“Lunch?” she asked, slightly embarrassed.
Russel rode on for half an hour before admitting he was hungry as well.
“Why must you be so hard?” Pandora asked, sitting with her back to a tree opposite Russel with his own rest. “I don't think I'm being unreasonable.”
Russel snorted. “If I give you an arm, you'll take my head and leg too. No, Princess, I will keep penned tightly for the time being.”
Pandora frowned and looked away. Her eye fell on Daisy, a few yards away drinking from a brook. Thunder stood placidly beside her.
“They aren't so difficult on one another,” she muttered.
Russel looked over his shoulder and snorted. “If you'll obey as well as well as Thunder, I won't ride you hard either.”
Pandora stuck out her tongue in reflex, which made Russel laugh. “That is not becoming, Pandora. You look like a wrinkled peach.”
She resisted the urge to repeat the gesture and rose. Russel remained seated while she walked over to the horses. Thunder accepted her pat but snorted like his master. Daisy's big lips mussed Pandora's hair at the same time her breath blew it about.
“Good girl,” Pandora murmured, testing Daisy's mind with several spells. The horse responded to each differently. The first blinded the horse with brightness. She whinnied and backed up, but didn't bolt or run. The second made several colored lights dance in her vision. One was blue among the red and Pandora watched Daisy's eye follow this rather than the others. Pandora tried to think of other tests, but she was tired and her husband hadn't done anything to improve her mood.
“Well, hop on her then,” he said impatiently, slinging one leg across Thunder's back. “We don't have all day.”
Gritting her teeth, Pandora put her foot in the stirrup and had the wind knocked from her when she fell flat on her back.
