“In their way.”
“It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen.”
I watched her watch them. The open wonder on her face turned her natural beauty to sheer radiance. I stared at her in awe. She had come from another world and found this one extraordinary at every turn. Singing grass, autumn bells, titania moss, and two florins exchanging something wordless on a fence post in the afternoon sun. Through her eyes, I found it extraordinary again, too. It was pure magic to rediscover my beloved home through her eager exploration.
The florin exchange lasted perhaps thirty seconds. No sound could I hear, simply the two of them holding hands with tails raised and fanned wide. Then Berry returned to my shoulder. The cream florin did not move from its post.
Berry’s eyes were forward. Tails lower than they had been all morning.
“What did they say?” Sammy asked.
Berry made a sound. Soft. Brief.
I translated. Sammy could understand Berry, but the florin had given me extra details. Information they didn’t say with words but a picture in my head. I swallowed, not wanting to keep anything from Sammy, but not wanting to worry her needlessly more. “They said the falls are beautiful.”
“Right!” Sammy smiled and reached for her notebook.
Berry’s tail pressed once against the side of my neck.
I knew that signal. I had felt it before storms, in the hour before rain when the farm animals went still and the air changed its character. It meant,pay attention.Not turn back. More ofsomething is coming, and you should be ready.
I was ready.
I kept Sammy ahead of me on the path to camp, where I could see her and where she belonged.Mine.My heart rumbled. My little human was mine to protect, to love, to cherish. Nothing would harm her so long as I lived. I swore it to the gods old and new.
That night,we made camp at a sheltered bend where the trees closed in on three sides, and I could see the road in both directions. Sammy did not question the choice. She was pleasantly tired, settling cross-legged by the fire with her notebook propped on her knees and the wildflower from the meadow pressed between two pages.
I built the fire larger than the evening warranted and kept it fed.
Sending our first status message to the sheriff through Berry at the appropriate hour, I gave the florin the basics: our direction, our heading, and that we were well. Nothing specific. Not the settlement, not Pell, not what the elder had told us about a small creature moving east at night.
I was not certain yet. And I would not send unnecessary alarm.
Carving at a captured bit of wood by the firelight while Sammy wrote, I scraped and shaped. In no time at all, a small alicorn took shape beneath my knife. It was the kind of task my hands did when my mind needed something to work against. Sammy fell asleep before I finished. I set the carving aside, banked the fire, and listened to the forest until I was satisfied.
Then I slept, keeping my back to the woods and my little human in my arms. Her pleasant warmth permeated my chest, and her hair tickled my nose. I sighed in contentment and the florin mimicked the sound, curling around Sammy’s knees.
Despite the ease of the evening, I woke twice in the night and scanned the tree line.
Both times: nothing.
I chose to trust in the woodland guardians after that. The night stayed quiet, and Sammy slept soundly, and for now that was enough.
5
The Heat of the Hot Spring
Sammy
He had planned this. One hundred percent without a doubt.
I knew it the moment the trees thinned and the slight sour scent of sulfur hit me. The breeze carried the aroma of minerals. A steam rose from the land just ahead.
I stopped walking. Guruk did not.
He continued three paces ahead before realizing I had fallen behind and turned to look at me with an expression of innocence that he had in no way perfected.
“You planned this,” I said, arms crossing over my chest.
