NOVEL NEXT Chapter 111
While Argul scampered around across the parking lot and generally had a good time, the rest of the group started to stuff all their luggage into the house. They could sort everything later when they were already on their way and time was at least somewhat of essence. Sure, neither Argul or Alyra worried about Meran and Erdanien too much, but being provocative about it would just invite trouble and not everyone was as untouchable as the two of them.
About half an hour later they were done, but they had to leave behind some of the furniture and the first floor of the house was packed. Argul didn’t envy the others for the job they would have to do while she got to enjoy a nice walk.
She walked over to the harness where her daughter was waiting for her and took a moment to inspect the mess of leather cords.
“Come on mom! Step inside already.”
Not wanting to leave her daughter waiting, Argul carefully navigated herself backwards in between the two metal poles and stepped into four somewhat larger loops meant for her legs. Then her daughter got to work, fastening said loops and binding additional leather cords around her torso until she couldn’t move without moving the camper anymore. It felt a bit like she was wearing climbing gear to be honest.
Argul waited until Alyra was back in front of the door and turned her head one last time to look at everyone standing there cramped together. It didn’t look safe, but she chose not to say anything.
“Alright, is everyone ready?”
Arthur looked at the suspicious lack of railing to keep them from falling down. “No, but go knock yourself out.”
Argul snorted at him. “Haha, very funny, but no I would rather not. Anyway, now is the last chance to go inside.”
She waited for a few seconds to look if anyone took her up on that other, but when nobody moved she turned her head back forward again and strained for a moment. Then, with a ruck that nearly threw everyone off, the camper started moving and she pulled it along as she walked off of the parking lot.
Argul could already tell that it would be easier to keep going once she started and that stopping would be a right pain.
Turning from the parking lot onto the street nearly saw Argul driving the camper into a street light, but she thankfully reacted fast enough not to crash their new house a minute into their journey. From there it got a bit easier for her though as she only needed to keep straight until they were out of the city. The lack of curves allowed her to experiment with her pace a bit while the rest of the group watched, keeping an eye out in case she missed a stray street light or something.
“Can you really just pull all this?” Luna broke the silence, gesturing at the house.
Argul’s ears turned to catch the sound better out of reflex, but she kept her eyes on the street. She was a responsible adult after all. “I think so. I can feel the weight of course, but it’s not more exhausting than hiking. In fact, I should be able to go at a slow jog for an hour or two.”
Arthur shook his head at that. Argul’s size meant that her current pace had to be somewhere around fifteen to twenty kilometers per hour, so a jog would see her at what? 40, maybe, and that wasn’t really any different than driving a car. “You are a monster.”
Mia punched him and crossed her arms at that. “Aunty is not a monster!”
“Right, sorry. Didn’t mean it like that.” Arthur raised his hands defensively and the girl let out a ‘hmph’ before she went back inside.
Argul simply smiled and kept going. It took her about 10 minutes to leave the city and enter the fields, from where she circled eastwards until she came across the street to Sacra. Argul followed that street for a few kilometers, speeding up and actually testing if she was able to keep up for more than an hour.
The large tires kicked up dust clouds as she sped past confused, scared and dumbfounded travelers that were either already on the move or in the process of getting up. Argul was sure she would be the topic of the next few days, but otherwise chose to ignore them. She did have to leave the road though, because there wasn’t enough space for the camper and the other travelers and she didn’t want to walk and roll over them. The ride got a bit more bumpy as a result, but the tractor tires made it possible to go offroad.
A few minutes later Argul slowed down as she had to cross a bit of a rise before the street angled downwards to the river and the bridge to Sacra. At the bridge she turned right and started to follow the water upriver along a path of trampled dirt, but nothing as solid as between Newport and Sacra.
From there, Argul stopped paying attention and simply enjoyed the wind in her fur and the sound of water. They would travel along this river for a long time, all the way up to its spring and would see where to go from there.
At some point, Alyra came outside and sat down for a while to give her some company.
“Is everything alright mom?”
“Hmm, pulling the house is strangely therapeutic.”
Alyra smiled, trying to catch Argul’s wagging tails, though smartly refusing to hold onto them. Otherwise she would be swung around like a rag. “Okay, just say if you need something and take a break whenever you feel like it.”
Then she went inside again, leaving Argul to her running.
Argul didn’t know how long she kept going, but when she finally stopped exhausted next to the river and greedily drank some of the water it was already past noon. The others except Mia, who was apparently asleep to catch up on what she missed last night, came out at that point, looking and walking around while Alyra helped Argul out of the harness.
“You did good mom, putting more than a hundred kilometers between us and Sacra. There is no way that the kingdom can follow us at that speed with horses.” Alyra playfully patted Argul’s side.
Argul rolled her eyes, but played along and neighed. Then she walked a bit away from the river and laid down, taking a well earned rest. “That’s one less problem for us. What about the church though?”
Alyra sat down next to her and let herself sink into her fur. “Well, technically speaking, they could keep up with us, provided you don’t plan on continuing today and Meran blesses their horses, which I don’t think will happen. He can get help from settlements along our path though, so we should look out for that.”
Argul let out a breath and put her head on her forpaws. “I think I had enough for today. Maybe I will try out hunting later. Just say if they plan anything and we will figure things out.”
“Speaking of hunting, you don’t suppose you could get something for the rest of us too? We don’t have a lot of food and it would be better to keep preservable stuff like noodles as long as possible.”
Argul let out a rumbling sigh, opening her eyes slightly. “If you come with me.”
Alyra smiled at that and her form started to light up and dissolved as she dismissed her humanoid avatar and created her unspecified one. A few seconds later she was in her new body and climbed on top of Argul’s massive form where she snuggled herself against her mother.
The two of them stayed like that for a few hours, more or less ignoring the rest of the group, before they decided to do something about their food situation and get up. Hunting turned out to be a bit weird for Argul though. She couldn’t really go for rabbits and similar sized prey and anything else had no chance of escape once she spotted it.
The boar she spotted as she and her daughter ranged through a forest they found a few minutes long run away from the river also proved another thing; She was positively terrifying. When it had spotted her barreling towards it it hadn’t run or anything, no, it simply fell over having died from a heart attack.
Argul still felt a bit adventurous and decided to take a nibble out of the dead animal, an experience she could do without in hindsight. Raw meat just wasn’t her thing and all the blood didn’t make it better, especially because she had to carry the bleeding corpse back to the camper.
All in all the whole thing didn’t even take half an hour and probably drove any professional hunter up the wall, not that she cared.
On the way back Alyra kept stalking around, showing her how hunts were actually supposed to look like. She didn’t manage to catch anything though, because anything with even a smidgen of survival instinct was long gone after Argul came through the first time.
Back at the house Arthur took over, skinning the boar and taking out its intestines. Luna was surprisingly unfazed by the sight and, armed with Argul’s magic, took the meat and roasted it. Argul had taken the woman more for a city girl that had never seen how the meat that everyone ate was harvested, but perhaps that wasn’t fair. Just because she was a sheep-kin didn’t mean she was a sheep.
The smell of food even managed to wake up Mia and after the girl came outside they all had an early, meat heavy and bloody dinner together.