Ax had started morphing into a human once he had finished telling the assembled Animorphs about the difference between thought-speak and real telepathy, just in case Cassie's parents came out near the barn or decided to look in. The one that the Animorphs had been speaking of soon arrived back in the barn, still in his panther morph. He took one look around at the assembled Animorphs, and was instantly curious.
Did I miss something? Slade asked.
"We were just going to start talking about how we might be able to follow that group of Horse-Controllers we spotted yesterday."
"I see you've got a new morph, Slade," Marco observed sardonically. "A big cat, how very original."
Blast off, space case, Slade shot back without any particular malice.
Cassie snickered as Slade began to demorph. After a few seconds of silence, Marco started laughing too. Once Slade had finished his demorph, he sat down on one of the few vacant hay-bales that bordered the work area of the barn. Cassie stood up once Slade had sat down, figuring that she might as well try to get some work done, now that all of the weirdness that Starfire had stirred up was now over with.
Heading over to a cage with a fox in it, the same fox who had watched her and four of the other Animorphs morph into birds in fact, Cassie took the fox out of his cage and gently cradled him in her arms. Taking a bottle of medicine from one of the large pockets in her overalls, Cassie tipped a pill into her hand, opened the fox's mouth, popped the pill inside, let the fox close his mouth and then blew on his nose to make him swallow the pill.
"So, how are we going to follow a bunch of Horse-Controllers, anyway?" Slade asked, looking around at his fellow Animorphs.
"We morph horses, of course," Cassie said, sounding for all the world like she had been talking about this for a long time, rather then having just finished processing some radically different information.
"Horses?" Jake asked, thinking that over. "Didn't you morph a horse once, Cassie?"
"I did," Cassie said, nodding. "It was my first morph, and it's still one of my favorites. But we won't be able to use her, she's got distinctive markings. We can't exactly go walking around the Dry Lands looking identical."
"Identical horses," Marco mused. "Sweet Valley Horses. That could be a TV show, or at least a book."
