2 - It’s not as easy as it looks on TV
writing Willow2 - It’s not as easy as it looks on TV
Content warning: Brief description of gore
The morning came before I knew it. As the shadows of the trees receded, the sun’s light began to reach my shelter, and I felt its warmth on my face, a pleasant contrast to the damp cold in which I had spent the night. The rough gravel under the bridge was far from my tastes in bedding, so I crawled out of my burrow and sat cross-legged to bask in the morning glow. The dewdrops glittered on the grass, and the smells of the forest played across my nose. Though I was still filthy and I hurt all over, for the first time since I arrived I wasn’t in any immediate danger.
As I let myself sit back and enjoy the sunrise, I closed my eyes and instinctively began to make a pleasant rumbling sound… But as soon as I caught myself purring, I bolted upright and scrambled for something to keep myself busy. Fire! Fire’s next on the list. I set off into the forest with renewed vigor, gathering various flammables into a pile near the bridge. Finding them took no time at all, abundant as the forest’s gifts were. I wiped the sweat from my brow, and congratulated myself on creating… a pile of wood. Actually lighting it was where my plan got less specific. I had started fires in the wild before, but I always had tools - a lighter, an axe, a knife… Now, I didn’t even have any pockets on me, let alone camping tools. I knew the basics for starting a fire with just sticks, but I wasn’t able to manage it even when I had testosterone on my side.
Near high noon, as I was trying to weave grass together to make a bow drill, I heard a cart trundling toward me on the road. I threw my work to the side and rushed to the road, waving and shouting, but the driver just avoided eye contact as he snapped the reins to speed by. I shouted choice words that don’t translate to English after his cart. Hearing my voice for the first time set gender euphoria abuzz in my brain again despite my inelegant choice of words, but such joy was quickly arrested when I returned to my meager campsite. The rope I had been attempting to weave had come undone the moment I dropped it. As I took a break to drink from the stream, tears of frustration began to well up in my eyes. I peeled off as much mud from my clothes as I could with my hands, but despite my best efforts, my fur was still filthy, and I itched all over. The power to clean myself off was right there, but the power to dry off and avoid dying of hypothermia afterwards was yet denied to me.
By the evening, several more carts had passed me by, despite my best efforts to hail them. My second attempt to craft a bow drill was a success, but I still had no luck starting a fire. It wasn’t clear if my noodle arms or last night’s rain were to blame. I was quickly running out of daylight, so I laid out my firewood and tools on the opposite bank of the creek under the bridge in the hope that they would dry out overnight. Before going to sleep myself, I spent an hour or so making trips into the woods to gather leaves and twigs to spread across what passed as my bed. Even if I accomplished nothing major today, at least I could say I upgraded my sleeping arrangements.
As I lay in my nest, once again alone with my thoughts, I began to consider my situation. Before the carriage blew up, though the thought makes me shudder… it seemed like those nobles were keeping me as some kind of pet. Maybe that’s why the people passing by are so wary of me, they see a catperson wearing bloody robes and assume I’m a runaway? No, if they thought I had attacked some noble they would probably snatch me up in hopes of a reward. Still, I’m suspicious that there’s some racial dimension involved - every person I’ve seen on the road today has been a normal human, I’d expect to have seen at least one person like me if we weren’t racialized somehow.
If getting help is off the table, I’ll have to figure out some way to make my way back to civilization. I haven’t been terribly cold since I dried out last night - there’s one benefit to being a cat, I have a built-in sweater - and the other reasons I need a fire are to boil water and dry myself off. I’ve already had to roll the dice on water, and as much as I hate it, cleaning myself can wait, so maybe the best course of action would be to give up on fire and just start following the road? It would suck if I couldn’t find shelter for the night, but in the worst-case I could probably just climb up in a tree and sleep there… Oh, but that plan doesn’t account for water, I don’t have any way to carry it. Maybe if I stowed away in someone’s wagon and hid whenever they made camp? No, I probably stink to high heaven, they’d notice me right away… Gradually, my inner rambling slipped away from my conscious mind, and I allowed sleep to take me.
My rest was interrupted in the wee hours of the morning by the same shiver I felt before the carriage was destroyed. I started upright, cracking my forehead on the bottom of the bridge, and blinked through the stars dancing across my vision to identify the danger. It wasn’t long before I spied wolves creeping out of the shadows of the forest. Stupid, how did I forget? I spent all day yesterday spreading my scent everywhere, they could probably smell the blood for miles! I hurried to grab two sturdy-looking sticks from my pile of flammables and clambered to the top of the bridge.
I stood as tall as I could, banged the sticks together over my head, and roared at the top of my lungs, but the wolves weren’t intimidated. The largest member of the pack charged with terrifying speed. I wound up a swing with the heavier of my sticks, dealing what I hoped would be a crushing blow to its skull and to the morale of its comrades, but it barely flinched before lunging at me again. I dodged its maw by a hair and set off running down the path.
The pack frenzied into motion, their barks cutting through the sound of air flying past my ears. Flying was certainly the right word - the feeling of speed was incredible! I felt like I could give Usain Bolt a run for his money. Even so, I was hardly on even ground. The wolves were at their peak, while I was dehydrated, battered, sleep-deprived, and nearing starvation, and to make matters worse, I could already feel myself overheating. Gradually, the din behind me grew closer, and I knew I needed to do something to break off the chase. I picked out a particularly tall tree, leaned into my turn to close the distance, controlled my speed, leapt into the air… and slammed into the trunk with enough force to knock the breath out of my lungs, almost my full height off the ground. I sunk my claws into the tree to hang on for dear life and scrambled up into the branches.
After the immediate danger was dealt with, I leaned back against the trunk and began panting to cool down, mourning the loss of my sweat glands - arguably the most important of the Big Three Human Superpowers. From my new vantage point, I could still see the bridge I had so briefly called my home, visible around a gentle bend in the path, and above that the faint lights over the mountain ridge gradually fading as the sun encroached from the left. Behind me, the forest stretched into the distance, gradually sloping to meet the water. Marks of civilization dotted the land - hamlets, plumes of smoke, the odd towering hermitage. Most notable was the city by the sea: a sprawling carpet of houses and streets spilling past concentric walls, their center marked by a grand castle cast in a radiant gold by the morning sun.
The morning wore on. My captors came and went, appearing to take shifts to keep a hungry eye on their mark. Perhaps it was naive of me to assume wolves acted the same, obviously they evolved under different selective pressures here… For all I knew, they might have started shooting lightning at me as soon as I got out of melee range. I thanked my lucky stars their teeth were still all they had.
Though the twilight had yet to give way to morning proper, I found a glimmer of hope in the form of an adventurer’s cart rumbling down the road, with shields hanging off the side. An opportunistic grin cast itself on my face - I was wearing expensive robes, the light was low, my face was obscured by foliage, and there would be plenty of action below to draw the eye. The conditions were perfect to get some adventurer with a savior complex to rush in to rescue the princess without letting them see my race until they had already done the hard part. I waited until the cart was sure to be in earshot and put on my best impression of a damsel in distress. “Help! Oh (god/king/utmost-authority), someone, please help! These wolves won’t leave me alone! Won’t someone please rescue me?” I repeated the theme while keeping an eye on the cart, and I was filled with smug satisfaction when the cart stopped and a tall man with fiery red hair stepped out, clenching his fists.
“Fear not! The paladin Brask has come to your aid!” The wolves began to growl to scare him off of their prey, but he approached unafraid. Wait, uh, where’s his sword? The pack leader that I struck on the head leapt at him with a vicious snarl. The paladin took a long stance, wound up his fist, and… Is this guy crazy, punching a wolf? The moment his uppercut made contact with the wolf’s chest, a blinding flash of white magic shone from the muscles in his left arm, and the creature was thrown no less than fifteen feet into the air. Panicked yelps arose from the pack as their leader flew overhead, viscera scattering from a hole punched clean through its torso. Ah. I may have made a mistake.
As the wolves scattered, the man shouted up the tree, searching for me in the branches. “Fair maiden! Calm your heart, no danger threatens those under my protection!” Except for you..!
“Uh, sorry, there’s been a misunderstanding, I think I’m fine after all, ha, ha..!” I struggled to think of a way to get down without drawing his attention.
“Nonsense! Come down, I will catch you!” He had spotted me, now following beneath me with his right arm outstretched.
“Sorry, no, I’m fine-” I crept away from him.
“Oh- careful, milady!” I hoped to jump to another tree, but the branch snapped under my weight, and I landed on the forest floor with an undignified yelp. “By the moons, are you unhurt?” I shrank away from his offered hand. He paused, the lantern on his cart lighting him from behind and leaving his expression a mystery. I braced for the worst, but when he next spoke, he did so softly. “Might you be ever so kind as to honor me with your name, your grace?”
His response was so far from my expectations that it took me a second to parse. Not only did he not mention my race, but he switched to formal address… Was I wrong about why no one would help me before? “It’s, uh, Lily.”
Brask blinked. “Lily… A regal name.” A grin returned to his voice. “Very well, Miss Lily - it’s excellent to meet you! Would you allow me the honor of escorting you to town?”