Can you tell me where my country lies?

Chapter 01: said the unifaun
Chapter 02: to his true love's eyes
Chapter 03: it lies with me cried
Chapter 04: the queen of maybe
Chapter 05: for her merchandise
Chapter 06: he traded in his prize

Generally, Dannagh is not home to all that many hooved creatures. The sand would sink them; a Griffox would sooner be at home than a Ponio.

Minoth, the Blade of Quaestor Amalthus, will likely always have a hard time finding himself at home anywhere, so perhaps it's not to be helped.

When the Indoline delegation disembarks outside Auresco, the Driver walks one way, and the centaur walks another. No use for a six-limbed scribe at the routine state-of-the-union summit, after all.

The air is dry and the sand is soft and Minoth, unfortunately, cannot run away.

Or maybe that's a good thing, after all. Once he started, he surely wouldn't stop.

In Torna, it is not customary for Drivers to become separated from their Blades, and vice versa. Addam, nineteen years old and all in earnest, thinks it fitting to ask after the Quaestor's, as he has managed to remember that the imperious man does have one (keeps one, rather?).

"It's in the desert," says Amalthus, languid and bored as ever.

Addam frowns, confused by the pronouns and the indifference and the general atypicality of it all, but trots off nonetheless.

"Ahoy there! Are you a Blade?"

At first, the face draped in auburn hair is all glare. Then it softens, opens up.

Then Addam can see the bright, bright, intelligent blue.

Addam approaches carefully, hesitant but not quite scared. The Blade is much as him, then. He'd started out as merely unseemly, unready to fit into the setting he had been born into, and by and by he'd just become plain unwanted. So it's quite the same, all round.

"Why don't you come walk through Auresco with me? There's no shame in being a Blade, I can promise you that."

He can?

"Who are you to know that?"

"I'm a prince," answers Addam, far too readily.

Minoth stamps, tosses his proverbial mane and minds not the traditional posture.

"I'm not."

"Well. I don't mind."

"What if I do?"

"Another story, I suppose."

On this occasion, they tread around the border of the desert. No humans - no civilians, no people of society - do they meet. They talk, idly, of favorite foods and classic stories, things that are quite strongly love languages if only you stop to pay attention.

On the next, Addam lays his hand in Minoth's mane. On the next, he finds himself leaning sleepily against the centaur's back, ether deposits pressing reciprocally into his chest.

"I'm glad they don't like us."

"Stupid thing to be glad about. You think this is forever?"

Minoth is a Blade. Addam is young enough for that not to matter, just yet.

"Why, yes. I hope so."

Minoth had already been dichotomized by way of the two races' form factors he hybridized simply by being extant and corporeal. He had already been a mutant, a mutt, from the jump.

Amalthus's experiment is somewhat of an offbeat suggestion - not the soundest scientist's idea of a control group, really. But Minoth is also already powerful, fast and strong and equipped with a deadly aim, so Amalthus will make do with what he's got on hand.

"You might die." It's Amalthus making the obvious advisement, not Addam.

Minoth snorts. "Are you planning on it?"

"No. Are you?"

He's not. No, he's planning for something quite different, once he can get away.

There hadn't been time to tell Addam beforehand. Afterwards, he arrives in Torna on one last available Indoline transport, planning to gallop into the desert with all speed.

But Addam won't be there, necessarily. And without Addam, he shouldn't even bother calling himself a Blade anymore. A Blade is nothing without a Driver - or, well, maybe that's true for humanoid Blades.

If a centaur starts parading through Auresco, no one will bat an eye at the apparent absence of a Driver.

Or, for that matter, a bastard prince strolling innocently into the port and letting a suspiciously independent horsey fellow nuzzle into his chest.

No, no one will mind at all.