Chương 63: Chapter 61: Sootpaw the Strange

First, the main course. Hooch-Braised Venison over Rice Pilaf with Queenslace stalks, Wild Carrots, Sage, Tomatoes, and Mint of great quality, crafted by Emily Goldtail Gives an extended buff to Health and Stamina, and to Mana Regeneration, Ghost Touch It was the very best thing I'd ever cooked in my life, bar no contender. The smell of it was warm and hearty and just a tiny, tiny bit boozy from the Hooch I'd braised the tough venison with.

By the time it was done cooking, the meat, which had been gamey and tough, was literally falling apart as I forked it onto the rice it was so tender and juicy. My cookery skill was pleased with it, but told me that fresh venison would be even better. I could actually feel the adventurers anticipation as they eyed the food like they'd never eaten before in their lives, and I couldn't help but smile as I spooned everyone up a healthy large portion.

"World... Emily, I can... I can smell that... can I have some?" Gelidia asked, and I placed a bowl of it in front of her too. I'd seen ghosts and skeletons eat before - they seemed to manifest around mouthfuls, but this? Somehow this was different. Gelidia leaned down close to her plate as it was spooned out, and breathed in deeply before visibly shivering in delight.

"It does... I think I will have some as well!" Alfredo said, spooning himself up some - and of course not leaving out the sauce in some measure!

"It says it has a property of Ghost touch when I inspect it. I think we figured out what Revenant Hooch and yeast do!" I said and spooned myself up a portion, setting it aside. I got another bowl, and the others watched me spoon up a pretty big portion of rice into it, along with the last of the sauce and meat. I didn't have a whole lot of time before moonrise - a bit less than an hour by my reckoning - and I had a promise to keep. Then came the second part of the meal!

It wasn't what I'd call a dessert, but it was certainly a sweet, tasty addition and complimented the food beautifully, I felt. Black Tea with Maple Sugar and Mint of excellent quality, crafted by Emily Goldtail Gives a buff to Mana and Mana Regeneration Mugs were distributed to the others and amply filled, and again in addition to my own mug... I filled another. I offered no explanation to curious looks. Was I expecting someone else their eyes asked, and I just smiled in return.

"It's almost night time." I announced once everyone had their meals. I wanted to eat with my friends, but again, I'd given my word. Gelidia just smiled at me and rose to brush her lips to my cheek.

"Be safe my love." She said, and the weight of meaning in her words was fairly plain to me. I nodded to her.

"I will" I promised, and, scooping up the twin meals, I made my way out of the Inn into the twilit evening towards the forest as the buzz of insects and the sounds of the monster town waking up flooded my senses. Since becoming a town again, since Gelidia had become the Countess, the town had changed quite a bit. The devastation of the poisonstone siege, the destruction of the last war, it was being pushed back.

There had been a spritely little tree growing out of the road between the gatehouse and the inn, but now it was gone. Grass had been pulled from between cobblestones, and even as I approached the gate I could see it was manned by some of the town guards who were making ready to shut it.

"Hey guys, what's the matter?" I asked, and the two skeletons startled a little to look at me! One had been a little chubby, but he was broad and tall - taller than me. His comrade was much shorter, but not actually much smaller width-wise. His bones under the spectral flesh and tattered armor were quite thick I judged, and his spectral image had a thick, full beard braided with star-like little gems of spectral light.

"Oh - it's you, Hound!" the tall one said and both stood a little straighter, eyes fixating into the middle distance as he clenched his fist and placed it over his chest in a salute. His shorter comrade eyed me, and gave a much less professional salute of his own, his form a little looser, his expression sort-of sour.

"There is a danger out there tonight ma'am, I can feel it in my water." the large guard said stiffly, and I blinked at him, curious about that.

"In... your water?" I asked, and he fidgeted.

"I... well yes, I have a Hunch that it might be dangerous tonight, miss Hound" he said. A 'Hunch'? I heard the capital letter slot into place on that one, and blinked at the man, then to his companion.

"Aye" shorty began, and his voice had a thick burr knit into it, some kind of accent I couldn't readily identify. His voice was deep and gravelly, like he'd spent the day smoking cigars and gargling river gravel. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was certainly different!

"Aye, a Hoonch. Tha'ss'a step aboe a Feelin', an' a step below actually seein' a bloody werewolf charge th'gate." he growled, and I blinked at him. He sullenly glowered back, but diverted his eyes from mine in deference a beat after meeting them. I think my Wolf decided she didn't like the look he'd given us, but I couldn't find it in me to care much what the little grouch thought. I knew that people were nervous in this world about werewolves, and he had to know I was one kinda, right?

Maybe not the kind he was used to, but certainly a Wolf just the same.

"Well I'm going out tonight." I announced. Not a question - a statement. If I had to jump over the gate I would, this wasn't a request. The shorter man's response was to sour his expression just that little bit more. He opened his mouth, but with a movement that could have been entirely accidental his coworker shifted a little and stepped on his foot.

"Right you are, Hound. I... we won't be able to open the gate once you're out though... are you sure, ma'am?" the bigger guard said, and I smiled at him. Him I liked. The shorter, stockier one? A Dwarf? I wasn't so sure about. Maybe Dwarves, if he was a Dwarf, were just bad-tempered? I had no idea, and decided not to judge too quickly.

"Mhm!" I said with a cheerful grin"That's fine, that's fine." I said, and they stepped out of my way to permit me past them.

"Thanks! You two have a good night now, okay?" I said, and the larger man returned the smile with a convivial nod towards me.

"Thank you ma'am, I'm sure we will. You be careful out there, alright?" He said, and with that they shut the gates behind me. I could feel power stir, and a window I'd seen once before appeared before my eyes, with the cute skeleton shaking his fist from atop a wall, its gate portcullis shut tight. Lambstock locks its gates. Entry no longer permitted for the night. The way is shut. I glanced back.

I'd seen the effect once before when we (Gelidia, the town guard, and I) had repelled the adventuring party that had attacked. Green light shot into the sky like a spotlight from the center of town, just barely visible in the fading light of twilight, and the partially-repaired walls were shining with green phantasmal energies that seemed nearly opaque to my physical eyes. I shrugged a shoulder, and continued on my way.

It was maybe a half-hour until moonrise, and I wanted to find Sootpaw to give her this meal ahead of time. I didn't need to go far. One minute I was stepping my way carefully through a small clearing full of little white and pink flowers - clovers, I thought - when I felt something approaching me at some speed. The way Sootpaw moved was hard even for my enhanced senses to follow. It didn't make physical sense; the motions didn't match up with the speed at all.

It was more like she had to make a new movement each time her foot touched ground or she had to step over a rock or something. I turned to face where she was coming from, and the girl, in her black sooty hair and dark robes stopped. Her robes didn't even move as if she'd disturbed the air, she was just... suddenly still. Her eyes were wide as she stared from the food to me, and back again.

"Hello, Sootpaw" I said into the silence between us, and I felt as much as saw her swallow in my Wolf-Ren, knew her mouth was dry. She just shifted her gaze to me, and blinked her golden, red-rimmed eyes in my direction. I broke the quiet again to say"I brought you a big bowl of dinner and some tea. Are you hungry?" I asked, and she began to tremble a little. How old was this girl? She looked so dirty, so haggard, so thin, she could have been any age from fifteen to twenty-something and I just had no way to tell.

She looked young everywhere but her eyes - those were haunted, troubled, and...... suddenly, she looked very familiar to me.

"Yes" she managed to croak after a false start and a gulp to moisten her mouth a little. I nodded and took a step toward her, slowly. She tensed and her fists clenched, but she didn't flee... so I took another. And another. At ten feet the scared little thing was visibly shaking even without the help of my Wolf Ren, and instead of getting closer... I simply offered out the food to her.

I got maybe a fraction of a second where I saw her taking it from my hands before she was twenty feet back and clutching her meal tight, looking at it carefully. I didn't bother. I simply sat into the grass and lifted my spoon to get some of the rice and meat onto it, careful to get a bit with the mint garnish and some of the sauce. It was still warm, but not very. I wish I'd been able to give it to her hot, but, there was always another time.

From the moment my lips closed over my spoon my mouth was flooded with intense flavors. The braising sauce was a little tart and pretty salty, but it was rounded out by the slight anise spice of queenslace seeds and richness of the sage. The meat was incredibly tender and fell apart under my tongue let alone my teeth! Holy cow, it was so, so good! Sootpaw remained standing for several seconds, staring at me with searching eyes before looking to her food and... biting her bottom lip.

I couldn't help but watch as she scooped her first spoonful, holding the spoon almost like she'd never held one before or... hadn't held one for a long time. She clutched it in her fist not her fingers, and.... I saw her pant a little as she brought it towards her face. Her sharp little teeth were matched by the doglike tongue that lolled out of her mouth as she... changed a little before my eyes! It looked so strange to my senses, but she didn't actually transform or anything.

She put the first spoonful into her mouth and made a long, heartfelt canine whine that seemed to fill the little clearing's pocket of silence almost completely, at least in my own senses! Something clicked. I didn't know what, but something I'd been missing slotted into place right where it was made to fit inside my heart, and a pervading sense of... rightness filled me from edge to edge. This was right. This was exactly right!

I found myself smiling brightly, and watched the kid as she sank to her knees and leaned over her meal! From there, she set to the act of eating with a will, and the scrape of her spoon on the bowl as she shamelessly grobblesnarfed her food filled me with more of that feeling, that rightness. She was a kid, she was hungry, and... I'd fed her. I tried to analyze the feeling as I assaulted my own meal.

The first sip of tea prompted Sootpaw to notice her own tea, and she let another squeaking whine as she tasted that next! She drank a little too much a little too quickly and coughed a bit, but from there started interspersing mmouthfuls from her big bowl with sips of the tea. I only realized she was crying big gummy tears into her food when I heard the first Hic! of her sobbing, and my heart simply ached to hug her, to tell her it'd be okay and that she could have as many meals like this as she wanted!

"It's... so good" she said, and I could see the tears streaking the ashes and grime clinging to her face clearly. Her voice wasn't nearly so dry or so quiet, now that she had a meal going down the pipe.

"I'm glad you like it, hon." I said softly, knowing she'd be able to hear me. She did, and nodded without looking up from her meal.

"We'd better finish up though." I said, and her expression changed to something a little haunted, a little harder than the childlike expression she'd worn moments before, returning her to the girl I'd first met. She nodded to herself, and began to tip the bowl back and scrape the food into her mouth. It'd have been a big meal for me, how much I'd given her, but she took it like a champ and polished off her tea all in one sitting, nearly without pause!

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Night was coming. I didn't intend to fight it tonight, to resist changing. I got up slowly and carefully, and made my way towards the still-sitting sootpaw. I could see her jaw muscles tense and jump a little as she watched me, but made no move to get up or get away from me.

"All done?" I asked, and she meekly offered out her bowl. I accepted the empty from her, and took the mug as well to set both carefully aside beside a tree nearby. She wiped her face with her robe's sleeves and sniffled a little, and only then did she rise to her feet.

"You're... so calm about this... why?" She asked, and I shrugged a shoulder.

"I've changed every night since coming here, more or less. It's... sort of normal for me now." I said, standing just out of arm's reach before her. Sootpaw rubbed her arm and searched my face, clearly confused.

"You're... really not scared of changing?" She asked, and I shook my head.

"No." I confirmed.

"I'm told its scary to watch... and it hurts a lot, but..." I stopped. Wild werewolf. Oh dear.

"But I am well-used to it." I said. I didn't wanna say 'it wasn't so bad' or something like that, it seemed... insensitive. There was a descending note. Not a literal musical note, but I could feel a flush settling over me as my body asked for permission, as my Wolf stirred in my breast and rose to her four paws in my mind's eye.

"It'll be okay." I said, voice going raw in my throat. Sootpaw however... just went pale as a sheet, and crossed her arms over her belly. I felt power stirring in her tiny frame, but the wash of my change drove the thought from my head entirely. I felt something that felt like her, that felt dark and strange, brush against me, but it was powerless to stop what happened next and Sootpaw backed a few more paces from me with frightened panting noises. What a beautiful night to have a curse...

Sootpaw staggered backward a little and let out a GASP as she saw me sink to my knees and double over as my muscles bunched and body tensed, clothing flashing out of existence in a brief shimmer of white light. As my chest expanded and body strained, skin reddening under my pain-blearied gaze and body shaking like a leaf, I was dimly aware of Sootpaw letting out frightened little noises as... she failed to change? I could barely think. I could barely exist.

The pain seemed to push at my senses, crowd them out like I was gasping for air in a storm-tossed sea as I fought the drag, as my body grew and strained and blossomed with new flowers of pain, every muscle in my body cramping up all at the same time as I struggled to keep my breathing even and keep myself from crying out as Sootpaw stared at me in abject horror. Then it was over, and I was left panting into the grass in my hybrid shape, shaking all over and tingling terribly. I had to get up!

I rose to my paws carefully and shook off with a floppa floppa floppa noise that didn't quite manage to conceal Sootpaw's frightened panting squeaks from my senses. I walked in a little circle, shaking off one, two more times before turning my gaze upon her at last. The still human-shaped girl was staring at me with very wide eyes as she shook, pale as a ghost as... some kind of wispy, tarry black-purple smoke seemed to cling to her frame and purple light overlaid the gold of her glowing eyes.

I didn't know what I was looking at - I'd never seen the like before - and blinked once to let my gaze flash into golden light as I poured mana into my Inspect skill. [MAGIC, LIFE] Hexerei: Suppress Curse. In the shadow of her on the ground, I could see... a non-human shape, something monstrous like the form I now occupied but she was resolutely human shaped still, and holding fast. She didn't run, didn't turn and flee from me, even as I turned to face her fully and rose to my full height.

She looked up at me, and... well, she looked sick almost.

"Emily... Oh Emily" she pleaded softly"I'm sorry, I can only help myself, I-" She stopped talking, but didn't move away from me or look me in the eye as I moved a little closer to her, shuffling in a crouching gait to bring my head down to her level. She didn't flee even though she stank of fear and shook like a leaf before me. Then I crouched a little more gripped the sod, dragging my paw down to clear a spot so I could write.

'DONT BE SCARED:)' I even added the little smiley face at the end, and Sootpaw choked a little in shock!

"You... you're...! How are you doing this?" She asked, mouth hanging open!

'I WAS GOING TO ASK YOU THE SAME' I wrote, and once she'd parsed that, her lips moving as she read, she looked to me again, her expression of fear thankfully melting away a bit in favor of sharp confusion"But you're... you're aware! How? I have a... a skill that lets me resist my curse, but you didn't do anything like that!" She half-whispered, have croaked. I felt my tail wagging a little.

'I AM STABILIZED' I wrote.

'THE WORLD TOLD ME THAT BEING UNSTABLE WAS DANGEROUS.' She blinked at me after laboriously reading what I'd written. Was she bad at reading? Then, her eyes widened a little as she seemed to reach understanding at last! It wasn't good - she took a step backward hesitantly, uncertain how she should react but she clearly assumed she should react poorly.

"You... embraced it?!" she squeaked, and I awkwardly rubbed the back of my head. That more than anything broke her brain a little - I couldn't see a transformed werewolf feeling awkward.

'I DIDNT KNOW AT THE TIME' I said and because I was worried I'd frighten her off, I decided on absolute honesty.

'ITS LIKE BEING MY OWN DOG' I wrote. Wolf, in my head, waggled my/our tail with a swish swish swish noise. She stared at me, stupefied for a solid four count. Then, she blinked, looking to my tail. I didn't show her my teeth, just kind of... mlemmed a bit and perked my ears hopefully. The wagging was pretty low, a canine ' please dont be mad', or at least, that was how I interpreted it. Wolf wasn't the kind of lady who explained things very much or often!

"I... I... but... you're... stuck like that now... a werewolf, I mean..." she breathed. If I were human or had normal ears, I had no idea if anyone else had ears this good, I probably wouldn't have heard that over the sounds of bugs and birds in the threes as a fog began to gather from the direction of the river. I shrugged.

'ITS NOT SO BAD. I'M UNDER MY OWN CONTROL AND WE ARE A TEAM, MY WOLF AND I. SHE ISNT A STRANGER, SHE IS JUST SIMPLER.' From there, she seemed at least prepared to hear me out. She calmed down - always just out of my arm's reach, and always echoing with that strange purple and black spell the World had called 'Suppress Curse'. She got to see that I wasn't a danger, wasn't something she needed to fear. She got to talk to me, be near me, see what I was.

The first parts of the conversation were the most obvious, I felt. She wanted to know where I'd come from, and... I had to admit curiosity. Still, that was a topic that was harder to share when I couldn't talk.

"That makes sense..." she said shyly as she doodled in the dirt with me. She used a stick, I, my claw.

"We can talk about other things" Is that alright with you, my friend? YOU FED ME WELL. I AM HAPPY TO WAIT AND REST TO TALK TO THE PUP. Pup? SHE IS A PUP. A WHELP. And she's so brave. I think she's fairly strong, too. SHE DOES NOT MEET OUR EYES. SHE DOES NOT CHALLENGE. What does that mean? Wolf offered no explanation, but she did chew on the question. Words... weren't her strongest suit. She paced and chuffed and slicked her ears back though, and finally returned with SHE IS A PUP. It took me a second to understand.

What, you want me to adopt her or something? Did I want to be a mom? I thought about the way she'd looked eating, how happy that had made me to see, how satisfying. She shouldn't be so thin. She shouldn't be fighting for her life. She should be a teenager! She should have friends and young love! How had she gotten here?

'PLEASE TELL ME YOUR STORY' I wrote, and she froze up a little. The power that surged around her flared just slightly and shifted. She didn't seem to notice. She was crouched and resting her chest on her knees as she idly drew a sun in the dirt. She looked... miserable. exhausted. I don't think she's sleeping right. AND NOT CHANGING. That helps? I LIKE TO SLEEP And that was a mystifying answer if ever I heard one. What did it even mean? Wolf just stared at me, wagging her tail a little. Are you fucking with me?

She panted and waggled her tail, lolling her tongue as she spoke without moving her mouth. NO OF COURSE NOT and weirdly I believed her. DONT NEED SLEEP WHEN WE CHANGE AT NIGHT That was interesting. I'd slept before in a transformed form, hadn't I? SLEEP IS GOOD. I LIKE TO SLEEP. Sootpaw huddled near the ground and stared moodily at the patch of bare earth, at the increasingly elaborate sun she was drawing as she thought and deliberated on what, or perhaps if, she should tell me her tale.

She was a brave kid, I figured. She hadn't run, she hadn't avoided me knowing full well what I was, she'd... come anyhow, and when she eventually started to speak it was done while she kept tracing over her sun.

"I... I lived in Oakhollow Farm near Northreach, I... I don't remember how long ago but... a Lycanthrope came out of the woods one night." she said, and hugged her knees a little.

"It... it...!" she began to shake and tears flooded her eyes, but she pressed on"It killed my pa and... got ahold of me and bit me open and..." she shuddered"... I lived. Don't know how, sheep don't survive that kind of thing but I did." and she resented the fact, the fact she'd lived. She wished she didn't, and... that, too, was familiar to me. I'd felt the same after the bombs fell and the radiation sickness began to destroy me.

"My pa was a farm hand... and the owner of the farm knew first what had happened to me, how I'd survived and he sent me away, chased me off with his dogs and... and told me if I ever came back he'd kill me himself." She said in far more matter of fact terms than I'd have thought possible for so grim a tale.

"So I... w-went into the woods and... I'd wake up in the morning after each night somewhere other than where I'd gone to sleep. I didn't understand at first but..." she sighed.

"I'd become one too... I was a werewolf, too." She said in a tiny voice.

"I was... ten?" I felt the urge to hug the kid, but I didn't think she'd react well at all.

"... I know a thing or two about the woods from my pa, I knew how to get good water and... I know where to get some roots I can eat from the riverbed, I'd gone for long walks with my dad in the northern parts of the woods where it's safer and... well I lived." she sighed.

"That's what I've been doing - living. I... leveled pretty quickly at first, and... well, I reached my tenth level and... the World told me that I'd been laboring under a curse and that... well... I could learn to control curses. It was the first direction I'd gotten. I didn't even have my destiny core yet, you know? I thought that... maybe I wasn't going to grow up, and the world knew it. I..." she sighed.

"... Well, I got a skill that went up a bit each night when I..." she glanced at me, and firmed her mouth into a thin line.

"... when I changed. I tried to fall asleep before it happened because... if I was awake it hurt so much and it was so much scarier." she steeled herself.

"... it was..." she cringed a little, and looked at me like she expected me to chase her away too for saying it. I knew the name of the skill already, didn't I?

"Hexerei. I got the Hexerei skill." she confessed and I wrote'I INSPECTED YOU EARLIER - IS THAT WHAT LETS YOU NOT CHANGE?' I asked, and she nodded.

"Once I got it to rank C, yes. I thought I was... I thought I could control it now and... well..." she looked even sadder.

"It was fine... I... people knew me where I'd lived with my pa, but I couldn't go back there... so I went further south and went to another farm. I thought I could leave it behind me, now that I could control it, you know? And... a Witch can be a respectable position in a village, you know? I got... dark magic, but... I could control curses, I could... help people, maybe break curses one day, and that would be good so... I wanted to try."

she sounded very sad to me, and again I was struck by a want to comfort the girl. She continued"... It was fine until... until the full moon came and... I couldn't stop it. I'd stayed there for weeks safely, I had been around people again and they'd taken me in, I never told a soul about what I was and... and...!" she did begin to cry then.

Not the 'boo hoo' cutesy sort of crying either, but the ugly crying that comes with huge tears and cries of misery from her breast as she wept into the grass, curling into a fetal position. This time, I did hug her. I scooped her off the earth and into my arms to hold the tiny, shivering thing against me. She was too wrapped in her misery to protest or react in any way but naturally as she pressed her face into the ruff of my neck and wept... and wept... and wept. She smelled like a campfire and body odor.

She'd not bathed for some time, I judged, and the past came back to me, my own past, the times after the bombs living in the ruins. I only realized the kid had fallen asleep when her sobs had fallen off and she went totally lax in my arms, when her heartbeat finally slowed. Wolf looked at me and whined softly, and... and I knew I couldn't not care about this either, couldn't not take care of... this kid, look out for her. She was a baby!

Maybe she wasn't actually a baby, okay, but she was too young to be alone, too thin, too tired. I decided then and there... that I would be her big sister, if not her mother. I was looking at my past self. How could I not?