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twinkling.
    Okay. Maybe there’s one better view in the world. Something about the night before—maybe the conversation about breeding, maybe playing with myself afterwards—had me on cloud nine. I knew, in the cold light of day, that I must have been reading too much into the conversation. I knew he couldn’t want me…but I could at least enjoy the fantasy. I took another deep lungful of air. “Morning,” I said lazily, and sipped more coffee, luxuriating in the cool breeze coming down off the mountain. It caressed my cheek, making my hair stream out to the side. It played with the little dusting of hairs on the back of my arm. It whistled across my bare legs—
    Wait. My bare legs?
    I looked down. I was still in the t-shirt and panties I’d worn for bed. My top half was decent enough, although without a bra my breasts were pretty obvious beneath the tight green fabric. But because I was kneeling, the hem of the t-shirt only hung to my waist. The entire length of my bare legs were on show, together with my panties. Pink panties, with little flowers on them.
    Russ was turned away for a second. I lifted myself up on my knees, grabbed the hem of my t-shirt and stretched it down to mid-thigh, yanking so hard I thought the fabric was going to tear. I sat back down, trapping the t-shirt at a demure level, and shook spilt coffee off my hand—I’d forgotten I was holding the mug.
    Russ turned back and looked at me strangely. “You okay?” he asked.
    “Fine! Drinking my coffee.” And I drank my coffee to demonstrate.
    He turned away again and I tried to remember what his expression had been. I’d been so embarrassed I hadn’t had time to take it in. Had he been amused that I’d finally noticed and covered myself, or….
    Or had he looked disappointed?
     
    ***
     
    Soon, we were coaxing our horses along steep mountain paths. Russ knew the area well and said he was taking me to where he’d last seen the horse. “I’ll get us up high,” he said, “and maybe we can catch a glimpse of her.”
    I nodded. Then, “Why is it that you want this one so much? I mean, there are lots of feral horses out there.”
    He didn’t answer for a long time. “Sometimes you just see one that’s special,” he said at last. And, even when I prodded him, he wouldn’t give me a better answer than that.
     
    ***
     
    We broke for lunch and then, not long afterward, we crested a rise and looked out over the landscape. We weren’t even close to the top, but we were high enough to get a good view of the valleys below. “We’re close,” Russ said. “Right down there is where I saw her.” We both stood there gazing down for long minutes. I saw a couple of horses, but none that looked sick.
    What I did see was beauty. I’d seen it the day before, riding through the grassland, but up there in the mountains, looking down into serene lakes and silent forests, I had to admit that maybe the country had more to offer than I’d thought. And I hadn’t been eaten in the night by a wolf or a coyote, and no poisonous spiders had made nests in my ears. Why was it, then, that I’d always been so attached to the city?
    Because it’s easier to disappear in a city, I thought bitterly. Just like the horse we were searching for, out here I was exposed, silhouetted against a huge sky. In the city people hunched behind newspapers, ears blocked with headphones. They didn’t want to see you or know you and most of the time that was exactly what I wanted. I wanted not to be noticed. Except, if you go through life trying not to get noticed…can you blame anyone but yourself if you wind up alone?
    I looked sideways at Russ. His easy smile was gone, his jaw set as he searched the countryside below. It was a rare opportunity to really study him, knowing that he was far too preoccupied to notice. I drank in the deep brown eyes, the hard lines of his cheekbones, the slight frown as he concentrated. I’d never seen him so intently focused on something.