Sixteen Feet of Steel Chapter 10

Chapter 10

*** Gracia…Before…

It was horrible….

It was the most horrible thing…

I roll over and grab onto the pillows and the blankets as everything comes back at me and hide…and cry…

And it had been such a nice day too.

I had finally gotten a dress from the seamstress Esmeralda one of the very best in all of father’s lands and even though I am a noble lady there was a wait from others and Daddy forbade us to use noble privilege to have our work put first.

I know, completely unreasonable. I need those clothes to be a proper princess. I have duties and I have followers and I need to look my best to be a good representative of the realm amongst the other realms.

Oh it was pretty too, hidden stiffened boning that tightened just so and pushed up just so and cut low enough that my suitors would be drooling and modest enough that my parent would not lock me away from them. I swear there is just something blissful about the way that men just seem to melt especially with a lovely cleavage, yes mine isn’t as great nor as inspiring as Angeline’s or mother’s but mine isn’t anywhere near as dowdily covered.

I do love the thrill of men.

The looks, the smiles, the hunger they have for me.

Who doesn’t love being wanted, being popular?

And the silks and the brocade of a fine dress.

It’s never been a chore for me to be a lady.

Oh I had other things that I did that day like go riding with my ladies and a tea with mother and her ladies while they talked endlessly about boring things like the cost of cottons. I mean really I have no idea how Angeline could like even stand it.

And supper was interesting with Sir Shane Winterbrook here on errant to be with us for a fortnight. He was pretty thing, all blonde with nice clothes, better than nice clothes even a uniform and a very nice sword one of those high court dueling blades.

Now he wasn’t a battleknighter more’s the pity but he was of good breeding and he was a cavalier so he was an expert horseman and he was an excellent dancer.

I loved the look of him, blonde hair with a neat braid that promised my fingers running through sweet lengths. He had a ready smile and a quick wit and a bottom that was made from sculpted steel.

And he listened and had stories of his knight errantry and that life.

Oh nothing like a man like that to stir up the other suitors.

Which of course made me like him more. 

…………………………..

I was talking to him actually when it happened.

Yes it was after common hours and it would be frowned upon of course if it was something we were caught doing but even if we weren’t…people still knew that we were talking and likely intimately past good hours and yet it was expected.

A young woman of my standing was supposed to have dalliances.

We were sipping brandy in my study…

Yes I had one; we all did even if I just generally used mine more for entertaining and reading than studying.

He was showing me swordplay, with his sword and all the flirty innuendos that came with a bit of a sip and me holding his sword when the alarms went off and things shook like crazy. I looked at him and he looked at me and then there was another and this huge crash into the walls that sent books tumbling off the shelves and shattered all of the windows in my bedroom.

Then we heard one of the men at arms yelling. “Attack! Attack we’re under….” There wasn’t anything after that and Sir Shane went from my study to my windows and looked outside and though he used his arm to push and ward me back I still went.

Looked outside and everything was in flames.

I could smell liquid pitch and sulfur and I could see and hear some of the people here in the castle courtyard fighting and troops pouring in and battleknights smashing and killing people and some…some were even on fire.

Then there was this…it was this sort of sound…not like anything that I'd ever seen and this huge flaming thing was coming right at us and someone on the walls was screaming… “Trebuchet!”

Sir Shane grabbed me hard and he pushed me…shoved me…actually he threw me back into the study and I screamed because it was scary and it hurt and it was just…

It was just a second and he was there, he smiled at me…as everything seemed to slow down and then he was gone…the flaming stone shot hit him and then my wall and went right through the wall rolling and spilling oil and flames and he was there…on my floor…ripped apart or more open…really like he was crushed and when it kept going it peeled his front off…blood was spurting out of places and out of everything and he wasn’t even dead…or he was only the reapers were too busy to still him.

He was making this not human keening sort of whine sound.

I don’t know why I went to him, I…I think I wanted to stop that sound…I had to stop that sound.

I reached for the blade and I could literally see his heart and I was about to run it through when it stopped…when he stopped and when I knew that it was like someone kicked me in the chest.

I didn’t like Shane like that, I barely knew him past our dancing and flirting and yet he gave everything for me.

……………………….

The smoke burned my eyes and my throat enough to shock me from staring at Shane’s corpse and I didn’t know what we were going to do to get out of this but I knew he’d need to be honored one way or another.

I took his signet, and cut off his shield patch…the best one from what’s left of his coat’s shoulder and I take a lock of hair, the castle was falling, I knew it in my bones and I rolled the hair into the fabric and stow in in my bodice. 

“I’d like to see more of that little whore.”

I look and see three of these enemy men-at-arms in my rooms or well what’s left of them. I don’t recognize the colors and they’re in leathers-with-rings and have weapons drawn. 

They’re leering at me.

Another one says. “Take the slut.” I don’t know the accent it’s very different.

The third just snarls and he grabs my arm and I drive Shane’s sword up between his legs and it’s a double edged blade and he huffs-wheezes and I pull the blade cutting into his male parts like a knife into a bread loaf.

There’s a spurt of blood and half his sausage falls through the gap in his breeches.

“My Cock! She coot uff m..mm..cock.”

He let me go to grab his parts and his two friends stared aghast and I swung hard thinking they’re not moving and their throats have little protecting... there so I went for the head, well the neck and took his head off. 

Well turns out it doesn’t work quite like that but I end up driving the edge it half-way before it gets stuck in his neck bones and my wrist turned the wrong way and I heard a pop as something hurt really bad. 

I was fountained in his blood though as I severed the sprayer in the neck. The last man swung on me with a mace and I don't know how I ducked the swing but he missed me and I kept trying to pull the blade free bit it wasn't budging and he swings again and the weapon stops inches from my face act it's vibrating. 

I looked to see Lady Blackhand there with her hand outstretched and her eyes are actually shimmering blue and white like the blue moon behind clouds. 

I've never seen her like this and she is practically kin, she's both best friends of my father who's definitely bedded her and my mother who's her best friend I think.

If mother lions were witches then that's the look.

I seen blades, her blades these disc's of steel with saw like teeth that she carried as tools coming from the satchel that she always had with her.

They flew past me and are spinning so fast they're making this singing sort of sound and they are so hard to track by eye and I never should have tried as all I seen was more blood and gore as they zip around the castrated one and the fellow with the mace and they both cut of the butcher's off bits in but a few moments. 

You hear things; honest to the Gods you do especially about witches. But while she was strange and spooky and mysterious she was never ever someone who could do something like that. 

She was my mother’s best friend and I think more with my father if you follow the rumors. She was my aunt though not by blood or even by adoption into our house…you cannot do that, the last witch that had title was her father and he was a monster if you believe the tales.

Or more to the point not the tales.

You here people talk, I’ve heard father talk about things that were honestly pretty vile things that men did to men on the battlefield and yet when it came to That event…no one spoke of it.

Then she’s grabbing me by the wrist. “Run! More will be coming run!”

I’m still in shock as I get hauled bodily out of the open to the air remains of my room and she’s taking the wallward side of the hall and shoving me clear as several more Trebuchet shots careen into the keep and shake the place hard…two I think breached rooms.

She hauls me out to one of the balconies that’s facing away from the fighting and she looks at me. “I’ll do what I can to get the others out but right now I have to send you into more danger.”

“More danger!? What’s going on? Where are you sending me and with who?”

“No one but I’m sending you to the capital seek out High King Boen there and tell him what happened here.”

“What!? How!?”

Then there’s this bubble around me and it’s like silvery-blue see-through light and then I’m send to my bottom as it rushes upwards and away from the castle.

It was burning, it was all burning…And I’m pretty sure that I screamed as we kept getting higher and higher.

I seen father, I seen The Rampant and I seen the death stroke fall and even the blood from this height as it bathes everything in the rig-seat and chest area in his blood. I screamed, I screamed “Daddy!” at the top of my lungs but he never heard me.

He’ll never hear me again.

There was the bursts of flames as the grain stores went up and some of the other things and very, very quickly I was speeding away up and out of sight. I seen another flicker of something up here far off and it’s headed to the east but I lost sight of it as well.

The rest is strange and surreal.

I remember that I oddly enjoyed the sights, the view from this height in this very strange and detached way as I sailed and sailed away from home and going farther and farther away already passing over places and realms that I’ve never been to.
I never knew the world was so settled, that farms and fields made intersections like a quilt and roads and ditches it’s an amazing thing to see when you have never seen it before.

And there’s villages and towns and keeps and even a few cities that I sail over. I should have known the names of those places but my brain was not working quite right after everything that had happened.

I did recognize the King’s Wall.

Not really a wall as these huge hills that sort of separate the lands of The High King Boen from the rest of the middle kingdoms and they surround this huge plateau that leads to The Mountains of the Kings.

The great center kingdom, the capitol was built on the plains that the ships of the ancients had and they sort of stand with a mass of buttes and massive rocky hills called The Mountains of the Kings where the first nobles had lived and built the castles that sheltered us from our foes…south of those is the plateau and it’s the lands of The High King and then south of that is the foothills that I was soaring over.

It’s not truly a wall but for an invading army it might as well be. Tall steep hills with keeps and castles and sections of walls in places that would be easy passes for foes covers the landscape as well as all the small towns that go with having keeps and soldiers and knights and all the things that they need..

I saw fabled Garrison Road; my father told me stories of. He had been here during the war with Lady Blackhand’s father. It’s this huge road thirty yards wide at a guess and made for battleknights to march on and their wagons and the siege carts and armies and it’s all made of flagstones…the golds that must have cost.

I'd seen battleknights too in those places even if the look like fathers tin models on his map boards from here and just everything else…there’s so much wealth as it’s not villages but it’s estates and the homes of the richest and the nobles and knights and all of that stuff until I was coming into view of…

Valhalla…

Named after the home of some of the lost gods or such.

The Capitol city of the High King and it’s built in these huge levels with like a star or a sun at the bottom and then it rises in huge, huge tiers and adorned with these fancy buildings all smooth and lit up and there’s the glitter of so much light and so much glass.

It looked like a fancy gigantic cake.

I…it…was headed for the palace…the castle called Whitehall…and I barely got a look besides it being huge almost a small city with towers and tall buildings all of it’s own before I crashed into a fancy garden with flowers and trees that looked decorative and in the end a gazebo of fine wood.

The soldiers came running with fancy spears and some with swords and some with crossbows and I remember seeing a man with a very nice uniform on like the others but with the best embroidery I’ve ever seen and he loomed over me with a dagger at the ready.

“Who are you girl and what sorcery be this!?”

“Gracia…Princess Gracia Lyonnes…my father…my…The Lion has fallen…”

It’s all I could get out.

This man his expression changed to shock then concern and things faded to black as I hear him yelling though he seems far away.

“Get the knight captain! Fetch a healer!”

And that was how I'm here, crying...so very far from home.

*** Chrissy…………Before…

Nicole set’s out mugs of tea and the Jam & Bits which makes more smiles and I serve a few myself and then Alaan comes in and he’s looking at us all from the doorway.

“The fevers are all breaking or on their way to, they’re all going to be okay it’s working.”

One of the women has tears and she looks at him. (Sniffle.) “Working?”

“Yes ma’am we’ve brewed the cure.”

The entire kitchen explodes in cheers and tears.

***And Now…

There’s a whole lot of cheering and there’s happy tears and there’s just such a happy high in the place that I have a smile on my face and there are tears in my eyes too and running down my cheeks.

It feels so damned good to have something to be so happy about. It’s something too that I’ve never really felt before either. This is a thing that we did for others; this is us winning over something really bad and all of the hard work for not gain but just because it’s the decent and right thing to do.

Worth more than silver and gold this feeling is.

It’s why a noble should be a good ruler, it’s why a healer heals, it’s why a knight should take their oaths.

I actually caught my thought there, I almost though his oaths automatically but I know now that this is so not the case.

For Nicole and for myself too because right now the change that was made to me doesn’t matter, doesn’t bother me so much and I’m sure it’s because my sex doesn’t stop me from doing things that are worthwhile and it’s only things I’ve learned and the thoughts of others that might bar the way of any woman.

Then there’s hugging and me and my tiny self getting spun around by men and women together and it’s fun. They even forget that I’m me the sorceress’s daughter and the Wisdom and just are happy.

Then there’s a lull afterwards and I’m not sure of what to do next until Alaan says. “Right, now ladies if you’ll excuse my squire, the wisdom and myself we need to get back to work and to brew as much potion as we can so we can treat everyone.”

There’s nods and some more hugs and kisses and I stay behind to heat water as Alaan and Megan are cleaning up the alchemy tent and readying everything there for mass brewing of the cure so we can save time and just get more done.

I get the men to fill the pots and the tubs and I set to boiling as much water as they have to get the things we need to wash cleaned and fresh and more importantly sterilized.

Even with the cure we still will have to wash and clean and clear out everything that we can so the sickness doesn’t come back or take root again.

Clean, clean, clean is so much the basics of real medicine I’m learning. Actually I’m learning so much here doing all of this and once I’m done and thanked I head to join Alaan and Megan at the alchemy tents as Nicole gathers her work force of volunteers to do some more of the work but a lot of the cleaning too.

Getting back to work it’s soothingly hopeful and each batch and each vial seems so precious and special and it’s worth the aching feet and the sore back from standing for hours on hours and getting lungful’s of fumes and odors and have the same in your clothes and hair.

I don’t care; this is so much more than important.

But truthfully I am glad that when we are done that we are done.

Well the alchemy at least and there’s a lot more of the dosing people with the potion and we waste no time in doing that either.

There’s this oddly village fair atmosphere as we do the patients in the hall and those that are coming in from the places outside the hall and Nicole and her crew bringing in those that are homestuck.

I see a bruise on her cheek and two young men with a lot more bruises on them doing what she has and they don’t meet her eyes, heck they don’t meet the eyes of any of the local women.

I get a tea for both of us and go over to her and she takes it with a smile.

“Thanks Chrissy.”

“What happened to you?”

She grins and nods towards the two boys. “They weren’t too happy about being asked to do women’s work and being ordered by a girl.”

“So they did what?”

“Oh they tried to put me in my place.”

“What? I thought that that sort of thing didn’t happen here?”

Nicole takes a drink. “No it happens but it’d also true that it doesn’t. There’s always some that think that what people tend to do as men and as women are bound by fates or some unwritten laws and some think that force settles those rights into place.”

“So they tried to fight you?”

She nods smiling.

I look at her. “I’m sorry I missed that.”

Nicole looks at them. “It was bound to happen, it will still happen especially when they don’t see the sword and the armor and stop seeing the squire and just see me as a girl.”

I shake my head. “I was hoping that it would stay different here.”

Nicole slings her arm over my shoulders leaning on me. “It was but two lads and it was a lesson they needed to learn the hard way and everyone knows what they tried and they’ll be feeling the sting of that far longer than the bruises that I gave them.”

I look to the two and the way that they’re being treated an it’s not just the women that are giving them looks the men are too in their own ways of treating them like the “Young idjits.” that they are.

I finish my tea shaking my head. “Home it’d likely be different.”

Nicole looks at me. “In your homelands I’d not be a squire period.”

I look at her. “That will change at least when I take Lyonnes back.”

She looks at me. “You’re going to try to take it back?”

“Yes, I have to. Even though I’m like this I have to. I can’t leave things as they are and leave my people to whatever is going on there.”

“You think that Lady Tatiana will back you?”

“You know her better than I do but I know that it won’t be easy and it might not be fast and there’s a lot of things that I need to know and to do before I can even set a footfall towards home.”

She gives me a hug with the arm over my shoulders. “Well if I’m given leave you’ll have me with you.”

I hug her back. “Thanks that means a lot.”

We both head off to finish our duties and there’s still a lot to do and slowly but surely we’re getting it all done.

I’ll admit my head and my heart is a little heavy from the talk with Nicole but it’s a reality that I will have to face.

Men, money, food, knights all of that will cost money. The Gorgon in the meanwhile will likely beggar my lands to fill his own coffers and do who knows what with everything that we had so there’ll be no guarantee that I can use any assets from home that I might have had to pay them off and even if there was something left there would be so much expenses.

Just crossing the mountains would be a huge thing logistically and with all of that again the coins.

I’ll need to learn yes but I’ll need to cultivate goodwill and I’ll need to earn coin in some measure or another.

I have no idea about the wealth of Lady Blackhand she didn’t seem wealthy like a noble would seem but she didn’t seem poor either.

I help with the dosing and then the washing and once that is all done I heat water for the baths and I’m more than grateful to slip into the hot water and let the heat and the soap soothe me.

This, I understand this so much better now with how much my mother and my sisters enjoyed their baths and just having that heat soak into you.

It’s so much different being like this and being so much smaller than myself before. You lose a lot of body heat or I did when I lost that size.

I mean it might just be less than twenty pounds but that’s a fair amount of my weight in either state.

I soap up and then sit and soak once my hair is soaped and I close my eyes and relax and think back. Use the memory power to focus in on Lady Blackhand and the things that I know that she’s done, that I’ve seen her do like moving metal and some of the things that she’s done like that.

How did she do it?

It’s over and over searching through the things that I’ve seen.

I look through other things, things I seen with the illuminators and with our generation machines and the like looking for clues because that power is my power too.

I remember…

I remember that there were magnets, cores of iron with copper wires wrapped around them and they were used for the generators and I’m trying to focus on that… I need to see it, to feel it and to do something.

I need to be able to do more as a sorceress.

I wash off and rinse my hair out and dry myself off and get dry my hair as best I can and comb it out and then get dried and then dressed and quickly head outside the hall and head to the smithy of the village and look for the things that I need.

Copper wire, and smithing rods and I wrap the wire around the rod and I reach inside myself and run the current through the wire and feel the current… no, not the current the magnet force.

I feel and feel and then something changes for me…it’s a ghostly like thing but I can see the magnet force and as I move myself and the magnet around close to the metals I see it reaching for it, I see it seem to be related to mass too as it reaches out and pulls nails to the bar and small object but larger ones aren’t able to be effected by it.

This, this is it. This is part of her powers her magic that she did!

My power spikes as I get overly excited by the prospect of it and suddenly everything is flying at me!

The thuds are pretty painful as I’m getting pelted and things are sticking to me and I’m crying out in surprise and pain as things are happening so fast.

“What in blazes be going on in here?” I see Megan in the door to the smithy before a few lengths of chains fly to me and wrap around my face and mouth and legs and I lose sight of her and fall over with a. “Mrrmph!”

Falling flat on my face and being covered in metal is a very… “Ow…” and embarrassing moment.

My ears are burning as I hear that musical lilt of Megan’s accent in her laughter and she’s come over to me and she’s rolling me over from front to back and she’s trying to pull things off of me.

She does get my face clear and my mouth free and she’s smiling down at me looking very beautiful in her fresh washed look and corset vest top and her bounty showing along with her very pretty smile.

“What did ye do?”

“I found the magnet force.”

“Aye ye did at thet I’d have te say.”

“I got a little too happy about it and my powers took off again on me.”

“I kin see thet.” She says it softly with a sweet tone and a kind smile.

Things start to fall away from me as I’m looking at her and I’m feeling my boy feelings or maybe sapphire feelings and her eyes are so pretty and my inside my lady parts are feeling…well it’s arousal and close enough to what I used to feel that I know what it is but at the same time entirely different.

Her…and the way that she’s looking at me.

Alaan and the attraction there with him and me to my body knowing what men do with women and the like too.

It’s confusing and arousing and…metal bits are falling free of me.

“Ye seen to be getting control of things now.”

“I’m honestly pretty distracted.”

“Oh ye are?” Playful sexy ginger smile there.

I nod. “Very, it’s not every day that I’m in this kind of a position with a beautiful woman.”

I blush at that, a fully heated face blush and she smiles. “I thought ye had a thing for me knight master?”

“I do…I’m greedy, my heart wants too much.”

“You just could be generous Christiana.”

I like the way that she just said my name.

Yes my name but not my name and it’s still…it was very…

“It wouldn’t be right me being with either of you. My life is complicated and it’s unfair to both of you.”

“Why? People feel what they feel and they want what they want and sometimes it has nothing to do with being with one person than being with another.”

“Honor, fidelity, loyalty…”

“Aye and being with different people an carin for different people changes those thins how?”

“I…I don’t know…it’s just how things have been.”

“In some lands Chrissy with some people.”

“But…”

Megan leans over and she kisses me. It’s so soft and sensual and there’s this something that reacts inside of me that gets all melty and gooey literally I feel melty inside of myself and feel it seeping and I don’t care.

She breaks the kiss. “Ye never thought?”

“Thought?”

“Ye mother, she had just as many lovers in men as she did with women too.”

“She did?”

“Aye, she was known fer it.”

Megan kisses me again and this time my mind flickers back to Lady Blackhand and…my mother…I mean I am certain that she did it with my father but her and my mother were best friends…and I don’t see them doing things together like intimately and yet.

I see in my mind shared glances, sometimes them leaning on each other in a way that you didn’t see between two women at home.

Were they? Did they?

And yet my parents were happily married, they loved each other and the three of them were all friends.

It’s enough, it’s enough and not as confusing or as hard to let my lips part and Megan makes the kiss deeper and my hands slip to her waist resting there and touching and Megan moves just enough to pull the smithy doors shut on us and then shove all the metals away from us and straddle me.

The ache is unreal in me. My dress is too hot and my breasts ache with need in a way that I have never felt but I need to somehow have sated.

Then she undoes her corset vest’s stays and pulls it off and she’s naked from the waist up and it’s suddenly different than bathing together, it’s so much different now that it’s something intimate.

Oh her breasts are so, amazing and I want…

I’m being kissed again and Megan is slipping my dress off my shoulders and my nipples react with the air and there are hands…her hands doing these amazing touches that make me arch into her hands more and I…

I reach out and touch hers shocked at the supple softness the texture of silk and skin and there’s so much heat too and she gasps. “Aye…aye like thet luv.”

She cups and squeezes but just so and her fingers let go sliding away to dance over my nipples to make my head spin and me whine with this astounding pleasure…

At some point Megan has her bottoms and her skirt then my dress is pulled up and she’s pulling my panties off and we’re kissing and it’s all happening so fast and so slowly and I feel Megan mount my leg and she running her sex against my leg, my knee and she’s making these trembly breaths that are matching mine and then one of her hands slips down to my sex and she cups me there and pushes with her hand and I whine-squeal as it spikes the pleasures that is running through me.

Then her hand runs over and over catching y juices and using the to do…do it…faster and then I feel the fingers slip in between…not like inside me but in between my parts the fold like bits and she touches something and like before in the old me when I would pull my well rope my hips arch up by themselves.

“Oh…Oh Gods…Megan!”

“Aye…I’ve wanted this since I’ve see ye….Good gods ye are so very beautiful.”

“Mmmm…me..?”

“Aye like a fine doll…so pretty and pale and fine like clean linens…”

“Linens..!”

“Aye… will ye sue meh fer not avin the right words?”

“Nay… (Gasp)…your words are fine.”

Megan kisses me and I feel this shiver run through her and then this wetness and warmth but not enough for it to be…

“Did you…?”

She blushes but she has this big sexy smile and there’s this shine to her, this light and… “Yes, yes I did.”

“But I barely did anything?”

“Ye did lots, ye did enuff and…”

“And?” (Gasp) Her fingers are doing that thing, rubbing and dipping between and there’s this wave of pure pleasure and lightning that runs through me as things inside clench and spasm and I have my first sexual explosion.

I’m panting and sweat soaked and so, so alive and wanting more.

“And we have time fer more, much more.”

It goes into that more… kissing and touches and me learning how to kiss more and more, to learn to love breasts and nipples and skin more and more and how to use my body to please hers…to taste Megan and to be tasted by Megan and so many more times do I reach my peaks, so any more than I possibly could by pulling on my well rope.

And I…we laugh, giggle, kiss and I cry.

Yes cry.

Megan holds me and she looks at me after I lift my face from her bosom. “Oi what was that about?”

“Life…”

“Life?”

I nod. “Too much death, too much of it so that even after everything that’s happened I was just feeling my way through things like I was in a trance. I feel like you, like this, this was such a good thing but you were my first…ever…it’s like you reached in and pulled me free of the fog.”

She gives me this serious stare. “Ye givin me too much credit.”

“No…it really helped.”

“What happened?”

“A warlord, with a Gorgon standard and with an army came to my home and dropped the walls, killed my family…those that Lady Blackhand hadn’t gotten out like me.”

“Ow…I’m so sorry luv, so you’ve been…”

“Surviving, trying to get used to everything being different, being here.”

“Here?”

“I’m from a long ways off.”

“I knew ye weren’t from here but Sir Alaan seemed t’know it.”

“Lyonnes, it’s out in The Middle Kingdoms.”

“Oi…thet’s far.”

I nod. “It was just over a week ago.”

“And ye haven’t stopped yet?” I shake my head no. “Then ye due a good cry and then some.”

I nod. “Thanks for being there, for this.”

She tilts my head up and kisses me lightly. “Oi, we’re lovers and where I come from thet says ye at least have a care of the one yer wit.”

I kiss her back still sort of marveling in her, and this closeness even with us both sticky and covered in soot and dirt.

We’re kissing some more when there’s a hard bang on the door making us jump. “Hey get your knickers on you two it’s been long enough and the smiths’ be coming back from supper soon enough.”

It’s Nicole. I look at Megan and she looks at me and we burst out giggling. “Well now we wouldn’t want to be givin him an eyeful now would we?”

She helps me up and we get dressed and it feels.

I feel…I feel like I’m moving differently.

It’s…

It’s a big thing that just happened really. I mean I’m not a virgin anymore.

Right?

I mean I peaked over and over and it means that I had sex, made love.

So just because I’ve not been touched by a man doesn’t mean I’m still a virgin right?

Confusing but a good exciting and confusing.

It’s how losing your virginity should be right?

We get dressed and come outside and I see Nicole looking at me and then at Megan and she grins. “Foods still on the board you two go get cleaned up, you’re a mess.”

I can’t help but to bush and to grin a little and there’s this look between us…it’s like the look that the boys and men share with the camaraderie and that same kind of humor but different, that but between women.

It sort of seems to find a place inside part of my heart as I walk with both of them to the hall and I see the village smith and I look at him. “I’m sorry I left your shop in a mess but I was doing some research sir.”

“Mess, research?” He’s looking at me and at Megan.

“Aye, she was foolin with her magic and making a thing like lodestone an when I heard the ruckus she had every light loose bit o’ iron an steel clinging to her like burdocks.”

He and Nicole looks at me and I’m turning red and blushing and the three of them start to chuckle as Megan starts telling them as I’m getting stared at by the other two and some others close by and Megan’s very good at that charming turn of phrase with that accent and the way she just seems to shine as she tells a tale with a smile.

I shake my head with a smile and head into the main hall and to the back room with the washing tubs and I start getting cleaned up again.

I was pretty filthy from head to toe and then some all over again and I have to find some more clothes to wear and make my way to The tent that Nicole and I share in my boots and my shift and get dressed in one of the shirts I still have that’s clean and a clean skirt and fresh panties.

I’m still not quite sure what and how I feel about all of this but I settle myself and head back out and join Nicole in heading to the main hall and getting some food from the board.

There’s leftover fish both baked and fried and I get some of each and a bowl of the greens and some of the green beans and bread and the farmers cheese that they have and a good helping of the pickles. They have lots of things that are pickled and it’s just easier on the use of food for everyone to use them when you can so I get some beetroots and some of the thumb carrots and some of the mustard pickles.

I’m hungry and I’m finding that despite the table I was raised at that I’m not all that fussy of an eater when I get passed the class of food difference.

I think that I’m honestly looking forward to the greens too these days and the local fast made cheeses.

Nicole gets herself a similar helping and we take it outside to sit and eat together on the back stoop with to leather jacks of cold leftover tea.

She looks at me as I’m eating and there’s a grin as she’s chewing.

I look at her and raise an eyebrow.

“How do you feel?”

I swallow and look at her. “Fine…better, different.”

“Different?”

“Nothing like reaching those peaks inside to land one squarely into your sex.”

“Really?”

“Well…I’m not sure exactly how much it helped but it helped, there’s a whole other side of all of this that I wasn’t feeling.”

“And Megan?”

I shrug. “I like her a lot but she was pretty clear that as special as our time was there wasn’t a serious relationship in what we did.”

“So how does that make you feel?”

“Relieved, because I know that a real relationship a deep relationship is not the sort of thing that I can handle right now.”

“You okay with that?”

I fork some of the cold greens and cheese together. “You said you’re not a virgin so were you?”

Nicole nods. “Good point I’ve had lovers but haven’t been ready for a relationship either. I’m still trying to have a relationship with myself.”

I point my fork at her. “That, exactly that. I think that as things are now I just took a bigger step in the relationship that I’m having with myself.”

She nods and we share a smile and it’s another one of those women moments that surprises me. That women are not always looking for love, for the forever love or for settling down either. That there are some of us that still want to be open with our lives and still have some things to do with those lives that you really can’t do if you settle down.

It’s that sort of like minded thing that’s feeling like friendship and maybe even sisterhood to me a little.

I finish eating and we both go and do our dishes and everything is done for a while and it’s getting dark and the others are going to be doing the nursing duties and the like so I head off to the smithy as Nicole is heading towards her Squire’sknight to go over it and to do her checks and tuning.

They’re a lot like an instrument really you need to keep the tensions right in them and that requires both use and it required care and attention or else they get tight and hard to move and risk breaking cables or wheel-cranks or too loose and they have a bad sluggish time.

I make my way to the smithy and he’s there still cleaning up my mess and I rap at the door jam and cough. “Master Smith? I should be doing that.”

“Aye, you should but it’s alright lady but you might want to take the thing that you made.”

He offers me the metal rod wrapped in the copper wire and I take it and I look at him. “Thank you how can I repay you for this?”

He looks at me and he chews on his mustache a little and he looks at the shop. “Well ye could help me tidy and the likes but I’d be interested in seeing ye do yer craft.”

“I’d be glad to help clean up but I’m just learning my craft, I’ve never had much formal training and such with these things.”

He gives me an odd look and I try for a smile. “I was just starting everything in my life really when she was killed.”

He winces. “I heard it t’was sommat like that, tis a pity.”

I nod. “But I’d still be willing if you’re willing and trying a few other things that it might be safer to try here as well.”

“Like’n?”

“Welding, I’ve seen it done with chemical covered rods that flare I was wondering if I could do it with my powers.”

“I’ve heard of it they call it Arcin but I’ve never seen it meself Wisdom.”

I run current through the bar and I feel it and see it faster now and I point at a length of chain and see the magnet force reaching for it but it’s too far away and too much mass for the magnet in my hand and I stare at it and stare at it and the ghostly color is reaching for it like I’m sending it there.

Can I direct this and feed power into it?

I point the bar at it like a wand and push more of my power through it but like I’m trying to push out the magnet force at the chain on purpose.

I feel it touch and grab hold!

I smile and pull the length of chain to myself and my “wand” and he’s staring at me and there’s a smile and a nod.

“Ye got thet right.”

I smile. “You’re not scared?”

“Ye came in and ye helped save me an mine before Sir Alaan did that says a lot about ye. I think I can trust ye.”

“Thank you and you’re sure you don’t mind me doing this?”

“Nay ‘side I kin say I knew ye when ye were just learning yer craft and maybe be even a little bit famous t’boot.”

“Well thank you Master Smith it’s nice to be so highly thought of.”

“Ye kin call me Aiden.”

“Chrissy.”

“Oh nay yer high born I can tell thet much.”

“No, I was wealth born there’s no man or woman that should be set above another.”

Eight days or so ago and a boyhood away I didn’t even know that much about life to even say that and now.

Now it just feels right.