rowan-yourboat:
“The chickens are free to roam wherever they want but generally stay around their coops. Goats and sheep have a five acre enclosure to just… Do their thing, I suppose, and the horses have thirty acres. There’s some really fancy ones that breed some of the best racing and show horses in the States.”
As they rode around the ranch leisurely, Rowan pointed out the different structures and enclosures. Besides the cows and horses that made up her father’s formal business, her parents loved animals to simply keep as pets, and there was more than enough space for them to have as many as they wanted.
She shared little details and stories with Morgan, arms loosely perched around her waist. Every now and then, she’d fall into the spell of the moment and rest her chin on the girl’s shoulder, but it never lasted. The last thing she needed was for her parents to find something to stick their noses in.
“And the cows are waaaay over there, as you can see.” She pointed at the moving spots in the distance, gently nudging the horse to go that way.
“Dad doesn’t breed animals for slaughter. His business is actually providing range-free, happy cows and bulls for other ranchers to breed their own. There’s cows for milk production, stud bulls for competition, and some really fancy, really expensive, and incredibly cute tiny cows that are mostly kept as pets. Very docile too. Wanna go meet them?”
Just then, the galloping of a horse made her look behind. Charlie was quickly gaining on them and Rowan smiled. Maybe Charlie would be a proper rider by the time they left the ranch.
“Sup, nerd.” She greeted back, looking behind Charlie to see the giant cat watching them from the top of a water barrel. “I see you’ve met Odin. Very nice, since he’s not a very social cat.”
Morgan’s observation that she was a unicorn on a horse produced snorted laughter from Charlie. While she wouldn’t admit it to anyone outside of the three of them, the unicorn nickname had become something very special to her. “Just imagine if I’d brought Horny with me, we’d be two unicorns on a horse!”
She slowed up a little to keep pace with the two of them, following Row’s gaze back toward the water barrel. “I thought I was about to get eaten the first time I saw him,” Charlie chuckled. “That is one big cat. But yeah, he came and sat with me for a while so I must have at least impressed one animal around here.”
It surprised her, the feeling of freedom. Out there on a horse, in the middle of a huge ranch, she didn’t have to be anyone but who she was. A girl in love, with pink hair and an attitude to match, who was finding that her family weren’t the people who shared her name.
“So what are we doing?” She didn’t mind where they went or what they did, so long as they could do it together.
