And now, presenting Chapters Two and Three. These are short. Very short.

At noon they met at the gate. Denii was already there when Erith and T'shebak arrived. The horses were ready and waiting, happily eating the lilies in the garden.

Yuck. Lilies are the worst, T'shebak sniffed, his nose in the air.

"The cook will have a fit about those flowers. She gardens more than she cooks. We end up with a lot of salads, even at royal banquets. I'm glad I won't be here when she finds out the state of her Sheala lily."

I hate that. No good leftovers, the cat thought.

Even as she spoke happily and bravely, Erith found inwardly that she was already homesick. I'm not actually glad at all, she realized. Then, a voice in the back of her mind reminded her of the embroidery in the pile on her gilded dresser, waiting for her to re-stitch it.

"Come on," she said to Denii, urging her horse to start. "Let's go conquer the world."

She wasn't unhappy anymore.

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Just past the village of T'kanith, they stopped to eat lunch.

Lunch, thought T'shebak, Food. Yum. "Meooowr"

 T'kanith extended all around the castle. Beyond the town to the south and west was mostly the Dratchi Desert, with the Perija Lake to the east. Only a thin strip of land separated the lake and desert, and the one major road of T'kanith was built on it. But to the north…

"We're near the edge of the forest," Erith had explained to Denii while chewing a bite of her tuna salad sandwich and not noticing that T'shebak had eaten most of the rest. "When we get through it, we go across the moor and cross the T'eiki. That's the river that runs through the moor. After the river, we enter the hills. "Then," she paused and they looked up at their ultimate goal, a silhouette against the cloudy sky, "the mountains!"

The same, unknown thing was drawing them both towards them. Towards the mountains.