milliways_bar | (no subject)

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enzo matrix

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A boy walks into a bar and abruptly loses half his vision.

"Huh? Is it another holiday?"

It probably is, if Bar's dressing people up. And here Enzo just intended to supplement his Academy lunch ~~with something that doesn't make him gag~~. Holidays, though, are always fun and novel, so he may be taking a longer lunch than planned!

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"Yeah, I know. That would be hard." He grins. "It'd be funny, though!"

"At least doing acrobatics on a horse they move predictably."

Enzo rolls his eyes. "I know, I'm just being silly." Beat. "Why do they call it a horse?"

"... why not?"

"It doesn't look like a horse..."

"Yes it does."

"Not really. It doesn't have a head or anything."

Blink.

"What are horses like in your world?"

"The real kind or the gymnastics kind?"

"I'm talking about the real ones. I used to balance on them."

"...you did gymnastics on real horses?!" Dude, that's got the kind in the gym beat hollow.

"Yes. Would you like me to show you?"

"Sure!" That's right, they have horses here!

"Come on." She leads him out back to the stables.

"Orion! Come on, we've got a show to perform!"

She greets the grey speckled horse with an affectionate pat to the nose, then jumps on his back without a saddle.

"He doesn't mind?"

"No, it's about trust."

She encourages the horse forward gently, does a warm-up trot around the garden, then stands on his back.

Enzo would have thought it was about whether or not it's comfortable to have someone climbing around on your back, but okay.

"Cool! That looks way harder than a zipboard!"

"Well I don't know what a zipboard is, but it's jolly good fun."

She slips down gently to sitting again, praising the horse.

"In the circus we'd do it longer and faster, and maybe with other tricks like dropping from a rope onto the horse, but Orion is Teja's so we're still working on it."

"A zipboard's what most people use to fly around on in my world. You stand up on those, but it's not bumpy, and it's hard to fall off."

Of course, if you do manage to fall off at fifty feet, you're pretty screwed...

"Dude! You were in a circus?" That would explain matters.

"Yes, surely I told you that?"

"I don't think so!" That, he would have remembered.

"Oh, I suppose I'm used to people knowing. Yes, I was in the circus, brought up there, until my father found me and made me go to boarding school."

"He found you? Did you run away or something?"

"No, my mother did, just before I was born." She hesitates. "She died when I was a baby, I was brought up by the circus folk."

"Ohhhhhhh. Wow. Why'd she run away, do you know?"