#tsrf2017

Rider Challenge 7: Home & Family

Wind whips my hair against my face fiercely, but huddled on the rocks, Rowan cursing under her breath about the cold, and Elemental just a few feet away, standing guard in the waves, I can’t find it in myself to be bothered. I’ve made a makeshift home with them here, the only place where I’ve ever felt I belong. Lately, I think maybe home isn’t so much as place, but maybe the company you keep.

Without Rowan and Elemental, I am not sure I belong anywhere. But New York… Maybe I could belong there.

“Tell me about New York again,” I murmur, eyes locked on the sea. It’s the billionth time I’ve asked Rowan about the city, but I still hang on every word she offers.

Rowan scoffs, nudging me with her shoulder. “Don’t you want me to leave something to be desired? You’ll see it soon enough.” When I turn to her with curious eyes, she leans back a little. “I told you that you should come back with me.”

My heart does a small flop in my chest. “I didn’t think you were serious.”

“Of course I was serious. You’ll like it there. And besides, my parents owe me big time for sending me here.”

It takes a bit of effort not to look hurt. As much as Rowan has become my friend during her time here, sometimes I wonder if she would trade it to have spent these last weeks back in her apartment, with her friends and all her shenanigans. Despite my own desires to escape, I want her to like Thisby. Even if I’ve outgrown it, my footprints are embedded in the hills and pieces of my soul are ground in with the sand. I am made of this rocky island with too much wind and not enough life, but just enough magic to create something as strange as me.

“Do you miss it?” I ask her, not sure if I really want the answer.

“I do. I miss my friends, and my parents. Even though they basically banished me.” There’s a little tension in her voice, anger at her parents that she hasn’t told me about before. As subtly as I can, I press my shoulder a little closer to hers in comfort. “It’s weird, being here, where I can’t even really talk to them at all. I wrote them a postcard, telling them I wanted to come home,” as if she can sense my sadness, she turns to me with a small smile, “and that I’d be bringing back a friend.”

It is so easy to smile back at her. For a moment, I forget why I asked her to keep my company today. Rowan has that effect on me. When we are together, I can see the future I’ve laid out for myself, and remember why I wanted to fight so hard for it. Sometimes, I need her nearness just to remind me that I’m still fighting.

Without thinking, I let the words slip. “I miss my parents too.”

Rowan twists from her position, so she can look at my face. “What do you mean? You live with your parents.”

Bile rises in my throat, but I swallow it back. “They haven’t spoken to me since I brought Elemental home.”

It all comes tumbling out of me. The way my mother has stopped asking me for help in the gardens over breakfast, and instead leaves a written note of chores on the counter. How my father spends twice as much time in the paddock with our sheep, so he doesn’t have to tell me what still needs to be done when I return from practicing on the beach. How, for the first time in my life, my bedroom store is always closed, and no one ever knocks to see if I’m in it.

“Thisby loved me before I was a rider,” I tell her, though the vanity in that statement makes me blush. “I was this weird little thing that everyone laughed at, but I was a great student and a also ever so well behaved. I was friendly and helpful and everyone knew my blonde pigtails when I came running into town to fetch things for my parents.

“And my Mom and Da’, they loved that so much about me. They thought I was Thisby all the way to my bones.” Rowan wrinkles her nose at my comment, and I would laugh if it weren’t for my melancholy. “But now… I think they know how badly I want to leave it, and they don’t approve. I overheard my mom crying the other night, about how whether I survived the races or not, she was losing her only daughter anyway. Does it make me selfish to want to leave? Am I a bad daughter for wanting more than a sheep farm and the Dalton name?”

Rowan considers this for a moment. “If you won the races, do you think you could still stay on Thisby and be happy?”

It is such a simple answer. I shake my head. “I love my parents, and this island will always be a part of me, but the only things that could keep me happy here are you and Elemental. But you’re leaving, and I made Elemental a promise.”

She doesn’t ask what the promise is. I think she remembers that day on the beach when we first spoke, and rumors were flying about how Finnigan Kendrick had tried to buy my capall out from under me. I’m sure everyone on this island knows that whatever happens during the race, Elemental will return to the sea.

We sit together in silence for a long time, before Rowan finally speaks again. “Maybe, you make them a promise.” I listen intently, my pulse a dull roar in my ears, hope so strong in my veins I think it might burn right through them. “Promise them you’ll come back, every year. You were always going to have to leave the nest, every kid does, but that doesn’t mean they have to lose you altogether.”

“Besides, as much as you want to get away, I don’t think you can leave Thisby behind forever. Not when Elemental might come back next year.”