Beating A Live Horse
#30 of The world of the Spirit of '67
The starting gate dropped with a thunk, and that started the thunder. Flying chunks of turf and track pounded into dust by a legion of hooves and twitching muscled flanks and short little riders who didn't even look twelve years old. They hit the curve of the oval and the pack broke apart, horse fifty-seven at the peak and the commentator's voice flying along after the drumming hooves at a dozen syllables a second.
Val Gordon picked up his glass unconcernedly, dropped his gaze away from the screens lining the betting pit at Aesop's Stables and to his pads on the table, and took a sip. Tip of his stylus braced against his thumbtip, he tapped the end against the nearest pad's frame nervously.
Not that he had enough money riding on this to be nervous, he just wanted to be sure he understood the principles. For work. No, the problem was the trio of women nearby who were clearly in the betting pit because it served alcohol at eleven AM.
"I didn't know they still had whips." Ciska's ear dipped at the same moment she scrunched her face up in confusion.
The redhead at the table opposite gazed at herself unconcernedly in a compact mirror. "Of course they have whips." She daubed on lipstick, slowly. "It's not cruel, you know."
"And how do you know that, Jo?" Ciska narrowed her eyes at the other woman. She bent her ears back at the same moment, Ciska was a rabbit, it made the whole shape of her head change in an instant. From bright and benign to vaguely aerodynamic and worrying.
The other woman, Jo, just looked predatory by default - that long, canid looking muzzle of hers. "Some people enjoy whips. I know a lot of people who do. The horses certainly don't look like they're complaining, do they?"
What didn't help at all was that the third at the table, the cute little ferret, was staring at Val in the same way the unattached human tourists from up north stared at him while he was cashiering, i.e., drunkenly, curiously, and not at his face.
Val crossed his legs slowly, planting his ankle on his knee, and turned away, jogging his hoof idly. He twisted his body away from the girls and chewed the end of his stylus slowly.
"So explain this to me," Katie - the ferret - murmured. "The horses all wear halters and leather and all, right? So does that mean..."
Ciska cupped her diminutive chin in her palm. "Well it's clearly animal cruelty."
Jo dabbed at the corner of her mouth slowly, grunting bemusedly.
"Mmm." Katie plucked up their betting ticket and slipped across one table and sat down.
At Val's table. Across from him, so she'd block the screens, if she wasn't short built and he wasn't almost a foot taller than her.
"Maybe you can help me with something," she purred.
He stared over the top of her head evenly.
She slid the betting ticket onto the table. "You're in a much better position to explain this to me than those two." She jerked her head to the side.
Val risked glancing over - the pair of them were staring. Slowly he bowed his head to look at their betting ticket. An Each-Way on Gilded Marie. Not that complex. He scratched behind an ear. "Yes?"
"With the horse racing..."
"Yes?"
"Do you think they like it?"
"Ah?"
"You know, being beaten, leather." Katie smiled slowly and strangely. She licked her lips very deliberately. "Getting ridden hard."
Val slipped a finger into his collar and yanked it loose. "Ah, I, uh."
Her teeth glinted white. "Of course they're so big..."
A blink didn't quite seem to work. He had trouble opening his eyes again. He dropped his hooves to the floor and pressed his knees together. "I wouldn't be in a position to. Ah. Say."
Her lower lip extended in the mother of all pouts. "I thought you might know 'coz you're a horse too," she whined.
"I should. Go." Val nodded decisively, ears flicking involuntarily.
Katies eyes widened. "Would it help if you tried it? With the leather and the whips and the," she slumped down, shrinking in her seat to appear smaller than her petite frame already made her, "really tiny little jockey riding you so hard?"
"I have an Appointment-So-I-Really-" He clawed up his pads and bolted as if the gate had dropped, "-Better-Go-But-It-Was-APleasureSeeingYouAgainKatieAnd-" It occurred to him that he'd forgotten one of the smaller pads he was reading records on, and in his moment of hesitation he heard the laughter of the other two thundering along at a rapid pace.
Face carefully blank, Val marched back.
Katie held out the pad, innocently.
"Thank you." He swiped it back.
"I was just playin'," she laughed.
Val steadied himself against the table for a moment. He'd accept the apology, they were just having fun, it wasn't like-
Katie leaned forward earnestly, planting her hands on the table to shove her cleavage together. "Can I play with you?"
Val slotted the pad in with the others, twisted around, and matched right back out to a chorus of barking, chirping, rollicking laughter.
His face would probably stop feeling as though it were burning, eventually.