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Heart and Sinew

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"When you call upon a Thoroughbred, he gives you all the speed, strength of heart and sinew in him. When you call on a jackass, he kicks."
--Patricia Neal

NO I'M SERIOUS THAT QUOTE EXISTS I DID NOT JUST MAKE IT UP

Previously on:



It was dim in the roomy apartment, but like everything else in Saratoga Springs, the decor and furnishings were both plush and rustic: mahogany and walnut and embroidered upholstery, lamps and sconces tempered by parchment shades. Most of them were off, now, anyway. It was late at night, and the three of them were huddled around the coffee table. The bottle of wine they shared had been hard-won; Ellie was still too young to buy it south of the border, and now that Chloe was confirmed to be carrying offspring, she seemed to have developed an irrational fear of even stepping into a liquor store. Thérèse, meanwhile, kept insisting that no, really, it wasn't necessary, she was fine... and of course she wasn't, and of course Ellie saw right through her, and resolved to call Laurence and raid his wine rack. This in itself had been a bit of an adventure, as Thérèse's chronic jitters, upon her arrival at her brother's home in Glens Falls, were similarly transparent to him, but Ellie had eventually succeeded in sweet-talking him out of his fermented grapes.

Ellie picked up the bottle and gestured at the empty glass in front of Thérèse. She tried to shake her head no, but the little blonde devil swiped it up and filled it up. "I have to get up and work tomorrow," she sing-songed. "You don't."

Thérèse sighed, but the alcohol warming her laughed. She wasn't used to drinking, had avoided it in general for a long time, but the three glasses already mingling with her blood were making an excellent case for the "why not?" side of the debate. They had also blurred and confused the the reason why she had been in such a foul mood at the start of the evening. She reached for the glass and sipped.

"Feeling better?" Ellie asked.

Chloe gave the little blonde a hard look. She leaned over to whisper, but Thérèse heard anyway: "It might not be such a good idea to give the daughter of an alcoholic too much wine."

"It's okay," Thérèse said. "De family's not... euh, does not have a tendency to addiction. En général."

Chloe's expression shifted to one of embarrassment, but Ellie's attention was on Thérèse again.

"Laurence and my sisters never 'ad a problem. Even when she was at her worst, my mother never 'ad a problem. Even Michel, he never got addicted to cigarettes, even though he sometimes smoked them with his friends." She snorted, took another gulp of wine. "Back when he 'ad friends."

"Huh," Ellie said. "I always thought he was a genuine boozer."

"Ellie!" Chloe admonished her.

Thérèse giggled.

"So, what's Marie Anne's story?" Ellie asked. "Who convinced her she's the Queen of France?"

"Not Queen of France," Thérèse said, shaking her head. "She doesn't want to be Canadian, so don't even talk about France."

Ellie chuckled, but said, "Question still stands." Chloe looked a little uncomfortable but no less interested.

Thérèse shrugged. "Even Laurence still calls himself Catholic, you know. Didn't go to church unless somebody made him go, but at least when Marie Anne asked he still said he was." She rolled her eyes and took a drink. "It's a long time since I even said it just to make her stop asking. Now she thinks she has to save me... but meanwhile, I'm a disgrace to the family. Like I said, at least Laurence says it. That saved him from Marie Anne for a long time. Then she saw him on TV with Santa, and then at the funeral, he..." Abruptly she stopped, remembering his discomfort and unwillingness to talk about it. Somewhere through the alcohol Thérèse realized she'd better trail off there.

"Wow," Ellie said. "I was right. Lady Catherine." Again, Chloe gave her a look. Thérèse was confused, but read Ellie's tone easily enough.

"More Shakespeare?"

"Austen," she said with a grin. "Crazy bitch who freaks out at the main character because her high-born nephew fell in love with the wrong girl."

Now Chloe's eyes widened, but she had to stifle her laughter. "Elizabeth Campbell, there are young ears in the room!" she chuckled, gesturing at her belly.

"Actually," Thérèse said, "its ears haven't developed yet."

"Nerd," said Ellie, but she was smiling broadly.

Thérèse started to laugh, but faded. She remembered the last time she'd been so accused, when
someone had startled her with a physics joke, so she'd startled him back. She must have been distant and quiet for some time, because Ellie was talking again.

"I wonder what she'd think of her sister's association with
Brett North," Ellie mused, slyly tapping her chin.

"There is no association," Thérèse started to insist, taken slightly aback by her friend's mind-reading abilities.

"I bet she'd know who he is," Ellie said, ignoring her. "Or who he was, anyway. Have you looked him up yet?"

Thérèse shook her head. "No."

"Why the hell not?" Ellie demanded. "Would be good to know why everybody's got an opinion about him, don't you think?"

"Don't need to," she replied, taking a drink. She was running out of wine.

"Did Laurence tell you?" Chloe, this time. More interested than she was pretending to be.

"No. Brett did."

This preceded a silence of some length. Ellie opened and closed her mouth several times before taking a firm grasp of what it was she wanted to ask first. The best she came up with was:

"What?"

"Anyway, he was a very rich hockey player. Marie Anne likes very rich hockey players," Thérèse said. "And even if he's not Québecois, at least he's white." She tipped her wine glass and polished it off.

"Are you sure he told you the truth?"

"But it doesn't matter anyway, because I was an idiot," she went on, as if Ellie hadn't spoken.

"Oh, honey, no," said Chloe.

"Yes, I was," Thérèse insisted. "I kissed him, then I interrogated him, and then I ran off."

Chloe's eyebrows flew up, and Ellie choked on air. "Woah, woah, woah," Ellie said when she'd recovered. "Chloe, I win. We need to get her a little drunk more often." She sat up in her seat and leaned toward Thérèse, pouring more wine. "Explain."

At least, Thérèse thought through the following morning's migraine, she'd had the good sense even then not to tell the whole story. In fact, she'd thoroughly disappointed her little blonde inquisitor, who could not stretch her farther than to say that she knew perfectly well that Brett had told her the truth.



-----



Ellie snatched the little figurine from Thérèse's fingers, turning it over in her hands. "What is this? A donkey?"

"A jackass," Thérèse muttered, very quietly. Then she rubbed her temples. "Please don't talk so loud."

"You're still hung over?" Ellie asked, head tilting in concern. She handed back the marble statuette. "You didn't have much more than four glasses."

"I thought I wasn't, but my headache came back."

"Well, come to the paddock with me. Chloe's a walking pharmacy, she'll have something for you. Hiding in some hallway's not going to do much for you." Ellie threaded her arm through Thérèse's and pulled her away before she could argue that sunlight probably wasn't going to agree with her right away.

Thérèse almost forgot about the donkey, but Ellie hadn't. "Where'd that come from?"

Thérèse hesitated, but considering the things she'd admitted last night, couldn't think of a reason to keep quiet. "Brett gave it to me."

"What?!" Ellie exclaimed, and when Thérèse winced, repeated it more quietly. "When?"

"Just now. I don't know how he found me, but he just gave me this and..." She trailed off. Ellie shook her a bit as they emerged into the sun.

"And?"

"And he said sorry for being a jackass."

Ellie's eyes didn't look like they fit in her head anymore. Then she said, "Oh, wow." And then she giggled. A lot.

Chloe did in fact have painkillers, which Thérèse knocked back before hiding behind Nautilus in the shadows of the saddling stall. She was so preoccupied by Advil and darkness that she didn't immediately realize that Brett North must be occupying the stall next door. She was leaning heavily on the wall, staring at the donkey and frowning when she looked up to see him glancing sideways at her. Thérèse blushed heavily, looked away and closed her hand around the figure.


-----


Standing in her customary position at the rail, Thérèse slowly emerged from her headache. She watched the parade while still fiddling with the figurine, watched Ellie's little horse bounce and shimmy quite playfully, while Brett and his strange spotted animal called Twitch moved along in a sort of controlled, diminutive froth, constantly in neurotic motion. When Ellie and Nautilus broke off to warm up, they cantered past their painted rival and the dark colt with the white face pinned his ears and bared his teeth. Just like a dog of war, Thérèse thought. His rider was calling out, yelling something that Thérèse couldn't hear, and Brett's eyes doubled in size. Twitch tried to lunge at Nautilus, mouth gaping, and their riders steered them apart.

As they galloped past where Thérèse stood, she heard Ellie say, "Two jackasses."

Some time last night, Thérèse remembered Ellie saying that she wasn't going to be afraid of the wild horse Brett rode for a while. Nautilus, she claimed, was quicker to develop and to learn. He had only raced twice and knew the game already, and his body was so much further along in its maturity and conditioning that most horses, let alone Twitch, would have a hard time keeping up before they finished their growth spurts. The spotted horse was the son of an Argentinean monster, Ellie said, whose sons and daughters climbed higher as they aged. That Twitch was running in the Sanford at all, she explained, was testament to his talent. To the fact that she probably would fear him one day.

Twitch was everywhere, breaking in the middle of the pack and then falling back a bit, then slowly climbing up again, a runner with no identity. Nautilus swept from the starting gate like an onrushing tide, quickly dispatching his rivals for the lead and skipping like a young buck over the sandy earth, and Thérèse immediately understood what Ellie had told her.

Ellie never drew her whip. Her little white-faced horse did his job without its light sting and thunderclap. He swung a little wide coming into the stretch, carried out by his own momentum before diving toward the finish line, his tongue flapping out of his mouth. The dog of war image was somewhat corrupted by it.



Shown:
Name: Nautilus
Barn name: Sailor, Nauti Boy
Gender: Colt
Breed: Thoroughbred
Age: 2
Height: Projected 15hh
Color: Black chestnut
Genotype: ee Aa
Markings: Blaze; RF coronet, RH sock
Temperament: "Though he be but little, he is fierce," to quote the Bard. Sailor is never standing still, his speed is explosive, and he's so competitive he won't even let his own mother run in front of him in a pasture.
Discipline: Racing prospect
Preferred distance: Unknown
Running style: Frontrunner
Bloodlines: Poseidon x Anemoi
Offspring: N/A
For stud/lease: Unavailable - too young
Image size
800x549px 167.21 KB
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boxofpeaches's avatar
EEEEE Nautilus!! :D