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La’an walks out of Una’s bathroom half-dressed and asks, “Have you got a spare undershirt? I’ve left mine out of my bag.”
“Top drawer,” Una answers without getting up. She’s got her legs out in front of her, torso nearly flat on top of them as she bends to grip her feet. She always likes to do yoga after a workout, which seems like overkill to La’an, especially at a time like this when they’re in a rush. Then again, La’an is the one who pushed for the extra half hour of laps that made them late enough she had to shower at Una’s. (You wouldn’t think it, but only having two working turbolifts really throws a wrench into things. She makes a mental note to talk to Hemmer later, see if she can bargain him into moving the others to the top of his repair list. Weeks later, things are still settling down after the Gorn.)
Una deepens her stretch. “They’re on the left.”
La’an drops her gym bag to the floor and pads over to the dresser, adjusting the band of her sports bra as she goes. Una’s taller, so the shirt will be loose, but that’s okay. She just needs something to wear to the senior officers’ meeting and then she can stop by her quarters and change. “You know,” she says, reaching for the button to open the top drawer, “if you don’t shower now, you’re going to be—”
“Wait!”
But it’s too late; La’an has already opened it. She looks down out of instinct more than curiosity, not at all certain of what she’s going to see. She runs through the usual suspects (sex toys, unrequested birthday presents, highly classified work projects) and dismisses them all in the split second it takes her to process the contents of the drawer. Her first thought as Una scrambles off the floor is that’s strange. Her second thought is, why did I think these were going to be sex toys? That’s all she has time to think before Una is behind her, reaching over her shoulder to slam the drawer.
“Um,” La’an says, because that’s all she can think to say as Una wedges herself between her hips and the dresser.
“Sorry,” Una says, and her face is flushed and sweaty, her palms flat against the dresser as if to hold it in place. “Forgot I rearranged.” Then she stoops, opens a different drawer, and plucks out a clean black shirt, which she offers to La’an as if she’s a chef using a complimentary dessert to distract her from poor service or an accidental insect in her soup. It takes La’an several seconds to place her expression, but once she does, she can hardly believe it: Una is embarrassed.
“Okay,” she says, crossing her arms and not taking the shirt. “I was going to let it go, but now you’re being weird about it. Why do you have a bunch of tiny horses hidden in your drawer?”
“They’re not hidden,” Una protests. “They’re breakable. We live on a starship. They’re securely stored.” Then she blushes (blushes?!) and quickly looks away.
“Okaaay. Why do you have a bunch of tiny horses ‘securely stored’ in your drawer?”
Una scowls and tucks the tank top between La’an’s arms and her chest. “I need to shower,” she says, heading for the bathroom door. “And you need to get dressed. Otherwise, we’ll both be late.”
La’an thinks about the horses for the entire lengthy staff meeting, and then she thinks about them for her entire bridge shift too. She continues to think about them while she eats lunch, does rounds, and signs off on next week’s security rotations, and she’s still thinking about them that afternoon as she fills out an incident report in the conference room. Uhura is also in the conference room, working quietly on the other side of the table on some sort of project—La’an didn’t bother to ask what it was when she walked in. Normally, she doesn’t like it when people try to chat with her. Normally, she would appreciate Uhura’s total absorption in her work.
Normally, La’an isn’t fixated on a box of tiny plastic horses hidden in Una’s room.
There had been so many. Big ones and small ones, skinny ones and thick ones, brown ones and gray ones and splotched ones and striped ones; horses with long manes and horses with short manes and horses with no manes at all, just thick muscular necks and feathered hooves and tied-up tails and the strangest, kindest, gentlest expressions sculpted on their tiny faces. She doesn’t get it. La’an has known Una for half her life. Never in all those years has she even hinted at a love of equines.
“Do you know anything about horses?” she asks Uhura an hour into their silent work session, after she’s caught herself making an inventory of Una’s collection in the Disciplinary Actions section of her report.
Uhura looks up, more than a bit bewildered. “Horses? Umm. No, not really. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
There’s a long beat of silence, and then Uhura brightens. “You know who does know a lot about horses?” La’an’s gaze follows hers as it strays toward the saddle in the corner, then over to the galloping horse and cowboy statue on the captain’s desk. Briefly, La’an considers the ramifications of showing a sudden interest in her boss’s favorite subject, then realizes there’d be no coming back from that. She returns to her report with a noncommittal noise.
She lasts another fifteen minutes before giving up and surreptitiously searching the ship’s computer for books about horses. Because Pike is the captain, there are plenty—including, inexplicably, a two hundred- and forty-one-year-old book on the history of racehorse names titled Fifty Shades of Hay.
By the time she steps into the mess hall late that night, La’an’s head is swimming with words like forelock and withers and tobiano and pinto and piebald and dapple gray. She knows that horses are measured in hands and that one hand equals four inches and that the tallest recorded horse in history was a Shire gelding named Sampson who weighed an astonishing three thousand three hundred and fifty-nine pounds before his owners renamed him Mammoth. Thanks to Fifty Shades of Hay, she knows entirely too much about twentieth-century racehorse names. She also knows the difference between chestnut- and sorrel-coated horses, and she can name at least twenty-five different breeds. More importantly, she knows that Una’s collection reveals a soft spot for Arabians and draft horses and that her favorite coat color is probably blood bay.
She also knows why Una has the horses in the first place.
At least, she has a theory, and she’s about to scope it out.
“Twenty-five,” she says as she sets her tray down on the table.
Una looks up from her book with a blank expression on her face. “Twenty-five what?”
“Horses.” She sits down and keeps going before Una can stop her. “One for each year you’ve been in Starfleet. That’s what they represent, right?”
Again, that blush of embarrassment colors Una’s face. This time of night, hardly anyone is in the mess hall, but she still leans forward and lowers her voice. “You got all of that from a three-second look?”
La’an doesn’t bother pointing out that it’s her job to be observant, nor does she remind her that her mind is a steel trap. She just leans back in her seat and calmly eats a carrot stick, then another and another until Una sighs and closes her book. “How did you know?”
“The numbers on their bellies. They’re stardates, right?”
Una looks at her with an inscrutable expression, and now it’s La’an’s turn to blush. It suddenly strikes her as ridiculous that she’s spent an entire day on this. She has a ship to protect, and she’s investigating plastic horses?
“Yes,” Una says, either not noticing or not commenting on La’an’s rapidly reddening cheeks, “they’re stardates. And—you’re almost right.” She looks down at her forearms folded on the table, then back up at La’an. “I met Captain Pike my first year at the Academy. He came and spoke to my advanced aeronautics class, and—well. I went up to him afterward and said his math was wrong.”
La’an’s mouth drops open. “You what?”
Una’s mouth twists into a rueful expression. “I know. Luckily, he was impressed. We started talking, and he invited me out to his family’s ranch with a group of his friends. This was when a lot of them still lived in Mojave, before he got his place in Bearcreek. When his mother was still around.” Una says all this as if La’an is already familiar with the names, the faces, the details, but she doesn’t even know enough about Earth to parse whether she’s talking about cities or countries or states. She wasn’t born there, and she didn’t explore much during her own years at the Academy. She reserved that impulse for space.
“We rode horses,” Una continues, “as you’ve probably guessed. And...” she shrugs, and her gaze wanders out a nearby viewport. “We had fun, and I was good with the horses, and by the end of the weekend it felt like we were friends. We were friends,” she corrects herself. She glances back at La’an. “We got together as often as we could before I graduated and Chris shipped out, and it was—” She tilts her head. “It was nice. I didn’t have a lot of friends back then. That group, they were my first.”
“So you got the model horse...”
“To mark the day, yes. I get them whenever I’m back on Earth.” She twists her fingers around each other. “It’s stupid, I know. I’m not normally so sentimental.”
You paint stars on your thumbnails, La’an almost says. You do it because it reminds you of when you were a little girl and all you had were dreams. You bring me cupcakes without icing on my birthday because you know I hate sweet things but still want to mark the occasion. When cadets move in, you leave a plant in their quarters to make the space feel less impersonal and more like home.
But she doesn’t mention any of that. Instead, she says, “Tell me about the twenty-sixth. The black one with the blaze.” She runs her finger down the bridge of her nose as she says it, an unconscious gesture of all she’s crammed into her brain today.
Una stares at her with a mix of affection and embarrassment. La’an’s chest does something funny as she waits for her to speak. “You’ve been doing your homework.”
“You’ve been avoiding me all day. I had a lot of time to think.” The horse had been off to the side in its own little box, not nestled with the others, and it took her until just now to remember that she’d seen it.
Una sighs and puts her elbows on the table and presses her hands to the sides of her face. She stays like that for a few long moments, and then she meets La’an’s gaze. “Do you remember when I came to visit you at the Academy?”
La’an shifts in her seat. “There were a lot of times.”
“The first time,” Una clarifies, “not when you enrolled, but a few months after. We made it halfway across campus before you sat down on a bench.”
La’an nods slowly. “I was worried about a test, and so you sat down with me.”
“Yes.”
Una waits, and La’an strains to remember the details of that evening, to slot them in their proper place. All of a sudden, the blood drains from her face. “Oh no. You wanted to take me horseback riding?”
Una looks down at her hands, now folded on the table. “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t tell you.”
“I said I couldn’t leave campus because I needed to study.”
“It’s fine, really.”
“You ran equations with me for five hours in the library.”
“And I was happy to do it.”
“Liar,” La’an deadpans, and they fall silent, eyes locked across the table. It’s a word she would have thought nothing about a few months earlier, but now... She resists the urge to fidget. After a handful of seconds, Una breaks into a grin. All the tension drains out of La’an’s shoulders. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
Una shakes her head. “It wasn’t important.”
It was though. The models told her that. Una had been trying to share something with her, to pass something along, to start a tradition—to give them both something they no longer had access to on their own. Of course, she hadn’t known Una’s secret at that point. She’d just been Una, her human friend and human mentor, someone to look up to (literally), to strive to be like.
Would it have made a difference? If she had known?
Una cuts into her thoughts. “There’s no way you got all that from one look. Be honest. Did you peek while I was in the shower?” La’an gives her a look, but Una just raises her eyebrow, determined to call bull. “You couldn’t possibly have read more than one of those stardates before I got over there, much less noticed the range.”
La’an folds her arms. “Security officers never slack.”
It’s easier—less embarrassing—than admitting that she’s had the details of Una’s public file memorized for as long as she can remember. She used to hide beneath her bed as a kid and study it, comforted both by the enclosed space and the clear-cut facts listed beneath Una’s face. Really, today was just an exercise in filling in the gaps. “So the horse,” she prompts. “You had it that day?”
Una nods.
“And then when I ruined the moment, you just... kept it? All these years?”
Una nods again.
“I’m sorry,” she says, though she doesn’t know what she’s apologizing for—it’s not like she knew what Una was trying to do and brushed her off. Una wouldn’t have told her the significance of the model. It would have just been another thing La’an had to keep up with, another possession tying her in place. She’s never been one for things.
She thinks of the horses again, each laid out on soft white batting and tucked into its own compartment in the clear acrylic case. She thinks of Una quietly collecting them throughout the years, not sharing them with anyone, but caring enough about them to mark them all with dates. She wants to ask if she ever pulls them out and holds them, or if it’s enough just to know they’re in the drawer—tiny prancing monuments to friendship and devotion, reminders of the risks she took to build a life for herself.
“Take me sometime?” she says instead, on impulse. “The next time we’re on Earth?” Things are still so tender between them—La’an still hasn’t figured out how to forgive her for the lies—but as the question spills past her lips, she realizes she really means it.
Una brightens, blue eyes warming as she relaxes against the table. “I’d love that,” she says softly. Then she grins. “Though we might not have to wait that long.”
“Be honest,” Ortegas says, tipping back her hat, “is this why you keep a saddle in your office?”
Pike laughs as he mounts his horse. “You know my motto: Always be prepared.”
This prompts Una to catch his eye and mouth Boy Scout, which earns her a look that lands somewhere between stern and pleading. Pike turns his attention to the rest of the group. “Okay. Show of hands: Who all’s ridden a horse before?”
Everyone’s hands go up except for Spock and La’an’s.
“Good,” Pike nods, “then I’m doing a pretty damn good job. Number One?”
“Waaay ahead of ya,” Una says, and she really is.
“I fail to see the purpose of this venture,” Spock says, eyeing the horse Una leads up to the mounting block.
“Personal edification, Mr. Spock. You haven’t properly experienced a place until you’ve seen it between a horse’s ears.” When that earns him quite a few looks, Pike adds, “Also, we could use the fresh air.”
“The air is sufficiently fresh in my cabin. Sir. And we did just have shore leave on Starbase 1.”
“Up you go,” Una cuts in with her most no-nonsense tone of voice, though La’an could swear she winks as she holds the stirrup steady.
“Do you just... keep an inventory of colonies that have integrated horses into their ecosystems?” Uhura asks. She’s already mounted on a placid pinto mare Pike referred to as his “old pal Mokey” the second they arrived.
“Really, Chris,” Una says once Spock is safely in the saddle, “it’s a valid question. Just how many four-legged friends do you have across the quadrant?”
Ortegas—decked out in cowgirl gear astride an Appaloosa gelding—looks over with a smirk. “A captain doesn’t kiss and tell.”
M’Benga hoots and slaps his thigh. “This one does.”
Pike grimaces. “All right, all right, you’ve had your fun. Now it’s time for me to have mine.” He gathers his reins and nudges his horse forward, then stops and glances back at Una and La’an. “You coming?”
“We’ll catch up,” Una says. “Don’t have too much fun without us.”
Pike looks like he’s going to argue, but then he lets it go. “All right everyone, time’s a-wasting. Let’s head out.” He reins his horse to the right, toward a gate which he expertly opens, then waits for the rest of the group to file out onto the blue-dirt trail.
“Yeehaw!” Ortegas shouts as her horse breaks into a trot. This makes Chapel laugh, and M’Benga and Uhura groan. Spock merely sways precariously in his saddle, elbows held like wings at his sides and spine as stiff as his expression. “He really should have gotten a pass,” Una says under her breath. “That man is not cut out for horses.”
“Don’t forget to breathe, Lieutenant,” Pike says as Spock rides by, and then they’re gone, kicking up a smoky blue dust into the air as they head out toward the mountains.
Una and La’an are suddenly alone. Or mostly alone. There are, of course, the horses. The horses which they now must ride.
“Oh come on,” Una says upon seeing her expression. “You can’t ask Christopher Pike to call up the nearest deep space horse ranch and not expect him to get excited. You had to know he was going to turn this into a field trip.”
La’an rolls her eyes but bites back a smile. “Just show me what to do.” She’s not thrilled at the idea of having an audience once they catch up with the group, but at least this way she can get the hang of things without everyone horsing around.
She winces. I’ve been hanging out with Ortegas too much.
By the time La’an stops cringing over her own involuntary pun, Una has led a chestnut mare over to the mounting block. Contrary to Pike and Ortegas’s mounts, this horse appears to be calm and steady. In fact, until Una walked up to her, she was pretty much asleep. La’an can’t decide if she’s grateful for or insulted by the foresight. Grateful, she decides, remembering the mild terror in Spock’s eyes.
She flexes her wrists and takes a steadying breath. Why did she want to do this again?
“It’s not too late to stage a ship-wide emergency,” Una sing-songs. “You don’t have to do this, you know.” Her tone is light, but her expression is sincere. She looks so comfortable in her field uniform, standing next to a thousand pounds of horse. (One thousand two hundred, her brain unhelpfully corrects. Sometimes, it’s better not to research things.)
La’an has never been an animal person. Maybe it’s because she grew up on starships, or maybe it’s because of what happened with the Gorn, who she cannot think of as anything higher than the basest reptile no matter how hard the Federation has tried to teach her otherwise. Or maybe that gene just skipped her altogether. Whatever the reason, she doesn’t get soft and sentimental like the captain or bouncy like Uhura or excited like Ortegas. She doesn’t even relax like Chapel and M’Benga. She’s more like Spock: rigid and sweating and proud.
Before this month, she assumed that Una would be like that too.
“C’mon,” Una says, holding out her hand. She wiggles her fingers, and the mare’s ears swivel toward the sound of her voice. She is so calm and relaxed and comfortable and happy and La’an is so tense that she’s going to explode. She forces herself to take one step forward, then another and another, until she’s within arm’s reach of the horse’s white-striped nose.
“See?” Una says, “nothing to worry about. Hazel here is an expert at breaking in new riders, aren’t you, girl?” She rubs the horse’s—Hazel’s—ears and leans her forehead against her bony nose. It is, for Una, unspeakably demonstrative, and La’an feels as if she shouldn’t be watching such a flagrant display of emotion. Looking away would be the polite response. Or exploding. Maybe. She lays one tentative hand on Hazel’s shoulder, just to have something to do. The mare’s shiny copper hide twitches, but that’s it. She doesn’t even stamp her hoof.
“You know,” La’an says as Una pulls a carrot from her pocket and shows her how to hold her hand out flat so Hazel can lip it up, “this is the second time in one year that you’ve revealed a secret identity.”
Una frowns. “What?”
She holds up one finger—“Illyrian”—and then a second—“horse girl.” Una scoffs, but softens as she gazes into one of Hazel’s big brown eyes. “Maybe,” she says, and the concession is so quiet that La’an almost doesn’t hear it above the ambient outdoor noise.
Una scratches Hazel’s neck until the mare droops her head over her shoulder and cocks her back right hoof and heaves a horsey sigh. Watching them, La’an thinks she gets it. Not for herself, but for Una. Horses are easy. They don’t care about who you are.
“Come on,” she says, patting Hazel’s shoulder more confidently this time. “Show me how to do this before the captain sends Ortegas to supervise.”
Una huffs a laugh, and if she has to turn and wipe a few tears from the corners of her eyes? Well. La’an pretends she doesn’t see it.
She’s a little bit startled when Una swings herself into the saddle. La’an assumed this was the horse she was going to ride. Una looks down with a grin and holds out her arm. “Hop on up behind me. We’ll ride double.”
“Is that safe?”
“Safer than you’ll be in space.”
“That’s so reassuring,” La’an drawls, because wasn’t it just last month that they nearly flew into a black hole? But she clasps Una’s arm and steps onto the mounting block all the same.
Una waits for her to settle behind her before asking if she’s okay. “I’m fine,” she answers, and she is. Hazel is taller than she looked from the ground, but she’s steady, and Una’s back is warm as she leans against it and slides her arms around her waist. It’s the most they’ve touched since Una came out as an Illyrian. La’an tries to savor it, but there’s so much else going on.
Una makes a clicking noise and Hazel moseys forward. “All good back there?”
La’an squeezes her waist. “Quit babying, I said I’m fine.”
Una pats her knee where it bunches up behind her thigh. “Sorry. Bad habits.” She steers them through the gate and latches it, then points Hazel toward the pink mountains and blue fields and purple trees.
La’an presses her face into Una’s jacket and breathes in the scent of sun and horse and hay and leather. Una can probably feel her heart hammering through her ribcage, but she doesn’t care. Not tomorrow, and not today.
Horses are easy, she reminds herself, like a mantra. And it’s working. She can feel her muscles relaxing, her heart rate slowing down. Maybe by the end of the day she’ll understand what all the fuss is about. Or maybe not. And that’s okay. She thinks of the little black horse in her keepsake box on Enterprise, of the stardate she’ll etch onto its belly when they get back. I’m not going to start collecting these, you know, she said when Una gave it to her.
Yeah, Una laughed. I know that now.
Hazel bobs her head and snorts as Una lets out the reins. “I’ll keep her at a walk until we clear the tree line and then we’ll speed it up, okay?”
La’an closes her eyes as a shiver of excitement ripples down her spine. Then she laughs and squeezes Una’s waist and says, “Let’s ride.”