She flicked water back at him, smiling. “Don’t let it go to your head. You can’t afford for it to get any bigger. The weight will crush you.”
“Ha! I’ll have you know that my legs are very strong. My big head is not a challenge.” He held a leg out and flexed it, his thigh muscles heavy and harshly defined under his pants. Callie’s smile slowly melted, her lips parting as she stared. He chuckled softly, running his painted claws up his thigh to his hip. His grin widened as her eyes helplessly followed.
“Are strong thighs a weakness of yours, darling?” They were a weakness of his, and hers were very strong. She had well defined calves. He would be biting them by the end of this rotation.
Her eyes jerked to his and her face reddened. The color was most becoming. He made a mental note to send for some darker pink and red blushes. He had never seen her wear cosmetics, but some gold and deep red would look fabulous on her brown skin.
“You were telling me about your childhood?” she muttered, turning from him.
“A skillful deflection, but my childhood up until the Fall was very good and boring. Tell me about yours. What was being young like for Callisto Ramirez?"
Her narrowed eyes didn’t scare him and he winked at her. She rolled her eyes and then shrugged, a reluctant smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
“My childhood was good too. I wouldn’t call it boring though. My mom was heavily into rodeo and horse shows.” She squinted up at him. “Do you have horses in space? Animals that you ride?”
Rathal knew what horses were. He remembered the chariots. “There was an animal native to Ara’Ama that I think was the closest in resemblance to Earth horses. It was called Ka’Ne. Though it had six legs and a tough leathery hide the color of purple moss. And if I remember correctly, it had very sharp teeth. Its name means ‘fearsome mouth’. I’d have paid good money to see someone try to ride it. Now I wish I'd known about horses in my youth. Persuading a teenage Rijitera to jump on one would have been child's play.”
She grinned at him and nodded her head. “Good. Then rodeo will be a little easier to explain. It started out as a way to round up cattle. The word rodeo comes from Spain—that’s a country on Earth—and it literally means ‘to gather’. It started with cattle ranches in the West, and a law was passed after some complaints from the Natives that all the herds of cows everywhere were ruining the land, that the cows had to be gathered and watched over by cow hands, or rancheros. So Black cow hands, Native Vaqueros and Mexican rancheros were tasked with this job. With me so far?”
He could listen to this human woman talk for ages. He nodded his head for her to continue.
“Well some rodeo sports have been around for thousands of years. Bullfighting and bull wrestling go back as far as ancient Greece and it was all over Spain as well. A Black cowboy by the name of Bill Pickett popularized bulldogging, a type of bull wrestling, got famous and did tours all over the place with a Wild West show. But before that, these games really started as a ranch versus ranch thing—a ranch is a place that raises cattle and horses—but it was a man named Buffalo Bill who started the first major rodeo shows and took it on tour from there. There is a lot of money involved in rodeo if you win whatever event you're signed up for. It's a lot of traveling from state to state.” She paused and laughed. “Wow, this is hard to explain when the person you’re talking to doesn’t even know what a state is. Okay, my country—the United States of America—is broken up into parts. And those parts are called states and each state is different. Got it?”
He wondered if she’d lose her mind if she knew he had surveillance on Earth and that he absolutely knew what a state was. He even knew their laws and their way of life. Rodeo was new to him, but not the rest. He should probably keep that to himself.
“I understand. Do go on.”
“Alright, cool. Anyways my mom’s main event was cutting but she loved barrel racing too. Cutting is sorting, where you and your horse are judged based on your ability to ‘cut’ a cow from the herd and you have to keep it from the others for two and a half minutes, called a run. Barrels is a speed timed event. Three barrels are set up in a clover leaf pattern and the rider and horse race around the barrels to get the fastest time. It's super competitive and we traveled all over to compete in as many events as we could.
My mother also roped, both break away and team roping, which is when a horse and rider chase a small cow called a steer out of the chute with a rope and try to get the loop or lasso around the horns. With team roping, the Header goes for the horns, while the Heeler goes for the back legs. Mom was a Header, though she could do both. In breakaway roping the rope is thrown around the calf's neck, the horse comes to a slide stop and the rope that is tied by a string to the saddle horn ‘breaks away’ as the rope becomes tight. The fastest time wins in both events.”
Her eyes were shining as she talked, her cheeks flushed. Callie loved this rodeo. It brought her joy to speak of it. Her passion was intoxicating and he wanted to prod her to talk more about it just to keep that look on her face.
“Did you compete in these events?”
She nodded her head vigorously. “Oh yeah, especially when I was younger. The best way to keep your kids occupied during a rodeo is to put them in it. Nothing babysits better than a horse does.”
“What was your favorite event?”
Her grin widened and she splashed her feet harder. “Reining. Though reining is its own separate show. My mother was a national champion and I wanted to beat her. Before I left forcollege, I toured all over with her. I homeschooled so I could compete. There is nothing quite like waking up before the sun to saddle horses. I missed it when I left for the Air Force Academy and didn’t have any time to ride anymore.”
Rathal had moved closer to her while they talked, until they were thigh to thigh. She hadn’t noticed yet, too absorbed in her story.
“And what of your father?”
“Daddy was a nurse, a type of healer, and while he came with us often enough, he had to work a lot too. When he retired he traveled with my mom.”
Rathal wasn’t quite sure what all retirement meant to humans so he kept quiet. “Does your mother still compete in these rodeos?”
Callie's smile widened at first and then slowly died. Even her playful leg swings in the water fell still. “I don’t know. She was still competing when I was taken. I imagine she’d quit while she looked for me. She and my father would never give up trying to find me.”
No good parent would. Something dawned on him as he watched her sad face. Rathal could do something about that. The sad look in her brown eyes made his own heart hurt. He didn’t like it and everything in his body wanted her smiles back.
“What are their names?” he asked, watching her with one ear cocked in her direction, but the other was shifted backwards as he accessed the internal server with his implant. There was a long range communication satellite that he had left hundreds of years ago. He hadn’t checked it in fifty years or so and it would take him a few minutes to locate it.
“My mother is Maria Isabella Maldonado Ramirez from Guadalajara, Mexico.”
Ah, there it was. Hmmm… someone had made modifications to it. It was stronger. He pinged it and a message reverberated inside his skull.
