Wordcount: 404 words
Rating/Warnings: PG
Summary: Of discretion, valor, and kidnappings

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In For a Penny

With a bound, Cat was through the gate and into the prairie on the other side. The Plains of Grass, a small voice in her head supplied, where the Knights of Pelavoux defeated the dreaded Wyrm of Storms. And she hadn’t realized she was walking forward until her hand brushed the stone.

“Cat?” When he turned she saw something in his eyes that stopped her, something sad and somber. “Oh.” Because this wasn’t her gate, was it? This was Heather’s gate, and David’s gate, and she’d never been meant to see. But Cat had needed to get in. Needed to get back—

And there was a sudden shove in the small of her back that sent her stumbling through the gate, tripping over Cat and trying desperately to keep her feet. Behind her, following through the gate, was the familiar rhythm of hooves and the amused snort of something equine.

“You’d’ve left her there, eh?” A hoof stomped the ground beside her, even as she scrambled to her feet. “Fine bit of Companioning that’d be.”

Cat hissed back at the horse, obsessively grooming his fear-fluffed tail back into proper order.

“Cats.” The horse snorted, then turned a brilliantly blue eye towards Wendy. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t Journey without ’em.”

At this point Wendy closed her eyes, clicked her heels together and quoted the Wizard of Oz. After a moment she cracked one eye open again, and found both the large white horse and the grey cat looking at her in amusement. “Well it could have worked. Can’t hurt to try, right?”

“Suppose so,” but the horse looked unconvinced. “Right then, so we’ll be off now?”

“Off where?” Wendy waved an arm at the rolling expanse of, well, grass. The gate had vanished, as gates in Velanon were wont to do, and she found herself oddly reassured that it had lived up to expectations. Of course those expectations implied several other things she didn’t want to think about right now, but it gave her a grounding, something solid to work from.

“To Fenrith Lei, of course.”

“Why?”

At a loss, the horse looked down at Cat who stretched, yawned, and then started wandering down the dirt path in what Wendy assumed was the direction of the fair city. After a moment spent thinking unkind things about cats in general and Cat in specific, Wendy followed, the strange white horse falling in pace beside her.

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