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Even in training exercises, her teacher said, Martisset moved with the atmosphere like a skilled rider with a wild horse, recognized that the planet had a mind of its own, and respected both its lawful and its wild aspects.

But then the metaphor was apt; at thirteen, Martisset had ridden with the adolescents in the South Continent horse-festival. She still remembered her giddy joy at seven years old, riding with the five-year-olds, tied to her mount in what was a barely controlled stampede. She was older than her South Continent kin but hadn’t had as much equestrian training, so she rode with the young ones.

A few summers with Yuki-Iskri’s kin, and she’d picked up a lot. Mostly because she wanted to, and because it felt like flying, joining her will to the horse’s intent, and forgetting her own awkward self.

She wasn’t going to be a racing-rider; she was too tall and gangly for that. But she learned archery, and she rode in the ritualized parade that was a distant descendant of a steppe-cavalry maneuver, charging and then turning in apparent retreat to shoot arrows back at an invisible enemy.

The hits were recorded by the herd-elders, conversing with the same satellites that tracked the fisheries of the True Ocean and the weather-systems turning overhead.

The skillful rider knows the mount has a mind of its own. From work in progress, Ship’s Heart (NaNo 2015).