The attempt to simultaneously inhale and exhale led to me swallowing a bunch of saliva at the same time. The embarrassment was deepening for me at this point, as I went into the classic sort of choking, hacking cough that always comes about from this happening. Even coughing hurt my ribs – I’d been knocked around pretty bad recently – so I was groaning between each one, bent double on the floor and feeling really sorry for myself. Please just kill me and get it over with, I thought, this is mortifying. Being perceived is cringe.
Also, you may know that a big part of our culture and our faith at the time, like how good the afterlife you went to would be, was based on how ‘well’ you died. Looking back on that moment, it’s probably a good thing he (I’d at least seen it was a man’s face) didn’t kill me, and not just for reasons like “I quite enjoy living”. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a worse way to go than “died while you were coughing because you tried to scream in fear and hiss in pain at the same time and ended up swallowing your spit instead”. Maybe this guy felt the same way, because I suddenly felt a couple of heavy pats on the back, right between my shoulderblades, as he clearly tried to help me cough up the last of it. I wasn’t actually ‘choking’ as such, but it was a kind gesture even if it hurt.
“Are you alright?” he asked. “Would you like some water?” I nodded slightly dumbfoundedly, still looking down at my knees, and held a hand out. A waterskin was placed into it, and I rasped a ‘thanks’ as I took a few small sips. I turned to face him as I did, and nearly started the whole process all over again, spluttering in shock around the lip of the waterskin.
I’m going to describe him by listing the parts of his appearance in a very rough order of least to most-striking features. He had brown eyes and a broad, flat nose. His skin was slightly darker than Midgard’s average, approaching olive. He had sharp cheekbones and a stubbly beard. His dark hair was extremely long, hanging nearly to his waist, with some strands of it twisted into small braids. He had broad shoulders and very well-defined muscles, including his chest and abs, visible even with his dense body hair (I was right next to him, OK?). He was topless, but he had decorated leather bracers on each wrist. His lower body was that of a horse.
Maybe I slow-rolled the last part there, but I’m a sucker for a dramatic reveal – we’d found the Centaurs.
Stolen story; please report.
More accurately, they’d found us, but let’s not split hairs. It seemed that Tove and Nalfis had woken up during my little panic-induced coughing fit, though Alf remained asleep. Luckily, they hadn’t jumped to any violent conclusions, which was just as well considering that we’d probably have lost if they did. I’d said it was ‘they’, not ‘he’ who’d found us, not because I was using him as a stand-in for the overall race of Centaurs, but because there were lots more around us.
I’d never seen a Centaur in real-life before, but they were pretty much exactly in line with my expectations. The stern expressions, the proud, upright bearing, the abundance of weapons and scarcity of clothes – all accounted for. Practically the only thing that surprised me about them was that there were also women. Obviously that wasn’t surprising on an intellectual level, but all of the depictions I’d seen had been male-only. Maybe it was because the pictures were always of warriors, and the artists had chosen to keep things ‘manly’. There was still quite a gender divide in the military sector among most societies, so it was possible I’d transplanted the ideas and prejudices that I’d been raised with onto their culture, and subconsciously discounted the idea of a female Centaur warrior.
That, or the artists might have left them out because the women were also topless and they felt awkward about that. Anything was possible.
They’d encircled us as we slept, about thirty of them. We must have been sleeping the sleep of the dead not to have heard them approach. Even on soft ground, that many hooves would still have made quite some noise. Most of them stood a short distance back, looking ever-so-slightly wary, and holding bows down in front of them. They had arrows nocked, but none of them had taken up any tension. It felt more precautionary than aggressive, and I didn’t see any reason for hostility. Hopefully they felt the same way.
I had thankfully managed to keep my composure and not start coughing again, but that just left an uncomfortable silence, during which I handed his waterskin back. He stood up as he took it, which was a bit of a surprise given that I thought he’d been standing already – apparently he was just that much taller. I heaved myself upright, and found my eyes pretty much in line with his stomach, where his bellybutton might be if he was Human. Normally, I’m used to being short, but after spending a while by myself and then with a couple of Dwarves, I’d slightly forgotten. As it was, he was about three feet taller than me (should I be measuring his height in hands? Is that racist? I kept my mouth shut), which is more than enough of a height difference to make you feel very very small indeed.
