Gallop & Gain

By the time Yorn decided to join a gym, he had already spent three full days arguing with himself about it.

Not out loud.

Mostly.

He told himself he didn’t need one. He lived in a mountain town. He walked constantly. He hauled things. He climbed things. He had survived years of cold weather, bad terrain, and the general physical demands of being a very large yeti in a world designed for people with narrower shoulders and fewer opinions about stairs.

But still.

There was something irritatingly persuasive about structure.

A routine.
A plan.
Equipment with names.
The vague fantasy of emerging from an organized fitness program somehow more capable, more disciplined, and perhaps slightly less likely to get winded while carrying boxes of books for Elara and then pretending he was fine.

So, one bright morning, Yorn found himself standing outside Gallop & Gain Fitness and staring at the sign like it had personally challenged him.

The building sat near the busier end of town, broad-windowed and energetic-looking, with cheerful banners in the front windows and just enough polished glass to make Yorn briefly regret not checking whether his fur was doing anything unusual. Inside, he could already hear the rhythmic clank of weights, the soft whir of treadmills, and the faint, persistent pulse of upbeat music chosen by someone who believed exercise should feel like a pep talk delivered by a drumline.

He opened the door.

The smell hit him first: rubber mats, eucalyptus towels, clean metal, and the faint medicinal optimism of a place where people regularly made promises to themselves.

The gym was full.

Weights clanked in one corner. Treadmills lined the far wall in a neat row of mechanical smugness. A set of stretching mats occupied the center of the room. Bright motivational posters were mounted high along the walls, each somehow more sincere than the last.

One showed Mayor Llama in mid-gallop over an obstacle course with the words:

BE THE BOUNCE YOU WISH TO SEE IN THE WORLD

Another featured Sir Reginald hoisting a kettlebell with such knightly intensity that he appeared to be defending the kingdom from inactivity:

TRAIN LIKE A KNIGHT. FIGHT LIKE A LEGEND.

Yorn stood just inside the doorway for a moment, taking it all in.

“All right,” he muttered to himself. “Normal. This is normal.”

No one heard him.
A mercy.

He moved deeper into the gym, trying to look like someone who definitely belonged there and not like a cryptid attempting to blend into a world of foam rollers and accountability.

He passed a rack of dumbbells.
A wall of resistance bands.
A woman doing lunges with the focused rage of someone settling a personal score.

And then he saw the treadmills.

They looked safe enough.

That was, of course, the first mistake.

Yorn had no interest in beginning his gym life by failing publicly at anything complicated. The treadmill seemed straightforward: walk, then perhaps jog, then dismount with dignity intact. It involved no choreography, no grunting under a barbell, and no obvious opportunity to get trapped in a machine shaped like regret.

He stepped onto one, looked briefly for guidance that was not immediately condescending, and pressed a button.

The belt began to move.

So far, so good.

He started walking.

A little stiffly at first, but not badly. He found the rhythm quickly enough. One foot, then the other. The machine hummed beneath him. The pace was modest. Manageable. He could do this.

He glanced around the room with growing confidence.

No one was staring.
No one was laughing.
He was, against all odds, succeeding.

“This isn’t so bad,” he muttered.

Feeling bolder, he pressed the speed up a notch.

Still fine.

Then another notch.

That was his second mistake.

Yorn was built for snow-packed trails, rocky inclines, and the general unpredictability of natural terrain. He was not built for a moving belt that demanded total obedience and punished misjudgment instantly.

His left foot came down slightly wrong.
His right overcorrected.
The belt kept moving with the cold mechanical certainty of a thing that had never once cared about pride.

For one spectacular moment, Yorn remained upright entirely through momentum and denial.

Then he was gone.

He flew backward in a blur of white fur, flailing limbs, and immediate regret. One arm pinwheeled. One leg kicked uselessly into open air. He caught the edge of the treadmill for half a second, lost it, and cartwheeled off the machine with all the grace of an avalanche developing self-awareness.

He hit the floor on his back with a thud that made three people turn and one yoga ball drift slowly away in alarm.

The treadmill, victorious, kept running.

Yorn lay there staring at the ceiling, winded and motionless, as if stillness alone might undo the event.

Then a shadow fell across him.

“Well,” said a warm, amused voice, “that was dramatic.”

Yorn blinked.

A broad hand appeared in his field of vision.

He looked up.

The man standing over him was, unmistakably, a centaur.

Not just any centaur, either. Clyde had the solid, confident build of someone who spent a great deal of time lifting things on purpose. His human half was broad-shouldered and athletic, with a relaxed, open face and the easy smile of someone difficult to truly embarrass in front of. His equine half was equally powerful—well-groomed chestnut coat, strong legs, steady stance, the kind of controlled physical presence that made it immediately obvious he knew exactly how bodies worked and had very little patience for melodrama about them. He wore a fitted gym shirt, a whistle on a cord around his neck, and the expression of a man who had seen people lose arguments with exercise equipment before and bore them no ill will for it.

This, Yorn would later realize, was Clyde’s great gift.

He made humiliation survivable.

Yorn accepted the offered hand.

“That,” Yorn said as Clyde hauled him effortlessly back to his feet, “felt worse than it looked.”

Clyde laughed. “I promise you, it looked pretty bad.”

Yorn groaned and rubbed the back of his neck. “Great.”

“Don’t worry,” Clyde said. “Treadmills do this. They wait. They lull you into confidence. Then the second you start respecting yourself, they strike.”

Yorn snorted despite himself.

Clyde offered him a firmer, more proper handshake this time. “I’m Clyde. I run the place.”

“Yorn.”

“Nice to meet you, Yorn.”

Up close, Clyde’s whole manner was immediately disarming. Friendly without being pushy. Confident without being smug. He had the very specific energy of someone who took fitness seriously but understood that most people arrived at a gym carrying at least three kinds of insecurity and probably one old injury.

Yorn gestured weakly toward the treadmill. “I assume that’s not how people usually introduce themselves here.”

“Oh, I’ve seen worse,” Clyde said. “One guy got launched sideways into a resistance band rack and came out looking like modern sculpture.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“It’s not supposed to be comforting. It’s supposed to make you feel less special.”

“That’s worse.”

Clyde grinned. “You’ll fit in fine.”

That, unexpectedly, helped.

Yorn glanced around the gym again, feeling less like a trespasser now and more like a man who had at least survived his initiation ritual.

“I’m new,” he admitted. “To the gym, I mean. Not just to… all of this.”

Clyde nodded. “I figured.”

“That obvious?”

“You looked at the treadmill like it was a legal document.”

Yorn laughed once. “Fair.”

Clyde leaned one forearm against the side rail of the now-stopped machine. “So what are you here for? Strength? Endurance? General self-improvement? Revenge?”

“Mostly structure,” Yorn said. “I get plenty of exercise, technically. But it’s all mountain exercise. Walking, hauling, climbing, journalistic suffering. I thought maybe I should try doing it intentionally.”

Clyde’s expression brightened with immediate approval.

“That,” he said, “is a great reason.”

“It is?”

“It is if you don’t want to hate yourself in two weeks.”

Yorn blinked. “That’s… surprisingly reassuring.”

“I’m serious,” Clyde said. “People come in here chasing some fantasy version of themselves and usually end up miserable. But structure? Feeling better? Getting stronger on purpose? That I can work with.”

He glanced at the treadmill.

“Just maybe not with this beast right away.”

Yorn looked at it with deep suspicion. “I would support never speaking to it again.”

Clyde laughed and clapped him once on the shoulder.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you the rest of the place. We’ll start with something less likely to throw you at the wall.”

From there, the morning improved dramatically.

Clyde gave him a proper tour. He explained which machines were useful, which ones were nonsense, and which ones were “for people working through something personal.” He showed Yorn where the free weights were, how to stand correctly for lifts, how not to destroy his shoulders, and why stretching was not optional just because it looked undignified.

Yorn listened.

Partly because Clyde clearly knew what he was doing.
Partly because Clyde had the steady, encouraging patience of someone good at meeting people where they were.
And partly because, after the treadmill incident, Yorn would have followed almost any instruction that did not involve being publicly flung.

They started with manageable things.

Rows.
Carries.
A few guided movements.
Core work that Yorn initially dismissed and then immediately regretted.

Clyde corrected his posture without making him feel stupid. He laughed at the right moments. He told stories about other gym disasters with enough affection that Yorn stopped feeling like his own belonged in a museum.

At one point, while demonstrating a lift, Clyde lowered his voice and said, “Just so you know, Fabian once tried to start a yoga trend in here.”

Yorn looked up. “What happened.”

Clyde’s face took on the distant look of a man remembering fire.

“He kept calling the poses ‘emotional shapes.’”

“That sounds terrible.”

“It was terrible. Flamingos are not built for downward dog.”

Yorn laughed hard enough that he nearly lost his grip on the weight.

By the end of the session, he was sweaty, mildly sore, and in much better spirits than he had any right to be.

Clyde handed him a towel.

“You did good.”

Yorn looked at him. “Even with the launch.”

“Especially with the launch. Anybody can feel confident on the way in. Sticking around after the humiliating part counts.”

Yorn considered that.

Then nodded.

“Thanks.”

Clyde shrugged in that easy, open way of his. “That’s what I’m here for.”

And that was more or less how it started.

Yorn came back the next week.
Then again after that.
Soon enough he and Clyde fell into an easy rhythm—part coaching, part friendship, part mutually amused commentary on the peculiar physics of Snowdrift Bay fitness culture.

There were, naturally, more mishaps.

Yorn once threw a medicine ball much harder than intended and nearly beaned Whirly, who had wandered in for what he described as “rage management through upper-body engagement.”

Another time Clyde, carried away by his own enthusiasm, attempted to teach a spin class before remembering halfway through setup that stationary bikes had not been designed with centaurs in mind and never, under any circumstances, should be.

Still, between the mishaps, real progress happened.

Yorn got stronger.
More comfortable.
Less suspicious of equipment.
Slightly more suspicious of group classes.

Clyde became one of those rare people who made Snowdrift Bay feel smaller in the best possible way: not less strange, but more navigable. He was the sort of friend who could laugh at you without making you feel lesser, correct your form without making you feel clumsy, and hand you a water bottle after a bad set with exactly the right amount of sympathy.

One evening, after a long workout, the two of them stood near the weight rack watching the last few evening members finish up.

The gym was quieter then. Softer. The windows glowed gold from the setting sun. Somewhere in the corner, someone was pretending to stretch while very obviously eavesdropping on a breakup. A rack of dumbbells sat in satisfying order. The treadmills, for once, were silent.

Yorn wiped his forehead with a towel and exhaled.

“You know,” he said, “I came in here because I thought I needed a workout routine.”

Clyde glanced at him. “And?”

Yorn looked out across the gym. Then at the treadmills. Then back at Clyde.

“And now I’m paying monthly to be insulted by equipment.”

Clyde laughed. “That’s the spirit.”

“I mean it,” Yorn said. “That machine threw me like I owed it money.”

“You recovered.”

“Physically.”

Clyde leaned one forearm against the rack. “That’s still better than most people.”

Yorn snorted. “Comforting.”

There was a short pause.

Then Yorn said, “Still better than sitting around pretending hauling boxes counts as a full philosophy of fitness.”

“That depends,” Clyde said. “Were the boxes heavy?”

“Yes.”

“Then it was at least a minor religion.”

Yorn laughed and tossed the towel over one shoulder.

For a moment they stood there in the easy quiet, the kind that didn’t need much done to it.

Then Clyde jerked his head toward the treadmills. “So. Same time next week?”

Yorn looked at the row of machines with the flat distrust one reserved for recurring enemies.

“…Yeah,” he said. “I’d like another chance to disappoint that one specifically.”

Clyde grinned. “Good. I was hoping you’d say that.”

He started toward the back room, then paused and called over his shoulder, “And stretch tonight, or you’re going to wake up tomorrow moving like old furniture.”

Yorn nodded. “That feels threatening, but fair.”

“It’s experience,” Clyde said. “Threatening comes later.”

Yorn watched him go, shook his head once, and smiled to himself.

Then he looked back at the silent treadmill.

“All right,” he muttered. “Next time.”

The treadmill, being a treadmill, offered nothing.

Somehow, that felt personal.