Page 219 of Hunters and Prey

A part of this field had been fenced off.

Black frowned, stopping, his hands on his hips as the cow-dragons milled around him, snuffling the ground. He saw them angling around the fence, heading a little faster for something that lived on the other side of it.

The cow-dragon he’d been walking beside stopped long enough to look back at him.

Black glanced at its face, and snorted a laugh in spite of itself.

He could have sworn the damned thing was waiting for him.

“Okay,” he said to it, breaking that church-like silence. “I’m coming, little brother.”

He began walking again, his hand once more companionably on the creature’s back. His eyes never left that fence. He studied it as they passed, frowning, seeing vine-like ropes holding it together, along with what looked like wooden or stone pegs, or nails.

Someone had to have put this here, he thought, staring at those nails.

It definitely looked made.

Someone made that fence.

Someone or something he hadn’t yet seen.

He followed his snorting, cow-like friend across the gentle slope of the field around the fence, and once they got all the way around it, there were rows and rows of shorter, squatter trees with broad, dark leaves.

He blinked, staring at them.

Like the fence, they looked… not natural.

He was still staring at them when the cow-dragon next to him apparently lost patience with his staring. Letting out a weirdly expressive snort, it kicked out its back legs and trotted forward faster, aiming its stubby legs and round-assed body down the slope towards those rows of flat-leafed trees.

Still frowning, now glancing between the fence and what looked like a damned orchard, Black followed the animal, walking down amongst those more cultivated-looking trees. It was then that he noticed the branches were loaded down with orange and pink fruits.

He was standing under their dark green leaves, staring up at those laden branches, when he heard a crunching sound.

The crunching multiplied around him.

Looking down, he saw his snorty, trunk-faced friends crunching happily on fruits that had fallen to the earth under the tree branches. Black watched them snort and crunch, snuffling the ground to find more fruit immediately after they’d finished eating one. Their entire focus was now on the short grasses under the trees, looking for fruit.

He watched as his friend, the one he’d been walking with all over Land’s End, found a fruit of his own, and began crunching it happily, juice running down its dark blue lips and matting in the black and red fur of its neck.

“Messy, messy,” Black clicked at it.

Even so, he smiled.

Cultivated trees and plants.

An orchard. A fence.

He decided to chance it.

Walking up to the nearest tree, he leapt up lightly on the balls of his feet, snatching for one of the unbruised fruits hanging from the lowest branch. His fingers closed around one of the pink and orange fruits, and he landed back on his toes, only losing his balance a little from light-headedness. He decided that was probably hunger too, and, after examining the lightly-fuzzed surface of the fruit, he took a cautious bite.

Juice exploded in his mouth, despite the crunchiness of the flesh, and the softness of the skin. He let out a surprised, happy sound, in spite of himself, doing his best to keep as much of the fruit and juice in his mouth and not running down his chin and throat and arm as he possibly could. Sucking on the bite he’d taken out of the fruit, he took another bite, and almost rolled his eyes in pleasure. It was sweet, with the slightest tang of sour, like a plum mixed with a peach, mixed with an Asian pear.

It had its own taste, though––something he’d never had before, something for which he had no good or simple comparisons.

He finished the fruit in a matter of minutes.

Then he hopped up on his feet, snatching another fruit from a branch.

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