Stay golden pony boy

Colt

It's boots and chaps
It's cowboy hats
It's spurs and latigo

The sun-soaked landscape changes, but it's still a dreadful expanse of endless sand, as if the grains were nothing other than the crystallized ashes of anything alive combusting on the spot and crumbling into the wasteland. She could believe that this is nothing other than a graveyard, each hellish slope of a dune blending into the next, whether in the Furnace or the Boneyard or here. Though this one, it has a crust, salt crunching underfoot like false snow.

Though she can scarcely believe twilight is already sinking in again, a testament to the time they've seared away one hoof step after another, she is grateful for the mottled violet sky. It shields the worst of the glare that the pale pools threaten to deliver, a scattering of vicious eyes attempting to glare contempt at their passing. She still has to tilt her head at the occasional glint that shivers over the horizon, where a claw mark of the daylight remains.

He is a steadying motion beneath her as he picks his way over the flats, and though she feels numb to the movement now, his consistent capabilities are a reassurance.

It's the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo

Vesper trudges forward, hooves crunching against the crystalline crust with slow, deliberate steps. The white stretches out in all directions, surreal and blinding even under the purple bruise of twilight. His dark coat is streaked with dried sweat, now caked with salt in a patchwork of glistening white along his flanks and shoulders. It itches, but there’s no energy to care. Not really.

His mane and tail, once loose and wild, are now tangled knots—humidity teasing them into clumps, wind twisting them into snarls. Each step lifts a whisper of white dust that tries to cling to his muzzle, his lashes, the hollow of his chest. He doesn’t shake it off. Doesn’t toss his head or snap his tail. There’s no performance left in him right now—just grit, exhaustion, and the quiet conviction to keep going.

And she’s still there, the familiar weight of her against his spine. That, at least, doesn’t itch, or pull, or burn.

You know it's all just a game that I'm playin'

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

Colt

It's boots and chaps
It's cowboy hats
It's spurs and latigo

They should rest, again, she thinks as they trudge. As before, as every time they have tried, this place offers no good sanctity for respite. The idea of setting down on the hardened shell of salt leaves her skin crawling, and absently she itches at one arm that prickles against the dried—wetted—then re-dried sweat that coats it. Still, her lips are chapped, and her throat feels raw against the arid heat she's breathed in from sunup to sundown. The addition of salt particles to that inhalation is the opposite of help.

She won't tell him though, too proud to be the first to admit it, especially when he's the one struggling the most. She could drink, but won't when he can't, likely would be bucked off if she tried anyway. There's not much left anyway, water. She had packed light to keep them light, and hadn't really thought they'd have to press so deep in the desert to taunt the Family's pets to give chase.

So instead she sighs, long and low, stubborn and irritable.

She pulls her fingers gently through his mane, still holding, but curling, tracing, something to ground her and keep her mind focused on something other than how shitty it all is. Worst road trip ever in all ways but one. "I'm glad you're with me, Ves," she admits softly to him, and it doesn't mean anything more than that. His company, though muted in a sense in this form, is always welcome.

It's the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo

The words slip past the grit and heat like a cool breeze in a fever dream.

Vesper’s ears flick back toward her, catching the sound more than the meaning at first. But it sinks in slowly, like everything else out here—molten and heavy, edged in exhaustion. He doesn’t respond right away. Just keeps walking, each step deliberate, measured, careful over the salted earth that aches for mistakes.

But the steady rhythm of her fingers in his mane—light, grounding, as though she’s combing the world back into order—does something strange to him. Something tightens beneath the sweat-slick skin of his ribs, a pulse of quiet in a place that hasn’t known quiet for hours.

He exhales through flared nostrils. Slow. Long. Almost like a sigh. And then—without slowing—he dips his head just slightly in a brief, silent gesture. Not quite affection. Not quite acknowledgement. Something in between.

You know it's all just a game that I'm playin'

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

Colt

It's boots and chaps
It's cowboy hats
It's spurs and latigo

Silence can be uncomfortable for many, like something that needs to be filled. She isn't so sure about Vesper's take on it, but could hazard a guess given he's been unable to speak most of this time, that he sits alright with it as well as she does. Although Colt can happily hang with a loud and rowdy crowd, she settles into the noise of nothing with equal, if not better ease. Content to listen, capable of finding other ways to talk. Maybe it's a trick of the trade, since most of her conversations are with beasts that can't respond or fully understand, so they develop a language all their own, one of pressure and release, movement and intent, balance and trust.

She hasn't minded the quiet of their trip, just the oppressive heat of it, the exhausting physicality of it, testing limits as if she needed to know where they lie with a punishing answer. Though through it all he's found his own ways to respond and question, limited only in body not in mind, and the accent of this form is familiar enough she picks up on it easily. When his breath comes, a mirror of her own, and his head dips, subtle but full of meaning, she smiles.

Just a little bit longer, they can do this.

[FIN]

It's the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo