Thoth had been right about Minnow and Morveren being kindred spirits. His mind filled with questions about living in a swamp - do you build your homes on stilts? Do you travel on boats or wade? How do you deal with the monsters? - but he bit them back, letting her ruminate at her own pace. His attention needed to be predominantly on the mare, not the girl. Light conversation was fine, but if he started getting curious about her background he might be too distracted to notice if the mare was getting tired or uncomfortable.
“We do have a swamp,” he did offer. “But you wouldn’t want to live there. It’s where the monsters come from.”
He filed his enquiries away for a later date. Maybe if Minnow stuck around once they reached the castle, she’d be able to draw sketches of her home life for him to dissect.
The conversation took a bemusing detour after he mentioned his magic. For a girl with a tail and a conviction that horses were magical and could talk to be awed by the prospect of someone who could talk in tongues was strange at best. He was about to point out that most people here had magic of one form or another, when she mentioned someone who had apparently given her the ability to speak English. A small frown creased his forehead. That wasn’t a power he was aware of – unless it was some kind of reverse polylingualism – which meant that Minnow must have pet a more powerful magical person or creature. There was one possibility which stuck out, although Thoth wouldn’t have used ‘really nice’ as a descriptor.
“Was this guy about this tall?” He gestured with his hand. “Black hair, kind of dark skin, probably wearing black clothes? Mid to late twenties?”
He glanced back at the mare again, but she seemed to be doing fine. “It’s called the English language, by the way.”
Her explanation of aja sparked a glimmer of intellectual curiosity in the corner of his eye. Forgetting about the mare, he gave Minnow his full attention.
“Aja must be horseoid in figure then,” he muttered, mostly to himself. Then, to her: “it’s aja plural, without an s? Like sheep? Yeah. Horses here come in different breeds and colours, but they don’t speak and they’re not elemental.”
A sly grin – his first smile since they’d met – flashed across his face. He pulled one hand out of his pockets and held it out, palm up, concentrating. A tiny sphere of water emerged from nowhere and spun swiftly, growing larger until it filled the palm of his hand. He stilled it with his willpower and frowned slightly as he forced it into a new shape, one he knew well. When he was satisfied that he’d gotten as close to having a little miniature water-fox (literally made of water) in the palm of his hand, he froze it in the blink of an eye and held it out for Minnow to take.
“I am though.” Magic was one of the few things Thoth could take pride in. “Most of my magic relates to water.”
MASTER OF THE ORBIS . MASTER OF THE WATER ELEMENT . SON OF AURA