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The stone path wends its way up the cliffside, steep under Eury’s horse’s hooves. The Mediterranean sun warm on them both as the massive gray mare picks her way carefully along the overgrown trail. Eury’s own enormous stature seeming more appropriately proportioned astride her.
“Not much further now,” says Eury, running a soothing hand down the mare’s neck. His amber skin burning as his fingers run across her mane, the seeming laid on his mount doing only so much to hide its true nature. Eury shakes off the pain as he leans back in the saddle, and draws the paper map out of his slung bag again.
“It should be around here,” he says, half turning in the saddle to check the waymarking stones behind them on the path against the more modern map.
The mare ducks her head, drawing his attention. “Ah. Well caught,” he says, and pats her neck as he sees the shimmer on the air the mare has already spotted. The ripple of it deep in the forest to their right, away from the cliff’s edge and the carved stair leading down to the ocean far below.
“I bet you’re glad to be almost rid of me, huh?” Eury says to the mare as he pulls the reins to angle her toward the treeline.
The mare just snorts as she guides them, far more capably than Eury’s managing inexpertly with the leads, toward the waiting portal.
#
“Whoa, no,” says the attendant on the other side of the portal as Eury and the horse under him emerge through the shimmer in the air into Sage’s Hollow. Multiple other attendants panicking as the horse drops its guise to reveal its true form: the coal black nightmare shaking away the disguise laid upon it, its blazing mane and tail burning on the air as Eury dismounts. The attendant gulping audibly as he looks up at the eight-foot-tall man in loose fitting clothes, riding boots, and a short cape. His thick hair bound back at the base of his skull. “There are no scheduled arrivals. You can’t just—”
“It’s fine,” calls Dusa, coming up the path to the portal plaza. The gorgon, skin a deep honeyed gold, walking unhurriedly as the warm summer wind catches at her loose white blouse, blue jeans, and sturdy work boots. The hissing myrtle and jade snakes atop her head tied down with a multi-colored kerchief; her serpents arranged into a mid-back fall of writhing hair, all communicating with each other as she comes to stop before the snorting nightmare and its rider. “She’s with me.”
“He at the moment,” Eury says, running strong hands over his hair to wipe away the glamour laid on it to hide his own jet-black serpents.
