The sleeping moon was barely a quarter of the way through her journey over the endless black void of the night sky. Ever as always I found her clear celestial body both horrifying and beautiful. If not for the swirling vortexes of each gigantic storm rampaging across her surface there would be no way to see her without a properly attuned lens. A sinister purple lightning constantly bursting through the folding clouds trapped inside each of her wickedly whirling disasters. It was considered unlucky to look into her spiraling eyes for too long over the course of a night. Not that I was overly superstitious but all the same I slowly drifted my gaze back down planet side.
While my eyes came back to the camp I watched one of our lighting puppets float lazily along overhead. They were disturbing small spectres made from real skulls. Harvested, cleaned and wired back together by Everrnak’s pupils. The one floating over the soup line was that of a female shrieking deer. A blue flame engulfed it, casting off flickering light as the spectral hand hovering over it trailed along. The jaw clattered in silent cackles as I watched it pass me by.
I was lined up outside the mess tent with two people standing ahead of me. Mirrin yawned and then cracked his neck in front of me while Charlie absently picked at his rear ahead of him. Icarus and Fastrada’s youngest daughter groggily stumbled into my back as she took over the end of the line.
“Huh?” said a sleepy green eyed girl of around thirteen while slowly returning to the land of the living, “Oh. Um sorry, Mr. Fe- Er uh, Sorrel?”
I turned around to face her and saw that she was still dressed in a long gown meant to be worn for sleeping. It was stylish but far from elegant, with a small lace ribbon perched under the hem around her neck. The lightly wrinkled sleeping gown hung down just over the tops of her mud flecked boots.
“It’s alright,” I said, “It’s pretty hard to properly wake up when it’s still so dark out, isn’t it?”
“Ugh I know,” she groaned in a pouty lament, “Why do nights have to be so long anyway?”
“Well the moons are both sisters so it makes sense that they’d both be so willing to share half of their time in the sky, don’t you think?”
She looked up at me thoughtfully a moment while rubbing the back of her head. I watched her tussled mess of green bedhead slowly rearrange itself as her hand ruffled it from underneath.
“Well, okay, I guess that sort of makes sense,” she said sounding only half convinced, “But then how come the days are so much longer in Summer and why do they get so stinkin’ short in Winter?”
I had to suppress a chuckle at how earnest her questions about lunar cycles were and wondered how her parents would handle answering them. I’d already tried to pass the subject off by answering with something whimsical so it seemed best to just follow through on that line of reasoning.
Charlie entered into the tent while Shay exited, sticking her tongue out and laughing at her brother for still having to wait. Mirrin pretended to ignore her and stepped forward but his aura told me that in his heart he felt fairly annoyed. I took a step backward to where Mirin had been standing a moment before and pieced together my next response.
“Well I mean you have a sister too, don’t you?”
“Yes?” she asked back as if suddenly made unsure by my bringing the subject into question.
“And surely there are things that the two of you have to share, like your parents’ time and affection, that you’d rather keep just a little more of for yourself on occasion, right? So can you really expect things to be so different with those twin sisters way up there?”
“Hmph!” interrupted Mirrin who’d apparently been listening in, “I’ll have you know that when it comes to problems like that things are even worse when your sibling is your twin.”
I couldn’t help laughing as the green eyed and green haired girl’s expression changed from curious to amused. In a beat she was giggling along with me while Mirrin huffed in false indignation.
It was strange to so suddenly be acting this close with my troupe mates after decades of keeping them, and almost all of the ones who’d joined us before them, at bay. But I was starting to remember the appeal held in spending time talking with people for more than just business.
When it was my turn to enter the tent I saw that Garris was standing out of line and talking cheerily with Marguerite. He held an empty bowl in his hand and glanced over to nod at me with a smile as I walked in. I supposed that meant he really was waiting to talk with me about something. I just hoped it wasn’t more of his horrendous so-called advice for wooing women.
The breakfast soup was light on meat but had a few small chunks of the outer forest’s game tossed into it for some added protein and texture. It all came from an assortment of little creatures caught up in the traps that the brute squad tended as part of their in-camp duties.
After collecting my portion Garris had waited for the young lady behind be to serve herself before taking his fill as well. And then he’d said to follow him and lead me back to the illusion of privacy offered up by our troupe’s covered wagon.
So far all we’d both done after climbing in through the back was eat our soup in silence while seated across from each other on the benches. I fished out a scoop with some flaky white meat and an orange chunk of carroleaf root. Before I could fully raise it to my mouth Garris finally spoke.
“So?” he asked nonchalantly, “How did things go for you last night, Fel? Was that the first time you’ve woken to a fine looking girl like that in your tent?”
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I looked up to see him grinning at me wide from under his mustache. I guessed this really was what he had wanted to talk about. It felt a little strange but like I could probably handle it.
“Well no,” I started slowly, “There have been a few times in the past where I’ve woken up with uh, with some company tucked in beside me. Of course the last time was probably around eleven years ago now.”
As I’d finished saying all of that Garris’ jaw had gone slack and he’d set his spoon into his bowl. His soup suddenly forgotten. He looked at me, wide eyed, as though some great new mystery had just settled in before him.
“Oh, do please go on,” he said, giddy as a child hearing talk of a new toy.
“Um, well I mean, that’s just the one’s who decided to stick around long enough to sleep anyway. I guess there was a point in time where I was trying really hard to lose myself in pleasure. You wouldn’t really know about it, I guess, but things were pretty bad until around a year or two before you joined the company. But anyway, about last sleep, it wasn’t really like any of that. I mean I guess when I woke up my head was on her lap but all we really did was talk for a while. She did kiss me on the cheek before leaving my tent though...”
My words trailed off as I thought about the feel of her lips pressing into my skin yet again. The pause not going unnoticed by Garris.
“Well, Fel,” he said, “It sounds to me like you aren’t really lacking the experience then but if it’s really been that long sure as shit you’ve gotten rusty!”
He barked out some laughter at my expense as I looked down into the remnants of my soup. My cheeks were starting to feel flushed with warmth.
“Now listen,” Garris continued, “It’s not like that’s a bad thing. I’ll have you know I saw your pretty missus and her kid brother earlier in the breakfast line. And do you know what, Fel? She was singing your praises to ol’ Miss Marguerite for how cozy and warm those bedrolls you gave them was. Though I’ll tell you another thing now that I’m thinking on it, it seems kinda off to me that Mr. Strise is being so hospitable to these two pickpockets in particular. That’s really not his usual way. Don’t suppose you’d be in the know on anything about that? He seems a hair friendlier with you than he is towards the rest of us.”
The sudden change to his questioning caught me off guard and I flinched my head to the side. Breaking our gaze and likely giving away that indeed I knew the reason why.
“It’s alright if you can’t talk about it,” he said sounding a touch concerned, “You don’t have to tell me that the boss man can be pretty unreasonable. Only ever needed to learn myself that lesson the once.”
“Do you mean when we first came across you and Charlie?” I asked before answering his question, “And it’s not entirely that I can’t tell you, only that it involves pact magic between myself and the Boss and I would prefer if we could leave it at that for now.”
“Pact magic, huh?” he mused with a sense of wonder, “That’s supposed to be some pretty powerful stuff. I guess that’s why he’s got you out there on the front lines during each show then?”
“More or less.”
“Well hey, fair enough. Don’t worry, Fel, I ain’t gonna pry into something you obviously don’t care to discuss. As for me’n’Charlie, yeah that’s the lesson I was talking about. Makes a man take a real good, long, hard look at his life when he’s been strung up a tree by a creepy little clown puppet with another man’s ass crack right up against his face. Of course it really didn’t help when some scruffy kid in a puffy cap came along and beat my head in with a stick.”
He glared at me with a smile before we both started to laugh.
“I am sorry about that,” I said, “But to be fair you guys were a small gang of bandits trying to attack the wrong caravan.”
“And look at me now!” he boastfully declared, “The mighty Emperor King Shit of the Merry Strongmen of Strise!”
The pair of us broke out into laughter again.
“Now what was it he said?” Garris bleated in between his gruff chuckling, “When ol’ Strise had Charlie’n’me dead to rights and strung together at his feet?”
“Um let me think,” I said while returning to that particular memory, “I think it was something like, ‘now listen here you filthy brigands weren’t but the two of you left after that pathetic excuse for an ambush. The ones we didn’t kill turned tail on you and left. Lucky for you two idiots my last strongman went and died in this little scuffle so I’ll be taking ownership of the pair of you as repayment for what it is you’re now owing me. Now go on and get your lazy asses up off the damn ground and roll ‘em into the fucking wagon. We’ve got us a show to put on in the next town and I’ll be having you earn your keep one way or the other,’ though I could be off on one or two of the details.”
My imitation of the Boss did us both in and we started cackling together like a pair of drunken fools. For a while after we’d both calmed and wiped the tears from our eyes we settled into silence and ate the last of our soup.
“So, by the way,” I mused thoughtfully from around the empty spoon still resting half inside my mouth, “When you were talking to me last night I remember you saying something about still having some time left on the clock at the brothel. So if that was true then what exactly were you doing running half naked out into the street?”
Garris looked at me and visibly shuddered.
“Listen, Fel,” he whispered while leaning in, “I’ll tell ya but this stays between you and me. Got it?”
“O-of course! I wouldn’t-”
“Good, now shaddup’n’listen,” there was an uncomfortable intensity to his voice, “Now you saw that little curseling in the burlap sack runnin’ around, didn’t ya? The one brandishing a dirty mop? Which come to think of it was that what you used to stab that man with? Fel, that’s fuckin’ nasty! Remind me to never get into a fight with ya! But anyway, yeah, that little creep do you know what it did?”
He looked up at me, tears fighting to roll out from his eyes and his hairy lip trembling.
“Garris, look, you don’t have to-”
“No, you know what, Fel, I kinda feel like I do. Maybe letting it out will do me more good than holding it in for the rest of my life. That little scum licking son of a grundle sniffer snuck into mine’n’my girl’s room with that dirty, wet, whorehouse mop in its hands and then it- it- Ah dang it. I was on top and then...Then the little mongrel rammed that nasty thing in between my cheeks, right up against my taint, my hole and my nuts, before giving it a twist for what felt like all it was worth. And then it just kept on smacking me on the ass with the thing before chasing me on down the stairs and running me around the main floor. Little shit was treatin’ me like a damn hog!”
I had no words. Garris looked utterly dejected by the memory.
“Anyway, I just really hope our next camp is near a river so I can go wash all of this filthy shame away. Between you’n’me it’s been starting to itch something fierce since around light fall,” he finished.
I did my best to console him and he did his best to put on a brave face.
So this was what guy talk was actually like.