“This is… this is delicious. I promise I will be good, so please make me more.”
I sigh and give him three more pancakes before making myself two. He eats one and then the next thing I know, he’s got the slice of pizza between two pancakes and is eating it like some kind of fucked-up sandwich while I stare on in horror.
“When I return to my realm, I will take you as my chef.”
“Do I have a choice in this? Because it sure sounds like I don’t. Let’s get going. I don’t want to be late for work, and who knows how much you’ll struggle with the escalator this time.”
I finish eating and clean up, which just gives me enough time to wash Kit’s food bowl before heading to the door. “Let us brave the world.”
“Sounds good,” he says as we walk down the stairs and out the front door where I jump, startled by the two horses tied up outside. One is busy eating a decorative bush the landlord is not going to be pleased to see missing.
I already know it’s going to be bad when Torin moves toward the closest one.
“I wanted something a bit more… flashy, but they were the only ones I could find in the area. I already had to walk quite far to find these two.”
“Did… Did you steal someone’s horses?” I ask in horror.
“Of course not. I paid for them.”
“Take them back.”
Torin looks gobsmacked that I would even suggest such a thing. “You cannot make me,” he declares like he’s a toddler. Unlike a toddler, he’s strong enough to pick me up and plop me down on the back of the horse.
“You will return these things immediately,” I declare while I grab on to save my life, convinced that I’m going to fall and die.
“I didn’t know you were so fussy. I’ll get you something else.What about a wolf mount?”
“Nope,” I say as I try to get off the horse, but he’s already climbing onto the other one and leading this one off. “No, no, no! Dammit, Torin, stop this horse!”
As someone who has lived in a city my entire life, I have never ridden a horse and really don’t plan to now. While there are a lot of magical mounts and some are still used today, they aren’t overly common when you can pop on the subway without having to feed it or clean up its shit.
“Let me off. Let me off!”
I debate bailing, but when I look down, using Kit’s eyes of course, it seems unreasonably far. I anxiously hang on, questioning whether I’ll just die if I leap off.
“You’re doing just fine,” Torin encourages, giving me two thumbs up like he doesn’t even need to hold on to the beast.
“My balls are being crushed with every step,” I complain as the horse picks up a trot. Like why is it going even faster? Does it not realize the misery I’m feeling?
“When you feel your ball sac split, you’ll know that you’ve conquered the horse,” he says, throwing my words from the escalator right back at me.
Is this karma?
This is surely karma.
“How do you even know where the library is?”
“I passed it on my quest to find a mount.”
My plan is to leap off the instant the animal stops moving, but it never does, all the way to the library while I hang on for dear life and repent for all of the mean things I’ve done to this god… which… looking back… was a lot.
“So much better than that bike or the tube monster,” Torin says as he hops off, and I’m left sliding off the creature where I fall and nearly get trampled when the horse heads over to the grass, oblivious that its former rider doesn’t know how to use his legs.
“Get. Rid. Of. Them,” I demand.
He ignores me and hurries to the front door, so I text Imani to get rid of the horses or I will stop babysitting her god problem.
She swiftly informs me that she’s sending a trailer to collect the horses.
