Conclusion: Their Hearts Overlap (?)
Both horses sped up at the same time in response to an invisible signal or perhaps an instinctual response. Their strong legs kicked the ground, making big puddles of mud fly up.
Craaack!
Skyred Hare was running fast when Ruby’s crop hit the back of it.
Craaack!
Mia’s reins snapped at the open air, telling her to get a better hold on them or they might get away from her completely.
“Go, Skyred! Gooooo! Faster! Faster!”
Ruby’s strong voice was heard all over the stands.
Eeeeeeek! I’m about to fall down! I’m falling!
Mia’s sad voice echoed in her heart.
Her body swayed all over the place. She could barely get her feet into the stirrups. She was dangerously close to falling off many times. She had tried many times to slow the horse down, but her desperate signals didn’t make it slow down.
She was now a sobbing mess with watery eyes and a runny nose. She gritted her teeth and tried very hard to tell herself that everything was fine.
What would happen right now if she slowed down? Without a doubt, the Princess Mia Chronicles’ vision of the future would come true. If she tried to escape this fight…
If she let herself think about running away even when she knew something bad was going to happen, she would never stop running away, no matter what.
… Yes, that’s right… I must win this battle. I’ll win, and then I’ll become a better person. So I have to keep going at this speed— Ah, never mind. I just can’t do it. Stop! Stoooop!…
She tried to tell Kuolan to stop, but it wouldn’t pay attention. She tried to tell herself to toughen up and keep going, but she didn’t listen.
She was already at her limit, and her own tears were making it hard for her to see. The only thing keeping her from going into full-on panic was that she was too tired.
The end was getting closer. The last straight stretch was almost over.
It was getting close to the end, and Kuolan still had a small lead.
“No more… Can’t… I’ll… Urrk…”
She whimpered, and then she threw up. Her mouth was full of something sour. She couldn’t see anything and felt like she was going around in circles.
Kuolan’s ear moved slightly. It quickly looked in her direction. She saw worry and an unspoken “I’ll stop if you really can’t take it anymore” in its eyes.
At least, that’s what she thought.
Even though they were in the middle of the final sprint, her horse still stopped to think about her. Kuolan had done its best during the whole race. Then why couldn’t she do the same?
She closed her eyes in a quiet way. She thought back to the time she’d spent with Kuolan. She thought back to all the times she and he had run this course together. Every time she tried to keep up with his beat. And every time she had failed, it was because her rump hurt so much.
One memory after another came back to me. She saw herself trying to pet Kuolan, and then he sneezed on her, and then he sneezed on her again, and then he sneezed on her again. Even the mucus from their practise sessions brought back memories that made them feel warm and fuzzy.
She had felt like Kuolan was having fun at her expense more than once, but that didn’t mean he was. Still, she knew he had always been looking out for her because she had never gotten seriously hurt while riding him.
Serious mode Kuolan was no joke. If he hadn’t cared about her, she would have fallen off many times by now.
He must have been looking out for me the whole time and I just didn’t know it.
When they thought about that, the days they spent together practising suddenly seemed like a lot of fun. Memories of happier times flashed before her eyes. They were bright and colourful, and they moved in a way that was uncannily similar to how people say they move when they are about to die.
But anyway, forgetting about that particular point…
Those memories were now very important to her, and if today was the result of all the hard times they had been through together, she couldn’t stop. So, in a strained voice, she forced the words out of her.
“We’re coming to the end!” She yelled, “Give it everything you’ve got! Don’t be afraid, Kuolan! Win by any means necessary!”
As she talked, a young horse somewhere neighed, and the sound of its voice matched hers.
Kuolan seemed to speed up when he heard the sound.
Go, Kuolan! Let’s win this!
Mia felt like she and her horse were the same thing as they raced down the course. The event was powerful. So deep, even.
She thought she finally knew what people meant when they said that riders and horses connected when their hearts and spirits touched.
She could feel Skyred Hare’s heavy breathing behind her. She knew it was keeping up because its steps were steady.
Usually, this much pressure would have made her throw up again, but she was completely calm.
“That horse won’t beat you, right, Kuolan?”
When she called out, she heard a loud whinny.
It looked like it was saying, “You bet I won’t! We’re going to keep running until we win! We’ll keep running after that! As far as we want, to the fullest extent of our hearts, into the great beyond!”
At that moment, she had the freeing thought that as long as Kuolan was with her, she could go anywhere and as far as she wanted. He would follow her to the end of the world and back.
“Ah—”
But her epiphanous moment didn’t last.
She looked back and saw that the finish line was getting farther away.
“Ah…”
After a second, the silence of concentration was broken, and the sounds of the venue came back in a rush.
It was very loud. Huge crowds of people were yelling and cheering. In the middle of all the noise and excitement, she could hear her cheering squad.
They yelled her name and praised her win.
“I… I won?”
Her wide, shocked eyes finally landed on her friends waving at her after she had looked around in shock. They had big smiles on.
“…I won! I did it! I really won!” she yelled, throwing her hands up in the air to show how happy she was. She then showed her friends those hands.
She waved and waved, because that was the only way she could show how happy she was. During this process, the reins were, of course, completely taken away from her hands.
“…Oh?”
She felt something strange.
It was as if all of a sudden, her weight had left her. And it had, because she had forgotten something important.
After two full laps at a full gallop, she was so used to Kuolan’s breakneck speed that she thought it was going slowly when it slowed down after crossing the finish line.
She was still going very fast, so it wasn’t.
So, physics said that if her horse stopped suddenly, she would still move forward at a very fast speed without it. Therefore…
“Oh? Oh?”
As Kuolan’s form stopped moving after digging its hooves into the ground, the world started to go around in a circle.
And that’s how Mia’s first flight went. Again.
“…Eh?”
Mia was flying through the air with her mouth wide open. A person blew by her, a storm to her breeze, and crossed her path.
“Gotcha. Careful, miss.”
Lin Malong was waiting near the finish line. He sped up his horse to match the speed of her parabolic flight and caught her in his arms like he did it all the time.
He pulled her close to him and did another lap around the course to ride out the rest of the momentum.
“When you’re riding a horse, you can’t let go of the reins and look around. Driving while distracted is dangerous. People will begin to wonder what I’m trying to teach you.”
Mia’s shoulders dropped when he told her she was wrong.
“I feel terrible. That was very stupid of me,” she said, looking like a dog who had been told off.
Even though her victory lap was awkward, the crowd was still very excited, and they cheered loudly for her.
Mia’s feet finally hit the ground when she crossed the finish line for the third time.
“Well, that was humiliating, to say the least. Ugh,” she moaned.
As she looked around for her trusty horse, her face lit up a little.
“However, I have to say that was a lot of fun. Even more so in those last few seconds when it felt like Kuolan and I were one. I told him to move faster, and he knew what I meant. We got together. I need to congratulate him and give him a pat on the back.”
A quick look around the area showed that there were three horses near the goal.
“Oh?”
One of them was Kayou, who was Kuolan’s boss and had come to watch the race. Her little foal was next to her. Kuolan himself was the third. He was rubbing himself against the other two in a very loving way. The three almost looked like a loving family.
“Hey, Kuolan. Good job. Aren’t you glad you got to show off for your wife and child?” Malong said as he patted each one in turn.
“Wait, what?”
Mia stared at Kuolan, whose happy tail was swinging from side to side, with her mouth wide open.
A-hm… I guess that makes sense.
She reluctantly came to the conclusion that the little horse did look like Kuolan.
“Hm? That makes me think… Isn’t that where Kayou and her baby were standing when he sped up during the race? Was he really looking at them when he moved his head? Did he work so hard at the end because he wanted to impress his family?”
She only thought about the idea for a short time before throwing it out.
“N-No way. I’m acting stupid. Kuolan and I definitely merged into one. Because our hearts were joined, we won. Mm hm.”
She thought that thinking about the possibility any more wouldn’t be fun, so she crumpled it up and threw it over her horizon of memories, which was also a horizon of thought.
She looked at the female horse with a feeling of pity and thought, “Kayou… I thought you were the future me, but you have terrible taste in men.”
Kayou tilted her head as if she didn’t understand what the look meant.
Then… “Hm?”
Mia felt a cool breeze on the back of her neck, which was something she knew well.
“D-Don’t tell me…”
When she turned around, the two barrels of Kuolan’s mucus launchers were right in front of her. They flared.
“E-Eeeeeeek!”
And that’s the story of how Mia triumphantly won the race. It was hard to say exactly how triumphant she was.
