Chapter Text
“Weave the nettle, weave the vine,
Knot the thread and twist the twine.
But weave with care and weave with dread,
For all you weave shall bind your thread.”
—Weaver’s Rhyme
Dawn brought the screams.
I was tending the goats at clearing’s edge. The morning had been quiet, the air thick with moss and the faint sulfur tang of nearby hot springs I had never been allowed to visit. The forest is unkind to girls, Mother used to say. "Marry strong, and one day your husband might take you."
The task was familiar. Scatter feed. Keep them out of the trees. And the pumpkin patch. My fingers brushed the coarse fur of a kid.
They tore through the stillness then.
Everyone ran in different directions. Sellen's brothers fell over each other. Thatched roofs vanished into flame. Gnolls. Frenzied eyes and fur matted with old blood. The beastmen rampaged through our lives and I ran. Heart pounding. Then a clawed hand seized my arm from behind. The cries of my goats blended with those of my kin as darkness took me.
I woke curled in the dirt. A searing pain pulsed in my cheek. The canopy had swallowed the sky, leaving only scraps of light. At least half a day must have passed. Mika was there, trembling as she hugged her knees, staring into nothing. Sellen beside her, face badly bruised, glaring defiance even in defeat. Sera was there too, her sweet laughter rarely resting longer than a breath, now a face of silent dread. We were branded. A zigzag etched deep into our faces.
Next to us were our goats, some of them. They bore that same tribal mark. To the Gnolls, critter or human, we were the same, equally owned. Mud walls and lashed branches caged us in. The four of us, childhood friends, had taken turns tending this herd. Now, stripped and penned like critters ourselves, the irony cut deeper than the cold.
The forest’s shroud pressed close, its mossy silence broken only by guttural snarls and high-pitched cackles as shadowy silhouettes flickered wildly in the firelight. Dozens of them. Tall. Hunched. Savage. Shifting in and out of sight between tents of skin. Decorated with trophies. Half rotted, mostly bone.
Mika sobbed silently through the night. Tears, snot, shaking, but too terrified to let out a whimper. Sera held her, murmuring soothing words. Her thumb found her teeth between each sentence. She hadn't been biting her nails like that since the time her mother fell ill. Sera, caring for others while chewing away her own anxiety.
“The monsters made Mika watch as they murdered Jen and Iver”, Sellen told me, her voice steadied by hate. She was the youngest among us, yet somehow the stronger one. We used to tease her that she was destined for a life of rootless adventure, not fit for a wife. She was convinced we could find an escape. “I am sure of it,” she whispered to herself.
“Look. Their watch is irregular. We can outsmart them.”
Days bled into a haze of hunger and dread. Then they took her. How she fought, bare feet skidding in the mud, wrists raw against the crude rope, spitting every curse. I had heard whispers of Gnoll savagery, but this went beyond butchery. It reeked of ceremony. They had her kneeling like a festival bride. They drenched her with cold water, roughly scraped the dirt from her skin, then slathered her trembling form with oils and herbs.
The light flickered on her. Glistening as she was brought onto the fire. Marinated. The crackling sound as the monsters seemed to hold their breath. Then her first scream tore the night, raw and feral. Another followed, then another, each shriek rising in pitch, until they melted with the hiss and pop of blistering flesh. I gagged on the stench of burning hair, foul beyond anything I had known.
They snarled and snapped at each other for the fattier pieces. One barked, "Krag!" plunging its claws into her thigh, tearing free a dripping hunk of flesh. Forest Mother had embraced her by then. I hope… I’m sure of it.
"Morr!" another followed, shoving its filthy talons into Sellen's mouth and tearing out her tongue. I could only retch, unable to look away, stomach churning at the wet horror of it.
Yet those guttural sounds. “Krag”… Thigh? Meat? “Morr”… Her poor tongue? They would stick with me.
The Gnoll who took her tongue stood up, commanding attention from the others. A large female with a toothy grin. One ear missing. It brought her tongue next to its mouth. Started gesturing, waving it obscenely. Gibbering loudly. High pitched, with a rhythm almost like... human speech. Sellen’s curses. Then her screams. Laughter erupted. Hysterical and foul. They were mocking her.
For days it lingered in my mind. Not the sights or the smell. I could block that out. But the sounds. Speech… Those two inhuman words. Scorched there as flesh on flame.
Hunger gnawed as fear did, my body wasting in that stinking pen. One dusk, a lean Gnoll lingered, his voice sharper than the others, cutting through their growls as he bartered over dried pixie flesh. His amber eyes met mine between the stakes. Clutching the barrier, I rasped, “Krag,” pointing to a scrap of goat meat by his feet. He sniffed suspiciously, but I pressed on. “Krag,” tapping my chest.
“Morr?” he snorted, tilting his head as if weighing my intent, then kicked the scrap toward me with a low grunt. “Morr!” he barked again, insistently. Panic tightened my chest. Did he want my… tongue?
No, that made no sense. Then realization struck like a spark. Language. Could it be my language he wanted? Sylvan, the forest tongue.
Our deal took root. I was moved to the pen with the milking goats, away from my friends. Every night he would return. He would point, fire, knife, goat. And I’d answer, “flame”, “blade”, “herd”. His growls mangled the words, but he paid in scraps. A boiled root, a marrow bone, a dead squirrel. No kindness. Just dealings. “Trade” he rasped once, ambition glinting like a copper blade. Each word I gave—“bone”, “skin”—bought me another day to map my escape. As snores rumbled through the trees, I drew lines in the dirt. The river’s bend, gaps in the thorns. I thought of Sellen, what she would have done. I’d run when the chance came. Free Sera and Mika. Steal a flint knife to cut the ropes. Forest Mother guide me.
From across the camp, I watched a Gnoll approach my friends with a bundle of blister nettles. Accustomed to their cruelty, I braced for another torturous display. This time I was wrong. The Gnoll tossed the nettles into their pen, then held up a crude net, the kind used in their pixie hunts, I would later learn. Sera, weaver’s daughter, understood immediately. With skilled precision, she used her nails to strip away the blistering hairs and began separating the fibers. In the span of two days she had turned fiber into cordage, then cordage into a fine net, far superior to the crude one they had shown her. Satisfied, perhaps impressed, with her work, our captors soon brought more nettles. Enough to occupy her for at least half a moon.
Sera began to teach Mika. Her big sisterly way. Surely concerned for Mika's safety if she couldn't contribute. Always caring for us. Mika learned quickly despite her meager state. But it was as I feared. Through this act of kindness, Sera had condemned herself. When Mika presented her first finished net, the Gnoll grinned.
Hunger had yet to rob Sera of her curves. And the beasts saw meat. Mika, skin and bones, tried to intervene. They wrapped her up in the net of her own making. Left her like that the whole night. No strength left in her arms to untangle herself.
Poor, poor Sera. Her vacant gaze met mine as she was dragged out along with a couple of goats. They put up more of a fight than she did. The fire flared again, ember and smoke coiling into the dusk. I could turn from the stench, but there was no escape from Mika’s cries, no longer silent, now demanding to be heard by all.
Two full days passed without language exchange. As hunger and unease tightened their grip, I realized how deeply I relied on this lifeline. Then there he was, the aspiring trader, with a steaming bowl in his hand. The stew smelled rich. Perhaps suspiciously so, had the hunger not clouded my senses. I ate greedily. The uneven chunks of meat were tender, yielding with a soft, almost buttery resistance. It melted into a sweet savoriness, coating my mouth in a way that was both welcome and unsettling. Familiar. Wrong.
A sickening knot tightened in my stomach as my teeth scraped against bone. Small and delicate.
I spat.
The tip of a toe? No, that’s a nail.
A fingernail. Human.
My throat seized. The thought of Sera's hands. The gentle fingers that would braid my hair. Point at songbirds we would mimic. Trembling, I lifted it into the dim light.
The tip of a thumb. The nail, biting marks. Chewed.
Bile surged, the world spinning as realization struck. I had consumed my friend. Devoured the hands that had once comforted me.
The Gnoll’s amber eyes glinted with knowing cruelty.
He knew.
In that moment, I understood. I was no longer human. Even if I escaped, there was nowhere left to return.
Survival became a detached endurance. It had to.
Gruk, as I now knew him, took me under his protection. He draped a small pelt across my shoulders, stiff with grime and reeking of smoke. Spotted. Gnoll. A macabre thing that did little for my modesty or fending off the cold. But when the worst chills hit, he would grant me a place by the fire. And as he ate, he would sometimes throw me fatty scraps. A stark improvement compared to life in the pen. Clinging to this privilege, I kept on teaching words, now with renewed effort. My voice still trembled as I shaped sounds into meaning, but less so with each day. It was becoming a routine. A strangely comforting one.
“Hunt”, “Flee” and “Bird” for a pheasant leg.
“Copper”, “Stone” and “Snake” for a foot of roasted Rootscale.
“Rain”, “Drink” and “River” for a bath…
I remember the time he attempted the word “Fair”. Something about the very concept of it intrigued him. A grin emerged as he looked around, then pointed at larger Gnolls, one by one. “Fair kill! Fair kill! Fair kill! Fair kill…” What was this? An attempt to show off? The bewilderment in their gazes. Oblivious to his bold threats pronounced in misused Sylvan. His strange attempt at bravado. To impress… Me?
A chuckle escaped, surprising myself. The once familiar sensation felt new… rediscovered. Then, dread. He had heard me.
Head tilted, eyes fixed on me, unblinking. I held my breath, bracing for violence.
Then a cackle broke the silence. Not the usual laughter of his kind. For a moment, it sounded like he was mimicking me. Then the sound spread, and the camp erupted into its usual hysteric giggling.
Was that the first human laughter they had ever heard? Shame simmered as I pondered the question.
Days later, as another language exchange was coming to an end, his claw pointed at me. “No fair kill, Gruk…” I quickly countered, having grown numb to the joke. But this was not it. Frustration tensed in his face, and he pointed again. Repeatedly, demandingly. I hesitated, confused. I had already taught him “critter”, “meat”, “human”, “woman”. What else could he want to know? Then I thought I recognized the intent in his savage expression. I reluctantly taught him “pet?”
He seemed to savor the word, repeating it in a low growl. “Pet”. I felt sick. But a faint, selfish hope also shimmered. Would this new title mean more food? Safety? That night, I came to learn the meaning of the word as he saw it.
As I was stacking firewood, I heard her cry pierce the air. Mika! I turned towards the pen. Two vile cubs had gathered, long spearlike sticks in hand, poking through the gaps. Without thought, I ran towards them.
Her face was red, eyes teary. Bleeding from scratches on her abdomen and neck where they had poked her. Monsters. But they were smaller than me. “Nak!” I demanded, as I tried to yank away the stick pressed against her belly. Too strong, even their young.
I stared directly at him. A blank beast stared back. Then a sudden stillness revealed the sound of the wind, whispering between the trees. I looked around. Eyes on me, across the camp, alight in the darkness. One stood up. Ear missing. Her. The one who stole Sellen’s tongue. Their mother?
Gruk’s bulk blocked my sight. Posturing as he stepped towards us. The cubs’ attention turned to him, muscles tense, breath held. He grabbed one by the upper arm, then hurled it across the ground with a force I hadn’t imagined him capable of. The other one had already fled, whimpering towards his mother.
He had come to save me? His pet…
Then shock. A sharp pain in my scalp as he dragged me by the hair, towards the dying fire.
He tore the pelt off my shoulders. Then he took me. There was no rage in the act, no understandable bestial fury. This was worse. It was methodical. It was ownership. His claws dug into my waist, as my hands and knees sank into the damp earth. A sudden sting. A piece of flint pierced my knee. I tried to focus on it. A different pain. Safe, not stretching. Leering cackles from all around. The cruel, uncaring rhythm of it. It felt like a small eternity.
Then he turned me over. Indifferently, without even looking. He was staring directly at her. At the mother. The rhythm slowed as his amber eyes turned to me. He watched my face with a flat, assessing curiosity. Like he was gauging the durability of a new tool. His face moved close as he went deeper. The whole time, his breath stank of scorched meat and rot. I made no sound. Focus on the other pain.
Staring past his matted fur into the twisting smoke, I detached. Slowly retreating to a small, cold corner deep inside my skull.
When he was done, I curled into a ball. Staring across the dirt, into the black woods. I still felt the camp’s eyes on my pitiful form. A wet warmth on my back, then the side of my face. A stream. Acrid.
Pooled in my ear, muffling their cackles. Marked with his scent, his claim was now complete. He tossed me a greasy hunk of meat. I did not eat it. I lay still. The grime on my skin, a separate layer from the new filth that coated me. I was not a partner in a trade. I was not even a critter to be fattened for slaughter. I was a thing to be used.
A thing…
That night, perhaps I had been a word… Or a phrase in an unspoken language I could not fathom.
I slept there, until woken by the fleeting mercy of heavy morning rain. From the pen, Mika’s stare bore a new, flint-edged contempt. She had watched. I looked towards her, and in her eyes, I saw my own damnation reflected.
Gruk approached, holding the pelt he tore off me the night before. He squatted, then gestured for me to put it on. I hesitated. “Killed this one. I did,” his voice low and guttural, referring to the pelt. There was no threat in his manner. This knowledge was supposed to console me.
Over the moons that followed, slowly but surely, I noticed his standing rise within the pack. He moved among the others with cunning ambition, bartering in their crude tongue. Rough gestures and snarls. Beast skins, bundles of dire boar tusks, shimmering trinkets. The spoils of his scheming accumulated, as did his Sylvan vocabulary.
The wound on my knee wouldn’t heal right. I tried not to pick at the scab. Most days I didn’t. Peeling it off revealed a fresh wound. Every time, somehow redder, more moist.
For a while, I was allowed to roam. They knew I had nowhere to escape to. I found new ways to make myself useful. Collecting nettles for Mika. Mushrooms and mosses for the goats. I found clay, and knew how to make pottery, though crude, with no proper oven. He gifted me a roasted squirrel. Big juicy one. Something to savor, out of sight. Couldn’t eat where Mika would see…
At the edge of camp, the one-eared female found me. Intent on claiming my meal, I thought. No choice. Gaze downward, I extended it towards her towering form. Slowly. Submissively. A jolt, as it was slapped from my hands, landing in the moss before me. As I looked up, talons enveloped my sight. She grabbed my face, lifting me off the ground. Claws digging into my temples and cheek.
Crushing.
Then she threw me onto the roots. Breath knocked out, I wet myself there. She sniffed the air with a look of pure disgust. Bared her toothy maw, leaning forward.
A whimper. Like someone stepped on a hound’s tail. An axe planted in the back of her skull. Not flint, copper. Iver’s? Gruk’s stash… Her form crumbled to reveal another Gnoll behind her. A young male, smaller. Someone I had seen dealing with Gruk days earlier. I think he made a point out of disregarding my presence, gone as soon as he had dislodged the axe. No ceremony. The She-Gnoll’s head lay where my urine had pooled, tongue lolling out, punctured by her own teeth. Her jaw’s death clench. This was the beast that had so defiled Sellen. Brave little Sellen.
Soon after, Gruk set up his own tent. Kept me there, with his stash. No more straw and mud. Skins and pelts now. Soft. But this feeling of relief was strangled a few days later, when he brought in the vile little things. Her two cubs, the ones who had tormented Mika. “No!” I screamed at him. He shrugged.
Was it their custom to take in orphans like so? Or were they simply a new addition to his stash? I could only ponder. He let me keep my sleeping spot next to him, but the filthy things were there now. Every night, tormenting me with their presence and stench from their place near the entry. He wouldn’t let me wander the camp to collect scraps anymore. And most of what he brought me the little beasts would steal. Pry from my hands, cackling. Why did he refuse to intervene? Cruel.
Had he tired of me?
Hunger gnawed again. I was starving. And as the language trades became less frequent, so did my morsels. Then one day he found another use for my mouth. And another way to sustain me it turned out. I learned the workings of it. The salty, fleeting warmth took the edge off the gnawing. On most days, the only relief. Whenever I found the strength, he rarely refused. The cubs’ gleeful cackling was the worst of it.
But when they slept, I discovered a sickening sanctuary. I now knew how to use the roof of my mouth and apply the pressure just so. My own pace. His pulse intensified, loud and heavy, each beat a jolt echoing inside my head. Thump. Thump. I counted them. It was a rhythm, something to hold onto. A song for someone who had forgotten how to sing. No gagging. His snore skipped a breath. Control.
Then the release. A mouthful. Another. Hands cupped under my chin to collect the excess. No waste. It kept me alive. The price of another day. Until he left.
I had not taught him “goodbye”. I don’t think they have a concept for it. It was his first trading mission, out of territory. Eager to put his newfound language ability to the test, I imagined. But his sudden absence filled me with dread. What would I eat? Who would protect me? With hesitant vigilance, I snuck out of the tent to scavenge. I was met with disdainful looks from the other Gnolls, increasingly perplexed by the nature of my relationship with the trader, no doubt. To my surprise, no one tried to harm me.
Instead, I was found by fever. Seeping into my bones. Blurring my vision and clouding my thoughts. It was the wound in my knee. Soon after he had left, it began to fester. Days blended together, marked only by the dull throb spreading upward, thumb by agonizing thumb. My leg darkened. Then each breath became shallow, labored, until I lay shivering, welcoming death, yet terrified of its slow, inevitable approach. Scared. Oh, so scared.
Fraying.
A splash of cold water yanked me from fevered dreams. I sputtered awake, blinking weakly at Gruk towering over me. I was outside. The tribe was roaring around us. He had returned after half a moon. A Gnoll trader, triumphant. Crouched miserably behind him, three new captives huddled, their hollow eyes reflecting the flickering firelight. They were bound by a strange, heavy rope made of connected copper rings. On the ground beside him, at least two dozen copper-tipped spears. “Goblin work,” he said, pride in his amber eyes. “Fair.”
As he turned toward the fire, my breath caught. Shriveled corpses of pixies bulged grotesquely within one of Sera’s delicate nets. Now a grim satchel slung across his shoulder. He brewed something. Then, returning to me, he held out a flint-carved cup. “Tea” he grunted, “Good”. Trembling, I raised the cup to my cracked lips. A pungent sweetness invaded my nostrils, thick and nauseating. I drank obediently. A shudder, nearly gagging as tiny bones and leathery, boiled skin bumped against my tongue. A piece of wing lodged briefly between my teeth, crunching like a dry leaf. By noon the following day, my fever had faded, strength seeping back into my limbs.
He came to me then. To his own tent. Yet it felt like a visit.
He lowered his massive head as he entered. Deliberate movements, almost clumsy, as if he was performing a ritual he had only practiced in his mind. His amber gaze fixed on mine with an expression I had not yet learned to interpret. He held one hand behind his back, and for the first time, I saw not just menace in his posture, but a strange, rigid tension.
He sat down, then slowly brought his hand toward me, claws uncurling for the reveal. I could not tell what it was. Hair? Attached to something. He held it out. I took it, because I had learned to take what was given.
A white stone. Small. Round. Hard and smooth. From it flowed a blond lock. Long and lush.
This was human.
…
It was Sera’s.
His eyes. Sincere, expectant in a way. Breath held. Not another cruel joke? Not a torment.
No, a gift.
I inspected the base, polished slick and cool against my palm. It had been expertly shaped, tapering to a smooth, rounded tip, then swelling before narrowing again to a slender neck. Pretty. But this wasn’t a stone. It was her bone. Somehow, I knew.
Strange comfort overpowered deep disgust. I clutched it to my chest, my gaze returning to his. Why? They couldn’t have made this here. How?
“Goblin work. Best. For You.”
I think I might have smiled…
I could barely process the thought before his hand found the back of my neck. Shoved down. Arse up. My body braced. But this time was different. Instead, the maddening words.
“Your tail. Put in. Complete, then we proud.”
For a moment, my mind went white.
No.
No, no, no. Don’t do that to Sera.
A roar tore from my throat, louder than anything I had ever heard.
“Monster!”
Not a word he had been taught.
He recoiled. Bewildered. Shocked? “You monster! Don’t put her inside of me!” My hysteria was a blur. I remember hurling his stash at him. Anything within reach. A pestle. A tusk. The wax lamp. For a brief moment, the savage beast, the great trader, he cowered, shielding his face.
“She is not a tail! I am not a critter! I am not a Gnoll!”
“I am human…”
He stood up. Rebuffed, but tense. Anger brewing. He reached towards her. I clutched it, baring my teeth.
He hesitated. Made his exit then, tearing the tent flap aside as if it were my flesh. Left me to sob with what was left of my friend. Surely he would have to kill me now. Was this the time to run? I didn’t have it in me. And the punishment never came. When he returned that night, an unspoken deal already seemed to linger in the smoky air. The hysteria. My objection. None of that had happened. He was the owner, ever unchallenged. I was his pet. One that he needed. Was this bestial affection? A silly thought. He had tasted the spoils afforded by a broken Sylvan tongue. He knew he had much to learn still. Utility. That’s all I was.
But Sera was with me now. And I was with her. I would sleep with her in my hand or tucked near my chin. Dreams of her dancing with pixies, a rainbow of colors circling her in the air. The wave of her golden locks, glinting in the sun. Her warm loving laughter. The High Bloom that never ends, Forest Mother’s peaceful embrace. Sellen was there too, playfully grasping at the fluttering Fae. The girl who spent half her childhood in the Shimmer Petal thicket, convinced she would see one. Joked she would catch it and make it her friend. After a while, Mother appeared. Holding a bowl of candied berries… And Father… Faces I hadn’t dared picture since our capture. When I woke I would braid Sera’s hair as she once did mine. Adorned it with a precious feather from her favorite songbird. I felt less alone since then.
Yet the price of my twisted bond with Gruk had been steep, exacted in shame festering beneath my ribs. And in Mika's eyes, piercing me with silent accusations sharper than flint. New captives, their defiance still raw, spat curses as I passed. “Gnoll’s whore! Wendigo!” one rasped venomously, voice hoarse from screaming. I convinced myself it was survival. A bargain struck so I could outlast this nightmare. But the lie was rotting inside me, half-forgotten but never gone, staining my soul with every breath.
I tried to occupy my mind. I had to. After tending to Gruk this morning, I tended the goat pens. Wiped the corner of my mouth. With half the She-Gnolls in heat, enough to fill the belly for once. That should keep him out of their hair for now... The absurdity of this existence wasn’t lost on me, tasked with milking beast and critters alike. I stroked her coarse fur as I scattered the mushrooms I collected yesterday. My presence still calms her. Not a kid anymore. Must have been eight moons since... Soon she will give birth to two, maybe three new ones. The workings of critter rearing are mostly lost on the Gnolls, although Gruk sees its value. Amidst the despair, I had come to find a tiny comfort in the routine. The goats need me. And Mika needs their milk.
The thought was interrupted by a tension in the camp. Then the drum. “Rokk’ol!” Their word for us.
Hope flickered. Slowly growing as the shadows stretched.
The camp held its breath.
Dusk brought their battle cries. A band of Rootless stormed the camp. Humans, but wild, cloaked in furs, faces smeared with ash, eyes burning with feral determination. Blades flashed like lightning as chaos erupted around me, Gnolls falling in sprays of blood, their snarls blending with Sylvan shouts and clashing copper. Gruk fled in the confusion, abandoning me to cower alone in his tent, heart hammering with a desperate, confused hope.
Then came a brief, unnatural silence. A moment of breathless pause, filled only with the crackle of flames and the gasps of the dying. Suddenly, jubilant cries erupted from across the pens, as the captives realized their liberation. Voices I recognized sobbed with relief and gratitude, and my heart lurched painfully. I stood up. Hesitating. My legs trembling. Silently begging the Forest Mother that I might share in this impossible mercy.
As they shattered the crude walls, freeing Mika and the other surviving women, I stumbled out into the smoke-hazed camp. Throat dry. Hands raised in desperate surrender. Tears carving streaks through layers of grime, I begged. But their eyes met mine with contempt, faces hardening into masks of disgust. They did not see a captive in me, only a traitor. The filthy pelt draping my shoulders a damning mark. It mattered not what I pleaded.
Mika doesn’t utter a word. Doesn’t flinch, as their rough hands drag me to the pyre. Branches piled high with dry moss. A man lifts my arms. Binding, high and tight with the stake before me. Breath by breath, rope coils down from my wrists. Reaches my elbows. Squeezing. I can’t feel my hands anymore. My forearms and the stake are one now. Their leader steps forward, holding a torch. Rugged, but shaven, unlike the others. Handsome. Flame reflects in armor. Shining copper work. No. Iron. Like nothing I’ve seen. Beautiful.
His attention diverts from me.
“Look what I found in her tent.”
No! Don’t touch Sera.
“What is that? Some kind of trophy?”
“No, look. Must be her own hair. Same color.”
“Look at the root… Stranger’s Teeth! I think the whore braided herself a Gnoll’s tail.”
“Do what you must! But don’t play with the pitiful thing.”
“Let’s get this over with”
The ash-faced man soaks Sera’s hair in his bucket. I can smell the sap.
My head is light. I feel sick.
He picks her up. Behind me now.
No, no, no. Anything but that. Don’t do that to us!
I try to speak. To scream. But words still won’t come.
Instead, vomit.
Only fluid.
Then a pressure. A cold, smooth intrusion.
I clench. Painful.
Sera… Forest Mother No. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
The ironclad begins his chant.
“Stranger, lord of paths unseen.
Take this wretch, foul, unclean.
Beast-touched, flesh defiled.
Burn from her the human child.”
Mika. Her eyes lock with mine. Her finger traces the shared brand on our cheeks. Pity? Hate?
I want to speak. For her to understand.
Only more vomit.
The ash-faced man lifts his bucket. Splashes the sap onto my thighs.
Sticky. Flowing with the vomit, down to my feet. To the dry moss.
I close my eyes, and for a moment there is stillness.
I hear the ironclad’s footsteps as he moves behind me. The warmth from the torch on my back. Descending.
I feel her weight in me. Her lovely golden braid, now heavy with sap.
That stench again. Burnt hair.
Leers erupt…voices blend…let’s see the She-Gnoll shake her tail…laughter…look at it dance…
“Silence!” A shout… The ironclad…
…
Gruk. Why did you leave me here?
Not fair.