Challenge?

It was a long, cold night and the wind was blowing rapidly through the barracks of the shed. Lance was un-harnessing the horses and cleaning their stalls before the blizzard came, and I was chucking the hay into the clean stalls. As I came to him with the wagon, I tripped on the pile of harnesses, and Lance belted out a laugh, humorously trying to act and do what I just done. He helped me up and put hay into Tobys clean stall. We still had much work to do seeing we owned 14 horses.

At 10:19 p.m. we finished the stalls and put the horses back in and shut their gates. We put away the cleaning tools and essentials. By then our big blizzard of the year had been going for about 43 minutes and the lights were flickering. The cold, wet snow that came through the door panel hit our face and stung our noses until they felt as if they were not there or had fallen off. We walked to the door to leave. As we opened it, it couldnt budge and the handle was frozen to the lock. We tried kicking it but it just was stuck.

We sat in the barn next to Toby trying to stay warm. It seemed as if hours had passed by like the snap of my fingers. Lance and me were now next to each other trying to stay warm. We took the hay from the hay stall and covered up with it. We fell asleepasleepasleep

We woke up to the sound of horses kicking their stalls and neighing as loud as possible. The lights had gone out and I held Lance tight. I was scared. We heard something outside Tobys stall and were frightened. Toby still lying there in the hay, we got up and hid behind him. The door swung open and a breeze broke in scaring Toby violently. We peeked up to see what it was. Turns out it was just the wind Lance kissed me and told me it was all right. We laid back down by Toby after shutting the stall door and feel asleep once more.

"LANCE! HOLD HIM BACK!" I screamed as Toby tried breaking loose. Tobys strength was of three horses his size and I couldnt get a grip. He had, had one of his nightmares again and it scared him. Lance came over to see if I was all right, but I wasnt. Toby had kicked me in the stomach where I was two-months pregnant with our baby. The blood flowed out of me like a river and I fainted. Lance started to cry he kissed me and picked me up. He brought me to the hay stall and placed me in a huge pile of hay. He covered him and me up with his jacket and hay. He held me close so I wouldnt freeze.

When we woke, it was daytime. I needed some new clothes but I hadnt had any in the barn. I got up and I was covered in blood, as well as Lance. We went to over to the old furnace and put some wood in it. Lance rubbed some wood together until we finally got fire. He placed the fire in the furnace and it started.

Lance took some water from the water hose and placed it into a can. He heated it and told me to undress. As I did, he took his coat from the hay stall and told me to cover up with it. I gave him my clothes, and he placed then in the hot water to clean. He worked with them to get the blood out and placed them on the furnace to dry. Lance then did the same thing to his clothes but had nothing to cover up with. I felt bad so I refused to cover up with hid jacket and gave it back to him; he wouldnt take it so I put it on him. He took it off, grabbed me and put the jacket on me. He cared so much about me then himself. He sat down and waited for our clothes to dry. I started to cry so he told me to go sit on his lap.

As I sat, he was cold. I decided that since our clothes were almost dry, that we should wash ourselves. I took some clean water from the hose, and poured it into the big can. Lance took the can and heated it up. I looked around the barn and found the horse soap, which we used to wash the horses with. I conspicuously looked at it and said, "that will work!" I returned to Lance and showed him it. He took it from me and dipped it in the cooling water. He lathered me in it from head to toe and I did the same for him. We went into an empty stall and bathed each other with the water. I scrubbed him and he scrubbed me. When we were done, we sat back down by the furnace, and covered back up with his jacket. As we shivered, Lance took my clothes off the furnace and gave them to me. I quickly got dressed and put the bloody hat that we slept on into the furnace.

Lance got dressed and laid by my side. He continuously kissed my back and neck and told me he loved me no matter what happened. I had lost our baby and he still loved me. How did I ever fall in love with this beautiful man? He cares for me so much its almost like hes too good for me, but he says Im too good for him, yeah right!

It was silent as we made love that night in the hay stall. Once we heard the furnace go down, we decided to put some more hay into heat it up again. We sat there holding hands on a haystack and fell asleep.