"What kind of song do you prefer, girl? A florid chanté tease? A ballad of hopeless lovers? Something bawdy and emotively blue? You call the tune, Sellanna, I'm only here for you."

The nightmare whinnied whispery.

"Well, that was more specific than your usual request. The Blade of the Veiled Night, it is.

Foot falls, breach slow, come, come, towards me.

He hides, he throws, not, not his shadowed pose."

Sellanna whinnied once more, this time abruptly. Someone approached so quiet Leresai realized right away the stealth it took must have been purposeful.

"Come, come, show yourself," Leresai demanded. "Is it you, bard of Tos-Fervarrynn, stalking me? You're going to make me regret my choice of lovers for this voyage."

As he came into view out of the shadows, an uneasy smile pinched the man's face.

"Beigart, so I was right."

"I wanted to hear you sing," he protested. "If you heard my approach, you would have stopped. Which is what you did."

Leresai leaned her head against the nightmare's neck.

"I was singing for my lady. There is a time to entertain men, and there is time for us ladies to assemble ourselves in closure. You interrupted the latter."

He approached; his shoulders furled in tight, sheepish.

"May I brush her?"

"Say you, Sellanna?"

The nightmare harrumphed a whisper into her ear.

"She will allow it."

Leresai handed her fellow Sgoëthe the brush. She then tipped over a bucket, setting it upside down. She squatted down upon it.

As Beigart brushed the nightmare, he gazed over the beast in appraisal.

"She is not of this Earth," he stated in admiration.

Leresai tensed up as she asked him, "why do you say that?"

Beigart gave a dismissive chuckle.

"I do not mean that literally, Leresai. You took that as if I were accusing you of something. Something quite odd, actually. This exquisite beast takes me back to my uncle's horse farm where I spent my Summers working when I was a lad.

"And, indeed, she is quite the refined beast. I will say, and this I do mean quite literally, it must have taken a thousand years of proper breeding to arrive at this beautiful creature."

Sellanna whinnied, appreciatively. A scent of jasmine delicately misted the seabreeze.

Beigart chuckled with a nervous jitter.

"I would almost swear she caused that to happen."

"Caused what to happen," Leresai asked with feigned obliviousness.

"Do you smell the flowery scent? It is something unreal how she does that."

Leresai stood up, and gave a deep chortle. Beigart was shorter by four inches than she. She came up behind the man and enclosed her arms around him in an embrace. She gnuzzled his neck with scrapes, bites, and sucking kisses.

"I fed her a salad of variedel leaf and flowers hours ago. There were many, many flowers in that mix. She either burped or she farted."

Sellanna objected to the accusation with a high-pitched utterance.

Leresai admonished her in turn.

"It smells of jasmine and it sounds like a chime when it comes out of your rump, my lucky lady.

"If I could do that it would be my foremost conversation piece at any soirée that I attended. I would be the belle of the ball with all the boys surrounding and sniffing. I would drink goat's milk, and eat cheese before every party just so I could light up the room."

Sellanna turned her head as if she were offended. She guffawed in a strident whinny.

Beigart turned to Leresai and asked, "what did she say?"

"She believes it to be beneath my station how I am carrying on on this voyage."

Beigart sauntered up to the nightmare's ear.

"Beneath her station," he began. "I will tell you what your lady did last night, Sellanna."

Leresai jumped on his back and tried to cover up the bard's mouth.

"No. Don't tell on me. She doesn't need to know our romantic play."

"Romantic? Sellanna, this big brute of a princess held a thick quilt over her head as she jostled her way towards me wearing a dumb wide grin on her face. I was lying helpless down on a small couch.

"She pulled the quilt down around us. Lets out a huge wheezer from out of the back of her pants. She held me down and forced me to endure it. Then another, and then yet another."

After she climbed down from his back, Leresai held her tummy as she split-gut laughed.

"Oh, you make me sound so evil," she said.

"It was vile, Princess. So, so vile, especially coming out of the derriere of Tos-Fervarrynn's very own princess."

She let go of the bard, and shoved him playfully.

"You need to get back in that den with your lute and earn your keep."

"I am late," Beigart admitted, "I wanted to see how you are doing. Have not seen you since this morning."

"Don't fret yourself over me, Beigart. I won't allow it. Now go. Go earn a yard of ale for me."

He stared back at her, shaking his head.

"You want to say it is hard to believe that I am an actual princess."

"I said nothing."

Leresai nodded and she tossed her hair out of her eyes.

"Your survival instincts did not fail you on this occasion."

He leaned in and kissed her lips, folding her hair along his arm.

"Not necessary," she said.

"What?"

"Oh, kisses are always necessary. But what you were about to say, absolutely not necessary."

"You are a strange one, Leresai Fervarryn."

"I am but a jaded old girl. If you had some sense about you, you would part from me as soon as your feet hit the dock."

Beigart smiled as he backed away.

"This isn't my first voyage romance," he said. "I do know what this is about. So don't feel obliged to save my poor soul from heartbreak. Tonight, love."

She returned a wane smile. Her hands in her back pockets.

"I will come by later," she affirmed.

He nodded as he turned and left.

Leresai ran her hand through Sellanna's sorrel mane. The nightmare exuded the scent of clay and the decay of a human corpse. The beast's control of her ability was so refined as to suggest the vile scent without making it nauseous to whomever she communicated.

"That is your solution to everything, my lady," Leresai answered her. She snuggled her face into the side of the nightmare's head, and whispered, "at least not yet. Not until we know who sent him."

She went back to brushing Sellanna's back as she continued the old highway bandit chanson.

"Foot falls, breach slow, come, come, towards me.

He hides, he throws, not, not his shadowed pose. . ."