Gunther’s head lurched forward from her nest, the unearthly screech from her open mouth cutting off as her head dove forward, her pointed canines flashing in the light, more like a naked blade than teeth.

My foot moved quickly out from where I had poked her as I pivoted out of bite distance. The screech made the hair across my body prickle up in goosebumps and sent my nerves racing. My body readied for a fight that I knew would not happen, muscles bunching up to swing with a weapon I didn’t have.

Lucky me, I didn’t because it would have been a far harder experience to abort if I did have it because the whole situation, for a brief moment, scoured my self-control and brought the fighting instinct to the surface. Before me was not Gunther but another animal that was not in the mood to play or simply letting its displeasure be known but a hostile entity of unthinking fury and hunger that wished to sate itself upon me for rousing it from its slumber.

And then I got control over it and mastered myself, finishing the movement of my legs and bringing my arms down and out of a strike to rest before me. I pushed the chair back as I did, letting out a scrape of wood on wood, which riled her, and she pulled back her head and scrambled with the blankets in an animalistic flail that did very little to free her.

“Hey, Hey! Gunther, it’s me! Saphine! I’m here to work, I’m on business!”

There was a flicker behind her too-wide eyes as she flailed, and she seemed to take in the situation, my voice, unhostile and familiar, bringing down the knee-jerk reaction to a more reasonable confusion in her face.

“Uhh?” she gargled groggily, “Wha, whats’ why are you here? I’m sleeping. Shoo.”

And then she pulled herself back into the ball of her nest, and like a brat who wanted to go back to bed or someone who just didn’t care to get up, she closed her eyes and pretended to go back to sleep.

I stared down at her in utter fucking disbelief.

“Selly, can you believe the audacity? OI! Get up. You don’t get to try and bite me and just brush it off. It’s practically mid-day, and I have a limited window of time to work for you,” I shouted down at her.

“Go away… Sleeping,” she groused.

Brat it was.

“Fine… Fine… I’ll go away. But only if you acknowledge that I have come in for work. I’m more than willing to give you your sleep, assuming you are willing to give me three gold in credit for no work… Otherwise… I suppose I’ll just have to keep bugging you, and I’ll start the time now and collect my four hours of time bugging you, I suppose.”

Her eyes opened, like before, but instead of being filled with the animal's need to protect herself, it was the kind of gaze that was followed by ‘over my dead body.’ Unlike the birth of her prior reaction, presumably born from some animal instinct or a few too many close encounters of the deadly kind, the kind that gets a person to sleep under their desk. it was born out of her will to pinch every copper coin.

It was the gaze of a [Merchant] that heard the word ‘free’ and was overcome with a sudden urge to decide today was the day for violence. It was disturbed and unstable; the idea that I would get three gold for basically free was more powerful a motivator than the siren call of sleep.

It was also much more in line with what I expected from good old Gunther, so the second I saw it reassured me that she wouldn’t remain sleeping.

“Wake up [Caravan Master]. You can have late breakfast or early lunchfast or whatever, but I need to get this out of the way so I can go sooner rather than later.”

“What has you in a tizzy? Honestly, kids these days, waking people up while they’re sleeping.”

She said it with a grumble, annoyance and clear distaste for my lack of accommodation. For my part, I just stared down at her, hands coming to rest on my hips. I could feel Selly standing tall on my head, using her four arms to presumably also act displeased with the wood elf.

“I will pick you up and carry you like a bag. You can't hurt me, no matter how hard you bite,” I half-lie, wanting to push Gunther into crawling out of her cocoon.

“That’s a partial truth, but the fact that you are willing to do it is reason enough for me to hate you… Leave the room, give me a minute. I need to get dressed.”

I gave her a pointed look, but I also gave her a shallow nod and moved to the side, backing away and towards the door while she begrudgingly crawled out, nightgown rumpled, her hair flowing around her head and past her, ears like a sheet of golden silk.

And then I closed the door, the hinges and frame holding it shut while I waited for her, or him, or them to get out. There was a great rustling for the better part of a minute before a set of shooed footsteps taped towards the door, and Gunther dressed in masculine attire just like yesterday.

“Can I ask why you dress like… You know,” I asked, “because I don’t know how to address you, and it’s kind of fucking with my head.”

She looked at me crossly but then got a terrible grin and answered, “You can ask all you want, but I’m not answering. Go ahead and stew in your confusion; it sustains me, and now I know the exact way to get under your skin like a bad rash.”

I looked at her and was caught between two answers. I thought it over for a minute, but I didn’t think I could pull off another taunt on charging her for breakfast now that she was up and more aware.

“Why are you like this? You know what, I doubt you’re going to give me a good answer. I’m just going to call you whatever I feel like until it wears you down, and you tell me.”

She looked at me, smug, like I was playing into her hand, but I couldn’t tell if she was being serious or if she was just being a little shit.

“I don’t care what you call me, and no one else will either. I don’t need pronouns for people to know who the one and only Gunther is, and that’s all I need… Now I’m going to go get breakfast, lets walk and talk.”

And I sighed but followed along after the short little chaos elf as she dragged me along for her very late breakfast.

***

I was tortured over an extended period as Gunther dragged me around, showing off how no matter what I called her, it didn’t disrupt anything while eating street food.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The strangest thing about Gunther was that everyone knew Gunther and had a decent opinion about Gunther. When they realized what I was doing, they played along with Gunther; when I offered to pay, they refused to out Gunther, and when I used a random manner of address, they played along with it.

She had fucked around with me the entire time.

We were at the stall of a Beastkin woman who was selling a broth soup that smelled quite nice, a pot behind the stall kept warm over a small stone hearth that billowed smoke into the open sky. I couldn’t quite tell what kind she was, but her style was impeccable. She had this thing with finely styled and shaped fur and a pleated sheet of cloth covering her like most of the furrier Beastkin seemed to prefer, but it was fine cloth.

She was one of the first women I had seen, and she had charm. Not as much charm as Anna, but Anna was my type so that was practically a given. She did have style over her, though, because it was incredibly fine cloth. It made me want to learn how to wear the same style just so I could try to pull it off.

I was about to pull my class, ‘Hey, why does Gunther dress like a man,’ or ‘What’s Gunther's deal?’ when the fact that she had obviously had her fur cut reminded me to ask a minorly important question.

“Say, I hope it’s not rude to ask… But do Beastkin have [Barbers]? Because I was looking to cut my hair back, and it’s a bit hard to do without someone who knows their way around a razor, and my hair is more like your hair than human hair.”

She looked at me, her muzzle opening, not expecting me to ask that over something food or Gunther-related. Gunther was also confused for a moment.

Selly, being Selly, said, “I could cut your hair. I’ve never done it before, but imagine getting your hair cut by a magic sword.”

“Your sword is like a sewing needle. I don’t even think there's an edge on that blade of yours, so I doubt that you could. Thanks for offering, but I’m willing to find a [Barber] over you cutting my hair without skills to back you up.”

I could see her pant a little bit as she held her mouth open before giving a nod of her head.

“The kin do have [Barbers], though we don’t often shave… Just to make sure I understand you correctly. Do you want to have your hair shaved? What odd kin you must descend from.”

She shook her head as if she was trying to imagine me bald.

“Not all of my hair, just the back of my neck,” I told her, turning to show my nape and levelling my hand at about the point I wanted it. “And I’m not of the kin cousin.”

She hummed, a deep, resonant noise, like the growl of a wolf, and that gave away that she was some form of canid.

“That makes much more sense. And I knew you were not, but in perfect honesty… shameful as it is to say… I just don’t know what you are, cousin,” she admitted a bit awkwardly.

She drooped a little while she said it, a genuine look of disappointment and shame on her otherwise well-trimmed face. I felt suddenly like I had kicked a puppy.

“Good job,” Selly chimed in, “You’ve impugned her honour.”

“Shush you,” I hissed up at her before I focused back on the woman before me and thought.

Goblins had been all about resilience, all about their people's past. They were a little different, but that was still a classic goblin response. It was not a matter of honour, as Selly believed, but of a perceived failure, a lack of understanding of her history. But it wasn’t her fault she didn’t know. And a bit of my fault because I hadn’t realized something.

She was young, she had to be, probably at least a year or so younger than I was, maybe more.

It was hard enough to be young and have expectations on your shoulders. If they were anything like Goblins, there was a huge amount of it.

“A word from the wise. There is no shame in admitting that you don’t know better, especially considering my kind is gone. Short of one of your elders, a [Historian], a very zealous Goblin, or being one of the Librarians faithful, you're unlikely to have ever heard of a Kobold,” I told her.

It was the standard opening for Kobold Goblin relations. Nothing was wrong, appeal to the elderly and pillars of the community, then inform. Kobolds had malleable minds; we just rolled with the punches and changed.

Goblins, though, and presumably Beastkin, were all resilient and hard-headed. Unless you slipped something in past their natural mental resilience, they would just lock up and stonewall the hell out anything you said, even if it was just reassuring them.

It worked like a charm; she perked up, and that was worth it, even though thinking about it was growing sore. I had been numb, but the more it came up, the more it felt like I was picking at a wound.

I pushed it back into the corner, back into the dark, and tried not to think about it. With any hope, it would go from scab to scar.

Gunther spoke up then, rescuing me from the great weight of the conversation.

“Thank you for the food, Selencia. Do give your parents my best,” she said calm but upbeat tone.

It was a careful tone, it was practically engineered to be respectful and sounded like either a skill or a lot of Charisma.

“Of course, Gunther… Oh, and miss, my recommendation for a barber would be Ciliart.”

I thanked her, and Gunther and I left the shop, soup in hand for each of us, with Gunther promising to return the bowls later.

I felt a little bad about the soup; she had given it to us for free, and I wasn’t even hungry. I ate it anyway, taking a sip from the soup like the bowl was a great cup. The soup was good, not thick or thin, and savoury. Just the broth was an easy seven out of ten, and I could only imagine how much better it would be if it had meat or filler to add to it.

After we had gotten out of earshot, I lowered my bowl and got to business. I could tell that whatever manic energy Gunther had was mellowed out after getting a bit of revenge on me and conversing with the shop owners. She had now reached a mellow, almost noble demeanour.

“So, are we going to be doing more of the same today? Because if we are going to spend four hours doing stuff I really do need to get started soon. I don’t want to rush you, but I have somewhere else to be later.” I told her honestly.

Gunther took a deep drink of the bowl before lowering it and taking a deep breath.

“Okay then, I’ve got some more numbers to crunch. You’ll get your due, don’t you worry away a single hair on your head. I’m always good on my deals… Always.”

I nodded, shaking Selly, who had continued to ride my head like I was a beast of burden. She could be pressed into a shot glass, she wasn’t heavy, and I cared little for any idea or pretense of vanity or indignity.

Selly still complained, but she also flew over and dunked her head in my soup.

“I do have a hiccup in the plan,” Gunther told me calmly, “I sent some of my [Wardens] and [Rangers] to scout the land were to move over, and I’m going to need one more day to get things ready, I’m going to have to come to get the wagons over the terrain, and I can't come tomorrow anymore.”

I sighed, my ear pricking at [Ranger] for a moment, but she wasn’t having any of it, and she didn’t elaborate on it.

“There are complications with the other companies right now. This is not me backing out, I just need one more day to line up the resources to get everything in order. I’m sure you can spend some more quality time with that [Druid] of yours. And before you ask, I’m not raising the price, and I’ll even throw in me guiding you to where to go to meet Ciliart.”

I didn’t let her probe get to me and instead thought over what she was giving as recompense, and I decided to push for one more thing. It wasn’t a lot, and I was fairly sure she would just tell me if she knew, but it was a very Gunther thing to get things via a trade.

“I also need to meet Strause. I have to get something, and he knows where to get it,” I told her.

She humphed, “That’s easy; he always hangs out at the same place. He already told you where to find him, but I suppose you probably don’t remember it, given the drinking, but I can give you directions.”

“Then were all good… Now I just have to explain to a [Druid] why we're going to be staying home tomorrow,” I told her.

“That’s on you Foxzilla, she’s your [Druid], not mine. I take care of mine, not yours,” she said unpassionately.

I thought over her words and realized something.

“How did you know her name, you never asked for it. And how do you know where some random [Barber] works? There's no way you just know that. Do you have a skill for that or something, some spooky [Caravan Master] skill that lets you know their names and locations?”

“What do you mean? Of course, it's not a skill. I just know all of their names, and more than just that. I know their names and their stories, their hopes and dreams. I am their leader, their [Caravan Master]. I have seen many of them grow up, and I know all of them. Compared to any of them, I am ancient and immutable, and all of them are my people, more than any creed, clan or kin. They are mine, and I take care of my own.”