Tuesday 30 April 2013

Hay-Barn Ponygirl - Story by Paladin


Hay-Barn Ponygirl

Sasha tumbled, shrieking with laughter, down on to the thick bedding of hay. She drew her legs up in a simple attempt to save herself. I pinned her wrists and then grinning at her helplessness I swung my leg over her knees and slid onto her body. I could feel her thighs against my back as I pushed back and sat up astride her stomach. Sasha poked her tongue out at me and gave a light buck. I moved a little further up her stomach so my knees could pin her arms down.

Once I had her pinned I sat fully up and placed my hands on my hips. “One,” I started counting. Sasha bounced me lightly up and down while trying unsuccessfully to free her arms. By the time I’d counted to seven I could feel her stomach muscles shifting under me as her legs rocked helplessly from side to side. “Ten!”

I released her arms and smiled as she pouted. 

This had all started after a summer shower had sent us sprinting into the hay barn. Sasha had grumpily shaken drops of water out of her hair. “Look at me I’m nearly soaked,” she’d growled. She noticed that most of my attention had been caught by the sheen of water across the top of her cleavage. She’d undone a button on her little red checkered shirt. “See something you like,” she’d teased.

I’d reached for her but she’d slipped free with a giggle. “If you want to get me out of this wet top you’re going to have to wrestle me out of it,” she’d challenged.

After a short chase through the barn we’d ended with me sitting very comfortably on her stomach enjoying the rise and fall of her chest brought on by the wrestling match. 

“Now that I’m pinned what are you going to do?” she asked with a naughty glint in her eyes.

I slowly began unbuttoning the rest of her shirt. I quickly realised that she had a cute baby-doll t-shirt on underneath.

“Guess you’re going to have to try and pin me again aren’t you?” she laughed.

I shook my head and stood up. Sasha slipped out of her shirt and quickly stood up with a squeal of laughter she threw a handful of hay at me and raced away. 

I chased her until I had her cornered on some hay bales. Susan tried to tackle me and we rolled down a slippery mound of hay until we came to a stop with me half lying on top of her. I took one of her top’s spaghetti thin straps and slipped it off her shoulder.

“Hey!” She protested, “you haven’t pinned me yet.”

I laughed and straddled her. I sat myself comfortably in the middle of her stomach and just to rub it in I rested my hands on my thighs. “One,” she bucked forcefully under me.

“Two,” and Sasha bucked again.

“Three,” and this time she just lay quietly under me. “Not good enough,” I told her. “Three,” I said again and Sasha bucked lifting me up high. She continued to buck as I counted.

I grinned enjoying the feeling of her stomach muscles pushing against my backside, lifting me up in the air. On Ten she continued to hold me up. I remained as still as I could and slowly counted at twenty she dropped back to the ground with a puff of exhaled air. 

“Enjoy that?” Sasha asked with a big grin.

“Almost as much as I’ll enjoy that top of yours coming off.”

She laughed, “and what will you do then?”

I leant back against her thighs as if considering.

“I suppose I could give you a little pony ride,” Sasha suggested. “Just a short one though.”

I laughed and slid back until I was sitting right against her thighs then I placed my hands on her waist, “put your hands above your head.” She did and I slowly slid my hands forward, rolling her top up. As my hands slid up over her chest she giggled and wriggled. 

I leant forward and pinned her arms again then kissed down from her lips along her throat and down across her chest until her breathing sped up.

“Do you want your pony ride now?” Sasha suggested.

I stood up and Sasha got to her knees. “I think you should get out of those damp clothes,” she said and then followed that up by helping me out of them.

The feel of her warm skin against mine as I sat carefully into the gentle curve of her back was incredibly exciting. I caught up her hair and smacked her butt. Sasha yelped but moved forward. I tried to turn her using her hair but she shook her head. “Just let me carry you,” she said.

She shuffled in a slow circle in the hay. The movement of her hips translating to a gentle motion through her back. I tried to direct her again but she stubbornly continued on her own course.

“Hold on a moment,” I said and jumped off. I was back before she could get up and quickly mounted her back. This time I settled my weight without waiting for her and I felt Sasha’s back curve under me before she straightened up.

“Right little pony it’s obviously time to break you in and show you whose the Master here.”

“I’m only giving you a short ride,” Sasha protested.

I flicked the riding crop I’d grabbed against the seat of her jean shorts. She yelped and moved but I was ready for it and curbed the movement by drawing her head back.

I ignored her protest, “now pony you’re going to carry me where I want to go and you’ll do it as fast or slow as I want. Now giddy up!” I smacked her a little harder with the crop and she obeyed straight away.

I rode her in a straight line then drew her head to the left. Another smack of the crop ended her resistance and when I turned her again she did exactly as she was told. 

I pulled her head back and Sasha stopped. “When you’re ready to submit to me that’s when the ride stops pony.” I told her, “now lower your back, lower!” The crop cracked and I sank deep into her back. “Now up as high as you can go.” She arched like a cat.

“Lets try rearing.” This took a few tries to get right but eventually I was able to get her to walk then rear up. I reined her in again.

“What now?” Sasha groaned. “This was just supposed to be a short ride.”

“Well you know how to shorten it,” I told her.

“Okay I submit you’re the best.”

I didn’t get off, “Say I’m the best wrestler”

“Yes you’re the best wrestler,” she answered.

“And you’re my slave.”

“What, no way.”

I swiped her butt with the crop.

“I’m your slave,” she wailed, “now can you please get off?”

“Now can you please get off what?”

“Now can you please get off Master.” She quickly replied.

I dismounted but told her to stay where she was. I knelt down in front of Sasha and she looked up at me while still on all fours. I ran my hands down her shoulders, down the middle of her back and then back up along her sides. 

“I gave you a good ride Master,” she said.

“Yes you did in the end but you lost the wrestling match and then tried to take control and slaves shouldn’t have control should they?”

“No Master,” Sasha whispered.

“Time to show me how well you can submit,” I told her. “You can start by licking and kissing.”

Sasha’s tongue slid gently up and down, first on one side then the other. Her hair tickled my skin as her head turned. She began to kiss and lick in combination and her soft murmurs of enjoyment sent a bolt of adrenaline through my body.

Looking down on Sasha while she was on all fours made me want to dominate her as I had while riding her. I picked up the crop and rested it on her butt, she paused but when nothing happened she went back to licking and kissing. I slowly trailed the crop up her spine, loving the way she tensed as I did it. 

I rolled the crop around her ribs, over her stomach and then traced it across a breast. As the crop came up her shoulder she paused again. I placed the crop on the top of Sasha’s head, “time to submit some more,” I whispered and slowly pushed her head down.

Sasha’s lips and mouth closed around me and I felt her tongue move like a wave against me. 

I pressed down a little more with the crop, “deeper, slave,” I commanded. Sasha’s head rose up then back down but I still wasn’t done dominating her. I slapped the crop down on her backside, “giddyup pony.”

I heard a muffled squeak but her head moved more quickly and my breathing responded. I tugged on her hair, “whoa girl, slow now.” 

Sasha obeyed. I couldn’t believe it! Not only had I made her obey me while riding her on all fours but now I had control over her as she submitted to me on all fours. I plied the crop twice and she sped up faster than before, one tug of the hair and she slowed, placing the crop on her head made her head dip deeper her lips sliding further down.  

I placed my free hand on the middle of her back so that she was taking some of my weight. The excitement was growing too much to control. I snapped the crop on her backside and felt the pressure of Sasha’s mouth increase. Another smack and she moved from a trot to a canter. 

“Faster now pony,” I whispered. I don’t know if she heard me but when I dropped the crop once more Sasha moved from a canter to a full gallop.

The world seemed to go white. The physical pleasure mixed with the exquisite pleasure of dominating Sasha combined.

When I could finally think again I put my hand on her head holding her in place until I was ready for my slave to stop. My breathing slowed and I allowed her head to rise again. I stood up and sat easily on her back. Sasha didn’t even protest, she merely waited on all fours ready to obey me. 

Now that pony,” I told her, “was a great short ride.”

In tangents to her orbit - Story by Unferth


in tangents to her orbit…
They said this sort of morning happened about five hundred years: the full moon setting in a blue- green western sky just as the sun painted the east orange. It was as if the world, suspended in space between the two of them, stood poised at a fulcrum at the start of spring. The croaking call of a distant ptarmigan, mingled with the continuous chatter of the stream and its tributaries as they tumbled together down the mountainside, seemed to be conjuring light from the night. He wondered if the bird, or one of its ancestors, had carried the berries up here: in the valley below the stream vanished into a mass of blackthorn, foaming white with blossom. He walked briskly down towards it, anxious to keep warm.
There were tracks amongst the bushes: perhaps red deer hid here, or ate the leaves in the summer. The path led him in, amongst the sickly-sweet scent of the bushes with their white froth of buds and flowers, which hid from his sight the young river. But the streams’ song seemed louder as he walked. He followed the track as it plunged unexpectedly down a muddy gully between scarps of rock into a halflight that still waited the dawn.
Then he saw why the stream seemed loud. The water poured over a lip of grey limestone, glowing gold in the first rays of the rising sun, and then falling as a mass of white, surging and frothing in the plunge pool below. Despite the cold he stopped. His journey, started in the cold predawn light an hour ago, could wait for a moment in such a place.
The boulders strewn at the edge of the pool were cold: carved into smooth flowing curves by years of frost and flowing stream, and tattooed by the fossils of shells from prehistoric seas. This one – half in, half out of the water – curved inwards like a bone, with a mat of brown-dry ferns overhanging the pool. It seemed natural to kick his boots off, sit with one leg either side and refresh his feet in the ice-cold stream and suddenly, she was alive: sporting, frolicking in the foam, the stream surging around her arms and her thighs, her back ice-slippery with streamwater. She sprang from stone to stone, not seeming to notice his weight, then splashed deeper, beneath the waterfall, the cold of the water, fresh from the snows above, stabbing him like a knife. His hands fumbled for hair – soft hair now, and not the harshness of dead vegetation - trying to keep his balance against the power of the falling water and the ferocity of her frisking in the waves. Then she turned to the deeper water, towards the outlet of the plunge pool, standing up so her stone-hard, cold muscular body pressed cold against him, yet his fingers felt her flesh burn from her exertion. She dropped again to her hands and knees to play in the sandy shallows at the far side of the pool, then suddenly twisted round, and galloped – there was no other word – back beneath the force of the waterfall, writhing in the whirling water until he lost his balance, and lay breathless in the cold river
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There was no breeze to disturb the summer heat in the valley. He’d been hoping this last couple of hours - as he’d walked, the forested hillside to his left had grown less - that his journey was at last taking him out of the mountains. But another horizon, more wood-wreathed peaks, had appeared beyond; beyond, he assumed another valley with another river, and the sun continued to rise higher in the sky, its brightness penetrating even the tall pines to bake the forest floor.
So it must have been nigh-on noon when he arrived at this other river. There had been streams to cross before, sometimes cut deep into the soil before now: usually a jump, sometimes to a convenient rock or islet in the middle of a stream. But the river that came down from the left was almost as wide as the one he was following – perhaps seven or ten paces to the other side. He followed it down the hillside, hoping there would be an easier crossing at the confluence. The pines gave way to blackthorn bushes: interlaced branches, full leafed and laden with green berries. Here, at least, was shade. And then the bushes gave way to bright, burning sunshine, and, at the end of an emerald green sliver of grass, the merging of the two rivers.
He walked out, into the sunshine, between the brown, limpid pools of the two rivers, and then jumped down onto the sandy continuation of the crest between them. The river that blocked his way here was narrow, but deep. He would have to wade. The wet sand gave slightly as he sat astride the ridge to roll up his leggings and take off his boots. This movement was not of the sand – although her goosebumped flesh beneath his palms still had the texture of the sand. The current seemed blessedly cool as she slipped into the muscle of water formed at the meeting of the flows. She turned to the right, stood up in the main current of the river so that the flesh of her back pressed against him; he gripped her hips tightly with his thighs, and his hands slipped under her arms to her breasts. Swift and smooth, she cut a swathe through a mat of floating pine needles, leaving them bobbing and dancing in her wake before crossing to the shallows at the far side of the tributary river, and returning to her hands and knees, and waited one with the damp sandbank again, for him to dismount. He hesitated one moment, indented the ridge of sand with his fingertips, expecting it to spring back again like flesh….
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A month ago these woods would have been perfumed. Perfumed with honeysuckle, and glowing emerald green with oak leaves. Now they smelled of the musk of the waning of the year: yet they still glowed: glowed with the bronze of oak leaves, flickering in the failing sunlight as the breeze disturbed the branches, or scrunching under his boots. The honeysuckle berries glowed too: he knew better than to eat those, but there’d been plenty of haw and sloe to sustain him as he journeyed. The hunger of spring was well behind him in this fruitful autumn.
The sun, too, was falling into a mass of colour. Soon it would be dark, and he’d have to find a place to light his fire, and to make his bivouac for the night. Ahead of him the valley – already broad and shallow became yet wider. Wraiths of mist rose ahead of him, glowing gold and red as they caught the setting sun’s rays.
Here was a stand of bushes, overhanging the river bank, and ripe with fruit. He picked his way around, enjoying the tartness of the berries as he followed the edge of the stand into the wood, and then back, down and round where the mists rose from the river. The river seemed wider, the opposite bank invisible in the fog, as if his journeying with the river had brought him to the edge of a lake. Perhaps tomorrow he’d see how big it was: in any case, tomorrow he’d continue his journey round the perimeter, whether that took an hour or a month.
Just downstream of the bushes an oak tree had fallen. He found himself wondering what storm could have brought it down; the trunk, supported in the river by four branches, seemed to be washed smooth, with detritus – grass, old leaves and twigs – from the storms of last week still clinging to it and to the twists of honeysuckle stalk. Yet the branches, well above the waterline, still held coppergold leaves. He could see them, still shining in the sun above the rivermist. He would sleep tonight in the scar left by the tree roots. He would harvest the straight blackthorn shoots for a shelter, and light fire – the first since the start of his journey – against the rising moistness in the air, and against the white light of the full moon.
But first he sat astride the fallen trunk, shuffled and leapfrogged along until he could peer into the river; perhaps there would be trout in the shadow of the branches that he could tickle for his supper. It was as if the sap still in her remembered the storm that brought her down: swaying and rocking from side to side, backwards and forwards. His hands fumbled for the honeysuckle stem that twisted around her – not that he needed a bridle to stay seated: whatever wind had brought her down here, kept alive in her thoughts, she contained in her own strength. Nor did the bridle give him any control. Her memory of the storm dictated her movements. Even the mists swirled around her, pricking his skin, yet she stayed, anchored to the lakebank as she reared and plunged, sometimes out of the water, sometimes almost completely submerged, soaking him to the waist in the cold river. Her moving became increasingly violent, imagining, no doubt, the building up of the storm, until at last he could grip the smooth skin no more, and he found himself, still clinging to the honeysuckle, in the water beside her…
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Cold. The fire glowed still, all but dead, but still the only colour in this world of white. It had been a long enough job on this shortest of days to collect firewood amongst the salt-marshes. His hands still bled from the thorns. And he had not collected enough for warmth through this night. Snow, driven by an ice-cold wind, stung his flesh. He stood up. The sky was scattered with stars, like frozen shards of ice. The blowing snow was just spindrift, a thin layer of biting ice particles, swirling angrily in the gale, yet no more than waist- high, piling into drifts around any irregularity in the ground. Yet, standing up, he could see the dim shapes of the hills he had journeyed down, and the other way the sea, flickering with reflected starlight. Here his journey would stop.
He was glad of that. He’d already lost the river, which had split into a morass of creeks, mudbanks and tidal rivulets. Some were frozen, so the scrambling down and across, although exhausting was easy. But others, more frequent as he neared the sea and salt, had not been: he was filthy with stinking mud, and the shrieking laughter of the seagulls had accompanied each fall. He’d found himself wondering if he could trap and roast one over his fire.
The pond he’d bivouacked near had been frozen. The wind had whipped the ice clear of snow, except for one drift. Even as he watched, he could see it move as the wind blew its load of spindrift across the crest.
And so he mounted her pure-white back, and felt her anger surge within her. Not anger at him: anger at the cold that froze her so. She punched at the ice, ineffectually, then reared, brought both fist smashing onto, through, the ice of the pond. She surged forward, pounding the frozen surface. His feet and knees, soaked from her splashing, numbed as he pressed, as tight as he could into her waist: he tried to dig his fingers into the flesh of her shoulders, and saw with alarm the cuts to his hands, made as he gathered firewood earlier, open up and bleed. And still she moved into the water, pummelling, rearing and plunging to shatter the ice that bound the river. Her own fists were bleeding: the blood swirled in the water and splattered the snow as she advanced. He leaned forward, lying flat across her back, wrapping his legs around her, and gripping her wrists as they plunged again and again into the numbingly cold water. And suddenly she stopped.
He had never controlled her. Yet she stopped. Watched as the two bloods – his and hers mingled, then flowed under the ice in some current through the centre of the pond. Then she turned, and bore him gently back to the riverbank.

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Sunday 7 April 2013

Adiranthe 13 - Final

Eleria smiled to herself at the rather inglorious picture her former captor made, forced to all fours, saddled and bridled and just waiting for her. Glaring, but what could he do about it? She held all the power and she knew it.

She stepped forward and took the reins, swung her leg over and sat down in the saddle. Just as she did so, Kardan did indeed try to move, she felt his strong muscles bunch under her in what would have been an attempt to throw her off backwards. But the magic prevented him. Oh, this was glorious!
"Bad pony," Eleria laughed, "I said stay still!" She smacked his backside hard. She felt his muscles gather again, but to no avail. He tried to curse her through the bit.

She slid her feet into the stirrups, settling her weight easily in the ornately tooled saddle, and took up just the right tension in the reins. It was almost like being astride a real pony, in a way that just a bare back horsey ride from a friend would not have been. In the saddle she was comfortable and secure, that and the bridle giving her total command. It put her utterly in control.
She could feel his greater strength waiting tensely beneath her, all restrained energy, wanting to get rid of her, but unable. Fun!

"Lets put some of that energy to good use!" Eleria sang, "forward, pony!" She jabbed the spurs against his thighs twice, lightly, mockingly, even though the verbal command would force him through the magic of the silk.
He began crawling forward under her! Somehow his obedience was surprising, even though she knew he literally had no other choice. She sat, feeling the gentle swaying movement through the saddle.

She reined him almost automatically as they neared the turn into the passageway, just as she would her real pony, Dapples. In other words, quite a gentle command, not force. Unfortunately the steed she was riding took no notice. So she used the reins to quite literally pull his head around. It wasn't that hard. And for good measure, she dug her right spur hard into his hip, causing his back half to instinctively move away from that leg even as his head was pulled around. Before he knew it, he was turning, under her control, without the silk having compelled him. He growled at her and tried to slow, and she laughed and forced him forward down the corridor. Between silk strips and spurs, he could literally not disobey.

"You might as well settle into a nice steady gait here," she told him. "There's a long way to go especially at your turtle like pace."

The Goblin King was, of course, not feeling very good about himself. Anger and humiliation warred within. To be defeated, robbed and ridden by this slip of a girl...! And worse, to have her make him obey her this way! The ignonimity! And yet, he knew he could not escape what was happening to him. What options did he have? To wait and see if he could catch her off guard when she was not using the silk to control him? perhaps throw her. She had lured him - he hated to admit it - into a false sense of security once before. So now he would pretend his obedience, and eventually she would give him an opportunity. He told himself that, as he carried his rider submissively through his own domain.
She wasn't that heavy, and of course he was stronger than she, but it was still hard work, he was breathing faster as he moved along, and she heard it.
"Aww, is this hard work?" Eleria said tauntingly. "Lets try a canter, shall we?" And Kardan found himself cantering awkwardly, more awkwardly than agile Eleria had, shuffle-jumping his hands forward, then his knees, then his hands, in an embarrassing parody of a canter. "Faster!" Eleria called, this was fun! Her spurs found his thighs again, once, twice, and poor Kardan was going all-out underneath her as she bounced lightly in the saddle. After only a short distance it robbed his breath quickly, and even through his trousers, his knees were beginning to feel sore. He didn't want to admit it but he would have loved to stop.

But she wouldn't let him! It wasn't until his breath was burning in his lungs that she finally pulled him up with the reins. She laughed to hear him panting under her. She lifted herself up a little in the stirrups, and bounced her weight on his back several times, letting him feel the impact of her weight right through his body, before forcing him on yet again, at a walk now, reveling in his breathlessness.
"Keep going, little pony," she mocked, "we're not even in the caves part yet!"

In a short while, she reined him firmly around into a different passage, this one didn't lead to the caves that would take them outside, but rather to an area where the Goblins resided.
As she had hoped, a Goblin came skittering along, and she reined her human steed to a halt. "Rear up!" she hissed, pulling hard on the reins, and he did, with her balanced easily in the saddle, then came back down again to all fours when she pushed her weight forward.
The Goblin stopped and its eyes practically boggled out of its mis-shapen, pallid head as it took in the scene.
"On your knees, filth!" commanded Eleria, and she took Kardan's magical necklace from where it hung round her neck, and held it up menacingly. The stunned beast fell to its knees, bewildered by the strange scene.
"I have defeated your master," she said, and it looked down at its sweaty, horse-bridled, humiliated King. Kardan glared at it and his muscles bunched, trying to grunt something through the bit at the goblin, but Eleria pulled his head back hard, ruining the attempt. She ordered the goblin, "You will bring my real horse, the dappled grey, out to the surface and wait for us there. If you do not, your miserable life will be worse than your master's here."
The goblin stammered and hesitated.
Eleria held up the necklace once more, as if to wield its powers. "Now!"
It ran.

Eleria sighed. "Being King is hard work," she said, relaxing in the saddle. "Now carry me to the surface, slave."
Growling unintelligibly through the bit, Kardan obeyed.

During the arduous trek through the halls, tunnels and caves, the Goblin King tried a couple of times to throw his rider. The first time, he tried lulling her into that false sense of security, acting tired and obedient, then when he thought her guard was down, attempted to throw himself into a bucking fit. Sadly for him, the command of the magic prevented him. The second time, he thought her distracted as she gazed at the weird, strange twisted beauty of the caves around her, but again, to no avail.

Finally they reached the area of cavern where the very first showdown between them had happened, where Kardan had lain in wait and held up his stone in the darkness and practically blinded her with magical light. By this time, the Goblin Breath was truly near exhaustion, his muscular frame trembling and wet with sweat; it  was quite a feat for anyone to carry a human weight that long.

"And thus it ends," Eleria said, half to herself and half to him, still in the saddle, as if he really were just her horse. "We have come full circle. This is where you meet adventurers who come to explore the supposedly empty Adiranthe, fight them and rob them... you are a thief too, really, aren't you, Goblin Breath? Shame you tried to enslave me. You weren't ever going to get away with that."

She dismounted him, and commanded the silk to keep him there on his hands and knees until nightfall. She removed first the saddle, then the bridle. He worked his jaw, relieving the ache that came from wearing it so long.

"Do not ever come back here, little pony slave," he growled at her. "I shall recover, and so will my magic, and you would not escape my wrath." The recovery part was true, for as well as the resources that lay beneath the ruins of Adiranthe, he still had the sorceress, whose powers he would use to enchant a new crystal to control the magics of the underground domain. "And you will always remember how I did indeed enslave you, and how you reacted to me, despite your fire."

"Ooh, the boy is trying to salvage his wounded pride," she taunted back, even though that last part had a small basis in truth. "Goodbye, Goblin Breath." And she walked away.

She found her way through the traps that she had come through to get here, having to tell herself to be careful; still high from her victory and a little shiver from the come down from adrenaline.
Finally she reached the surface, and held her hand to her eyes, shielding them from the unaccustomed sunlight, looking around.

She saw a pair of figures, one smaller than her, one bigger and much more solid and four legged. A pang went through her heart. Dapples! She rushed forward, and indeed, it was the goblin she had intimidated, with her dappled grey pony.
"Good. You are wise to have obeyed me," she told the goblin sternly when she reached them, one hand on the magical, crystal necklace round her neck. "Now go, and do not try to follow, or it will be the last thing you ever do."
The goblin bowed its head and scuttled back to whichever tunnel it had come from. She watched until it had disappeared.

She felt a firm nudge - ok, more like a head-butt - and warm breath on her shoulder, and turned. Dapples regarded her curiously with his dark, liquid eyes, as if to ask her what the hell was going on.
"Oh, Dapples, are you ok? Did they do anything to you?" She looked over her grey pony with concern, but he seemed fine. Overcome with emotion suddenly, the thief-girl threw her arms around her pony's neck, glad to have his solid warmth, glad for contact that did not involve battle.
The horse snorted, as if to show amusement at his owner's nonsense. Eleria laughed through her little wave of emotion. "Oh, Dapples, we're rich. You're going to live in horsey luxury." And not feeling like riding right now, she collected her gear and led her grey pony away from the ruins of Adiranthe, talking to the animal about the riches they had won.


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