I squeezed her hand as hard as I could, to repay her for hurting the horses; my horses who stood proud when we set out, but now one is skittish, head down and flank twitching, only looking at me when I call his beautiful name and only then for a heartbeat; and the other is standing in a trance, facing some new reality where humans are cruel and unpredictable and he has no plan for this, he has never needed one; he never needed a plan more intricate than merge, yield, or prance for kids waving from a school bus; he has never been pushed, never been screamed at, never been run into by a careless biker, so irate that she threw her water bottle then her helmet at the horses despite her own clear mistake, and now, thanks to a peaceful cop, I have to shake her soulless hand and that's when I started squeezing as hard as I could, and of the whole crowd that gathered to watch an English woman yell at an Amish man, only one person noticed- the cop saw her wince in brief agony, and, in a way, it is the worst thing I have ever done.   --- When Jaye was little, she would skip school to go to the library, and then go home and draw on the walls. She has a long love affair with ink in all its forms, and often combines words with drawings. She regularly struggles with ten word stories on Bluesky @thirteenthstory.bsky.social.