Our trio headed towards the outskirts of the woods, their horses seemed uneasy and even with reassurance they seemed adamant not to go any further.
"Chester, come on mate, it's alright!" Seb patted his horse, but he wasn't having any of it.
"I'm not going anywhere near there!!!"
Seb was so startled by this voice he practically fell off the saddle.
"What the fuck??? How long have you been able to speak Chez???"
Alexis and Twig both stayed on their horses unphased by this development.
"Did you know our horses could talk?" Seb asked his companions.
"All animals can speak, didn't you know that?" Twig asked with a cocked eyebrow.
"No! I bleeding well didn't, why hasn't he spoken to me before?" The Prince pointed to his stead.
"Because 'he' didn't want to!" Chester replied with a grunt.
"People tend not to listen to us when we speak." Added Ember, Alexis' horse.
Seb looked over to Roquefort,Twig's horse waiting for him to speak, but instead he just stayed silent.
"Have you honestly never had a conversation with your horse?" Twig asked, surprised. "Roquefort and I have the most splendid conversations, he's quite the chatterbox."
Roquefort just stood in silence staring blankly at Seb.
Twig and Alexis both climbed off their horses.
"Ember, babe, you sure you don't want to go any further?" Alexis asked.
"In there? You must be joking!" The horse whinnied in reply.
"Why don't you want to go in?" Seb asked as it finally dawned on him in a world inhabited by vampires and disappearing kingdoms a talking horse was the least weird thing to experience.
"There's something in there," Chester shuddered.
"Yeah, it's called trees." Seb rolled his eyes.
"No." Roquefort finally found his voice. "There are creatures in there, dangerous creatures that would eat us for supper. We can sense them."
The other two horses nodded and took a step backwards preparing to head off.
"Hey! You can't just disappear!" Seb protested.
"We're going to walk round, we will meet you on the other side." Ember reassured him.
"Wait! Why do we have to walk through then?" Seb demanded.
"Because the creatures that lay in the woods are no danger to you my Prince." Chester bowed his head before leading his companions away.
"So it's like that then? You bugger off and leave us to go through the big dark woods?" Seb shouted after them. "Cowards." He muttered to himself.
"What's got your fanny in a twist?" Alexis asked the Prince.
"I'm just ... I'm just frustrated! I don't remember anything from last night and I know something happened. I can sense it, I can feel it! But I don't remember and it's pissing me off!"
Poor Seb, I wish I could tell him what happened to him, but that would spoil his story.
Twig and Alexis looked at each other before Twig stepped towards the Prince now squatting on the ground with his head between his hands.
"We feel it too your highness, but there's no use dwelling on it. The next kingdom is the other side of the woods, we should start making a move before it gets too dark."
It's worth mentioning that what our friends are about to enter would better be described as a forest, but since they've been isolated to one kingdom for their whole lives they're only truly familiar with woodlands and that's why they refer to this forest as such.
"Do you think the horses knew what happened to us? What were they even doing last night anyway?" Seb pulled himself up from the ground.
"I don't know." Twig stated matter of factly.
Alexis clapped Seb on the shoulder and led the way into the forest.
After walking on foot for two hours Twig found himself struggling to keep up and had to sit himself down on a large tree root protruding from the ground.
"What's the matter Twiglet, your dog's barking?" Alexis laughed to herself before...
"AROOOOO!!!"
Could be heard in the distance.
"Shit, they really were barking!" She laughed uneasily.
Seb looked around and whilst looking straight ahead he addressed Twig.
