them in the wind.
I smile. God, I love them.
Taking a swig from my water bottle, I sit on a nearby tree stump and watch them frolic for a few minutes. A flock of birds fly past, low over the glass surface of the lake. Mornings like these, when I'm all alone and everything is serene, my mind travels unavoidably back to Japan.
I miss it. Even though my life here could be considered better, even though Ryefair is, in many ways, the same as what I left behind, I still miss it. I miss my home. I miss my parents, and I miss my old farm. I miss the many cows and sheep and goats and chickens I used to tend to; the dogs that would bound along my heels and the horses that ran in packs. Kuroo and Shou are lovely, but nothing beats a herd of seven horses galloping in the backdrop of a setting sun.
But they're all gone now. Gone in the face of a 27-paged black and white document.
I scowl. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath, letting the whinnying of Kuroo and Shou fill my ears. I don't think anything can ever fill this black hole in my heart, but those two are sure doing a good job patching it up.
