Chapter 6
Violet
The air at the sanctuary always smells like holiday camp, warm hay, clean leather, and that earthy sweetness of the horses that clings to your clothes long after you’ve left.
It takes me back to a simpler time, and maybe that’s why I love coming here so much.
For a couple of hours every Tuesday, I get to step out of the scary part of my life and into something quieter. Calmer. Kinder. And definitely safer.
It reminds me of Papaw and Meemaw’s farm.
It reminds me of the place that caught me when everything else in my life fell apart.
My father was a drunkard and a cheater, and when I was six, he finally left for good—traded us in for a girl ten years older than my sister.
My mother slipped deeper into her addictions after that, turning our house into a storm you never knew how to stand in.
And my sister, seven years older and already half gone in her mind, packed a bag soon after and vanished.
She never called. Never checked in. She just… left.
So, Papaw and Meemaw took me in and raised me on their farm.
They homeschooled me, and also taught me the kind of lessons you don’t find in books: how to collect eggs, how to bottle-feed calves, how to muck a stall properly.
The farm became the only stable, safe place I’d ever known.
The only place where people didn’t leave.
Sometimes, when I’m surrounded by horses, and the warm, familiar scent of hay wraps around me, it feels like stepping back into those years—the only part of my childhood that didn’t hurt.
When I first heard about Joe’s Animal Sanctuary and all the disability programs from Melissa, my occupational therapist, I wasn’t sure it would be a good fit for me.
Honestly, I was terrified. Terrified that I’d show up and fail at the things I used to do without thinking.
Terrified my old memories would be overwritten by reminders of everything I’ve lost.
But the team leaders and therapists were patient in a way that felt like… well, a sanctuary. They were gentle, slow, and persistent.
Over the past year, the sanctuary has become my second home. I’ve tried almost everything they offer: gardening with raised tactile beds, grooming ponies, feeding sheep, and even trying—and failing—to help shear alpacas.
Alpacas do not care that you’re disabled. They will kick whoever they want, and I have the bruises to prove it.
Slowly, the therapists have guided me through every tiny step, and my confidence has stitched itself back together, one new skill at a time.
The first thing I ever grew here was onions. It was small, maybe even silly, but pulling that onion from the soil made me feel capable again. Like I could still do things without seeing them. Like the world wasn’t permanently closed off to me.
Every week since, I’ve learned to find the joy in the simple tasks. I was eventually able to trust myself because if the sanctuary trusted me, the animals trusted me (alpacas aside), then I could start trusting myself again. Well, here at least.
I inhale deeply now, lifting my face toward the sun. The warmth seeps into my skin and settles in my chest, stretching into a soft bubble of peace that will cling to me long after I leave this place.
Maybe it’s because, since the accident, this is one of the few places where I don’t feel stared at. Or pitied. Or… delicate.
Here, I get to live. Not just exist. Blindness and trauma be damned. This place reminds me there’s still a version of me in here worth fighting for.
“Low branches coming up in about five paces,” Jenna calls from beside me.
I duck my head until she says the path is clear. Her horse’s hooves thud steadily on the trail, four soft beats I’ve learned to track better than the shifting horse beneath me.
Jenna has been a godsend. It took me weeks to build up the courage to mount a horse again. I wasn’t afraid of riding—not really—I was afraid of not being able to control where I was riding to.
So, week after week, I held the reins while Jenna guided the horse around me in slow circles, letting me control the space, letting me feel safe again.
Letting me learn Honey’s movements. Letting me relearn trust. And one afternoon, after I fed Honey an apple, and she gave this soft little whinny that felt like reassurance, I finally swung my leg over her back.
I’ve been riding with Jenna ever since.
Honey lets out a soft sigh. Jenna says that’s her relaxed cue, but really, I’m the one who’s relaxed.
To me, Honey’s a warm, steady body beneath my legs, swaying gently like water rocking a small boat.
I smile, because tonight, when I slip into bed, I know I’ll still feel her rhythm in my bones, much like it was as a child getting off a trampoline and I could still feel the bounce under my feet long after I got off.
The reins brush against my fingers, where I’m loosely holding onto the saddle.
Before, when I used to get off Honey, my hands pretty much needed to be extracted from the saddle horn because I was holding on so tight.
Now, it’s more about the sensory input from the leather beneath my palms. Jenna guides us around a bend I’ll never see.
But here, at the sanctuary, I don’t need to.
Sunlight warms my shoulders in little bursts as we ride through patches of shade.
A breeze touches my cheek, carrying the scent of pine, horse sweat, and the faintest hint of apples from the orchard downhill.
Honey’s gait is slow and steady. Moments like this almost make me forget the dividing line of my life: the person I was before the accident, and the person I’ve been learning, slowly, painfully, to become.
“This is nice,” I murmur.
“It is,” Jenna says with a smile in her voice. “Your posture gets better every week. Look at you. Riding like a pro again.”
“You know, Jenna, you’re just too sweet. Next, you’ll tell people I can dunk a basketball and wrestle bears.”
“Not today. That’s next month’s program.”
I snort. Honey shifts as if she approves of my comedic timing.
But today is different. And for the first time in a long time, I’m nervous again.
Today is supposed to be the next step. The big step.
Today is my seeing-eye dog evaluation.
Six months of debating it. Three months of telling myself I wasn’t ready. One month of reading every disability blog I could find.
And now I’m here sitting on Honey, trying to convince myself I’m brave.
“Nervous?” Jenna asks.
It’s casual, teasing, but it cuts through me all the same. How can she know what I am feeling while I’m here trying on my poker face?
“About riding?” I try forcing lightness I no longer feel.
She snorts and I can feel her rolling her eyes. “You know about what. Your future partner.”
My future partner.
Hearing it out loud twists something in my chest. Fear mixed with want mixed with belief I’m afraid to claim. Could this be what I need?
My fingers curl around the saddle, the leather warm under my palms. “Terrified,” I admit. “But… hopeful.”
“Good.” Jenna’s smile is audible. “That means you’re ready.”
Ready.
God, I wish I believed her. Ready sounds like a word meant for stronger people. People whose lives didn’t collapse under them. People who didn’t have to relearn how to exist every time they stepped outside.
Honey slows, then stops dead in her tracks.
Her whole body goes rigid underneath me, muscles coiling, trembling like a bow pulled too tight. She snorts. The shift is so sudden, so absolute, that the hair on my arms stands on end.
My breath snags. “Jenna? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” But that’s not what her tone says.
The reins creak as she adjusts her grip. Then, softer, like she’s trying not to startle either of us, she says, “Stay calm.”
The breeze shifts. And something comes with it.
Not a smell exactly, more like a presence inside the smell.
Sharp. Wild. Heavy. I’m hyperaware of every sense in my body: how my skin prickles from the air alone; how my nostrils are flaring.
My eyes widen behind the sunglasses as if they are begging to see again just this once.
Just to see why the world suddenly got so still.
It feels like… danger. But then again, I’m the girl who thinks Michael Myers is coming for me in my home—which is not a cabin by the lake.
My pulse stutters out of rhythm.
Before I can speak, Honey gives a bone-chilling neigh.
It’s a shattering, terrifying sound that rips the quiet wide open. In the same heartbeat, she lunges forward, and then we’re moving—no thought, no warning, just raw panic in motion.
She bolts into a full, frantic gallop.
“Whoa…whoa! Honey!” I grab for the saddle horn, my knuckles slamming into the leather so hard it sends a jolt up my arm. The world jerks beneath me, every stride a violent jolt.
Air zips past my face. Branches whip against my sleeves. My bones rattle. My heart slams.
The rhythm of Honey’s hooves is no longer a pattern I can track, it’s a chaotic thunder—too fast, too wild, too wrong.
“Jenna!” I shout, but the sound carries in the opposite direction.
I can’t hear her horse. I can’t hear anything except the explosive pounding beneath me and the rush of every branch we barely miss. It feels like falling forward while sitting still. Like the ground is trying to rip me off her back.
“Honey!” I choke. “Please, slow down, sweetheart, please.”
But there’s no reasoning with her. Honey is lost to terror, all instinct and muscle and flight. And beneath the terror, beneath the wild pounding of her stride, I feel something else.
The unmistakable sense of being chased.
My lungs constrict, that awful fluttery panic blooming in my throat. I feel the world closing in around me. Trees whip past, too close. Air pressure shifts as we fly by each tree. The faint electric buzz of danger prickles up my spine.
Somewhere behind us, Jenna is shouting, her voice barely a thread in the wind.