As his consciousness returned, the first thing Hermey noticed was the light-swaying motion that came with being carried. His arms dangled precariously below him, but he didn’t mind. Occasionally, when the elves worked too hard and fell asleep at their posts, the Head Elf would carry them to bed. Other times, if they hadn’t met their quota for the day, they wouldn’t have met with so gentle of a fate.

“Please tell me you didn’t kill a child,” a woman’s voice said, and Hermey felt his body stiffen. He wasn’t at home, being carried up to bed by the Head Elf, he realized. He was in the forest, after having wandered for days, being carried by either a devilish man or a giant woman, and he still had no idea how he’d ended up here.

Whoever had spoken was not the giant woman he’d seen before. In fact, from behind him, he heard a light chuckle from her. “Honestly, Shadowheart,” started the man, who he now realized was carrying him, “you have far too little faith in me. I’ve yet to kill a child since we met!”

“True, but I feel that’s mostly because we’ve yet to see a child outside of the grove.” Hermey heard the other woman approaching them - she must be this ‘Shadowheart’ the man had mentioned. “And who is this?”

“No idea,” the giant woman said. “He was hiding in a berry bush, and Astarion scared the shit out of him. Fainted right on the spot!”

“He’s alive, by the way,” the man, Astarion apparently, said. Astarion stopped, and Hermey felt himself being lowered onto something that was only mildly softer than the ground. “A mosquito took a bite out of him, but I didn’t.”

“And because of that, you thought to bring him here?” Shadowheart asked skeptically. Hermey felt a soft hand grab his wrist, feeling for a pulse.

“What, do you think he’s an enemy? Just look at him,” Astarion said. “I don’t think he could hurt any of us if we were fast asleep and the gods were on his side. He’s not even half the size of an owlbear cub!”

His wrist dropped, Shadowheart apparently convinced enough that he was alive. “If we’d have left him out there,” the other woman said, “he would have just been gnoll chow. Killed another pack of them this morning - the sooner we can get out of here, the better.”

“And it would be faster to get out of here if we don’t drag people back to the camp. But since he’s already here, we might as well figure out what he knows.” Hermey saw a blue light through his eyelids, and then he felt Shadowheart’s hands on his arm once more. Then, he felt nothing - no pain, no soreness, not even any of the bruises that had been slowly healing since the crash. “Come on,” Shawdowheart said, her voice now sounding more gentle than it had been a few minutes ago. “You should be feeling better now. Let’s get you up and you can tell us who you are and how you got here.”

Hermey opened his eyes, squinting at the sunlight above him. He didn’t think he was anywhere near the forest he’d been walking through for days - for one thing, he didn’t see the limbs of trees above him, and for another, he couldn’t hear the hum of the bugs that had become his constant companions since he arrived.

“By all means, take your time,” Astarion said sarcastically. “It’s not like we have anything pressing going on.”

Hermey pushed himself up far enough to lean on his elbows. He was lying on the ground, on what looked like a small, brown bedroll in the middle of a cluster of haphazardly thrown-together tents. Astarion and the giant woman were standing near his feet looking down at him, along with a third person. The other woman, Shadowheart he assumed, was wearing all black, save for a silver hairpiece. Chains wound down her hair, holding it in a tight ponytail that Hermey couldn’t help but look at the intricacy of - it would have taken an elf a full day to make that much chain.

Shadowheart and the giant woman looked down at him, kindness appearing in both their eyes, despite Shadowheart’s earlier annoyed tone. Astarion, if anything, looked mildly bored, as though seeing an elf show up in his camp was an experience that he’d had so often that he’d grown tired of it. He held a dagger in one hand, but he made no move to turn it toward Hermey - if anything, he held it like Hermey would have held a security blanket.

“Oh, don’t mind him,” the giant woman said, crouching down to get closer to him, even though she was too large to ever truly get on his level. “Astarion here is just crabby because he hasn’t gotten to eat today.” Astarion glare toward her matched the dagger in his hand, but she didn’t seem to notice. “I bet you can relate, huh? You look like you haven’t had a good meal in days!”

Hermey shook his head, trying to clear away this obvious delusion. Several times during the days he’d been here, he’d thought that he must have fallen in the snow and hit his head - there was no other way that any of this would make sense. That went doubly so now, he thought as he looked at the people around him. “Who are you? Where are we?” was all he said in response.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

“Well, he can speak the common tongue, at least,” Astarion said, leaning back on his heels and eyeing Hermey with curiosity. “I was starting to think you were a deformed imp or something of the like.”

Shadowheart sighed. “Astarion, can you go get our guest something to eat? I don’t think we’ll need the help of your, um, interrogation services at the moment.”

Astarion rolled his eyes but turned to walk toward the far end of the camp. “Fine, if you want to take all the fun out of it,” he said, sounding annoyed.

Shadowheart ignored him, instead turning her attention back to Hermey. “I’m Shadowheart, and this is Karlach,” she said, pointing to the giant woman who gave a little wave at her name. “Astarion and Karlach found you in a bush and brought you back to our camp, thinking you might have been hurt.”

“I wasn’t injured, but I thank you very much for your kindness,” Hermey said, just as Astarion got back with a half-eaten apple and a small bit of cheese. It was far from the meals that he had at Santa’s workshop, but it was more than he’d eaten since he’d gotten here.

“Oh, so I carried you back just for my own amusement,” Astarion said with a haughty laugh. “Next time, you can just walk on your own two legs, or what little of them you have.”

Hermey felt his adrenaline spike, wondering if that was supposed to be a kind of threat, but Shadowheart just sighed and crossed her arms. “Oh honestly, Astarion, do you have to mock the child?”

Karlach, seeming completely uninterested in Shadowheart and Astarion’s investigations, started dancing around in place as though not so patiently waiting for her turn to talk. From the way no one even noticed her as she jumped around, it seemed like this sort of thing must happen a lot. “I’m not a child,” Hermey said, flipping his attention back to the present conversation. “I’m an elf.”

Shadowheart blinked, trying her best to hide her surprise. Hermey, though, was used to working with the elves, whose whole job thrived on pretending to be happy even if they weren’t. He could sense hidden emotions from a mile away. Astarion, meanwhile, made no attempt to hide as he laughed loudly. “An elf! Can you imagine?”

“I am!” Hermey protested as Karlach stopped her dancing to move in closer, inspecting him. He squirmed slightly on the bedroll - as an elf, he’d spent too much of his time trying to be consistent with everyone else. The goal was to be unremarkable - part of the unit of one. That was, he reminded himself, until he ran away to become a dentist. Maybe he had asked for this.

“But you’re so….you,” Astarion laughed, sweeping his hand toward him as though that was all the evidence he needed. “You look nothing like an elf!”

“I hate to side with Fangs on this one,” Karlach finally said, “but he’s right. Your ears aren’t even pointed.”

Hermey felt a flush rise to his cheeks. “They’re not, but everyone else’s ears were. Just another thing that made me a misfit around them.”

Shadowheart’s eyebrows raised and her eyes met Astarions, as though trying to ask him a question without speaking. Karlach, though, seemed unbothered. “Oh, that’s alright, we’re all a bunch of misfits here. Welcome to the team!” She reached out as though she was going to give him a playful shove, but she stopped short. Hermey was thankful of that, as he could feel the extreme heat radiating off her even from her distance. Why was everything here so hot?

“When you say everyone else, what did you mean?” Shadowheart said, at the same time Astarion said “Karlach, you can’t just invite people to the team without asking the rest of us!”

Hermey swallowed, feeling a thick lump in his throat. Even more than food, he would have to find water soon. “The other elves at the North Pole. They all had pointed ears. We were never sure why mine grew in rounded, or why I had blonde hair,” he said, grabbing a small tuft from under his cap, which had somehow miraculously stayed on. Just another testament to the quality of the items they made at Santa’s workshop, he assumed.

“You are no more in charge of this group than I am,” Karlach shot back at Astarion, but her tone still somehow sounded joking, as though she didn’t feel threatened by him. Hermey supposed she probably didn’t - she was nearly twice his size. “If you can invite people in, then so can I.”

“I didn’t invite anyone in!” he insisted. “If I remember correctly, I’ve specifically said not to invite several of the people here.”

“Yeah, and that’s why we don’t listen to you,” Karlach said with a chuckle. Astarion gave a slight frown and then turned back to Hermey.

“So there’s a troupe of elves somewhere nearby?” Shadowheart finally asked.

“A troupe of very short, un-elf-like elves,” Astarion added, under his breath.

“I doubt it’s nearby,” Hermey said with a light cough. Karlach uttered a small “oh!” and turned around to rifle through her pack, finally pulling out a flask and handing it to him. Hermey grabbed it and took a long sip. The water was hot - almost warm enough to make tea, but that didn’t surprise him given the heat radiating off Karlach herself. Still, he was thankful to have anything. “Where I come from, everything’s covered in snow. That’s why I have these,” he said, pinching the thick fabric of his pants. He wondered if Karlach and Astarion had thought to grab his coat, but he supposed it didn’t matter. He hadn’t gathered much other than berries, and it wasn’t like he was going to be needing a coat anytime soon.

Shadowheart reached down and lightly touched his pant leg, her eyebrows raising again when she felt the thick fleece. “It’s a wonder you didn’t pass out earlier, what with the heat,” she said. “Astarion, could you go through the trunk and see if we have anything that might be small enough to fit?”

“You just want to give away our valuable equipment to some stranger who claims he’s an elf?” Astarion complained.

Shadowheart stared him down until he finally turned and headed toward a large trunk in the middle of the campsite. “It’s not like any of us will be able to get any use out of it anyway. And most of the cloth we’ve found isn’t worth selling.” Astarion mumbled something, and while Hermey couldn’t hear it, Shadowheart’s lips twitched into a momentary smile before she turned back to him. “So snow, a large troupe of elves. You sound like you’ve got quite a story to tell.” Shadowheart reached out her hand, and Hermey took it, happy that she at least didn’t seem to be radiating any additional heat. “You’ll probably have to meet the rest of the team before you can officially join us, but we’re always on the lookout for a few extra misfits. Now, what was your name?”

“Hermey,” he said, finally getting up off the bedroll. Now that he’d had something to drink, the heat didn’t seem quite so unbearable. Although he was still going to stay away from Karlach, at least until he was in lighter clothes, he thought.

“Hermey,” Shadowheart said, shaking his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Good to have you, soldier,” Karlach said chipperly. “Let’s gather the crew.”