Two minutes later: “How much farther now?”
I ground my teeth together. “Still don’t know, Gary.”
Three minutes later: “So, question.”
“Gary.”
“How much farther?”
I almost choked him to death. I only stopped because his neck was larger than the grip of my hands. I told him as much. After he shrieked at me for the next half hour for apparently calling him Fat Neck, he said, “It’s just a question. Ask Dimitri.”
“You ask Dimitri.”
“This is your quest, asshole.”
“You’re on this quest with me, asshole.”
“I’ll show you an asshole!”
“Yesssss,” Kevin hissed as he stepped over a tree that had bent itself almost horizontal.
“Dimitri,” Justin said loudly.
“Prince,” Dimitri said, fluttering back toward us.
“Would you tell these bitches how much further we have to go?”
“Of course, my lord. Bitches, we’ll arrive when we arrive.”
“Ooh,” Tiggy said. “Tiny man’s got words. Tiggy smash?”
I sighed. “No, Tiggy. No smash.”
“You lucky,” Tiggy told Dimitri. “I smash. I smash gooood.”
Dimitri didn’t look impressed. Which made me impressed, because Tiggy was scary as all fuck. It was about then that I realized I was an extraordinarily complex person, because my logic typically made no sense.
It was a rather disconcerting revelation to be had in the middle of a forest.
“I need to go talk to Dimitri,” I said to Ryan, pitching my voice low so no one could overhear.
Ryan glanced at me, reaching up and wiping water from his beard, which was just unfair, as I wanted to rub my face against it. His lips quirked at my obvious interest. “You sure about that? We could probably just sneak off for a little bit. Try to put this thing to some use.”
“Whoa,” I breathed. Then I shook my head. “Stop trying to distract me with your evil sorcery! You know my one true weakness is to ride your face. And now you have the beard? My gods, the power you wield could destroy the world!”
I realized then that everyone had gone quiet around us.
I looked at the others.
They had stopped and were staring at me with varying looks of lust and disgust.
“I said that loudly, didn’t I?”
Ryan was bright red. “You practically shouted it.”
“Oh. Wow. My bad, dude. Sometimes I don’t know my own volume, especially when it comes to your face.”
“Or when you come on his face,” Gary said.