March Is Women's History Month - day two: Kailani as a Tween
March is Women's History Month, and so for March I'm doing vignettes about or questions regarding any of my female characters, one/day from the 10th-31st.
The prompt post is here; please add more prompts ;-)
This one comes from
clare_dragonfly, who asked for Kailani as a tween.
Kailani is one of the three main characters in Addergoole, which also has a landing page here. (Stay tuned for the entirely-new rewrite of Book One of Addergoole, coming soon!)
"His name is Gibbous Moon Over the Lake, but we call him Moonlake."
The instructor was an earthy woman - brown hair, browned skin, and a smell like loam - a friend of Kailani's mother who called herself Stormshadow.
That was unimportant. What was important was that she was holding the bridle of a horse. A horse.
"He's a very calm boy, but watch his ears. They'll tell you if he's upset, or interested in something, or spooked." Stormshadow patted Moonlake's head. "And his tail - you can hear it flicking back and forth."
"Like cats." Kai put her hand over her mouth, feeling her cheeks heating up already. "I mean..." She released her hand, "with the ears and the tail, not the same language, I mean, obviously, one's a small carnivore-predator and the other one's a large herbivore-grazer. But they both move their ears for emotions, and their tails. And here?" She touched the horse's shoulders gently.
"Very good. Yes, they don't use the same body language as cats, but if you've taught yourself to read feline body language with any rate of success, you should be able to handle horses with little problem. Of course, you'll be on his back, which is different from cats, I'm sure."
Kailani giggled. "It's a little different, yes. But I really get to ride him? He won't mind?"
"He won't mind. Moonlake is a nice boy, and he likes being able to spend time with people. Here's one more trick. You can offer him treats, but you have to be careful to keep your thumbs out of the way. Like this."
Stormshadow wasn't watching Moonlake; she was watching the young girl with the frizzy hair who was clearly falling in love. "No charge," she told Moonchild, Kailani's mother. "In another year, this girl is going to be working at my stable nonstop just to be around the horses."
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/694127.html. You can comment here or there.
The prompt post is here; please add more prompts ;-)
This one comes from
clare_dragonfly, who asked for Kailani as a tween.
Kailani is one of the three main characters in Addergoole, which also has a landing page here. (Stay tuned for the entirely-new rewrite of Book One of Addergoole, coming soon!)
"His name is Gibbous Moon Over the Lake, but we call him Moonlake."
The instructor was an earthy woman - brown hair, browned skin, and a smell like loam - a friend of Kailani's mother who called herself Stormshadow.
That was unimportant. What was important was that she was holding the bridle of a horse. A horse.
"He's a very calm boy, but watch his ears. They'll tell you if he's upset, or interested in something, or spooked." Stormshadow patted Moonlake's head. "And his tail - you can hear it flicking back and forth."
"Like cats." Kai put her hand over her mouth, feeling her cheeks heating up already. "I mean..." She released her hand, "with the ears and the tail, not the same language, I mean, obviously, one's a small carnivore-predator and the other one's a large herbivore-grazer. But they both move their ears for emotions, and their tails. And here?" She touched the horse's shoulders gently.
"Very good. Yes, they don't use the same body language as cats, but if you've taught yourself to read feline body language with any rate of success, you should be able to handle horses with little problem. Of course, you'll be on his back, which is different from cats, I'm sure."
Kailani giggled. "It's a little different, yes. But I really get to ride him? He won't mind?"
"He won't mind. Moonlake is a nice boy, and he likes being able to spend time with people. Here's one more trick. You can offer him treats, but you have to be careful to keep your thumbs out of the way. Like this."
Stormshadow wasn't watching Moonlake; she was watching the young girl with the frizzy hair who was clearly falling in love. "No charge," she told Moonchild, Kailani's mother. "In another year, this girl is going to be working at my stable nonstop just to be around the horses."
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/694127.html. You can comment here or there.