Work Text:
graceless lady
you know who I am
you know I can't let you
slide through my hands
from “Wild Horses” by The Rolling Stones. (Honorable mention: the 90s cover by The Sundays, which I heard first growing up. It's hauntingly beautiful.)
Silence Suzuka sits alone at her desk in a modest hotel room, trying (and failing) to write a letter to her best friend back in Japan.
Dear Spe-chan,
It might be a bit odd that I'm writing to you like this when we usually exchange video calls, but the timezone differences between here and Japan have been tiring for me. Night time here in general has become a little difficult for me. I often find myself restless, and yet listless, tossing and turning in bed, or sitting up and staring out at the stars in the night sky…
Suzuka stops mid-writing to lean back, taking a breath and blinking away a slight moisture in her eyes. She's getting carried away. There was no need to ramble on and on about her troubled sleep to Special Week so early on in this letter - at least, not without explaining the strange events that started it in the first place.
She crumples the letter and tosses it into a garbage bin by her desk, starting anew with a new sheet of blank paper.
Dear Spe-chan,
I hope you're doing well. My training for the American racing circuit has been fruitful so far, especially as I and Trainer-san immerse ourselves in the many different cultures here. It's so much more varied than I'd imagined! I wish I could show you more besides the pictures and souvenirs. There's really nothing quite like experiencing it all in person…
Suzuka pauses, bothering the back-end of her pen with her teeth. Now she was rambling on about a different subject, still avoiding the topic she'd wanted to write about in the first place…
She sits back and closes her eyes for a moment, taking a breath to calm herself. She's been battling a quiet frantic-ness that's been bubbling up in her chest, an unsettled feeling that's stuck itself there ever since that strange day in the Rocky Mountains, more than a week ago now…
She opens her eyes to look again upon her second unfinished letter. She sighs. There just wasn't an easy way to put the events of that day into words, much less in a letter to Special Week. Would she even understand, if Suzuka told her about it? Could she even begin to grasp the complexity of the strange, sad feelings Suzuka experienced that day?
Suzuka thinks, and thinks, spinning her pen in her left hand and staring at the half-finished letter for minutes on end. Then she ponders her hotel window, the dark night outside, the time blinking blearily on the digital alarm clock by her bed. It's already past midnight. She'd have trouble sleeping even if she weren't trying to write a letter right now. She's been even more restless than usual tonight, and she thought finally trying to put her thoughts to paper would help…
After long moments of contemplation, she decides to try one more time. She tosses the second letter into the garbage, alongside all pretenses of writing a letter at all. She will just… write about what happened. She doesn't need to send it to anyone. It doesn't even have to be sensible, or formatted - she just has to get the words out.
She starts simply:
Trainer-san and I were on a trip with our translator through the Rocky Mountain areas in the northern part of the country. After a long week of endurance training, we decided to take an extended weekend to relax and enjoy the scenery at our guide's request…
“Amazing,” Suzuka murmured, watching the sun rising over the rolling plains and hills through her phone's camera. She attempts a few photos and even a video to capture the moment, but she frowns at the results - none of them fully capture the majesty of this place in-person. She decides to pocket her phone and enjoy this scenery as it is, alongside the cool breeze, the calling of birds, the distant rustling of grasses. If she wasn't already sore from training and hadn't been strictly forbidden from doing anything but relaxing right now, she would love to run here.
She turns back to her Trainer, standing nearby and wrapped in conversation with their guide and English translator, Mr. Tanaka.
“…rich history in this area, especially in regards to the indigenous tribes that used to populate this region. They'd follow the herds of Bison all across the plains here,” he was saying now, with one arm outstretched to gesture across the whole of the landscape. Trainer-san was following his gaze and nodding sagely.
Suzuka looks at them and chuckles softly. Her current Trainer was a fellow Japanese native like her, but apparently had a deep fascination with American history and culture beyond its racing scene. It's no surprise to her now that he was adamant on seeking out his friend Tanaka-san to be their guide here, being a mixed-race translator born in Japan but raised mostly in America. He has an impressive, intimate wealth of knowledge of this country.
He's almost the opposite of Grass-chan, she thinks to herself, her friend and rival who was, conversely, American-born but raised in Japan.
“-Eagles were an important animal in their culture as well," Tanaka was saying now, pointing skyward at a distant bird-shaped blot in the sky that had just passed over them. Suzuka follows it towards the horizon. “There might be an ancient ancestor that inspired their legend of the Thunderbird, whose wings were so huge they could cover the sky, and created peals of thunder when they flapped-”
Wah!
There is a peal of sound suddenly, but it isn't thunder, far from it - it is a tiny sound, far away and muffled. Suzuka's sensitive ears twitch toward its direction.
Waahh!
There it is again. She wasn't just hearing things.
"Did you hear that?" She asks her companions.
Trainer-san and Tanaka stop their conversation about birds and turn to her, confused.
"Hear what? The eagles?" Tanaka asks. "I haven't heard any calls-"
"No, not that," Suzuka says, shaking her head.
Waahhh!
"There it is again!" she exclaims, turning away and looking into the surrounding brush, trying to pinpoint its location.
"I don't hear anything," Trainer-san says.
"Me neither," Tanaka replies, but by now Suzuka was tuning them out to focus completely on the strange sound.
It repeats again, and now she can tell that it is a cry of some kind, spacing itself out between the breaths of something, or someone, who was in distress.
At this thought, her instincts rise up into a quiet panic in her chest and an itching in her legs, and before she can really think about it, she's running off the dirt path surrounding their RV, down the rocks and into the tall grasses below, following the sound.
“Suzuka!” her Trainer and guide call after her, but she has already left them far behind.
The rough terrain was painful on her sore muscles and casual shoes, but Suzuka endures it - as she moved forward, tracking the sound, it became more and more clear that it was not only a cry, but a baby's cry. She needs to hurry.
After navigating the rocks and dirt and sinking into the lengthening grasses, the sound feels much closer. She slows down to a brisk walk as she negotiates the blades of grass now surrounding her. Then she stops, as the sound becomes very close - she thinks she sees a section of grass that moves on its own, the blades askew from something at their base. The cry fades as she pushes towards it, and for a moment, she's afraid she's lost it - then she reaches a little clearing in the brush, and what she sees on the ground leaves her mouth agape with surprise.
It is indeed a baby - a baby horsegirl.
She is very small, with nothing but a cloth diaper to wear and a small blanket wrapped around the rest of her. There's mud stains on her skin and grass stuck in the small tufts of hair on her head and tail. She was staring wide-eyed at Suzuka, her cries and movements having stopped as she drew closer.
Suzuka stares, confused at the tiny girl and her strange circumstance. Her mind races with questions - how did an infant horsegirl get here? Why? Was she forgotten by a traveling family? Or worse - abandoned? And why so little protective clothing? Why-
She shook her head free of these thoughts, before her emotions got the better of her. She made a move to gently reach out to the infant. Her companions would surely help the little girl. They could clean her and get her some much needed food and water, return her to the nearest town and open an investigation with the police-
A sudden shout interrupts her thoughts, and she freezes her outstretched arm. It's not the baby - it is an adult feminine voice, speaking in unfamiliar words, nearly right in front of Suzuka. She looks up and meets, to her shock, the eyes of another horsegirl - an adult, emerging from the long grass behind the child.
Suzuka is stunned. She is unlike anyone she has ever seen, human or otherwise. The horsewoman wears simple, hand-sewn clothes made of furs and skins, hand-carved knives on a rope belt around her waist, a spear slung across her back, a handmade basket on her shoulders. But what is most striking is her face - fierce eyes shining out from a worn, dirtied face, framed by dark, braided hair. Her furred ears press back against her head with tension, and her frazzled tail swishes behind her.
She seems wild and strange, but not feral. There is a careful consideration to her dress, practicality and pragmaticism. An unmistakable intelligence in her eyes as she glances between Suzuka and the child at her feet. Her brow furrows in concentration and confusion, as if she were just as perplexed at Suzuka's appearance as Suzuka was at her.
It only lasts mere moments. Then, the horsewoman mutters something in that language Suzuka doesn't recognize, not even as English, and she quickly bends down and scoops up the infant into her arms. She backs away, keeping her eyes on Suzuka, until she is a shadow vanishing into the surrounding brush.
Suzuka stood there, stunned, for an unknown length of time. She had so many thoughts and questions swimming though her mind, a torrent with nothing solid to grasp onto.
Eventually, she vaguely registered the voices of her trainer and guide finally catching up to her, their footsteps through the brush behind her, then their gentle, unsure hands on her shoulders as they asked her what happened. Her mouth dry, she stammered through an explanation of what she had seen, gestured uselessly at the empty clearing before her.
"A baby- baby horsegirl, right there- She was crying, all alone, and dirty… Then an adult horsegirl came - her mother, maybe - but she was- She was- I don't know, I've never seen anyone like her…"
“Oh-!" Tanaka-san exclaimed suddenly. “She must've been a member of one of the native horsegirl tribes here. Her baby must've accidentally fallen from her papoose while they were running by, and she happened to run into you while retrieving her.”
Suzuka felt her tail stand on end. “Native… tribes?”
Tanaka chuckles nervously. “Ah- Are you not familiar with native horsegirl populations back in Japan?"
Trainer-san shook his head. “Not that we know of - if they exist there, they're most likely isolated far from civilization.”
Tanaka nods, frowning. “Mm, yes. Makes sense for a small island country. I think I've heard of small tribes still living up in the northern mountains, but you folks aren't from there.”
Suzuka stammered, looking between the two men with bewilderment. “Wh- What…?”
Tanaka spreads his hands in apology. “My apologies, Ms. Suzuka. Let me explain while we head back.”
As they slowly made their way back to the RV, he spoke:
"There are many legally recognized and protected tribes of Native American horsegirls in this country. Some are completely isolated from modern civilization and rarely make contact with us, like the one you met. They are direct descendants of the natives who lived alongside native humans hundreds of years ago, and who interacted with our colonial ancestors later on."
“We've had a… troubled history with natives in the past in this country, so nowadays we take great care to preserve and protect any remaining tribal populations here. After all, some of their ancestors are the progenitors of many modern horsegirls both here and abroad, like you, Ms. Suzuka."
Suzuka had nodded quietly at all this, silently overwhelmed by all this information. Even Trainer-san was surprised, saying, "Interesting! I knew a little about Native American humans, but not so much about Native American horsegirls. Any idea why they separate themselves from modern society?"
Tanaka shrugs at him, half-smiling. “We don't know, and we don't need to know. They have values and traditions going back hundreds of years that are deeply important to them. If they have no interest in compromising those values to integrate with modern society, we can only respect that. Especially after what our ancestors did to them in the past…” Tanaka sighs as he trails off, falling into an unspoken sadness. Trainer-san seemed to catch onto his nodding and murmuring in agreement. Suzuka knew little of American history, but the seriousness of the implications made her not want to ask further.
She was very quiet for the rest of that day.
Suzuka's sleep was fitful that night in the RV, between the roughness of the road and her brain buzzing with questions. Eventually she had no choice but to surrender to her insomnia; she got up, poured herself some coffee in the kitchenette, and made her way to the vehicle's passenger seat to keep Tanaka-san company as he drove. Trainer-san slept soundly in the cots behind them.
Neither of them were very talkative. Mostly, Tanaka pointed out some notable landmarks as they drove past, at least what could be seen in the dim morning light, and Suzuka would hum with acknowledgment between sips of her drink.
Then, after the sunrise fully emerged, casting the fields beside them in golden light, Tanaka perked up suddenly and started pointed excitedly at something out the window.
"Whoa, look- Look, Suzuka! The horsegirls are running!"
That makes Suzuka bolt up, ramrod straight, then lean over to follow his hand. And there they were - a crowd of horsegirls running through the distant plains, all dressed like the horsewoman Suzuka encountered the day before, their dark hair and handmade garments blotting out the molten sun behind them.
She stares out, transfixed again as Tanaka lists off more facts about them - something about following the seasons and the herds they hunted - but her attention was elsewhere.
She strained her eyes, glancing between the tribe members until she sees her again - that horsewoman from yesterday. Her silhouette was distinguished by her papoose strapped to her back, her daughter safely in tow as she ran alongside her tribe. Even from this great distance, Suzuka can tell that the horsewoman and her daughter were both smiling.
All the horsewomen were. They all threw their heads back with laughter, their hair whipping wildly, their faces shining with sweat, their bare feet darkened with dirt.
That child will only know life out here, Suzuka realizes. It is all she will ever know. She will run with her mother and her tribe out here in the green-brown grasses of the plains, beneath the open sky and stars. She will never feel the heaviness of cleated shoes, the hardness of streets and sidewalks, the exhausting rigors of endless training. She will always run freely, unfettered by the weight of expectations or industry. Her and her people lived in the wide-open scenery that Suzuka has spent most of her life forever chasing, only catching glimpses of at the forefront of a blistering race, or in her memories as a child in the countryside.
They live with that privilege, that blessing, every day of their lives. And that- that must be why they chose not to walk alongside humans into the modern age, unlike their brethren so long ago. Because, despite the many benefits modern humans and their societies have graced upon the world, for these horsegirls, none of those things would ever replace the freedom they enjoy out here in the plains.
And Suzuka, constrained by modernity, will only ever have the smallest, most fleeting of glimpses of it. For a moment, she feels crushed by a deep, painful sadness, and feels tears well in her eyes and splash onto her covered coffee cup.
Tanaka-san was too focused to notice, between driving the RV, watching the horsegirls and blabbing excitedly about them. Suzuka wasn't sure if he'd really understand her feelings anyway. She quietly calmed herself, dried her tears on her sleeves, then sat back in her seat while she listened to him, letting everything fade away into numbness.
Back in the present, Suzuka sets her pen down to wipe away the wetness in her eyes again. She has long since given up all pretenses of this letter being addressed to Spe-chan - she found herself reliving her encounter with the wild American horsegirls in writing and the feelings it inspired, then stopped when she became too overcome with emotion and exhaustion to continue. She has no idea if Spe would understand any of this either - maybe if she explained it verbally in a video call another time? Who knows. At the very least, Suzuka finally feels tired enough to sleep for the first time in a long while. Perhaps she needed this.
As Suzuka turns off her hotel room's lights and crawls into bed, she finds herself gazing out her window at the night sky. That sadness falls upon her again - Tanaka-san had mentioned how the light pollution of the cities obscures the true splendor of the night sky, and she sees it for herself now.
Out on the American plains, the night skies had been glittering with stars. A beautiful smattering of light above your head, the vastness of space stretching out forever onwards all around you. A light that those tribeswomen were no doubt enjoying somewhere out on the plains right at this very moment. Here in the city, the stars are so faint, they are pinpricks swallowed up by the dark sky like a dark cloth covering a lamp.
For Suzuka and other modern horsegirls, that is all they will ever know - forever chasing after those faint glimpses of light that their ancestors enjoyed freely.
Perhaps that is the price they have paid for modernity.
and wild horses
couldn't drag me away
wild, wild horses
we'll ride them someday
For info on American Wild Horse preservation and how to donate to their cause, visit their website here: https://www.americanwildhorse.org