“Good. Now for the fun part. Your armor, m'lady.”
“I have no need of armor,” she laughed as he produced a tunic and leggings covered in the same camouflage and armor as his own.
“You'll wear it anyway, and you'll wear foot coverings too.”
“I didn't wear any of that my entire life and somehow I survived. Why do you want to weigh me down?” She picked up the tunic. “This weighs more than a big cat.”
“It won't be that bad when it's on, and you'll get used to it.” He took it from her hands and lifted it over her head. Before she could protest, he dropped it on her shoulders.
To her chagrin, he was right. It wasn't really that heavy, but it was heavy and she didn't like it at all. “Exoskeletons are for bugs,” she said, squirming out of it.
“You put it on, or you spend the day in the crate whilst I go out by myself.”
“That's not fair.”
“Life often isn't.” He pointed to the armor. “Put it on.”
Scowling down at the green and gray attire, Sarah had a sinking feeling that she was going to end up wearing it. Outright defiance was getting her nowhere.
“I can't wear it,” she said, letting her voice soften. “It's too heavy.”
“It's not,” he said. “I had it lightened specifically for your frame. So quit stalling. I am leaving here in two minutes. You'll either be with me and wearing this, or you'll be in your crate.”
She stalled another few seconds, but it was obvious that she was out of choices. It was with extreme reluctance that she donned the armored tunic, leggings, and shoes. The shoes were the worst. Heavy, thick rubber separated her feet from the floor, making it impossible to feel the texture or nature of the terrain. Stone or sand would have been the same.
“You'll get used to it all,” William said, ushering her out the door.
It was her first time out of the house since arriving in the city. The first time she had been in a covered crate and had not known precisely how they had arrived at his house. It turned out that they had taken a flimsy piece of magically floating plastic.
“It's okay,” William tried to reassure her. “You just stand on it and it automatically adjusts to make sure that the platform stays stable. You could fly anywhere in the city on this and never fall off.”
Sarah tapped the platform with her boot. She couldn't feel the platform properly through the dulling material, but she did not at all like the way it swayed. They were very high up, far higher than the canopy of the forest. If she were to fall, there would be no branches on which to catch herself, there would be no soft place to land. There would be a hard landing on unforgiving, unnatural rock
“Look,” William said, “there are hundreds of these things flying everywhere.”
He was right. There were hundreds of the scary saucers flinging themselves through the city skies with no regard for the laws of nature. Some of them had people aboard, city dwellers who did not know that flying was for birds, not men.
“I can't.”
“You can,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. Without any further cajoling, he lifted her up and onto the platform, keeping a firm hold of her as it moved away from the security of the docking station outside his house and began floating through the ether.
“I'm going to fall!”
“You're not,” he said. “You couldn't fall if you tried.”
“I could fall if I tried,” Sarah argued. William had her very firmly in his grasp, pressing her back against the muscled planes of his chest and thighs. He was the one solid thing in a world of floating objects, the only thing between her and the raging fear being triggered by keen survival instincts.
“You really couldn't,” he said. “Even if you tried to throw yourself off, the platform would compensate.” His voice, gruff and confident in her ear was very reassuring, distracting, in fact. So distracting that she barely noticed that their journey was almost over.
William loosed his grip and took her hand instead. “Come on,” he said, “almost there.”
Sarah allowed herself to be led through what was a frankly bewildering set of smooth rock canyon walls through to a room where a man in a pristine white robe and a most ridiculous hat asked William for his identification.
“You understand that by going into the wilds, you risk solar contamination,” the man in the robes droned, reading from a plastic card. “You understand that the city takes no responsibility for injury or death resulting from excursions into the wild. You understand that the wilds are unregulated and not subject to city law, nor order...
“You understand that you can find your ass with your hands by reaching behind you,” Sarah interrupted, thoroughly bored with proceedings.