Chapter 6: Even a journey of a thousand miles...

Sitting again at my usual place, because I had nothing better to do, I pondered about the circumstances of my upcoming journey. Did I have everything I needed? Was I missing something?

A silhouette against the afternoon sky interrupted my thoughts. Squinting a little, I noticed that the shape was getting closer. And it flew straight at me.

My first instinct was to duck, to hide behind a rock from the to-be attacker. Perhaps someone finally decided to take their hatred for me to a whole new level. I didn’t know if I should feel flattered or scared. Thankfully, I had decided to keep my dagger around my midsection, hidden from sight by my baggy shirt, at all times. One could never be careful enough, etc.

Following my instincts, I leapt down from my sitting place and soon enough my ass was uncomfortably pressed against the cold ground instead – right behind a giant boulder. My right hand went under my shirt until I felt the leathery handle of my dagger.

My fears vaporized when the gryphon made an amazingly smooth landing where I had been sitting just a moment before.

“Dammit, Jack!” I breathed out and left my hiding place, hand no longer on the dagger’s grip.

“Hi!” He practically yelled out, skipping in place in excitement.

“Hello to you, too.”

Before anything else could be said – not that there was much else to say – he patted his back a few times. Rolling my eyes, I went over to him and seated myself on his back. My hands gripped the plumage of his neck and… Wait. Was that blood?

I yelped and it took all my acrobatic skills not to fall off when he suddenly lurched forward, wings extended. He must have been really excited. Normally he would give me at least a small warning, so I knew when to pray to God that I wouldn’t fall.

But one thing I learned from all those flights was that the ability to fly without planes or any devices was… overwhelmingly enjoyable. It was freedom. And while I clung to the gryphon for my dear life out of fear, I couldn’t help but yell in both fear and happiness when he dove into an opening in the tree canopy.

But soon enough, my cries of adrenaline were replaced with squeals of pain as the twigs of trees assaulted me from all sides. Damned things slashed me across my back and arms, scratching them a little.

Jack squawked and landed in a little clearing with absolutely no trees. Why the hell he decided to go through the trees was beyond me. But from the ephemeral little smile of his, I had a pretty good guess why. Masochist. I could practically see the words in his eyes, “All in good fun.”

When I stopped shaking, I finally noticed the acrid smell of metal in the air. The unmistakable stench of a certain red substance. Jack seemed to notice that I noticed, because he stepped over to me and nodded. I didn’t exactly know why he did that, but I still nodded anyway.

He rolled his eyes and nodded again. It took me a second to process that he wasn’t really nodding at me, but rather at something behind me. So, I turned around.

And lo and behold, a pitiful sight lay under the forest’s shadow. Matted brown coat riddled with slashes oozing drying blood. A back leg swollen and bent into the wrong direction. Broken antlers.

But the worst… the worst was the face. Soulless, black pools of eyes wide open, and a grimace, one of pure terror, etched into its face.

Has it been… had it been sapient?

No, it couldn’t, some part of me reasoned. I’ve known Jack for a little while now. He wasn’t a brute; a killer. He was a family person. He would never kill anything sapient. After all, he didn’t kill me, a completely strange and unknown creature.

A shiver crawled down my spine as I beheld the deer once more in its full, terrifying glory, a display of death.

With a leap of his wings, Jack jumped over to the deer, a certain pride to his movements. After all those weeks, I forgot that he was still a predator. A hunter.

And in that moment, where he stood above the bloodied corpse, I could see the unveiled beast of prey. And boy, would I hate to not be on his side.

Slowly turning his head to me, a talon raised, beckoning me closer. With a small gulp and an urge to discard my lunch, my legs carried me over to his side. Then, from behind the corpse, he pulled out a freaking skinning knife. He held it in his talons with a certain reverence to it. And with just a single look, I could see that it had been used. Extensively.

And then he handed it to me. At first I shook my head, but he was pretty insistent. By that I mean that he practically shoved it into my face, his eyes hardened into a piercing gaze. I mean, what was I supposed to do but take the knife?

What followed next was kind of bloody. No, wait, it was really bloody. When his talons were no longer occupied, he picked the corpse by its back legs, and with some ropes – that were too placed behind the corpse – tied them to some of the sturdier branches of the tree, the deer’s abdomen facing us.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen someone butcher anything before, but it isn’t nice. Especially when Jack wanted me to do it all mostly by myself, him only sometimes guiding me.

Those soulless eyes haunted my nightmares that night. But the trade off was worth it, I guess. Now I knew how to butcher animals, and all those animal-like sapient beings.

Yay, me… yay, me.

After three weeks of showering in nothing but cold water, I got somewhat cold resistant. The mountain wind no longer bothered me. But that might have been because of all the clothes I wore.

Paul and I were just returning from one of these showers, when a commotion stirred his flight path to all that ruckus.

Our arrival, however, made a ruckus of its own. You see, there were some new gryphons that I had never seen before. And also a miniature pegasus.

I think my jaw dropped a little as I watched the small creature while Paul went in for a landing. And when we finally landed, everything went silent. God, I hate those awkward silences.

If the carts full of stuff weren’t any indication, the outfits those gryphons and the pony wore would be more than enough to tell me who they were. By the way they they looked at me, they’ve probably never seen a creature like me before, which only solidified my belief that I was the only human far and wide. I didn’t know if that was good or really bad – considering my brother.

“Hello.” I raised my right hand a little and waved it. Must’ve been a funny display, me sitting on Paul and jerking my hand back and forth.

“Good day,” one of them replied uncertainly. Hah, I actually understood that.

“And that is where my knowledge of that language ends,” I added just for the comedic value of being able to say whatever the hell I want without anyone understanding a single word I said. Hey, at least the language barrier isn’t all that useless.

I tried to get off Paul, but as the universe would have it, I had to make a complete ass of myself. I stumbled a little, not enough to fall, but enough to hurl me forward and right into… Jack. Thank God it was Jack at least.

When I straightened myself, finally, I didn’t even bother to try to look like I fit or something. I just didn’t care. The first impression was now swimming somewhere at the bottom of the sea of shame.

“Nice weather today, right?” I barked a forced laugh, hoping they would catch onto it and laugh too. Laughter was, after all, infectious. But damn, they had to have one hell of an immunity system, because instead of falling into fits of giggling, they just kept staring, dumbfounded.

Soon enough, my mirthless chuckle died a horrible death and silence reigned supreme again. I also realized something.

Diseases could become a huge problem. A completely different planet with different flora and fauna would probably have different diseases and stuff, too. I was either incredibly lucky so far, or maybe our worlds weren’t so different after all.

Or, I had one hell of an immunity system, too. I really hoped it was the last one. Dying of alien diseases wouldn’t be anything pleasant.

Thankfully, before the silence could kill us all, the children came. A wave of adorableness and feather-balls hit us all like a tsunami, and soon enough the air was filled with merriment. The adults quickly caught onto the sudden change of mood and the bartering began once again.

Unnoticed, I moved out of the crowd, searching for the creature that had drawn my attention earlier. While it was smaller than the gryphons, it was more colorful than most of them, so finding it wasn’t so hard. And I discovered that I wasn’t the only one looking for a strange creature. So, instead of following it, I made it follow me. Making sure it saw me, which wasn’t all that hard, I made my way to the edge of the crowd. My tired legs made me sit down on a smooth rock that was placed conveniently near three others of similar sizes and smoothness.

It didn’t take long before the pegasus sat down next to me, looking anywhere but at me. I didn’t have that problem, so I just looked directly at it.

“What?” was the only thing that came to my mind out of all the words I knew. Which was the problem. I didn’t know any.

It muttered something.

“Yeah, I don’t speak moon language.”

That made it look up at me. And holy hell, those eyes. It was like staring into two satellites. They were big and just… big. How did those even fit into its head?

She spoke, this time loud enough for me to hear it. And yeah, it was a “she”, alright.

And that’s where my plan ended, really. I didn’t know what much to say, or do. I was really curious about her, but there was no way for me to ask. Hey, now I knew not to try to buy a horse or something. At least not legally. Not that I would try to… or anything like that.

The pegasus seemed to hit the end of her patience, as she slowly got up.

“Peter,” I said suddenly, right hand extended towards her. She kinda raised an eyebrow – an actual eyebrow – at me, so I said my name again while pattering my chest with my left hand. Her eyes lit up with comprehension and she said something, presumably her name, and lightly bumped the top of my fingers with her hoof. That worked too, I guess.

Now, with the formalities out of the way, the chokingly awkward atmosphere vanished altogether. She actually smiled, which  seemed a whole lot more normal than a gryphon’s, so I smiled too.

She turned around, tilting her head a little. I realized she was telling me to follow her, and I did. We cut through the crowd like a hot knife through butter. Wherever we went, the gryphons spread out to make space for us, hushed whispers following in our wake.

She stopped near a little cart, smaller than the gryphons’. It was packed full, though, and covered with a blanket that was tied around the cart. With a swift movement of her jaws, she somehow untied it all and let the blanket drop, revealing trinkets and small chests/cases of all kind.

Using her hooves, the pegasus opened one of the small jewelry cases. And holy hell, she was freaking rich! Gold, jewels, even honest-to-god diamonds!

With a bored expression, she sifted through the fortune like it was nothing, until she found something at the bottom of the case. Her eyes brightened and she pulled out a rolled up scroll tied with a red string. She held it in in the crevice between her bent hoof and ergot.

“What is it?” I asked, and as if sensing my question, she handed it over to me. The yellowy scroll looked rather new, so I didn’t have to fear about it crumbling at my touch. I undid the tie and let the scroll unroll.

On it was a drawing.

A drawing of a human child.