Phase #1 The Fence Line

Part I: The Fence Line

They used to call me 8807. That number clung to me like mud in the hollows of my scars. I don’t remember the first time I heard it. Just the way it scraped across my back like a saddle pulled too tight. A sound with no softness, no name, no meaning beyond what they needed from me. It followed me through holding pens, across auction blocks, through the dark metal hum of transport trailers. It was who I was — until the morning I met her.

Longhorn Ranch smelled different than anywhere I’d been before. Not of fear or waste or old sweat. Here, the air held cedar and hay, fresh water and sunbaked earth. The wind rustled the trees with ease, not warning. Somewhere nearby, a wind chime tinkled against a porch. And behind that? Laughter. Hoofbeats in rhythm. Buckets clanking. A normal kind of noise I didn’t understand—but wanted to.

I stood alone in the corner of a wooden-fenced pasture, its rails weathered smooth with age and softened by time. The posts were solid. No rust. No barbed wire. Just wood and the scent of sap. A fence meant to mark boundaries, not punishment.

She came to the fence slowly. No halter. No rope. Her hands weren’t held out. She just looked at me and smiled.

Her eyes softened when they landed on me, but she didn’t try to hide the pity. I hated it. My skin still stung where tack had rubbed me raw. The worst welts were swollen and crusted over, white hairs already growing in crooked around them. The sores along my withers and spine still wept if I moved too suddenly. Red skin peeked through cracked scabs. A raw patch near my shoulder pulsed in the breeze, stinging each time I shifted.

I shifted uneasily, keeping the fence between us, muscles twitching beneath a hide too tender.

“I read your report,” she said softly, kneeling in the damp dirt near the gate. She held a crumpled piece of paper in one hand. I recognized it—my number was on it. I flinched.

But she didn’t tear it up or burn it. Instead, she folded it slowly and slipped it into her coat.

“That’s not you,” she said. “Not anymore.”

I didn’t understand her words, not exactly. But her voice didn’t hurt. And that… that was new.

Later that evening, I stood in the corner furthest from the house, half-hidden behind the cedar trunk at the pasture’s edge. She came back with a bucket and a book.

She set the bucket down. Something in it smelled sweet, like oats and apples. She didn’t push it toward me. Just let it sit. She perched on the bottom rail of the fence with one boot resting on a cinder block, thumbing through the little leather-bound book. A pen sat tucked behind her ear.

She opened the book in her lap and read aloud as she wrote.

“Journal Entry. June 2” she said gently. “I wish she had a name. Something that belongs to her, not to the men who numbered her.”

She was quiet for a moment. The sky went from honey to indigo.

“I think she deserves something lasting.”

She tapped her pen once against the page, then wrote something down. I watched her from the shadows, ears flicked forward.

“I’m not in a hurry,” she said at last. “You take your time. We’ve got it.”

The next morning, the bucket was empty but still there. And I stood a little closer to the fence.

My first impression of her lingered like the scent of wild mint—something I couldn’t quite pin down. She wasn’t loud, or demanding, or made of iron like the ones before. There was softness to her stillness, a steadiness that didn’t push but waited. I didn’t trust her. Not yet. But I saw her.

And something deep in my bones knew—she saw me, too.