Prysmcat
There were a lot of birds, butterflies, bunnies, bees, and squirrels in the Greenelk Forest, and an occasional deer. None of them ran away from us, though they did keep out of reach. Given that taboo against eating meat, that made some sense. Watching for them among the greenery around us was something to do while we were walking, since it just wasn’t possible for even Aryennos to talk all the time and there were some stretches of quiet. I preferred observing local fauna over letting myself fall into my own thoughts about home, and the confusing feelings I had about life here and my own identity weren’t much better.
Keeping an eye out for the pnts Serru was looking for around here was some distraction, especially now that I no longer had to carry Aryennos and could stay human-form when that was more practical, but it wasn’t really enough. The thicker trees meant it was harder to see any other parties on the road, so I kept finding myself listening for them in hopes of having time to make sure I was centaur-form before they came into sight; the occasional exceptions were deeply uncomfortable.
My clothes didn’t stand out as gringly as they originally had; my colouring was still not typical, but that was probably not as much of a giveaway as my mannerisms and knowledge. On the other hand, I didn’t have to interact with anyone beyond a smile and maybe answering a greeting.
So why did I still feel better being centaur-form when anywhere near people? That form did make me feel calm and confident, somehow, and I liked how it looked and the easy physical strength, and I had my healing magic. My own form was my own, familiar, and had the distinct advantage of being much less bulky and more manoeuvrable.
Serru stopped at a fork, and gestured to a road to the left, clearly not the road we’d been following though it was still broad and clear and in excellent condition. “We aren’t far from the Quincunx, I expect to reach it tomorrow, and we can make sure we have everything to camp comfortably while you’re gone. It’s also, thanks to a ke, actually a more efficient route.”
“Fair enough,” I said. I paused to gather a pair of pnts Serru wanted, then switched to my centaur form.
“Is it big enough to have a public library?” Aryennos asked.
Serru shook her head. “It’s only a vilge. We shouldn’t be here long enough for that anyway. You can dig around in the Coppersands library in a few cycles.”
Absolutely ft ground, well-spaced buildings, utterly clean, free-roaming pets and poultry, check.
However, the buildings were different. Instead of cob, they were made of wooden pnks in any of several tones, or a mixture of them, with wooden shingles. Carved wood gingerbread-style trim, in many different motifs and painted in bright colours, adorned every building, and windowframes and the like were painted to match. Flowerboxes were common.
There were few of the collie-type dogs, more of the little beagle-like ones, and more long-legged lean ones I thought vaguely resembled sight-hounds but there wouldn’t be any hunting here. The long-legged ones were sometimes sleek all over, sometimes had long silky fur just on their ears and plumed tails, sometimes had sleek heads and legs but medium-length glossy fur on the rest of them, and all of them came in endless colours although many had a lot of white.
There were even more cats.
But then, the people were about half furry themselves, and most of the rest were split between humans and those deer-people—cervids, Aryennos had called them in his ramblings. His information was broad but I hadn’t yet managed to really build it into a coherent picture of what the many species were and what to expect, and besides, theory wasn’t quite the same as actually seeing it.
The furry people were definitely, unequivocally feline, with all-over fur in as wide a range as the small cats, tails, and feline ears; they tended towards diminutive, retively, maybe averaging around a meter and a half. There wasn’t a lot of sexual dimorphism and in most cases it was impossible to tell gender, but then, even Grace could only make an educated guess about some cats and not always be sure without an intimate look. A significant minority had visible, though not rge, breasts and my guess was that they had a higher percentage of body fat overall, and since those traits also turned up in the few that were showing signs of pregnancy, those were probably mothers, maybe still nursing. A significant minority had a more powerful build and broader faces that made me think of mature tomcats. The overwhelming majority, I would not have wanted to make a decision about.
“You look startled,” Serru murmured. “This is normal for a Forest vilge. Felids are the most common species in the Forest, as humans are on the Grassnds. Cervids are less common but often present, as centaurs and saurids are on the Grassnds.”
“Anyone can turn up anywhere,” Aryennos said.
“All people,” I said. “Right. Just need to remember that this world gives ‘diversity’ a whole new dimension.” Felids. Cervids. But all people.
We were greeted cheerfully in the general store by the shopkeeper, a cervid woman, and the aisles were wider than they had been in the store in Iguana Meadows. Serru briskly gathered up whatever she had in mind, paid for it, and distributed tents and travel bars to Aryennos and I.
We visited a bakery, as well, and what I could only call a grocery store that had mostly fruits and vegetables.
It turned out that the vilge we were in was on the edge of a ke. Near the shore, we stopped at a sort of restaurant—on two sides, the walls had been folded back to give easy access to the interior, which had wooden tables and chairs. Serru ordered three meals and three bottles of some kind of juice, to go.
“We aren’t staying to eat?” I asked her in puzzlement, as we waited for the white-and-tabby felid behind the counter to put that together from the covered ceramic pots behind them. Light caught on the silver bracelet-and-ring combination on their right hand, the two pieces linked by a wide ft chain; on the bracelet, and maybe on the ring around their middle finger, tiny pastel crystals glittered in a sun-and-moon design. The dangly earrings that chimed softly clearly matched, and the pastel colours reflected in the cropped sleeveless shirt and open-sided shorts they were wearing.
She smiled. “We can do something better. Is the ferry still running at noon?”
“As far as I know,” the felid server said amiably. “Today’s pilots were in for a meal a little while ago. You should still have plenty of time to catch it.”
“Perfect. Thank you.”
The meal came in rge ft-bottomed containers that felt like thin polished wood and had arched covers that matched. Serru paid, let me take them to carry, and shooed me and Aryennos back outside.
“We need a ferry?” I asked. The road turned into a kind of boardwalk along the edge of the ke. Geese floated around in the water among the lilies, a lot more tranquil than the stories I’d heard about close encounters with them. A dozen or so people rexed on it, the felids and humans and a couple of scaled ones who must be saurids making use of the benches and picnic tables, the cervids with their slender legs folded under them. An enormous spreading tree was completely ringed by boardwalk and by a circur bench, creating a shady pce to sit for anyone who didn’t want to be in the sun.
A dock extended outwards into the ke, and alongside it was a boat that sat low in the water. From what I could see, it had two hulls, with blunted points at the end facing me, and between them was a considerable ptform. All the way around, a wooden wall reached to something like waist-height, and then turned into a more open but sturdy-looking railing; a wooden roof snted down from a central ridge to shelter the middle half or so. There was an enclosed room or cabin or something in the very centre. I couldn’t see any means of making it move, no sails, oars, paddle wheels, motors, but what did I know?
Nearby a tall windmill stood, and heavy ropes reached from it straight to the dock and vanished underwater.
“The ring road was forced to deviate around the ke and some very swampy unstable terrain,” Serru said. “Wagons and coaches need to stay on the road, but it takes longer. There’s a ferry from here across this arm of the ke to a vilge on the far side. It’s a long ride, and slow, but we can rex and eat on the way. I normally take the road, since there’s nothing I can gather in the ke, but it does have some lovely scenery. I keep meaning to bring Terenei here so he can paint it—although I’m not sure we’ll ever get him off the ferry if I do that.” She sounded amused. “If we’re very lucky, we might see a greenelk herd resting through the middle of the day, the ferry passes a pce near the shore that they like and the elk are too used to it to care.”
“Most people never see one at all,” Aryennos said. “I didn’t think they came this close to the Midnds, just way out in the deep Forest.”
“They’re shy but they’re there. I camped off the road for a couple of days, not much farther out than this, and woke to find a herd investigating my tent and what remained of my fire—and eating the starbell flowers I’d spent the past two days climbing trees to gather and had left out to dry, which was my own fault. I can carry more if they’re dry and that’s how alchemists use them, but I didn’t take enough precautions to keep them safe. That’s not a mistake I’ve made again, but it seems a reasonable price for an extraordinary experience.”
“Sounds like it would be,” I said. “Um, can a ferry handle a centaur?”
“Oh, yes, easily. They take cervids across all the time, and you wouldn’t be the first centaur, I promise.”
We found an unoccupied bench Serru and Aryennos could sit on, and I carefully folded my legs to lie down next to them. I was getting better at the manoeuvre, and man, I was so grateful for those dream memories that gave me basic motor controls, because I was pretty sure that trying to work those out on my own would take forever. We stacked the food on the bench, and opened up the juice to sip at while waiting.
We didn’t have to be there long. A tall, slender, androgynous figure with dark pinkish-magenta skin strolled up the ramp to the ferry and swung open a gate. They were wearing only a sort of kilt or skirt of wrapped fabric in a bck-and-white geometric pattern, and sunlight caught on metallic gold and silver that might be body paint; long hair was a lighter magenta, and in several irregur braids that glittered with beads and ornaments. It didn’t look like it could be considered a uniform by any standards, but it wouldn’t surprise me much if this world didn’t bother with uniforms.
A sleek felid with orange mackerel-tabby markings, in indigo shorts and a sky-blue sleeveless cropped shirt, a small bag fastened to their belt, ran up the ramp after them, and I could see them bustling about doing something on the deck. They had one of those ‘sve bracelet’ kind of bracelet-ring combinations, too, although I could see only that it was bck with silver on it, and it was on their left hand.
“Welcome on board, folks!” The magenta-skinned pilot’s voice was androgynous too, resonant and expressive.
Everyone on the boardwalk began to move, although they did it with no particur haste. No one was jostling for position, no one was crowding anyone; in fact I saw a cervid step in to help a fluffy swirly-tabby felid who had a much smaller felid in a bright fabric sling on her hip and her other arm was occupied with a basket and a mid-sized bag and a plush bird toy, and gesture to the felid to go ahead.
It was strange and rather depressing, that the variety of species around me actually felt less discordant than courtesy and kindness to people who were visibly different.
I expected the gangpnk itself to be awkward for me even at its shallow angle, despite seeing cervids climbing it with no trouble, but it turned out to be easy: the wood had been covered by a thick mat of rough woven grass of some kind, and it didn’t move the width of a finger on my way up it. That struck me as a thoughtful kind of touch, making the traction better for those with hooves. It would probably have been good for wheels, too, but I had yet to see anyone who needed so much as a cane.
The deck below my hooves was solid, hardly giving at all despite my weight, and more of that thick grassy matting had been secured on the walkways that ran along the edges near the railings and along the centre.
Benches formed two long rows that fnked the midline of the deck, with occasional spaces to allow people to get from one side to the other; I figured each bench could support two human-sized people comfortably, and a human my height could have stretched out along two of them for a nap. After every two pairs of back-to-back benches, a pair was repced by a sort of low broad ptform with yet more matting on it, only a short way above the deck.
Serru dropped coins into a box as we passed. No one seemed to be cheating on that, even though there was no one keeping track. The magenta-skinned pilot had gone briefly to the central cabin, then returned to help people who wanted to stow belongings in barred racks under the edges of the high roof; the racks were too high for any of the felids to actually reach with any amount of effort, but they’d certainly be dry. Meanwhile, the orange tabby was helping people get onboard and settled if they needed it. Both were joking with people who might be regur passengers judging by the apparent familiarity. It certainly wasn’t crowded; the ferry could comfortably have held twice as many people. Maybe sometimes it did.
There was plenty of activity but no haste, and everyone seemed actually aware of the people near them as something other than obstacles.
