The breakfast was once again excellent. I think I have never eaten so well since I arrived at Krenburg Castle. And healthy too, all organic with no additives, high fructose corn syrup nor artificial flavourings. Even Larina enjoyed the food, hoping it would go down well with her horse half. Usually, she had to eat a lot of oats and other strong fibres. If she ate enough of those, she could tolerate a little meat as a side dish, the usual human luxury food around here. But she had never really thought about vegetarian human food like the clerics ate. She did not even know that cleric cuisine existed, even though she had been here for months. I felt sorry for her.

And we both hoped that her stomach would tolerate it so that she could enjoy eating again. In a few hours she would know.

Just explaining the different food choices of the clerics took a long time. My command of Kren was really bad, no doubt. And while Larina spoke more fluently, she had only been learning Kren for five months and had a completely different grammatical background coming from Kwal. So she stumbled over my bad grammar even more than the Kren natives. She spoke some Kwal for me, which had a hard, biting Sh, rolling Rs, and explosive Ps and Ts. She sounded like a stereotypical villain to me. Speaking Kwal did not suit her at all. Of course, I also spoke a few words in my mother tongue, but she could find no comparison. And it was not only the language, her mind had holes in several places. Understandable, since she had only half a year to acquire all the knowledge that had not been forced upon her at her creation. She rediscovered the world, starting with a blank slate half a year ago, knowing only how to speak Kwal and how to fight.

And so she insisted on continuing our training after breakfast.

When we had finished and got up, a groom was already running outside looking for a servant. The other came to me with a fresh brush and bowed.

"Would Milady like a morning brush?"

I smiled at him. "No. Later. Now fighting Larina. Thank you!" And bowed a little too.

He was disappointed.

"Just hour to two. Then brushing. Just you."

Larine came back with the two crops we had used yesterday instead of sticks. She also had a sort of bra, or rather a scarf wrapped around her chest, just for modesty as there was not much need for support. Which again reminded me of my lack of wardrobe.

But no time for distractions. Larina came straight at me.

Yesterday Freya had translated and I had simply followed her mindspeak. Still, my ear had connected the mindspeak with Larina's basic commands. So I jumped left and right and back and forth as Larina told me to. Soon I was in the zone, acutely aware of every straw beneath my paws, even the breeze from the crops. Larina spoke less and less as she had to pay more attention to parrying my moves. I still had not managed to hit her.

I still did not manage to strike her.

Compared to yesterday, it took much longer for Larina to stop wheezing, unable to continue.

My human half was drenched and my shirt was in a sorry state. "You," I pointed to the groom, " now brushing good."

Immediately, he was at my side with the brush, bowing again.

"Please brushing," I told him. Then I nodded to the second groom, who was standing a little further away. "Please getting water."

"Yes, Lady Kiara," he bowed and ran off.

The other was still standing next to me, brush ready. "Lady Kiara, where?"

I gently put his hand with the brush on my lower back. "Like horse. Good?"

My lower body was quite dry, with very little sweat except for my tail. So I just lifted my tail up and wagged it dry. The brushing was more because the groom was so eager and I still enjoyed it.

Larina's lower body was also soaked as it was bigger than mine and she had to work harder to move it. And she only wore the scarf bra on her human half, so less sweat there due to better cooling.

With my thick shirt, I really need to wash my upper body. When the second groom came back with the bucket, I took off my shirt and poured the bucket over my upper body. The groom then tried to pass me a blanket without looking. It was cute. I quickly dried myself and wrapped the towel around my chest.

The first groom had jumped aside when the water came and now approached me carefully. "Please brushing," I encouraged him.

"Not very, Lady, like," Larina wheezed, "you should, dsfs sdfsd, sgfsdf, shirt."

"Only shirt."

"Lady Kiara only has one shirt? Oh, sorry, I" The groom blushed deeply. "I am so"

"It's OK. I cominged eleven days. All travelling."

"We're going into town today," Larina decided. "It's the old six-day, there will be xccs cssd and sdfdfsd."

"I need translating!"

But first I needed to dry a bit more and let the groom finish his brushing.

* * *

When I got to my room, they were preparing the mage for transfer on a stretcher to the healer's room, now that he was stable enough. I fetched my purse (a small leather bag closed with a string) and was going also to the healer's room. There I checked on Freya, who was still snoring in her bed.

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I returned to the stables alone.

The groom had helped Larina get her lower half into an impressive harness. The leather bands were joined by golden rivets, or at least very yellow shiny ones. Red and white plumage protruded from a silver vase with ornaments standing on a broad leather band in the middle of her lower back. It went very well with her red shirt. She wore a white scarf, echoing the colours of the Kren Republic. To any observer, she would be the lady and I the bodyguard.

"Good looking, very good."

Larina beamed. "Lady Kiara, really?"

I nodded enthusiastically. "Good. Good. Freya sleeping. We going."

"Thank you. Jack and Yuan, say hello to Kendrick if you see him. And thanks for borrowing the harness."

The grooms bowed a little to Larina and then deeply to me. "Anything for the Lady Kiara."

I was confused. "What?"

"Later," Larina said.

So I bowed to them, "Thank you."

Then I grabbed my saddlebag, which was still hanging on the wall where I had left it when I arrived. To their surprise, I buckled it myself, as I had done so many times before. It was then that I realised how unfair it must have felt for Larina, who needed the grooms to even get into the harness. "Sorry," I smiled.

Larina sighed but made no comment.

"Let's going!"

And we set off at a short gallop towards the gate.

* * *

At the drawbridge, we slowed to a trot and stopped a quarter turn around the hill down the road.

Larina considered me unsuitable to enter the city as Lady Kiara. She combed my hair and gave me a red scarf: Together with my whitish shirt, I now wore the colours of the Kren Republic too. Larina's harness was the one the horses wore when they drew the state carriage, she explained. The grooms had suggested it when she told them she would accompany me to the market. And this would be the only appropriate outfit for the lady's company.

Larina was in high spirits and trotted briskly down the steep road. It was a beautiful day, with a few scattered clouds in the blue sky. The sun had dried the cobblestones, so there was no danger of slipping. Larina's rigid hooves had much less trouble with the round stones, while my more flexible digits were constantly being bent and pushed apart. Come on, wasn't it only three days ago that I walked this very path with Freya on my back threw the rain? The lady had gone soft very quickly.

We practised my vocabulary about colours and fabrics.

She pointed to the sun. "Yellow." The vines. "Green" and so on.

Kiara, the parrot repeated.

When we reached the first houses at the foot of the castle hill, Larina stopped, panting again after the descent. "It, good, going, out, side."

"No hurrying," I patted her on the back and waited. It was nice to be out. Well, there were still too many stones and far too few trees. But the sun was warm and the air was still fresh and wet after the long rain.

"Waiting!" I stopped Larina who wanted to go one. We were in no hurry.

"Lady Kiara," she gasped. "How much money have you got?"

"Is little." I handed her my purse.

She looked in it and nodded. "Not much, yes."

I could see in her face that it was much less than she had expected. "Can we buying shirt?"

"Yes, I think we can buy, enough fabric to tailor a shirt for the lady."

Her breathing soon returned to normal. "Now going slowly. Larina speaking for Lady Kiara."

She nodded and smiled back. "Yes, says the Speaker for Lady Kiara."

* * *

Larina had been down in the town a few times and knew the way to the town square. It looked very different from the gloomy, rainy day when I had walked through it with Freya. Today the square was packed with people and vendors. There were three rows of stalls where they sold their wares. In the far corner was the eating area, clearly indicated by the smoke.

We entered the middle row. Larina walked in front of me. She was wider than I was, and her harness meant official business. Despite the narrow space between the stalls, the crowd quickly parted in front of her. As soon as they realised she was not a horse with a rider or pulling a carriage, they stopped and stared. Well, most of them. I passed almost unnoticed by comparison. Walking in Larina's wake also meant that I did not have to worry about where I put my paws. So I looked around. The two stalls we had just passed sold baskets and other things made from woven reeds. The next one sold pottery and then one for leather cords. And a stall could be just a rough board on top of a barrel, a table, a cart, a merchant's rucksack, or just a stand, like the one for the leather cords.

After about ten stalls, we came to a cart that served as a stall. It was loaded with all sorts of fabrics.

Larina stopped and bowed. I stopped next to her, but only bowed slightly.

"Salutations, fair Sir. This is the new Lady Kiara of Earth." I nodded at her sign. "The lady wishes to purchase cloth in the colours of her house, green and white," or so she said. The shopkeeper was less convinced that there was a real lady in front of him. But business was business. So he asked for more details and Larina answered. For someone who had spoken Kren for less than six months, she was very convincing.

He quickly produced a sample. The fabric was too fine and too dark. " More stronger."

He had quite a variety on his small cart. Finding a leafy green was a challenge. On the other hand, these were not synthetic colours and would certainly fade. So a stronger colour might be even better. The fabric and weave were more important, as was the price. I could not follow the conversation and I had the impression that even Larina was reaching her limits, I just smiled and nodded for moral support.

After some time, he had produced a stiff dark green fabric and a matching white. We bought two arm lengths of the white fabric and another two of the green, and one of the soft fabric, which cost more than the other two put together. I stowed them in my saddlebag. Then we bowed and headed for the food area.

Unfortunately, what was left in my purse was just enough for two sweetened buns. We stood off to the side where a blind man was playing the lyre and a young girl was accompanying him. If I had any money left, I would have given it to them. So we just sat on our haunches close by and hopefully helped them a little by attracting spectators, curious to see our non-human bodies up close and then hopefully moved by the music, donated to them.

* * *

The way back up to the castle seemed much steeper now. Larina was tired and very hungry. I was too, and I felt bad that I did not even have enough money for a decent lunch. And there were no greens to snack on. The weeds on the road had probably seen too much horse droppings. I had plucked a few leaves from the spiky, wild vines growing over the steep rocks on the inside of the road. But they were no good, as thin as rice paper. Larina was staring at me again. In those moments it felt more like I was the one who came into the world without any previous knowledge, not Larina.

Despite being hungry and thirsty, we took regular breaks. Larina was out of breath after every quarter turn around the hill, and the heat of the afternoon did not help. The sun was lower in the sky when we finally reached the top. The guard at the gate stood at attention for us, or rather for me.

With one last effort, Larina strutted proudly through the gate to the stables and almost collapsed inside. She drank three buckets of water before she stopped shivering with exhaustion and started chewing oats. I was thirsty and hungry too, but I felt sorry for her. I could bear it for a moment longer and only went to the kitchen when Larina looked busy enough with eating.

Before I had taken two steps down the broad stairs, a servant hurried up. "Lady Kiara. How may I serve you?" Or something like that.

" Please, big lunch. Stables again. For two."

"Very well. Thank you."

"Thank you," and bowed again, smiling. And then up again, to the stables, and to drink some water too. Even if it was the poor water from Krenburg Castle.