“Now, about your clothes…”

Ash has finished measuring me and now she’s got a finger on her chin. She’s deep in thought.

“Ahh, they don’t need to be fancy or anything.” It’d be rude to demand some kind of haute couture from her.

“Nah, that’s not what I was wondering about. See, I have more than enough leftover Stone Ogre hide to make you a decent outfit, but…”

“But?”

“But is that really what you need? The Stone Ogre is tough against cutting and stabbing, but that’s not really what you, a forest troll, are concerned about.”

Well, I kind of am, but I don’t say that. “It’s true I heal most any wound that I take, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”

“No, no, obviously.” Ash waves her hand. “But let’s think this through. I have something somewhere…”

Ash begins rifling through a pile of hide that seems like it was thrown in a corner. “Not this, not this…” She’s throwing stuff aside left and right. “Ah! Here we are.”

She’s holding a rolled-up hunk of dark red leather that’s covered in scales. With a practiced motion she tosses it so it unrolls into a long, thin piece of hide.

“That’s Inferno Snake leather. It’s hard to sell, because it doesn’t offer much protection. Cuts and stabs will go right through it, and it won’t keep you warm on a cold night. There’s some demand for it from bakers and chefs, but not enough to use up all this.”

“Okay…” I’m not seeing where she’s going with this but I try not to let my tone seep through. It’s easy because I basically growl.

“Don’t be like that.” How can she tell? “The one thing Inferno Snake hide is great at is heat protection. It keeps the sun off you and you’ll never suffer from heatstroke. Some people wear hats made of the stuff on the desert floor of the dungeon.”

Desert floor? Of the dungeon? I put that aside. “Okay, but I don’t really plan on going anywhere hot.”

Ash grins. “But the reason I think it’s perfect for you is… it can’t burn. Any fire that touches it gets extinguished, even most magical fire.”

My eyes widen and I touch my side. The burns there have healed but it took a long time. “That’s exactly what I need! You’re a genius!”

Ash puffs up visibly, obviously proud. “It’s the basics for a leatherworker to tailor the hide to the client. It’s hard to sell a human on this stuff because they rarely get lit on fire, but for you, that’s basically the one thing you fear, right? So rather than bolster a defence you already have, let’s shore up your biggest weakness.”

My excitement is boundless. I stand there while Ash wraps me in the leather, taking notes and making marks here and there. Then, when she’s done, she nods to me. “Go wait out front. This part is a Guild secret. Nothing personal; nobody gets to see this. I’ll be quick.”

Out front the other workers—apprentices, I assume—watch me curiously. I wave to them. “Hi. Just waiting for Ash to make me some pants and a shirt. Er, I think it’s gonna be pants and a shirt.”

What if it’s a dress? That would be… actually, you know what? I’d be fine with that. Not the most practical but then everyone would know I was a girl at least.

One of the apprentices, a young man who looks barely old enough to shave, approaches me. “You’re a troll, right? How’d you learn to talk? Er, to write? Um, whatever it is that you do?”

I hold up my hand and show him the ring on my finger. “I’m also a dwarf. An honorary one, at least. They gave me a magic stone that writes what I say for people to read. Otherwise it’s all growls and snarls.”

“Aye, that it is,” he says. “But how do you know Master Ash? She’s making you something personally?”

“Hmm. Well, I try to make friends as fast as I can. Is it a big deal that she’s making stuff for me?”

Another apprentice stops scraping the hide she’s working on to answer. “It is! I wonder if she’s using guild magic. She only does that for high paying clients.” The girl pales and curtsies suddenly. She smells like sudden nervousness and the realization of a possible faux pas. “Begging your pardon, but are you a troll noble?”

I laugh and the girl pales further. I stifle the sound as fast as I can. “Trust me, there’s nothing noble about being a troll. I think we’re just establishing a business relationship.”

While I wait the apprentices warm up to me and explain how their work goes. The girl is soaking raw hide in some nasty mixture that she says cures it so it doesn’t rot. The boy is scraping the remaining detritus from a freshly skinned animal so it can be tanned.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Once Master Ash recognizes us, we can apply for Guild membership in full. Right now we’re pro-vis-ion-al.” The boy speaks the word carefully as if he doesn’t really know its meaning. “Are you in a guild? The troll guild, maybe?”

I remember just in time not to laugh. “No, I’m currently between guilds. A free spirit, you might say.”

“Ellie! It’s ready. Come on back here. You two, get back to work.”

That was way too fast, wasn’t it? In the back, Ash has laid out an outfit. I sigh in relief when I see that it’s pants and a shirt. I guess I didn’t really want a dress after all. There’s lacing down the sides of the legs and the front of the shirt. For a moment I’m concerned about how I’ll get it on, but it turns out that she’s put loops on the ends for me to draw easily.

Two minutes later I’m wearing a deep red outfit that curls around my limbs like a sinuous serpent. I hold out my arms and examine it. I can’t see the seams but somehow she kept the look of the hide being wrapped around me. It leaves my feet and hands open, which is great.

“Move about a bit. See how it feels.”

I do so and find that the outfit doesn’t restrict me in any way. It doesn’t snag on my scales or anything. This is great! “Feels like I’m wearing nothing at all,” I say as I twist my waist to look at my backside. That’s something I couldn’t do as a human.

“That’s the goal,” says Ash. “I’ve put a little something extra in the crafting of it for you. Wasn’t cheap but neither is sharpening mithril knives. Go ahead and tear it a little.”

Oh yeah. Ash had mentioned that the Inferno Snake was not very tough against being cut. It’d be terrible if my outfit fell to tatters the first time I got in a fight. Wait, why do I expect to get into a fight? I put that aside and carefully cut the leather along my thigh with my talon.

It tears very easily indeed. But almost as soon as I am done cutting it starts to close up! I watch in wonder as the pants heal themselves just as effectively as I do. Ash’s grin is smug.

“That’s a little trick that we leatherworkers learn. Self-repairing leather armour is extremely sought after, but there’s precious few willing to pay. Now, let’s say that in the next month you come into another one of those oils. You bring it here and sharpen my blades, and we’ll call it even.”

I shake her hand and grin. I’m more than happy with these terms! On the way out I bump into a woman who’s cleaning up the front store. “Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t meet you earlier.”

“She’s just the hired maid,” says one of the apprentices dismissively. “Pay her no mind.” That seems rude, though?

With a smile the maid steps aside for me and I head out in my new clothes. Things are looking up, even though I’m still feeling down. The sun feels just a little brighter, so I decide to walk a little. Stretch my legs, get some vitamin D in my troll self. Wait. I’m mostly green; do I photosynthesize?

Stupid questions aside, the truth is I don’t recall how to get back to the Bedrock Inn. Asking a guard is bottom of my list after the way the last one talked down to me, so I just wander instead. Follow my nose, so to speak. It leads me to… a food stand.

There’s actually a few of them, and they’re all calling out to get the attention of passers-by. The one that drew me in though is small and a little ways back from the best parts of the street, and he has no customers at all. Naturally that’s the one for me!

“What’s that?” I ask, pointing at a weird skewer of meat that looks suspiciously like a tail.

The stall operator is a little pale, but when I point down to where my words appear, he reads them quickly. “Ah! A specialty! Twisted Lizard tail, roasted with vegetables over a slow fire! Very delicious!”

I knew it. The idea of eating a tail sounds gross but smells delightful, so I pull out a gold coin. “How many will this buy me?”

For just a moment I smell something sneaky and deceitful on him, but it’s rapidly replaced with a sort of fearful respect. Was he thinking of ripping me off? Not that I’d know, other than his smell. “You could buy my entire stall for that, miss troll, and me included if you made the offer to my wife. How many would you like?”

“I’ll take two for now.” He hands me the two skewers and a bunch of silver and copper coins, I don’t bother counting because really I don’t care that much about it.

They are delicious! The first one I eat slowly, because the lizard tail wants to slide off the skewer, but I get the hang of it fast. The second one I just slide through my teeth and devour. Then I turn to the stall operator and ask for two more.

The man is making a bit of a face but he smells like a mixture of anticipation and nervousness. “Miss troll, what if… what if I gave you two more now, and you stood beside my stall for an hour, talking about how much you liked them? Then two more at the end of the hour?”

It takes me a sec to see what he’s after. I grin. It’s like a sandwich board but magic. “You got a deal, mister…?”

He claps his hands together and bows slightly. “Talla, miss troll.”

“Call me Ellie.”

For an hour I stand beside his stall. Whenever someone looks, I make a point of talking about how great his food is. My words light up around my waist and I can tell which people are literate because they always stop to read and then stare at me. Talla, for his part, starts pitching his product as “the favoured dish of trolls everywhere”, which I am not sure is a great selling point.

At first I think he made an error, because people are very clearly staring at me and avoiding coming near, but then the balance flips. A young man walks up reading something in his hands and asks for a skewer, then sees me standing there. I wave and grin. “They’re delicious! Get two, you won’t regret it!”

“I, uh, I will!” he says, with a bit of a shake to his voice. The stall operator serves him with a smile and that is the beginning of a very busy hour. Once one person had the guts to walk up to the troll, it seems everyone wants to. Soon I’m fielding all kinds of questions, including one very persistent woman who wants to know if I ever gain weight eating these skewers. All I can tell her is that so far it doesn’t seem like it, and she happily buys four. Don’t come back here and blame me if your skirt needs letting out later!

At the end of the hour Talla has sold every bit of food he has and is taking down his cooking equipment. He already gave me my two skewers, but when I turn to go he asks me to stay. When I do, he counts out a silver coin and a few coppers.

“Here, Ellie. For your time. I never sell out this early. I can spend the afternoon with my wife. Come back anytime you aren’t busy and want a free lunch.”

I wink at him and head out. Good food and I made a new friend, maybe. My purse is heavier than when I left it, Guild blacklisting or not. I feel so much better! Now, I just have to find the inn…