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Saturday Afternoon

Emmanuel had run at a maintenance pace for the past five or six kilometers, enjoying the fresh air of the country rather than the less-than-pleasant air of the city or the canned air of an indoor track. Running was his simplest way of keeping fit. Wings or not, he was a horse. Horses run. He didn't let himself do much thinking when he was running; he focused on his breathing, the inhale, the exhale, the pull of the muscles, Zen and the Art of Glutes and Flexors. He wondered about his distant cousins, the feral horses he had met last night and this morning, what they thought, or if they thought. The desire to run, even to push individual limits, is something that seemed to be in equine DNA at a fundamental level. The Pegasus had noticed little Hot Shot in the fields earlier, seeming to chase anything from butterflies to daydreams, his bright eyes focused on something that only he could see as he dashed about in a behavior that Gavin had called "the rips."

Focusing at a point he estimated to be a good 50 meters or so distant, he pulled in his wings, put his head down, and pushed out a hard, fast sprint to his destination. After he'd covered the distance, he settled back into his maintenance speed, covering a kilometer about every eight or nine minutes - a leisurely pace, for serious runners, but it did just fine for him. He could hold a speed double that for an extended period when necessary, but his usual workouts were best when he kept a slow pace intermixed with sprints. It was a trick he'd picked up from his non-equine friends who ran in marathons. Horses, as one might have guessed, weren't bothered by a mere 40km.

It seemed sensible to him, for many reasons, to avoid trotting beside the main road. It would be difficult not to notice him, and unless Gavin had posted publicly somewhere that he was hosting a Pegasus, the local constabulary would probably want to know who this winged equine was. More than that, he simply wanted to be alone for a while, and the trails around the black bear's property and through the woods that surrounded much of it were clear and solid enough for his hooves to work with. With Brady and Boyce's help, Gavin had posted discreet stakes low to the ground, each marked with one or more bars of color to indicate the path that they and their guests might travel. The trails themselves were clear enough that no one should get lost, and they all would meet back to a point in sight of the main house and grounds eventually, but it was a nice touch. Reducing his speed to a moderate walk, Emmanuel decided to find out about the bit of trail (marked by blue-banded stakes) that led around to the pond that had been mentioned the night before. He wasn't sure that he wanted to go swimming, but being around water is usually calming, and that was something that he could use in abundance.

The lush heat of the afternoon had fulfilled the warm promise of morning, though it was a bit cooler in the protective shade of the verdant growth of the evergreen forest. The Pegasus moved slowly, letting the lather on his bare caramel-colored chest and back do what it was supposed to do.A hoss could get used to this, he thought, smiling a little. He found himself wondering idly if Gavin would mind having him visit more regularly. This, despite his resistance, turned his mind to the fear of how the black bear would react if Emmanuel decided to go ahead with the surgery. It was no secret that the mane-dresser was against the idea, and more passionately so than the model would have imagined. This led back to yet another question on the equine's mind, but like the first, he wasn't sure if he wanted to have too close a look at it just yet. It wasn't fear in any ordinary sense of the word, just uncertainty. He really wasn't in much of a position to make so many decisions in one weekend.

Through the trees, Emmanuel could see what the twin otters had called a "pond," realizing that it was a great oval quite possibly as much as 50 meters end to end, perhaps 30 meters at its widest. He stood amid trees which, if his sense of direction were working properly, stood on the side of the pond where the house would be located, some little distance off and behind him as he faced the water. To the other side, across the narrower dimension, he spotted some movement which he figured to be Brady and Boyce, as he had the sense that Shane didn't partake in the simple pleasures of an afternoon swim. The Pegasus raised his forepaws to his muzzle, preparing to call out to the otters, but he stopped himself. Sweet, natural stillness filled the air and asked, somehow, not to be disturbed. He decided to walk around the oval, still cooling down, and greet them when he could do so more softly.

He set his hooves gently upon the soft-packed earth, his ears pivoting independently to catch the sound of wild birds and small animals playing safely amid the trees. He was glad now that he hadn't called out. It was what a friend of his had dubbed "hollerin'," and that was an accurate description. What was it about sentients that gave them the gift of more precise and eloquent communication, yet they tended to throw it away in favor of sound and fury that communicated even less than honest howls, growls, and whinnies? The arguments about "free will" seemed counterintuitive in this regard. Those who act on instinct do so because they must, for survival; those who act on free will seem instead to choose actions intentionally that ensure destruction.

Emmanuel found himself slowing further, feeling his wings shifting almost of their own accord. A natural adjustment, he thought, moving a little to allow some air along his back to let the lather cool him down properly, but not so much that they prevented keeping a little bit of the heat in. Automatic, intuitive, something he'd done over the years without any more thought than he'd given to breathing. They were not separate from him, alien to him, other beings attached to him like lampreys. They'd been his since birth; his mother had given him them from the beginning. He was no longer sure if he could live with them, yet without them...

He stopped, leaning his chest against a large tree and, eyes closed, rubbed his cheek along the bark. It was a strange, primal sort of comfort, something he'd found as a colt and only outgrew because city-dwellers look at you strangely when you perform a primal behavior in public. He rubbed the left cheek first, three times, then the right. That was how he'd done it the first time, and it was rare when he did it any other way. He might repeat it, but he rarely rubbed more than three times before switching sides. That made no common sense, and sometimes he would try to do it differently, just to prove that he could, but it never felt right.

Pushing himself away from the tree, the stallion looped around the narrow end of the pond, moving slowly toward the figures that he saw moving just ahead. He could see now that it was indeed the twin otters, and unless they were wearing thong-style swimming gear that was colored to match their fur perfectly, they were indeed not the least bit shy. In fact, they were...

Emmanuel stopped short and, despite his good manners, found himself unable to tear his eyes away. They weren't... well, they were certainly stripped to the fur, but they weren't... it wasn't like they were... He blinked, and neither the image nor his response to it was made any clearer. He thought perhaps he should just turn and leave, but something in him simply couldn't move.

From the short distance, he wasn't entirely sure that he could tell Boyce, the elder twin, from Brady, but if he was right, it was the latter who lay with his back against a tree, while his brother lay on his back with his head in the younger's lap. Boyce's tail thapped against the ground, slowly, happily, as the two of them shared a deeply intimate kiss that made Emmanuel feel as if he were the worst type of voyeur. His embarrassment made him clumsy, and his shifting hooves made more noise than he'd intended. The kiss broke abruptly, and two pairs of eyes regarded him uncertainly for a moment. He felt himself blush from eartips to frogs, wings sliding slightly outward as his tail flagged nervously.

"Emmanuel?"

The Pegasus started to look away, slowly changed his mind. Boyce - he could see more easily now that it was the slightly elder twin - had sat up next to his brother and was waving him over.

"Please. It's okay."

Tongue-tied beyond anything he'd felt before, the equine clopped slowly over to the twins. They seemed alert, their pert, round ears forward, eyes regarding him softly, but they didn't seem to be embarrassed at all. They were indeed naked; Emmanuel could see their shirts and shorts were set to one side, just behind them. Neither was aroused, so it wasn't like he'd found them_in flagrante,_ as they say. And it wasn't like he, in his long and not wholly pristine life, hadn't witnessed any number of far more evocative acts than a mere kiss.

"Come sit with us," Brady asked softly. He smiled. "We'll get sore necks looking up at you from this angle."

Emmanuel gave a short snort of amusement, managed to relax enough to sit near the twins. "I hope I'm not..."...interrupting? he added mentally.

Boyce shook his head a little. "We weren't sure if you'd come visit with us, but we're glad you did." He paused, and despite what Gavin had said about the otters not being shy, they did seem at least a little embarrassed. Not ashamed, though; that emotion had a very different feeling, and it wasn't in evidence here. "I think we might owe you an explanation."

"You 'owe' me nothing," the stallion offered softly, "but if you don't mind telling me...?"

The brothers looked at one another, and through some fraternal psychic wavelength seemed to come to a conclusion. Brady put his arm around Boyce's shoulders and gave him a squeeze. "Yes. We're lovers. Have been for years."

"We try to be at least a little discreet when Gavin's here, especially with guests. And you can imagine how careful we are around Shane." Boyce's muzzle bore a very gentle smile. "You don't seem shocked."

"It takes a lot to shock someone in the fashion business," Emmanuel nickered with a grin. "If I haven't seen it myself, I've heard about it." He paused, his head tilted slightly, silently asking permission. Both of the twins nodded. "I won't ask how it happened; that's easy to guess. I only wanted to tell you that, given what I saw in that kiss, it's not just about sex. You love each other very much."

Brady nuzzled his twin's cheek playfully before answering. "Yes. After all, we've known each other for literally all our lives. The 'how' was part accident, part curiosity, and part mutual ambush. We were well aware, at a surprisingly early age, what it meant when our parents said that we were 'getting too old' to bathe together, sleep in the same bed, all that sort of thing. Our parents are very loving, supportive, nurturing, but 'that sort of thing simply isn't done.' So we got smart very quickly."

"We got good at being quiet as well as enjoying time when our parents weren't at home."

"Did they feel it was such a serious taboo?" the stallion asked.

"I don't think it was personal, so to speak. There's an old argument that says, if incest is condoned and accepted, it will stunt socialization in general. That may be a bit extreme, but I can see how some siblings - especially twins - could become very introverted, not risking themselves for other relationships. That could be harmful."

"Truth is, our relationship saved us from some bad choices." Boyce smiled at his brother. "We didn't feel the need to go hunting for, shall we say, experimental subjects?"

"To put it a bit more nicely," Brady elbowed his twin smartly, "we realized that there was more to it than just hormones and wiggling willies."

"Well put," Emmanuel grinned. "May I ask about, well, preferences? Meaning males and females, not specific activities."

"Are you sure you're not in the Diplomatic Corps?"

"I'd fail the Dealing Happily With Idiots test."

Brady chittered happily, his tail thumping with mirth. "We can't stand Shane either!" he laughed.

"But to answer your question," Boyce grinned along, "I guess we're probably bisexual, or maybe even straight, depending on your definition. We've each had a few female more-than-friends, in high school, college, even since we've lived here. We're good to them, fair with them, or at least I hope we are. We've not found anyone who would want to move out here with either of us to stay, so we keep coming back to each other as our most stable relationship."

"And other males?" Emmanuel was curious.

"No." Brady leaned against his twin unselfconsciously. "Never really had any interest in any other males. We're very happy with one another, in that regard."

"I guess we could be curious, but as we said, it's not just makin' whoopee with us." Boyce kissed his younger brother atop his head, causing Brady to chitter softly. "We're here for each other, and that's probably the most important part of any relationship." He looked up at the stallion, his eyes soft, deep with emotion and contentment. "Thank you for understanding, Emmanuel."

"It's easy to understand love, at least from the outside. That's what I see here." He paused. "I'm certain that Shane doesn't know; he wouldn't stay here another minute. I'm guessing that Gavin doesn't know either."

"I guess we're lying by omission," Brady admitted, looking sadly at the Pegasus. "We do tell him about any females in our lives, if only to explain that that we sometimes have a guest here. Only females as guests, though, no other males. Maybe that's why Shane is so angry about Barton. He probably thinks our boss is going to try to 'convert' us."

"Not that we need converting," Boyce added with a grin. "A big bear would come in handy to snuggle up with in winter!"

The stallion had to laugh. With so much ice breaking, he found himself relaxing again, back to the camaraderie he'd felt before. These were, he realized, the same good lads he'd met yesterday, who'd helped introduce him to Footie and Revy, who'd shared dinner last night, who'd helped to show him the first steps of grooming a feral horse this morning. He actually felt closer to them than before. Perhaps he could risk...

"Emmanuel?"

With a start, the horse jerked his head back toward the otters. "Sorry, what?"

Brady smiled gently. "You looked like you'd wandered off for a while. Are you okay?"

He paused a long moment again, considering, feeling. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "You two have shared a lot with me. Thank you. May I ask you to let me do the same?"

They nodded, mirrored smiles on each muzzle.

One ear flicking self-consciously, he tried to find the best place to begin. "Gavin said I'd been working hard. I guess that's true, at least when I've been working. What I needed was a place to rest and think a while. I'm facing a very difficult decision, and I'm not at all sure what to do about it."

"Tell us."

"It's one of those old questions, about how much you would give up for your career. Pegasi aren't exactly mainstream, you see, so there are a lot of jobs I get passed over for because of my wings. You'd mentioned yesterday that you thought the wings might have been added in some photo-shoots; truth is, they're more often airbrushed out when needed. Some Pegasi have had surgery to have them removed for various reasons. It's not considered as major a procedure as it used to be. My agent and some of the photographers suggested I'd probably be more bankable if..."

He stopped, genuinely frightened by the look of horror on the twins' faces. Brady's chin began to tremble, Boyce shook his head slowly. "No," said the elder twin. "No, you can't possibly be thinking..."

"It's a short recovery," the stallion said, beginning to repeat what he'd said to Gavin, what his agent had told him. "I'd be able to get back to work within two months, maybe less if--"

"NO!" Brady shouted, covering his ears with his webbed forepaws, shaking uncontrollably, his tail lashing like a whip behind him."No, no, no, no, no, no...!"

Boyce grabbed his brother, pulling him tightly against him, holding him close, pressing his head against his chest. The elder twin shushed and chittered softly, stroking his head and neck sympathetically. When he cast his eyes toward Emmanuel, the look held no rancor or accusation; it was pleading, asking for time, for understanding. The stallion held as still as he could, his ears back sharply, barely daring to breathe. What had caused...?

It took a very long time for Brady to stop shaking. Without any warning, he pushed away from his brother's embrace, skittered across the short distance of hard-packed earth, and slid almost noiselessly into the pond, disappearing below the surface with barely a ripple. His head didn't reappear the whole time that the equine watched. He'd heard that river otters could stay submerged for six or eight minutes at a time, but it was still nerve-wracking to him, wondering if he'd see the young male again. Boyce's deep sigh turned the stallion's attention back to the elder brother, who passed a webbed forepaw across his dark brown muzzle before finally speaking. "You had no way of knowing."

"Boyce, I'm so sorry, what...?"

"It's several things, Emmanuel. Part of it is a guilt that he still can't get shut of, even though it wasn't his fault." The otter rearranged himself on the ground. "I don't know about your own anatomy; it may not be an issue for you to have a broken leg set. Your primitive cousins over there are another story entirely. We're often shocked when we hear of a horse being put down for having 'merely' a broken leg, but it's the complexity of the circumstances that make it a requirement, for the horse's own sake."

"The bones are different," the Pegasus nodded slowly. "They don't break; they shatter. And they need all four legs to support their weight."

"Even if the bones could be reassembled, they bend horribly before they break, so the leg will never heal properly enough to bear weight. And even if the bones could somehow be reassembled, keeping the horse off of that leg for the time needed to heal opens the door to pneumonia through inactivity and poor nourishment, or even simply the poor beast becoming so stir-crazy that he moves around too much and re-breaks it."

"I'll never complain about being bored again." The stallion paused, made the easy guess. "One of the horses here?"

Boyce nodded. "We hadn't been here too long. Not like we were greenhorns or anything; we'd been well trained, tended horses before. That wasn't the issue. It was just..." He started again. "Trooper, his name was, or Old Trooper by that time. He was an older gelding, and his eyesight had been failing as well. We watched out for him as best we could, being careful about his grooming and grazing, watching his gait because he seemed to be developing some hip issues." The otter sighed, the sound ending with a soft choke. "The field is kept as level as possible; sometimes, it's even rolled, like the great British estates. Makes the grass more lush, the ground more solid, easier on the hooves. But winter can make frost heaves, swells in otherwise smooth land. We can't always see them, to fix them, and..."

Emmanuel waited patiently, sensing how difficult this tale had to be.

"It was turning dusk, late autumn, getting colder. These woods are posted, but there's always some idiot who thinks that rules don't apply to him. Pardon the species stereotyping, but he was a jackal, and he fired his thirty-ought noisemaker somewhere off the back of the fenced area where Old Trooper had been grazing. Spooked him, perhaps more so because he hadn't ever been around firearms before. He bolted, couldn't see where he was going. Brady and I both ran after him, calling out, trying not to shout too loudly in case it would spook him worse. He smacked into the rails of the fence, practically sheering the post out of the ground; it threw him off balance, knocked him sideways, and his hoof caught one of those damned heaves." He closed his eyes against tears, swallowed hard. "I can still hear that sound."

The equine couldn't speak.

"Emergency call to the vet, even to the county, trying to get the sheriff out here to find the damned hunter. Brady stayed with Trooper, never left his side for a moment. Pet him, cried over him, tried to calm him every way he could think of. Twenty-five agonizing minutes till anyone showed up. The decision was quick, and the vet told us what had to happen. We both knew it, from the moment it happened, we knew what we would have to do. The vet had a syringe ready quickly. Brady... he sat on the ground, cradling Trooper's head, and he watched the sun fade from the sky and the precious light fade from the horse's eyes. He stayed until the vet's assistants could get the equipment to take away the body. I almost had to carry him back to our rooms. I called Gavin that night, to tell him what had happened. Brady sobbed against me the whole night long."

Swallowing hard, Emmanuel finally spoke. "It wasn't your fault. It wasn't Brady's fault."

"We all knew that. Gavin understood, never blamed either of us. It was an accident, a horrible thing, yes, but no one's fault except for that damned hunter, and the worst the law could do to him was to fine him for hunting on posted property. But no one could tell Brady that it wasn't his fault. He'd done everything that he could, and still, he felt it was his fault for not being able to save Old Trooper. It's the one trait that he could never unlearn, almost from when he was a pup. He always took on everything. If something went wrong, it was somehow his fault."

"But why? It couldn't possibly be his fault, so why would he...?"

Boyce passed a forepaw over his face, sniffed back a solitary tear. "I don't know. He wasn't like that when we were little, but somewhere about age fourteen... He started saying that he could 'do better' or 'do more' about whatever was happening with him or around him. There were times when all I could do is hold him, help him get past whatever it was that was hurting so badly. Something changed him. I never found out what. It's the only thing we've not shared in all our years. The only thing about him I don't know."

The otter looked at the Pegasus with eyes far older than the number of his years. "The reason for his reaction... that part, I understand. Whatever it was that happened to him, Emmanuel, it gave him an iron resolve never to give up who he really is, not for anyone or anything. We told you about our degrees. We did well, and we could probably find work in any number of fields - marketing, social media, public relations, jobs paying three, maybe five times more than what we're making here. It wouldn't be right for us; it wouldn't be who we really are. Here, doing work that we truly love, in a private place, with a great boss who takes care of us as much as we take care of him..."

Slowly, Emmanuel nodded. "No one to judge," he said softly. "No one to pretend for."

"No one to try to make us into what we aren't." Boyce looked the stallion in the eye. "If I'm to be fair to you, I have to acknowledge that it's your choice. Only you can make your decision. By the same token, I can't live with myself if I don't tell you what I feel." This time, the tear fell down his dark-furred cheek before he could stop it. "Emmanuel, by all the gods, I beg you not to abandon your wings."

A shiver went through the Pegasus before he could stop it.Abandon. That was not a word he had ever thought to use. To abandon his wings. "I don't..." he tried, but he couldn't manage to say anything further. It was about his career (money), it was about success (money), it was about survival (money). Everything was about trying to pursue... to be able to... to be allowed to...

He was barely aware of Boyce's movement toward him until he felt the otter's forepaw on his arm. Looking up into his eyes, the stallion saw a brilliance of pain, of understanding, of a deep need to stop the hurt in both of them. Emmanuel reached out to embrace the younger male, pulled him close, feeling the webbed forepaws reach carefully behind him to touch his back without disturbing his wings. No matter what else he tried to think about, his wings intruded on every thought. Holding the otter close was a warm, sweet experience of caring, and it happened because they'd been talking about his_wings,_ and the otter had to be careful how he hugged him because of his_wings..._

Boyce made a soft chittering noise against his ear. "Don't," he whispered. "You're tensing up. Let it go, Emmanuel, just let it go. I didn't mean to make you so upset."

"No, it's not... you didn't..." The stallion felt himself trying to fight against his emotions. "Boyce, it's just--"

"Shh," the otter whispered. "Not right now. Just hold me."

Clinging tightly, Emmanuel felt that he would unleash a flood of tears upon the otter's chest, but he didn't. Not a drop. Not a single expression, save for the sense of absolute confusion and desperation that he just couldn't sate or savvy. It should be such an easy thing, such a simple choice, that's what everybody told him, just do it, do what you have to and get on with your life. Mini-max solutions, cost-benefit equations, simple logic, do what you're supposed to do, what the photographers want, what the client wants, what everyone else wants, and you'll be fine. Just do it. Easy.

Something shifted, and another pair of arms, still damp, joined Boyce's. "I'm sorry," Brady's voice came softly. "I'm so sorry. I should have..."

Emmanuel shook his head, still pressing close to Boyce. "Not your fault. I shouldn't have said..."

"Yes, you should." The younger twin kissed the top of the stallion's head tenderly. "You need to talk. And I need to listen."

"We need to listen," Boyce said. "We want to listen."

"I'm not sure I can--"

"Not now." Brady caressed the equine's ears as tenderly as a lover, as sensitively as he would do for his charges in the stable during a storm. A maelstrom, like the one in Emmanuel's mind. He felt himself responding to the touch, calming, comforting, accepting. "Later will do just fine."

"It's too close now," said the twin otter.

"But I--"

"Shh," Boyce soothed.

"No, wait." The stallion pulled back slightly from the dual embrace, looked at each brother in turn. "It's what I came here to do - to make a decision. Not right now, no. But I know that I have to come to some kind of decision. And yes, I need to talk. I need to hear other voices."

"Gavin?"

He nodded. "Him too. It's why he asked me out here, to rest, to talk."

"And have you?"

"Some. Not enough, I think."

Emmanuel paused for a long moment, the otters' arms still wrapped around him, a sense of closeness and trust that he'd not felt for a long time. What was it, he found himself wondering, what the hell had happened to his life when strangers were the only ones to tell him not to just give in, to let it happen, do what he was told?

"I need to ask you something," he said softly. "It's part of another conversation. It's important."

The otters nodded, and he spoke of the conversation that he'd had with Gavin the night before, and then asked his question. They asked a few in return, and he could only guess that his answers were good ones. Brady and Boyce smiled and leaned in to kiss him tenderly on each cheek. That, it seemed, was their answer to his question. The twins then pronounced that the equine's lather had done its job, and it was time to strip down and enjoy the water. That advice was easy to take.