I sat down and saw a big fur blanket on the floor of the sleigh in front of me and also a furry, white hat had fallen there. I exchanged the crown for the hat and pulled the blanket on top of me, shoving it under my ass to tuck it secure as high as I could get it around my body. Then I secured the crown as best I could in the open sleigh.
Better.
Then I grabbed the reins again and took stock.
I had four, beautiful dapple gray horses pulling me and behind me in the sleigh there was a shiny, black piece of fabric with what appeared in the forest-muted moonlight a gold and red crest stitched into it stretched over a bunch of bulky stuff and held down with gleaming, gold, what looked like silk ropes.
My luggage, apparently.
Okay. Well, there you go.
Off I was on my honeymoon.
Ho boy.
It was at this point when I thought I really, really should have listened to Claudia.
We kept riding, and, well, sleighing through the snow and The Dragon didn’t engage me in conversation as we did. I didn’t try either. I concentrated on not steering my horses into any trees. Then I concentrated on my cheeks not freezing off.
We trotted ever onward in newlywed silence that was more than a little disconcerting but I hung with it not sure I wanted the alternative. Early experience indicated my husband wasn’t a skilled conversationalist and considering he gave the impression he didn’t like me much, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what he might have to say.
After some time, we cleared the forest and moved into a vast, snow covered plain that was absolutely gorgeous considering the snow sparkled and the entire vista was blanketed by the twinkling moonlit sky that was filled with what seemed like three times as many stars as any night sky I ever beheld. Then, after some time, we went through a small village that I wished we’d slowed even a little bit as we went through so I could take in more because it seemed mega cool, but we didn’t.
Not even a little bit.
The Dragon led us ever onward through more plain then forest then I started to get concerned about the state of my horses, and his, but he drove us on.
And on.
We went through another town, this one larger, but still no slowing.
That was when I realized I was getting hungry and my hands hurt from holding onto the reins. My body was ensconced in fur so I was actually toasty warm, it was just my cheeks that were cold. So cold, they hurt.
I decided it would probably not be smart to share this as my husband wasn’t talkative and he clearly didn’t like me so I figured he wouldn’t want to listen to me bitch (even with justification) so I didn’t share. I just tried to ignore it and didn’t quite succeed but didn’t outright fail either.
He led us through more forest and we kept right on going. We had long since left the mountain town or city type place behind, and with it my parents, which I did not think was good. Nor did I like it.
So, I pulled up the courage then pulled in a breath and started to say loudly, “Uh –”
“Quiet!” he barked without even looking at me.
Shit.
I was right. Not a big conversationalist.
Okay, I’ll deal with the next second. Then the next. And the next. And the next. And so on. Focus on the now. On just the now, I told myself.
So I focused on the now and in so doing I noticed I was right, a sleigh ride was fun. Maybe not one that lasted hours through a dark, cold night but I decided not to focus on that and instead focus on the fun part.
And I discovered that commanding the sleigh was even more fun. I tried things out, found that the horses were obviously highly trained, they adjusted to even the most minimal change of their reins and that was super cool.
I did this for awhile and then got over it. It was fun but we’d been going for hours and nothing was fun for that long and certainly not driving a sleigh.
We cleared the massive forest and were on another plain, this one by a sparkling river lit with moonlight which was pretty cool.
Then we went through another town which was also cool but we didn’t slow so I didn’t see much of it.
This lasted a long, long, long, long time and I was definitely hungry, definitely worried about the state of my horses because they’d been going at a good clip for what was now hours and I was closing in on pissed when the sun started kissing the sky and we entered another forest.
It wasn’t lost on me that the air was even more frigid wherever we were now compared to the arctic clime we left (in other words, it was now f**king cold rather than just freaking cold and suffice it to say I had thought it was f**king cold before but now I knew the true meaning of that) and I lost my pique when I saw the trunks of the trees, all the way up, were dusted with snow, heavier on one side where the wind drifted it up or lifted it to powder the higher bark.
It was fantastically gorgeous.
What was more gorgeous was when we hit a sleepy, marshmallow-snow roofed, icicle-dripping, chimney-smoke-drifting village in a somewhat cleared area. That was, trees scattered the level area and the hillside the village decorated but they were not as thick as the forest. There was a wide-ish glistening creek running through the village with several streams meeting it criss-crossing across the forest floor and running down the hill to join the river (in fact, my horses and sleigh glided over two such streams). And there were two large streams of steaming water that clearly came from hot springs that glided down the hill and poured into the creek. There were even not one, but two wooden water wheels.
Definitely cool!
I really wanted to take that village in because it was way cooler than all the rest and all the rest were already cool but we went straight through it then kept going through the forest for what I estimated was five minutes before The Dragon turned his steed, I turned my horses with him and then I had to concentrate because this was not a road. We were going through the forest proper and I had to focus on steering my horses through as well as not getting hit by a big, low hanging branch (of which there were a lot) or whipped by smaller ones (of which there were a lot more).
Then I saw it, up on a rise surrounded by trees, a building with some outbuildings. It looked cockeyed because one side was one story, the other side with what looked like a half a story on top.
The Dragon slowed and so did I. I was pretty pleased how I brought the sleigh around to the front executing a tight curve in the small area allowed (truth be told, the horses pretty much knew what they were doing and obviously did all the work but I thought we all managed it with great aplomb) and then we came to a halt.
By the time I did this, The Dragon was already off his horse and opening the front door to the dwelling. What he was not doing was smiling proudly at me and calling, “Well done, my new wife in her gorgeous princess wedding finery!”