The horse

Artem had no idea of how she could be this cheerful despite that dreadful journey through the portal, but didn’t delve at the question for long. Right now, he tried just to focus on one thing: Finding the horse.

They kept walking for about half an hour or so before they found it. The frightened creature had entangled itself in some dense shrubs and was desperately trying to get free. Cautiously Artem approached the horse, trying not to frighten it even more. He gently placed a hand on its neck while quietly talking to it “There there. It’s all right. I’m gonna get you out of this…”. It took him quite some time to calm the horse enough for him to start cutting it free with his small dagger. After having done this he first checked to see if the horse was hurt, but it only had a few scratches that wasn’t too deep. Only after having inspected the horse thoroughly he started to see if all his things were still securely attached to the saddle. Luckily that appeared to be the case and he let out a small sigh of relief.

“Good, I don’t think anything’s missing, but we’ll have to walk the rest of the way, all right?” he only turned to look at Winifred now, whom he’d so far completely overlooked while being focused on making sure the horse was all right.

It did annoy him a bit that they wouldn’t be able to use the horse since he still didn’t feel so well, but the horse was simply too tired and it would be unwise to strain it even further when it had been wounded too.