Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
“What’s that?”
“That’s a train,” Thorn says. “You can get inside it and it runs along those tracks and you can travel long distances without walking.”
“Nice,” I say.
I know what trains are, sort of theoretically. My mother’s books had references to some non-magical things here and there, but seeing things for real is always different than imagining them based on text on a page.
“Come. The candy store is right here,” Thorn says, taking me by the hand and tugging me away from the train station. He leads me into a building, which is a novel experience all of its own. Walls have been constructed to cut out the view from the inside, and a roof protects the interior from elements. Our pack dwells in caves, not in constructions. So this is quite a fascinating experience. I like the way the walls here have been amended so as to allow various wares to be displayed upon them. Every inch of the place shows some kind of thought and delight.
A lovely-looking elderly woman with thick spectacles and a gingham apron smiles at us over her counter, which is almost taller than she is.
“Hello, dearies,” she says. “What sweeties would you like today?”
I am surrounded by food. Not meat food, but very human fare. There is no sugar in the mountains, except very rarely in packages that come from travelers. I can smell the sweetness so intensely it feels as though it is already inside me.
I don’t know what any of these items are, so I look to Thorn. He seems like the sort to know what to get.
“One hot chocolate, and two peppermint twizzles,” he says.
The lady bustles about happily, pouring a big mug of some kind of beverage from a large urn. She slides it over the counter to Thorn, who immediately hands me the mug full of a rich dark brew, and gives me a little stick that is hard and sort of sticky and has red and white stripes on it.
“You can drink the drink,” he says. “It’s delicious. And if you like, you can dip the twizzle in it, and then sort of lick the twizzle, and it will taste like hot, sweet, chocolatey mint.”
He takes the mug from me for a moment, holding it while I experiment with the stick. When I put it in my mouth, I taste mint, sweetness, and something so delicious I feel as though my entire body is being suffused with pure oral joy.
“Oh, my!” I feel instantly energized after a big day of traveling and fighting evil and then fighting my mates and generally planning to escape. I didn’t know there was a kind of food that could make everything instantly better.
“Could I please get a ten gold mixture,” he says. “I think we’re going to want to sample all your wares.”
“Of course, dearie. It’s so sweet of you to be treating your lady friend, and what a pretty dress you have on, dear. I’ve never seen anything like it, not in recent years.”
“Thank you. It was my mother’s,” I say, pleased by the compliment.
We go outside the little shop and sit at a rickety old table and chairs that are set there for the purposes of enjoying the sweets. Thorn now has a big brown paper bag jam packed full of what looks like at least one or maybe even two of everything in the store.
“Thank you,” I say as he offers me a soft chewy round disc to eat. I put it in my mouth and feel it full of… I don’t even know how to understand it exactly. It’s sort of soft, and it tastes of pink somehow. I didn’t know pink had a flavor, but it definitely does, I realize. Maybe like berries? But most of the berries in the mountains are bitter and there’s no bitterness in this at all.
Krall
The boy is spoiling our mate. I do not know if a big bag of candy is enough to make up for the horrors of the night, but it seems to be making some inroads on the affair.
“The next train does not leave until the morning, so we need to get a room overnight,” Skor says. He’s already been in the hotel and made the reservations. I have been scouting the town, making sure it’s safe. There is always a lot to do when we arrive in a new populated area without real law enforcement.
“I think we should share the one. She’s going to try to escape,” I say.
“Yes, of course she is.”
“She’s probably never slept inside before,” I say, anticipating further problems already. She is not going to make this easy for any of us, and Thorn hyping her up on sugar won’t help, though I appreciate the distraction.
“Probably not. She’ll get used to it. She is young. She will adjust.”