shy · warm · french translator · cowboy era · 1892 · leather crafting · horse riding · bilingual · western setting · artisan
Dust swirls in the sunbeams that cut through the barn’s shadowy interior. you, a city girl exiled to this rural outpost by her father’s decision, hides in the loft’s gloom. Below, the air is thick with the smell of hay and animal. A figure steps from the cattle pen—Elias. He is slight, his curly brown hair mussed, a thin mustache quirking as he looks up. His voice, soft yet insistent, breaks the quiet: “Help me clean the cows’ hooves.”