Chapter Eight

“Are those?” Hannah asked, her cat tail twitching around as she saw the bundle under Varus’s arm.

He nodded.

“I don’t meow about this…” She pursed her lips and twitched the ears on her head, her nose twitched too, “they smell funny.”

“Sister! Don’t be rude.” Tuesday said and came over from where she sat…reading Varus’s manuscript.

“You can read?” Varus asked, his eyes darting from her to the manuscript and back again as she came closer.

Tuesday blushed just a little, her fox tail bristled, suggesting to him it was a somewhat sensitive subject.

“A little bit. I mean…” Her ears lowered and she looked down at the ground, “Not much. I learned a few words from a merchant, but our people were nomads, we didn’t carry much, so there wasn’t any need to read. I think only the chief knew how. That doesn’t make me dumb, though!” Tuesday said with a defensive air and snapped her eyes up to stare defiantly at the lich.

“No, not at all.” Varus said with a casual wave of his hand, “It just means you’re ignorant. Ignorant and dumb are not the same thing at all.”

He said it casually, but when he looked down at the pair again, he saw the dubious and doubting looks on their little faces, wondering if they’d been insulted in some way.

Before they could draw a conclusion he hastened onward, “Wolf pelts are very soft when they’re properly treated, besides… they did try to eat you. I would say wolfkind has atoned for the crime by offering you a few pelts to sleep on. You know how to prepare them, don’t you?” Varus asked, and briefly distracted from their doubt, the two girls nodded with enthusiasm.

“Good, I’ll let you chew the fat, and if you look down in the cellar, you’ll find a mixture preserved to cure the interior. It’s hardly a full ‘bed’, but I suppose you’re used to bedrolls anyway.” He suggested, and once again nods greeted him.

“Then it will do?” He pressed.

“Yes, thank you, Varus.” Tuesday said and licked her lips. For a moment, Hannah was silent, until Tuesday’s hand went behind her back and pinched Hannah’s tail near the base.

The nekoni girl hopped up on her tiptoes with a yelp and added, “Yes, Varus, thank you!”

“Good. Now, you do that, and then I’ll do my part when you’re finished.” He promised, and laying out the furs with the interior skins facing up, he watched the two just long enough to see them sit cross legged in front of one another, grab the nearest fur, and set their mouths to chewing on the greasy fat to remove it and soften the pelt further.

‘Nomads, huh, interesting. I’m genuinely surprised, those weren’t doing so well the last I remember.’ Varus thought and settled himself back on his chair to resume his writing again.

The quill scratched over the paper and the story flowed through his mind again, like a silent observer, he watched the lives of the characters unfold. He drifted through the tale and the whole of the real world vanished from his awareness.

There was nothing but the unspoken dreams of imaginary lives set to paper, recorded as if they were history being lived out beneath the watchful eyes of the gods whose names Varus could no longer recall.

‘We can do this! We have to! There’s no other choice!’ Varus no longer had skin to tingle, but that did not stop him, the skin he didn’t have, tingled anyway.

Varus had no lips to smile.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

But he felt his smile anyway.

The fulfillment of a character’s journey, the crescendo in the music of their life, was only a few pages away, from there, nothing but victory waited, and her final, longed for peace. All Varus had to do was keep writing…

“Whoa!” Hannah’s voice went up in a cry of alarm.

Varus felt his peace and focus shattered into a thousand fragments when he heard not just the voice, but the crash and splintering noise of glass as it hit the floor of the cottage, and Tuesday shrieked with alarm as Hannah began to wail and cry.

Varus shot up to his feet and spun around to see what transpired in that fragment of a moment. “Hannah!” Tuesday was crouching over her sister, but Varus was tall enough and in the right place to see beyond her.

What he saw, a crying nekoni girl clutching her stomach and…’Blood?!’ He thought with alarm when he saw the ugly red stains all over her front and the broken glass scattered across the floor.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to drop it…” Hannah wailed as Varus rushed over, the bones of his feet striking the floor made a sound like the heavy pounding of a drum, and his precious story was forgotten in the blink of an eye. The memories of ten thousand wounds rushed through his consciousness to fill that empty place. ‘How to treat a sword wound to the gut? What to do if impaled by a spear through the leg? What to do if-’ He recalled all the directions as clearly as if they were given to him and lived through on that very dawn, and not a timeless age beforehand.

None of them however, seemed to fit this particular scenario. ‘I know how to bandage and treat almost any wound from any weapon, but ‘girl falls on broken glass’ and I can do nothing?!’ Varus shouted in his head and wondered, ‘Could I do a resurrection spell? Magical races are much more challenging, especially if they’re weak, I don’t know if I’m good enough to do that…’

“Where are you hurt?Pull up your shirt, I need to see the wound!” He directed as if he were on the battlefields that he once called home, and whether it was the intonation or his looming presence or…something else, Hannah sniffled, then raised up the ragged, stained shirt, to show nothing but a few scrapes and cuts.

Varus exhaled with abject relief, his hand came up and covered his face as he took long, slow, needless breaths. “That… that had me worried. I suppose it’s just the…” Varus tried to recall the name for it, but it wouldn’t come to him, “stuff for the furs. I’d forgotten that it was red.” He let out a low chuckle of relief, and Hannah let out a little sniffle before reaching up and rubbing her nose with the back of her hand.

“It still hurts… but, you’re not mad? I broke it. I spilled it all over the place when I tripped… Aren’t you going to yell? Aren’t you going to tell me I’m bad?” Hannah asked, and though he was sure Hannah saw nothing, Tuesday subtly inched over a little so that she was in Varus’s path.

“Why would I be doing a thing like that?” Varus asked, his expressionless face may have conveyed nothing, but his tone was more confused than anything else. “I’m not happy that you broke the jar and spilled that stuff everywhere, but it just means wiping it up and then applying it to the furs. As for the glass?” He shrugged, “It’s only glass. It can be reassembled with magic easily enough. Just like you did with the door, we just need the pieces, most of them at least.”

“You’re… you’re really not mad?” Hannah searched the blank face of his skull, and she wasn’t alone in looking at him that way, Tuesday’s doubting face slowly transitioned to one of surprise.

“You’re really not… we broke something of yours and made a mess, how can you not be really mad?” Tuesday asked in a quiet voice as if she was afraid that speaking louder would break some mysterious enchantment upon the elder lich.

“It was only an accident. Accidents happen. We’ll just clean up the mess and then I can get back to work…eventually.” Varus replied and spread out his arms with his palms out, “I promise, I am not angry. I can pretend to be, if you insist.” His voice became lightly teasing, and the two disbelieving little girls said simply…

“No-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o.” While keeping shaking their heads in sync with one another and drawing out the word.

“Good, then let me clean up the glass, you can use magic to put it back together, then I’ll sew a few furs into something comfortable to sleep on and snuggle into…then I will get back to what I was working on.” Varus said and clapped his hands together as if to close the book on that chapter of the day.

The two small ones sighed with relief, and Hannah’s eyes welled up again with tears not brought about by the lingering sting of broken glass, but as Varus bent and reached for the first and largest piece, he froze, and had their attention once again.

He paused because he felt the tingle of magic as his summon stopped in its tracks.

“Varus…?” Tuesday asked gently, leaning forward with her little fox tail dancing around behind her back, “Is something…wrong?” She asked in that same reluctant voice she used when doubt was in her mind.

“I used a summoned skeleton to try to find a village or town, he’s been running ever since I made him, and he just stopped… he found people.” Varus explained, then shut his eyes and looked through the skeleton’s own at the first humans he’d seen in what suddenly felt like forever.