“Oh, did we get a new carriage?” Waiting outside the Merchants’ Guild to take Dahlia home was not her usual horse-drawn carriage but one with gilded doors drawn by sleipnir.
Mena turned to her with a smile. “Our usual horse is ‘off to see a prospective partner,’ and it went back to the ranch. It’ll get colder and colder too, so the vice-chairman prepared this carriage with a closed, heated cabin and rented this foal to go with it.”
Though it was as big as a grown sleipnir, there was a childlike sparkle in its black eyes, which were pointed at Dahlia. There was something familiar about its appearance and its happy nickering. “Is that perhaps Purple Grape’s foal?”
“How sharp of you, Chairwoman. Number Twelve here loves purple grapes too, so I hear.”
What a delightful surprise reunion—this was the exact sleipnir that had been pulling her carriage when she had first met Volf, and maybe it even remembered him too. Something caught her attention, though. “What do you mean by ‘number twelve,’ Mena?”
“That would be the sleipnir’s name. There are many horses for hire, so they often resort to numbering them.” It made a lot of sense, but it was nonetheless a little unfortunate.
As she drew close to the beast, Marcella appeared, carrying a chest of goods to be delivered, as did Ivano, carrying a briefcase. “The new carriage looks very promising. You’re not afraid of sleipnirs, Chairwoman?” asked Ivano.
“No. In fact, I’ve hired this one before.”
“Oh, what a coincidence.” Ivano sandwiched his briefcase under his arm and approached the sleipnir. He demonstrated his familiarity with horses by locking eyes with it and slowly stroking its mane. Number Twelve was enjoying the attention when it suddenly began sniffing him. “Sorry to say, but I don’t have any apples or pears for you—oh, I forgot about this; this is what you must be smelling.” He took a step backward and retrieved from his jacket pocket what appeared to be a crusty green bar of agar but was actually the result of the experiments some time ago—the thing created by enchanting green slime mixture with fire magic. “I had forgotten I’d scraped this off the table and stuffed it in my pocket. Mr. Forto said this is unsuitable for weaving into fabric, unfortunately.”
“Lucia expressed the same, saying that it was too fine and delicate.” The magical toolmakers at the Tailors’ had run some experiments on the fibers, but what they had made was closer to paper than cloth, and they had found out that it even dissolved in water given enough time; it was far from suitable for clothes.
Marcella demonstrated his experience as a courier. “Green slimes not only eat plants but just about everything else, so I can’t imagine it could be turned into fabric.”
“It is what it is. It would be foolish to expect to run into nothing but succe— Gah!” Taking advantage of the situation, the sleipnir whipped its head toward Ivano’s hand and twisted its tongue around the green cake of fibers. “Hey, that’s not food! Come on now, spit it out!” He scolded the sleipnir like a father would.
Sitting on the coach box, Mena guffawed. “You’re sticking out green hay, Vice-Chairman—of course it’s gonna be eaten up. Sleipnirs are quite the gluttons, so you’re never getting that back, you know?” It whinnied like it was agreeing; its mouth was empty already.