Wheatley remembers the first time it had ridden in something horse-drawn. Well, maybe it hadn't been actually drawn by horses, in hindsight, but from what it could remember, it gave the younger Wes all the same wonder and joy. It was a far less fancy sleigh, being a log sled for logs, but Wes had been too young and unknowledgeable to pull the sled properly, so instead, it had perched upon the logs and giggled as its mentor grumbled carols in the snow-filled woods. The outfit it wears now feels like those moderate lined coats did back then. A lavish winter cloak died in reds and browns, paired with branch-like antlers on its head via headband; it wasn't the modest chaos it'd grown used to wearing, but it was comfortable nonetheless. It was the sleigh that felt wrong. Too enclosed. Too unlike the logsled it had ridden back as a young lumber runt. But since the uppity coordinator lad wouldn't let it exit onto the parade route on top of the sleigh, so it had to scramble in. The jostle Wes felt and the accompanying noise it heard was also different from back then, stuck in the carriage of a woodsy sleigh until it could figure out how to safely clamber onto the carriage roof. Once it figured that out, though, and finally broke out into the open air... Oh. This felt more like those logsled trips. Yes. Wes was clutching the carriage roof for fear of falling off and being trampled by horses, but it was beginning to laugh regardless. Laughing because it could almost hear that grouch of an old fellow that had dragged it and the logs on the logsled. Waved because it remembered waving at all the birds tucked safely into trees and the squirrels brave enough to battle the winter weather. The clipclops of horse hooves make it beam, make it risk raising a paw from the roof to giddily wave at the audience while alternating between giggles and half-sung lyrics of half-remembered carols. It's a shame, really, that this will probably be the last time it gets to ride on a sleigh with no worries in the world other than trying to acknowledge everyone watching it pass by. But for now it gets to pretend it once again is too small for arenas and just the right size to fit on a logsled being tugged through the woods.
