Kashi knew it had to be his doing, but she found herself paired with Matthias for work the next morning. The two of them were set to muck out all the stalls. The most unpleasant of jobs. She tied her hair back into a bun using a headband to keep it out of her hair. Job or no, if a spot of refuse got into her hair she was going to walk out and shower for three hours. Maybe she'd cry afterwards. She could handle the thought of it on her shoes. Maybe the old pairs of jeans she'd taken to wearing, but not her hair.
Matthias showed up with a grin much too large for someone about to spend the rest of his day shoveling crud out of horse stalls. He was much too chipper for the morning also. Kashi wasn't a morning person herself, but even morning people shouldn't be that excited. She shot him a scowl for good measure. If he was that happy, she could be that much more grouchy.
"Morning Kashi!" He all but chirped as he came in. Even his gait was bouncing.
"How much caffeine did you have to make you this… obnoxious?" Kashi said, vaguely gesturing to him.
His boots scuffed the floor as he came closer. "I'm always this obnoxious," he grinned. "Why shouldn't I be?"
"Because we're to be shoveling horse shit for the next couple of hours before we go to lunch, then we're to finish the stables after that." Kashi spat out, checking to make sure her bandana was secured.
His grin faded. "I traded with Margret, she said you and she would be on grooming duty for the little foals…"
Kashi's mood instantly improved. "You got played by Margaret!" Kashi howled as she laughed, nearly doubling over. She watched Matt's face morph into one of surprise, then indignance. "She's never been nice to a human for no reason in her lifetime, I'd bet. Hell would freeze over." Kashi's laugh died, but her grin didn't. "Stuck shoveling with me Matthias!"
She refused to admit it out loud, but she much preferred Matthias as a partner to Margaret. Matthias was witty and funny. He made work go along faster. Plus with his speaker, he could play music too. The barn was practically empty anyway, so it wasn't like they were bothering anyone. He had some great stories too.
"Wait, so how did you end up out there to begin with?" Kashi asked, stifling a laugh.
Matthias chuckled, shoveling a heap of refuse out of the stall next to hers. "Well my buddy dared me to go skinny dipping with him. It was a private pool and Kate's family wasn't supposed to be home for another couple of hours. She was there, but nowhere near the pool." At Kashi's furrowed brows he explained. "Well they were super loaded so a multilevel penthouse suite with an indoor and outdoor heated rooftop pool was pocket change for them. She was in a lower level occupied with something. Nah, she and my friend conspired to lock me on the rooftop balcony where her parents had some important business meeting going on."
Kashi's eyebrows shot up in surprise but she thought better of putting a hand over her mouth. She'd been hanging onto a filthy shovel for the better part of an hour at least. "That's horrible." but she laughed all the same.
He nodded, "Well I was never allowed back into their house after that fiasco, that's for sure. Though we snuck in when her parents were actually away. But those are stories for other times."
They both glanced at the wheel barrows. Both were almost full. They'd have to take a trip out to the dumping grounds. Kashi's uncle made them dispose of it in a careful way so he could sell it to the nurseries to use as plant fertilizer. He also used some himself for his own small acreage of crops. Kashi hadn't yet been asked to work with the plants. Maybe her uncle knew she was well versed in the art of killing houseplants. She would probably kill a plant by looking at it wrong.
"This is my least favorite part of this job." Kashi grunted, hefting the wheelbarrow, "You have to push around fifty pounds of manure with the smell blowing at you."
"At least it's sunny." Matthias said, giving his wheelbarrow a good shove to get it moving. "I don't envy the ranch hands who had to do it in the downpour yesterday. Did they have tarps or something?"
Kashi shrugged. "Well after this we have to re-hay the stalls and if we have time, clean up the cement floors. They're all disgusting from everyone tracking in mud yesterday." She squinted in the sun. It was a hot day in comparison to the last few weeks where it had been rather mild. There wasn't a cloud in the big arching blue sky anywhere. "There had to be a more efficient way to do this other than trekking out to the manure dump every couple of stalls." Kashi grumbled as they reached the quite heinous smelling dump.
"They've got young kids to do it, why do they care? Matthias chuckled. "Race you back to the barns!" He took off running, the wheelbarrow bouncing over every rut and lump of grass.
Kashi scoffed, but ran after him laughing. She pushed the wheelbarrow over the grass, dodging a hole and sprinting after Matthias. He was most definitely faster than she, but she'd blame it on his head start. He was close enough so she could still hear the music from the speaker in his pocket. She matched her footfalls to the bass to try to speed up. Her laughter made it harder to breathe as she ran and her heart beat faster, but she was enjoying it. Though she'd complain to Matthias that it was getting sweat marks on her tank top.
Kashi's ankle twisted slightly on a raised patch of grass before the wheel got stuck in a whole sending Kashi careening to the ground, slamming her knee and arm into the side before getting a faceful of grass. Her knees were scratched, and bleeding, there were some splinters in her arm from the wooden handle. She could feel her face aching, blood pouring from her nose from hitting something hard. The wheelbarrow handle? A rock maybe?
Kashi sat up, pinching her nose, a headache forming. But it wasn't a rock. It was a half buried gun, laying in the ground of her uncle's ranch.