For Nevermore Season 1

clearly this couldn’t be real.
    Could it?
    Noella shook her head no, she was indeed not from around here.
    The centaur leaned the human part of him down, sniffing at her skin.
    “You’re from over there?” he said, standing straight, then looking around cautiously. “Did you bring any cakes? I so love the cakes from over there,” he said, his smile as wide as a kid in a candy store.
    “Cakes?” Noella said, confused.
    “Yes, cakes. Did you bring any?”
    “No,” Noella shook her head. “I don’t have any . . . cakes. Can you tell me where I am?”
    The centaur looked confused at this question. “You don’t know? You’re here, yet you don’t know where here is? How odd a predicament.”
    The centaur looked up, sniffed the air, then turned his head sideways as if trying to hear something. Moments later, Noella heard the sound, too. A buzzing, mechanical sound that seemed strange but also oddly familiar.
    The centaur’s eyes widened, “Has anyone else seen you?”
    “No, you’re the first per ... person I’ve seen.”
    “Hop on my back, I need to get you out of here.”
    “What?”
    “If the queen’s soldiers see you, you’re dead.”
    “The who?”
    “Hop on!” the centaur ordered, looking to the sky as the weird mechanical sound droned above and a creeping shadow draped the world around them.
    Noella looked up to see something resembling a blimp, but smaller, above them. A man with odd aviator goggles and a hat leaned out, looking down at them. The blimp hummed and hissed as weird pistons and mechanisms rotated and turned a large propeller on its rear.
    “What is that?” Noella asked.
    The centaur grabbed her arm and looked at her eyes, “Get on, now!”
    She reached up and awkwardly pulled herself onto his back. It had been years since she’d ridden a horse, and hopping on top of this half-man, half-horse felt bizarre.
    “You, down there! Stop!” a man’s voice said over a speaker from the flying machine.
    Noella managed to get onto the centaur’s back just in time as he galloped down the road in the direction they were headed. Noella wrapped her arms around his back, feeling especially awkward since she was essentially embracing the top half of a shirtless man.
    “Hold on tight,” he said, gathering speed.
    Above them the thing continued to hum as it sped up, keeping pace.
    “What is that?” Noella yelled above the drone.
    The centaur didn’t answer, kept moving, faster than any horse Noella had ever seen. She was terrified she would fall off.
    “Stop!” the man screamed again from above. This time an arc of electricity shot like lightning past them, exploding the bark of a tree in front of them.
    Noella screamed, then looked back and up to see the man in the flying machine aiming a long black gun with a large cone at the end of it. The cone filled with electricity again as the gun seemed as if it were getting ready to fire.
    Noella screamed again and instinctively kicked the centaur’s sides to spur him to move faster. He did, just as another bolt shot from the gun and exploded a patch in the brickwork behind them. The centaur then swerved, racing off the path and into the thick forest.
    Noella bounced up and down, desperately holding on as the centaur navigated the rough terrain. She glanced back to see if the blimp-thing had followed them. Though she could see part of it, the trees were so thick, she was pretty sure the man couldn’t see them, which must have been why the centaur had gone off the road.
    He raced faster, weaving through trees with a speed and grace that suggested he knew his woods as well as Noella knew her bedroom.
    The more they rode, the more Noella grew certain she was not suffering from hallucinations. Her episodes didn’t last this long and were never so fully realized. And she’d certainly never ridden a centaur! She had somehow crossed over to another place. A place with centaurs, weird blimps, and God knew what else.
    If this other world was real, then so was Dante.
    After 20 minutes or so, the centaur stopped and looked around as he caught his breath. She was shocked that he wasn’t more out of breath than he was. He was obviously in great shape for a centaur.
    “OK, we’re safe,” he said.
    Once stopped, Noella felt odd to be more or less sitting on the back of a shirtless man.
    “Should I get down?” she said, not wanting to offend him by jumping from his back, but also not wanting to ride him if he didn’t want to be ridden.