Chapter 6
Ryzer
“Alright, now go on, get,” he harrumphed, tossing Dallen out through the open screen door. His employee yipped and howled with laughter the whole way out to the bunk house. “Rotten cheater!”
Ryzer turned from the doors, shutting both behind the last of his crew to leave the main house.
Most nights after dinner the whole crew lazed about till either Ryzer or Dee-Dee kicked them out to get some sleep.
However, on account that Daisy was newly hired, they decided Arcon Hold’em was a much better bonding experience.
“Because he counts cards,” Ryzer grunted, returning to the table.
He collected the stack of cards and shoved them back in the sleeve.
The cards always stayed on the shelf in the dining room with the chess, checkers, and other board games that Dee-Dee collected over the years.
Along with it were the old glass vases his old man used to collect for his mother.
Every week, rain or shine, snow or heat, when he came in for dinner, he brought a fist full of flowers with him on Sundays.
Sometimes, when he was out in town to get them, he’d come across a new funky vase from one of the glass blowers, a daughter of some friend of his or something.
Then he’d come home with flowers already in a vase.
His fingers grazed one of them and lost himself in the memory of it.
“How do you tell he’s counting cards? I thought it was all random?” Daisy laughed sheepishly over his shoulder. Ryzer snapped back, pulled out of his melancholy over the dried-up romance in the dying house of Bitterroot, or whatever poets say, and turned to face her again.
“If I told you, then you’d know how to count cards.
” Ryzer took up the last few dishes on the table and sat them in the sink to be washed in the morning.
Thankfully it was just tea glasses as per usual, which just needed a momentary swish with soap.
Nothing egregious. He’d never leave Dee-Dee crusted over dishes.
“You just don’t want me to beat you at it,” she countered with a huff, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Sweets, maybe I should teach you to count cards,” he chuckled, watching her face screw up and darken to a rose red around the center. He laughed harder, “You might actually win a game.”
“Hey! I won a game!”
He rolled his eyes. “By default.”
“A win’s a win in my opinion.” She jabbed a finger in the air, sassy as always. Daisy tossed her tinsel hair off her shoulder and stuck her tongue out at him.
Ryzer threw back his head, laughing from down in his stomach.
It ached, made all his poor, abused muscles yell.
Yet, he couldn’t stop as he leaned against the wall in hallway, across from her room.
She stood in the middle of her doorframe, shoulders trembling while Ryzer ate her up from her borrowed boots to her messy mane.
Damn she’s pretty. He coughed, clearing up his laughing spell.
“Get some sleep. You’ll not get special treatment just cause yer a little banged up.
Wakeup call is sunrise and we get straight to work. ”
Her gaze dipped to the floor shyly, that smile still curling her tempting lips.
Woah, not tempting. Not even slightly interested.
No! No. Ryzer bowed his head without another word and shuffled off to his room.
A grip was required as little miss Daisy was not in a position to return any interest. She was an employee now, and he needed to treat her as such.
The crow’s song came far too quick for his liking.
Ryzer awoke to the bastard’s yodel next to his bedroom window.
He climbed to his hooves before he could think better of it and shuffled toward the bathroom as he always did.
Only, as he put his palm to the door, it swung open.
He stumbled back a step, ready to apologize to Dee-Dee when it was Daisy who stepped out.
Groggy and bleary eyed, she ran into his chest and Ryzer didn’t stop her.
Her hands patted his body before pushing off him to squint up at him.
“Ryzer?”
“Mornin’,” was the extent of his vocal cords.
She smiled sleepily, patting him on the stomach. Clearly still loopy and pre-coffee, she shuffled past him with a hum, “You’re real soft.”
Ryzer grunted, ignoring that sweet comment that made sluggish butterflies flit about in his lower belly.
Instead, he ducked directly into the bathroom to scrub up.
Yet, he kept coming back to the lopsided grin on her lips and the hum of her voice.
It ran shivers up his spine. It took longer than usual to get his teeth scrubbed clear of fuzz because he kept losing concentration.
When his aunt knocked on the door, he rushed to spit out the foam and get himself back on track.
His thermos was set out like usual, but alongside it was a second thermos.
Dee-Dee’s cup of coffee sat at the dining room table next to a place of left over pie from last night and the meds for her bad hoof.
Ryzer picked up his thermos and stopped to glance over his shoulder.
Don’t wait for her. He jerked upright, storming through the kitchen to the porch.
She’s an employee, remember, she gets no special treatment.
Yet, that didn’t stop him from giving her the easier tasks.
It was tradition that the newbie to the farm mucked the stalls, but he gave that job to Eddy.
The kid didn’t even seem to flinch, which is why it flew over Ryzer’s head until he was showing a much more alert Daisy where the seed bags were to fill up the wheelbarrow.
“Think you can handle these?” he teased.
“I’m a big girl,” she sneered at him. Case in point, she tossed one over her shoulder, and only after a little teetering did she toss the bag into the wheelbarrow.
Ryzer spotted Eddy over the top of the stalls, finding him weaving through the inner barn with ease.
Since they mucked them daily, he truly was just doing upkeep.
The whole crew helped to do the barn flips at the end of the week, and at the end of the month they all pulled on the rubber gloves to scrub into all the corners.
Exactly how his parents ran the fields, and his father’s mother.
“Shame,” he sighed.
“Woah, what?” Daisy blurted out, whirling to him.
“What?” he huffed.
“Nu-uh, you said something!” She waggled a finger at him.
“A man can’t just think out loud?” He scoffed, putting his hands on his sides.
“Depends on what the whole ‘shame’ thing was about because the last thing I said was I was a big girl!” She cocked out a hip, fists resting against her belt with a righteous fury in her eyes. Ryzer’s eyes widened and mouth dropped open. Way to fuckin’ go!
“I wasn’t talkin’ about yous! I was just thinkin’ to myself.
About the farm! Not about you. Why do you assume the stars rotate around you?
” He snatched up the last two bags. He’d been so zoned out, watching Eddy, he’d forgotten that he’d offered to help her fill the tractor.
They’d tilled the earth and if they were fast about it, they could seed now and have wheat early spring.
Ryzer dropped them into the wheelbarrow.
As if it could ever be a shame that yer a bigger girl.
Taurian’s couldn’t blush on account of the fluff, but if he were down to his skin, he’d be red as a tomato.
Ryzer liked thicker partners. Liked them soft and cuddly and warm, didn’t much matter what gender they were so long as they enjoyed riding an old bull with an over abundant…She’s still staring.
He swallowed, peeking over his shoulder. Daisy stood firm, eyebrow raised.
With a sigh, he confessed, “I was thinkin’ it’s a shame that no one else will treat this farm like we will.”
“Why? You thinking of selling? Because you can’t do that until I’ve got the ship figured out.” She put up her palms like his selling a farm she’d only recently come to know was out of the question.
Ryzer scoffed, “No. I ain’t sellin’ the farm.”
Daisy made a face that said, ‘I’m just saying’, But didn’t actually say anything else.
Ryzer shook his head and picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow. “I’m just the last of the Bitterroots. Once I’m gone, this place goes to whoever can afford to take over.”
“Oh.” She blurted out, walking beside him as they started the trek out to the field from the barn. “You don’t have any other family?”
“Just me and Dee-Dee.” The sun was a little higher on the horizon. While the wind wasn’t as bitter, it was still chilly. Tiny clouds of air puffed around his muzzle when he huffed out his nose. “And I’m not exactly swimmin’ in heirs. My parents popped out just little ole’ me.”
“Pfft, speak for yourself. I have eight siblings. My aunt has seven kids. And my uncle? He’s got twelve.
So that’s nineteen first cousins! Nineteen!
” She threw her hands about as she talked.
When she caught him eyeballing her out of the side of his face, she flushed again.
Finally, it was her turn to sputter and try to explain.
“Aquaterranians are just absurdly fertile—err, I didn’t mean like—look, my parents were really close?
No…I mean, yes they were, but like when you live on a dusty rock with nothing to do, you tend to have a lot of babies around is all. I’m just used to a big family, I mean.”
Ryzer choked on his own tongue trying not to laugh and failing. “So, you have nineteen first cousins cause everyone on Aquaterra is bored?”
“Uh, let’s just forget I said anything,” she squeaked, glancing away quickly.
“I’m just wonderin’ if that’s why yous got to send so much money back, to pay for all the babies they keep makin’?”
She jabbed two gloved fingers in her finned ears and loudly sang, “La-la-la-la-la, I can’t hear you!”
He laughed harder, “What are you? Ten?”
“I can’t hear you over my mortification!
” she yelled, jogging toward the tractor.
He snorted, watching her race away from him.
Well, at least she doesn’t think it’s a shame to be a bigger girl, because there ain’t no shame in those swaying hips…
and if there is, I could fix that. What he wouldn’t do to see her bubblegum pink thighs wrapped around his head, to see if the tinsel on her head was the same color of her curls…
to know if she tasted as sweet as she looked.