Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 121146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
“A pleasure to meet you all. Now Hold and Fierce, step down onto the ground and offer your little goddess your shoulders to ride upon.”
Hold and Fierce shared a glance over Celia’s head, but neither one said a word. Instead, they stepped down from the shuttle to the grassy ground and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Fierce on the left and Hold on the right.
“Very good. Now, little goddess, be so good as to seat yourself on the shoulders of your steeds,” the priestess instructed. “Later we can have a harness and a goddess seat made for them so they can carry you properly, but for now you must ride upon them as they are.”
“I, uh, don’t mind walking,” Celia offered. “If you want me to wait to ride on them until we have a, uh goddess seat made.” It seemed to her that riding on both the guys’ shoulders was going to be a precarious business. They were both so tall, her head was going to be almost nine feet up in the air if she sat on them.
But the unicorn priestess was shaking her head angrily at the idea.
“Most certainly not! As a divine representation of the Goddess of the Shining Heart, you must be treated like a goddess—which means that your feet must never touch the ground! Now mount yourself upon their shoulders and let us see how they function as your steeds.”
So there was no choice but for Celia to seat herself—very carefully and very awkwardly—upon Hold’s and Fierce’s shoulders. Luckily they were almost the same height—Fierce was just a little bit taller—so it wasn’t too uneven.
Without asking, Fierce wrapped his arm around her left leg and Hold wrapped his arm around her right. Celia liked that—she didn’t feel quite so wobbly with them holding her firmly. She didn’t quite know what to do with her hands, though. Eventually she reached around and placed her fingertips lightly on their broad shoulders, the better to keep her balance.
“Very good,” La’ver’na, who had been watching the whole operation, pronounced. “Now follow me.”
“What about the ship?” Fierce growled, holding his ground. “Are we just supposed to leave it here in the middle of this field?”
He pointed at the long range shuttle and Celia saw that it’s formerly sleek silver hull was covered in dents—it looked like an angry giant with a hammer had gone after it!
“It will be taken to our repair shop,” the priestess assured him. “I promise our mechanics will make it their top priority. In the meantime, the three of you must come with me. You must be properly dressed if you are to be inducted into the Sisterhood. Now come.”
She tapped her two “steeds” on the tops of their heads and they began moving off together, the wicker seat with La’ver’na mounted on their shoulders swaying slightly with each step.
“Okay, easy Brother—we have to stay in perfect sync with each other,” Hold murmured. “So don’t get ahead of me.”
“I’ll be fine,” Fierce growled. “Come on—they’re leaving us!”
He started out and Hold had to hurry to keep up. For just a moment, Celia felt like she was either going to be torn in two or fall off—she was so high up in the air it would have been a nasty tumble.
“Whoa!” she exclaimed, swaying as she looked for something to hold on to.
“Sorry, my lady,” Hold said. “Come on—try again, Brother.”
“All right,” Fierce muttered and added, “Sorry, Celia.”
“It’s okay—just don’t dump me off—it’s a long way to fall!” Celia told them.
They started off again and this time the two of them finally got their pacing together and got moving, following La’ver’na down the rolling purple hill towards the forest in the distance.
It occurred to Celia that the repairs to the ship might take some time—she wasn’t going to get home to reunite with Peter any time soon. Well, he would just have to wait for her and hopefully she would get home in time for the wedding.
She had no idea what she was going to go through before she finally got back to Earth.
28
CELIA
“Welcome to our compound,” La’ver’na said, as they left the rolling grasslands and entered the shade of the forest. The trees were huge—much bigger than oak trees, Celia thought. In fact, many of them were as big as the giant sequoia trees that grew in California.
That was where the resemblance ended, though. They didn’t grow straight up—they had knotted, twisty trunks that grew in all different directions with branches that spread in a wide circumference. Their barks were papery and white, like a birch tree but the leaves were a dark, rich purple with hints of royal blue and scarlet, depending on how they caught the light.
But there was more than the trees to look at. As they got deeper into the forest, they met other men and their “goddesses” going back and forth. Most of the women rode on a wicker goddess seat on their mens’ shoulders, like La’ver’na was. But some rode in woven sedan chairs with long poles attached, and some were simply being carried in a man’s arms.