Turning back to Leste, he continued, “Her creature will stay here, in a show of good faith from both of you-”
“Now wait just a gol’ darn-” I protested readily, while Leste let out an incredulous laugh and scoffed, “In my quarters? Have you gone mad? It’ll piss on everything!”
“I have spoken,” Gasep snarled, his voice low yet thundering, echoing off the walls. Leste and I jumped and dipped our heads like naughty children. Daddy was done with our BS. We were in for it now.
I was waiting for someone to pop in and suggest he paddle our arses. The moment was so strange and surreal. For as long as I lived, I’d be thinking of this moment often. Done got told by a Pegasus man.
“Al... alright,” I said finally, “I’ll leave Cap in here and go eat and relieve myself with you.” Realizing what I just said, I corrected, wide-eyed, “I mean, I’ll relieve myself and then eat with you. You aren’t watching me pee, honey, I don’t care how magnificently otherworldly and black stallionish you look.”
“Black stallionish?” Naturally, the much subdued, properly chastised wizard would latch onto that.
“Come then,” Gasep entreated, motioning for me to set my damned dog down and be on our way, pretending as if I hadn’t just Black Beauty with wings-ed him. Maybe he was used to compliments. He was quite something else.
“Here.” Leste unearthed a broken basket and shoved a robe hanging over one of his chairs into it. Did the man never clean? Ever?
Not wanting to make waves, as I was trying to make nice for all of our sakes’, mine and Cap’s, particularly, I reluctantly set my pooch in the nest looking doggy bed.
“He should be quite comfortable,” Leste said huffily, and gathered some things to step past us. “That’s my favorite robe,” he said to the door, walking towards it.
“Then why did you give it to him?” I muttered wonderingly to his back.
Cap, cuddled up in the purple softness with a thousand tiny silver stars embroidered in it, was already snoring lightly, out like a damned light.
“An offer for amends,” Gasep said conversationally as we stepped out and he closed the door softly behind him.
“That was, uh, nice of him,” I conceded.
Gasep nodded and motioned towards a long set of stairs at the end of the hall, two rights and a left later. I’d never be able to find the bathroom on my own. “He knew it was not easy for you,” he replied, like he was the spokesperson for Leste. Leste for governor. Vote Leste.
“It wasn’t,” was all I offered. As we tromped up steps and I counted his clippity clops, wishing I had a set of coconut halves and the nerve to start spouting off about the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, I found myself watching the flicking twitch of the long tail sprouting out of the back of his breeches.
Slowing my steps, I grinned as I went, left leg lifts and flexes, butt cheek clenches, tail flicks to the left, the same but in reverse as he took the next step and lifted his right leg. When he stopped suddenly, I had to jerk to a stop and yank my head back or end up risking face planting in that generous rump. Waiting, still focused on peaches I assumed were furrier than his hands, I glanced up slowly. A funny feeling enveloped me.
“I thought to find you admiring my wings,” the Unipeg said with an unabashed grin, “but if that is what you wish,” his shoulders lifted, taking his wings with them, “who am I to stop you?”
“Your tail,” I blurted, blinking, aghast at being caught gawking, “I was watching your tail.” My cheeks pinkened and I swallowed hard. “It’s- It flicks when you walk. We have horses at home. Not people horses, but horse-horses. You know, we ride them.”
He quirked an eyebrow, dark eyes lighting up like I’d just said something amusing. “Do you like to ride your home horses, my lady?”
Oh god... “For sport. Ridden for sport and stuff. I don’t have a horse,” I garbled out. My face was flaming. We both knew exactly what that dirty little dark horse was alluding to.
“Indeed.” His lips twitched in a smirk and he turned back around. Starting off without me while I collected myself, he paused a few steps up. “Do you wish me to walk faster or slower so that you might admire my... tail?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, get moving, Flicka, and prepare to hear me squealing in disgust if all y’all have for a porcelain throne is a tower with a room at the top and a hole to poop in.”
Gasep burst out laughing but got moving. “You say the strangest things. You will tell me all of this Yearth and the towers with holes for waste receptacles. Are your thrones all made of porcelain?”
Oh brother. I supposed it could be worse? What was a little crap talk amongst newfound friends?
“Do you know what porcelain is?” I thought to ask.
“Yes, and you will tell of all the other similarities and differences between our worlds.”
“So far, I could name about a hundred differences,” I muttered, peeking out a small window as we passed it, gaping at the landscape. I’m in a fairytale book land. I’d been sucked clean into Narnia on steroids with a hit of My Little Pony, a dash of Rainbow Brite, The Hobbit, Bed Knobs N Broomsticks, and I was probably about to find out real soon what all else.
“Let us start with the relieving receptacles,” Gasep said with a motion of his thick arm, his hand gesturing in a grand fashion at the door just up ahead. It looked like a tower that held a trapped princess, not a crapper.
“You’ll walk me through this?” I muttered.
“I offer myself as tribute, should you need someone to protect you while you do what is needed.” He was humoring me, his eyes dancing.
“Damn,” I muttered, “that sounds an awful lot like you’re gonna make sure I don’t fall in, not protect me from big baddies.” It wasn’t so much the words he used but the way he said it and that look in his eyes that led me to this conclusion.
“I will catch you before you could think to fall.” He was full on grinning now.
“Nooo,” I groaned, my voice bordering on a disgruntled moan. My hand went over his when he went to open the door. “I ain’t hoverin’ over a hole!”
He pressed the handle and the door swung open, revealing a clay looking basin, dark red and thickly rimmed, not unlike a human toilet’s base, with a strange curl of tubing at the back that curved into an egg shape, like it was meant to cup the back of the, erm, sitter.
“I hate you,” I grumbled, when he couldn’t hold his humor in a moment longer and loud, boisterous belly laughs that echoed down the tall tower carried throughout.
“You will forgive me,” Stog got out between choking guffaws. “Your face. I could not help but to torment you.” Holding his hand up, the other braced on his knee to hold him upright, he pinched his fingers together, about an inch of space between the pinched digits. “If only a little, to loosen you up.”
“I’m horrified,” I said with a sniff, pushing past him to step into the room. This just set him off again. I’d never contemplated pushing someone down a length of crazy winding stairs before, but there was a first time for everything. “Now that I’m in here, where are the leaves? The t.p.? The butt paper?”