Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 11

"I am here to earn some gold and nothing more. I care less than nothing for the wants and desires of either of these dead little lords.

"But I can be roused with the wrong words, now that I am wet and miserable. So do not think to call me foul ever again. I promise that I will not be as kind to you as this if you do."

She reached down and took a handful of the hair on his head which was not burned off and she pulled up so that she could look into his red and tear-streaked eyes for a moment.

"I truly do not know if I am wicked. I would like to think that I am not, though no one ever grants me much of a chance. Your view is a little strained by your doltish mind. Here is a thing which you should know. It is why I am not already gone. I seek to solve the mystery of me for you.

"Long before even my grandmother's grandmother was born, a female relation joined in a pact with something which ought to be feared. She laid with a demon.

"Ever since, some of that joining comes to ones in my line, whether it is wanted or not. I made no pact. I am what I am and there is nothing that I can do to change it - or it would already have happened, you may trust me.

"I do the same as you, fighter - I do as I can as I try to live my life. But I did not want this.

"Imagine how happy my life is to be as I am. There are not so many ways to lay my head down and sleep at the end of a day, not like there are for you. Because of these horns, I have been fucking jealous of your kind since I noticed it.

"So if there are in fact, any wits at all in your skull, you will lie here quietly until I am gone. You have reminded me of what I would forget and cannot.

She smiled at him coldly, "It makes me ill-tempered."

She let his hair go as she straightened up and with only a look to see that he still drew breath, she stepped over to where her helmet lay and picking it up, she began to walk to where she'd set down her pack. Pulling it onto her back and cinching the straps, she looked back again for a moment and walked away as she dispelled the weather that she'd built up in the valley.

As the last rumble faded, she thought of how it was to everyone's good fortune that she was half-starved and a little weak. Were it not for that, she'd not have bothered with the weather and just settled the thing in a minute with a storm of flame.

As she neared the low rim of the valley, the rain stopped and the clouds began to clear.

But as she crested the rim, the weather which prevailed outside of the valley took precedence.

Rain, icy cold and unrelenting teemed down as she stepped under the eaves of the forest beyond. Looking around, Challa saw no one, but she felt something and sought for more knowledge of it.

Finding nothing much, she sighed and stopping, she took off her pack and digging in it a little; she drew out a heavy hooded cloak and put it on. There were a few things that she'd learned how to do to help her appearance. Most of the powers and abilities that she had, she'd gotten from her mother because her mother carried much the same features. She could lessen the apparent size of her bovine horns but she couldn't make them go away. She diminished them so that she could pull the hood over her head. At least the rain wouldn't run down the back of her neck like this.

As well, she thought of her boots and her thick hooves came in as she "grew" a little in height from the difference in how she stood like this.

She didn't really know just where she was at the moment, but she guessed that it didn't matter. She had no home, having been run off from the small village where she'd been born because of her red eyes - which she now kept hidden behind an illusion. She stepped deeper into the woods, looking for anything which might resemble a trail.

After only a little while - less than two minutes, the way that she felt just washed over her.

Challa seldom if ever had any dealings with men, and on those rare occasions when it did happen, her conversations - well, her half of the conversations usually related to the price of a room at an inn or how much a meal might cost.

Their half of the conversation - if they didn't just hurry away usually consisted of monosyllables. It didn't really apply, but then Challa wasn't trying to look for sense in things at the moment, but she realized that the single nicest thing that any man had ever said to her was when he'd called her a foul, wicked thing and said that she should not be allowed to draw breath.

The thought caused her to stop as she wept a little, her head hung down as she stood in the dripping forest.

A small sound came to her ears and she looked up.

There were two women there in the frigid, dripping glade looking at her, their expressions anything but cold and uncaring and Challa marveled at that for a moment before she noticed that one of them was like her. The horned one had a lovely face framed by very long inky black hair.

The other one was nothing like her companion, though she drew Challa's eye as surely as the dark-haired one. She was tall and lovely and ... large, the feeling of underlying strength coming from her was unmistakable. Her hair was long and a medium blonde bound in many long braids which did not appear to have been placed for any reason other than just the braiding of it. She held up a finger, indicating that they should be quiet.

Challa felt herself being pulled backward gently toward a place where the pines were thicker and the horned one brought her lips close to Challa's ear.

"Be a little still," she whispered softly, "You were followed here, Sister. Astrid will deal with him and we can be on our way."

A few moments later, Breck walked over the ridge and into the woods. He was a little intent on following Challa's trail and he didn't look up until he was airborne and sailing backward toward an old spruce tree. He hit a thick bough and was thrown onto his face. He looked up and stared at the large woman before him.

"Who the bloody hell are y-"

Astrid smiled down as she worked her axe out of Breck's head. She made no sound or reply as she walked to join the others and the three of them walked away through the dripping forest.

--------

The shop of a reluctant cooper

There was a fine sheen of sweat on her back, shoulders, belly and ... well, she didn't really want to consider just where else there was a layer of sweat right now as she worked. She was fitting stakes into place on the latest batch of barrels that she was making and she'd been at it hammer and tongs all the day long now.

Traudi never gave it much of a thought when she was like this, but the way that she ran around in her shop from the forge to the place where she shaved the stakes and cut the ends and fitted them, she came about as near to being in more than one place at a time as it was possible for one person to be.

Working as she did and doing everything else into the bargain was a hard row to hoe, but there were things which she needed and they weren't where she was. She needed to get the day's work done early if she was going to have the time to seek for those things.

And it looked like it might rain.

She set to work again, almost driven now.

-------

In the moors outside of the town

She rode her horse as she often did, alone and far out from the little settlement. She wore a robe then and a cloak, but once she felt far enough away and her sense told her that there was no one who watched her on the open coastal plain - indeed, no one who even could - she pulled everything off to feel tied to the land and the world. She wore only a few rawhide cords which held some of her talismans and charms.

Her horse walked slowly and Traudi felt the rhythm of her footfalls sent to her directly by the contact of her vulva against the back of the mare, the horse hair keeping the core of her tingling and it drove her other senses higher. She could think freely, see what needed to be seen and make her plans as she felt what needed feeling on the wind, in the air, hidden in the sea breeze, and feeling the caress of the zephyrs as they passed her.

She was out looking for herbs to cook with, wash with, and use in her magical workings.

Besides the need to gather the things that she needed for herself, these little trips - when she could scrape together enough time for them - did her quite a bit of good. Like this, she felt connected to the ground and the world because she was of it, no matter what anyone thought of her. It helped to calm her and she oftentimes needed that very badly.

You see, Traudi had a temper.

She knew it and as well, she was aware that it usually didn't help her any if she gave in to it. Given a chance and without appropriate reason for her mood to darken as it sometimes did, she wasn't foul tempered at all. It was just that she was tiring of the uphill fight to even hold her ground in this miserable little place, never mind get ahead in any way.

Nothing remarkable ever seemed to happen to her at all. Not anything which was good at any rate. Other than her two small friends, she had no one to hold her drowning heart afloat.

Well, other than a lot of drudgery in making her living. She looked up as she felt the first tentative drops of the long-portended rain and she looked down at the back of her horse's neck.

"Here we go," she said quietly, "I should have been done a time ago and we'd be safe and warm at home, you in your stall with a bag of oats and I with my never-ending pile of work."

But this was worse than awful, she decided as the sky opened up and sheets of cold late summer rain began to pour down. The world around them turned a dark silver colour and was shrouded in curtains of water from the sky. She wanted to scream in rage at the clouds, and she knew that it would do nothing for her.

She couldn't just take off and search for what she was here for whenever she wanted. There was still the shop to run and orders to be filled. She had to work until she got a little ahead and that was the only thing which could be done. She'd planned as best she could, but even so it took days to find the time and you couldn't gather much if you couldn't see because it was dark.

As she'd worked to be able to have this time, she'd kept her eye on the weather. It was a race that she couldn't have won no matter what. The clouds were gathering and the wind had smelled of this storm for the past two days. Any fool or old woman could tell that this had been coming for a while now. Traudi knew that she was probably far closer to the fool than the old woman but even so, she'd known this was coming.

She looked around and could see very little, but she thought that they were much closer to the forest than they were to the town, and so she pointed her horse toward the woods.

The only child of a witch from deep in the northern forests across the sea, she'd been here since she was twelve. Her mother had gotten pregnant there as the result of being forced and she'd killed the man afterward, though not right away. It had taken her some time to heal first and then to seek where she might find where he lived before she came for her revenge.

To Traudi's mother's mind, the stupid oaf had gotten a few minutes of pleasure after slapping and punching a poor woman into submission. For that, she'd gotten the additional burden of a child to carry and birth, a new mouth feed and raise all alone. It changed her life. She'd loved her coming little one, but for the pure, selfish thoughtlessness of it, the least that she could do was to change her assailant's life too.

So she'd shortened it for him.

The fact that her own deed was regarded as cold-blooded by the community had earned her exile. It made life much harder to be a northern witch who'd been dropped off on the northern coast of another land to the south by the superstitious crew of a trader's ship years ago.

Traudi's mother had taken ill and died during their fifth winter.

So Traudi knew all about being just about the only northern person in a land of southerners and how it just added degree of difficulty points to about anything.

Traudi's mother had taught her daughter well however.

After dealing with her mother's death, she'd wandered a little while to come to this place. There had been an old cooper and he'd taken her on reluctantly as his assistant since he couldn't get anyone else. He'd told her right from the start that making barrels wasn't a job for a slip of a girl like she was.

But hunger is a significant driving force stronger in some people than in others and Traudi had always nodded every time that he'd told her that.

She'd learned the trade from him anyway.

Now he was dead and gone and she still ran the place alone, still making barrels and selling them. There had been times when she'd had trouble with men who wouldn't pay her and she'd learned that going to the manor lord didn't help - other than to be told that she had no claim to the place anyway.

But since there was no other cooper for miles in any direction, they left her alone and did business with her when it suited them - and of course, even though she "didn't belong there", they still wanted their taxes.

She worked her young bottom off, producing barrels for anyone who wanted them and would pay, yet she still knew what she was. She practiced the arts as her mother had taught her.

Back where she came from, somebody like her could make a fair to pretty good living just scrying for important people who just HAD to know what at least a little of the future portended.

Oddly enough, Traudi would be the first to tell anyone that being able to get a look ahead for other people didn't necessarily translate into being able to see one's own future which a great deal of clarity - though sometimes she could.

Well, if she'd been able to exactly predict this rain which threatened to drown her as she sat on her mare with absolute certainty, she wouldn't be out here in it would she? She'd have gotten up in the dark and made a shorter trip out of it, settling for at least something if she wouldn't get drenched and chilled as she was now.

In modern units, Traudi stood about five and a half feet tall and her figure was about normal for a human woman who had to work for a living.

Well, she'd heard it said of her that, looking at her from the rear when she was naked was a little like looking at a girl, though she wasn't fat or thin. To the very few people who'd ever seen her like that, it looked like she was grown up in a way that still allowed for a bit of baby fat - though there was none to be seen of that on her at all. It was just how she was built. A bit of a benefit to her was that though it wasn't readily visible, her occupation had made her quite strong for her stature.

Her hair was long, to about the middle of her back and it looked like a dark shade of ash blonde in most light, looking like an odd, unearthly shade of almost gray in dim light and almost making the trip into white if seen in the noonday sunlight.

But none of that mattered now. Not here and not today.

Where she was, this place where she'd never have wanted to be was a coastal plain in some places and forested hills in others. She could tell if there was no one about, being able to feel it where people were concerned.

To her, it always felt better to be wearing only a few talismans for this. She couldn't say definitively, but she was a little sure that being just about naked out here helped her to find the things that she sought much more easily. Like this, the knowledge that she was near the plants that she sought just came to her and she headed off in the right direction almost unerringly.

And now it was pouring down cold, coastal rain - and for one like her, it was more than a little obvious that it would go on like this until it was done. She could reach into her bag and pull out her roughspun leggings and shirt, her robe and even her hooded cloak to put those things on.

And then what?

She'd still be cold and wet in clothing that would become cold and wet as well the way that it was teeming now.

She looked around and made for the edges of the woods, talking to herself a little at the same time.

She didn't belong here. She didn't belong where she'd begun as a child of the north either.

As she made the eaves of the forest, she finished the thought and a sad, quiet groan escaped her.

She didn't really belong anywhere.

Twenty years old and as alone as the day her poor mother had died. There was no one to love her, no one who even liked her very much, since she wasn't one of 'the people' here. They just put up with her since she made barrels and there was nobody else who did that here.

Barrel making needs wood and a lot of it, so she paid woodcutters to get it for her. It kept a few families alive. It needed some iron as well, and supplying Traudi so that she could make the metal barrel bands kept clothes on a couple of miner's kids too.

Aside from the business of that, nobody in the place would piss on her if she were on fire. The woodcutters and the miners might talk to her, but they wouldn't talk with her - and not even their wives had a kind word for her if they saw her on the street.

Standing under the eaves of the forest, she tried to keep it in. Leaning against a tree in the dripping woods, she did her best to hold it back.

But in the end it was hopeless and she knew it.

Traudi hung her head and almost wept where no one could see her. She thought of Tikka and Tam and the feeling passed. She corrected herself. It wasn't so very important now that she'd put things in perspective. She had no human friends, but the ones that she had were priceless to her.

A while into her self-misery, she began to feel that she was not alone.

She knew that she was not being watched and that the one that she sensed was not far, but also not within the range of direct sight due to the forest's growth. She willed herself to be still and calm, at which she was partially successful. Rather than look around, she tried to feel for direction. She could defend herself if she had to, but that would mean that of necessity, there could be no survivors.

They cared little enough for her in this shithole at the best of times, she thought. Word getting out that she could kill with a chant and a wave wouldn't improve her life at all.

The direction became clear in moments, but there was something else in it.

Traudi touched her horse's neck in the way that she knew would be understood that the mare be still now and she slid quietly off to stand with her hand caressing just above the horse's nose as she listened and sensed.

She heard soft and quiet moaning some way ahead and off what looked like a little trail. If there had been even the slightest bit of breeze through the trees, she'd never had heard it at all. But the sound of the rain out beyond the trees was a little easy for Traudi to filter out and she strained to listen.

It didn't sound as though someone was in pain and after listening a moment, it intrigued her.

A few slow moments of careful stalking got her near to the source of the sounds and Traudi had stood there a little transfixed by the sight that she saw.

At first glance, she'd thought him to be a boy, a naked boy kneeling alone in the dripping forest. But after watching carefully for a moment longer, she saw that he was a young man who was in a circle scratched in the loam of the forest floor and was he not really kneeling.

He was fucking himself on a wooden phallus held upright between the soles of his feet.

She drew back a little and left him to it for a time. She didn't smirk or even smile a little.

She often did the same thing herself and other than how it felt, she knew exactly why he was doing it. The presence of the circle changed everything.