Chapter 4
Ryzer
“Yeah, feel little bit like an asshole now, don’t ya?” Deidre sneered at Ryzer as he poured the poor, rattled thing in their guest bed a bowl of chili.
“Shut it,” he huffed.
Which came in the form as a wooden spoon upside his noggin. Ryzer hissed, “Son of a goat’s ass! Dee-Dee!”
“What? Slipped.” She dropped the wooden spoon onto the kitchen counter.
He glared at her, thinking up all the ways he could drop kick her or toss her off the porch into the chicken pen.
Then, not giving into impulse, he took up the plate of cornbread, the bowl of chili, another glass of water, and stacked it all on the tray.
While he didn’t expect Daisy to meet them at the dining table in her state, she couldn’t starve in the backroom.
He turned and found her hobbled up against the side of the doorframe.
Ryzer sighed, setting the tray on the table then grabbing the wobbly legged woman by the armpits.
She couldn’t writhe or fight him too hard with ribs as bruised as hers.
Didn’t stop her from mean mugging. Daisy glared holes through his skull as he sat out her dinner then sank into the chair near hers.
Deirdre, however, suspiciously didn’t sit with them.
He watched, speechless, as she took her bowl with a fat chunk of corn bread out onto the front porch.
As the screen door creaked open, he watched his aunt saunter out into the afternoon sun and sit among the sleeping pups and the other farm hands spread out on the porch, their bellies full already.
The screen door thwacked against the frame, essentially putting a curtain between the pair inside and the crowd outside.
“I was making my way,” Daisy muttered under her breath.
“To an early grave,” he rolled his eyes.
Scooping up a hefty spoonful of beans and vegetables, he sprinkled some of the crumbly bread onto his bite.
He could feel her eyes on him, and he waited for her to decide her fury wasn’t worth missing out on a good meal.
While he did feel like an asshole, beating an already down-trodden pup, nothing he said was wrong.
Maybe it was his bias, or maybe he was just stewing too long on all the sour things in his mouth, but Daisy didn’t deserve to have a mean ole bull jump down her throat.
Even if she is the one who decided to fly a broken ship alone into the back field.
She eventually bent her head and ate her chili.
There they sat, two bull-headed people, shoveling food in their maws and not biting each other’s heads off.
It was something close to peaceful until he finished his bowl first. Ryzer climbed to his hooves.
Glancing at her for the first time in several minutes, he found her hunched over her bowl.
Shoulders rising and falling in soft shutters, tears speckled the tablecloth.
He shifted, like he might ask if she was hurting, when she swiped at her face with the back of her hand.
Ryzer slumped away, putting his bowl into the already sudsy sink and then leaving out the front door.
I can’t help with those tears, little flower.
He’d already spent all his tears on dead parents long ago.
All he had left were the good memories, funny stories, and the occasional sting when he thought of something he wished one of them was there to witness.
It was a good sting. The kind that reminded him they were there, that they still meant something, and he’d never be alone even when he was the last Bitterroot in the ground.
Morning came just as bitter and cold. The sun broke over the horizon, turning the field of wheat into golden waves.
Roosters belting out the song of their people was the only alarm Ryzer ever needed.
His hooves were against the groaning floorboards, making his way to the bathroom.
The main house was a singular floor with four bedrooms, a kitchen that was more of a dining room, and a massive wrap around porch.
The bunk house attached to the porch was a three-story, barn-like building full of bunks of varying sizes.
It had its own kitchen and showers, yet most of his farm hands just ate whatever Dee-Dee cooked.
Once his horns, teeth, and hooves were brushed to his liking, he headed to the kitchen to find his aunt leaning over her morning coffee like it might steam life back into her.
He gave her shoulder a good morning squeeze, taking his already filled thermos from next to the coffee pot.
The screen door groaned but rattled shut behind him as he stopped dead in his tracked.
Sat on the edge of the porch with a thermos of her own was Daisy.
“What are you doing up?” he huffed. She craned to stare up at him with blue eyes framed by dark circles.
Didn’t sleep, huh? He bet it was weird to sleep on a farm where everything breathes and the gusts of wind make everything groan.
Unlike the mechanical, synthetic life of a ship that recycles the very air it blows on your face.
Daisy climbed to her feet and he furrowed his brows at the boots strapped to her ankles. “Where’d you find boots?”
Daisy’s gaze flickered to the door behind him and he sighed loudly. Twisting on his hooves, he growled through the screen. “Dee-Dee.”
She shooed him with a flap of her hand from the kitchen table. While he wanted to complain…he also wanted not-burnt bacon for breakfast. A scowl firmly in place on his face, he returned to face Daisy.
“I wanted to go see my ship, if you don’t mind.”
“Well, not like it grew legs and walked away,” Ryzer harrumphed.
Stomping down the steps, he avoided physically brushing past her.
Don’t want to bruise more of her ribs. Not that it stopped her as the short, pink lady raced to keep up by his side.
“Why don’t you go lay back down. Yer still hurtin’, and it’s a long trek out to the back field. ”
“I’m not asking you to give me a tour. Just point and I can walk out there.
” She rolled her eyes and Ryzer’s face scrunched.
No sass mouthin’; you’re just gonna be mean and she’s already said sorry.
He could feel his left eye twitch. Inhaling sharply, he cleared the ire out of his system.
It’d been forever since someone back-talked him.
Even the farm hands that didn’t stay all were cordial.
Yes, sir, right away, sir, you got it, boss!
And yet, she put a hand to her hip, tinsel hair falling to the side as she stared up at him with belligerence.
“Fine,” he grunted, pointing south, directly over her shoulder and past most of the pastures and barns.
“Head straight south, when you get to the edge of the wheat fields, follow the road east, there’s been enough traffic in and out of that field, you’ll find your way.
Just follow the trampled, dried out husks. ”
“Thank you,” she grumbled, raising her coffee thermos to him in fake cheer.
Ryzer watched her saunter off, thermos in hand and truly considered just going back to work.
There was cattle to move from paddock A to paddock B.
They needed to bundle and palletize the wheat they harvested for the warehouse. A hundred things loomed over his head.
“Hey, boss,” Dallen yawned from behind him, another Taurian in rust orange with white spots. He stopped beside Ryzer, following his employers gaze to the pink woman waltzing her way to a sore rump. “Oh, where’s little miss space cadet going?”
“To go look at her ship,” Ryzer grumbled.
“Pfft, why? It grow legs and walk off overnight?” Dallen snickered, waving as Eddy came shuffling up to the pair in the yard. “What up, kid?”
“The sky, I hope.” Eddy yawned hard, smacking his chops as his gaze, too, followed Ryzer’s out toward Daisy. “Where she off to? Hope she’s not gonna try and wrestle that ship back together.”
“Ha! That’d be fuckin’ ludicrous; that bucket o’ bolts fell apart at the seams!” Dallen laughed even harder, but Ryzer’s eyes widened.
No. She wouldn’t. But he didn’t have any fucking proof that Daisy was the kind to be reasonable.
Grief wasn’t exactly a clear head—it was a heavy fog that clouded judgement.
Ryzer would know best of all that she might try anything to get an ounce of her father back.
He slapped a hand against Dallen’s chest, causing the younger bull to hack up a lung.
“Both of you go get the herd ready to move. I want them in paddock B by the time I get back.”
“And where are you going, boss?” Eddy called out. Ryzer didn’t answer.
He was charging ahead. Catching up to her took actual effort, he would give her that.
She marched fast and she didn’t break a sweat.
Between walking a mile in those borrowed boots and chugging her coffee like it air, she’d nearly gotten through the first field.
Ryzer slowed to a jog, then to a walk beside her.
“What’s on the ship you need? I can get it. ”
“It’ll be faster if I do it myself,” she grumbled.
“Uh-huh, remind me again, yer a mechanic?” He cocked a brow.
Her soured face snapped up toward his and the sun was filtered through her hair. It made her pink skin a little less bubblegum and more rouge, her fins a darker dusty rose as he realized she was blushing. With a hard huff, she shook her head. “No, I’m a pilot.”
“Right, and so you weren’t considerin’ waltzin’ out there and using rubberbands to put that old bird back together, were you? Cause that would be laughable.”
“Oh, would it?” she sneered, stomping faster. Her boots crunched over the dying, winter grass. It was already a burnt orange color. The new blades would poke through the melting snow in a few months, but they’d lost all their color.
“I mean outside of the fact it would take an army of yous just to move one piece of that junk,” he added, seeing her flinch. Ryzer took a long sip of his coffee before continuing. “Second being you ain’t got any tools to melt the fucking walls back together—”
“Look, I get it! Alright!” She flung her one arm out to her side, smacking his arm.
Spinning to face him, he dug his hooves into the ground.
Her nostrils flared and if it were a few degrees colder, steam might trickle out of her adorable ears.
Instead, he stared at her. One fist rattling with rage, nose scrunched, and shoulders squared.
“I just want to see what shape it’s in. If it can even be salvaged. ”
“It can’t.” he snapped.
“You’re saying that because your mechanics saw an old model and called it junk.”
“That buck o’ bolts is a death trap!” he roared, watching her deflate. “Was…a death trap. You recall how you crashed into the planet? How if I’d not been beneath you, that yous be a pancake in my outfield?”
“I can still probably—”
“There is no ‘probably’!” The world grew very quiet.
Instead of chickens crowing, goats bleating, cows mooing, and the sound of wind whipping through his tall crops, there was dead silence.
Like if he breathed a little too heavy, it might burst a bubble wrapped around him.
He stared down at the woman suddenly clutching her thermos to her chest. The desperation was in her eyes and he realized he’d bulldozed her.
Way to go, ya ole’ bovine. With a sigh, he raked his free hand through the mop of hair on his head.
“Look, let’s just go see for ourselves, huh?
We’ll go scope it out, you snag anything valuable you need in the meantime, and we can work out everything later. ”
“I still can’t pay you,” she muttered, taking a slow, steady sip of her coffee.
“Yeah, well, I’m always needing hands around here. If you can pilot a class 4 freighter by yer lonesome, I imagine yer plenty capable of using our equipment. Or I can always make you milk goats.”
It was the first time he saw light come back to her face. A broad grin filled her features and Ryzer did his best, he truly did, not to feel it nudge something in his chest. Damn, she’s real pretty when she smiles.
Not that she wasn’t pretty regardless, but when she showed off them pearly things, he could see why her parents named her after a flower.
She was positively lovely as she spun on her heels.
Sauntering ahead of him in blue jeans and one of Dee-Dee’s flannel jackets, she looked the part.
Ryzer just hoped that she wasn’t all talk, and that under that bubblegum was a whole lot of gumption.