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Who: Regulus and YOU
What: Various opens, catch-all for the traveling
When: various times
Where: Along the passage
Rating/Warnings: Will put in warnings as needed

( starters in comments, feel free to reach out if you don’t see anything that suits your character via pm or on plurk! )

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A. Regulus Rides a Horse

Regulus had chosen a horse for the journey. The elk were extremely intimidating with their spread of antlers, he could just imagine the things turning its head to look behind and getting gored with one of those spikes in the leg. And one of the donkeys had bitten him when he was checking them out.

So, a horse it was.

However, choosing a mount had been the easy part.

Rideing was proving far more daunting and confusing than Regulus had let himself anticipate.

His horse was following the object ahead of him (he’d been told his horse was a gelding), so that was good. But Regulus felt so unbalanced in the saddle with every sway of the horse’s step. And what was he supposed to do with the reins? Brooms didn’t come with all this equipment, they were straightforward.

And horses made noises and kind of smelled all the time. Their natural smell wasn’t the worst, but it was present. The worst was when they, well, you know, answered the call of nature (which was a problem with all the mounts on this journey.

His horse snorted and it had Regulus’ grasping the pommel of his saddle as he tensed up over the sudden shake of his horse’s head.

But then it turned out to be fine. And his horse was still following the leader.

“This is nothing like riding a broom,” Regulus grumbled in something between mild distaste and distress.

2a. Reg on Night Watch – things are fine – First Watch

On a first night watch shift, Regulus sat with his magicked fire next to him, it spread enough warmth to him and his immediate vicinity. It provided him enough light to read a book by.

He had one of the astronomy books he’d salvaged from the farmhouse, and he was comparing star charts with the sky he could see above. He still didn’t know what the text said specifically (only that generally this was a farmer’s almanac), but in talking with the refuegees, Regulus had started to learn the names the various refugees called the constellations. With the pencil he’d copied from Lily’s original, he’d written those names down.

He was starting to become familiar with the strange shape of the language the words and names were written in.

2b. Reg on Night Watch – Blood Rain – Middle Watch

He’d taken up his post for the second watch of the night a bit early just because he could. He was fiddling with the harpy feather he’d picked up while inside the mount, pondering on his experience in there. His magic fire was with him again and he was on the lookout already for harpies. Clearly, harpies had been in the rooms he’d had a chance to explore.

He felt the first drops of rain on his head and thought nothing of it. That they would get rain on this trip had pulled him from his thoughts. He looked up and two more drops landed on his cheeks. His fire hissed next to him as a drop of rain landed in his fire.

The next drop landed on his hand and idly he looked down, only to be met with the deep color of red.

Which was momentarily disorienting.

Had he cut himself and not realized? He fingered the spot of red – possibly blood – on his hand but revealed no scratch that might have originated the blood.

Then another drop – he saw it fall this time – splattered red again on his other hand. And it hit him one second too late that the blood was falling from the sky before the deluge started. His wand was just coming up to cast a spell to keep the ‘rain’ off him, but he was a fraction of a second too late and he was ultimately drenched before the spell made it up above his head to protect him.

So, there he stood, fire quenched in blood, red rivulets dripping from his soggy hair following the lines of his face, his clothes stained.

He grumbled to himself and sighed.

3. Mute Regulus

Regulus had figured it out! They were traveling with ghosts. Ghosts with the helpful ability to fight off harpies and stand watch in the blood rain, which was a bit of an improvement over the ghosts of his universe who just floated around transparent. These ghosts were like poltergeists in that they could affect objects in this physical living world. But so far they seemed mostly benevolent.

However, there seemed to be one horrible problem with the ghost army: If you tried to bring up their ghostliness with them, the questioner was robbed of the ability to speak the rest of the day.

But it’s not like anyone was issuing that kind of warning.

So there Regulus sat, on his horse (oh, he’d named his horse by now, Darius), silent as the weird forest they were passing right now.

Oh, but he wasn’t without expressing himself – a scowl was firmly fixed to his face. Because he was not well pleased at this turn of events.

The blood rain was battering his tent from the outside. But safely tucked inside this night was himself, Lily (and Patricia and Darius tucked away in his bag – ever since the harpies had started showing up, Regulus wasn’t taking any chances that either his cat or his mount would fall prey to those beasts. He’d fed them first so there was nothing to worry about.)

He’d dropped a few rocks – just big enough for him to fit all his fingers around – that he’d found on their journey onto the sleeping mat between them.

“I figured we could try perfecting the spell on these first before ruining your notebooks.” Next time they traveled through the eerie forest, he was going to grab a few good-sized twigs to try as well. It seemed smarter to try the spell on things they didn’t mind breaking, first.

The caravan had stopped for the night and Regulus was going about the business of taking his tent and sleeping rolls off the back of his saddle. He was by no means highly skilled at this yet. But he was doing better than he did his first night.

Patricia was still out, perched deftly on Darius’ rump.

For a second, as Regulus started to unroll things, he got confused. And after a moment he glanced up and caught Patricia’s judgmental face.

“Yes,” he said to the cat. “I do know what I am doing.” He thought. But Patricia didn’t need to hear his doubt.

Her attempts at summoning tea from nothing were not going terrifically by any definition of the word. Off to one side of the sleeping mat was a steaming basin of light green water that smelled more piney than tea ought to. It was better than the pervasive smell of blood from outside, and so she'd yet to do away with it. They had more important work to do, so she had given up after the first try of the night, reaching for some of her dwindling leaf supply to turn them into proper(ish) cups of tea for the both of them instead.

Lily held her cup, looking from the rocks Regulus had set down to him with a nod. "We could see how marking them with a pencil goes as a means of testing? My first thought was to use strips of paper, this is far more resourceful."

"Doesn't get any more fun to see, but I do have to wonder why it never manages to fall more than lukewarm."

Or did it, higher up, only losing heat as it fell? He only wonders a little about it, though he habitually steps out from under the tarp hanging angled over the fire to keep the passing illusion from suffocating the flame.

"And if it's linked to why they come this way every year, or if it's because they do." A nod of his head to the ghost army, still moving around, before they start fritzing for the evening, weakening and strengthening in a way he finds fascinating for slightly related reasons.

He looks to Regulus, brow faintly furrowed. "How're you holding up?"

Days after the siege and Five was used to feeling miserable. He wasn't comfortable on the donkey he ended up with, but it was slower than the other options, and steady enough that he hadn't thrown up anything lately. As far as anyone was concerned he was fine, even though he'd rather be about anywhere and doing anything else. His expression was dour as he tried to stay alert of their surroundings while simultaneously ignoring everything around him. None of which made him any more sociable than normal.

It was somehow still hard to miss Regulus struggling with the horse whenever he looked in his direction. Not that Five had a lot of experience riding a donkey, but he at least grasped the concept better than the wizard. Apparently magic couldn't solve all problems. At one point (while he was attempting to get into a better position to write in a notebook mid-ride) he heard him make a comment about riding a broom and put the book down to gave him a sidelong glance.

"I was about to say the same thing." -- Well, he was going to break his silence at some point. It might as well be to mock a completely ridiculous image. He shook his head and went back to his scribbling. "Try not to fall off."

It's not quite sleeping time yet, and Catra is hungry and cold; so she grabs a snack from her stash and makes her way over to the campfire. She'll have to be among people, but the desire to be warm for once trumps even her distaste for company.

On the way, though, she sees something that somehow escaped her notice up to now. Perched up on the behind of a horse is a small, furry creature.

With pointy ears. And a fluffy tail. And slitted pupils.

Something about this creature is... oddly familiar. Catra can't exactly pinpoint what, but it bothers her to the highest degree.

"What is that?" She wonders out loud, aghast.

Eleven laughed, catching the remark as his mare came up next to Regulus. He was having no such trouble, riding smoothly and guiding his horse without apparent effort.

"I should hope not." He smiled over at the man. "But you should relax more; horses know when their riders or handlers are stressed or nervous and can pick that up from them. They can be pretty sensitive to that sort of thing."

Regulus shot Eleven a cross look.

Ya, he got the general idea, one leg on each side. Sit in the saddle.

From there, he didn't know what he was supposed to do with this feet, legs, how to sit in the saddle, what to do with his arms and hands. On a broom, he sat forward, hugging the handle. You only sat upright when you wanted to just... well, sit there in air. But you couldn't sit forward like that now, not with a horse's neck in the way.

And again, what did a person do with the reins?

"Easy for you to say when you know what you're doing," he said.

Regulus looked up to see what the speaker meant by 'that,' and promptly startled.

Of all the non-human sentients in his universe, bipedal cats were not among the listed.

Was Catra attempting to learn to be an animagus and got stuck in some phase of transformation? Or did she inadvertently drink a polyjuice potion mixed with cat hair? Or something else altogether?

Regulus' mind was racing.

And of course, he blurted out, "What are you?" While standing there, just holding the pieces of his tent. Patricia just stared at them both with the judgment of a cat.

The expression on Regulus face as he turned his head to look at Five was clearly unamused. The farthest thing from.

"Were you?" he snapped back, but then grumbled, "You wouldn't know how to ride a broom."

But if this was the resource he'd been given.

"Go on, enlighten me. How does one ride a horse?"

Oh, was he actually going to ask him? Five stopped trying to write (he didn't want to admit that it was a futile exercise in trying to keep a pen steady), and looked back. He probably shouldn't have opened himself up for a longer conversation, but he was in a lousy mood, and loudly judging someone's shortcomings had a way of making him nostalgic.

"Picture a broom with legs." If he didn't immediately regret asking him in the first place. In all honestly he wouldn't have minded seeing Regulus take on a flying broom, for curiosity's sake, but apparently he didn't bring one along.

"Don't act like you're afraid of it, I'm pretty sure they can sense that." Then he actually gave a moment to consider, since he probably owed it to him. For all Five knew, he lucked out by getting a very tame donkey to ride, but he could take a stab at what he was doing wrong. "And stop pulling the reins. You're just jamming it into the thing's mouth."

Eleven gave him a rueful smile. "Yes, I learned when I was young. But I promise it isn't difficult to learn."

He examined Regulus' posture with a hum. "You'll want to keep your back straight and kind of.. hug your horse with your legs. Not tightly- that would tell him to move into a trot. Just.. sort of relax, with your heels back and keep a loose hold on the reigns for now. We're already at pace and don't need to turn yet."

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Some wonderful thread starts

Regulus and Lily – practicing magic

Regulus and Catra – Near the start of the journey, a chance meeting

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2b wildcard since it's post stonenapping?

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