The castle did what most castles were prone to doing; towering, looming, and so on. As a gestalt of stone, mortar, and wood, parts of it were far more aged and rickety than other parts. The furniture was so well preserved it was brand new, while the court mage’s tower, accessible via the fifteenth floor, was ancient, more ancient than it should have been. And, of course, the great treasury vault below it was as old as the metropolis the castle had given rise to. 

To most in the surrounding city, it was nothing but a tall eyesore amongst the stone forests of the modern cityscape. Or, sometimes, it was a landmark to mark which way north-northeast was. In fact, the most interesting aspect of the place, to the average person, was that it was the first among all the buildings in the city to get working elevators installed.

At that moment, there was one person in particular who cursed that fact. To him, it was less of a fascinating tidbit and more the reason he was about to lose his job.

“Come on, come on…”

He was at the end of his rope, and his name was Ryan. Of the two elevators helpfully installed near the stables in the castle, this was the slow one. 

Somehow, in the slow elevator, he had to catch up to the other (faster) one, and its speedy occupant. The alternative…

He didn’t want to think about the alternative. 

His way-too-short hair (in his opinion) was disheveled, his clothes were covered in hay and smelled like horse shit, he had a full watering can in his hands, and this goddamn elevator was so fucking slow-

It was stopping. Why was it stopping? This wasn’t the tenth floor! This was, like, maybe the third. Or, was it the fourth? 

The wooden doors of the elevator slid open, and in stepped a put-upon looking woman in a servant’s uniform. Some would call her a maid, and by all rights she was, but the term left a bad taste in her mouth. It was so… gendered. 

 “Hi Tina,” He said, “how’s it going?”

Tina, with her dark hair and tired expression, simply gave him a nod. He smiled back at her. The calming effect her presence had on Ryan was a slight, but still helpful, reprieve from the axe swinging over his paycheck.

“...If it’s alright with you, I need to be up on the tenth floor, like, yesterday.” He said. 

“I’m headed up there anyways. What’s the rush? And why do you have a watering can?” Tina asked.

Ryan bit his lip. He was a stableboy, after all, what could he possibly need up on the floor where they held court and had fancy shmancy balls? 

Also, thank god he had something to focus on, because if he had to think about how the boy at the end of stableboy made him feel, he would start clawing at his skin until the thoughts went away. 

Also, he set the watering can down. 

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Hell, I don’t believe me.”

“Try me.” Tina said.

He sighed. He. He was a he and there was nothing to be done about it and-

Oh, hey, he could explain the situation to her! That would take up some mental real estate! 

“Well, since we’re not going up particularly fast…”

    His troubles started early that day, when the flowers in his bedroom wilted. By all rights, they were watered…

    Okay, no, scratch that. Whether or not he’d had a minor emotional breakdown over his flowers wilting was irrelevant to all this. In fact, it made him seem kind of pathetic and weak, if you asked him. 

“I didn’t ask. And… I disagree. You took good care of those flowers, you know? You’re allowed to feel something about losing them.” Tina put in.

“Oh, whatever.”

    It really started when he took Apple Sauce, the most skittish and dangerous of the horses, back inside after a ride through the pasture. It had been a nice day out, all told, and a smooth ride, but all good things came to an end at some point.

    He put the horse back into her paddock, made sure to shut the gate, and went back to his room to check on the flowers. He got to work reviving them, with soil gathered from the fields, and some plant food he’d synthesized. It wasn’t the most masculine of hobbies, sure, but it was a harmless little thing and-

“Man, you’re riding yourself pretty hard. You can just like gardening, you know? No need to shame yourself about it.” Tina said.

Ryan sighed. He didn’t want to be a guy who liked flowers! He was one, he had no choice in the matter, but...

    Or, well, he’d tried to get to work. He definitely tried to feed the plants. 

The cosmos apparently had other ideas, though. Just as he was addressing the moon tulips’ dying leaves, there was a great noise, a sort of loud ‘pop’. Shortly after, he could hear an unknown man’s voice shout from within the stables.  With little other recourse, he grabbed the heaviest watering can he owned and ran back into the stables. 

    What he found was… confusing.

    He’d shut the gate on Apple Sauce’s paddock, he was one hundred percent sure, no ifs ands or buts. And, this part was key, the gate had been attached to the paddock, because, you know, it was a gate. Gates tended to be connected to things so they could be open and shut.

“Yes. I know what a gate is.” Tina said.

“I’m making a point to emphasize that for a reason, Tina. Be patient.” 

    The gate was on the floor, and it was not just detached from the paddock, no. It was as if it had never been built into the paddock in the first place. There were no hinges on the gate, no sign of use or wear and tear, and the paddock showed no signs of ever having had a gate connected to it.

    It was at this point in his analysis he realized that neither Apple Sauce nor the source of the unknown man’s voice (well, maybe it was a man’s. He didn’t want to jump to any hasty conclusions, after all.) were here.

Tina cocked an eyebrow at Ryan. He sure had a lot to say about gender and gender adjacent-topics in a story not at all about said topics! 

That was understandable, though. It was one of those things that constantly snuck up on her, tapped her on the back, and said, ‘boo!’. And every time, reminded of how the world saw her, she let out a scream of agony.

Wait, Ryan was still talking, wasn’t he? 

    He listened for a second, and the sound of Apple Sauce’s hoofbeats echoed from deeper within the castle’s connecting corridor. With no other choice, he gave pursuit into the nearby hallway. 

    The hallway was one of many of the castle, without any flair to it. The nobles wouldn’t be caught dead down here, after all, so what was the point in making it beautiful, right? Or, at least, that was what the interior decorators thought. Or, rather, it was what Ryan thought the interior decorators thought. 

Tina nodded with an impatient look in her eye. 

    He ran down said hall, fast enough for it all to become a single empty grey blur. The elevators were just at the end of the corridor.

    And Apple Sauce, in her skittish glory, was inside one of them. He called after her.

    The elevator doors shut, and the indicator above them read ‘10’.

Tina frowned upon hearing that. 

She had every right to, since after all, true or not, it was patently fucking ridiculous. In fact, it was so ridiculous, so outside the little boxes she used to organize the world, that it sort of bypassed her normal judgement. 

“Told you you wouldn’t believe me.” Ryan said.

“I said nothing about belief. I just… how? How?”

Ryan shrugged.

“Don’t know. Apple Sauce is smarter than you’d think, I guess.”

“And how, exactly,” Tina said, “Are you going to catch the horse? It’s a goddamn maze up there.” 

“Don’t know.”

Tina laughed.

“Well, if this Apple Sauce tears up the tenth floor, I’ll have to clean up after him…”

“Her.” Ryan corrected, with a deathly serious timbre to his voice. Why he was taking the proper gendering of a horse was anyone’s guess, but far be it from Tina to be rude about it.

“Right, her. Sorry. Don’t want to uh, misgender anyone. Or anything, I guess? Does a horse count as a someone? Kind of a grey area in the categories, there...”

Dammit, now they both were equivocating and angsting about gender again! It was a good thing this hadn’t come up at after-work drinks, because if one more happy hour became unhappy hour because of this subject, she would lose it. After work time was fun time! Not ‘get sad’ time! 

There was a moment of heavy silence between them. Ryan kicked at the floor of the elevator, and Tina sort of stared at the doors. There was no way in hell Ryan was going to be able to wrangle Apple Sauce up there without a navigator, and plus, he was pretty lean. Some extra muscle wouldn’t hurt…

“I’ll help you catch her.”

“You don’t have to do that…” Ryan said.

“I know I don’t! I want to, though.” 

Ryan took a deep breath, and looked back at the floor. Maybe if he held his breath long enough, the blush on his face would die down. Or, no, hmm…

“Uh… thanks!! That means a lot.” He said, finally.

“Heh. No problem.” 

It was about then that the elevator reached the tenth floor, and the doors opened. Maybe, if they were lucky, Apple Sauce would just… be there, waiting for them.

Once again, the cosmos had other ideas.

The hallway, in all its austere grey glory, was caked with dusty hoofprints, leading far out of Ryan’s range of vision. The prints were spaced far apart, as if Apple Sauce had taken off with a start, too.

“Fuck. She’s gone.” He said.

“At least she’ll be easy to find.”

The pair broke into an easy run, just short of sprinting. 

Or rather, Tina broke into an easy run. Ryan had more of a strained jog. As it turned out, their respective vocations gave them widely different strengths. 

Ryan could stay on a horse, no matter how much it bucked or panicked, like no one’s business, but running was far from his strong suit (this had the side effect of giving him the most toned legs Tina had ever seen, for the record). 

Meanwhile, Tina had timed herself, and found that on a consistent basis, she could run from one end of the labyrinth of a castle to the other in under three minutes and eight seconds.

The hoofprints were closer together now, as if Apple Sauce had slowed down. If they were lucky, that meant she was close. If not, well, at least Ryan could catch his breath a little.

“Okay, so we’re,” Tina said between even breaths, “approaching a big bend in the corridor, it splits off. Could we do some kind of pincer maneuver to surround her?”

“No.” Ryan coughed.

He stopped running, and caught a few errant breaths.

“Not unless,” He exhaled, “you want one of us to get run down by a frightened horse. She scares real easily.” 

“Okay, then, bales of hay, what do you recommend?” 

He took a few more gulps of air.

“Okay, well, since you asked, we approach her. Slowly. Make sure she knows we’re friends.” 

Tina nodded.

“Alright, let’s go.” She said. 

The pair started up again, now at a slightly more even pace. It was kind of funny how easy it was to get around today… Normally, the tenth floor was abuzz with people going to and fro. Where was everyone?

“If we’re lucky, no one’s seen her yet.” Ryan said.

“Yeah. All we have to do after we catch her is coax her back into the elevator! Easy!” 

“You’re so sullen sometimes, you know that?” Ryan said with a laugh.    

Tina laughed in kind.

“It’s my trademark. What can I say? I’m a realist.”

The halls got more and more decorated, the further they went. A long rug, red with a golden trim, began somewhere along the way, and the lighting went from rudimentary candles on sticks to gas-powered lanterns and grand chandeliers. 

Even as they were running, Ryan couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if one of those lanterns broke. Surely, the escaping gas would ignite the chandelier’s flames into a proper conflagration, the kind that would probably consume the whole tenth floor. If he were a braver man, person, you get the idea, he’d tell someone on the security staff about it. 

Anyhow, as the hallway grew ritzier, they grew more concerned. Apple Sauce was still nowhere to be-

Oh dear.

“Ryan...” 

“Yes.” 

Tina stared straight ahead, at the empty space where Apple Sauce had just occupied. In the seconds before, the horse had….

“Did I just see our horse friend wander into that ballroom?”

“You did,” Ryan said, “She just… went right on in.”

There was a pause. 

There were two pauses. There was somehow a very pointed break between the two of them, all without either of them saying a word.

“And we have to get her out. Of the ballroom.”

Ryan nodded. Man, his throat was awfully dry. Where was water when you needed it?

“After you.” He said.

“Oh, no, by all means. I insist.”

“You’re so chivalrous.” Ryan said, with the sugariest, most sarcastic grin he could muster. 

Apple Sauce the horse had been frightened, for some reason. She scarcely remembered what it was that had frightened her, now. Was it the fact that all the other horses were gone, off to frolic in faraway fields, and she was alone in the stables?

No, not quite. But that hadn’t helped.

Oh yeah! There had been a man… he appeared out of nowhere! In the stables! They weren’t supposed to do that! They normally had noisy footsteps and walked places, instead of popping in and out of existence. And they certainly didn’t usually make the gates that kept them safe in the stables disappear. 

In all the commotion after that, the running, the trip up in the large strange box and so on, she had sort of lost the plot of where she was. 

This was not the stable, or the fields, or the city, or her favorite spot in the woods nearby. This was a big, open space, with walls… and no sunlight. All the light came from tiny little fires, suspended above. The floor was shiny, smooth, and rough. She poked at it with an experimental hoof. 

Weird. 

But that wasn’t the weirdest part. The weirdest part was the large, flat trough that took up most of the room, and the people in very nice clothing sitting around it, eating with strange small swords and three pronged spears. And, for some reason, many more people flitted about the room, moving strange platters of food-shaped food around! And why were the people in metal armor just standing around with their spears down? 

“Hey! Apple Sauce!”

Oh, there was that nice stable person, Ryan! They had found her! Thank goodness. They always kept carrots with them, and never shouted at her when she got scared. She walked over to them and put her nose on his shoulder, just to say hi. 

Huh.

They weren't petting her, or grooming her mane, or feeding her. Something was wrong with this picture.

“Ryan, come on! Let’s get her out of here!” Said another person. A friend?

Yes, a friend. A scary new friend, but a friend all the same. Apple Sauce was delighted! 

“Uh… Tina…”

“Yes?”

“It’s a bit late for that.” 

The people in nice clothing seemed less delighted about all this. In fact, the whole room seemed quite angry at her and her two friends, as if they were doing something terribly wrong. 

Tina would never admit, on pain of death, to be a troublemaker. It was easier, more pleasant, and less stressful to just color in the lines and do as she was told. She was asked to be ladylike? She would be ladylike. Wear a dress, even though dresses suited her very poorly? She’d wear the dress, she’d weather the internal feelings of agony, and do it all with a smile, like some kind of puppet or actor or some other agency-less being.

Which is why this particular outcome was her own personal hell. 

She and Ryan sat in her boss’s boss’ office on the ninth floor, stewing in the heat of the cramped room.

“Now, you two,” her boss’s boss said, “what the hell am I going to do with you?”

“...Let us off with a warning?” Ryan suggested.

Her boss’s boss(‘s boss’s boss’s boss), the head of staff, was pretty high up the chain of command. Her name was Miriam, and she was furrowing her brow at Tina and Ryan.

“A warning? What would I say? ‘Oh, don’t ruin a court luncheon by letting a horse loose in the newly refurbished ballroom on the tenth floor again, that would be a real bummer’?”

Ryan made a face.

“Just so we’re clear, we didn’t let her loose. She got loose, and we pursued. In a way, we saved that luncheon from an even worse fate, if you really think about it.”

“Ryan…” Tina said, shaking her head at him. He was, strictly speaking, correct, but being more correct than your boss (or your boss’s boss’s boss, for that matter) was a one-way ticket to being fired. And being fired was the worst thing Tina could imagine… every subsequent job would ask, hey, why did you get fired? And then, she would have to either come up with a decent lie (unlikely) or tell the truth (impossible). 

“I can’t… I can’t accept that as an answer. Even if I believe you… the court saw you. You know, the guys who run our country? Sure, sure, the king and his family and half the fucking staff are out on some whatever trip to wherever, but these guys… they tell parliament what to do. They’re no joke.”

Miriam shook her head.

“They need someone to take the fall. That’s how their minds work. And hell, it’s not gonna be me. I’ve got an aging mother to feed. How am I gonna tell her, hey, ma, you’re moving back to the asbestos-lined shitholes I just barely can afford to keep you out of?”

Ah. Guilt tripping. A classic ‘boss who’s about to fire you’ maneuver. Ryan shook his head. If he was about to be fired anyways, he may as well push back a little bit. 

“So, what, we take the fall? We’re not exactly swimming in opportunities, here, either.” Ryan said.

Tina bit her lip. Why did Ryan insist on playing with fire?  

“Yeah! Yeah, you do! You take the fall because…”

Miriam paused, either for effect, or to figure out what the hell to say next.

“Look at you. A guy in his twenties covered in horse shit and muck, and a girl in her twenties in a maid uniform. You’re nobody special.”

Ryan let out a sharp exhale. Tina flinched, in a deep part of herself that never seemed to be able to unflinch afterwards. 

“That’s bullshit.” Ryan said.

“Yeah, well, go cry about it somewhere else. You have three hours to collect your shit and turn in your security passes at the gatehouse. If I catch either of you here after that, you’re dead meat, you hear?”

Tina heard just fine.

Ryan also heard, but with a scowl on his face.

“Then get out of my office.” 

Elsewhere, back in the elevator, Ryan’s watering can sat. By then, several people had seen it, questioned what the hell it was doing there, and then decided to ignore it. 

This went on for some time. It just sat there, slowly leaking out a hole in the bottom of its reservoir.

That is, until a man popped into existence, picked it up, and popped right back out of existence.