She had a well as it turned out, and I had, after repeated use of the attached bucket, a tub with cool clean water that I could use to wash myself. So, I walked around the corner and thanked her for her tub and soap, punctuated with a little bow. She seemed to understand my meaning, and she shooed me, so I walked back around the side of the house and got to it.
I should make sure to clean myself well, my everything is dirty. Even my clothes.
That made me grumble to myself, wet clothes were terrible.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beth Mynes was expecting today, like any other day, to be a rather boring day.
Her brother was coming over to discuss the village’s situation with her. She would tell him what she told him last time, and he would act thick-headed and refuse because 'It wasn’t in the budget' or whatever father told him as an excuse, and he would head off after that.
She was not expecting a visitor covered in ash, though. Nor the game of charades she had that was almost fun. It was one of the only cases where she had to use her head in months. Instead, a little while after she went to wash her hair, she came back around and bowed to me.
Gratitude? Presumably, but for all I know, it's part of her culture just to bow to people who give you soap.
What a strange woman; she wasn’t human, that was for sure. Maybe she was a beastkin; she was certainly beastkin-like if the story hold true, although no fur.
She had characteristics of an animal, ears that poked out the top of her head, and more hair than an average human has for sure. She had an animal nose but no snout, which looked strange on an otherwise human face, but it's not the strangest face I had ever seen.
Beast folk of all kinds are supposed to have snouts and tails and be covered in a fine fur pelt. Half beastkin maybe, maybe she’s lost? She certainly doesn’t speak any language I know which is highly unusual.
Maybe I could help her learn mine as a side project, I could tell from the way the land felt about her she was not a threat to me. The land might not be a god, but she cares for her own, and she cares for her. I would love to know whatever series of events brought her to my grove, covered in ash nonetheless.
I asked the land if my brother was coming; he, in fact, was. But was still further out and could always turn back, you never knew with Clause.
What was with her eyes, though? Her eyes were like the undead, but not just any simple undead, with the little candle flames of an ensouled undead, but as far as I could tell, she’s very much alive.
They looked black, but there were little speckles in her eyes like sparks coming from the fire. It was enchanting in a way, they were magical things, wavering a little in an unseen breeze.
I decided to peek around to check on her, for her protection, of course; you never know when you might drown. I stood up from the chair and tiptoed down the stair, across the path, and to the wall before peeking around the corner. Her hair was maroon without the ash, I wasn’t expecting to see her cleaning the rest of herself, however. I jerked my head back after getting an eyeful watching her, blushing as I returned to my chair.
I was not expecting her to be cleaning everything like that.
My cheeks were warm with embarrassment, and a little shame at peeking.
My goodness, she had big arms. Maybe I could see if she wants to stay with me, and I can try to teach her common Halsi, and she could use her big arms to, um… tend my garden! That’s it, I can always use an extra set of arms.
My cheeks were burning, and I felt quite flushed at that, so I went to get a cup of water. Because somehow that would help control the flush of emotions. Instead of sitting down, I picked up my mug, opened the door, and went to the kitchen, took my mug, and filled it with from my keg of water.
I was going to chill it when I remembered. I had a guest! Flustered, I grabbed a second cup and filled it before I cast [Druidcraft].
Most people think you cast magic to change temperature, but that’s not what I did, I convinced the water to give up its heat mana.
The water bubbled for a second and then was cool. Most people didn’t understand mana, the energy of magic. It permeated life and flowed throughout the world, taking on different flavors depending on what it was doing. Druids could tap into the world's mana and move it around. Of course, it would settle with time, and the heat would build back up until it had the same heat mana as its surroundings, but they were cool for now. A spell was not persistent unless it was made persistent, like the grove, and then they would often outlast the caster.
Most people didn’t understand it; they saw someone cast magic and imagined they waved their hands and figured it was just something we did, woosh cold water, a wave of the hand, now your crops are healthy.
All we did was move mana, nature did the rest, at least when a [Druid] cast magic. Other magi could do different things, store up mana and remove its affinity, and then transmit that stored "clean" energy to do other things. Need a fire with no heat mana? Use your own heat mana and boost it with your reserve.
[Druids] were limited in that way, we moved the world around us, not shackle it for our whims, we were its stewards. We were also particularly strong because of it; how could a man hold the power of a raging river in his hand? A druid could guide the land to do it; we didn't need to hold that power for ourselves.
All though, us [Druids] were oddballs when it came to casting spells. I had both a more normal [Elementalist] class, and a [Druid] class. Casting with the land, the giant genius loci, was like throwing a handful of water out into the sky to get it to drown a man, whereas elemental spell casting was more direct, like trying to drown a man using a bucket and your own two hands.
I thought about her eyes again, little candle flames of her soul. They were smooth like a lamp, not ragged like an open flame. I had read that with ensouled undead, you could often tell if they were hostile by the flames; if they went from candle to torch, they would attack you, but it also indicated an ensouled undead. Not just any bag of bones had them. Generally, one such undead indicated the presence of a [Necromancer], someone to trap the soul of another in a corpse or cage or whatever they placed the poor soul inside.
The undead, those without a soul to power themself, collected ambient mana and stopped it. Negative energy, stagnant mana or whatever you wanted to call it, was the source of undeath. Mana flowed through a living person and back out, pulled from one living thing to another, it entered their corpses too, only it slowed down. It built up a kind of pressure, that, when enough is present, would cause the dead creature to move spontaneously.
The build-up eventually created natural undead, the more build-up in an area, the more likely it was a body would catch enough energy, the less that needs to build up before mana can't escape except through movement. Moving bone or tree stumps or whatever.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
But the woman outside was normal; she generated movement like everything else, and her body was alive, not dead. She breathed it in and exhaled it, it was a mystery. And I had just come off the high of using my brain. I wanted more of that in my life.
What a confusing woman, I wished she could tell me about it, or maybe she would show me her status one day. The new status stone father bought had [Advanced Appraisal], it even gave descriptions of the skills and spells we had. Clever Magi getting us to buy a second product, but it was totally worth it, at least for them.
She has so many things I think I want in my life. A big armed mystery woman who might share more interests, maybe she might be amenable to staying?
All I can do for now is make sure my brother doesn’t spot her when he comes up and see if she wants to stay. I should at least have a pretense for it… and now that I think about it, I could use some help with the gardens.
As I thought, I walked out of my cottage with the cups, and found my guest waiting for me.
She was much cleaner now, she had even scrubbed her clothes out a little, and it was somewhat distracting. She was also dripping on my porch, so I walked forward and waved her over.
She didn’t get it for a second until she realized I wasn’t just being weird but trying to get her to do something, which she obliged and came over. I handed the cup to her, and she took it, and with a hand free, I touched her tunic and cast [Druidcraft], pulling the water from her clothes by tugging the water mana, which tugged the connected water out along with it.
The look on her face was priceless. I loved that look. Whenever I used magic around my brothers, they just waved it off. Their mutual disregard for magic drove me away from my family, which is why I moved out of town. Well that and my ‘marriage.’
I asked the land again to see how close my brother was; he was still a few minutes away, so I gestured to the possibly half-beastkin girl to get her attention. I gestured with wide arms, then tapped my head, I pointed at the sun and made a motion of it going down. When my arm reached horizontal, I pulled the mug from above to bellow my flat arm. I looked at her to see if she got it. She seemed to be following, so I did it again and made a shadow on the ground. I made it move like a sundial and checked again. She seemed to be following, so I motioned towards town, then made a walking gesture with my hand on the rim of my mug and gestured to the ground at my feet.
I gestured towards the town again and back to myself, gestured towards my eye, then at myself. That was a very complex way to say, ‘My brother is coming to see me soon and probably won't like other people being here.’ She didn’t seem to understand the lack of context of brother, she did get the time bit, though.
She gestured at herself and motioned her hand to the ground and then made a wide gesture out into the trees with a confused motion, and I started shaking my head.
“How do I tell you? Do I even need to tell you?” I gestured for her to follow me into my cabin, then walked her to the spare room I used for my projects, it had its shudders closed but had enough light to not need a lit lamp. I gestured to the room as a whole, then motioned to her, then the room, then I motioned to myself and motioned back the way we had come and made a mouth-flapping gesture. She seemed to get that I was asking for her to stay but cocked her head in confusion at the last bit; she did end up nodding. Her ears made wiggling motions, and it was quite cute, but my brother was close, so I couldn't stay and stare.
With that done, I went out to speak with him. It was a few minutes, but he came eventually up through the tree line, with a quick wave to me. My older brother Claus was in his thirty’s but still looked 20, the lucky guy. Strause, our younger brother, was in his twenties and looked 30, with a widow's peak sharp enough to cut a tree with.
Claus, on the other hand, has the face of a young man and the expression of our father, the constant disapproving frown that bordered on a scowl, with sharp dark green eyes and short cropped brown hair.
“Beth, how are you?” He called out gruffly.
I could never tell what his mood was, so I decided to stay neutral with, “Fine, Claus, my garden is enjoyable. What brings you to my grove?”
He gave a curt nod, “Father… Again. I have come to ask you for help with our crops ever dropping fertility and the general state of the territory.”
I sighed, “Claus, I Can’t raise fertility again. All it will do is kill all our crops, the seed will be edible and totally worthless when it comes to seeding next year's crops. The soil is rapidly becoming infertile, brother. I can't just wave my hands and fix all of your problems. Forcing me to raise the fertility was a practice I told you all would bite us in the ass, and it has."
I took a sip from my mug before continuing my pushing, "I can't get the fish to repopulate when there’s nothing for them to eat! And I can't magically give you a crop that will give you enough gold to fix the problem. You have to drain the lake, kill the undead in it, and invest in stocking the granaries with proper seed!”
I stared at him as crossly as I dared. My brother might be my brother, but he was also the future [Baron] of my home. I wanted him to take my words of advice as advice, not as a condemnation of our father and himself. Unfortunately, it's not up to him, but my father was lost in doing what his father did. I hoped that by telling him, it would create a divide in his mind before the worst came to the worse. He could technically do it, if he would just act on it instead of…
“That’s not in the budget Beth, the necessary increase in manpower just to defend against the undead alone would likely bankrupt us, not even including the price to lower the water, and the disruption to trade with the villages across the water. Is there nothing that you can do to fix the issue?”
I sighed and shook my head, “No Claus, I can’t prop the economy up anymore,” I could see something in his eyes like he was holding hope entirely on the meeting.
He started grasping at straws, saying, “I do not believe there is nothing we can do, nothing you can do! All you have done is undermine Father. What about your cottage? It is thriving; why can you not apply that to the valley… Beth, if you could do that, it would solve everything!” He said it like a child grasping at straws, he was losing his composure.
Even for him, that meant that he showed only a hint of emotion slipping into his voice, for someone that knows him, he might as well be crying.
“I can’t do that, Claus, I can only have one grove. It's passive around a set place. It can only be so big; I am only so strong." I waved him off, "Go back to Father. I can’t help him fix the problems he refused to fix because ‘it wasn’t in the budget’ now that he has to pay the price that should have been paid generations ago when it started, and father should have started paying back before we were born. The valley is supposed to be a valley, not a lake. And the land is done with it, I work with the land, not command it. If Father ever listened, he would understand that.” I told him no lies; my home and place of power were sized based on my level and power.
I didn’t tell him about how my grove pushed the problem back, my grove has extended the longevity of the lakeside by at least six years, how I denied the marriage to try and keep my family’s holding alive, and not because I hated the marriage that was arranged for me.
Well, I did hate my marriage prospect, but that was only icing on the cake, and we both agreed to help one another. He insisted that I refuse so he could marry his second cousin, I disliked him because he was a gross unattractive pig that put the Consanti family name in Consanguinity.
I was trained for this by the Agri cleric that originally performed many of the duties I now do, and that advised my father and grandfather. He insisted that his family had excellent prospects of childbirth and were above the Mynes on the basis of proper breeding.
I played him like a fiddle because he was a dead end, and I knew his future cousin-bride could direct his ‘well-bread’ intellect in whatever direction I asked because I had been in contact with her since I was eight years old and discovered he was the most likely candidate for me to be married off to.
I’m sure it was fine, there’s no way the Consanti brat didn’t have a skill for it, they’re family tree was a circle.
“If you had just been more convincing, Beth, if you had kept his trust, we might have avoided this. Could you have not…”
“Brother, you are being a tree.”
That had him focusing back on me and less on the spiral of whatever stage of loss he was cycling through, “What?”
I answered him without needing any more prompting. It took me ages to come up with it, “If a Druid shits in the woods, did it make a sound?”
I had him utterly confused, honestly, it would probably confuse anyone but a druid.
Maybe my guest would understand it? Was that racist? Gosh, I hope not, I would hate to offend her. I spaced out for a second with my internal debate, but my brother was so confused that I could practically see his brain smoking, trying to see where I was going and failing. I could see the moment the gerbil powering his brain gave up the fight and he said, “No?”
I smiled, and nodded before telling him, “It does, but the trees don’t get it.” Then, I turned and walked towards my cottage, where my fascinating, hopefully semi-permanent, well-muscled guest sat waiting.
“Now, if you will excuse me, I have something more important to get back to. Tell Father to either stop wasting my time, or eat some crow and listen, or better drain the lake yourself, Clause, I know you can do it.”
And I left him out in the garden to walk back to the manor. I had dinner to make and a person to teach, and a bed to makeup, I didn’t want to chase her off with my bed… The loft is nice this time of year.
My, my, so very much to do, I sure hope she stays.