AUTHORS NOTE:

Sorry all for the delays, real life. meh.

Thank you for the author follow / favourites : kizmitkojo, adrianwelshinger, hoyoyiyu, indianajonas19

Thank you for the story follow / favourites: Bluearmada!

Archer1Eye - Sharein is still very young, and working through the fact that she's not attracted to boys at all and that boys, in fact, are gross. Oooh, will Sharein become a demigod? I don't know, we'll just have to wait and see ;-)

Readinglover3: Thanks for picking up on that incorrect chapter!

Chapter 87

? Day of High Summer? 768 n.c?

We stayed up talking even as Celestine fell and Luna rose. Too tired to cook a meal, or start a fire; we lay down between blankets in each other's arms and eventually we both fell asleep, exhausted from our delve into the old ruined temple and the loss of our friends.

Celestine had already risen when I awoke, as had Karalin. She had a small fire going and was cooking on a pan, the delicious smell of frying bacon had my stomach rumbling.

"You're awake!" She declared pleasantly when I stirred, "I'm cooking breakfast for us, Damon had some eggs packed in hay inside a box in his pack so I thought we may as well make use of them."

"Thank you," I said as I got up and made my way outside to make water.

We had started eating our breakfast when Karalin paused momentarily and whispered, "thank you."

"For what?" I asked, surprised. I had partially forgotten our conversation the previous night.

"For understanding," she said quietly, "about me."

I smiled at her, "there's no need to thank me, but I'd suggest that I'm not understanding. I cannot fathom how it felt for you, but I can try to imagine it."

"Well," Karalin said with a sad smile, "you didn't tell me that I was wrong or that I'd just have to 'man up' or that it was 'just a phase'. That's more than most."

"Are there… Others like you?" I asked.

"Yes," she answered, "I've met one other like me that had access to a girdle and is now married to a blacksmith in Castlemere with three children and two others who were born as women who are now searching for their own. Tali, the blacksmith's wife, was one who told me about the girdle. Once Father and I had taken care of the goblins that destroyed our home, he took me to see a wizard friend of his to see if there was some sort of spell that could be cast on me. He didn't know of a spell, but had heard of a person who had changed sex. It took a while to track her down, but eventually we found her. She had discovered the existence of these girdles after her aunt, who was an adventurer, had put one on. The aunt turned instantly into a man and she tried to live as a man for a few years until she couldn't do it anymore. Mithras' mistakes, we call ourselves. Either we find a girdle to fix it, or…"

Karalin stopped and went quiet.

"Well, you found a girdle at least?" I said.

"Yes.. Yes, I did," she said a little brighter, "and hopefully the other's will soon as well."

The talk about the girdles had me thinking and I ventured, "I could probably make them."

"What?" Karalin asked excitedly, looking up at me with wide eyes.

"The bit that is burnt out is the power bank," I said, "but most of the rest of the scheme seems to be intact. I can probably figure most of it out. In fact, I wonder if the Mages Guild Library has the scheme written down?"

"If you could make them," Karalin said, "that would be… incredible! The two women, who should be men, both work as marchant's guards and would each pay their year's earnings for one."

I hummed, "I'll have to study it a bit more and I'm unsure of the materials for making the belt to begin with, but it's something that I think I can do. I don't know if I'll need a year's worth of earnings for it though, but I'll see."

We finished breakfast and cleaned up; packed up our temporary camp, sorted out the packs and divided them between the horses. Once all was done we headed off, into the forest. There was a small track, not very well worn, that led from the cave towards the logging camp. It was obviously made by groups of troglodytes and Karalin had no problems following it. I, in turn, followed her.

It didn't take all that long, we entered the camp well before Celestine had reached his peak. Small lean-to's and huts dotted the clearing in the middle of the large hardwood forest, a river ran through nearby and two large sawmills had been built beside it to saw logs into planks of wood. Chickens wandered the clearing and the stink from pig styes was prevalent in the air. There looked to be about fifteen houses in the clearing, which extended a fair distance away from the homes. Men with large axes or two men operating large saws were working at chopping down trees at the edge of the clearing while others were using work horses to drag logs towards the sawmills. A few women were crouched down near the sawmills, washing clothes against the river rocks. Children ran about in various games or chores with some of the older teenagers already helping out their mothers, running water to the loggers or clearing branches off logs with smaller saws. A huge flat cart was sitting near the sawmills, half stacked with planks of wood. A single flag flew over the village, a tattered scrap that had seen much better days. It wasn't even enough for me to discern which Baronocracy we were actually in. A few loggers cheered when they first saw Karalin ride in, but fell silent when they saw me and the empty horses. A huge muscled man walked up to us, his tunic tied around his waist; sweat glistened on his skin and his whole body was covered with a thick layer of curly brown hair. His face was covered with a large beard.

"Damon?" He asked and Karalin simply shook her head.

The great giant of a man visibly deflated and sat very heavily on a tree stump. He just stared at the ground for a few moments, before blinking and looking around as if surprised that he was sitting down. A mousy looking woman hesitantly took a few steps towards him, but stopped when he moved again. He stood back up and approached us, beaming as if the past few moments had not happened at all.

"You killed them foul beasts?" He asked loudly, his voice carrying over the clearing.

"Yes," Karalin told him, trying to match his volume but coming far short, "they will not bother you again."

"They will not bother us again, very good!" He boomed and other loggers and family came out from the huts and surrounding trees, he turned around then and announced to the gathering crowd, "the troglodyte menace is no more!"

The crowd cheered. Mostly. I noticed a small group of people turn away in a group off to one side of the clearing and walk a few paces towards some wooden planks that had been driven into the ground at the end of long mounds. There would be many in the village that wouldn't be celebrating tonight, but would still be finding a measure of solace in the news.

The giant man announced, "this is cause for a celebration tonight! Put away the axes, put away the saws!"

The crowd cheered even louder and the man turned back to us, "you'll stay, won't you? We could provide you an escort to the village of Nearn in the morning."

I wondered why we would need an escort to the village, but no doubt the village was in the wrong direction and would likely be too populous to risk in any case. I looked at Karalin and she seemed somewhat torn and I guessed that it was for the same reasons I was.

"We'd love to stay for the celebration," I told him, "but an escort won't be necessary, we will be heading somewhere else in the morning."

Karalin gave me a brief smile but the logger headman just looked perplexed, "but… it's too dangerous."

I let out a loud laugh, the outrageousness of his worry was just so absurd that I couldn't help it. The idea that we would need an escort from loggers because it was dangerous in the forest was surely a joke? I noticed that nobody else was laughing though, in fact the man seemed to be starting to get a bit angry at my reaction.

"I'm… sorry," I apologised, "we've just returned from killing an entire village of troglodytes, I doubt we need protection from anything in the forest."

He calmed a little and even managed to look slightly abashed, "oh, of course… Of course," he held his hands up in warding gestures, "I just assumed that you were a prisoner of the beasts or something and perhaps…"

He fell silent so I prompted him, "perhaps?"

"Well… I just thought that perhaps the men had killed all of the troglodytes and something had happened to them on the way out," he said very quickly.

"Aaaaaactually," Karalin interjected, "Sharein here killed almost the entire village herself."

"Don't be so modest," I retorted, "your arrows killed at least half of the ones that I missed."

She blushed a little and the man beside us held up a finger timidly to interject, "Uh… I'm just going to sort out the celebrations. Um…. please make yourselves at home."

The celebration was a match for any celebration back in Easthaven, if only with slightly less variation in foods. They, of course, did not have access to the farmlands that Easthaven had. They made up for this with a variety of scavenged and hunted foods from the surrounding forests and a small selection of foodstuffs that they had brought in. A pig was quickly organised to cook on a spit, thankfully it had been slaughtered the day prior and was all ready for cooking. Beer kegs were brought out of storage and some loggers brought out simple musical instruments to play songs. We ate spit pig, roasted gora nuts, tree rat pie and a delicious suet pudding with a sugar sap sauce drizzled over the top of it which was absolutely delicious. It was all washed down with a very unique tasting bitter beer.

The man who gave me the first mug did so with a look of excited anticipation and asked, "what do you think?"

I gave him a frothy lipped smile and said, "it's good, but a little different from what I'm used to. What makes it so…"

"Bitter?" He finished for me, excitedly, "it's the flower bud of a vine that grows in the forests here about. It gives a unique fruity flavour, don't you think?"

"It would definitely be refreshing after a hard day's work," I agreed, somewhat. I wasn't quite sold on the idea, but it did make for an interesting and unique beer.

As the celebration began to calm down, near to the time Luna was high up in the sky, the headman found us and directed us to a small hut nearby that we might use for the night. It took a short while to move all of our packs into the shack, but we both felt happier once we had done so. There was something about this village that made us wonder if we were entirely safe.