—OOO—
Disclaimer: MCA/Universal/RenPics own all copyrights to everything related to 'Xena: Warrior Princess' and I have no rights to them.
—OOO—
A Xena/Gabrielle campfire story. Gabrielle is a little uneasy and irritable with her heart mate.
—OOO—
'The Rising of the Moon'
'What are you doing?"
"Wha'cha mean, Gab?"
"That!" Gabrielle was standing for no nonsense as she gazed at the supposed fire in the little clearing where they had set up camp for the night. "Here I am searching for brushwood for ages and you're piddling around with a few stones! Where's the fire?"
"I've just been giving the horses their meal, Gabrielle." Xena was defensive. After all, even she couldn't do everything at once. "Gi'me a chance!"
For answer Gabrielle merely pursed her lips and threw the handful of dry twigs and small bits of wood down by the side of the unmade fire and stepped over to sit on a nearby moss covered boulder.
"Well, get on with it! I'm beginning to freeze my butt off here!"
Evening had come on quickly, as normal at these high altitudes; and the nearby mountains, with their snow-covered ridges and peaks, added to the coldness. They had camped by the edge of a small wood of firs alongside one of the many streams racing merrily off the shoulders of the foothills. Xena had been somewhat suspicious of her friend's attitude for several hours and present circumstances began to make her believe it may be going to be a long night.
"Trekking into the mountains to go over the Pass instead of taking the ferry round the isthmus." Gabrielle's tone was astringent. "Tell me again, why are we doing this?"
"I know the way, Gabrielle!" Xena spoke soothingly. "Why spend money on a sea voyage when a few days on horseback will see us there easily?"
"Yeah! Yeah!" Gabrielle's natural love of a bargain told her it was good to save money in this way; but she was by no means pacified. When she was in a foul mood anything was grist to her mill.
"Whad'cha think of that merchant back in Darhassus?" She suddenly changed the subject as she watched Xena kneeling arranging the hearthstones for the fire. "12 drachmas for three blankets and a few odds and ends! By the Gods! I could have kicked his b—"
"You hit his knuckles with your staff!" Xena glanced over her shoulder at her friend sitting with her chin in her hands, musing on past trials. "You nearly broke his hand! I don't think we'll be able to go back to Darhassus anytime soon. Another village off our visiting list!"
"He deserved it, Xena!" Gabrielle was unsympathetic. "Trying to squeeze hard-earned money out of people; and sell rubbish as well! If I may have accidentally brushed his fingers with my staff I'm sure it was only an accident!"
"A well-aimed accident!" Xena spoke admiringly. It had, after all, been a swift reaction to the merchant's raised fist when he heard what Gabrielle had begun to say about his ancestors.
"Well! Who needs to go back to a flea-bitten one-horse mire like that, anyway!" Gabrielle tossed her head, letting her long hair swing around and catch the light of the growing campfire in a way that made Xena hold her breath for a moment.
"I caught us a rabbit for supper!" Xena wondered if appealing to her loved helpmate's baser instincts would have any effect.
"You can cook it, then!" Gabrielle wasn't falling for such an obvious trap. "I'm on holiday till we're over these damned mountains and back in civilisation again!"
"Yeah. Of course, sweetness!" Xena tried to inject a placating tone into her words, but the small figure on the other side of the fire obviously had other things on her mind. As Xena worked she glanced up into the darkening sky where the new Moon was riding high. A frown crossed her brow, as if she were working out a problem of some sort; then she quickly returned to making up the fire with the wood Gabrielle had scavenged nearby.
"What's with those heavy boots you've got on the packhorse, by the way, Xena?" Gabrielle's aggrieved voice still vibrated with passion and Xena hunched closer over the fire as she recognised her ploy had been discovered.
"Boots, Gabrielle?"
"Don't make with that innocent tone with me, Xena!" Gabrielle looked sharply over the flames at her friend. "Traipsing over the snow-covered mountains is one thing. But I'll be damned if I paddle through the Boeotian Marshes on the other side too! You know as well as I do that we can head East over the plains and reach Pyrhinus that way!"
"But it'll take two days longer, darling!" Xena sometimes spoke without thinking of the consequences.
"Then let it!" Gabrielle threw her arms out in a gesture of despair. "I am not trudging through a swamp up to my 'you know what' in mud and leeches just so you can break the record from Darhassus to Pyrhinus! So think again, Warrior Woman!"
"OK—OK ! We'll go the long way!" Xena tried to be placatory. "It don't matter."
This offhand remark was just about the worst reply she could possibly have made to a young woman in a delicate state of nerves; as she realised before the words were out of her mouth. Retribution was swift.
"Oh! Oh! It don't matter!" Gabrielle stood up and put her hands on her hips; her flat belly and muscles gleaming in the fire's reflecting light. Xena was almost as transfixed by this vision of loveliness as the words that now issued from her loved one's lips. "Of course it don't matter about my comfort, as long as someone who will remain nameless can drag her friends through Hades and Tarturus just so she gets her own way! Ha!"
With this diatribe completed Gabrielle stomped over to the pile of gear at the edge of the camp and returned with an armful of blankets; one of which she threw unceremoniously towards her companion.
"I'm sleeping on this side of the fire: you can sleep on that side!"
—OOO—
An hour later, with the Moon higher in the sky and shedding a cold light over the white landscape, Gabrielle had not been mollified by a hot meal. The two were now lying in their blankets on either side of the strongly burning fire; though its warmth did not seem to be percolating to the inward feelings of at least one of the reclining forms.
"Warlords! Outlaws! Deadbeats! Horse-thieves! Power-crazed Tyrants!"
"What's your point?" Xena was really tired and some part of her natural caution had weakened, otherwise she would never have made such a foolish remark, only serving to add fuel to the already raging fire.
"My point, dearest," Gabrielle spoke cuttingly from beneath her blankets, where she was beginning to regret not letting Xena cuddle up to her for the night. "was just that we seem to spend all our lives and most of our days with the scum of the earth; including some of the Gods! And I ain't happy! Not by a long way!"
Xena forbore to reply as she silently prayed that Gabrielle, who was still talking though now in a flamboyant and descriptive manner, would have the sense not to actually name any of those Gods who were getting on her wick. If any of them, one in particular, heard her now expletive riddled imagery of some of the Gods she had known Xena could see difficulties ahead.
"What about spending a week in Pyrhinus, darling." Xena cut into the flow, hoping to check a possible storm. "We can hit the bazaars, and go swimming in the sea. It's warm water on the other side of the isthmus, you know."
This had the effect of steering Gabrielle's thoughts off the topic at hand onto another, just as strongly embedded in her feelings of the moment.
"That depends on how much money we have, don't it?" Gabrielle hunched over in her blanket to gaze at the long shadowy form on the other side of the fire. "Money, you know, Xena! It's made up of silver and gold coins! People take it for services rendered! At least those with any sense do! So what happens when a Warrior Princess and her lowly companion help a city, let's say 2 weeks ago, to fight off an entire army of cutthroats and are offered an enormous reward? No! No! Don't interrupt! I'll tell you what happened! The Warrior Princess in question, taking no notice of her lowly companion's supplications, tells the Elders there's no need and walks off with her head held high, and holes in her pockets! And holes in mine, too. Do you know the current state of our finances is exactly 8 drachmas and a handful of assorted bronze coins of no value whatever! How are we going to have a holiday on that, eh! Warrior Princess!"
Xena had been looking high into the sky where the arched gleam of the new Moon sailed serene in deep blue infinity. Another calculation had only ended in dejection and she was starting to feel self-pity coming on. Another day! Two days? Longer?
"We'll be OK." She spoke tenderly, with a catch in her voice; she really wanted Gabrielle to be as happy as she could possibly be. "Remember, we're going to be staying with our friend Lady Helena. We'll have fun with her and her family."
"Yeah, I suppose." Gabrielle was somewhat mollified by this prospect. She loved Helena, as did Xena; but there were still important points taking up her thoughts. "But that, dearest, all depends on whether we knock Kribanus the warlord on the head when we reach his camp on the other side of the mountains, doesn't it?"
"Yeah. But we can do that easily." Xena chuckled at the thought of action to come. "Why, with your help it'll take all of an hour and a half to see him taken care of! He! He!"
"I'm glad you're happy, warrior!" Gabrielle's tone was still emphatically not pleased. "Kicking butt! Knocking people's heads together! Whirling your chakram around! All the usual things! Another happy day kicking the doowhiddly out of everyone! And then we go on to whoop it up with the locals! Just great!"
"Come on, Gabrielle," Xena was needled into a truly incautious reply. "We'll need a break before we—"
Gabrielle caught the sudden pause in her lover's voice and jumped to the correct conclusion.
"Before what?" She rose to lean on her arm for a moment before lying back to wrap the blanket more warmly around her. "I know what it is. You're thinking we can go on to Coriythia after we've had a few days fun with our friends. And what's in Coriythia? Why! If it isn't the dreaded evil outlaw Polycreides and his trusty army of jerks! That's what you're thinking, ain't it, Warrior Princess?"
"Well—"
"That's all I need." Gabrielle's cup of complaints was now fully charged, and she meant to drain it to the dregs. "Fight one Warlord. Have a holiday. Fight another Warlord. Have another holiday. What then? No! Le'me guess-!"
"Come on, Gabrielle! Hades, we've gotta earn our bread, ain't we? This is what we do!"
"Ha!" Gabrielle had her friend just where she wanted, on the point of her sais. "Earn our bread. Get paid! That'd be great. If it ever actually happened! Why, I tell you, Xena, the first time we're offered good recompense in the next few weeks, and you actually accept with a smile and a thank you, I'll cook our meals and give you back-rubs for a month. Ha!"
With this disgusted reply to what she obviously deemed an unlikely scenario Gabrielle turned over and pulled the blankets over her chin, finally at a loss for words.
Xena had been lying with her head supported by her arm as she listened to the small figure on the other side of the waning fire; but now she lay back pulling the blanket round her shoulders. Above, surrounded by deep blue depths of infinity, the Moon continued in its course. For a moment before falling asleep she looked calculatingly at the white orb, wondering why it didn't move with greater speed.
But the resplendent cold silent Moon took no notice of her.
The End
—OOO—