Elle lay on the ground, buried under fallen leaves, as the sky grew to a dim orange. At the edge of the thicket, she had an excellent view to a wide open field that grew into a rolling hill in the distance. Her camera with its telephoto lens was braced on a flat rock in front of her, and beside her, she hoped no-one would notice the subtle shine of the parabolic microphone dish, hidden under a nearby bush. All that was left was to wait, and Elle was patient.
So she waited. The sun crept higher. The sky changed from dim orange to bright orange and then a soft blue, and the grass of the field slowly drifted from black to golden to green. A warm, gentle breeze, just barely perceptible, washed in from the ocean, and white fluffy clouds drifted overhead. She was grateful that the day had turned out to be as good as she’d hoped.
In the distance, something changed.
Elle noticed it first with her bare eyes, but she quickly dipped her eyes down to look through the telephoto lens. There in the distance, at the edge of the grassy hill a mile away, a head appeared, dark against the early-morning sunlight. Another head appeared a few yards from it. As they approached, they seemed to be talking to each other, and as they crept a little higher, Elle could make out the shapes of two young women having an animated conversation as they strolled, their hands waving as they spoke, and occasionally they would pause to laugh or shake their heads.
Elle glanced at her watch. 7:26 AM.
The two were walking for quite some time, and Elle realized that the hill was considerably more gentle than it looked from a distance: They didn’t get much higher for a bit, so it was impossible to tell much of what they were or what they looked like, and they didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. As the sun rose, she was able to pick out more details. One was a brunette and the other was blonde, both tanned from the Atlantic sunshine, and Elle couldn’t decide if their clothing was minimal, or if it simply didn’t stand out very well this far away. But that didn’t matter, because as they came up the hill, the sight took Elle’s breath away.
They were centaurs.
Real, live centaurs, walking only a half-mile away now, across a green grassy field. The shapes of their lower bodies were unmistakable: large round circles, supported on far too many legs for a human, with tails comfortably swishing behind them. Elle snapped a photo, and another, as the young women continued walking up through the field. It slowly began to dawn on Elle that, in fact, neither of them were clothed at all: Locks of their long hair partially covered their chests, but otherwise, they were bare from head to hoof, and that made the truth of their species all that much more obvious, since there was nothing to obscure the gentle blend from human skin to equine hair.
Closer now, she could make out plenty of details through the telephoto lens. The blond girl was perched atop a palomino and had long, straight hair, and she seemed far more animated than her companion, talking loudly about — well, *something*, Elle couldn’t quite tell what yet. The brunette had wavy hair, and most of it was tied back, save for the two locks she let trail over her chest for modesty. She was considerably less animated than her companion, frowning at her from time to time, and occasionally responding in dark tones. The brown bay horse underneath her ended in black socks, and her tail was black.
“ — should just tell him,” she said. The parabolic dish was starting to pick up their voices well enough that Elle could understand them.
“He did June!” said the blonde. “They’re, like, a… c… now, and June’s my friend. I don’t want her to f… … like I … ” Elle struggled. As loud as she seemed to be talking, they were still pretty far away.
“So … to her,” said the brunette. “Maybe she’ll share.”
The blonde scowled. “Laura, you know I can’t … I don’t want to … June deserves him, more than I do.”
The brunette shook her head. “You’re hopeless,” she said.
The two continued walking, arguing about what Elle now assumed was some kind of love triangle between the blonde girl, her friend June, and some boy who’d slept with the both of them, if *slept* was the right word. It was juicy, but it wasn’t an especially interesting conversation. Still, as they walked in a wide arc that neared the tree-line, it gave her plenty of time to snap photos. They stopped, maybe twenty yards away, arguing over the boy, and Elle held her breath, nervous that she’d be found out. Finally, Laura had apparently had enough, and encouraged the blonde to get moving and head back to “the pavilion.” The two circled, and began walking away along the eastern shore before turning again and heading back toward where they came.
Elle slowly let out her breath. They were farther in the distance now, but she had photos, *real* photos, *lots* of real photos, of two live, *real* centaurs, and based on their conversation, somewhere beyond that hill, there were more.