Via Lunae (the incredibly rough draft)

Roughly three people may remember the last time I posted a novel here, entitled Goddaughter. This is mostly the same, except I changed the title. And I wrote this during Na No Wri Mo and had way more fun while writing it, one of the major reasons being the fact that I have arranged entire scenes around lame puns. And I increased the number of shout outs. And I also increased the amount of not giving a fuck. This draft is not necessarily better, it simply takes itself less seriously. You don't have to compare them, I know it was a very long time ago.

All readers are allowed to comment whenever they see something that is stupid, redundant, esoteric, overwhelming, inaccurate, boring, nonsensical, or otherwise unpalatable. They are also to mention if something is brilliant, groundbreaking, well-executed, subtle, accurate, exciting, perfectly sensible, or otherwise palatable. Groan when you see a pun. Say "Aha!" if you hear a shout out.

This post doubles as a Table of Contents and shall be edited constantly. A new chapter shall be posted every week once in two weeks somewhere in the general time frame of one to two weeks, to allow for reading time on behalf of the readers and procrastination time on behalf of the author.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2

edited 31st Jan '12 9:45:27 AM by Leradny

Chapter 1: Bea

I’d cried so hard on my first Ambulatio Longa that my dad had stayed behind with me, for one more day. The route that we take starts at the Ash Fields by the foot of Sun Mountain in Herridia. Thwaite ends it on the coast of the Lip of the Ocean, what the still folk call Lunaterra. It is a very long walk. If we make sure to go at a steady pace every day for two months, we’ll likely make it in time without running ourselves into the ground. And even though I’d made that trip three times a year, every year, since a bit after my sixth birthday, the thought of going on my own suddenly made two months seem like forever. As everyone else left me behind so that I would be able to complete my adulthood alone I thought I would never reach the Lip on my own.

I couldn't decide whether I should stop my tears out of relief, or cry even harder because we'd just broken the rules. Then, my dad sat me down and told me that breaking rules is all right if we do it to help people, although it is better if we only bend them a bit so that we don’t push our luck. The judges of earth and sky are fair, he said, and if you run into the right one, they won’t mind if you break one rule to help someone else, especially if your record was mostly clean to begin with.

I still don’t break the rules if I can help it, but once I reached Thwaite after one and a half months of traveling, I felt like an adult, and that I could do anything. And, since nothing bad happened to me or my dad, I relaxed a bit about the rules.

The cities where the still folk live burn like suns every now and then along the route, grey suns roaring with every car that leaves or comes back. If we stay too near them, we can't sleep or see the stars, and any game is sure to be giving them a wide berth as well. I was born in one of those cities, but I can't remember much about it now, except for the name: Critheannburgh.

I'd skirted away from the cities during my first Ambulatio Longa as an adult, because people aren't supposed to get help. I was also scared stiff of straying too far from the rules, since my dad had already bent them for me. But since Cat was around, I thought it meant that things would be different, or at least the same as usual, since I only had my dad while I was growing up.

It's not the same, though. I'd forgotten that with the last cool breezes of spring dwindling off, Via Lunae would be empty. Now, it really is just me and Cat around a fire between a road and a forest, with Marzka buzzing on the edge of our patch of grasslands. Lying on my left side as my dad told me once, I can see the moon curving onto the horizon like a sideways smile, grass rising like the long fur of a wolf. It's how my dad taught me to tell time, whether the moon was getting bigger or fading away.

The moon had been full when Cat and I started out on our marriage rite, waiting while everyone else had gone ahead of us down Via Lunae. No shepherds with their flocks scattered like clouds in the grass and dogs darting at the heels of any rogue sheep, or hunters with their bows. And a few days ago, there had been nothing in the sky except for the stars. So it's a comfort to see her again, smiling at me like my dad said.

I curl my fingers against my palm with only my thumb sticking out and hold it up seeing how close the moon looks to the white edge of my nails. I need to trim them soon, but I hadn't gotten around to it. It's too late now. When Cat rolls over in her bundle of red wool cloth, the grass flattens under her weight and I feel my chest squeeze, too.

"Oi, Bea," she says.

"Yes?"

"You awake?"

I sigh.

Cat sits up across the glow of sleeping coals in the firepit, which is a bit of a relief, and asks me, "What'd you call Luna where you're from?"

After lowering my hand, I sit up too, drawing my knees up and keeping my own white blanket from slipping away. Even though I'd made sure to clear all of the rocks and twigs away, and my legs aren't straight against the ground, I feel little points digging into my calves and thighs.

"Cat, clear your ground or you'll be sore and grumpy in the morning."

"It's too dark now," she says. "I'll manage. Now tell me, what'd you call Luna?"

I sigh again, and look at the moon—again. "My dad said when the full flask is on its way, she smiles because her flask is getting full. And when the flask has come and gone, she's frowning because she'll need to find more water again."

"He would."

A night breeze blows and I shiver underneath my blanket before Cat gathers hers around her, replacing it with the rough feel of handspun wool. I'm cocooned in linen, which is smoother but cooler. My mentor, Sycamore, told me once that it's harder to feel plant emotions than it is to feel animal emotions.

Cat goes on, "So my mum told me I was born under a frown, only she said it was a bow. And that's how she knew I was going to make trouble."

"I don't know. A frown works for you, too."

I feel a ghost sensation flick across my face, like a memory of rolling my eyes and the corners of my lips turning down.

"Anyway," Cat says. "What were you born under?"

This time, the wince is sharp and real and very much mine. I look up at the stars as if they can tell me what moon I was born under, but they blink at me without giving anything up. In the end I have to say, "I don't know."

"Right. Sorry." Cat squirms out of her blankets and around the banked fire, but she stops when I lie down. For good measure, I roll over, so I can look away from the moon and the sight of Cat draped in shadows. "If I had to guess, I'd say a full flask. Or a smile."

"Probably."

"You know what they call a full flask, though? Over where my sister Zwei was born."

"Zwei," I repeat. It's one of the words for 'two' in a language I can't remember, from an inland country. And Cat's full name, Quatre, means ‘four’ in another country to the south of the route on the coast. "You mean Terra Via Solaris?"

"Yeah. They call it—at least, the bloke I was talking to—they call it an open eye."

Our laughs bury the silence, comforting and loud. I look at my hand again, dark in the night just like everything else, and wonder what Cat sees that I don't. A few days ago, there were only the stars to guide our way, but Cat hadn't stumbled at all. She offered to let me see through her eyes, and reached out for my hand. But I backed away at the last second, and she hasn't brought it up since then.

I was curious, of course. Even though I get along fine, everyone else thinks that I am remarkable for being able to work with magic that I can't see. When I worked with the still folk they showed me alchemist's powders and potions and other things that could help me to see magic. Those I turned down, too, but that made sense because I was more than a bit wary of them. Some of the potions smelled bitter, like fresh pine sap, or too sweet like over-ripe fruit.

Our laughs are buried in the silence that follows, and after a while Cat asks, "Where's the next rest stop again?"

"Near Marzka," I say. "Oh, no—almost to Parzinghaven. Eighty miles or so from here. We'll have to make two days of it if we're quick."

"So... Bea."

I sit up. "Is something wrong?"

"You're a healer, right?" I don't answer. "I just meant, d'you ever get lonely?"

"What?" I squint at her. My eyes are already quite bad, but in the darkness I might as well close my eyes and listen for where she is. "No. Where on Terrus did that come from?"

"Oh, come on. We haven't seen anyone since we started, the roads are all empty, and it's getting too bloody hot out here. And you like people more than I do."

"No," I say again. It's not that Cat doesn't like people. She just doesn't make very good first impressions, and when they decide to be rude right back at her, she ends up not liking them. "You're here."

That's probably the thing she wants me to say. It's not a lie, though there's more to it than that for healers, especially me. Lying back down, I press my hand against the blanket and feel the ground underneath it, like a warm shoulder. There are never words with rocks or soil or water, but sometimes they soak up the feelings of the people who've walked on them, if the feelings are strong or repeated enough times.

There are hundreds of summers bursting out, and winters freezing the land, plants growing and dying, animals hunting each other and roaming when the weather changed, people playing and talking or just moving on. When I was younger, Sycamore had to help me with sensing the memories that inanimate objects held.

My mentor would stretch out her old, warm arm, draped in wire bracelets and heavily beaded bronze cloth, to touch the centre of my forehead. It would be like being caught in a dust storm and then reaching shelter, everything around me shining brighter and hotter even in broad daylight. With her help, I could hear the trees around us conversing with each other in a language I couldn't understand, rabbits chittering to each other in the underbrush, and grass voices risen in a single chant about the sun.

I'm still not at the level Sycamore could bring me to. For one thing, I can only do the same thing when I'm lying still in the dark of night, and not trying for anything much besides sleep. Not to mention it's far easier to reach this depth with people. Sometimes, if I try very hard, for animals. But if I ever want to hunt again, that's out of the question.

"Right." Cat sounds less than pleased.

She flops back down, and the sleeping grass protests. Underneath the feeling that people have been here before and people will be here again, I feel a black sweltering emptiness in my chest. It's bigger than the twinge I feel whenever I want to call my dad around and realize he's waiting for us at the coast, hundreds of miles away. I hear dogs, and other voices calling Cat's name, and I realize Cat hadn't wanted the answer I gave.

"I do miss my dad a lot, though," I tell her.

"You would."

"Do you miss your dogs?"

"Tch. No." That is a lie. Cat swipes her hair out of her face. "You know they'd start scrapping at food, or whenever your back was turned. Zwei hated pulling them apart. Daftie. All of my sisters were too soft, come to think of it."

I close my mind off to Cat because it's unprofessional, and no one likes to feel lonely anyway. But before I do, the pressure slides away, and now that Cat feels better, I feel better. So I relax through my first watch as Cat sleeps, and when we switch off she only groans a little bit before getting up.

By the time the dawn light touches my fingers, I'm already watching the sunrise.

I have to stay awake, even though I can't see anything besides the dim curve of yellow on the horizon. The trees and grass to the east of us had begun to stir half an hour ago, in the strange silent way that plants wake. I can't shore up my mental walls and relax enough to fall back asleep. And if I built up the fire now, we'd only have an hour or two to use it since we're going to move on.

Anyway, Cat would get grumpy. She had the last watch, after all. Right now she's curled up under her over shirt, as if even a knife at her throat wouldn't be a good enough reason to wake her up.

Once the sky is a weak blue, I've had enough of feeling rocks poke into my side, which is well off the ground. I close my mind off so I won't feel any unpleasant emotions, tighten up the laces on my ghillie slippers, and walk carefully between the thicker tufts of grass. When I put a hand to Cat's shoulder and shake her, the turquoise beads at my right wrist clatter against the stone my dad brought me from my hometown.

"Cat."

"No," she snarls. But since her face is pressed into layers of wool over a patch of mostly bare earth, it doesn't sound very menacing. Just muffled.

"Cat," I say again. "You're going to be grumpy either way, so you might as well get up now. And I'm sure that those rocks don't feel very nice."

Cat whinges and makes a great fuss over getting up. She unstops her flask and pours water into her mouth, dribbling some down her neck. Then she shoves her feet into her moccasins and stomps out the coals. I trail over to my sleeping space and unfold the white rectangle carefully, shaking out all the dust before I fold it lengthwise and wrap it around my torso.

"Why'd you put us on watch anyway?"

"It's traditional."

Cat's mum and three sisters pop into my head, all with curly dark red hair instead of Cat's flat ginger strands. They were the last people we knew, who'd left us two weeks ago. The sight of everyone going down Via Lunae without us spreads across my eyes, and then the sight of the empty trail looms.

Even though I’d already gone down Via Lunae alone, I'd been scared for Cat’s sake, because she can’t heal as quickly as me and there wouldn't be anyone to help her if we got separated on the way. But now, even I had to admit that there really wasn't a need for watches if we were careful about storing our food.

Two flashes of white dangle at Cat's wrist while she sweeps her hair behind her ears.

"This tradition," she says, "Can stick its hand in a wolf's mouth and hope it doesn't bite."

I catch Cat rubbing the dog fangs on her bracelet, between her thumb and forefinger. One big jab of emotion bleeds through my guard so that I can feel it in my own chest. I tug my sleeves through my bracelets to hide my wince. But Cat quiets down and walks over to her shepherd's crook, lying near the ground she slept on. Staring and frowning at it even harder, she shrugs a knot of tension out of her shoulders and rolls her neck. I wince again at the cracks while Cat steps on the end of her staff, rolls it onto the top of her foot, and kicks it up into her hand.

We start walking back onto the central route, dust packed tightly enough for only a few small puffs to cushion our footsteps.

"Still," I tell her. "If we get in trouble and there's no one around to help us..."

"What trouble?"

Cat gestures to the empty grasslands around the central route. A few birds flutter through the trees and shrubs, singing. Ground squirrels poke their heads out of their holes and scurry back in. Rabbits flash across the ground in the distance. But other than that, the only movement I see is from the bracelets marking Cat's age. They're tied too loose, sliding back and forth with the sharp wave. Even on the dark stone road that the still folk use, running in the same direction as our trail but a stone's throw off one side, there isn't a person in sight.

"Well," I say.

Cat rolls her eyes and tells me, "Back when things were bigger and angrier, and when mountains spit up fire, I guess watches might have been useful. But right now, the only things we have to worry about are—"

A single car rushes into view, cutting her off. We watch the beige spot roar into the distance kicking up even beiger dust. Cat waves at that too.

"Yeah. Those. And since the people in them are smart enough to stop if we need to cross, and most of them only get up in the middle of the morning anyway, we don't need watches. I say we don't do them and just say we did."

I feel the thundering magic before I see the crowd of things coming towards us on the dark stone road, and bouncing like horses in a frothing gallop. The trees and grass shriek their fear at the noise and anger.

"Cat," I tug on her elbow. "Those feel quite dangerous, we should get away from th—"

Cat shakes her head. "Those horsemen are glowing, and they've got little threads connecting them to the people in the car. They won't get distracted just by seeing us, and since we're not in their path we won't get trampled."

"Oh."

The men shout in a language I can't understand as they pass us by. Axes and bows swing in their arms, showing through the cloud of dust every now and then. But like Cat said, the horsemen don't even look in our direction. It's a lot of hunters, and I think about the people in the car. Whether the reason they're being chased is because they've done something wrong, or because someone else—someone bad—had set the horsemen on their trail...

"I know, I know," Cat says. "I'd want someone to give me a hand, too, if I was being chased by mad hunters with horses and bows. But look at how fast they're going, Bea. We can't even catch up to those horsemen, so we might as well forget about it."

"Right."

"Sorry."

We clear the campsite more thoroughly than usual, then set off down Via Lunae side by side. Every now and then, Cat glances behind us—and whenever she does that, I can't help but look ahead.

edited 23rd Jan '12 7:59:44 PM by Leradny

It's alright. I didn't find your first chapter particularly stimulating, but I shall wait in hopes for the next.

Forgive me if I'm being too meticulous, but how do you pronounce Critheannburgh?

Is it krɪθænbɜrg, krɪθinbɜrg, or something else?

In other words does the vowel in the middle sound similar to "an" (stressed), "bean", or something else?

edited 24th Jan '12 9:14:52 AM by EldritchBlueRose

QQQQQ: Thank you. Although it wasn't really supposed to be stimulating in a literal sense, it was just a way to ease into the action without being completely mundane.

Eldritch: You're not being too meticulous. I wanted people to notice it, if only for the fact that it looks hard to pronounce. Critheannburgh is Gaelic, pronounced "kree-an-borough". Thanks to you, too.

Chapter 2: Liam

I used to be in the air force, so I am not only assumed to be a good driver, but I have to be. And in my opinion, I am not too shabby at it. Even though the vehicles I drove weren’t specifically on land, the anatomy is the same. So is the principle: One twitch of the wheel can save your life, or send you crash landing nose first into a mountain.

Something they don’t train you for in pilot school is working with someone else in the figurative cockpit. Or rather, when you are the someone else in the figurative cockpit, watching the pilot. Driver. I'd be just fine if I had something in my hands, even with the narrow range. With cars you can go four ways, but with planes you can go six. Backwards, forwards, side to side, up and down.

An average civilian car can push two-hundred and forty klicks an hour these days. But that burns up the gas like... well, burning gas. It has been exactly six hours, twenty-three minutes, and give or take a few dozen seconds since we left Il Lago di Stelle. Using the good old formula of distance equals rate over time, I glance at the speedometer, round up to six and a half, and calculate that Eos and I have driven roughly seven hundred and thirty klicks.

Call me old, but at the rate the trees are flashing past when I look out the window, seven-hundred klicks is too short a distance.

"Miles," Eos says. "Factor that in."

"What?"

"They use miles here. Not klicks."

"Oh, miles. Of course, we're in a different..." I stare at the dial again, and my entire brain deflates trying to gauge the distance. "I'm getting way too old to be converting kilometers to miles here, Eos."

"We have driven the equivalent of one thousand, one hundred and seventy-five miles since Il Lago, right..." Eos waits until the clock hits twelve forty-five. "Now."

"Show-off." I lean back. "And yes, living here for three years counts as cheating. How'd you know, anyway?

"My brain is young and fresh."

"No..." Straightening up anyway, I tell her, "How'd you know that I was trying to figure out how far we've come? You're just about the least likely person to be a telepath, ever."

"Oh. Well. You kept looking at your watch."

"No, I—" I cross my arms. Then I uncross them when I realize I'm being defensive. "Okay, maybe I was. A couple of times. What were you looking at me for? You're supposed to be driving, here."

"Peripherals."

"Again: Show-off."

"Well, maybe you should stop acting like you're late and distracting me." Using her peripherals, Eos reaches over and wraps her hand around my wrist, covering my watch like an artist smearing ivory paint over my own dark skin. The skin is warm from the steering wheel, and—ugh, my heart had just started to slow down to a reasonable pulse. With my safety net hidden from view, it pumps maniacally again.

Some people have habits. I should say most people have habits. But then again, most people tend to do things that are so harmless that even they aren't aware of it. It's the harmful ones that get attention. People will do anything to make stressful situations easier to handle. They smoke, drink, gamble. Others talk it out, exercise, paint.

Eos retreats into her head. She's not a talker, even at the best of times. People say a lot of things about this woman, with her hair always gathered in a pristine bunch at the nape of her neck, piercing blue eyes, and the distinction of being a war hero. But no one would ever say that she is a talker. Instead of doing the hard thing and trying to get her to open up, I learned how to read her body language.

Statuesque comes to mind. Not only because she's tall and shapely, but because she naturally holds herself still. So reading her is hard, too. But in the same way rock is different from cloth, there is a difference between relaxed Eos and the person who has taken her place. The person who showed up when we opened the door to her hotel room and saw that it was mostly untouched, had it not been for the fact that the two most important things in our lives were both missing.

I watched her freeze over as she called the cops and told me to pack my things. I watched her scowl at the backs of the gondoliers. Their languid paddling was fine for the luxury that defined the people who lived in floating mansions with one room bigger than my entire house, but it set my teeth on edge when I was trying to figure out what had happened to my son.

Now, if I stretch, I can watch both of our faces in the rear view mirror. Mine is loose with age, calm and dark. Hers is pale, angular, taut with the barely-masked worry that only single parents have.

For all her insistence that she is Daphne's big sister and they happened to get orphaned, she counts as a single parent. Only one of those would have politely thanked police officers when she was pointed to the gate that a suspected kidnapper may have gone through, and then kicked at the outer shell of the wall as if the whole business was its fault.

And only another single parent would have followed her through. I thought about kicking the wall, too, but then I'd caught her limping to the car she'd rented out. I tried not to blame the security. The police were sorry. The wall, inanimate. But their jurisdiction was pretty clearly defined by a shoreline, and a wall which had not only failed to keep trouble out, but to keep the kidnapper from escaping.

When Eos' grip tightens on my arm, I twitch. This reminds Eos that she isn't holding the wheel with both hands, and she lets go.

"Sorry," she says.

"No problem."

"We'll find them. They'll be okay. But first..."

The car eases onto the side of the road and we shoot past a sign in a language that I don't understand. Disorientated by the pull to the right instead of the left, I sway like I'm seasick before my eyes refocus. She doesn't pick up her speed when the turn's over, but she slows down to a narrow shack at the side of the road with a sign in Lunaterran: Rest Room.

"Eos, I have no idea what a rest room is or why we've pulled over to one."

"First, we're going to change out of these clothes. Then we'll go down the road to this one place I went to for work. It's pretty small, but it has everything we need to restock."

The yellow sundress and heels Eos hadn't changed out of transform as she climbs out of the car and stretches to her full height. Instead of being delicate, they look flimsy, like tissue paper tied over steel. I myself am wearing a dress shirt and slacks, which are all right for gondola rides but don't take kindly to urgent road trips. So the changing thing is understandable. But the second one, that's less intuitive. We have plenty of water and a couple days' worth of emergency rations. Eos walks out to the back of the car and I follow her, asking, "Restock?"

She pops the trunk open, unlatches the lid of a suitcase, and searches around, her light brown hair flicking with every layer of clothes that she pushes aside. I try to peer over her shoulders, but the heels give her a good few inches on me. Finally, she takes something decidedly not clothes-shaped, or even shoe-shaped, and makes a very familiar clicking sound with it.

"Eos—" I stare. "You packed a gun on your vacation? To the safest city in the world?"

"No." She turns the safety on, puts it back in the holster, and tosses it to me. "I packed two."

"Well..." I peer at the gun in my hand. "Whatever. They've already been kidnapped."

Eos takes out the other gun and slings the belt over her left arm, then drapes a more sensible outfit over her right. As she pushes open the door, she twists her head back and says, "Cover me."

"From the invisible scouts of the people who kidnapped our young 'uns?"

She frowns, which is nothing unusual. Then she smirks, and I brace myself. "Considering who you're talking to, they might be invisible."

"You—you!" I search around my suitcase for another change of clothes and look over my shoulder as Eos pulls the door shut behind her. "Evil woman! You did that on purpose!"

"Why are you looking for invisible scouts?"

"Shut up!"

My shoulders loosen up a little when Eos strides out of the shed, wearing cargo pants bleached from washing, a pair of gray combat boots, and a black jacket. As much as I like to judge people based on their ethics and personality instead of appearances, it just doesn't feel right talking tactics with someone in a dress that probably costs more than the gun at her hip.

"You look good," I say while we switch off. And because I've started to get into the mindset again, I give Eos a thump on the shoulder. "Dressed for the occasion."

She's already started to walk to the car. Since her hands are still full, Eos kicks the door shut. It clatters into place. "No scouts in there. But make it quick."

The light in the rest room consists of a few thin rays of sunshine from between crooked, dusty planks and the badly fitted door. I blink in the cool blue darkness as my eyes adjust, sneeze out a breath full of dry powdery air, and then get moving. The rest room lives up to its name. When I knock down something loose on the floor, I upright it and find myself squinting at the outline of a rough wooden stool. Eos bangs on the wall.

"You okay?"

"Yeah." I put the stool down, drape my gun belt over it, and step sideways to clear it. Just my luck—I bark my shin against another. "Gosh darn it!"

Bang, bang, "Do you ever get out of Dad mode?"

"Never." Waving a hand in front of me and crouching, I feel for more things that I might trip over, fall and break my head and never see my son ever again. "Eos, how many chairs are in here?"

"Four."

The last two are sitting in a corner, side by side. They're so out of the way that it's infuriating. But my clothes go on top of one and I sit on the other.

"Handy," I call. "Why do they have these rest rooms here, anyway?"

"Other than people like us, looking for a quick change?" A silence. I imagine that Eos shrugs before remembering that I can't see her, and then she says out loud, "This freeway goes right along the central route of the Lunaterran nomads. I guess they use these, too."

"Got it."

I pull off my dress shirt carefully, and I realize that just about everything in here is dusty and covered with splintery rough wood. After struggling for a second, I sigh and decide that I can wash these things later. From then on, the goal is for speed instead of care. Right when I'm adjusting my belt and checking my gun, Eos bangs on the door again.

"Liam, hurry up!"

"What? Why?"

"There's a lot of things coming for us, and they look like they're on horses."

My gun is loaded with the safety on, of course, and I feel like kicking myself for wasting time. But if I hadn't checked, Eos is the sort to frown at it anyway, so I shove the door open with one hand on the grip. Said door is loose enough on its crappy hinges to swing all the way to the wall—or, it would have, if Eos hadn't been standing in between the two.

"Ow!" comes her yell.

"Sorry!" I yell back.

The door swings halfway to closed. Eos steps out from behind it, rubbing her face and glaring at me. At least I hadn’t broken her nose. Neither she nor Daphne would ever let me live it down. Then she looks back to the grassy plains off the side of the road and points to it with her left. I can see a cloud of dust rising out of the horizon, but even when I squint, I can't make out anything besides a gaggle of bobbing silhouettes.

"Cavalry?" I ask. "Wait. No one has a cavalry nowadays. Mounted rangers? Old fashioned highwaymen?"

"I don't know."

Eos looks from side to side, as if the black van of a criminal had suddenly pulled up next to us. I look up at the sky for jets—or, more likely, news choppers. But there's nothing in the clear blue sky except for some clouds, and we both shuffle to the car, torn between trying not to drop our things and not caring one bit about our nice clothes in the face of danger. I compromise by opening the backseat, and pile my outfit onto the floor over the brown bag Eos had packed.

"How can you tell they're on horses, anyway?" I ask.

"The movement. Cars, bikes, even runners have a way smoother track." She frowns at the cloud, instead of squinting like I do. "Also, they're carrying stuff that swings."

I squint at them. They do bob slightly. "Giving you the gait." I get her things and toss them down, too. Her heels clatter on the side of the bag. They settle between rounded disc shapes at about the right shape and size to be potion flasks. "But you can see their nightsticks or whatever, and that is just freaky—"

Eos waves her hand from the front seat of the car. I have a split second to wonder why she hasn't gotten in yet, before she asks, "Shotgun?"

"You're the one with absurdly good vision."

Eos opens the front door and holds the keys out. I open the passenger door and catch the keys, then Eos steps to the left and vaults—yes, vaults—over the hood. Which is, in fact, showing off. But at least it was fast. As for me, I clamber over the passenger seat and the stick shift without closing the door, then I buckle in and check the mirrors. Since we're the same height, there's no adjusting that I need to do, which is a relief.

By the time I twist the key into the ignition, Eos has rolled the window down and crouched on the seat with her hand on her gun. She leans out the window and stares at the cloud, which to my less freakish eyes looks vaguely like a group of horsemen now. And they are definitely headed towards us, still the only car on the road. Over the click of Eos' safety getting switched off, I clear my throat.

"Hey Eos?" I ask. "Could you, uh..."

"What?"

"Could you try not to shoot the horses?"

Before I decided to bring George with me to Il Lago di Stelle, I'd thought about going to a ranch near my place which gave out horse rides to kids. The things I might have reminded George to do, like 'Keep your legs in the stirrups' or 'Hold onto the reins, not his neck' ring painfully in my ears. In the end, I couldn't decide on whether I should have him ride behind me or ride on a pony of his own, and since a plane flight and short stay in Il Lago would be only slightly more expensive than a flight to our mainland for a stay at a country ranch, I'd taken up Eos' offer.

Eos doesn't say anything.

Somehow, I feel more afraid of my best friend's silence than I am of the unknown horsemen with weapons, which currently outnumber us by at least a dozen. I ask her, "Did you hear me?"

"I heard you," Eos says. Since she leans out of the window right when I start driving the car back onto the road, I can't see her face. "I can't make any promises."

"Please don't shoot the horses?" I ask, deeply unsettled. "It makes me feel bad. I mean, they didn't mean to carry our enemies—"

"What do you mean—oh. Jesus, Liam! No!" It looks like she's gotten my mistake. I don't know whether I should feel better or worse at how shocked she sounds. "I just meant to say that most of the time, their heads will be between my barrel and their riders' chests. So I probably can't help shooting a couple, and I probably can't help it if they die, or fall and get trampled anyway."

"Oh."

"I'm sorry." This lack of control is harshing my buzz, and I should be the one apologizing for putting the pressure on her. So I still feel terrible—at least until Eos adds, "I'll try not to. I promise."

My stomach churns. I look ahead of us at the empty road and behind us at the cavalry or whatever, who've started to curve their path onto the road and straight after us. It's a knee-jerk reaction to step a little harder on the gas. Besides, shaking them off before any shots need to be fired will ease both of our consciences.

"I'll make it fast," I tell her. "That full gallop can't last long. Once they get tuckered out, we'll probably be at the city, and who knows? They might give up."

Ten minutes later, they haven't flagged at all. Eos has her gun out the window, aiming at them. Then she shouts, and even though her words are almost lost to the wind, I'm looking in the mirror and the sight behind us helps me to fill in the blanks.

"Liam? Do you see any horse heads?"

I can hear hooves pounding against the dirt. But after a look over my shoulder to make sure, the only thing I see is that the horsemen at the front are sitting very far forward. If they were sitting, they'd be right on the necks of their horses. It's not until a few of them break loose of the swarm that the reason Eos asked that question becomes clear. There are no horse heads. There are only seamless transitions between men's stomachs, and the front legs of horses.

"I take back what I said before," I call, and step on the gas.

I wonder what kind of miles these people are using?

Regular miles and kilometers. It's a play on the rivalry between the metric system and US customary units.

If they're regular miles, you should switch them around. Customary miles are longer than kilometers, unless it's supposed to be a joke that they did their math wrong.

edited 5th Feb '12 9:48:41 PM by ohsointocats

Duly noted. Rough draft and all.