Porcene: The swine-folk of the Easterling Plains, bordering Yor. Robust creatures, stout in body and thick in skull...

Olive huddled under the starchy sheets, a finger-length flashlight in hand, fleshing out the details of her world. Her door was shut, her fan on, filling the dim room with sublime white noise. There was no need for it anymore: her father was asleep on the couch, drooling, and her mother had locked herself away in their room.

But it was better to be safe. The blanket, the fan, her world, they were armour, magical barriers, towers and walls, separating her from the barbarians beyond.

And yet, the barbarians were loud, and they scared her sometimes. Her shoulders were still trembling as she continued, pencil strokes smudgy on the crisp paper.

Worship mud. Eat truffles.

She heard something in the house shift, flinched, held her breath. There was school in the morning, and if either of them knew she was awake...

Nothing. Just the foundation settling.

She sniffled. It wasn't fair. Why didn't they ever think about what she felt? Why did they hate each other more than they loved her?!

Was she that horrible?

She curled into a ball, sobbed into her notes, and wished that she could disappear.

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It all aligned. The 'Furies', the barding, her piggish features.

She stalked down the valley, keeping to the gullies at the edges of the road. A Porcene. She wasn't a hybrid, cooked up in some lab. She was a creature in a fantasy world she developed before she could legally drive.

Some skepticism lingered, of course. But it wasn't the largest jump between 'test subject' and 'fantasy malarkey'. Just a genre pivot.

If the rider hadn't convinced her, the figures she passed on the road would. She saw sharp, leaf-like ears poke through woven straw caps. Tusks protruded from green lips, under broad noses. A bovine, spotted with scales, webbed wings flapping on its back as a score of stumpy dwarves towed it through the muck. Even through the murk of her youth, the half-remembered details, she remembered it sharply. A Croke.

That last one made her snort, a quiet trumpet blare. It made no anatomical sense, served no ecological purpose. Was exactly the kind of thing a needy teenager would will up, to turn heads.

And it was right in front of her, trudging through the muck, its scales glittering emerald bright in the creamy sunlight, stinking of cow and lizard both. She felt numb, overwhelmed, her gait wobbling, unconscious. She let herself move unthinking, accepting all as blank facts, to be settled later. Like throwing a blanket around her senses, letting them rest.

The road filled out as she passed crossroads, the air roiling with novel smells. She noted that the humanoids were oddly tall, her head coming up to the elbows and chests of the men, and, at best, the biceps of their women.

Either they were tall, or she was short.

The thought made her jaw clamp, tusks grinding, her fingers tweezing a soft, silky ear. She had always looked down on other girls, and many men. Looking up... it felt wrong. Unsettling.

She reached a hillock, the road sloping up, the sun dipping below the tufted crescent, putting the light out of her eyes. Hopefully, there would be a warm meal on the other side, a bed, a bath. Her trotters had grown sore, caked with mud and streaked with green stains. Her shirt was soaked under her armpits and chest, and had taken on a sour odor, overripe in her snout. It didn't smell like she was supposed to smell.

As she pushed for the summit, she wrinkled her face, tapped her fingers, wiggled her tail. It should have felt wrong, there should have been latency, resistance, dysphoria. Instead, it felt unnervingly natural. Crinkling her snout felt as mundane as tilting her brow, puffing her cheeks. Twitching her tail was no more difficult than her rolling her tongue, wagging a finger. Her new toes were more stiff, had less flection, but she managed a surprising dexterity, especially with the hind two.

She summited, the sun flaying bright, making her wince, squeeze her eyes shut.

When she opened them, a vast expanse of tiled roofs curled around a bay, cradled by sheer stone walls. Amidst the splay, set like a jewel, was a crystal dome, shimmering in the softening light.

Opaline, she realized, with stolen breath. Capital of Yor, birthplace of the Last Empire.

Her first step toward home. Hopefully.

The road flowed toward one of a dozen gates, cut into the stones proper. A few structures littered the perimeter. Shanties, vardo encampments, makeshift rope pens for sheep, cropping up like mushrooms.

Or maggots. She wrinkled her snout, edging her way down the incline, between the little camps, keeping her chin high. The smell seemed stronger on the outside, wafting up from ditches, narrow holes. The stench made her gag, clasping a hand over her nostrils. Hopefully, the people inside know about pipes.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Did she write anything about sewage systems? Her memory was foggy on that score. Most scores, really.

A small chain of travelers lined up outside the gate, dragging carts of fruit, bags of grain. A day's harvest. Two figures flanked the gate, scaled armour glimmering, a falcon emblazoned on their breasts. They traded words with the visitors, nodded, laughed, gestured to the open gate. She watched, studying. One was male, lean and chiseled, the other female, tall and scarred. The first held a worn clipboard, a pen, jotted down details as he spoke. The second held a spear over her shoulder, its tip sharp as a nib, solitary--

"Can you spare a coin?" A crooked voice derailed her, made her blink, turn her head. A calloused face, like an eroded cliffside, smiled down at her, gap-toothed and meagre. "I only need the one, and I can pay ye back with a few errands!" It said: male or female, she couldn't guess.

She steered her eyes toward the lined, the wagons and bags of provisions, then squinted. "Are you sure I'm the one to be asking?"

They ran a hand over their threadbare robe, shaking their head sadly. "Most folk don't know charity. Think she's a witch!" They snorted, scoffing as a few heads turned, regarding the beggar with wrinkled noses, sneers. "But you know. Yes, you would know! You'd have to!" They eyed her, pointed a gnarled knuckle at her snout.

Her blood simmered, hands balling at her side as she stepped back. "You don't know me." She bit out, tusks gnashing the words.

"I know an unfortunate when I see 'em!" They chuckled, nodding. "Come on! Let's be unfortunates together!"

"I'd rather cut my own eyes out," she said, coolly. "Then choke you with them." She added, a tusky smile breaking her face. Her fists trembled, a strange ache pulsing through her chest.

The beggar quailed, face pale, setting off their liver spots. Their eyes sagged, a dour, pitiful cast to them, as they turned away, slunk off toward a pen of sheep to loiter.

Not like I had anything to give! She scoffed, turning back. And, even if she had...

The world was filled with invalids, the indigent, and the hopeless. If you thought about one of them, you'd be thinking about them all, soon enough. They were better as scenery, white noise. Block them out, and you're free to think about yourself. If everyone did that, we'd be on Mars by now.

The sun was a silver line on the horizon when she reached the front, a hunched cabbage farmer waving as he spoke his goodbyes, the guards turning to her, the last in line, cocking their brows. The male was handsome, a layer of fine stubble accenting his sharp jaw, grey eyes waxy and soft. The woman, however, had a surly, sour expression, dragging at freckled cheeks. Poniard-sharp ears bristled out of slits in her dinted metal cap, twitching as her yellow eyes slid to the Porcene, fingers curling around the shaft of her spear.

Olive felt a chill feather down her spine, shoved up her chin, snout thrusting upward. She just needed to be confident, casual, meet their energy, and extemporize. Olive Farrier, CFO of life!

"Just passing through!" she said, ears bouncing. Her nose twitched: they weren't meant to bounce. "Been a long day, and I'd love it to be over! Could really go for a cold one at the old pub!" Overdoing it.

The male blinked, squinting, running a hand through peppery hair. "That sounds proper, yes. Right proper." He nodded, a thin, guarded smile on his lips. "Got your papers?"

Olive felt her heart slip on ice. "Papers?" No one ahead of her had papers!

"Papers," the elf echoed, biting the word off. "Thin, white, lot of little squigglies on them?"

"Yeah, yep, I'm familiar with the concept!" Olive winced, pinching her ear. "I guess I just don't see how that's germane..."

"You think you're smart?" The elf straightened. "You learn a ten copper word, and suddenly the law is just a 'concept'?" Her height came into relief. The male came up to her neck, and Olive barely made it to her lower chest. Her mouth went dry, kneading her ear, tugging it. The spear seemed a razor, a savage edge, a killing thing.

"I-I didn't say that..." It was already falling apart. She stepped back, shoulders pricked, the desire to curl into a ball keen in her mind.

But this is my world! Heat swam through her veins, her lips stretching into a snarl. She didn't know how she got there, or why, but she knew it was her's. It belonged to her, bent to her whim, did as she said, when she said it.

She just needed a new role to play.

"I just meant that I'm a messenger!" She held her nose up, her expression stolid. "Bianca Fou! An envoy from the Easterling Plains! I thought my coming was known?" She cocked a brow, affecting an imperious stare, stolen from a dozen viziers, a thousand royal stewards in a thousand fantasy serials.

"It was not," the male said, with a few apologetic scratches. "Who are you meeting with? I might be able to--"

"Don't bother," the elf broke in, blunt as a hammer. "The hog's lying."

"Hog?!" Olive squealed, unbidden, before pulling back, taking a breath. "I-I apologize, but you'll appreciate that-- well, insults are hardly the surest path to accord, don't you agree?"

"Why are you wearing stinking rags, 'envoy'?" The elf posed, one corner of her lip deviously curled.

You bitch. "W-well, on the road, you'll agree, it's safest to pack light! Fall in with the commoners, avoid undesireable attention, that sort of thing! You understand, I hope?"

The elf sighed, lips flattening, eyes sharp as an executioner's blade. "What is the name of the Yorish diplomat in the Plains?"

Olive blanched. She didn't remember writing in diplomats!

"W-well I've been on the road for--"

The elf smirked. "They've been there a decade."

Fuck. "We have so many dignitaries..."

"Do you?" That smirk broaded

The male sighed, tucking the cupboard under his armpit. "Frey?"

The elf shrugged. "What? Long day." She snorted, turning back to Olive. "Well?"

Olive turned on her trotters, dug in, and shot toward the open gate.

She didn't make it two steps before something skitted out, thwacked her in the knees, and sent her face into the dirt, breath squeezed from her lungs. She curled up, wheezing as she held her leg, tail aflutter.

"Yor doesn't send envoys your way, hog," Frey said, shoving a knee into the back of her neck, choking her, mashing her snout. "Never has. Eryck?"

The male groaned, a man so close to a warm bed, pulled so cruelly away. "In the name of the Furies, you are hereby under arrest for impersonation of an official."

"What?!" Olive croaked, kicking, muck shooting up as Frey yanked her arms back, shoved them together. She felt the bite of cold iron, snapping shut at her wrists, chains clacking as she pulled them taut. "Wait, wait! This is just-- I mean-- It was just a joke! I was joking!" She told them, through gasps and coughs, as another set of irons closed around her ankles.

I was a corporate god! I had everything! She hissed, the guards grabbing her under the armpits, wrenching her up as she grunted, oinked. She remembered the skyline, her office, her parking space. She earned it all!

As they forced her to her trotters, made her waddle through the gate as they set to locking it, the cold settled in. That was another world, a fantasy inside her brain. The walls had fallen, the magic failed, her armour crumbled to flakes, and the barbarians were here, now.

She drooped her head, sniffling quietly, and wished that she could disappear.