“Never have I ever been so happy to have had the flu,” Master Wylde said. “I was supposed to go with him and was stuck in bed.”
Master Thorin snorted as he scratched behind Babe’s ears. “In hindsight, I’d have happily let you sneeze all over me if I’d known that scene was going to take place.”
Giggling, I reluctantly moved away from the pigs so I could go meet the goats. There was even a feed dispenser available, just like the petting zoo section of the zoo I’d loved to visit back home. Listening to their conversation gave me a glimpse into their history. There was clearly a great deal of history between them and more stories like the ones I’d just glimpsed. They didn’t seem shy about sharing them either, or talking openly and honestly with me, like I was a treasured friend, and this was just day one. I still had thirteen and a half glorious days to learn more about them, and longer if I was granted permission to stay. While I knew things would change once my stay as a guest was over, I hoped they’d still want to spend time with me.
“Clara and Clancy,” I said as I filled my hand with feed from the dispenser. The pictures on the front of their pens were labeled with their names, allowing me to tell which one was which. “Can I come here as often as I want?”
“You sure can,” Master Wylde said as he filled his hand with feed too.
“Oh, oh wow, their noses are so soft,” I said, giggling as Clara nosed at my hand while Master Wylde offered food to Clancy.
The flapping of wings caught my attention, then a blur whizzed past so quickly I didn’t have time to see what kind of bird it was. Clancy’s tail flicked up right before he fell over on his side.
“W-what happened?” I said, “Is he okay? Did he die? Oh my god, we shouldn’t have been talking about bad things happening to animals before we came in here. It was a bad omen, wasn’t it? What do we do? Can you help him? They have animal CPR, right?”
Warm heavy hands settled on my shoulders, grounding me, right before Master Thorin’s deep, soothing voice spoke in my ear, his lips tickling my earlobe.
“He fainted. Clancy is afraid of birds. Some goats, especially fainting goats, will stiffen up and fall over whenever something startles them or if they get too excited. He’s just fine. As soon as his muscles relax, he’ll be back up on his feet and eager for more food.”
“Are you sure?”
“A hundred percent,” Master Wylde said, stroking my hair, occasionally touching my ears, as if I could feel every caress, instead of just the motion of my headband moving when he did it.
Even that was soothing.
“Can we wait and watch, just in case?” I asked, still worried about poor Clancy, who lay as stiff as a board.
“Of course we can, sweet kitty,” Master Wylde said.
So there we stood, with Master Thorin’s hands on my shoulders and Master Wylde stroking my hair and shoulder until Clancy twitched, kicked, rocked, and righted himself again.
“Oh, good boy, you’re okay,” I said and immediately reached for more feed to give him while I rubbed his ears.
Not only did he happily eat it, but his stubby tail gave several shakes as he did. Relief flooded me as he nibbled the feed from my hand, and I could finally breathe easily, knowing the sweet goat would be just fine.
Only now that he was, I absolutely couldn’t resist pulling my mini-sketchbook and drawing pencil from my pouch so I could draw him. The scratchy sound of lead on paper erased the last of the worry I’d felt when Clancy fainted, while the sounds around me dulled. The only way to describe it was like being underwater. Sound existed, but in a faint, inconsequential way.
While I hadn’t been able to see the bird who’d frightened him, my mind’s eye conjured up the image of a barn owl, one in leather chaps, boots, and a vest, just like the ones Master Wylde had worn earlier. I lengthened the feathers around the owl’s heart-shaped face and added slight fringy waves to them until they resembled Master Wylde’s hair, and then, just to add an element of fear to the whole scene and a reason for the goat I’d drawn with a mesh crop top and lacy boy shorts to be lying sprawled on the ground, like Clancy had looked when he’d fainted dead away, I placed a studded leather paddle in the owl’s hand. Chosen because I never wanted to feel an implement like that one on my backside, which likely would lead to hollering my safe word as I crumpled to the ground. I loved the way it rounded out the image.
A story would come later, maybe even tonight as I lay in bed. For now, I was happy to have drawn something I was actually pleased with and to have found my inspiration in the wonderful morning I’d shared with Master Wylde and Master Thorin, as well as these adorable members of Rawhide’s petting zoo.
And they’d said I could come as often as I wanted.
Oh shit!
Blinking, I tore my focus away from my sketches, which had grown from one page to three, to find them several feet away, still in my line of sight, Master Wylde scattering feed for a trio of chickens who were happily clucking around his feet.
Not only didn’t my Doms seem bored or eager to move on to the rest of the animals, but their posture suggested that they were perfectly at ease and not the least bit in a hurry. My eyes met Master Wylde’s, and he smiled and made a shooing motion I took to mean that it was okay to go back to my drawings.
I needed that bit of encouragement and appreciated that he’d seemed to know that and had given it to me the moment I’d turned my attention towards him. Instead of wasting timewondering if it was because of the information I’d filled out in my Q & A or if he’d sensed that I needed this time, I dove right back into my sketches, moving from the goats back to the pigs when an idea popped into my head.
I drew Babe with a leather kilt and Wilbur with a leather harness crisscrossing his chest and one of those old-school leather caps, like in those 1960s biker movies. My pencil flew over the page until my hand started cramping. Time was an abstract concept. Like sound, it existed only in a faded, hazy, muted sort of way.
Then I saw it, only I wasn’t even sure what it was. Llama or alpaca. Was there a way to tell them apart? Not one I knew. I turned to ask and realized that at some point, Master Wylde and the chickens he’d been feeding, plus two more, had moved just down the fence from me. Like before, he watched me, the ghost of a smile on his face.
“Is that a llama or an alpaca?” I asked as I closed the distance between us, careful of the chickens, who were still clustered around his feet, pecking occasionally when he tossed down a few kernels of feed.
“Sherlock is a llama, like inThe Emperor’s New Groove, which still cracks me up every time I watch it,” Master Wylde said. “Kuzco was a hot mess, and the whole opening scene, with him sitting there in the rain, was karma at its finest.”