Sugar on the Edge(51)

I’ll admit… I’m excited about seeing these horses that live on the beach, eat the wild sea oats, and drink puddled rainwater. She told me all about the little beauties as we got dressed, but I struggled to pay attention to what she was saying as she shimmed into her underwear. I had to restrain myself from tearing them off her and pushing my tongue between her legs again.

As we were leaving Savannah’s house, I noticed some framed photos on the wall in her living room. They were framed in whitewashed wood… four of them mounted side by side. They were of the exact horses we were on our way to see, and I had never seen anything more beautiful. The pictures were taken at sunrise, as the sun was halfway lifted from the depths of the Atlantic horizon. The sky was a beautiful pink and orange, with dusky blue clouds that hung low on the water’s edge. Four horses stood knee deep in waves that repetitively rolled onto the beach, three adults and a tiny foal. Three of the photos showcased all the horses, but the last photo was just of the baby horse as it frolicked in the surf. She caught it perfectly, kicking its spindly legs out behind its awkward body.

“Are these the Corolla horses?” I asked.

“Yeah. The herd is much larger though.”

“These are amazing,” I commented as I studied them. “Where did you get them?”

“Oh, I took those a few years ago. One of the lucky times I got to see the horses in the surf. That’s a rarity.”

I turned to look at her in disbelief. “You took these?”

I was astounded. The lighting was perfect, the angle and composition flawless. It was the type of work you’d see hung in an art gallery.

She just smiled at me shyly, and I said, “I want to buy these from you.”

She blinked at me once and said, “I’ll make you some prints and give them to you.”

Shaking my head, I insisted. “No… I want these. Exactly as they’re framed. How much?”

Savannah looked at me as if I was an oddity she had never beheld before. “I’ll give them to you,” she insisted.

“No, I’ll buy them.”

“Then you won’t get them,” she said and turned to walk out the door.

Gone was the shy woman of five minutes ago, and in her place was a woman in command.

Utterly fucking fascinating.

Savannah turns the Jeep to the left, onto hard-packed sand where we’re not in danger of getting stuck, heading north up the beach. It’s absolutely deserted, as she said it would be in the dead of winter, but several rows of tire tracks lets me know that other vehicles have been down this route today.

We drive for a few hundred yards and come up on a truck parked in the middle of the wide stretch of sand. I see a man and a woman, bundled up in winter gear, fishing in the surf. Savannah waves at them as we drive slowly past, and they wave back.

She keenly searches the distance in front of us, vainly seeking the elusive horses.

“I don’t come here that much, but it’s really hard to catch them on the beach. They mostly stay on the other side of the dunes, back among the houses over there,” she says as she points out. “We’ll definitely see some once we turn off.”

We drive for a while, not seeing a single horse, so Savannah makes a left hand turn through a break in the sand dunes. We lurch over some more loose sand before she hits a hard-packed dirt road that winds in and out of a small neighborhood of beach homes.

As we turn a corner, we see some of the horses… just a pair of them as they graze on the short grass yard of a red-stained house that sits on stilts.

Savannah puts the Jeep in park, and we watch them for a bit. They’re really small, and they look like they’d buckle underneath me if I tried to ride one. Not that I’d want to. I’m not overly fond of horses, having been nipped by one when I was little. They’re dark brown with long, shaggy hair and kind of cute.

“It’s against the law to approach or touch the horses, and you can’t feed them either.”

“Why’s that?” I ask as we watch another horse come from around the side of the house and join the other two.

“They’re diet is very specific. If you were to feed something to them that they weren’t used to, it could make them really sick. Plus, they can be dangerous. You don’t want one to take a bite out of you.”

Fuck yeah, I don’t want that.

After a few moments, Savannah puts the Jeep in drive, and we meander through the dirt streets of Corolla. Pushing further away from the ocean, there are fewer houses and the dirt roads wind among a thicket of trees that Savannah tells me consist of wild persimmon, yaupon, myrtle, and red cedar. The trees are shaped and molded by the ocean winds, creating thick canopies and heavy shade as we drive along. We see several more horses and spend a good hour just driving around and watching.