Ivy didn't like the ocean. She never had, even back in the ocean. It was, she thought, a fear of the unknown. Not knowing what unfathomable monsters might be lurking in the deep, quite frankly, scared the shit out of her. That had been true back in their world; Max had never been on so much as a boating pond. Here, in a world where she'd already learned that lamias and giantesses and centaurs and who knew what else lived on the land, the fear of what might live in the sea, lurking just beneath t

For the second time in as many days, Ivy found herself waking to the sound of birdsong in her ears and the feel of grass on her cheek. Somehow, she'd migrated in her sleep from her borrowed bedroll onto the bare ground. She sat up and looked around at the others, still asleep around her. Max was laid with his head on his pillow and human half on the bedroll, but there was no way his horse half would fit and it, like her, was resting on the grass. Mara was coiled up, her human half barely visible

There was a cliff, lower than the trees, perhaps the height of two men. The back had a gentle grassy slope leading to the top, while the front was bare rock. There was an opening, a small cave just big enough for a person to squeeze through, and in front of the opening was the source of the smoke. The campfire was lit and burning, and a spit held what was clearly a rabbit, slowly turning despite having no apparent means of doing so. Next to it lay a fallen log, a tree long since dead.The group h

Birdsong. That was the first thing Max registered, as his conscious mind began to wake. He could only clearly hear it in his right ear, mainly due to his left being partially blocked by the dirt floor on which he was laying. He felt tired; he could barely raise the energy to open his eyes. When he did, he saw a hand in front of him. There was something wrong about it, and it took his confused brain a few seconds to register the fact that it was green, bright green, the colour of grass. He shifte

Max had always had liked the forest. When he'd been younger, his family had lived in a big city, with huge skyscrapers, a concrete jungle. But, every summer, they'd go on a trip, and they always went camping in the forest, just a few hours' drive away. They would park the car on the outskirts of the forest, in a lay-by on the side of a small dirt track, and they'd take the tent, and the camp oven, and all their other gear, and they'd walk. They'd walk for hours, until the skyscrapers and the con