ALS: According to my recent calculations Raistlin's plotline starts in chapter 10

Chickens: You're right, pickpocketing will occur. Nicknames, too.

And now, enjoy the kender and the bathtub

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Part 5 - Reflections

As soon as he was gone, Nima began to undress. She struggled with the robe for a while until she managed to get it off. Only when she was just in her -his- underwear, she realized that this was going to be an embarrassing experience. For the first time it really hit her that she was not only a human but had a different gender now. She considered not taking the bath and therefore not having to deal with this. Nevertheless she had to admit that sooner or later she would be confronted with the fact of being a male now. Suddenly a solution sprang up. She would do everything in a hurry, close her eyes, jump into the bath and just look elsewhere until she was dressed again. Yeah, that was a good plan. The plan worked until Nima realized that getting into a bathtub was very tricky when you had your eyes closed. While climbing into it, she hit her left knee on the wooden object.

Finally Nima made it into the water, a curse on her lips. She cursed again since the water was really hot. The first seconds she felt like a crayfish in her mother's cooking cauldron until she had adjusted to the temperature. Then she waited for relaxation to come. She waited several minutes but didn't feel relaxed a bit. Instead she felt tensed, embarrassed and... very much curious. What did the guy look like? Did he have the strange skin color all over his body? How was he built? Was he old? Or young? Should she dare a quick glance? Just very quick? Maybe just with one eye? Why not? He wouldn't know when he had his body back and at the moment nobody was here to object. Oh well...

Without further ado she opened one eye and peered down at herself, feeling her cheeks blush.

'Boy, am I skinny!' was her first thought. Gee, this man was really slender. Did he ever eat? No wonder he was sick. But the golden shimmer was everywhere as far as she could see that right now. According to the shape of his hands and arms, the man was in his late twenties or early thirties. She left out other parts of the body which she didn't want to investigate closely right now. What she had seen so far was freaky enough.

After a while Nima decided she had cooked herself long enough and reached for a towel. Some mindful soul, probably Dalamar, had deposited one next to the tub. It was large, soft and perfectly suitable for wrapping herself into it. Having finished the wet part, she investigated the room further. In a drawer she found the object she was looking for. A mirror. After having studied chest and arms, she wanted to see her new face. The face said much about a person.

Nima took the polished silver plate and held it in front of her face. Her reflection made her gasp. She looked like a nightmare. The hair was white like Hrongars. The face was golden just like the rest. Dark rings encircled the eyes. The lips where thin and pale, but those eyes... those eyes staring at her through the mirror where somehow inhuman. The pupils were shaped like hourglasses and the look of them made her shiver. She had the feeling of her very soul being sucked into the infinite depths behind those hourglasses. What had this guy done that he looked like this? She blinked several times until she got used to the sight in the mirror. At least a little bit. When this guy was in his early thirties, he shouldn't look like this. The haggard look of his face and the white hair made him look ten years older. She could nearly see his face aging in the mirror. Oh, boy, that Raistin-mage didn't live very healthy, didn't he?

"Somebody should do something about this." Nima pondered loudly and put the mirror down. She yawned. It was about time to go to her quarters and have a chat with the pillow.

When she was hurrying along dark floors and shadowy stairways, she had no doubts where the sickness she had felt when Dalamar had found her had come from. How could you not get sick, when you lived in a draughty and dusky place like that? People needed to go out in the sun, and they needed a proper nutrition! If she met the real Raistlin she would have to talk with him about that.

Eventually she stopped thinking about the mage's unhealthy way of life, but only after she had crawled into his bed and sleep had overwhelmed her.