3 - People are difficult
writing Willow3 - People are difficult
As we returned to the road, I noticed Brask’s left arm, somehow untouched by the blood of the wolf, hung limp by his side, wisps of steam drifting lazily from his skin. He offered his right hand to pull me up onto the cart after hoisting himself aboard, and despite his injury he may as well have been a trebuchet. I let out an involuntary squeak as I dangled from his grip and landed less-than-gracefully on the deck. In response, Brask flashed me a wide smile.
The carriage was facing towards the ridge where I saw the aurora as Brask set his horse in motion. Worry formed a pit in my stomach - I hadn’t seen any forks in the road yet, so we were sure to pass by the atomized remains of the nobles that I so briefly met when I arrived. The last time I was there, the rain hadn’t done much to wash away the evidence… From what I had seen of Brask’s strength, it wasn’t likely he would have any trouble arresting me if I gave him reason to, especially now that I was in an enclosed space. Maybe if I get him talking about himself, he might not connect the dots?
“Excuse me, Mr. Brask?” “Just Brask, please - I don’t like honorifics.” “Sorry, Brask - what made you decide to become a paladin?”
Even from behind I could see him flinch a little. “Ha, ha! What is there to say? I’m just a man who can’t stand to see people hurt!”
“…Well, then, what business do you have here, are you on a quest?”
Brask’s relief was palpable. “Yes, of course! I heard there was a Magestorm, just two nights ago. I was hoping to find - er, do you know what a Celestial is?”
There’s the place now..! “…Uh, no, I can’t say I do.”
“Story goes, there’s someplace in the sky called (Earth), hiding behind the stars.” Oh boy.
“A thousand generations ago, (Earth) went to war with us, and we lost almost as badly as it’s possible to lose. The invaders from (Earth) spared us, but as their prize they stole all of the gods’ gifts for themselves. Supposedly, they’re still up there, using them for who-knows-what. Sometimes, though, one of them will trip and fall down, and they’ll land so hard they stir up a storm.” Brask’s voice was enthusiastic as I shrank into my seat. If I could, I would be sweating buckets.
“Whenever a Magestorm happens, there’s always a scramble to find the celestial, since they’re still carrying one of the gods’ gifts - if you kill them, you can take back what’s rightfully ours.”
We’re nearly past it. Just a little longer, keep him talking..! “H-how interesting! How do people go about that?”
“Celestials aren’t usually subtle about it, they’ll go gallivanting around like they own the place, blowing things up..! Even in those cases, it’s not easy, the last one took out half of the Doctrine army by himself before a bandit stuck him with a dagger in his sleep.” No, don’t look that way..! “Some of them try to be sneakier, but it’s still…” Brask trailed off when he spotted the carnage. Damn.
“By the gods…” Brask turned toward me, fear and sorrow painted across his face. “Lily, I’m so sorry you had to see this. I need to investigate, please, uh… Please stay inside, for now.” He didn’t immediately accuse me of doing this, that’s good…
I nodded, and Brask turned away and hopped the side of the carriage. Worst-case, I’ll probably be able to outrun him..? I peered around the edge of the cover of the cart to watch him - he stepped into the pile of bloodstained sawdust, and before long he spotted something among the remains. He picked it up, dusted it off, and I saw the morning sun glint off of its metallic surface. He pondered it for almost a minute before realizing something and wheeling around, almost spotting me watching him.
“Lily! Do you know anything about this? Were you aboard?” Brask asked in a hurry as he all but leapt onto the deck of the cart, making me jump out of my seat.
“N-No!” My heart shot into my throat, my voice was squeaky and my expression and body language were all wrong… I had put off so many tells, even someone like Brask could see through my lie. Brask’s expression shifted, and after a moment’s hesitation, he began to approach me, his huge frame covering the entrance and giving the space a claustrophobic feeling. I tensed up, one sudden move away from clawing my way through the canvas that made up the wall and taking my chances with the wolves-
“It wasn’t your fault.” Brask interrupted my spiral, his voice breaking a little as he sat opposite me holding the golden symbol he unearthed from the wreckage. “This coat-of-arms… Under all that mud, you’re wearing their family colors. They were…” Brask met me with misty eyes. “They were your masters, weren’t they?” I nodded.
“And, the only way they would have gone out in the storm was if they had a canary…” Brask slammed his fist against the deck, and I flattened against the wall. “Damn them..! It’s already unforgivable that they keep slaves, but to put you in danger just because they were impatient..!” When he saw how I flinched at his outburst, his eyes were filled with regret, and he pulled his knees to his chest. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “I’m sorry. I’ll, uh… get back to driving.”
Brask attempted to make small talk once or twice during the remainder of our journey, asking more about me and my past, but I wasn’t forthcoming. Or, perhaps, I didn’t have any information to come forward with. I felt guilty, though, since Brask clearly took my silence as a sign that I resented him for what happened before. I was scared, that much was true, but not for the reasons he thought, or anything that was his fault. He clearly didn’t mean me any harm - I wished I didn’t have to lie to him like this.
We trundled along for much of the day after passing the remains of my masters, eventually drawing close to a town at the base of the caldera. Brask pulled the carriage off the road and parked a short distance from the gate before turning to speak to me again. “Lily, if I may… Dressed as you are now, the gatekeep will want to see papers from your masters before letting me bring you into town.”
I nodded. “That makes sense.”
“Indeed, and… I would understand if you were hesitant to trust me, but if you would abide, I could leave you here and go into town to purchase something less conspicuous?”
My eyes lit up. Finally, a chance to feel a little less disgusting! “Oh, of course, that would be great!”
At my reaction, Brask was reassured. “Brilliant! Worry not, the Paladin Brask shall deliver unto you a garb fit for a king!” Wait, no, that’s the opposite of what I need-! His heroic mask mended, Brask traipsed into town. I worried for a moment what kind of clothes he might return with… No, he seems like a gentleman, I doubt there’s anything to worry about.
I sat back against the side of the cart, alone with my thoughts. From what I’ve seen, Brask seems like he really does just want to make the world a better place. Perhaps, if I could get him to understand my situation, we could be true allies..? He said he wanted to hunt me and take my “gift from the gods”, but I don’t know why he would want it when he’s already so powerful. I wonder if, when he defeated the wolf before, he overextended himself to intimidate the others with a show of force, and that’s why he couldn’t use his arm afterwards? If that’s the case, I imagine his sustainable output is much tamer. Still, I imagine he could have held his own… Maybe he was trying to show off?
As for what he’s trying to take, I’m not entirely sure what my “gift” would be - Brask said the last Celestial was strong enough to rival an entire country’s military, but if I’ve had something like that this whole time, I certainly don’t know how to use it. As a whole, the myth that Brask told me about is curious: Humans didn’t have civilization at all a thousand generations ago; I don’t remember the exact figures, but there were probably still a few Neanderthals around that far back. The time span could be exaggerated, perhaps it’s closer to ten generations… That’s on the order of 400 years, which places it just before the industrial revolution. Still, it would make sense how they lost if their tech level was as far behind then as it is now, since we had just started to use black powder, though magic might have made up some of the difference-
Brask peeked his head around the corner, triumphant. “With the Elixir, Milady, I have returned!” He tossed me a bundle of rough cloth bound with twine.
“Har, har.”
I could hear Brask pacing outside the cart. Despite his facade of heroic purity, he was still a man, so I wasn’t surprised that this situation was a little troublesome for him. I expected to have some difficult feelings of my own, but now that I knew what I was going to see, all I felt was a rightness that had been sorely absent for much of my past life. Even my feline features, though they were alien to my conscious mind, seemed to have come with muscle memory and a matching internal body map. I noticed some cognitive dissonance; it felt as if I had been like this my whole life, despite knowing it had only been a few days.
After some finagling, I figured out how the clothes Brask had purchased were meant to be worn. They were far from glamorous; the outfit consisted of a beige tunic, a belt, and a dark blue hood with a short cape. The fabric looked terribly itchy, to be honest - but my fur was thick enough to spare me the worst of it, and the comfort was night and day compared to what I had changed out of. The sizing was a little generous, but I was glad Brask had erred on the side of caution.
When I emerged, I was greeted again by the setting sun casting the world in orange. I met Brask outside; he looked me up and down, and began to say something with a strange expression, but seemed to decide against it. “Miss Lily! You, er… Are you ready to head into town?”
“I am, what will we do once we’re inside?”
“It’s growing late, so food and sleeping arrangements come first. After that, I… suppose it’s up to you.”
We passed the gate without incident and followed the road into the square. Even in the twilight hours, the village was alive. The streets were lit by lanterns filled with dancing fireflies. A street vendor yawned at her stall, having sold much of her stock of some sort of football-shaped orange fruit, and a child holding a bucket brimming with water waddled home from the well. The buildings were made from a mix of dark wood and a sort of brick and mortar, with thin slate shingles making up their roofing, and a warm glow shined from their windows.
Our destination, the tavern, was the most active by far. Jubilant voices bubbled through the door, smoke gently arose from the chimney, and I struggled not to drool as the smells of delicious meats wafted through the air and mingled in my nose. The growing hunger I had felt over the past three days awoke and began to claw at the inside of my stomach.
The smells intensified when we entered the building proper. The tavern was burgeoning with life. The majority of the customers and the bartender were human, but I saw several short, stocky folk that I could only assume were dwarves, and there was an elf drinking at the bar, her long ears flushed red.
The barkeep was strikingly ugly: his mustache was patchy and unkempt, and the bald spot that dominated the top of his head was so greasy it looked almost wet. His eyes narrowed as I approached to order, but when Brask followed he plastered a customer-service smile onto his face. “What can I do ya for?”
Seeing how the man leered at me, Brask didn’t honor him with pleasantries. “Dinner and two beds for tonight.”
Deceit glinted in the barkeep’s eye. “That’ll be two Favors.”
The two men glared at one another for a moment. Maintaining eye contact, Brask pulled a single silver coin from his pouch and pinched it between his finger and thumb. “Come now.” His fingers glowed with the same light he used in the forest, and the coin yielded as if it was made of cardboard. The balding man’s grin faltered, his fearful eyes following the folded coin as Brask deposited it on the counter. “One is more than fair.”
The barkeep tripped over his words, trying to hide his terror. “You- er..! Of… Of course, sir, m-my mistake!” He hurried to the kitchen, not even bothering to take Brask’s coin.
We weren’t waiting long before we heard the kitchen door open again. Another animal person - a fox - bumped the door open with his hip while balancing crude clay plates filled with food in either hand. As he scanned the bar, worry sprung up in the back of my mind. What if he sees through me? I don’t know anything about our culture or social norms, even my name might tip him off..! Before I could come up with any ideas for a cover story, he spotted us.
“Hey, nice job with the boss, he had it coming!” The fox spoke to Brask with a smirk while setting down our plates. The food wasn’t anything special - it looked like a chunk of beef, with a side of mashed potatoes and chopped carrots, but I couldn’t wait another second.
“The likes of him are no match for the Paladin Brask! I’m glad to have- By the moons, slow down!” I had heard that estrogen changed one’s sense of taste to some extent, but in combination with my new feline senses and my days-long fast, the flavor was felt almost like a place. The potato was the soil, soft against my feet, the carrots were a deer prancing through a field of grass, and the beef cast a sunset in the sky, marked with long white clouds… In the distance, I saw a cottage, and though I had never lived outside the city, somehow, it meant home. I danced toward the building, feeling the clouds play through my fingers as I twirled among the greenery, and..! Snapped back to reality, having accidentally inhaled a bit of potato mash.
Once I had finished hacking up an unsightly mix of starch and saliva, the fox spoke in words I didn’t understand. He was using another language, softer on the ears than the one I had heard so far, with a rising tone indicating a question. Perhaps our native language? I nodded, assuming the inscrutable syllables meant something like “Are you OK?”
The fox moved with purpose. He ducked under the bar to grab a mug and filled it with water from a pitcher. Bad guess, but not catastrophic. After I drank some and the muscles of my throat had relaxed enough to breathe properly, he asked another question. I hesitantly nodded, but this time he furrowed his brow before switching back to the language I knew. “Sorry, I’m Raaf, what’s your name?”
Now the jig is up. “…Uh, it’s Lily.”
His eyes narrowed. “Huh. Nice to meet you, Lily.” A note of playfulness returned to his voice. “Try to take your time with the rest of your meal.”
While we ate, Brask offered to explain the coins he used - I was glad that my situation gave me an excuse to be a little ignorant. The coin he used was a Favor, equal to ten Pittances and one tenth of a Promise. A Promise is a typical week’s wage for an entry-level job. In my head, I did some quick math to get an idea of how it would map to the currencies I knew: $1000 seemed like a good approximation for a Promise. Brask also tried to walk me through some basic arithmetic using the currency, but while I was relieved to learn that the counting system here was the same one I learned in Kindergarten, reviewing addition and subtraction didn’t hold my attention nearly as well.
After finishing our food, we made our way to our room in the back of the building. The security worried me a little - the cuts in the key Raaf gave us were imprecise, and I felt too much slack in the lock’s mechanism when I turned the key. I imagined a certain lawyer from my world would make quick work of it… Nevertheless, I continued into the room. It wasn’t spacious - using my body as a ruler, it was about three strides from side to side and five from front to back, with twin cots on either side. On the far wall, there was a small window, and above that, another of the lanterns I saw outside was mounted on the wall and lit the room dimly. I wondered to myself if the man that tried to fleece us at the bar had placed us in the worst room in the joint, and Brask’s expression made it seem like he was thinking the same thing.
I stared at the wall for a while, willing myself to sleep, but fear began to crystallize in my heart. Everything I held dear from my past life, and almost everything I knew, had been left behind. From what I had learned, I was now in about as precarious of a situation as a person could be. In the days since I came here, I was forced to roll the dice on all manner of infections, death by exposure, being mauled by wolves… If any one of those gambles went wrong, it would have been the end. I was comfortable for the moment, but if Brask caught onto my secret or we were somehow separated, I would be back to roughing it in the woods.
“What am I supposed to do now..?” The surface of the question was directed toward Brask, but the whole of it, with its tangled nest of secrets, aimed inward.
“You’re free now, what do you want to do?”
I took a moment to think. “I… I had people I cared about, once. We went everywhere together, but… We got separated. If it’s possible, I guess I’d really like to see them again.” I had no reason to believe it was, and mentioning people from my past complicated my story… but I had done enough lying. Telling what kernels of truth I could made me feel a little better.
“I have people I miss, too.” Brask’s spoke carefully, but hints of emotion glimmered through. “Though… I can’t say for sure whether they miss me.”
“…What kind of people were they?”
“I traveled with an adventuring party once, they were… almost like family. Arin and Kavek were their names. It almost felt like I was parenting them, sometimes, since Arin would get us in trouble by mouthing off to some guard about their decorum, and Kavek always seemed to have set his eyes on some Hom woman before we took our first step into town.”
“Hom?”
“Oh, Kavek was a beastfolk, but he was always smitten with humans for some reason.” Brask chuckled sadly. “Once, we even had to tie him to a pole so we could actually buy equipment without him trying to make moves on the shopkeep’s wife.” He sighed. “Anyway, we had a falling-out, just a few months back, and I can’t help but worry what kind of trouble they’re getting into without me to keep them out of trouble.”
“Can I ask why you split up?”
“It’s, uh… Personal. How about you?”
I’ll have to fudge the details… but I think I can open up somewhat. “I had a few friends since I was little: Paisley, Robbie, Tom, and James-” Brask winced. Damn, have I already said something bad? “Hmm?”
“It’s… I had guessed that your masters would have given them Heroic names too, but naming a beastfolk after the Butcher? Their cruelty abounds..!”
“…The Butcher?”
“Gods, they didn’t even tell you..? A century ago, there was a Celestial called James. Within days of landing, he had beheaded half the Imperial Senate and usurped the throne. Beastfolk weren’t in the best place before, but… He dismantled nonhuman citizenship, brought the institution of slavery into force practically overnight, and started a war with Beast’s Den that slaughtered thousands of common folk.” Brask’s voice betrayed a struggle to hold back his emotions. “For a moment, it looked like he was going to negotiate an alliance with the Demon Lord… but by some mercy from on high, he dropped dead during a rally.”
“…Fuck. That’s pretty heavy. They, uh, never told me about that.”
“Yeah. Sorry for interrupting, what kind of people were your friends?”
“They were… Paisley was my sister, and I was so close with the others that they might as well have been my brothers. Paisley was a troublemaker, but when she got serious she was incredible. She taught me… almost everything I know. Robbie was someone I could talk to about anything, and he always seemed to know the right thing to say to make you feel better. Tom… Well, I think Kavek sounds a little like him.” Brask and I chuckled sadly for a moment. “He meant well, though. James, too, he wasn’t the smartest, but he always did his best to understand and be kind.”
“He doesn’t sound anything like his namesake, then.”
“Yeah. It was four years ago, when… Paisley was sold off.” I lied about the mechanism, but… My true emotions about losing her were showing through, and my voice began to break. In truth, I was the one who left. Eventually, her parents found the last avenue we were using to communicate, and she just stopped writing back. “I never got to say goodbye.”
I heard Brask roll over to look at me, but I didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“I was still with the others, but… then they took me out as a canary. They probably think I’m dead..!”
“You could find them, right? Let them know you’re okay?”
Brask’s question made sense, given what little he knew, but it struck the heart of my grief, and I lost what little hold I had over my emotions. As I sobbed, the air was tense for a moment as Brask stammered, trying to figure out what to say, but he eventually went quiet and turned out the light.