A Questionable Quest

Chapter 10... in which I win "heads or tails" and ignore my guilt

For all the tales of knights defeating dragons and fair maidens being kidnapped by dragons and dragons hoarding treasure troves of gold...

Dragons were surprisingly hard to find.

"Heads."

"Nope."

"I swear it has to be heads."

"Sorry."

"So it's tails."

"Yup?"

"You're lying." My travelling companion frowned, and shot me a more-than-slightly miffed look. "You've got to be lying. That's twelve tosses in a row!"

I just laughed. "I'm not lying. See?" I held out the coin in my palm. Staring up at him was the image of a wing. "Tails."

Van stared. Eventually, he looked away. Stepping up onto a particularly large tree root, he asked "how do you do that?"

I lifted one foot to join him... and slipped.

His hands shot out and steadied me by the waist. He waited a moment -- just a moment, as was proper for a prince to do -- and let go.

"Thank you."

"Of course."

We kept walking. I doubted he could hear the slightly erratic drum of my heart, though I could hear it perfectly well in my own ears. Because I'd almost fallen, of course. Not because of... anything else.

We'd been travelling for three days, and, for the most part, my reactions to Van (the beating heart, the twisting stomach, etcetera etcetera) had settled down. Thank the skies. It would have been awkward indeed to travel on this big quest all the while crushing on your travelling companion.

Very awkward.

Still, every now and then, something in me fluttered when I looked at him. (Three days hadn't diminished his looks at all, despite rendering him a little rougher around the edges.) And then I wondered, "what if I weren't to be engaged to his nine-year-old brother".

Huh.

There's a sentence I'd never, in my wildest dreams, thought I'd say.

We moved along the path in silence for a while, only pausing briefly so I could take Jester's reins. (Jester was, apparently, named after the old Portsburring court jester, who had possessed hair of the same steely-tint as the horse's fur.)

Once my rioting heart quieted down, I patted Jester's flank and asked, "do you want to know my trick?"

Van looked at me. It took a moment for him to register what I was talking about. "Ohhh the coin. Yes." He shifted his bag. "What is it?"

"It's the coin."

"I don't understand."

I held out the coin. He carefully took it from my hand. Looked at it. Then at me. Then at the coin. Held it up to the sun. Dropped it to his palm. "...I still don't understand. It feels like a coin, and looks like a coin."

I snorted. "It's a coin."

"Right. So..."

"So, it's a magic coin." I pressed the coin deeper into his palm. "Can you feel that vibration? It's going to be really faint, if you haven't had much practise with magic, but it's there."

Van cocked his head. We stopped moving forward. Just stood there.

I could almost hear his concentration.