Here to Stay: Day 4

 Word Count: 24,157

Summary of Events:

Having been tasked with grooming one of the horses because of the fact that she'd rolled in mud and gotten filthy, Jacob was leading her back to the pasture when she decided she didn't want to go and knocked him off balance, causing him to fall and hit his wrists hard. He hoped to pretend they didn't hurt because he was afraid that the might be broken, but James found out his son's wrists were hurting and made him go for x-rays at the hospital, which thankfully showed only sprains, and a small fracture that didn't require surgery, all Jacob had to do was wear braces on his wrists . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

The doctor had told him that he might want to wear his right brace a bit longer than the left one owing to the fracture, but Jake was rather sick and tired of the braces, as wearing such things in the summertime made his hands warm even though there weren’t any fingers on the braces, thus he had every intention of going without them both today, since it had been a week and his left wrist, for one, was actually feeling pretty good.

Still, he was careful as he flexed both of his wrists and found that he did feel a bit of pain still in his right wrist as he flexed it, but he was sure it wasn’t going to be bad enough that he’d need to keep the brace on, as it certainly felt much better than it had before he’d been to the hospital.

Opening his bedroom door, Jake made his way around the wall and down the stairs that were immediately adjacent to his bedroom, his nostrils filling with the scent of pancakes and some sort of pork — which seemed to be the only meat that was typically served at breakfast.

In the kitchen he found Grandma ladling pancake batter onto the cast-iron flapjack pan, which was rather like a round griddle with a handle, having the littlest lip of an edge to constrain the batter for 20cm pancakes — although Grandma typically made more like 15cm pancakes — and knew there was assuredly already a stack of pancakes in the microwave keeping warm while Dad and Nathaniel were at the morning meeting, which was always held in the tack room.

Dad had said that once Nathaniel left for college Jake would be expected to attend those meetings, with Grandma exempt for culinary reasons — Dad and Nathaniel usually gave her a full report over breakfast anyways — and Jake didn’t know that he really liked the idea that he’d have to get up an hour before he was supposed to be ready for the bus, as that was getting up early in the dark, which was hard. Getting up early in the light, on the other hand, was easy.

“How are your wrists feeling?” Grandma asked.

“Fine,” Jake replied.

“Do they hurt at all?” Grandma asked.

“Not really,” Jake replied.

“And that means?” Grandma asked.

“My left one hardly hurts at all,” Jake replied. “But there’s a bit of a pinch on the right one.”
Grandma nodded. “Are you going to at least carry your right brace around today just in case you need it?”

“No,” Jake replied. “I don’t think I should need it.”

“It would be wise,” Grandma said, shifting the pan in her hand to see if the pancake was cooked enough to slide on the surface.

“I’m probably not going to be back to full work anyways,” Jake said.

“Even still,” Grandma said.

Jake watched as she flicked the pan — which, being cast iron, weighed over a kilo — to launch the pancake into the air and cause it to rotate 180˚, catching the raw side on the hot iron, where the moisture sizzled.