The wooden boards beneath the monstrous, cloven hooves of her new form cracked and clattered as she scrambled nervously. The tavern had erupted in a flurry of action as if the room had spontaneously caught flame and everyone was trying to find a way to escape. Two men leaped up and caught the thick, burly fur of her neck. They smelled of beer and sweat from the field, likely farmers—strong from field work and wise with horses. But she was not a horse. And though she felt them tug hard against her neck, she didn’t stumble. In fact she barely felt them at all, and when her ears pinned flat back on her head and she turned to look at them, the men fell away.
All around her people were shouting. Their arms were waving. A trio of serving women had dove beneath a nearby table, and as Beck backed away, her hip crashed into its corner and caused them to screech in panic. The witch jumped a bit, startled, and swore to herself.
And then, cutting through the chaos like a blade, Brienne came into view. She felt a spark of relief and fondness, and then a foreign, braying sound involuntarily leaped from her throat. It drowned out whatever her friend had attempted to say to her the first time, but the second time was quite clear.
With an extreme amount of effort, the witch managed to turn her massive bulk around the way she’d came. Though it came at the expense of another table, which cracked beneath her hoof as easily as a roasted wishbone, and the door, which got caught on the massive horn protruding from her forehead and split. She took a step back, dislodging herself from the door, and maneuvered herself out the door. Her ears tilted backward, trained on Brienne, and when she heard her cross the threshold to the tavern, she shook her head, and the door snapped shut.
It would buy them a few moments of privacy.
“Brienne!” She exclaimed a second time. The braying noise threatened to resurface as her happiness bubbled up once more, but she squashed it as best she could. It came out as a high pitched squeak of joy. Beck tilted her head, then looked down at her broad chest and thick, furry legs.
“I’m not—really sure.” She replied. And it was true. She hadn’t spoken the language of the place she had been, and the people hadn’t exactly upheld the laws of hospitality for her anyway. “IIII—think some sort of goat.”
A very very big goat. Bigger in fact, than the three horses tied to the post not thirty feet away, watching them with their tense ears and whale eyes. She was at least a hand taller than them.
“Oh! I can get us away!” The witch hopped like an excitable kid, her hooves crunching against the flagstones of the tavern. “I’m fast! I’m really, really fast! And with my magic, I’m even faster! Like a dolphin, but on land! Here.”
Beck knelt so that both her front legs were curled beneath her just as the wood of the tavern door began to splinter. “Get on my back! I can carry you!”
“You have an apple on your head.” Brienne sounded slightly dazed, as if just awakening from a dream. She was used to Beck’s disruptive presence, or as accustomed to that as she could be. There was magic that clung to her friend that she had never known existed. She’d rather disliked and distrusted magic before, but now that she’d befriended a witch… if she was honest, Brienne still found most of the magic too unpredictable to be enchanting, but in spite of that she liked Beck.
She did wish that her friend had waited to meet her outside, however.
Brienne shook her head and pulled the dagger from her belt. “Here. Hold still.” She reached up, standing on the tips of her toes, and steadied Beck’s horn with one hand and using the other to cut away the apple. For a moment, she instinctively considered trying to feed Beck the two halves of the apple, but that felt odd considering that she was really a person. She let it fall gently to the ground instead. Beck could pick it up if she liked. There were more pressing concerns.
She took stock of the situation, quickly. Beck had shouted her name in the tavern, and now more than ever people would be after her. First she was blamed for Renly’s murder, now this… she didn’t want to think what could happen to Beck if she was captured. She wasn’t going to let that happen.
She’d left her saddlebags with her horse in the stable, intending to carry them up to her room after dinner. Fortunately, she had her gold, her bedroll, and both of her swords, but the rest… Jaime had given her that horse, a fine mare, and she was loath to leave her behind, not to mention the silver and copper coins that were still in the saddlebags. She closed her eyes briefly and let out an unhappy sigh. Perhaps if she left horse and coin at the inn, they would accept that as some small payment for the damage they’d done. She had to continue her quest, but could return later, perhaps, and apologize, as well as give the innkeeper some of her gold. She hated fleeing like a criminal, but once again it was necessary.
One final time she tried to protest. “But, my-” A sound from the inn door interrupted her. Brienne bit her lip in dismay. It wasn’t only that she was reluctant to leave her horse and saddlebags, or to run from the inn after her friend had left it in shambles. Brienne was experienced on horseback, but this creature Beck had turned herself into- a unicorn, maybe?- was another matter. “You have to stay calm,” Brienne told her as she carefully climbed on. “And don’t go too far, just enough to lose them. Please.”