There is nothing in the world that Jas wants more than to pet the pegasus that has just landed outside their inn.
She’s a strawberry roan, with a pinkish-white coat and red, sharply angular wings, like a hawk’s. Her nose is dark grey, and looks so very soft.
Jas just wants to touch her. To pet that soft nose, and be wafted with the pegasus’s warm breath, and find out what those shiny feathers feel like under her fingers.
The pegasus trots a few steps, tossing her head wildly as her rider pulls her to halt. Her mane has been clipped short into a sort of bushy crest, which is less elegant than the flowing-maned palfreys Jas is used to reading about in storybooks, but Jas likes it. It’s different.
The rider dismounts, and the pegasus, instead of standing obediently, nudges the man with her nose, whickering at him when he protests with the air of a teasing friend. Evidently contented with having pestered the man, she folds up her wings like an elegant lady arranging the train of a gown, and stands with her head high, prouder than any horse Jas has ever seen.
The man leaves the mare’s reins hanging loose, and it seems more like a gesture of trust than of carelessness. He runs up the steps of the inn, grinning at Jas where she stands clutching her broom.
“Hello, lass. Have you got a–” he rummages in a pocket, pulling free a paper and glancing down at it. “Civet Resava about?”
She wants to ask him about the pegasus, and whether or not she could pet it, but instead she supplies,
“That’s my Da. He’s inside, at the bar, I think.”
“Thanks!” the man says breathlessly, and darts up the last few steps. Messenger service, she thinks, and an expensive one, too. They’ll be preparing their best rooms for the night, if she had her best guess.
She looks at the pegasus again, and leans her broom up against the wall. Gathering her skirts, she makes her way down the steps, across the yard, to the stables.
Renaldo, their grumpy old donkey, is the only animal in the stables. He stares at her as she opens up the apple barrel, which means that she has to give him one. He snorts at her once she does. Not at all gratefully, either. Gratitude isn’t really Renaldo’s style. She ruffles his mane and calls him a good boy, anyway, because he always hauls their wood for the fire and doesn’t spook when young, stupid city children try to pull his ears.
She leaves Renaldo in the stables, another apple clutched in her hand.
The pegasus is still standing out in the yard, right where her rider left her. She pricks her ears and swivels her head as Jas walks out into the yard. One of the pegasus’s eyes is an eerie pale blue, and the other is a dark, curious brown.
Jas takes a bite of the apple, spitting it back out into her hand. Smaller pieces were better, especially for strange horses. It made it less likely for them to choke.
She holds her hand, and the bit of apple, out. The mare takes a step towards her, lowering her head. She breathes warmly into Jas’s outstretched hand, before lipping up the bite of apple and chewing it thoughtfully.
Jas spits another bite of apple into her hand.
The pegasus eats like any other horse, though Jas was right about her nose. It is very soft. Jas gets brave enough to pet along her shoulder, and her coat isn’t soft at all. It’s wiry and stiff, like dried peat moss, and the pattern of hairs is sometimes interrupted by small feathers, which reflect the light like scales.
As the pegasus slowly chews the very last bite of apple, Jas runs her hand along her shoulder, skipping over the straps of the elegantly tooled saddle, and pets cautiously at the pegasus’s wing.
The feathers are so very smooth. Jas is used to the funny, fluffy chickens she’s grown up chasing about the inn yard; but the pegasus feathers are hardly like that at all. They are soft, with sharp edges that line up against all the other feathers with pleasing geometric exactness. Jas does little more than run her fingers along them gently, not daring to risk pushing one out of place.
The mare curls her head around, watching Jas pet her wing, and then prods at Jas’s hip with her nose. Asking for more apple, probably.
“Sorry,” Jas whispered. “That was the last of it.”
She pets the mare’s neck, though, and scratches along the base of her mane, admiring the way the afternoon sunlight turns it such a bright and fiery orange. The pegasus huffs at her, but seems to enjoy the attention.
—
When the messenger clatters down the steps again, Jas is nearly finished sweeping them, and the pegasus is half-dozing in the sun. She perks up when she sees her rider, though, and stretches her wings as soon as he swings into the saddle. Jas pauses her sweeping, yet again, just to watch as they take off. The man wheels the pegasus around, and the clatter of hooves over stone turns into the sweeping fwoosh of the largest pair of wings in the animal kingdom.
For a moment, pegasus and rider are starkly painted against the soft blue sky, a symphony of pink and orange, wild as a fire and lovely as a sunset. Then, with a few heavy wing-beats, they are gone. Hidden by the rise of the town’s many buildings, and off to deliver more messages before the sun sets.
Jas returns to her sweeping. A smile is indelibly printed on her face, and her heart is far fuller than it had been before.
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