Now that Fenrir and Serra are done playing with one another, they finally get around to finding the stables and meeting Oleander and Corwin there.

Fenrir isn’t the only one with messy hair.

Both Oleander and Corwin look sweaty and messy, and their clothes are much more messed up than Fenrir’s and Serra’s are.

The two boyfriends notice that Serra and Fenrir look messy, too.

Oleander and Serra lock eyes and give each other a thumbs-up.

“Anyways,” Fenrir says, interrupting them before they get a chance to begin. “Hey,” he says to the only stable worker that he can see. “I was told we’d get to borrow a few horses.”

“Oh,” the worker replies, “that’s you guys? Yeah, the king told me,” he explains. “It’s those four over there.” He points to a group of four horses that already have saddles and ropes tied to them. “You guys riding them back, right?”

“Uh… I didn’t actually think about how we’d get them from here,” Fenrir admits.

Their building site is on the other side of the river, and they don’t have a bridge built yet. Furthermore, Fenrir doesn’t think that they’d be able to fit four horses on The Shoebill all at once without some major chaos. If they get spooked at all during the voyage south back to the others, then there might be some serious problems.

“Uhhh, I have no idea,” Fenrir says. “Do you have any suggestion? Sorry to ask, but we’re building on the other side of this river down south some more, so we’d have to either take them by boat or somehow build a bridge really fast.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the man replies, “and yeah. We’ve got these like… ‘trailer’ boats. Use them to transport stuff between here and Spike Isle mainly. Can load the horses up in them, and then we’ve just got to hook them up to your boat. Though, I’d recommend building a bridge pretty soon anyways. Would make life a heckuva lot easier for you all down there if you want to do some trade with us up here.”

“That sounds good enough to me, and yeah – you’re right. We’ll try to prioritize that.”

“You got yourselves an engineer or anything? If you’re talking about the river I think you’re talking about, you’re going to need a big bridge. There’s a boy in town here that could help you out.”

Fenrir chuckles and says, “Actually, we’ve got our own version of him. A short girl obsessed with engineering and crazy ideas, and then we’ve got a guy with some architecture experience to help out.”

“Really? Sounds like you’ve got a sweet deal going on. Introduce those two up here sometime and the king might have some work for them. Might even be willing to treat it as a deal. Get some help from them in exchange for materials or something.”

“You guys seem like you’re pretty set up here. I mean, you’ve already got these walls and those breakers out in the water.”

“Yeah, but this was all kinda just thrown together.”

“What about that boy? Didn’t he help?”

“He came after the town was already set up, and… I don’t think anybody trusts him to actually fix problems. We tried letting him do it a couple of times before, and each time ended up… yeah.”

“Then – then why’d you recommend him to me?”

“Honestly man, my mouth is faster than my thoughts. My bad.”

Fenrir shrugs. “Fair enough. Anyways, think you could help us get everything loaded up?”

“Yeah, sure, no prob.”

With the reigns of the four horses in hand, they go down to the harbor where The Shoebill is docked.

The small boat that they load the horses onto is more like large box on top of a small rowbot with a flat front. With a bit of maneuvering, they get the small boat lined right up behind The Shoebill, and then they use a combination of hooks and ropes to get the boat hooked up to The Shoebill.

Those horses within the “trailer” boat aren’t too happy whenever the boat rocks underneath them, causing them to get antsy and stomp around a bit, but they don’t have anywhere to go and Fenrir has no way of making their boat not rock. As fun as it would be to control water and prevent waves from being a thing, he can’t.

“By the way,” the stable worker says as everybody but Fenrir steps onto The Shoebill, “you got any idea for what to name the place you’re making?”

Fenrir freezes. He… hadn’t thought about it all yet. “I… honestly have no idea,” he admits. “The crew is named The Soaring Wolves, and we’ve got The Shoebill, but… yeah, I’m not that good at naming things, honestly. I have a pet dog made out of rock that I’ve named Rock.”

“I see what you mean. Well, good luck! I can’t offer any help with that since I’m horrible at names, too.”

Fenrir shrugs and holds out his hand to offer a shake. “Thanks for helping us get the horses loaded up. Got a name, by the way?”

The man shakes Fenrir’s hand and answers, “Yup. Bromeister the 9001xXx – the second x is capitalized, but everybody just calls me ‘Horse Guy.’”

“W-wait… is – is that your actual name?”

“Yeah, but everybody refuses to call me it. I guess I made it too obviously stupid.”

“I mean… kind of.”

Horse Guy shrugs.

“I take it you really like horses?” Fenrir asks.

“They’re alright. I mainly just like horse girls,” Horse Guy answers.

Fenrir internally lights up with excitement but tries to hold it back until he confirms it. “When you say ‘horse girls,’ do you mean… like human girls but with horse ears and tails?”

“Yeah, like horse monster girls. They’re the best. Shame I haven’t met any yet.”

“Someday. Someday.”

In this instant, Fenrir develops a powerful, deep connection to Horse Guy.

Any man who has a favorite type of monster girl cannot possibly be a bad person.

Whether the monster girl is a fluffy moth, scaly dragon, petite harpy, obsessive snake, seductive spider – regardless of what a monster girl may be, any man who can appreciate monster girls is a friend to Fenrir.

Unfortunately for Fenrir, Horse Guy is just wondering why Fenrir isn’t letting go of his hand as the handshake becomes awkwardly long.

Then there is everybody else around watching. Oleander is hardcore judging Fenrir, Corwin is confused and doesn’t know why Fenrir looks so happy, Serra is imagining strapping Fenrir up in BDSM gear and whipping him with a horse whip – and then imagining the roles being reversed, and the various men and women along the docks are either just judging or confused.

“Ye-yeah,” Horse Guy says, slipping his hand away from Fenrir as soon as the grip is loose enough. “Good luck with your town and all that. Don’t forget to bring the horses back in a couple of weeks, or bring something worth extending the time you can keep them.”

“Will do,” Fenrir says. “Until next time, Horse Guy. Maybe we can go fishing sometime and talk about monster girls.”

“Yeah… sure.”

Fenrir, with an excited smile on his face, utterly fails to read the mood due to the excitement caused by monster girls.

With Fenrir believing that he has made a new friend – a compatriot to discuss the glory of monster girls with, The Shoebill and her crew set off and sail right out through the gate that they came in through.

…

Meanwhile, a certain serpent has grown curious about something.

She has felt a strong, powerful attraction to something out deep in the ocean’s depths ever since arriving to these waters. The attraction is a strong enough pull to make her completely forget about watching over her saviors.

Deep in the ocean – far deeper than a human could ever wish to go on their own without being crushed by pressure, the serpent gets closer and closer to whatever this mysterious force is.

But she can’t find anything. There is nothing but darkness all around her. When she tries lighting her scales up, she can only see what is immediately around her and nothing else. A small, odd-looking fish swimming in front of her is the only other living thing down here that she can see.

So then why does she feel herself being surrounded by that force? She has reached the source of the force attracting her to these depths. But, she sees nothing.

That is, until a circle lights up around her.

Similar to how she can make her own scales glow, there is a truly massive length lighting up its scales in the water surrounding her.

The scales grow brighter and travel along the length of whatever they belong to until they reach their owner’s head.

Just the length of other’s body is easily over a hundred times the size of her own. Even with how large it is and its glowing scales, she can barely make out any of its features. She can just hardly make out the outline of its sheer size.

And then its eyes glow.

The serpentine, glowing eyes of the one who attracted the serpent now stare directly at her.

She wishes she had a rowboat to snack on right now.