Courier Troupe Ten

By Jem Morgenstern

There I was, riding my buffalo into the ocean with my companions close behind me on their varied steeds. My favorite - apart from my own - was Theodore’s; a giant pitbull imported from China. When my buffalo’s first hoof hit the water, I could sense his worry. His teeth were chattering, hairs sprung up, pace slowed to a cautious slink. I did my best to reassure him, but he would stay that way for about the whole way through the Pacific. He was far from being the only of our animals to be so worried. That pitbull stubbornly sat at the shoreline for a good two minutes before she would be coaxed into diving down. The birds were especially put-off, for reasons that you can certainly imagine. Although its surreal nature was so intimidating, walking under the ocean was likely the easiest part of our journey. Under there, the Dust Raiders were nowhere to be seen, the Gullmen never dove deeper than six feet into the water, and the Horrible Centipedes had lost our scent miles before. The one thing we had to worry about were the regular creatures you would find in that part of the ocean, which are mostly non-intelligent and harmless. We did have an interesting encounter with an octopus hybrid about halfway to our destination, which is just about the only noteworthy thing to have happened during our ocean travels. I’ve described the details of that encounter to a dozen people before, but I’ve gauged from their reactions to the tale that most people are clearly not interested in hearing it. A few miles away from there, we did catch a glimpse of some sort of shark, which was mildly exciting, considering they’re so rare these days. We hadn’t accounted for the fact that trudging through water would so noticeably slow us down, so we were a little short on supplies near the end of our journey, but we made do with what we had. In about two weeks, we finally arrived at our intended destination, Los Angeles. We were able to finish our business ahead of schedule and the rest of our week there was spent relaxing, as if we were on vacation. Then, we stocked up on supplies and another journey began. Six more months of walking, but we would know what to expect and we would be prepared.