Our New Home
Three sections from my fantasy series. This is from book one, The Girl Witch. Enjoy!
Falcing had been walking for days.
He needed to rest.
He needed to drink.
More than anything he needed to eat.
It was no fair that they walked past so many good things to eat without stopping.
He felt like he was going to die.
Somehow his body kept moving though. He didn’t want it to keep moving.
The wagon came to a place with no trees. There was so much grass and so many flowers.
The wagon stopped.
YES! Food!
Before he could lower his head to eat, something bumped into him from behind.
Stupid sheep.
If he wasn’t so hungry, he would have turned around to bleat at them.
He was hungry, though. Starving.
“Watch it,” he muttered, then lowered his face into some delicious white flowers.
They might have been delicious.
Were they delicious?
He ate them too fast to know, or care.
He ate and ate and ate. He was relieved that no one was stopping him.
As he ate something happened.
Things always happened. Usually, they were stupid things. This something got strange when that shadow of something large blocked the sun. The shadow was followed by a voice.
Signy.
“And this is Falcing. He’s our goat. He likes to eat.”
Who was she talking to? Whoever it was, they were probably stupid.
Falcing looked up.
He saw knobby knees.
He looked up farther.
He saw a torso.
He looked up even more.
Finally, he saw a head.
It was hideous. And huge. And Signy was on its back.
The thing looked down at Falcing. It had a long, ugly stupid nose. It didn’t say a thing, but it breathed loud.
“Falcing,” Signy said. “This is Snog. He’s a moose.”
She wanted him to see her new friend and he saw it, whatever it was.
New friends were stupid.
Falcing grunted once, then lowered his head and kept eating.
The Snog shadow moved away. Falcing heard Signy introduce the giant stupid snog moose thing to the sheep.
He didn’t want to listen, but he couldn’t help it. They were so loud.
The sheep said hello to the snog moose thing. It said hello back.
Falcing had a thought. A terrifying thought.
“You’re not keeping it, are you?”
“What was that?” asked Signy.
The snog moose thing walked back to Falcing with Signy on its back.
She repeated her question.
“What was that?”
Falcing looked up. Way up. He needed to see her eyes when he asked.
“You’re not keeping it, are you?”
Signy opened her mouth to speak, but Falcing cut her off and bleated first.
“Because I won’t share. All the grass. All the flowers. All of it. It’s mine! He can’t have it!”
Signy laughed.
SHE LAUGHED!
“Mine!”
He lowered his head once more, burying his face in a patch of clovers.
“MINE!”
Holger watched in stunned silence.
Signy was on a moose!
She was riding a moose!
That was impossible.
Did the thing understand her?
Did she understand it?
Beyla grabbed his hand.
Their eyes met.
She looked terrified.
Holger shrugged his shoulders.
He and his wife followed their daughter, riding the moose from goat to sheep to horse.
She seemed to be introducing the moose to them all. Holger could understand Signy when she spoke. The animals did seem to respond but he could only understand her.
Impossible!
Signy rode the moose back to the wagon.
Holger looked up.
“Do they… understand you? Like really understand you?”
“Of course,” she replied laughing. “I keep telling you I can talk to them.”
Beyla said what Holger was thinking.
“We thought it was make-believe…”
Beyla paused.
“But this is…”
She stopped.
Holger didn’t know what to say either. It was something, that much was certain, but what?
After a pause, he and Beyla spoke at once.
“Incredible,” he said.
“Dangerous,” she said.
They locked eyes. The terror Holger saw in his wife’s eyes before was still there, but now he saw anger in them too.
Husbands and wives, from time to time, share a kind of unspoken communication. Holger was convinced that this is what happened after they said two different things. His understanding was that they would talk about this later, and that is what he said.
Beyla did not say a word, but her eyes went wide with shock.
Holger feared that he might have misunderstood the unspoken communication.
Signy said, “okay,” then rode off on the moose’s back through the meadow, whooping and yelling like it was the best time of her life.
Beyla hit him in the arm.
She was angry.
He turned to her. He was going to explain. He didn’t know how. He hoped the words would just come.
He opened his mouth, still unsure what would come out when from across the field came a shout.
A happy shout.
“This is it! Our new home!”
If only there was water, he thought. It would make a fine farm if there was water.
Then came another happy shout.
“There’s a river too! I love it!”
Holger closed his eyes. Sure enough, to the south was the sound of running water.
Beyla climbed out of the wagon. Holger watched her stand with her hands on her hips.
Without turning around, she called back to him.
“I can already tell you like it. We might as well start unpacking.”
He climbed down.
“But I’m still angry,” she added.
Moose did good.
That night, when the moon was high, he did not stay with his new friend.
Signy was asleep.
He walked through the darkness to the Troll’s bridge. It was not far.
He went to tell Troll that they had arrived.
I love that universe of yours so much! I want to live there! 🥰😁👍🏻
😁adult bedtime story 👌