Emily climbed down off her horse, Samson. She'd spotted a patch of the fence line that had become obscured by a tree's overhang. The cows were clever enough to find breaks in the fence that would often be hidden from plain view. Most folks didn't give the herd the credit they deserved for being problem solvers. Working as a dairy hand often meant thinking like a cow though.
Grabbing her shears from the loop on the side of Samson's saddle, she headed over to the patch and went to work. It was unusually hot for the late fall, even this far south. Adding to that was the strange feeling she'd had since she woke up that morning. She'd not slept well on account of a series of dreams of which she didn't remember much. What she did remember made her blush nervously. She'd never had many sex dreams, but she'd certainly had some last night.
That had left her off kilter as she got dressed for the day, but the bizarre feeling in her didn't start until after breakfast. Something about the milk had seemed different. Working her whole life on the farm, she'd come to understand a few things about milk. Two glasses that morning and the whole time drinking it she thought that it tasted funny. Didn't stop her though. Didn't stop her mom or dad either. They'd all guzzled it down.
Clipping away the overhanging branches, she was relieved to find the fence in tact. She'd only brought enough supplies to make a few repairs, and she didn't want to have to double back to the house. It was already near noon, and Emily was unusually hungry. She gathered up the fallen branches and threw them over the fence and turned to get back on Samson and ride home. The horse whickered and backed away from her as she approached.
"Easy boy, easy," Emily said, the horse had been jumpy all morning, not helping Emily's uneasy mood. Now he seemed much more agitated, to the point where Emily was a little spooked herself. She turned back toward the fence and scanned along the line. A coyote could get Samson uneasy, or something like a bobcat. Hell, even black bears still lived somewhere around. Still, Emily had a distinct impression that it wasn't any of those things.
She tried moving closer to the horse, but it backed away, stamping its hoof, ears back and eyes wide.
It's me,
she realized. Emily had raised Samson from his birth. It wounded her more than she thought it would to see him feel threatened by her.
No, he wouldn't. It's not me, exactly. It's something about me.
She looked down at her hands, wondering if the branches had been coated with some other animal's scent. Samson was not so patient. The horse took a few more cautious steps back and then bolted. Emily called out in frustration, but it didn't matter.
At least he's headed toward the house.
She groaned aloud. It was at least a thirty minute walk back to the house from where she'd been stranded. Frustrated, she propped the clippers on her shoulder and started walking.
The heat started to get to her after only ten minutes. The summers got up to the hundreds, but somehow the blazing sun on a clear fall day was always worse. Maybe it was the expectation of a cooler season that made it seem worse. Or maybe it was just worse somehow, through some sort of physics Emily only had the half of. The shift in the Earth's axis caused the sun's rays to hit the atmosphere differently, or something. She'd never paid any attention in science classes and often found strange ways of regretting it, such as bemoaning the temperature on a fall day. The pastures were mostly flat, but with a few gradual slopes, meant to facilitate drainage. Gradual seemed much more significant at the moment as she hiked up toward the gate and the house beyond. At the top of the small hill stood a few sparse trees that the cows would use for shade. Cows were clever like that, after all.
Sheltering under the small copse, Emily paused to rest. She hadn't been walking for more than fifteen minutes and yet she felt exhausted. The strange feeling that had been plaguing her all day was taking a bizarre toll on her stamina. A little piece of her mind seemed to suggest that walking on all fours would somehow be less tiring. The sweat on her body had made her start to chafe and itch. Frustrated, she tossed down the clippers beside one of the trees. One less thing to worry about, at least. She scanned the field looking for any sign of Samson, but the horse had disappeared. He likely went back to his stable, but he could have also run off to the far end of the pastures for a little holiday of his own, though he would likely be disappointed to not find the herd waiting to frolic with him.
"We're alone," Emily whispered. The pasture stretched for two miles in the opposite direction. On the closer side was a road that no one used a full two miles from the nearest highway. Other than her own home, the closest house was another four miles down the road. The only people even remotely close to her were her mother and possibly Cain, she hadn't noticed if the farmhand had come in that morning. Even if he had, he'd probably been sent home already since her father wouldn't be back till that evening. The isolation made Emily grin. She'd worn a t-shirt that morning. She pulled it off and draped it over her shoulder. Her sports bra itched, but she wasn't
