Pegasus

by Brian Brookwell

- do not use without the author/artist's permission.
- more stories and art at The Mermaid's Tail


hari loved horses and everything to do with horses. When she had been little, she'd wish hard to even be a pony just like the ones on her favorite TV show. The wish had never come true but her passion remained ... her home was filled with statuettes of horses, pegasi, hippocampi ... even her wall art was ponies and horses.

Her ex-boyfriend was a biogeneticist and an amateur archaeologist as well. He, too, had loved horses but not nearly as much as she had. The fight, now ten days in the past, had ended with Shari stomping from his apartment vowing never to talk to that over bearing creep again.

The fight had started simply enough. She'd invited him over for dinner (and maybe a romp in the hay later). The dinner went well and after a few hours of conversation, cuddling and the like, she'd hinted she wanted him to stay over. The excuse used had been that he'd had one too many drinks to drive safely. He made a half-hearted attempt to insist he really shouldn't stay over but agreed in the end. That was when things had started to get strange. He went down to his car "to get a few things" and returned with a box full of leather and metal.

Shari went along with the "horse play" for a while but when he produced a saddle and proposed he ride her around the room, she balked. He was twice her size and there was no way she'd be able to support his weight bent over at the waist. Unfortunately he was just drunk enough to use this weight to have his way. The rest of the evening was a complete disaster. Shari's hips and legs hurt and the hoped-for "roll in the hay" didn't happen. In the end, they'd fought and he'd grabbed his keys, drunk as he was, and driven himself home.

Kenny hadn't phoned since and Shari thought she'd lost him for sure. The end of a love affair always produced a deep melancholy for Shari. Her friends at work noticed and commiserated but the dark mood hadn't lifted. Every time she thought she'd give him a call, the pile of "ponygirl" equipment still in the middle of her living room would make her see red. If he wanted to apologize, then all would be well but there was no way she'd go crawling to him to submit to whatever other insanity he had in mind.

Her ruminations were interrupted by her doorbell. A young woman in a uniform introduced herself as a courier and offered Shari a notepad to sign. He handed her a wrapped bottle of wine or something like that, turned and left. It was from Kenny! He'd sent her a gift to apologize for his faux pax.

The letter, written in the same rambling style as Kenny spoke, wasn't an apology. He was still on this damned ponygirl kick. His letter stated that whenever she was ready to pick up where they'd left off, he'd be more than willing. There was the implied threat that he wouldn't wait forever in there, too. The wine was a reasonably good vintage (not the cheap stuff Kenny preferred) and Shari set it on her shelf.

There it sat for several days while Shari waited for Kenny to give in. In the end, during one of her darkest moods, Shari opened the bottle. The cork slid out easily, leaving none of the little cork bits she so detested. Pouring herself a glass, she recorked the bottle. She sat down in her favorite armchair and sipped the wine. It was excellent but had gone off in some way as the fruity aroma she'd expected had a slight tinge of something slightly bitter. As she was washing up the glass though, she noticed that the label on the bottle was crooked and, as she discovered, loose.

On the back of the label was another short note from Kenny. This time the note was ominous. He told of a strange shop and an even stranger woman. He'd bought the wine and the spell in anger. "She'd be his horse yet," the note had concluded.

Shari felt a strange churning in her stomach that quickly spread to her whole body. A burning, like fire, gripped her breasts and abdomen. This soon passed and Shari went outside to sun on her deck. Thankful for the high fence erected by the previous owner, Shari stripped for half an hour of sunning in the nude. She found herself strangely groggy and was unable to resist as sleep overcame her on her deck lounge.

Kenny had always enjoyed horses or Shari wouldn't have dated him. His passion, though, was the mythological flying horse Pegasus. He'd assumed, like almost all people in the United States and Canada do, that everyone speaks their language. So when he'd drunkenly asked for the spell he'd asked for one of those "horse fly thingies" and "winged horse thingies". When the sorceress had learned to speak thousands of years previously, English hadn't even been her second language - tenth or twelfth perhaps, but she'd forgotten so many languages that even she wouldn't have been able to say with any certainty.

Sheri stretched languidly from her unexpected mid-afternoon nap to discover a few changes had occurred. Her chest as flat as a schoolgirl's, her hands and feet hooves instead of hands, she screamed. Blast him and his strange tastes! And then the final discovery, she had wings too! Not quite the flying horse Pegasus though ...