The rules of Hospitality are such that as much as I wanted to replay the loop of, “No, no, after you, I insist,” with Artur all would still know it as procrastination.\u00a0 So I took a step forward.\u00a0 Nikolai whined and pushed at my right leg with his nose.\u00a0 Another step, and I could feel the sound buzzing slightly.\u00a0 My synesthesia is not entirely metaphorical; after all, sound waves are physical, measurable items.\u00a0 A third step and I and Nikolai were through into the cold, thin air, falling perhaps half a meter in surprise between there and here.<\/p>\n
I said something unintelligible at the time, moving forward so Artur could come through and not crash into us.\u00a0\u00a0Nikolai\u00a0found a place to heel beside me.\u00a0 I couldn’t speak for the dog, but I was getting pretty tired of all the travelling.\u00a0 I close these darn things, and at that, I thought portals\u00a0short-lived and relatively rare.\u00a0\u00a0 Now I find that they’re kind of the whoopie-cushion of wizards or some other practical joke.\u00a0 “Here, pull my finger, and I’ll open a gate to Stenchlandia!”\u00a0\u00a0 “Pick a card, any card, and I’ll portkey you to Spadesville, Ace!”<\/p>\n
We were let out at a mountainside of amethyst and gold.\u00a0 The purple mountains’ majesty, if you must.\u00a0 I don’t know plants, but the colour was made of little flowers in yellows and violet, living symbiotically, or at least as good friends, on unnaturally shiny ground.\u00a0 Thick golden seeds went unharvested at the base of the petals, and their stalks seemed to sprout symmetrically from the same base.\u00a0 The flowers were kind of star shaped.\u00a0 Very desert twee.<\/p>\n
Nikolai moved to water the flowers as Artur came through.\u00a0 The gate’s exodus on this side was anchored by a bronze and indigo treefall that had been impeded by a large rock that looked made of pyrite or an exceptionally golden mica or something else.\u00a0 I was\u00a0trotting out all the geological terms I knew, except for the cleavage jokes because there weren’t any girls here.<\/p>\n
Looking down (the direction we were pointed in) showed a yellow brick road in the distance.\u00a0 I couldn’t actually tell if it was brick, and it looked more like a pale mud than yellow, but I was feeling snarky.\u00a0 Of course, we’d already sung the, “We’re Off to Meet the Wizard” in the last pocket universe we visited.\u00a0 There were some other hills in the distance, some quite butte-iful.\u00a0 (I like big buttes, Sir Mixes-his-metaphors-a-lot?)<\/p>\n
“Which way lies the beast?” Artur asked.\u00a0 He hadn’t spent the last minute hopping and cursing his ankle.\u00a0 Of course, I had been far too suave to do that either, but I was kind of hoping.<\/p>\n
I sighed and started climbing up.\u00a0 “The Dragon can fly.\u00a0 Start remembering to look up.”<\/p>\n
“If you believe magical beings to be evolutionarily savvy,” he said, with no trace of an accent, “you’d know that’s highly unlikely for a creature born of the treetops.”<\/p>\n
“Born of the treetops?” I asked, without looking at him.\u00a0 I patted my stomach.\u00a0 “This here, was born of the muffin-tops.”<\/p>\n
“You’re awfully irreverent for a wizard.”<\/p>\n
“Must be why I haven’t gotten the union card.”<\/p>\n
“What would you call yourself then?\u00a0 A doctor?”\u00a0 He scoffed.<\/p>\n
“I call myself `me,’ just like in the song.\u00a0 What’s a lesiye anyway?\u00a0 Sounds like part of a zombie, but only if you add the ‘f’ in front of it.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
“A…fleshy.\u00a0 That one’s good.\u00a0 Oh look, there.”\u00a0 We had reached a bit of summit, and he pointed across a large puddle of shimmery water.\u00a0 Well, I called it a puddle because from this height all I could do was guess how deep it was, so other than it being water I could splash in, it was a mystery.\u00a0 Plus, not being a cartographer, I didn’t know what the rules were to naming it a pond, lake, mere, loch, sea, or whatnot.\u00a0 (But I took a moment to make a note in my phone to look it up later.\u00a0 No, I didn’t have signal.\u00a0 It’s a market ready to happen, though, although I decided that looking up my service representative and suggesting it was not on my to-do list.)<\/p>\n
The lake (I took a wild guess) itself reflected gold and green, depending on the winds.\u00a0 On an island in the middle was a cave that, were this a videogame, practically screamed, “click on me to enter!”\u00a0 I made the appropriate motion with my index finger, and then smiled to myself.<\/p>\n
“When she was Naul, she was brown with the talons of an eagle, and wings of garnet and copper feathers,” Artur said, and it sounded like he was reciting a piece of scripture.<\/p>\n
“Eagles build their nests high, I thought,” I said.\u00a0 “Not on islands.\u00a0 But I thought she might actually be elementally connected to water, which would indicate the cave, maybe?”<\/p>\n
“Water eagles?” Artur asked, skeptically.<\/p>\n
“Sea eagles.\u00a0 Ospreys?”\u00a0 I shrugged.\u00a0 “The coat of arms for Russia has a double-headed eagle.\u00a0 And doesn’t it also have a dragon slayer?”\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Point, although that’s within the last millenia.”<\/p>\n
“Full of relevant timely trivia, that’s me.\u00a0 I’m fun to have at parties.”\u00a0 I watched the skies, but except for occasional wisps of clouds, there was nothing about, and no noises to indicate invisible things flying about our heads.\u00a0 Unless they were inaudible, and, well, had no wind resistance either, in which case it could still be sylphs, but I think of having them as being just a little less likely than having a social disease.\u00a0 Which meant that I would have to have, you know, a social life.<\/p>\n
We picked our way down the mountain carefully, and quietly, which gave me time to ask myself the question I had been avoiding.\u00a0 Would I have gone this far for Maggie?\u00a0 I told myself I would have for any damsel in distress, and maybe even a couple good male friends.\u00a0 But I might have been lying to myself, I mean, how would I have ever known?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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