Meghan: Cows

“God damned hippies.” The chubby Farm manager spat, “You aren’t a hippy are you?”
“No sir.” I replied curtly, trying my best to look as if I hated the earth, “Can’t stand them.”
He brightened as if I had just blessed his firstborn, “Well, I see you come highly recommended Ms…Deina?”
I could feel his eyes probing me for some hint as to my name-story, but I kept my face carefully blank. If he wanted to know, he could ask, rude as the question was.
He made a harrumphing noise deep in his chest and folded the papers he had been reading. If he could read. No one really knew.
“You’ll start work tomorrow.” He said, “Be here at 5am sharp, the cows get angry if they have to wait.”
“Of course.” I said, smiling brightly while inside my head I was stabbing his chubby gut with scissors, “I’ll be here.”

5am really is too early. I shuddered in the morning chill and trudged towards the barns. A wiry, strangely awake Farming assistant fell in step next to me and began chattering about the duties that I was to fulfill on the Farm. Every once in a while I nodded but was mostly focusing on becoming more awake myself.
“The cows are housed in here.” He said, patting one of the barns that lined a quarter of the Farm. I bristled internally at his language, but had heard the slang so much since my arrival that I was starting to get used to it. Perish the thought.
Clueless to my internal turmoil, he continued on, “Since you’ll be mostly working with them, the Boss said to take you for a look around.”
I rolled my bottom lip between my teeth, daunted at the prospect of seeing the ‘cows’ for the first time with this skinny assistant ready to report every misstep to his boss man.
“I’d like to see them for the first time alone.” I said in what I hoped was a commanding tone.
“Well, I don’t know if—“
“Of the two of us, which has been hired for this job? If you have a degree in cows (I spat the word angrily) I’d like to see it.”
He looked like he might cry and I felt bad, but quickly crushed the bad feelings before they could weaken my bitchy tirade.
I sighed, “If I bring other people in with me it’s going to make them skittish. I can’t do my job if they’re skittish.”
“Of course, I’m sorry go right in.”
Twinges of guilt
Stop that
I took a deep breath and pushed open the barn doors.

The room was dark and musty and smelled strongly of hay and horse manure. I stepped forward cautiously into the gloom, wincing slightly as dim lights flicked on to illuminate the room. I walked slowly forward, trying not to startle them, but of course that wasn’t possible. Hooves stamped, nostrils flared, and eyes rolled in rage as yet another person invaded their space. And what a little space it was. I walked down a narrow hallway between two rows of gated wooden pens. Hooves slammed into the wall of a pen on my left and I flinched away from it, suddenly feeling very human and very fragile. More slamming started on the right, then more and more hooves over and over. I covered my ears against the thunder and splintering of wood, screaming for them to stop. But of course that had no effect. So I sucked in a deep breath and screeched out the words that he had taught me. The thundering stopped and the silence that followed was thick with suspicion, rage, and other nasty feelings.
“What did you say?” a deeply bass voice thrummed from one of the pens. I repeated the phrases I had been taught, words slithering and tripping over each other as they were not meant to be pronounced by a human mouth.
“What do you desire?” The voice asked tiredly.
“She is one of them!” a different voice hissed with rage.
“Please—“ I croaked.
“Shut up, human.”
“She knows the words. We must give her what she wants.”
An angry whinny echoed across the high ceiling. I took the silence that followed as permission.
“I’m looking for Eury.”
Another snort, “Why would one of you seek one of us?” I walked over to the stall that the angry voice came from and placed my palms against the wood of its door
“He is mine and I am his.”
I felt air blow through my fingers as he sniffed my palms. A peal of laughter came from the stall and I fell back in surprise.
“I can smell him on you, gods, I never would have thought.” He smothered his laughter to quiet snorts, “He’s in the third section, sixth stall down. And tell him—“
But I never heard what to tell him, because I was running. With every step that pounded against the floor and every row of stalls that I passed my heart pounded harder in my chest. Finally, finally, finally, I was so close. I skidded past his section, grabbing onto the corner of the hall to steady myself before I walked shakily down to the sixth stall. I regarded the door for a moment, not daring to think what I would do if I was wrong again, then rocked forward to lean against the wood.
I rubbed my cheek against the wood for good luck then whispered, “Eury?”
The answering whisper broke my heart.
“Deianira?”
God, how could someone sound so hopeless?
I dug frantically through my purse and came up with a packet of flat metal tools. I took the lock on his door in my hands and pried at it delicately.
“I’ll have you out in a minute.”
“Why did you come for me?” Of all things, he sounded angry.
“Why did I come for you!?” I hissed back, “I’m your lover, I’ll rescue you whether you like it or not.”
“We are a dying race little spitfire.” He said quietly, “You would do better to go live your life without me.”
“Go to hell.” I muttered as I twisted frantically at his lock.
“Soon.” He said wistfully.
The lock clicked open and I swung his door open with such force that it bounced against the wall.
He stood a torso length taller than me, standing on a floor covered with hay and shit; four legs shaking like he’d been standing for days.
I scowled up at him, “If you dare leave me for death I’m going to march down to river Styx and drag your furry ass right back.”
He smiled and I saw a trace of my old Eury flickering in his eyes. He bent down to my height and laid a cheek against my hair
“I have missed you.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face in the side of his neck, breathing him in. He braced his hooves and lifted me up so I could wrap my legs around his waist. He whispered words of his native tongue, into my ear. I just held him like I used to, not looking forward to the moment when we both remembered to be reasonable.
“We have to go.” He finally said.
I grinned at the ‘we’, “Yep.”
“But we have to come back.”
I let my head fall on his shoulder again, “Yep.”
I felt his muscles shift under my hands as he breathed in my scent again.
“You smell different.”
“Mmmmhmmm.”
He leaned me back so he could look at my face, “No, I’m serious, what changed? It’s not just your shampoo unless you’re mixing it with some sort of hormone…”
I watched him, innocently blank while the thoughts ticked across his face.
When he finally got it his whole body shuddered, and I clenched my legs even tighter around his waist in case he let me go.
“Y—y—you---you---“
“Yeah that was my reaction too.” I said calmly.
He swung me down to the floor and knelt so he was about my height. After looking into my eyes for permission he slid my shirt up and laid his face against the flat surface of my stomach. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Once. Twice. Three times.
His eyes flew open and he was spinning me, kissing me all at once.
“When? How?” he asked between kisses.
“Soon after you left. And…the traditional way.” I touched his cheek, “But then all this happened and I wasn’t sure you even wanted children.”
“Of course I do.” He said passionately. Then his eyes flicked to our surroundings and reality sucked back in. “We must leave.”
I nodded and he swung me from his arms to ride on his back. It was considered a mortal offense to ride them like horses, and the rider who tried was often killed, but he was mine and I was his.
We clopped through the maze of pens while I whispered directions in his ear. I pushed open one of the back doors to the barn and was relieved to see the transport van that I had paid dearly for parked close by. The driver would leave in a half hour, taking us with him. But we would be back. And trust me when I say that a woman pregnant with a centaur’s child is not one you want to mess with.



-M