Chương 69: Chapter 67: A Trip to the Tailor

Hand-in-hand, I did my best to explain the matter to Sootpaw as I led her along the street in the morning light. She was quiet the whole time, and I felt her eyes on me even as I looked at the road, and Gelidia was nearby, holding my other hand in her own. Once I'd explained things, she seemed to sit with her words quietly for a bit, and I let her think, let her probe her feelings and thoughts in peace a while until, eventually, she spoke up again.

"So... you need to go on an important mission to... join Lambstock with the Republic...?" The question was hesitantly asked. I got the impression Sooty wanted to ask me something, but was working up the nerve to do so, and it was important to her. I decided not to try and suss out what it was - she was smart, she'd get there on her own. The best, most respectful thing I could do would be to let her get there at her pace. I nodded as I answered her.

"Yes - I need to journey to Rucksberg with the Wayfinders. From there, I'm not sure what it will look like, to be honest with you" I explained, rubbing the back of her hand with my thumb to offer what comfort and encouragement I could. Her next question came on the tail of my answer.

"And... you're expecting... danger?" She asked, and again I nodded at her.

"Yes, I think there will be. I mean, we might be different now than we were once, but it's not like there is a great big sign flashing over our heads to show everyone. Roxala thinks people might try to hurt me out of pocket." I said. I felt that honesty would probably be my best approach. Sooty took that in carefully, staring at her feet. She seemed to be nearly there, and I had a feeling I knew what she was going to ask, but nothing prepared me for how she put it.

"... You won't let me come with you, will you." Not asking if she could go, but... confirming the decision I'd made already back to me. I moved to sit at the fountain, as I had done so many times before, and the girl looked at me, eyes hurt, uncertain, worried. I stared into her eyes and thought before replying. She dipped her eyes from mine, her wolf telling mine she was not interested in challenging her, and I didn't like that much. Was she used to other Wolves treating her like that?

My wolf thought I was silly, she was being polite, she wasn't a beaten child. This was Wolf etiquette, not a human thing.

"It's not that I don't want you to, or... that I doubt your capability, I... I mean, you've lived alone for a long time, but..." I tripped in the conversation and hesitated - what did SHE want? How could I treat her with respect as a person and not let her decide things for herself? She wasn't some idiot kid or helpless baby. I decided to trust her.

"What do you want to do, given the situation as I've explained it?" I asked, tilting my head a little at her. Rachael was a little shocked at that, and opened her mouth, but shut it again. She took her hand from mine with a distracted air, and rubbed her arm as she stared at her dirty pink toes (No shoes, good grief) And then, reaching up to hold onto her hat, she looked at the sky or possibly the lambs of the fountain, then at me again.

Her expression, as she did these things, shifted around between different emotions, but she didn't hurry things - she let herself process the answer thoughtfully. She sighed, and stared at her feet once again.

"... I think..." she began, and her voice sounded brittle to me, like she was on the edge of tears"... that if I got hurt, it would be very bad, and... and it would ruin things. I think I could help, but... but I'm not as capable yet as you, as a werewolf... and... I have a r-reputation around here as the um... the Black Beast, and... and there's a bounty on me for monster hunters." I blinked at that last, concerned suddenly, and she avoided looking me in the eyes.

"I... I didn't even do anything... o-on purpose, I um... w-well I told you that w-when I got my hexerei to rank C I... tried to live a normal life, right...? And, that it went wrong on the full moon?" She said, voice tiny. I nodded at her, and she went on"They... they tried to um... to hurt me, I think and... and the town I was in burnt... down..." she swallowed, voice hoarse"... I did it. O-or... my wolf did? I don't know, but..." she looked like she was going to throw up.

"... a lot of people died" she whispered.

"I... hurt a lot of people, they said... I don't remember any of it but that's... why I'm um... th-the black beast, it's... how I earned the title." she said, still staring down at her feet. The World didn't show favoritism, I knew. Good or bad deeds were rewarded equally, and... not all titles would be good ones, it stood to reason. I didn't think for a minute she had wanted to hurt anyone, but the fact remained that she had made a name for herself in the worst way, right? What is a parent to do in that situation?

The answer was obvious. I scooped the kid up and gave her the biggest, warmest hug I possibly could, and actually stood so I could enlarge the hug, and empower it with a little twirl of my girl, and then? I kissed her forehead and both cheeks, smooching them clean of tears as I held her up and she squeeked! She stared into my eyes, uncertain, tears brimming, and I put my forehead to hers.

"Would you... let me come anyway?" She asked, voice tiny"Even though... even though I'm... even knowing that?" She asked, and I set her on her feet again, sitting in front of her. I thought about it, and nodded.

"If that's what you want. I'd protect you." I said easily, and smiled at her. She returned it, sniffling, a little giggle bursting out before she seemed to steel herself. She donned a kind of metaphorical mask, became a little more serious, a little stiffer, a little more... what, mature-seeming? It was her business face, her 'I gotta do something!' face, I realized in a flash of insight. Really it made her look like she had a tummy ache, and made me feel a little queasy myself.

It was a familiar look she had - I'd donned it myself more than once, I'd had to learn how to form that mask myself more than once.

"No, I don't think I should come" She said firmly, and sniffled a little.

"I'm... I'm gonna just stay here, in Lambstock until..." A bad thought obviously crossed her mind, one that made her turn pale a moment, but she shook her head as if to frighten it away"... until you get back." she said firmly.

"My brave little pup. I'm so proud of you." I said, and kissed her forehead again, then hugged her tight, clutching her to me. She slid her arms around my neck and tangled her fingers in my hair in a great big hug. Little trooper! Gelidia, who had been silent as this went on, seemingly unsure what to do to help or contribute, pat the kid's back and nodded at the pair of us.

"You are a very sensible young woman. I am honestly impressed by you." She said, and that seemed a little stiff and odd, but it made Sooty blush and hide her burning cheeks in my neck with a puplike grunt.

'This is an odd situation for me, I am not at all certain how to care for a child!' Gelidia defended herself'This poor thing has not much childhood left, and she is wise beyond her years, but a child she remains and I never believed I would be a mother.' Gelidia admitted to me, in the privacy of our heads. She must have heard my thought in the mindscape SHE DID. Oh, great! YOU THINK LOUD SOMETIMES She's smiling, Gelidia, so that's probably fine. Just be yourself, I'll be myself, and things probably won't explode.

'... Oh, they probably will, but we shall strive to... put out the fires, and make things as steady for our child as we may.' Sooty eventually unpeeled herself from around my neck and ugly-snuffled into her robe sleeve. The best you could say was that it couldn't possibly be made more disgusting by her blort blorting into it a bit. I helped a bit, wiping away tears and smiling at her as she collected herself. She didn't resist at all, just fully let me do it. This was someone's little girl.

This had been someone's baby, their cherished child. No, she hadn't been beaten or abused, at least not by people. She was just scared of them for perfectly good reasons. She wasn't scared of me at all - that ship had sailed. She wasn't a bitter orphan, she was a survivor. My Sooty. OURS'Ours now. We will cherish her. We will cherish her especially when we get her new clothes and some shoes and possibly a bath!' Gelidia said and I frowned a little at her. Sure the kid was filthy, but...

well, that was slow pitch for a woman who had seen the nuclear wastelands of Milwaukee and lived in Grover Heights, she wasn't even in the top fifty. Hell, I'd been a lot dirtier than she was now, literally and metaphorically.

'What? I'm just glad my sense of smell is muted, that's all I'm saying.' she said'Her robe has little shelf mushrooms growing on parts of it. I think part of her hair is green.' IT IS CAMOFLAUGE Wolf added SHE SMELLS LIKE A MOSSY LOG AND CAMPFIRE SMOKE I bet a lot of wild animals would avoid her or not think twice, good point.

'Well...' Gelidia relented'... Let's make the poor thing smell like sage and fresh bread, like spices and like clean young woman, instead.' Gelidia said, and I chuckled in my head at her.

"Um..." Rachael said, jarring me from my thoughts.

"a-are you okay, momma?" she asked, and, first of all HNNNG MY HEART, but second of all I realized I'd been staring at her with her head in my hands for a solid thirty seconds or so. She was blinking big hazel eyes at me, and I blushed a little. Stolen story; please report.

"S-sorry! I was miles away, I was thinking about where I came from!" I said, and it was true enough! I stood again, and offered Sooty my hand. She took it, linking fingers with mine carefully and clutching me tight.

"Where DO you come from?" She asked softly, and I took Gelidia's hand in my opposite hand, the three of us walking east towards Ms. Spruce's shop.

"I'm a Riftwalker! Did I tell you that?" I asked, and Sooty's head spun toward me, her eyes wide as she blinked at me in shock.

"Heh, guess not... yeah, I'm from a place called Milwaukee. It was... well, it was part of a nation called America." I explained.

"Was it nice there?" She asked, and I realized then and there that I did NOT want to explain atomic bombs and radiation sickness and mutants to my little girl. Best part was? I didn't really have to. One day I might tell her more, but for now?

"No!" I laughed, horrified"This place is much, much nicer!" and the fact that that was the truth, and that I'd said it with such conviction told my clever daughter more than I'd meant to share. She shut her mouth with a clop and blinked several times as she processed that, and only then did she speak up.

"You got attacked and turned into a monster when you got here, this place is a haunted ruin, and... it's better?" Sooty asked, incredulous I nodded.

"Mhm! And I wasn't attacked - I was a Lycanthrope when I arrived." I explained.

"I started out a werewolf and stabilized." Sooty tilted her head, a doglike expression that I'd made several times. It made me smile a little.

"... What did you DO in your world, that she should hurt you so?!" She asked, her fingers tightening on me, as if demanding I confess my sins and I chuckled a little - I couldn't help it.

"I said something like that too, when she told me." Gelidia added, and I nodded.

"It wasn't like that I don't think - I'm just lucky!" I said, and both Sooty and Gelidia made separate sputtering noises a moment as I went on"It's not so bad - you'll see. I can't imagine what it was like, dealing with it when you were unstable, but... things are different now, better now. You'll see, honey, I promise." I said, and squeezed Sooty's hand tight as we pulled up at last to Ms. Spruce's shop.

"Okay!" She said simply, and squeezed my hand in hers tight. It didn't have a front window - but it did have a place where the window would go. The door was makeshift, far from the ghoul's top priority, but the space was clean and already smelled bizarre to my senses. The scent was the uncanny combination of tannins and dyes, mordants and pickled meat that I knew was the ghoul herself - she was in - but there was also... old fabric, fresh water, sharper chemical smells, leather smells, and... sage soap? Had Ms.

Spruce gotten some? With my Wolf-Ren, I pressed my perceptions out and into her shop and realized... that I could actually sense the woman inside. Her gangly, long-necked form was crooked and bent over something, long-fingereed hands tugging a needle through fabric. I lifted my hand to knock on the door, and before I could even do so, her nightmare rasp of a voice, like a crooked branch strewn with cobwebs trying to form words, came to my ears.

"Come inside, Good Hound, Your Grace, and..." the ghoul lifted her head - she was on the second floor, her back to the doorway. Did she have special senses too? I saw Ms. Spruce blink and tilt her head disconcertingly out to a ninety degree angle, and turn to look in our direction, her neck four times the length of a human being's neck. I could see her dry, leathery flesh strain its seams - she'd actually sewn her flesh with... no, that wasn't actually accurate, I realized with a start, she'd...

what, replaced bits of her skin with leather? Augmented herself with her own skills somehow?

"... a child?" She asked, and seemed to panic? She flailed a little, putting things away hurriedly and... I realized with a start that the ghoul was trying to make herself presentable? She got a shawl, a kind of robe thing, and... bundled herself up into it. I suddenly felt a little bad for the woman - she couldn't help how she'd died after all, and here she was... trying to make herself less scary looking for the benefit of my Sootpaw. I figured she could see, so I gave her a grateful nod.

Sooty was confused a little, and I could practically see her little ears twitching as she tilted her head this way and that, pausing with me curiously as she tried to analyze what she was hearing inside. Had she heard Ms. Spruce's voice? I decided to explain.

"She is a friend. She's the tailor who made our clothes" I said"She'll be downstairs in a minute to see us, okay?" I explained. I didn't dare tell the kid not to be scared, or that Ms. Spruce looked freaky or something, not if the woman could hear us - the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her feelings or make her feel bad. Rachael blinked at me, then nodded.

I got the impression the kid soaked up more from my expression and reactions than I'd intended to give, because she put her 'game face' on again and nodded firmly as she followed Gelidia and I into the tailor's parlor. It was a nice space!

I could see the vision of it - a comfortable place to relax while you waited, several mirrors lined up to let you get a good look at yourself, racks of cloth and leather, buckles and belts, and a service desk in front of a space leading to the back where she had her messy work to do. I'd helped move a lot of these things, and they were fine indeed! When Spruce came, she did so at first crawling like a spider, skittering across the space upstairs where...

her bedroom and main workshop were, and where she kept extra things. Sooty froze up a little, her eyes narrowing as she took in the noises of that, tracked it as it made its way across the room upstairs to the stairwell where it changed as Ms. Spruce seemed to school and steady herself, to make herself walk on two legs carefully. She took her time - it clearly was unnatural for her to move like that, but... I could see a grim determination on the ghoul's face.

When she did appear, for all the world she looked like a bent old woman. My little girl's eyes widened just a little and I saw as she took in a breath, took in the ghoul's alchemical, pickled scent and seemed to steel herself as the woman took careful, deliberate steps closer.

"Hello, little one. Hello again, Your Grace, Good Hound." Ms. Spruce said softly, and I could see the lambent lights of her glinting eyes under her robes.

"I am Miss Spruce. How may I serve you?" She asked politely, and again Rachael surprised me.

"Hello, Miss Spruce" she began and, taking her hand from mine, bunched her fists at her side and lifted her chin a little.

"You need not worry on my account, miss, I'm not frightened" A lie. I somehow knew the kid hadn't been honest, but there was no actual malice or challenge to it. A white lie? A Lie she wanted to be true more like, as I let the scene unfold and watched. The tailor seemed to take that in, and nodded slowly. She pulled back her hood, and blinked open too-large milky eyes, with their bloodshot and yellow sclera. She had changed a little since I'd seen her last, she... parts of her really had been sewn with...

not leather, it turned out, but fine fabric carefully, especially on the joints, and... well, the effect wasn't entirely unpleasant, rather like she was a living doll, with little patterns of flowers and paisley. Her hair was thicker than I remembered, and I realized... it wasn't hair really, but mostly a kind of treated, shiny thread the color of her hair that she'd added to herself, mousy brown with a greenish character now that it was clean. She smelled of pickled meat and alchemy and cloth and...

sage, most of all. Sage soap - I could almost see what had happened to her. She'd tried to bathe and the added moisture and washing had damaged some of her parchment leather skin, so she'd... well, fixed herself up like one might darn a tear in old trousers. Her whole body was like that - she hadn't stopped. But now, she looked more or less cohesive, and honestly? The effect was kind of cute in a strange sort of way, and didn't stop her moving freely.

Sooty took in the full landscape of the ghoul's face and body and, clever and curious as she was, actually leaned a little to see more and blinked as I saw fear begin to ebb a bit. Scary, yes, but not that scary when you got right down to it. How would she take it, my little girl?

"What's your name, brave little one?" Ms. Spruce asked, her rasping voice gentle and creaking a little"Mine is Caramel Spruce" she said. Rachael smiled a little at the ghoul and offered her hand to the woman readily.

"That's a lovely name" She said"Mine is Rachael - Rachael Sootpaw." the young woman said. The two exchanged grips, and I could see that Ms. Spruce was as taken aback as I was. The fear in my Rachael faded quickly then with the farm girl handshake, and the girl seemed to warm up quickly to the ghoul's presence.

"My goodness - that's a unique name, and you smell of the good hound - my my!" Spruce chuckled, a bubbling, almost... wet sound in her breast that became a small cough to the side, giving away how long her neck actually was.

"My daughter-" Spruce snapped her head to look at me, eyes widening with delight. I smiled a little, a wobbly expression as I met that terrifying gaze"-n-needs new clothes, I was hoping that you could make something for her?" I asked"You will of course be fairly compensated for your time and materials, Ms. Spruce." Gelidia added. The ghoul chuckled again, a horrible noise.

"I would be delighted to, my dear" she said, to Sooty rather than to either myself or Gelidia"May I ask an important, somewhat impertinent question, young lady?"

"Yes of course, Miss Spruce." Rachael said dutifully"Are you... a Wolf, like your mother?" the ghoul asked, eyes tracing over the girl's figure, taking measurements I was sure. At Sooty's nod, the ghoul grinned, showing her graveyard's worth of tombstone teeth"It will definitely affect the design... though you might be pleased to know that I believe I could make an enchantment to make the clothes vanish and reappear when you change shape.

I was inspired, when I got a good look at your mother's collar and the enchantments therein." Just like that, she got the Kid on her side. Magic! The magic word for my little girl was 'magic'! Sooty was delighted, and as Ms. Spruce took more precise measurements and talked about the design of a nice set of mage robes with my little girl, I found myself relaxing. Ms.

Spruce cared even less than I did how dirty my baby was, and Sooty let her lift her arm and check her waist line, didn't seem to mind at all as the ghoul skittered all around her and inspected her. Then, Ms. Spruce asked the girl to come back tonight when she'd changed shape so she could get better measurements for that form so the clothes could reappear properly, and Sooty was taken aback.

"I... Okay, Ms. Spruce, are you sure?" She asked, clearly uncertain.

"Of course~!" the ghoul said cheerfully, and gave another bubbling chuckle.

"I have seen your mother changed, doesn't worry me, my dear. I like dogs, and you're no rampaging monster, are you dear?" She asked playfully, and... booped the tip of the kid's nose! Sooty blinked, and giggled - and it made her look five years younger as she, laughing, said"No, course not!" and it did my heart good to see. Gelidia was smiling too, and squeezed my hand in hers. I leaned over and kissed the Duchess's cheek, and the woman blushed, but didn't comment.

'I think our little girl is home.' I agree YES Things would turn out fine. Not maybe, they would. Or we'd insist. No hot head or stiff noble idiot or over-zealous knight was going to take this peace from us.