Dedicated to the most amazing woman in my life, my mother.

Also dedicated to Neyonlites and Bleu Melody – may they forever have beautiful spring fields to run like the wind through

The pitter patter of the rain on the metal roof kept a steady cadence for Leesa as she made the final preparations for her journey by the light of a single lantern. Her horse, a large chestnut with a bright white blaze down his face, had protested when she entered the barn, disturbing his rest, but she had quieted him with a pat on the neck and a grain bag tied around his nose. While she made sure she had all the supplies she required, her horse happily, and noisily, slurped up the grains. He finished before she did, and Leesa was forced to pause her preparations to remove the feed bag and took the opportunity to brush the dirt from his back.

“Rolling in the dirt again, were ya, Neyon?” She said affectionately as she brushed him clean. “Well, you won’t be able to do that today, big guy. I hope you got your fill yesterday.” As she talked and brushed him, Neyon curved his neck around and began to nibble lightly on the collar of her jacket, his whiskers tickling her neck until she laughed and pushed him away slightly, “Enough of that! We need to get going before the sun rises.” She glanced out the stable door at the rain, “Well, when it would rise if it weren’t for this rain.” Neyon nickered in response and nuzzled Leesa’s neck affectionately.

“Nope, you can’t sweet talk me out of this, not today. We need to go. Pa will be up soon, and if he catches us before we are gone, you know that is the end of it, right?” Neyon nodded his head up and down vigorously, as though he could truly understand what Leesa was saying. She liked to think he could.

With her horse brushed, Leesa grabbed a saddle blanket to spread over his back and lugged the heavy saddle onto him.  She tightened up the girth and, after waiting for Neyon to let out the breath he was holding, cinched it up a little tighter so she wouldn’t end up riding along on his belly.  That had happened once, when she was much younger, and was not an experience she ever wished to repeat. Her head had been sore for weeks!

With Neyon bridled and saddled, her saddle bags secured filled with travel food and a change of clothing, and her oiled leather raincoat around her shoulders, Leesa swung up into the saddle – a hard task, considering Neyon’s height, but she was used to it. She pressed her heels lightly to Neyon’s sides and clucked him forward in a walk. He paused before heading into the rain, as if to ask if this was really what she wanted to do, but Leesa insisted with another cluck of her tongue.

Leesa would have been drenched in moments if it wasn’t for her raincoat, and as it was she felt a cold trickle of water down her back where it had worked its way inside the coat. Had this been any other day, she would have been curled up in bed still, the embers from the hearthfire glowing gently as they cooled. But today was the only day of the decade that the portal opened to the other lands, and Leesa wasn’t going to miss the chance to leave the tired little homestead she grew up on.

She didn’t know what lay beyond the portal – those who had entered it never returned. The older folk, those settled in their ways, often spoke of the evil the portal brought, of how it enticed the young ones away from their homes and responsibilities. The speeches turned off all but the most adventurous, and Leesa knew she was one of the most adventurous. Her father had forbade her from leaving, had even gone so far as to lock Leesa in her rooms that night. She hadn’t let that stop her, of course, although it had delayed her somewhat. She chuckled at the thought of her Pa guarding an empty bedroom to make sure she didn’t leave. He would have quite the surprise in the morning.

No matter! The sun had not yet risen, and she was leaving the homestead. She had a solid couple of hours to get to the portal before it opened, and everyone said it stayed open for several hours at least. Leesa stretched on her saddle, dropping the reins momentarily to crack her fingers before reclaiming them with a satisfied grin.

As she rode, the rain began to slacken and she found herself riding through a misty landscape as the rising sun evaporated the fallen rain. She took a deep breath of the musty air, laughing happily to herself. She felt free, for the first time in her life, and she could barely contain the excitement within her.

“Want to go for a run, Neyon?” She asked, pressing her heels into his side to bring him into a canter and then a gallop. With a huge grin, Leesa whooped and steered Neyon deftly along the dirt roadway, hardly needing to guide the intelligent creature. With her hair streaming in the wind, and Neyon’s mane and tail doing the same, Leesa felt more free than she had in a long time. The steady beat of Neyon’s hooves calmed any anxieties left in her and she revelled in the run.

Eventually, though, she had to slow down or risk hurting her horse and it was with a tinge of regret that she pulled Neyon into a steady walk to cool him down. At the steady walk, it wasn’t much longer before Leesa and Neyon were approaching the turn-off to the portal.

A glance at the seldom-used road showed only one fresh set of hoof-prints, and Leesa suspected she knew just whose horse they belonged to. She doubted that there would be any but the two of them at the portal – herself and the boy from two homesteads over. They were almost the same age, so their parents had always stuck the two together and likely had assumed that the pair would one day marry. Leesa grimaced at the thought – Arden was lazy, selfish, and his only redeemable feature, in her eyes, was that his desire for adventure was as strong as hers. How he reconciled that with being lazy, she had yet to figure out.

Sure enough, as she approached the place the portal would open, she saw Arden sitting on the crumbling stone fence, munching on an apple that his horse kept trying to grab from him. Leesa couldn’t help but smile a little at the antics, though she quickly wiped the smile from her face. She didn’t want Arden to think she approved of him.

“I thought you told me that Melody was a perfectly behaved angel, Arden.” Leesa commented as she pulled Neyon to a halt near Arden and Melody.

Arden sighed expressively and pushed Melody’s nose away from the apple again, “Don’t even start. You know she loves her apples. I wouldn’t have any luck if this was an orange.” Taking one last bite of the apple, Arden finally let Melody eat the remainder, which she did after delicately picking it up from his flat hand with her lips. You could almost hear her sigh of contentment as she crunched down on the juicy fruit. “So you managed to convince your Pa to let you go through the portal?”

Leesa laughed harshly, “You know he never would. No, I left before dawn. It was pouring rain. How did you get here so fast, anyway? Neyon and I took a run once the rain cleared.”

Arden shrugged, “I, uh, might have had a fight with the family last night and camped here. I’d’ve been soaked if it wasn’t for the ruins around here.” He ran a hand through his messy brown hair, “Guess neither of our folks’ were too eager to see us running off on an adventure, eh?”

“Can you really blame them? Nobody ever comes back. But I can’t handle this place anymore, it is so boring. I need to get out of here.” Leesa swung off of Neyon and tied the reins to the saddle before walking over to the site of the portal, Neyon trailing behind like an obedient puppy. “How much longer before it opens?”

Arden glanced at the sun before answering, “Honestly? Any minute now, I think. Doesn’t look like anyone else will be going.”

“I wonder what’s on the other side…”

“We’ll find out soon enough!” Arden got up from the stone fence, brushed his hands off on his pants and swung up in Melody’s saddle. “Any minute now…”

Leesa turned from the portal and swung up into Neyon’s saddle and gathered up the rains to wait for the portal to open.

The wait wasn’t long – as Arden predicted, it was only a few minutes before the tell-tale glow came from the surrounding ring of posts. Leesa backed Neyon up slightly, not wanting to be standing too close when the portal popped open.

A hum filled the air, and slowly a great circular portal opened in the centre of the posts. The portal itself was a swirl of colors, looking like a giant opal spinning slowly on its axis. Arden and Leesa found themselves captivated by the sight of it and had to shake themselves out of their trance or else they would risk missing their window.

“Ready?” Leesa asked, more than willing to treat Arden as a companion now that the moment was upon them. It was just going to be the four of them, through that portal – herself, Arden, Neyon and Melody, and Leesa suddenly realized that they were probably going to need each other to get through whatever waited for them on the other side.

Arden, having similar thoughts, nodded in response and tapped his heels against Melody’s side, moving her into a walk. Leesa steered Neyon behind Melody and, after a moment’s hesitation at the threshold, they stepped through to the other side.

~*~

It was nighttime.

The stars in the sky weren’t familiar.

The moon was too large.

There were trees everywhere.

The first moments after stepping through the portal were disorienting, a series of impressions without context. Had there been anyone waiting on the other side of the portal, Leesa and Arden would have been helpless.

No one waited on the other side, though, and Neyon and Melody simply kept walking, not experiencing the same disorientation that their riders were feeling, though the two animals were clearly a little confused by the strange scents suddenly around them. By the time the two riders had regained their senses the horses had carried them away from the portal and down an overgrown path, plodding along contently.

Leesa rubbed at her head as she looked around in wonder. They were in the middle of a dense forest and she could barely see the sky above the canopy. The trees were strange, larger than they should have been and covered with sharp needles instead of broad leaves. The dried needles underfoot crunched loudly with each step the horses took.

Leesa unhooked her lantern from her saddlebags and fished out a striker to light it, bringing a small circle of warm light to the cold night. Arden and Leesa rode as close as they could without knocking stirrups together, both looking wide-eyed around them.

“Do you think we are in the same world, or somewhere completely different?” Arden asked in hushed tones.

“If it is our world, it is as far from home as can be. I think we are somewhere new, Arden. Otherwise someone would have surely returned home, right?”

Arden shrugged his broad shoulders, “I guess.”

The two rode along in silence after that, both lost in their own thoughts and too captivated by the new sights to hold a conversation for long.

Eventually, the forest began to lighten as dawn approached, and the trees around them began to thin out. They prodded their horses forward, picking up the pace now that they could see the path more clearly, when a rustling in the underbrush ahead of them caused them to rein up. The two horses were snuffling and snorting, a little overwhelmed by the variety of new scents, and neither seemed to like whatever it was that was making the noise.

Leesa was about to suggest that perhaps they should turn around, find another path, when a short, green-skinned creature leapt into the centre of the path. It wore a loincloth tied shoddily around its waist and carried a crude spear, barely more than a stick with a hastily sharpened point. The creature waved the spear menacingly, making guttural noises that Leesa and Arden assumed was some form of language. Or maybe the creature thought the noises were threatening.

Leesa and Arden turned to glance at each other, amusement painted clearly on both their faces, as they did not take the threat of the little green man seriously. The amusement vanished moments later when another dozen green men stepped from the underbrush and surrounded the riders. They were all dressed similarly to the first little man, crude loincloths and wielding a variety of thick clubs and spears.

Neyon and Melody danced, trying to get themselves away from the strange smelling creatures and Leesa and Arden had to spend several long moments bringing their mounts back under control before they could even think of addressing the thirteen men.

It was a delay that would have cost them their lives, had it been any other day in any other spot.

Instead, thirteen arrows came flying from the treetops, each burying itself into the throat of a different green man. Within moments, all of their accosters lay dead on the path and Leesa and Arden sat in stunned silence, their mouths hanging open. This was not the sort of adventure they had anticipated. Not that they had really thought out what adventure meant, but surely this was not it.

Silence reigned for a long moment before another rustle came, this one from the tree-tops, and a slender woman jumped from the trees and landed lightly on the path, nearly stepping in a growing pile of blood. She grimaced and took a step away from the pile, clearly not wanting any of the sticky substance to get on her delicate leather boots. “So. You’re the new recruits?” She asked, her voice soft, sounding like she would break into song at any moment.

“New recruits?” Leesa asked, confused, as she studied the newcomer. The woman appeared to have no fat on her, just muscle, and she wore her hair in a tight braid over her shoulder, showing off her pointed ears. Paired with the dark leather boots, she wore a pair of light green leggings and a tunic of the same shade as her boots. A quiver of arrows hung from her belt, and she carried a short bow in one hand.

“Sure! That was why you came through the portal, right? To fight in the goblin wars?”

“Goblin wars?” It was Arden who asked, this time.

“Yea.” The woman said, a little exasperated. “You know, goblins. These guys.” She poked the nearest one with her toe and immediately grimaced as she realized she got blood on her boot. “Ugh. Anyway. Why else would you come through the portal?”

“Uh, well, we don’t know anything about goblins, or wars. Nobody knew where the portal went, but we decided to try it out.”

“WHAT?!” The woman exclaimed, astonished, “That is unacceptable. How can no one know where the portal-” She paused mid-sentence, thinking furiously, “Wait. How long has the portal been there? I remember there was something about a time difference…”

Leesa and Arden exchanged a glance, “Well, forever. My grandparents talked about their grandparents’ generation going through it.” Leesa answered with a small shrug, reaching down to pat Neyon’s neck to calm him a bit.

“That explains it, then. Too long has passed. I’ll have to have a chat with Moga about that when we get to camp.” She put her hands on her hips and stared Arden and Leesa down, “Well, do you want to help out in the Goblin War, seeing as you are here and all?”

“Do we have a choice?” Leesa asked pointedly.

“Not really.” The woman answered cheerfully, “I’m Devlin, by the way. You can call me Dev.” She sketched a half bow and then turned her back on the two and started down the path, “C’mon. The others have already gone back to camp, and they’ll be waiting for us there!”