Aggie came galloping over with a delighted bounce in his hooves the moment he caught sight of Tessa and Karyn, each carrying a feed bucket. Chirp ran ahead of the girls to greet the stallion, tongue wagging.
Tessa giggled. "G'day t' you too, ya big ol' baby!" she laughed, setting down the feed bucket and throwing her hands around its neck for a good scratching in greeting. "Didja miss me? Cuz yer mama sure's hell missed you, boy!" Aggie's lips curled and twitched in that derpy expression horses passed for a grin.
Karyn smiled warmly. "He probably missed ya sorely, Tess," Karyn commented with an eye roll, making her way over to the feeding trough. "Now there's nobody around to spoil him any chance they get!"
"Oh, shush, you," Tessa replied playfully, not even considering breaking her cuddles with her old riding horse even as it started giving the suggestion of food some side-eye. "This here's my vacation, an' I git t' spend it with my old buddy if I darn well please!"
"Yeah, which one?" Karyn laughed as Chirp started licking Aggie's hooves, once again fishing for attention and now broadening the net to attention from the less human kinds. "We haven't even gotten to the cattle yet, and you just know they're gonna be all over you too!"
"They's got plenty a pasture, Karyn," Tessa dismissed, now fishing around in her bag for a nice apple to feed to Aggie. "But we ain't got much sunlight neither. I dun wanna miss a minute of it! Critters're sooo much cuter when they ain't just text yer readin' 'bout fer some test!"
Aggie visibly had to keep himself from diving at the apple the moment Tessa pulled it into view. He knew the rules: he knew Tess was gonna make him do some little trick to earn it first. This time, his human told him he needed to lie down, so, on his knees he went.
"Hey, Tess, ya mind if I feed him?" Karyn asked, wanting to join in on the fun.
"Aw, sure, Kare." Tess handed over the apple. Aggie rolled over onto his back for a moment kicking his hooves around in the air to beg, and Chirp, tired of being ignored, started making puppy-dog eyes at Karyn. "Jus' dun tease 'im too much; he looks hungry!"
Karyn got down on her knees and into the muddy soil, and was maybe inches away from actually feeding the horse the apple, when Chirp, who could stand it no longer, made a play and lunged for the apple like it was his favorite ball, stealing it from her hands and darting off.
"Wh-? Chirp, ya lil stinker!" Tess laughed, Aggie bolted upright onto his hooves, and the chase was on! The stallion galloped after the dog, the dog zipped around the corral, Karyn ran after them both, and Tess just watched them all in amusement and egged them on all the while. The animals had made it to the fence ages before the slow human on her slow human legs did, with plenty of time left for Chirp to smugly prance around the other side of the fence he'd slipped under and taunt the angrily stamping horse on the other side. They'd moved on from such juvenile games well before Karyn got there, instead running about the circumference of the corral in a teasing little game, Chirp running back in just enough to get Aggie to lunge, then darting back out again. Eventually, the human joined the game by climbing over the fence herself, and Chirp found himself "forced" to dart in and out under the fenceline again and again to evade the human and equine menaces on either side trying their best to run after and catch him. Karyn almost got him, once, but she slipped in some mud at the critical moment and Chirp got clean away from both her and the corral, trotting proudly around as if to flaunt that that this "ball" was his now.
Aggie stamped at that, and decided, then and there, that enough was enough: after backing up a little to pick up speed, he galloped up and jumped a full five feet in the air, clean over the fence, and sprinted full speed for the little thief. Chirp's body expression suddenly switched from smugness to the canine equivalent of "Oh, shit!" and he took off running, but the stallion was faster, no question about it. After covering a lot of distance in no time at all, Aggie had the poor dog practically underhoof and was just about to start getting his teeth in it, when both of them stopped to hear Tess whistling at them.
"Now, now, y'all, I ain't got no problems with y'all havin' a lil fun, but there ain't no need t' fight none over it!" Tessa had a second apple pulled out of her bag and tossing about in her hands while she sauntered up to them. "There's plenty to go around!"
Aggie and Chirp both heeled to Tessa quickly after that, the latter greedily gobbling down his consolation prize as soon as he did, and the former, after some coaxing from Tessa, reluctantly dropped his prize, which of course Aggie cleaned up afterwards. That finally got Chirp the love he was seeking from Tessa, in the form of a nice through scratching down and some cuddling. "Ya dun need t' be jealous none, boy; I love ya both more'n anythang, y'all know that?"
"Heh. I'm sure they do." Karyn, muddy and a bit tired, watched them all almost enviously: it was like the interspecies version of a group hug between the three, with Tessa sparing one hand to scratch down Chirp, the other to pat down Aggie's neck, the other two nuzzling and licking her to show their own little signs of love. It was warm, and wholesome, and adorable: the sort of scene Karyn just couldn't watch without getting a nice, fuzzy feeling. She joined in too, after a moment, spoiling the animals with more love than they probably needed. This time, neither she nor her cousin particularly cared just how much sunlight they burnt that way.
It was Chirp that broke the scene, after a while. Something was coming down the road nearby, which of course he just had to run off and go bark at, as if a big black pickup truck would just turn tail and flee because he made so much noise in its general direction. Karyn bounced off next, when she saw whose truck it was.
"Hey, Sean's here!" she called out to Tessa. "Freakin' finally, it's almost sundown! Let's go meet him!"
Karyn hopped to her feet and ran after the dog running after the truck, and Tess, after some thought, figured she had a trump card to get there faster. She jumped up to ride Aggie after them, bareback.
"Bro, you big, loveable asshole, you've kept us all waiting forever! What happened?" Karyn called out to the truck as it slowed down and pulled into park, Chirp yapping at it all the way. The doors to the vehicle opened. Out of the driver's side door came Sean, and out of the passenger's side...
...Oh. Karyn thought, face falling in abrupt disappointment. He brought her along. Sean and Candace had been dating for a few months now, and although Karyn hadn't properly met her more than once or twice before now, her opinion of Candace was... less than flattering. Sean had actually called Karyn once or twice for advice on how to impress a girl like her, but looking over her now, with her long pink nails, thick makeup, and tall high heels entirely unsuited to the filthy country earth she was about to tread over, Karyn had to seriously question what exactly Sean had thought she and Candace might have had in common besides a second X chromosome. Come to think of it, she was probably the reason he was late getting here.
"Oh, nothing serious. Candi just had to pack her stuff up before we left town, and that ended up taking a while," Sean said, casually confirming Karyn's suspicions. "Nothing to worry about, little sister. Good to see you too, girl," Sean continued, pulling Karyn into a tight and welcoming embrace.
"I didn't know y'all was bringin' no guest along!" Tessa exclaimed, trotting up near to the girlfriend who obviously seemed quite intimidated by the huge draft horse she was sitting atop. "What a happy surprise! Nice t' meet ya, ah, Candi, was it? I'm Tessa, Tessa Black, Sean's cousin!" she introduced herself while jumping off Aggie, ending with a hand extended to shake.
Candace did not shake it, not right away. She seemed to be considering it, but, the look on her face suggested she considered it much like one would consider whether or not to clean up the dog's vomit: she should, but did she really want to touch that disgusting thing?
Tess eventually grasped part of what the issue was. "Ah, sorry, been workin' with animals like this big baby 'ere," she said, motioning to Aggie. With that, she proceeded to wipe her hands off on her shirt to get most of the fur off, and then reached a still-pretty-grimy hand back out to Candace. Karyn could have laughed; on the one hand stood a tall, muddy, tangle-haired girl in working men's clothes, reaching out a hand to a short, petite, delicate little dress-up doll of a girl who looked at that hand like she was afraid of how it smelled. Heck, she probably is wary of how it smells, Karyn thought, given that Tess probably smelled like some awful combination of mud, sweat, dog, and horse, whereas on Candace the dominant scent was of perfume, heavy enough to mask the copious amount of bug spray she was also wearing. She took Tessa's hand gingerly, for a quick, weak shake.
"It's, um, nice to meet you, Tessa," Candace replied, quickly letting go and recovering her composure once she had. "I'm Candace Rose, but like, all my friends call me Candi. I'm just sweet like that!" she said with a little flourish. "Boyfriend told me he was going to a week-long vacation at what was, like, kinda the last minute, and like, I totally just had to follow him out here, you know? I can't just let him have all the fun all by himself!"
Karyn knew for a fact that leaving all social media and most society in general behind to spend a week out in the dirt was not the sort of thing Candace would normally be very excited about. This isn't about enjoying a vacation, it's about keeping Sean on the leash, Karyn thought cynically.
Tessa, on the other hand, had never so much as heard of Candace before, and obliviously took her word for it. "Well, y'all needn't have worried yer purdy lil self on that count, pard: the whole Black family's here t' keep 'im company whene'er he needs it! 'Course, we's always lookin' fer good new blood like yerself t' welcome in if y'all catch one of ours' fancy, so y'all jus' sit back an' let yerself enjoy a good week of Black hospitality!"
Karyn swiftly decided Tessa would be a much better face for that hospitality than she would be, and shortly made herself less obviously hospitable by going to take a few of the several suitcases Candace had brought (because of course she had overpacked) into the cabin with Sean. She knew how things would've played out otherwise: Candi longed to be the center of attention even more than Chirp did, and unlike Chirp, she had human vocal cords that never, ever seemed to tire out, no matter how inane or vain the topics they produced. Sean, who was in Karyn's estimation the coolest and most chill person in the universe, would probably have been happy to just let her have it and fade into the backdrop, which just wouldn't do, in Karyn's mind. So, off on the errand with Big Brother she went, leaving Tessa ensnared in a conversation about fashion or celebrity bullshit or something stupid like that.
"Well, Aunt Marie's gonna be mad," Karyn piped up once some distance between herself and the little pink one had been made. "I don't think she was planning on having a twelfth bed ready."
"Eh, it's no worry, Kare, she knows. I can just go sleep under the stars if push comes to shove, anyway. Heck, I might go do that regardless if the weather stays nice this week. Let's hope!"
"Hey, hey, don't tell the weather what to do, it never listens!" Karyn warned superstitiously. "And, she knows? I thought Candace said she decided she was coming at the last minute?"
"Eh, kinda. Plan A was to spend spring break partying on a beach with her friends, but some drama went down in her group that I'd rather not get into. So, when the topic of spring break came up the other day, she sorta fell in love with the idea of spending a romantic week out in the country with her boyfriend instead, and asked if she could come here." After a moment's pause in which he seemed to read Karyn's mind, he added "I don't think she'll throw off the family dynamic too much, Kare. She's plenty tame as long as she's fed, you know."
Karyn suppressed a scoff. "Let's just hope she doesn't need to be fed too much. I haven't really seen you properly since Christmas, bro! Where are those good old-fashioned values on which we used to rely?"
"Well then, you're lucky there's a family guy," Sean finished the tune with a smirk. "And hey, no worries, Kare. We got all week. And don't think I've forgotten about that Secret Mountain Spring Expedition thing you, Tess, and I were going to go on: I've got that new backpacker's water purifier, all packed up in the trunk for this year's go-around!"
Karyn's mood brightened up considerably. "Did you also bring a butterfly net and an empty bottle? I hear the fairies there will restore all your HP if you run out!"
Sean chuckled. "You're funny, Kare."
