Low Branch or Collision at Speed

The branch takes you across the throat at a full gallop and the world snaps backward. They find you flat on the trail, the horse standing over you, and something gone terribly wrong in your neck, the doctor braces it between sandbags and speaks in the low voice doctors save for the worst of it. Whether you ride again is a question for providence.

• Neck braced rigid between sandbags, you move nothing for 3 days
• A crushed-black throat bruise; your voice is a ruined whisper for 5 days
• If feeling returns to your hands, the doctor calls it a mercy
• /me lies utterly still, eyes moving where the head cannot

Recovery A week immobile under a doctor's care to learn what you keep, untreated, a broken neck settles its own account.·Doctor, urgently

A fine branch-tip rakes across your eye at speed and the pain drops you from the saddle blind on that side. The doctor rinses it, bandages both eyes to still the hurt one, and will not say yet whether the sight comes back whole, only that you must not rub it, whatever else you do.

• Both eyes bandaged for 2 days to rest the scratched one, you are led by the arm
• After: an eyepatch and no depth to the world for 5 days
• Light through the bad eye is a knife for 4 days
• /me tilts their head, aiming their one good eye at whoever speaks

Recovery 7 bandaged days deciding what the eye keeps, untreated or rubbed, you trade sight for stubbornness.·Doctor, urgently

The limb smashes your nose flat and the ground finishes the job on the back of your head. You get both classics at once, a nose the doctor must pull straight and a concussion that makes the pulling merely one more strange dream in a bad night.

• Nose splinted and both eyes blacking, breathe by mouth for 4 days
• Concussion fog, no riding above a walk for 3 days
• You ask what happened, are told, and ask again an hour later
• /me squints against the light, plastered nose whistling faintly

Recovery 5 days of dim rooms and a set nose with care, untreated, a crooked beak and a week of dizzy spells.·Doctor required

The branch catches you flat across the chest and sweeps you off over the cantle. The blow lays a welt like a lodgepole across your ribs and the landing cracks one under it. Two hurts stacked: the stripe you can show and the rib you can only feel.

• A branch-wide welt across the whole chest, purple-black for 5 days
• One cracked rib, chest wrapped, shallow breaths, no lifting for 5 days
• Deep breaths, coughs, and laughter all cost the same sharp fee
• /me undoes one shirt button to show the branch-stripe, wincing at the stretch

Recovery 6 days wrapped and careful with a doctor, 7 aching ones and a fever risk without.·Doctor required

You duck, mostly. The branch cracks the crown of your head, your hat takes some, and the night takes the rest. You come to in the leaves with the horse nosing your boot, missing the last mile entirely and owning a headache with its own heartbeat.

• Knocked cold a minute, the last mile of trail is gone from memory
• Thunderclap headache and unsteady legs for 2 days
• No night riding for 3 days, your eyes are done being trusted after dark

Recovery 3 days of quiet and shade with a doctor's look, 5 dizzy ones alone.·Doctor required

The limb hooks your shoulder and hauls you off the horse's back as it gallops out from under you. The trail is packed hard as brick, and your shoulder and hip take the landing with a double crunch of deep bruising that stiffens by the campfire.

• Wrenched shoulder, arm rested in your coat front like a sling for 3 days
• Bruised hip that makes mounting a two-stage operation for 3 days
• /me works a stiff shoulder in slow circles, jaw set

Recovery 4 days working it loose, 6 if you keep hauling on ropes and reins.·Doctor required

Neither of you saw the fence line until it was inside your plans. The horse checks hard into the rails and you carry on alone over its neck, landing in a heap of your own limbs on the far side. Your ribs and forearms are bruised lumber-dark, and your horse is standing off with cut knees, it rolls on its own table.

• Bruised ribs and forearms, lifting and roping ache for 3 days
• A rail-print across your thigh where you clipped the top board going over
• Roll for your horse, partner, its chest and knees met the fence too
• /me and their horse limp back down the road together, matching gaits

Recovery 4 days of deep-bruise stiffness, 5 if you work through it, tend the horse first, it did not choose the route.·Doctor required

The branch bends, whips, and lays a stripe across your chest that cracks like a bullwhip and burns like one too. You keep the saddle by fistfuls of mane, but the welt beneath your shirt swells hot and tight, and deep breaths stay expensive for days.

• A whip-welt across the chest, raised, hot, and hidden under your shirt for 4 days
• Deep breaths and long yells pull at it, speak in short sentences for 2 days
• The shirt sticks to it if it weeps, wear something loose

Recovery 4 days for the welt to settle with cool cloths, 5 without.·Doctor required

You duck the killer limb and take the price in its underbrush, a dozen fine branches lash your face and neck as you barrel through. You come out the far side wearing a lattice of thin red welts like you lost an argument with a cat the size of a shed.

• A cross-hatch of stinging welts on face and neck, fading over 3 days
• One welt across the ear that reminds you of itself hourly
• /me dabs at the thin red lines on their cheek with a wet kerchief

Recovery 3 days of sting and fade; witch hazel shortens the sentence.·Doctor advised

The branch glances off your forehead and the world goes bright and sideways, but your body keeps riding while your mind catches up somewhere down the trail. You come fully back to yourself a half mile on, reins still in hand, with a lump rising and no memory of the interval.

• A forehead lump under the hat brim, tender for 3 days
• A dull headache and a half mile of trail you cannot account for
• Mistrust of your own eyes at dusk for 2 days

Recovery 3 days for the lump and fog; note it to a doctor if the headache worsens instead of fades.·Doctor advised

The horse shies around the deadfall and swings your knee square into the trunk beside it at a canter. The kneecap survives; the everything-around-it swells like proofing dough and bends thereafter only under protest.

• A swollen knee, stiff-legged in the stirrup and on stairs for 3 days
• Kneeling is out entirely for 2 days
• /me rubs their knee against the saddle motion, muttering at the trees

Recovery 3 days wrapped and grumbling, 4 if you keep jogging it.·Doctor advised

The branch hooks your shoulder and spins you clean out of the saddle like a hand plucking a bottle off a shelf. The ground is mercifully soft, the shoulder less so, wrenched and bruised where the wood caught it, with a scrape following the collarbone's line.

• A bruised, wrenched shoulder, overhead reaches ache for 3 days
• A bark-burn scrape tracing the collarbone, scabbing for 3 days
• Your coat hangs off that shoulder wrong until the swelling goes

Recovery 3 days of stiffness with rubbing and rest, 5 without.·Doctor advised

Low scrub catches your boot, then your leg, then all of you, dragged sideways out of the saddle at a trot and deposited seat-first in the thicket. You land among the branches with a bruised tailbone and enough scratches to itemize.

• A bruised tailbone, saddles and church pews are penance for 3 days
• Scratched forearms and one ambitious scratch across the jaw
• /me picks twigs out of their clothing for the better part of an hour

Recovery 3 days of careful sitting, 4 if the trail stays long.·Doctor advised

The branch bats your hat into the weeds and clips your brow on the follow-through, a scrape and a shallow cut that bleeds just enough to trickle past your eye and lend you a desperate air you have not earned.

• A scraped brow under a sticking-plaster for 2 days
• A faint dried-blood streak you will find in the mirror tonight, missed by everyone's mention

Recovery 2 days of scab and done; the hat is recoverable from the weeds.·No doctor needed

You duck the big limb and rise straight into the small one behind it, the forest's oldest one-two. It cracks flat across your scalp, more insult than injury, raising a welt line that your hat will press upon at every opportunity.

• A welt-line across the scalp, tender to hat brims for 2 days
• A minute of seeing sparkles at the edges of things
• /me lifts their hat and gingerly fingers the welt beneath

Recovery 2 days of tenderness under the hat and no more.·No doctor needed

A whip-thin branch lashes the side of your neck as you flash past, a hot stripe like a wasp with conviction. It raises a welt your collar rubs at all day, and every man in the bunkhouse will have a theory about where it truly came from.

• A thin welt along the neck for 2 days that invites exactly the wrong questions
• Collar chafe against it all day, you ride with the button open

Recovery 2 days to fade, faster than the jokes will.·No doctor needed

One twig finds your cheek in the whole dark forest, a shallow scratch from cheekbone to jaw that stings smartly and bleeds three drops, total. The horse never broke stride, and neither, you will claim, did you.

• A thin scratch down one cheek for 2 days, rakish, if you angle it right
• A sting when you wash your face tomorrow

Recovery 2 days and gone, likely without even a mark to keep.·No doctor needed

You see it coming with a whole heartbeat to spare and flatten yourself along the horse's neck, cheek to mane. The branch skims the back of your coat, you feel it walk its twigs across your spine, one, two, three, and touches nothing else. You ride out the far side breathing like a bellows.

• Untouched, the branch combed your coat and took nothing
• A racing heart and a fierce grip on the mane for the next mile
• /me stays flat against the horse's neck a good while after the danger's past

Recovery Nothing to heal, sit up whenever your spine agrees to it.·No doctor needed

The branch swats your hat off your head, you duck under the limb itself, and, by no plan of yours, your hand finds the hat midair behind your back. You gallop on wearing it before you fully believe it happened. The person riding behind you will never stop telling this.

• Wholly unhurt, improbably stylish
• A witness sworn to the story, which is worse than a wound
• /me settles the caught hat back on, as if that was always the plan

Recovery None, though your reputation may never recover from the improvement.·No doctor needed

The branch that should have taken your head square is dead through and through, it bursts against your chest into a soft explosion of punk-wood and dust, weightless as a handful of flour. You ride out of the drifting cloud dusted pale from hat to belt like a ghost of yourself, entirely unhurt, while the forest reconsiders.

• Untouched, the killing branch crumbled to powder on your chest
• Coated in pale wood-dust, ghostly by moonlight, until you beat it out
• The broken stub on that tree gets pointed out on every ride after
• /me rides out of the dust cloud pale as a haunt, grinning through it

Recovery Nothing to heal, the forest took its shot and had nothing in the chamber.·No doctor needed