The railing around the edge is loose enough that he takes a reflexive step back after touching it, but the view is spectacular. And useless--more meadow on this side of the river, forest stretching away past that, no sort of landmarks or buildings that might provide any sort of direction for him. He bites his lip, contemplates it a moment more, and then hurries around to the other side of the tower.
The baying of hounds greets him, though try as he may he can't locate where exactly the sound is coming from--just that it's far too close for comfort. And to make matters worse, there's a small convoy of boats coming down the river towards where the tower is, though he can't make out who's in them or exactly how many. The way his luck is going, there's no way they're here to help. He's got to get back down to Benny pronto and hope that the horse can manage two mad sprints in one morning.
There's a moment of panic when he returns to the room and can't see the rabbit anywhere, just odds and ends of abandoned furniture, but then he spots it in a corner, sniffing a very ugly pair of boots. Not the awful knee-high leather gloves he's had to deal with since coming here, but something much ... floppier. Still, it's probably worth taking thirty seconds to see if they'll go on, if only to avoid further risk of splinters or tetanus.
They do, with a little tugging around the ankles, and the rabbit allows itself to be scooped up again, and then Dean takes his first step--and nearly smashes face-first into the door on the other side of the room.
"What." He says to the rabbit, in flat bafflement. It silently wiggles its nose at him. Maybe he blacked out for a moment there?
He takes his second step--and he's balanced precariously on the edge of where a stair should be, the shoulder pressed up against wall aching. Steps three through seven are perhaps the most terrifying five seconds of his life, but then he's tumbling out the doorway, frantically tugging the boots off again before he accidentally sprints away into the endless forest.
"Ten-league boots," he tells a bewildered Benny. "Careful where you step while wearing them."
"Think we could get them on the horse?" Benny asks, offering a hand up, and Dean can't tell if he's serious or joking. The hounds are sounding awfully close now. "No sign of your brother, I'm guessing."
"No," Dean says, biting the word off as short as he can and looking around for something they can use to get back on the horse. "But there's a whole bunch of boats coming down the river straight for us, so we're about to have an awful lot of company if we don't get out of here fast." The few crates lying around the courtyard between tower and outbuildings are all visibly rotted, so Benny winds up sort of shoving Dean up onto the horse, but just as Dean's reaching down to help haul Benny up into place the first couple of dogs come running around the base of the tower and from there everything goes straight to hell in a handbasket.
I have given up trying to predict just how much of this is left. Keeps getting longer on me.
