I finally slow, expecting her to close the gap, but she doesn’t.
Because she’s collapsed.
I sigh, slowly circling back to where she’s now lying in a heap.
It’s then I realize that she’s run her shoes off, and her feet are oozing blood all over the ground. It’s a little satisfying, seeing how miserable she’s become. She feels the way I feel at having selected someone light and bright and weak.
I swear, I saw the darkness clearly.
I saw it.
But now she’s all brightly lit soul energy, buzzing and flickering, with oozing and filthy feet and a limp mortal frame.
I nudge her with my nose. She groans.
I nudge her again, and then I whinny, loudly.
She lifts her head, her eyes blinking, and then she drops to the ground again, shaking. “Can’t.”
I snort, and I toss my head, and I paw at the ground. Then I scream in her face.
She finally shoves to her elbows. “Just kill me,” she wheezes. “It would be nicer.”
I toss my head, and then I lower one shoulder.
She frowns. “Are you telling me I can ride?”
Before she didn’t ask. She just climbed on. I miss that stupid human. At least she was strong. As she shoves to her feet, trying to stand on her bleeding and sore feet, I realize she’s not doing so well. All the running I’ve forced on her, as exhilarating as it was for me, killing and leveling and destroying as I sped along, was terrible on her.
She’s practically wrecked.
I sigh heavily as I drop my shoulder even farther.
She finally manages, after trying three times, to scramble onto my back.
This time, when I take off, she just hangs on. She doesn’t try to change my path at all. I’m following a road the humans have created that’s labeled. It takes me north to circle around a mountain range, and there are signs on the path that say “I-80.” I want to ask her what they mean, but I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing I’m ignorant about it.
I haven’t gone much farther, barely reaching a sign that says, “Cargill Salt Work,” when she seems to pass out. Her body slumps, swaying concerningly on my back.
I have two options.
Dump her and let the bond destroy her when it snaps, possibly putting myself to sleep in a strange place, surrounded by almost no humanity with which to power me back up, or waken her and somehow improve the state of her physical health. Both options are unappealing, and I have no one to blame but myself. I chose badly, and then I injured her in my fury, worsening a bad situation.
My nostrils flare.
The rage inside me grows.
The safest and most prudent path for me is to nourish her and explain a bit about our purpose so she can stop fighting me about it. A little patience on my end could turn a liability into an asset. A human who would fight the darkness so hard could be a powerful force if she would instead embrace it.
Just past the salt factory, where it appears they’re drawing salt from a local polluted lake, I halt and shift forms. She slumps to the ground after I do, her body falling in a heap that looks like a very unnatural shape. I crouch down beside her and try to shift her so she’s lying flat. “Hello?” I poke her.
She doesn’t move, but she’s breathing.
“Wake up.” I kick her.
She’s still entirely still.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have killed the hundred or more people working here in this small plant before setting her down. Some of them might have been able to help me discover what’s malfunctioning about this mortal specifically. Other than her feet, which are now a bloody, sticky mess, she appears alright.
