silverthorne

Mindless writing...

What's That They Say About Kansas, Again?

*Thud!*

Dustin thought the sound of hitting dirt was something akin to smacking an egg with a sledgehammer. He knew for a fact that it felt like an egg being smacked with a sledge hammer.

That was probably because the inescapable fact was that he happened to be the 'egg' at the moment, and the hard, unforgiving ground was the sledgehammer that he was being smacked with.

Dustin let himself lay there for a long moment, waiting for the ringing bells and throbbing bruises to dull down. He couldn't hear the bronc that had thrown him, but that was all right as far as he was concerned. If he couldn't hear that thunder of murderous hooves coming for him, it meant that the clowns and other riders had managed to shy the stallion away. Good thing too--Dustin wasn't looking forward to adding a good trample to his list of injuries. The broken collar bone and cracked ribs two months ago had been enough. Cost him his ride, his belt, and his rent, too. If he'd had a girl to loose, it would have made the perfect set for a good old-fashioned country song.

Hopefully, he'd been luckier this time around. Taking stock of himself, he supposed he had been. Nothing really hurt past a dull ache; he was breathing okay; all his limbs seemed to be pointed in the right direction. Really, the only troubling fact niggling at him was the lack of sound.

More precisely, the lack of anything that sounded even remotely like the arena of a rodeo in full swing.

Oh shit...he hadn't knocked himself deaf, had he?

Dustin Charles McKay stiffened a little as he considered that possibility. He didn't remember hitting his head, but that didn't mean a thing. Cowboys hit their heads all the time without realizing it. It just came with the territory. That's why there was always some bullfighter--'rodeo clown' to those not in the know--hovering over you and asking you who you were after a good throw. They had to make sure you still had a few brain cells that hadn't been scrambled yet, after all.

Only, as far as he could tell with his eyes still squeezed shut, there weren't any clowns asking him a damned thing. Of course, there wasn't anyone trying to get him to stand up either, or trying to move him in that careful way that meant they wouldn't be moving him at all if they could get away with it. Which meant he might be okay except for his ears; they were all just waiting for him to wake up on his own, and probably frantically asking him questions, not realizing he couldn't hear a blessed thing.

Damn, though. Last thing he needed was to go deaf. His mortgage was due, for god's sake!

It was at that moment that he was disavowed of that idea, however. A cool breeze, just slightly more chill than the warm air he was becoming aware of, rustled what sounded like grass just past the top of his head. Dustin heard it, and breathed a sigh of relief, enjoying the scent of sun-warmed sage. Good, he could hear after all. It just happened to be quiet, is all.

Wait a minute. Sage? Warm Sun? Quiet?

Relief became a short-lived sensation. All three sensory inputs were Not What He Should Be Experiencing. The rodeo grounds had been noisy, muddy, stinking of wet cattle and sodden horses from an all night monsoon storm. And it had been cold with springtime just now getting into the swing of things. Warm sun had had nothing to do with it.

Something worse must have happened than loosing his hearing. His practical mind being what it was pointed out that he was going to have to open his eyes to find out whatever 'worse' happened to be in this case.

Dustin gritted his teeth as he screwed up his courage. The only thing he could figure was maybe he was in one of them newfangled hospitals were they did everything but rub your feet for you if you were sick. Or maybe he'd been hit in the head hard enough that he was hallucinating. Who knew? But the only way he'd know for sure was if he opened his eyes. He was hoping for the newfangled hospital theory...he was pretty sure though that it would be the hallucination theory instead.

He opened his eyes. And he stared.

Hallucination theory won, hands down.

Dustin decided to give the hospital another chance to appear, closing his eyes again. He counted to ten...twenty...twice. Held his breath. Opened his eyes.

There was still a turquoise colored sky above him, and the faint outline of two moons in half-phase. He could swear that he saw oceans on one of them, even. The gray tufts of whip like grass waving in the breeze didn't help. Each of the tallest ends, of which there were five, ended in a cattail like tuft. That fairly glowed white.

Dustin refused to even acknowledge the bird...lizard...bird--it had to be a bird--that was making lazy circles in the sky above him.

He had to give himself credit, though, when his mind went for it, it really pulled out all the stops. So far, everything seemed uncannily real. He'd expected there to be some sort of surreal feeling to it. But no...everything felt normal, crisp, focused. His head was doing one hell of a job keeping the illusion up.

Dustin supposed maybe he ought to try and sit, then. Maybe moving would somehow jog his brain back into the right track.

Or at least wake him up from the damned strangest dream he'd ever had.

Out of long-standing habit, Dustin took one last stock of his body, making sure it didn't have any complaints he ought to know about before he started jostling things around. He might be hallucinating (or dreaming, his mind helpfully suggested), but that was no reason to risk any further injury. Easy did it, and even if he started seeing pink bunnies, he wanted to at least be physically comfortable and as healthy as he could be. If he didn't snap out of this soon, he wanted the docs to have as little as possible to worry about.

Finally, he felt he was as fit as he was going to get. With one last deep breath, closing his eyes in the hope that maybe, just maybe, the real world would be there when he opened them again, he sat up.

He was still sitting on the ground. His fingers were still twined around the blades of gray grass. That damned bird, lizard, or whatever it was, was still making circles over his head, in the same sky that had been there a few moments before. In fact, the only thing that had changed by him sitting up was his vantage point, the fact that he could see his hat perched on a rock a few feet past his boots, and that there was an Indian sitting on an Appaloosa stallion on the nearby rise.

Make that an Appaloosa Indian Stallion centaur, son.

Dustin passed out, grateful for the second, fading thud of the day.

Maybe he'd wake up in the hospital next time 'round.