Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Bdubs sighed as he ran his free hand over soft fur, dust and stray hairs clinging to his skin. The other was busy holding on to the thrashing head of the majestic beast beside him as Tango tried to apply a salve to the rashes on her snout. Well, Bdubs thought, not quite as majestic as she could be. As she ought to be.

Her eyes used to shine, full of life and wildness, and now the only reason they weren’t dull and soulless was that they were alight with pain.

Bdubs continued muttering thoughtless praise into flattened ears and patting along her neck gently, trying to give her any amount of comfort he could.

“There we go, Warden, all done!” Tango tried to keep his voice uplifting, though Bdubs could tell how fake it was. They both backed away to give her a bit of space, and she visibly deflated as soon as there was some distance between them, but she still kept a careful eye on him. And her ears never perked up.

All three of them whipped their heads to the side as a startling shout reached their ears.

“How’s she doing, boys?”

Jimmy was carrying a bucket on his hip as he approached them. When he noticed how much he’d spooked them, he added, in a lower tone, “Didn’t mean to make you jump. I brought you some fresh milk! Thought you might like some refreshments.”

He pushed the bucket of mare milk into Bdubs’ hands, who took a grateful sip of the lukewarm liquid.

“Very thoughtful of you, dear,” Tango said, as Jimmy passed the bucket on to him.

Jimmy just hummed, running his fingers through Warden’s wild mane, to which — seemingly out of nowhere — she started wildly thrashing. Bdubs was just barely able to jump out of the way of her bucking hind legs.

“Whoa! Whoa, girl,” he scrambled quickly back toward her head, grabbing onto the lead tying her to the hitching post that looked dangerously close to being ripped straight out of the ground. He tugged her thrashing head toward himself, running his free hand over her nose until her wild eyes focused onto his, and her ears swiveled to listen out for his gentle shushing. “It’s okay, girl, you’re fine! You’re gonna be fine.” The look he shot toward Tango said otherwise.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t–” Jimmy’s hand was stained red. Bdubs and Tango exchanged glances once more.

Tango inched closer to Warden’s side, careful not to spook the mare again. She tried to sidle away, but once she was pressed against the rail, she had no choice but to let Tango lift her mane to reveal that the rashes had spread, running all along her neck, and they did not look quite as good as the ones they’d been treating regularly for the past few weeks. Quite the contrary.

“We can’t–” he twirled around, his garbled noise of frustration making Warden snort in discontent, “Bdubs, we can’t go on like this! We’ve already lost two horses to the infections, and this… this doesn’t look good… I don’t know, Bdubs, Warden might not make it.”

Bdubs laid his forehead against her snout, careful to stay clear of the rashes and sighed sorrowfully. “But what’re we going to do? What can we do, Tango?”

“We need to talk to Jeb, we should have already done that a lot sooner. I really thought I could handle it…”

“I’ll go do that, then,” Bdubs said, lifting his head to look into Warden’s eyes, “and you, get better! For me, okay, girl?”

As he set off toward the village of yurts in the distance, he could hear Tango sending Jimmy off for a clean bucket of water over the miserable whinnies of Warden.

Oh, how he hoped she’d be alright.

It was quiet around the shaman’s yurt when Bdubs arrived. There were no horses tied to the fence by the entrance, the carpets of which were splayed open in a warm invite.

It didn’t seem like anyone was there, but Bdubs knew not to trust first appearances when it came to Jeb. Though he usually only saw the man around the bonfire on special occasions, he had heard many a wild story from around the tribe.

He unbuckled his hunting knife from his belt and laid it against a support beam before peeking through the door.

The inside of the yurt, like in most cases, was shrouded in shadows. The afternoon sun peeked through the hole at the top of the yurt, casting a circle of light onto the carefully arranged wooden structure that reached upwards toward it. It was not hard to recognize the Tree of Life, without which the shaman’s yurt could not be complete.

At the base of the Tree, looking ethereal, bathed in the soft light streaming in from above, sat Jeb, the shaman himself, facing away from him. Bdubs barely even dared to breathe for a second as he took in the sight. He didn’t want to disturb the otherworldly peace that seemed to have settled into every nook and cranny of the yurt, that felt as if it was physically swaying with every gust of air gently exhaled. He didn’t want to break the cacophonous silence.

And he didn’t have to.

“Bdubs!” Jeb said, turning to greet him. He’d known that the shaman knew him by name, and yet, in that moment, he was very much taken aback. “What brings you here, my boy?”

He tilted his head to gaze at him with a kind of shine in his eyes that made Bdubs think that the question was, in reality, completely unnecessary.

He licked his lips and stepped further into the yurt, going into his explanation nonetheless. “It’s about the horses, sir, me and Tango’s herd. They’ve been falling ill and we’ve tried everything within our knowledge to help, but so far we've found nothin'.”

Jeb just hummed and nodded along, raising his brow as if to tell him to go on.

“They’re breaking out in these awful, bleeding rashes, everywhere on their body. There’s no pattern to where or why, at least as far as we’ve been able to tell. They get slower and weaker and then– Well. We don’t know if it’s the infection taking them out or some other inner workings of the disease.” It was disheartening to see the corners of the shaman’s lips gradually lilt, and Bdubs had to look away to be able to finish recounting the problem. “We’ve tried every treatment that had worked for any kind of illness in the past and nothing. All that we’ve been able to do to help is to separate the sick horses from the healthy. At least like this, it seems to be spreading slower. But it hasn’t stopped. Too many deaths already, and it hasn’t stopped.”

The shaman sighed deeply, and Bdubs’ eyes snapped right back to him.

“What you’ve just described, my boy, seems like no disease that I’ve ever come across… but as you must know, I am a healer of people, not animals. I do not have as much knowledge on your horses as perhaps you yourself do. But there are shamans who can help you with that, I am sure. As a matter of fact, I know of someone in a tribe that shouldn’t be far from here at this time of the year…”

Bdubs perked up at that. He had been devoid of hope since Jeb had started speaking, but his last sentence completely lit him up.

“So there’s a chance we can cure them! There’s a chance for it to work out, after all!”

Jeb’s lips quirked up again, his eyes growing warm as he regarded the man standing in front him. “There is always hope, my boy. It would be cruel of Them to leave us without it, and They are never cruel.”

“I don’t doubt your words, sir. But who do I need to find? Where should I go? I’d like to get going as soon as possible.”

“Your spirit is admirable, but it is not all that you need to be successful in this endeavor. I will send my son with you on your journey, he knows the way upriver to the tribe which you need to find. He might still remember the shaman himself! I’m sure he’ll be a great aid in the journey to come.”

“Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am forever grateful to you, sir, how could I repay you, or your son?”

“Well, my son happens to be the one taking care of the duties around the household, so all I ask in return is that while he is gone, your cousin and his husband may help me. I can take care of anything that my son may require, taking care of the tribe is my duty after all.”

Bdubs felt like he could cry from relief. He didn’t think about the possibility that the other tribe’s shaman might also not know the cure to whatever illness it was that their horses were suffering from. He swept it out of his mind as soon as even an inkling of doubt arose. He had to believe this was going to work. He had to save their horses. He had to save their livelihood.

Jeb’s smile grew wider upon seeing the hint of tears gathering in Bdubs’ waterline. The shine it brought to his eyes made it feel like he knew of every single glorious, grateful thought that was passing through Bdubs’ mind.

Without another word, he rose from the worn carpet covering the floor and made his way over to one of the countless storage chests by the walls of the yurt. Bdubs watched with curiosity as he rummaged through a particularly aged, and from the clinking and clattering emerging from under his hands, a very crammed one as well. With a triumphant hum, Jeb finally pulled a small trinket from the chest that Bdubs couldn’t quite make out in the gloom, and gestured him over.

“This is a little something that the shaman is sure to recognize you from, give it to him and he’ll know I had sent you.” He dropped an intricately carved wooden sphere into Bdubs’ hand, whatever was inside rattling slightly as it rolled into the curve of his palm. A loop of soft fabric attached to its base tickled his arm as it fluttered down between his fingers.

Bdubs closed his fist around the trinket, looking back up at Jeb. He opened his mouth to thank him again, but he just silenced him with a wave of the hand.

“Meet me here tomorrow at sunrise, I’ll make sure my son is also ready to leave by then. If the situation is as grave as you say, you must go as soon as possible.”

Bdubs nodded along, “You’re right, of course. I gotta go now, I have to get ready for tomorrow morning. Thank you again for—“

He was cut off by Jeb, “There’s nothing yet to be grateful for, my boy, you’ll have to see where your adventure takes you.”

“I really do appreciate all you’ve done for us so far. I’ll have to thank you in full once we return with the cure!”

“Be off now, there’s much to do still and the sun will only be high for so long.”

“Goodbye! May They guide your hand.” Bdubs

“May They light your path.”

Jimmy tied up the second large, brown sack, and plopped it next to Bdubs’ sleeping mat, where the rest of his things had already been hastily gathered. He wondered if he should do any more organizing, but after a moment of thought, decided to leave it up to the man himself. He’d most likely just displace something essential in the process. Packing together the rations for their trip would have to be enough, for now. He glanced up.

Through the column of the smoke of the small fire heating the merrily bubbling stew in the middle of the yurt, he could see that the sun had dipped significantly lower in the sky. Behind the stain of gray, the clouds had turned a warm orange, matching the shade of the paint decorating the yurt’s crown.

He poked at the fire, adjusting the burning logs until the flames were just the right height. Satisfied, he wiped his sweaty hands into the side of his kaftan and walked out, his hand instinctively giving a stir to the vat of mare milk set up outside the door. It was time to call the boys inside to eat. Even if it was a bit earlier than their usual schedule, Bdubs would have an eventful day ahead of him, and Jimmy decided that it’d do him good to get an extra hour or two of sleep before their departure.

He found the pair of them hard at work, still, pacing between the handful of horses they’d brought down from the hills to examine. He grabbed a lead from where they stored them, looped around a fencepost, and headed over to see if he could help finish up the work.

“C’mon boys, dinner is ready,” he took extra care to check for any wounds before trailing his hands over the nearest stallion’s rump. “Will we have to take these guys to the paddock?”

“Yeah, better safe than sorry. I also warned xB to try and keep their herd far from ours,” Tango said, his fingers wriggling the knots of the rope loose almost reflexively. He tossed a few of the leads toward Bdubs and Jimmy, and the three of them made their way inside the fenced off enclosure, the horses – thankfully – not putting up a fight at all. He leaned back against the wood for a moment, eyes gliding over the animals in front of him. Jimmy rested his chin on his shoulder, basking in the warmth that seemed to be radiating off of the man, even if he knew it was fuelled by an unimaginable rage that Tango kept bottled up in his core. He rarely let himself go, but when he did, it wasn’t pretty. Jimmy was, for this reason as well, so happy about the inkling of hope that Bdubs’ mission gave to his husband.

“Don’t worry, Tango! They’re gonna be okay!” came a shout from a bit further away, from Bdubs who had already started his descent toward the yurt. Jimmy and Tango joined him, and they walked side by side back to their home as the last rays of the sun dipped under the horizon, gentle orange fading into a stormy blue. They didn’t talk, because they didn’t need to. The same thought repeated through every one of their heads.

Let Bdubs be right.