The Tamers I

This day dawned autumnal and cold. Adeleyn rode her horse to a standstill, watching her warm breath condense in the cold air. For many years she’d ridden abreast her family on a stout old pony not of her own, but now she sat atop the gift from her brother whom she couldn’t thank enough. He was a brawny, willful stallion of six, the only dapple-grey in the stables. As much as he was charming to Adeleyn, he was perhaps the most disliked.

It had been merely a few weeks ago that Adeleyn had aged seventeen. She was eager to be an almost-woman, though she had felt her heart misgive her. She’d ridden longer than most of her siblings, to be sure, but unlike them what was esteemed of her four years ago was disreputable, yet she knew her father hadn’t had his expectations high. But soon they were riding east…she needed a mount of her own.

Adeleyn squeezed her calves around Elliot’s stomach and sent him down Tia’s road, a trail of dirt that sluiced through the hillock; it ran from her home to the village. The neatly aligned trees on either side were now almost leafless, only bearing a couple of red and gold. Those strewn along the ground danced whirlwinds in the light stream of breeze. It had evoked the stories Adeleyn had been told about whirlwinds, how there were ones of ruin in the north, perhaps a thousand times larger than the small dances performed by the dying leaves of autumn.

The village was rather lively that day. Adeline kept her stallion in a calm walk as she entered the posterns. It had seemed the town was swarmed with a sea of people, some bearing hampers, some hawkers wheeling their handcarts, some mothers walking their children. The crowd on the road rived to allow Adeline through; falling into a reverential hush as a stately, grey creature strode before them, his tail following gracefully behind like a pennant flowing at a ship’s masthead. Adeline could see there hadn’t been a grey horse as imposing as Elliot passing through in a while. For the first time in her life, she felt a queen making her advent. She saw the awe in the eyes of the children; she pondered if they sought to be like her, part of her wouldn’t have imagined it.

Elliot’s nostrils quivered as they whiffed rye and barley. Adeleyn maintained a grip on the reins so his lengthy neck didn’t turn,.V