Elle slowly circled through the photos on her camera, simply staring at them. A few were out-of-focus, but most of them were sharp as tacks, and the images they showed were simply incredible. The two centaur women were happily walking along and talking with each other as if it was completely normal to be half horse. Maybe for them it was, but for Elle, they were marvels, something she’d only seen in the short propaganda the Moxes had released, never something she believed could *actually* exist. Somewhere deep down inside, she had been convinced that the Moxes’ videos and photos were just elaborate fakes, and that the real reason she was here was to disprove all of it — but her own photos shattered that illusion. There was no denying that Donald Lawson — Lakapius Mox had pulled off something utterly extraordinary.
She took a deep breath, shaking her head slightly. There was no way they could be real. They had to be tricks, illusions, costumes, or *something*. But she’d seen how they walked, how they moved, and there really could be little doubt in the close-ups of the telephoto lens that they were real: Unified, singular creatures, not women on horseback, not women in costumes, not women in elaborate makeup, but simple, real, live centaurs.
She looked up from the camera, and realized that while she’d been looking at her own photos, the entire scene in front of her had changed. Her jaw fell open. The field had not two centaurs but two *dozen* now, men and women both, nearly all as naked as they day they’d been born, some walking, some running, some simply lounging on the grass. And in the middle, a human woman seemed to be walking, wearing a long white gown, occasionally talking with a centaur or centauress, each of them nodding in deference to her.
Elle darted back into the telephoto lens, and recognized the human woman’s face immediately: Argiala Mox, the former Amanda Stears, resplendent in long white garb, with a golden circlet on her head. The daughter of a financial baron, heir to a billion-dollar empire, she’d gone off the deep end after she met Donald, and the two had cashed in some of her savings to buy this island. Now it seemed like she fancied herself royalty, and the centaurs, her partner’s bizarre creations, were her subjects.
Argiala strolled through the crowd, smiling at them, checking on each of them in turn, and then walked over to a sturdy centaur male with an impressive dark beard. Two other younger centaur males leaned over and cupped their hands, and she used the cups as steps to climb up to the back of the bearded centaur, where she sat down sidesaddle. He nodded at her in approval, and she waved away the other two, who stood up and backed away, bowing. She gathered up her dress, and then her mount began to walk, smoothly and steadily, carrying her away.
Elle realized she’d been staring without doing anything about it, her finger only occasionally weakly pressing down on the capture button, and she quickly began snapping photos as fast as she could before Argiala and her ride disappeared over the hillside again. The other centaurs continued to lounge and play in the field in the warming morning sunshine, but Argiala as a Princess? Or a Queen? That was lunacy even for the Moxes. Photos of a field of centaurs were good, but Queen Argiala amongst her subjects — that was a photo that Elle could take all the way to the bank.