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Word Count: 535
Dear god, kid, you're a machine.
★ ★ ★
Aspirations are slippery, curious things. They come and go as they please, long-lived or fleeting, to catch eyes and hands and hearts. Sometimes they stay a while, keep our souls warm against winter's bitter winds; others, they are gone just as soon as they had appeared, a spring breeze lost to the white cotton of clouds, stretched like thin gauze over the sky. For someone like Hadley, they were meek, shy ideas that scarcely peeked their heads out; he would find his niche, and sink into it. Grace was more amorphous, a bit dreamier than most, and wasn't too concerned with what to do with her life, in an absolute sense. She was glad for something to do right now, something to pour energy and creativity into. She cared for the horses and honed her crafting, and of course, smoked plenty of cannabis. But to commit to do only this, for the rest of her life? She could hardly justify that. No, Grace had only one aspiration, and that was herself: slippery, curious. She could not be had or kept, only enjoyed in a moment, and then gone, perhaps in the very next.
Grace finished her task quickly. She had been doing this for a week now, and for years at home. Had Grace known what one was, she might have thought that it was like riding a bicycle; however, that metaphor would have been completely lost on her. Rather, she was glad for years of having stable duty at home. When she finished, she returned the canvas sack to its place. She would refill them later on; canvas was durable, and these bags would last for some time yet. She thought one of them needed mending (although she'd lost track of where that particular bag had gotten off to, just this moment); it occurred to her vaguely that she would have to tend to that later. Right now, more important things needed doing, namely getting these blasted chores out of the way so that she could start riding. She wasn't usually impatient about chores, but she couldn't lose herself in thoughts and experiences with someone else here, and Taj had flown off, leaving her without her usual morning companion.
Grace turned to Hadley, tilting her head slightly toward the pitchforks and such, leaned against the stable wall. She really should think about building a rack for them. Stable tools a mess, that was the sort of thing that would cause endless pettifog from her mother. At least she'd learned how to organize, between the lectures. Not that she cared for it, except that it made boring, tedious work go faster, because she could find what she was looking for. That, she could go for - she would much rather be out riding than mucking stalls. She grabbed a pitchfork and turned to face Hadley, leaning on the handle. "You ever mucked a stall, Hadley?" she asked, half-expectant, half-skeptical. She honestly couldn't be sure if he had or not. On the one hand, if she expected that he hadn't, he might surprise her; if she expected that he must have, he would have no experience, just because life is funny and ironic in that way.