The lord surely wouldn’t have gifted the royal family a horse that had any problems. The most logical conclusion, therefore, was that he’d become skittish because of the change of environment.
But Marvin was concerned—normally, a foal would gradually get used to the change and improve, but Lenis seemed to have done the opposite and gotten worse.
“I’d like to get him started with learning how to ride with someone on his back, but that would be quite difficult with how he is now…”
“Maybe it would be a nice change of pace for him to run around in a big area?” Amy suggested.
But Marvin looked troubled and explained that not only was he afraid of the other horses, but lately, he’d started not wanting to go outside anymore.
They could always wait and see what happened, but if Lenis didn’t get any better, dealing with the situation later down the road might get more complicated.
The rearing and training of a gifted horse drew attention from the royal family and the gift giver. The caretakers involved in raising the foal could never rest in peace until the foal was a properly trained and reared adult horse.
Lenis’s large, wide dark brown eyes darted around watchfully, but it didn’t look like he would bite.
But he was still breathing heavily, even though he hadn’t run at all.
His breathing is so fast… If nothing’s wrong with his heart or lungs, he’s probably just nervous, but…
Healing magic could only heal ailments—diagnosing those ailments was left up to the medical doctor. Amy didn’t have enough knowledge or experience yet to draw conclusions like that.
But if he’s uncomfortable, thought Amy, he’ll probably want some comforting… Like when people rub their tummies when they have a stomachache or when kids fall and scrape their knees and want a kiss to make it better.
Amy reached out her hand to the foal.
“Oh! Careful, Lady Amy! I know I joked about touching him before, but it would be a disaster if you were to get hurt!”
“It’s okay. I’m just introducing myself. If he doesn’t like it, I’ll stop. Hello there, Lenis. My name is Amy.”
Amy moved her hand very slowly so Lenis could see it out of the corner of his eye. Lenis flinched when her hand made contact with him, and his entire body started to tremble, but that was the extent of it.
As a foal, Lenis was much smaller than Fente. Amy didn’t have to look up at all to meet his eyes.
Amy smiled as she quietly spoke to him. “I don’t want to scare you. I just want to make you feel relaxed.”
Then, she gradually started to sense something through the palm of her hand that was pressed against Lenis.
What is this? Could I be picking up on his feelings?
Whenever Amy would touch a seriously injured animal to use healing magic on them, she’d been able to sense the pain they were feeling and hints of distress.
But what she was feeling now was a little different.
Amy sensed a heaviness… She felt a cloudy image in her mind…
Weariness clung to her entire body. Her head felt hot and fuzzy. All she wanted to do was rest, but her weariness made her feel her restless and unsettled.
Amy was fortunate enough to not have experienced these sorts of feelings in this life, but she remembered them very well from her previous life.
Like the morning after staying up all night to cram for a test the next day, or the day after staying up all night to read a book I couldn’t put down…
“He hasn’t been sleeping well?” Amy muttered quietly to herself.
Amy had often heard of people feeling miserable after a change in their environment made it hard for them to get to sleep at night. Some particularly sensitive people couldn’t even get to sleep if their pillows were changed.
Amy tilted her head, wondering if it was even possible for horses to suffer from lack of sleep.
Horses, like other animals, go through several periods of light sleep throughout the entire day. Very young foals or adult horses in a very safe environment can lie down and sleep, but even then, they won’t sleep for large chunks of time like humans do.
Horses can even get restful sleep snoozing while standing up. Could Lenis not even do that?
“I see… It’s his sleeping environment, then?”
“What?!” Amy asked, twitching in surprise. She had no idea Marvin’s sharp ears had picked up on her quiet muttering.
Her ramblings were pure conjecture—far too baseless to be taken seriously.
“I’ve been very careful about his meals and the temperature, but I’ve turned a blind eye to his sleeping hay. I’ll check it out right away.”
“H-Hold on! It really was just an idea, and plus, I know you guys always keep the stable hay clean!”
“Well, it wouldn’t hurt to check, now would it?”
Ignoring Amy’s attempts to stop him, Marvin asked a nearby worker to bring him Lenis’s rearing history documentation. The worker fetched the documents at once, which revealed that wood shavings—in other words, sawdust—was often used as bedding material in Lenis’s native territory.
Both straw and sawdust were commonly used as horse bedding.
“That makes sense… We only use straw here, so we should get some sawdust too, huh? We can get some of that in a jiffy.”
“But it might be totally unrelated!”
“That’s all right, Lady Amy. Just having something new I can try out makes me feel much better.”
“Really? Well, I suppose that’s fine, then… But please don’t get your hopes up, okay? Oh!” Amy suddenly giggled. “That tickles, Lenis!”
Perhaps affected by Marvin’s relieved and uplifted mood, Lenis nudged his nose against Amy’s face. He rustled around her neck and hair, like he was sniffing her. For some reason, it looked like all his caution toward Amy had suddenly melted away.
Amy would’ve been happy enough for Lenis to let her touch him, but the fact that Lenis himself took the initiative to get closer to her made her positively thrilled.
Lenis was practically glued to Amy. She slowly moved the hand she had pressed against him, petting him. She moved it as gently as possible, trying to soften his mood with her own slightly elevated temperature.
I really wish there were some magic that could let humans and animals talk to one another!
Amy was sure Lenis knew right away what had been making him feel bad. She wondered how this new place looked in his bright, clear eyes. Maybe he missed his home territory and the mother he was separated from…
Lenis had been brought to the riding grounds of the royal palace completely at the discretion of humans, but Amy hoped that, at the very least, he wouldn’t find it a terrible place to live.
In the place of words Lenis couldn’t understand, Amy pressed her forehead against his.
“I hope you feel better, Lenis.”