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Show rosestone escarpments. At the mouth of the slit, Dr'Anya reined in and urged her JackPony around and to the side of Janni's-back to front. She pulled her mask down. "We'd best stop here, child, and eat," she said, her voice raised against the howling wind outside. Janni nodded with relief. "Aye, and thank the blessed Saints for that!" she said through her mask, and dismounted after her mother. The ride had been painful in the extreme for Janni, whose buttocks still throbbed from her wild ride with the knight-aye, full through to the seating bones! Their cloaks billowed around them in the eddies licking into the sheltered mouth of the slit. They tied their reins together close to the ponies' heads, and threw back their hoods. Then they rummaged in the saddle packs for pemmican cakes and the bottles of hot greenberry tea they'd made in the stable scullery. Janni pulled down her mask, extracted dinner-plate-sized grain cakes and offered them to the ponies. The animals lifted their pink lips and took bites of the cakes delicately with their big, white teeth, snorting in pleasure. They were leaning back by then, using their forelegs to eat the cakes and placing their weight on their hind legs and heavy tails. "Thou wilt drink, my pearls," said Janni to them, "at the next raging torrent." She patted them both on their long muzzles. Janni and Dr'Anya left the ponies to munch their grain cakes and hum to themselves, and stood together leaning against the soaring rock face behind them. They ate their pemmican thoughtfully, sipping tea from their bottles. "Never did I ask thee, my Mother," Janni asked deferentially-for mother and daughter were still unsure of each other, "whither in Ida's dear 177 |
