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“What?” he asked.
“The horse,” she said, pointing.
While they argued, the little horse was trundling slowly up the path on the right, with the hover cart trailing behind.
“I can’t believe it,” she laughed, heading after it.
“Oh, so when the horse has a feeling, you follow right along,” Jubal joked.
“He lives here,” Chloe said, shrugging. “Besides, everyone knows animals have great instincts.”
“You’re lucky you’re so cute,” Jubal told her sternly.
But he was trying not to smile.
A light breeze picked up, cooling her cheeks and suddenly, everything just felt lighter and better.
She followed the little horse, with Jubal by her side, and even the steep climb and the pack on her back couldn’t get her down.
The path curved around a hillside and then opened up into a sunlit meadow. Flowering trees dappled the emerald grass with shade and birds sang overhead, and there was the sound of a gurgling stream in the background.
The little horse immediately began munching on the tender shoots of grass.
“Oh,” Jubal said. “Now I see why he didn’t want to wait for us. Should we have our lunch, too?”
“Good idea,” Chloe said. “I wonder what Oberon packed.”
They found a nice flat part of the meadow that had the perfect amount of filtered light from between the boughs of a flowering tree.
Working quietly together, they unfolded the patchwork quilt that was on the little horse’s cart and laid it out on the soft grass.
“Sit,” Jubal said. “I’ll figure out lunch.”
“Thank you,” Chloe told him, lowering herself to the blanket in relief.
She knew he was tired too, but she honestly felt like her legs were about to give out. Which wasn’t all from the hike.
Do not think about last night and all the reasons you are tired…
Jubal jogged back with an honest-to-goodness picnic basket.
“Is that an actual basket?” Chloe couldn’t help asking. “Not a cell or a food-seal?”
“It’s a basket,” he said, lifting it up slightly. “Real as they come.”
“Oberon sure knows how to do romance,” Chloe said, shaking her head.
For a moment, it almost seemed as if the sunlight gleamed brighter and the birds sang a little louder, as if in response to her kind words.
But surely an AI wouldn’t experience pleasure when complimented.
Would he?
Across the meadow, the little horse shot out his tongue like a frog to grab a flower from one of the trees.
“Oh wow, did you see that?” Chloe asked.
“He must be a hybrid,” Jubal said. “Or maybe he was brought from someplace where the horses here have evolved.”
