Chapter one.
In which Susan meets a centaur and begins her quesT
Susan is a twenty something woman. Up to now, her life has been spent in a learning environment followed by several years of self-abuse. Her qualifications were either too much or too little for serious employment, although, her efforts to establish a career hadn't really been conducted in earnest. The lure of nightclubs, music and drugs had developed a nocturnal aspect to her waking hours.
Her chosen life style also brought her many affairs, some with disastrous consequences and potentially dangerous situations. After a particularly heavy binge of drink and drugs and falling asleep in a park, Susan found herself waking up in a strange world where everything was almost right, but different all the same.
Serves her right!
"You cannot say you were not warned." The cat seemed to smile at her as it prowled around her head, coming on silent pads into her eye line, as a ginger and white ball of fur and then, just as noiselessly, passing from view, its presence only noticeable by it's continuous purring. It came into view again and sat with its tail around its front paws regarding her with the same smile.
"You can't say I didn't warn you and now look at you. All scrunched up like so much discarded paper. Well! Now your here and in big trouble I'd say."
"Nobody asked you." She spat grit and dust out of her mouth.
"If I had wanted your opinion, I'd have asked for it, but I didn't, so piss off and leave me alone." She rolled over to face away from her tormentor, but only succeeded to roll off of the pallet she had been lying on, to fall bonelessly, on the hard packed dirt floor, driving the air from her lungs.
"Aw shit!"
"It is my observation that, you ain't really, very much good at this adventuring lark are you?" It wasn't a question so much as an entrée to an argument. Susan could hate the ginger peril without any problems at all.
"If I'd known the prophecy was meaning some otherworldly fruitcake, I wouldn't have volunteered." The cat sneered, as much as a feline face will allow.
"VOLUNTEERED," She screamed back at the cat,
"YOU WERE GIVEN NO CHOICE, YOU LITTLE...YOU LITTLE... SCUMBAG!" Invectives failed to really emphasise her frustration at her tormentor who was supposed to be her guide in this.
Since her accidental portal into this realm of fantasy and myth, she had been tormented by the furry little shit. As a guide he sucked, big time. It seemed that most of her tribulations all stemmed from some stupid error on the cat's part. One thing was for sure, if she ever got out of this mess and ever made it back to her own civilised and rational time plane, she would never go tripping on anything stronger than Aspirin and would carry a pathological hatred for all cats, but even more so for ginger ones.
As it was, she still wasn't entirely certain that this wasn't a bad trip from the concoction of drugs she had swallowed at the nightclub. She had experienced acid trips where rats crawled from the wallpaper and stuff like that, but this fantasy realm was all together, a different bag and one she could well do without.
She grimaced at the various bruises and bumps as she picked herself up and spat out more of the dust. Sunlight steamed through the thin gaps of the bamboo poles that formed her prison. The light seemed to refract and bounce off of everything it touched, giving the hut an ethereal glow about it. Susan could have cared less, but it would have been difficult. Right now, all she wanted was a long soak in a hot tub with loads of bubbles and a glass of something long and cool. She wanted out of the bamboo prison and she wanted home. All of which seemed like a million miles away.
"I was only making an observation, that's all." The cat tried to stop smiling, but the coloured bands on his face made it impossible.
"Why don't you go outside and make some observations out there. See if there is a way out and find some water. Why don't you do something useful for a change instead of making snide remarks?"
The cat winked out, leaving her alone in the tiny room to contemplate her mission. Somehow, and Susan still wasn't sure about this, she had found herself in a, for want of a better description, adult fairy tale. Her only chance of returning to her own time and space was to find and steal the pearl of wisdom. The cat was right though, so far, she had not done very well in the 'adventuring lark'. Her first encounter after being given instructions in the 'Ice Palace' by the Green Queen; had been in the tunnels of Green Mountain.
A group of really, very seriously smelly Orc's with terminal halitosis had found her wandering around and captured her. They had buggered her and violated her body; inserting fingers into her snatch and making her suck them off. It seemed she was doomed to life among the miscreants until some passing mage heard her cries and banished the little bastards to the four corners of the globe, never to return. Her joy was short lived. The mage, at about three and a half million years old with skin that had more wrinkles than an unmade bed, decided that her liked the look of her and had enslaved the poor girl as a receptacle for his lusty emissions. The cat had saved her, the one useful thing it had done up to now, by fooling the mage into believing that it was a greater wizard and frightening him off.
Susan had by now, been fucked semi-stupid in all holes and was ready to call it a day. That was only the start of her adventure. It seemed she had been here in this God forsaken shit hole for a couple of months and not the ten hours it really was.
Heavy footfalls sounded just outside the door to her prison. She heard the rattle of the chain and lock that secured the bamboo door. A loud creak of the leather hinges heralded a brilliant burst of sunlight that illuminated the door opening. A silhouetted head poked around the style and a deep basso voice invited her to come out.
Susan struggled to a sitting position and waited for a moment until her senses stopped reeling. Then she painfully waddled to the door. The sunlight temporarily blinded her as she emerged into the heat of the day. Gradually, her eyes adjusted to the onslaught of light, she began to wish they hadn't, an immediate headache started.
Waiting for her outside the bamboo prison, was a blond Adonis. His head and face were framed in locks of curly, golden hair that seemed almost to be bleached by the sun. Broad shoulders that were tanned to a bronze colour supported his beatific face that was also tanned to a deep colour. His massively muscled arms rippled with latent strength and downy blond hair covered his torso down to his belly button. All seemed okay, even quite sexually interesting, until her gaze went past his navel, from belly downwards, he was all horse, complete with four sturdy legs, a beautiful tail that swished at the flies plaguing his rump and a glossy chestnut coat that shone with health and vigour in the sun.
"Oh shit! That's all I need, a fucking Centaur."
His golden locked head, tilted to one side as he regarded her, a quizzical expression showed in his amber eyes and tanned features.
"You talk strangely young one. Yes I am a Centaur, but how you make reference to the physical act of love and defecation in the same sentence is baffling to me. Please explain?"
Susan thought he was trying to make a joke. Her humour had left some time ago, about the same moment her life took on this strange twist.
"Are you trying to be funny?" She crossed her arms in defiance and stood as erectly as her battered frame would allow.
