The road was terrible.
I experienced a level of discomfort on the road that I never knew roads could cause. Every stone, every bump, and every root transmitted a shock through the saddle and straight into my spine. My ass had gone numb somewhere in the first hour, and then came back to life somewhere in the third just to make sure I knew how much pain it was in. I shifted. I squirmed. I tried sitting on one cheek, then the other, then kind of hovering, which lasted about four seconds before the horse decided to step over a ditch and I slammed back down.
"My ass is broken. I think it's actually broken. Can an ass break?"
"I would not know. I ride correctly."
I shifted again. Pain. "How do people do this? How did your entire civilization decide, yeah, let's sit on a leather rectangle on top of a moving animal for hours. This is great, this is the future?"
"We also invented the wheel."
"Invent a cushion."
Cruit didn't answer. She sat in front of me, straight-backed and unbothered, steering the horse as if she had been born doing it, which she basically had. I hated her posture. I hated how comfortable she looked.
The scenery was unhelpful. Trees. More trees. A field. More trees. A creek that the horse refused to cross, requiring 10 minutes of coaxing and one near-drowning. More trees.
Around the fifth hour, the problem shifted from my ass to something lower and more urgent.
"I need to pee."
"No."
“You can't just say no to peeing. That's not how it works."
"We are an hour from the village. You can wait."
"I can't wait."
"You can and you will. We have made excellent time and I will not sacrifice it for your bladder."
"My bladder doesn't care about your time."
"Then your bladder will learn discipline."
I managed to make it for another twenty or so minutes. Maybe fifteen. Each bump on the road was a personal attack. Each jostle of the saddle was a war crime. I was clenching muscles I didn't know I had, thinking about deserts and sand dunes and anything but water.
"Cricket, I'm going to pee my pants."
"You will not."
"I'm going to pee on this horse. I'm going to pee on this saddle. I'm going to pee on everything in a three-foot radius and that includes you."
She stopped the horse.
"Get off," she commanded.
"Thank God." I slid off the saddle, less a dismount and more a controlled fall, and landed on legs that didn't work right. We were on a road bordered by thick woods on both sides.
I began to walk toward the tree line.
"Where are you going?"
"Where do you think? I'm gonna go pee in the woods.”
The silence behind me was so thick that I could have sat on it.
“You intend to relieve yourself in the open? On the side of a road? Like a common...”
"Like a person who has to pee? Yeah."
"It is not ladylike."
I spun on my heel. "I'm sorry. Ladylike?"
"It is vulgar. It is uncivilized. A woman does not simply squat in the wilderness like —"
"Like what? What do ladies do? Hold it forever? Explode? Is that how princesses die? They just refuse to pee until they pop?"
"There are chamber pots. There are privies. There are facilities designed for —"
"Do you see a privy anywhere, princess?"
She clamped her lips shut.
"What do you do on long rides? Serious question. When you're on a horse for five hours and nature calls, what's the royal protocol? You got a little golden pot strapped to the saddle? A servant who holds a curtain?"
"We plan accordingly." She said, indignant.
"You plan your pee?"
"We manage our constitution with dignity, yes."
"Great. Good luck with that. I'm going to pee now. In the woods. Like an animal." I turned back toward the trees, which were dark. They were huddled closely, and the light between them was beginning to fade to a gray hue.
I looked at the woods, and the woods looked back at me.
"Ummm... Cricket? It's kind of... dark in there."
Cruit was looking at her nails without a word.
“Can you...come with me?”
"I beg your pardon?"
"Be my lookout! Just stand there and make sure nobody comes.”
"You want me to stand guard while you relieve yourself?”
"C'mon, dude. It’s dark! Who knows what’s out there? It's scary!"
She fixed me with a piercing gaze for a long time. A long, disgusted expression filled with contempt and indignation. She dismounted the horse. She skillfully secured the reins to a lower limb with a knot, and followed me into the trees.
"This is beneath me," she declared.
"Technically it's beneath both of us. Get it? Cause I'm peeing? Badum tsk.”
She was not amused.
I discovered a hidden space near a tall tree, far enough away from the road to be out of sight of the horse, but close enough to hear Cruit's irritated breaths.
I pulled down my pants.
"OH —." She spun so fast that her braid whipped around her head. "Could you not WARN me?"
"What did you think was going to happen? I said I had to pee."
"I assumed—I thought you would—there would be a warning. Some level of —"
"I gave you a warning. The warning was 'I have to pee.'"
Her back was to me, her spine stiff and her arms crossed. She kept her chin up and stared at the trees in front of her.
I squatted.
I tried, I focused. Nothing happened. I thought of waterfalls and rivers and the sound of rain on a roof. Nothing.
"Are you... finished?" she inquired, maintaining her averted gaze.
"I haven't started."
"What do you mean you haven't started?"
"I can't go. You're too close.”
"You ASKED me to be here!"
"I asked you to be a lookout, not to stand there breathing! I can hear you breathing!"
"I am a living creature, Cassian. I breathe!”
"Can you breathe quieter?"
"I am going to leave," she began to walk away.
“No! Just... just hum or something! Make noise so you can’t hear me pee!”
"I will NOT hum for you."
"Then I can't pee!"
"THEN HOLD IT!"
"I ALREADY TOLD YOU I CAN'T!"
We were both shouting now. In the woods. At dusk. About peeing. This was my life. I closed my eyes. I took a breath. And I started singing. Loud. As loud as I could. The only song my brain could find was the one Tess used to play on the bathroom iPad when she was fostering younger kids, trying to get them to stop being scared of the toilet.
"IF YOU GOTTA GO POTTY, STOP AND GO RIGHT AWAY!" I belted it. I was past shame; shame was a country I'd left three hours ago. "FLUSH AND WASH AND BE ON YOUR WAY!"
"What... what is that?"
"IF YOU GOTTA GO POTTY —" Louder. "STOP AND GO RIGHT AWAY!"
"What are you SINGING?"
"IT'S THE POTTY SONG. IT HELPS. FLUSH AND WASH AND BE ON YOUR —"
It worked. At some point between the second and third verses, my body stopped resisting me. I heard Cruit emit sounds of pure, distilled terror. This made me feel better, as if her pain negated my own performance anxiety. It was like a beautiful ecosystem.
"—YOUR WAAAAAAY," I finished. I pulled my pants up. I did a little shimmy and walked back to the road. Cruit was already by the horse, untying the reins with furious movements.
"We will never speak of this," she vowed.
"I thought it was kind of a bonding experience."
The horse's hooves pounded the ground and it tossed its head back, straining against the bit. Cruit steadied her with a hand on her neck, but the horse stamped again, harder, with ears flat.
"Easy," Cruit murmured. "Easy, girl."
The horse wasn't having it. She was making a ruckus now, snorting, shifting, and stamping her hooves on the ground. Her neck swung toward the forest across the road, and she pulled so hard that Cruit had to tightly grasp the reins.
"What's wrong with her?" I said.
"She hears something."
We both became quiet. The woods were dark. The road was deserted in both directions. The remaining light of day had thinned and turned gray. The shadows between the trees started to merge.
Soon, I could also make out the sound of voices. Low, distant. From somewhere deeper in the trees. More than one. Maybe more than a few.
The horse stomped again.
Fuck.