“You like it?”
“No, Tor, I love it. The colors are beautiful and the shoes are totally fab…you…las.”
“Gods,” he whispered, his eyes moving over my face, “you like it.”
“Okay, you can say I like it when I told you I love it. That’s cool. Whatever,” I replied and turned to face front again. “And thanks for the bath. That river is cold as Siberia but it feels nice being clean.”
He made no response to this except his arm got tighter again, this time it felt like he meant to do it and it go so tight I slid the half an inch back so the side of my behind was snug in his crotch (because I was riding sidesaddle) and my back was tight to his front.
With no response from Tor, I kept blabbing as I watched the lush forest trees and beautiful stone of the mountain slide by. “And I’m so glad to get out of that cave for dinner. I know you need to take the pulse but I’m glad you’re taking me with you. That’s very cool of you. Thanks.”
Still no response but I felt his fingers open up at my side so they spanned my ribs then they flexed in.
“God!” I breathed, looking around. “This place is magnificent. Totally out of a movie. The colors are so… I don’t know… colorful. The trees seem to have ten times as many leaves. The stone seems like it’s almost glossy. It’s bizarre but so stinking cool. I wish I had a camera and I could take pictures. No one at home would believe this.”
Finally, he spoke. “Camera?”
I twisted to look at him again and nodded. “Yep, it’s this gadget that’s really small but it takes pictures. Do you have paintings here? Portraits? Landscapes?”
“Of course,” he grunted, staring down at me.
“Well, a camera takes a portrait or a landscape by touching a button, you load it on your computer, print it out and voila!” I threw out a hand. “You have your picture.”
“That’s mad,” he muttered.
I grinned up at him. “I know but it’s true.”
“So my world is more colorful than your world?” he asked and my light heart lightened more.
Was I finally convincing him?
I nodded fervently. “Yes, totally. It’s hard to explain but the birds are more vibrant. The flowers more dazzling. The river is cleaner than any river I’ve ever seen.” I tilted my head to the side. “There’s a lot of pollution in my world.”
“Pollution?”
“People litter, big corporations dump waste. It’s not good.”
“Love, I don’t know what the bloody hell you’re talking about.”
I looked into his sky blue eyes and realized I was glad he didn’t.
Then I said, “Well, I guess my world has a curse of sorts too but all of man caused it by getting rid of their rubbish, and we create a lot of rubbish and some of it is unnatural, in the rivers, the oceans, burying it under the fields.”
“Why would they do that?”
I shrugged and turned forward. “I don’t know,” I whispered. “Because we’re stupid, short-sighted and greedy.” I looked at the darkening landscape that was still verdant in comparison with my world even with the falling night. “I wonder,” I went on in a whisper, “if my world looked like your world before we destroyed it.”
“Maybe it did,” he remarked.
“That would suck,” I muttered.
“Suck?” he asked.
“It would be bad.”
Silence then, “Yes, love, it would.”
I fell silent and Salem cantered down the mountain, found a road and took it. Tor’s leg moved under mine again and Salem speeded up to a gentle canter. At the same time I felt Tor’s thumb start moving, up and down, stroking me at my side.