Chapter Text
Approximately 5 years ago.
It was nearing the end of the day at Nevermore, which meant tomfoolery was allowed and afoot.
“Ready?” Duke yelled out from on top of a horse.
“Go!” Lenore yells back, standing a fair distance away from Duke in the arena.
The two idiots’ goal is to swing Lenore onto Duke’s horse while it is running towards her. Whatever managed to convince the two this was a good idea is still unknown, but they did it.
Duke and his horse began running towards Lenore, his hand outstretched for Lenore’s. The horse continues to charge towards Lenore, much too fast for Duke to be able to get a safe distance between him and Lenore while also accomplishing their goal. He pulls on the reigns to try and slow the horse down but instead the horse gets back on its hind legs and kicks it’s hooves in the air right in front of Lenore. The horse starts bucking, startling both Lenore and Duke.
”Lenore watch out!” Duke screams as he’s gripping onto the saddle and reigns for dear life, trying not to get thrown to the ground.
But his screams were useless, despite Lenore’s attempt to protect her head with her arm, the horse kicks her so hard she flies upwards and crashes onto the ground with a heavy thud.
Duke falls off the loud bucking horse, crashing to the ground as well. The horse quickly calms down when Duke is off it’s back, scrambling to his feet to reach Lenore.
The loud noise created by Duke screaming and the horse neighing attracted a crowd of Nevermore staff, including Theo. The sight of his now unconscious sister laying on the dirt arena in a fetal position led to him hoping over the fence and over to her, shouting to call an ambulance.
That was how Lenore got her first concussion and a broken arm. Theo gave her and Duke the lecture of a life time when she finally recovered her memory loss from the blunt head trauma. After a year Lenore recollected all her memories, good and bad, at least that’s what she thought.
Current Day,
The summer season had begun at Nevermore, causing the return of Lenore and her coworkers. Minus Theo, who had moved back to their family’s ranch to get ready to take it over. It was odd, not having him around after so many years. But that wasn’t the only change; A man named Ira Whitlock bought Nevermore during the winter.
The first day back nearly flew by, Pluto, Lenore, and Duke helped open, led two groups through the trails for a total of 6 hours. When they finally returned and departed with their tour group to bring the borrowed horses to their stables, Duke, Pluto, and Lenore took it as an opportunity to complain about the people in their group now that they were long out of ear shot.
”Did you hear that one man? He would not shut up the entire tour. 3 hours of listening to the guy drone on and on.” Duke groaned, looking relieved to finally leave the man behind.
”I can’t tell what hurts more, my ass or my ears.” Pluto mutters, getting off of his horse, Chip.
”Whoever made todays schedule was out to get us, two 3 hour tours back to back with us leading both of them? Even Merry and Mourn gave us a break in between.” Lenore said.
”Well at least we get it now, even though we might as well just leave at this point.” Pluto shrugs.
The trio leads the horses back to the stables, letting the stable hands help them bring each of the horses inside. There were three main stable hands: Prospero, a man who looked somewhere between never working a day in his life and being raised to do nothing but work in a horse stable. Montressor, a man who shouldn’t be allowed within a three mile radius of a woman. And Will, a fairly kind guy who follows Montressor like a lost puppy.
Afterwards, Duke looked around for Pluto who seemingly had gone missing.
”Lenore, where did le petit garçon chat go?” Duke asked, peering over the stable doors to try and find Pluto.
“Probably with that cat again.” Lenore rolls her eyes and starts to look into the stables as well.
Duke spots Pluto laying in a pile of hay in the back of an empty stable with a cat curled up in his lap. Duke immediately pulls out his phone to take a picture of the two.
”Duke!” Pluto whisper yells, a mixture of surprised and angry.
“I’m sure Eulalie would love to see this.” Duke teases as he sends the photo to the staff group chat.
”You better not!” Pluto stands up, now holding the cat in his arms. “Delete that!” Pluto’s face turned to a shade of red.
”Too late, we already have responses.” Duke laughs, scrolling through the group chat replies. “There’s one from Eula!”
Pluto tries to see Duke’s phone, trying to snatch it from his hand only for Duke to hold it out of his reach. “She says, Please bring Poe to the shop, I miss him dearly. Oh and with a heart emoji!” Duke smirks, looking down at a flustered Pluto with Poe, the cat, in his arms.
“Lenore, we’re going to head to the store to buy something to eat, hurry up.” Duke puts his phone away in his pocket and waits by the stable’s exit with Pluto and Poe.
”I’ll meet you there, just let me finish this.” Lenore doesn’t bother turning her head as she brushes Key’s, her horse, mane. Unlike Pluto and Duke, Lenore had her own personal horse at Nevermore. Her coworkers just have a favorite they try to beat guests to. It was a benefit of the Vandernacht Ranch being business partners with Nevermore.
Lenore continued to brush Key’s hair as she heard footsteps walk into the stables. Typically, she could recognize a person just by the sound of their boot steps, but these weren’t familiar. She assumed it was a guest taking out their horse for the evening and paid no attention to it.
”Lenore..?” A British woman’s voice came from behind her. Lenore spins around to see what British stranger could possibly know her name and is greeted by a woman with blonde curls tied up in a green bow in a plain blue shirt and long black skirt, almost resembling clothes you see in historic west photos. Lenore doesn’t recognize her from anywhere, though she has this feeling she is supposed to, like the memory has been knocked out of her head by a certain horse 5 years ago.