Sixteen Feet of Steel Chapter 12

*Before…

It’s kind of fun breaking these old class rules.

It’s very fun when we’re slowly starting to mix the two styles together…a few more turns, use the circle to switch a partner to the right and add a clap after the snaps as we step back towards our partners.

And then it’s late and the lights are burning low when the fiddles and violas start singing out that up close and personal waltz music and I’m finding myself really close and hands holding hands with Alaan once again and he’s…he’s very, very handsome and I’m feeling…and he’s so large, bigger than me in this good way and he’s smiling just from having fun but he’s looking at me…he’s looking at me in a way that makes me want to blush and makes me want to want things.

And then he makes me twirl.

*And Now…

It never once really settled in to me that I was actually so small. I’m dancing with Alaan and he’s doing all the slow dance things that a man does and following is a lot different than leading.

But we’re not doing anything hard or fast so I can keep up.

But my heart…oh…this feeling of being turned…twirled and spun. Out than back in…into his arms.

He is strong, he smells good, and this is fun.

Oh I like dancing.

And I’m getting aroused.

I know I’m getting aroused I can feel it. Like with Megan with the flush under all of my skin and the ache in my nipples and how it spreads from there to my breasts or maybe from my breasts and ending and being focused in my nipples and then there’s the wetness…and that ache…that need to be touched and tasted…to feel something so wild.

And it’s changing too…maybe it’s Alaan and the way that he feels so right in the way he’s so handsome and muscled or the way that he smells too with that soap he uses and leather and hints of oil and steel from him being a knight and then there’s what I feel pressing into me as we’re closely dancing after he spun me out and pulled me in again.

I know exactly what that is and even as scary as that is I’m a woman and he’s a man and I have no idea if I could ever go back to being myself and likely not…likely even if there was a chance to reverse Aurora’s…Mother’s? Lady Blackhand’s spell that could take a long time.

And I’m a woman until that time or forever.

Sooner or later intimacy with a man will crop up…especially if this is the way that I’m felling now.

And as unromantic as it may just sound it’s also a very in my mind thing that there are a whole world of worse men then Alaan to lose my virginity to.

I bite my lip and I lean back into him as we’re dancing and press myself against him. I hear his intake of breath…part scenting me and part of it surprise and that’s…

Honestly it’s emboldening me.

I reach back and take his hand and step off and away from the planks and pull him along with me to his tents.

“Chrissy?”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s? Oh…I…are you sure?”

I’m drunk but not sloshy but it’s enough that I laugh a little because that really was… “You know that’s very cute and endearing coming from a knight.”

“Well it’s coming from a man that doesn’t want to take advantage.”

“You’re not, notice that I am leading you good sir.”

“I’ve noticed, you’re like your mother.”

I turn around and still pull him but I’m walking backwards because I know where to go because I can feel the magnet force of all the metal things that he has there. “Tell me this after we’ve been together and I’ll shock you.”

He actually grins a little at that and he opens his mouth to say something but we’re there and I step up and I kiss him.

This requires me to use both of my hands to get a grip on his tunic and to step as high as I can on the tips of my toes but I kiss him.

I like that he’s surprised.

And I would not be likely anywhere as bold it’s true for not the drink but I’m still very aware.

Feeling him all over again against me and the solidness he has I’m very, very aware.

We walk into the tent me going backwards and him leading and guiding me inside holding things out of my way and this isn’t his alchemy tent it’s his personal tent and it’s quite different than what I thought.

It’s heavy canvas and oilcloth I think and there’s brass fittings for the different things that he needs and it’s has a frame like his Alchemy tent of fitted pipes and there’s a snap in place floor like his other tent too. It’s warm and it smells of his things and him…leather and armor and beeswax candles and herbs and soaps and of other things that my nose actually finds pleasant.

The snap-in-place floor is such a great thing as it keeps the ground’s coolness or dampness out and makes it quite comfortable in here.

And of course there’s a bed and there’s.

I send a tendril of lightning out from a finger and I light the large candle on the small desk that he has for writing and he’s looking at me with this look it’s sort of awe? Wonder? Me?

It’s powerful too and it’s enough that I start to unlace my dresses stays and then he’s there and he’s helping me getting free of my clothes and then it occurs to me that I can do the same to…rather for him.

I’m familiar with the gear he’s wearing even if it’s not battle gear but just men’s things and as familiar as I am with it all it’s a whole different story taking it off of him because it’s completely reversed.

There is a part of me that gets this dry mouth swallow and a shiver as it all comes loose on my side and my dress tumbles off of my shoulders and slides over my breasts and the little cotton band that I have covering them.

Nerves, excitement, fear…and I swear that little flick through the cotton breast band of the dress falling down went all the way straight to my toes.

The air is cool and that raises chill bumps in a good way and actually makes my nipples ache all the more and I bite my lip and work more at pulling him free of his things. His coat of leather and plates falls with this sexy thud…I think it is?

It’s armor, it’s strength and protection and it means something.

Or it used to for me before all of this.

Shirt stays and then he’s pulling it up over his head and I work at his sword belt and take it off and it’s very heavy but I actually turn and set it on the bed…and assuming I’m on the bottom…I place it on his sword arm side.

Many knights sleep with their swords and as much as it’s tradition it’s just good sense.

And there’s things that still matter to me like that.

I turn to see this look on his face; it’s kind of surprised and sort of pleased. “You know about?”

I nod. “Yes, It’s important.” and looking at him I’m sort of caught by him early naked. He’s big, so big compared to me…muscles and tanned skin and hard looking and there’s hard won scars there too and I can’t help but to touch.

It’s a strange fascination.

I know who I was, but there’s just such a pull and there’s this feeling…Alaan’s looking at me and he’s has this expression that’s just tender yet wanting and…

Oh…He reaches out and he touches my face and it’s.

I…It feels good; it feels strange and thrilling and exciting.

He guides me but reaches out to me at the same time and then he kisses me.

Being kissed…it’s so very nice. It was nice kissing Megan and it’s really so very different being kissed by Alaan.

It’s strong, and I know it’s strange to talk about strength in kissing, but it’s this whole other thing. It’s powerful and strong and it’s being kissed with this male want of…of me and it’s as intoxicating as all the drink I’ve had.

My arms went up and around his neck.

His hands settle on my waist and hips and he picks me up and lays me down on the bed and he settles with me, kissing me more. He undoes the laces of my breast band and it comes away and I’m exposed to him and the air and the release from the cloth makes me gush a little down there…it was this little squeak of passion and thrill and excitement…his mouth comes over my nipple and it’s so hot…and so strong.

It’s is so good, powerful, wanton that his suckling makes my heart feel aflutter.

I push my chest to him and his other hand cups and squeezes, and I feel that mixture of his strength, his healer’s hands and then the calluses on his hands from the weapons work.

“Alaan…uhnn…”

That’s so inadequate.

But my eyes are rolling back or trying to. I’m panting hard, it’s not cool anymore it like my skins on fire.

“Alaan…please, please touch me…touch me.”

His hands run over my skin and it’s so nice, it’s so exotic to me. My mind isn’t thinking of anything else but how good this feels.

Then more kissing, more sucking on my breasts and my heart races faster and faster. I arch my hips and pull off my panties and kick them to the foot of the bed and ten reach for his undertrousers and pull them off his hips and buttocks.

He springs free and it’s pressing against me.

Hot and hard and big…so big.

I reach down and feel, it’s big and I can’t wrap my little had around it and it feels so huge. But alive and good.

Yes, good…very good and he gasps.

And it’s a good grasp, it feels powerful. Like that was just me, I did that…Made him feel that and there part of the old me clicks and that’s the few things and girls that I had thought of, that I thought about and I stroke him. I move my hand with his moveable skin and he’s getting unreally thick and hard and sticky.

“Chrissy, Chrissy have you been…been treated?”

“The potion?”

He nods.

“No.”

“We can stop.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“You don’t need it.”

“What…? I don’t understand.”

“Your mother she told me…that…that the lightning in her, in you kills male seed.”

“But my…how did she and my father?”

“Magic…but you’re safe.”

Part of these things, part of these things I want answers for. I have questions and he’s looking at me, giving me the chance to stop like the good ma that I’ve come to know and…and I want this man.

I use my arms and push myself up and I kiss him, I kiss him over and over and then he’s kissing me back and touching and I reach down taking hold of him and peel back his skin and guide him to my womanhood parting my legs.

I know I’m very slick, very aroused and still when he starts to enter and push inside of me.

It hurt; it hurt but inn this way you’d feel like if someone was massaging a cramped muscle. It was a hurt but it wasn’t what was built up in my imagination and it was sort of this good hurt, a good ache inside not this piercing tearing that was often the myth of virginity.

He move back and forth and his breathing was hot, he was gasping from the things he was feeling and I was too. Then there was this tight knot inside like just that, like something was tied inside with one of those trick knots that you yank on and it unravels….

Something inside me gave.

“Ugghnnn…Alaan!”

“Chrissy…oh…Chrissy, Christiana…so beautiful, so amazing…”

He sinks deeper and deeper now and I know it’s just a few more inches but it feels like forever.

We connect, our hips meeting when he’s all the way inside of me and that feeling is…it goes a long way in rightness? Like men and women have for gods knows how long together and fitting and flush.

He kisses me deeply, and squeezes my breasts just staying like that filling my up and kissing and the heat, his heat spreads. I feel it inside of me and it’s feeling better, less aching and cramped and more like heat in the cramped area and the rest of his attentions are heating me up and it’s making me wanton again, desireful.

I nod. After his last kiss I nod and he moves, I feel the stroke out and it’s good…startling and good then he sinks back in and I feel that crampy flesh getting massaged and then it’s more and more as I’m feeling less cramping, more feelings and the size and the shape and the hardness and the heat and then there’s that feeling like with Megan.

That beautiful shiver, that great feeling inside as everything becomes a flood as the orgasm hits me. It’s so deep though it feels like part of me wants to lose control and it’s like things inside of me re-cramp in this whole other way like I’m tightening up in pleasure more and more until I can’t anymore and my body weeps in just pleasure from my womanhood.

I have to touch him during that tightening pleasure, touch and grip…and to hold onto that powerful muscled frame and then my arms are pulling on Alaan’s and then there this point where my legs come and wrap around his waist and hips and I’m soon moving with him, meeting his thrusts as I orgasm over and over and it’s possessing…being there in the moment and it’s not like anything I’ve ever felt or done and I feel like I’m on fire and so very, very alive.

Alaan’s pace gets relentless and I know it’s not long but it feels quite long and soon, too soon he pushes into me hard and his feet dig into the bedding and I feel him swell and these hot, boiling hot pulses and he cries out.

Then he’s on top of me and he’s panting and I’m…I’m not done, I feel him inside and I squeeze and release and do that over and over and trace my fingers over his back and through his hair and he lifts his face from my chest and we share a tender look.

“God’s Chrissy, gods you’re amazing.”

I smile but I nod and my hair’s wet and I look at him. “It was, but please tell me we’re not done?”

He grins. “If you keep doing that definitely not.”

I kiss him again while tensing and un-tensing and rolling my hips getting more control over my sex and gaining confidence too. It’s gratifying in the extreme as Alaan thickens and hardens then I’m riding him even if I’m under him but it takes no time before he’s joining me and sinking back into me so sweetly and with such power it’s…it’s wonderful that he’s doing this to me and for me and he’s working for this.

It’s sweet in this erotic and stunning way, I feel sexual and powerful and wanted, lusted after and it’s so heady.

And it’s so much easier, faster for me to reach these peaks and highs as waves of pleasure erupt through my body leaving me feverish, crying out, wanting more even.

“More…Harder Alaan, harder…please…”

“Oh Christiana…you’re such a goddess, a princess…a nymph…magical...”

“Nymph?” I ask gasping.

He kisses me then breaks it breathily. “Not that barracks talk, but fey, sweet, daring, sexual…like the legends of the real thing.”

I like that, I kind of like that a lot.

“You…you’re so strong Alaan, a knight…a healer, a good man…I want to be with you because I want a good man to take me to all this…all this beauty.”
It says a lot that the sex is this good that, we’re not saying the harsh rutting talk…but caring things. Pillow talk I think they call it even if the pillow is on his floor.

Then he’s firing again with a hard hot heartfelt groan and he buries his face into my cleavage and I feel his voice resonating into his chest…and I have this... another surge of pleasure as his hot seed splashes my insides again.

It makes my eyes go wide again.

I feel him harden again right after. He moans too into me… “Oh gods, so much like her, so much like your mother…”

“I...I am?”

“Yes…I feel it, feel your magic.”

“What…?” (Panting.)

“She could do that, make me hard again…”

“Oh…you’re welcome?” (Breathy chuckle.)

Honestly I have no idea what or if I did anything but he’s on his third lance and I think that’s rare and he’s moving again and I still, I still am so deeply enjoying all of this.

He changes positions…moves my legs over his shoulders.

Oh good gods that was deep and powerful and I screamed when I orgasmed after that one and then he did again and filling me again and he didn’t flag at all this time and we moved again this time on my knees and I’m holding onto is scabbard using the weight of the blade as something to hang onto.

Another screamer…this time he was loud…and there was this sob? He’s holding me upright and panting I’m panting and he’s saying “Oh gods Chrissy, oh gods that’s…so amazing, so powerful…I never thought I’d ever be with a woman like this ever again…”

He rolls us over and he’s starting to flag and we end up being like two stacked spoons.

I’m shivering like a race horse and I feel his arms tightening around me. “Are you alright?” He asks.

“I’m very alright, that was amazing Alaan but I’m feeling so charged up, so emotional right now that I’m going to start crying and I really don’t want to because it was that wonderful and it was moving and.. and amazing and I didn’t know I was doing that thing that my mother did to you and…”

His arms tighten and around me and he presses into me. “And you’re saying and a lot. Cry Chrissy, you’re allowed happy tears…excited tears.”

Well that was it, just all these feelings and passion and excitement all comes tumbling out with the loss of my virginity…being so well lain and then there’s loving it too even though I never set out this way and it’s all lining up with Alaan and his care, respect, what type of man he is and I cry.

I don’t bawl but I push into his body for the heat and I’m crying and laughing a little too at it and it doesn’t last too long but it speaks so well of all of this that he’s this good to me even now…even after.

I can see how women can fall in love with a man like this, I likely could if my life wasn’t so complicated and this so still unknown to what will happen with my future and what I might have to face.

Sigh… no I’m not fallen for Alaan but it is such a very good thing, being with him. And this being my first man.

Not that I’m planning on a lot of men.

Alaan slips away from us and he gets blankets and tosses them to me and I smile and take them and unfurl them and it’s such a feeling with this and the after sex feelings both inside myself and physically too. I feel sated, sexual, and really sore too and awake but tired. It’s that half lidded feeling and I’m enjoying it.

I’m also enjoying the sight of Alaan naked with a small oil lamp he lights off of his candle and it has a burner frame like the ones from his alchemy tent and I watch him make us tea in two copper mugs and he brings them over and he pulls out a pack from near the bed and he has a canned jar and he offers a spoon.

“Beet jam?”

“Yes Please.”

I’m still not used to this and it’s one of the local gifts from here and it’s actually very good. It tastes well like beets but it’s a heavy fruity flavor but this dense texture that is mixed with a sauce that’s broke down with some of the beet and juices and cooked with something that thickened it a there’s a hint of citrus rind and spice both sparingly used. It’d be good with boar or rabbit or something gamey but it’d never grace the table of the nobility.

Beets? That’s poor food, might as well be a turnip.

I don’t care this is actually fabulous as we’re sharing spoonfuls of jam and drinking black tea after sex and it’s good.

It’s very, very good.

We actually have a mug and a half of tea and we eat all of the jam and then Alaan has me get up while he puts one of the blankets underneath of us because of well the dampness and we slip into bed together and pull the covers over us both.

Hot tea, sweets, and that post sex feeling of contentment blurring with blankets and tired ad being sore and Alaan’s body heat and then being held as we fit together like spoons again it’s very easy to fall asleep.

……………….. My dreams are scant and sleep is actually pretty deep and glorious. The bits of dreams I have are actually amazing sexual snippets and having jam and tea.

I wake before Alaan does like always lately and I’m sore but feeling good too. Not that sexy good but before but well rested and at the same time different inside. I look at Alaan who’s sleeping and smile a little to myself.

Definitely a milestone.

I try to slip out carefully and quietly but it’s like trying to get past Nicole and Alaan’s looking at me. “You’re leaving?” He asks quietly.

I nod and kiss him. “I’m awake, and I need to clean up so I’m going for a swim.”

He nods and he bites his lower lip and I kiss him again but hold both sides of his face in my hands. “Thank you, this was perfect Alaan.”

“I should be thanking you.”

“Then we’re even and we can look forward to another time.”

“Another time?”

“Hopefully.”

I get my clothes and take a blanket with me and slip out smiling and I hear him let out this big sighing breath. “Gods, these sorceresses…they’ll be the death of me.”

This, this sort of makes me smile; it’s a very, very odd thing that my mother and I shared a man in a roundabout way but I think I might have did her proud?

Yes, I think so if I’m any judge of the woman.

It’s that cool pre-dawn and I walk through the dew and head to the lake and set both the blanket and the clothes on part of the dock and grab my baskets and swim out to the lookout raft and…There’s a light there I see after I toss the baskets up.

“Oh I didn’t know someone was here?”

I see a young man one of the ones I tended early and recovered quickly. “Sorceress…I mean Wisdom, I mean….I…you’re..?”

“Swimming.”

“Naked.”

“Yes naked.”

“I…” He actually looks away. “I can watch another direction.”

I should consider it but at the same time I’m well covered by the water and yes it’s sort of fun that he’s truly wanting to look but not wanting to look. It’s still quite dark yet so I think I’m safe.

“Sentry?’

“Yes ma’am?”

“Do your duty; I’ve nothing you’ll not see.” Well actually he might not see anything but still…

I just turn and swim back to the dock and I do seven distances back and forth before stopping and tread water by the docks and use my fingers and hands to get some clean water inside of myself for a while until I’m very sure that I’m clean and I head back out to the raft and then I take a breath and go down the chain making light as I go and once more attracting the curious from a turtle to a frog to small fish. I wait a little while doing the arc’s between my thumb and forefinger and then tone it down then off as I head back to the surface.

It’s a little lighter and I can see him watching me. I wave and take a breath and head back down and this time I look for a rock to hold my weight down and swim out even further and I head out into the lake more and using one hand to hold the stone and the other for light.

Then there’s a current that I feel and swim into and it’s cooler, and I think it could be one of the feeder currents here that fills the lake and I cross it’s cool path and there’s fish there, a largish amount of them coming to see and are doing the swimming swirl around me and I just stop and take in the moment.

It’s just magical watching this like a whirlpool of silvery and greys and a few other shimmery colors and it’s nothing that I’d have seen if not for this.

I’m getting breathy so I let out a strong charge and pop…there’s that wave of lightning rippling out through the water.

Then I surface and I’m not too far away from the raft and I swim over and there a wuffle sneeze beside me. I look and the two otters are there swimming beside me.

“Oh now you show up.”

The female whisker bitey smiles at me and her mate swims I a rollover and water slaps his tail.

“Show off.”

I stop and get the baskets. “You two help or no fish for you.”

They follow me up to the raft and they follow back to the fish and they actually help gather them to me sort of like dogs. Ha, they know, they’re definitely smart enough to know where their easy meals have been coming from.

It takes a while to gather them all up and then they’re off with the two biggest fish of course and then there’s this feeling as I’m heading into the shore than then young man’s watching me.

Okay, I’m fine with that.

I know that it’s natural, I’d look, and even now I’d look.

And it’s not like I haven’t been doing this for a while now.

Then there’s this whole sorceress thing that’s come from this and well I guess it’s another thing that I’ve inherited from her.

I wrap my blanket around myself and it still smells a lot like Alaan and a little of sex and I pull it and get warm and dried off and then use it to dry off then I get dressed. I have most of it on by the time the others are out into the morning to do all of the things that they have to do in the morning and I get nods and cap of hood tugs.

“G’morn Wisdom.” One of the fishers.

“It is, a bit chill sir.”

“Fine catch ye have.”

“I wanted to add to the stores before we’re to leave.”

“Mighty kind.”

“Kind of you I don’t me to poach on your trade.”

“Aye well, yer not we’ve good fishin here.”

“I’ve noticed I was through one of the currents.”

“Aye ye, we’ve a few feeders from the underground b’tween the rivers and some of them be main rivers we’ve always been thinking.”

“Good place to settle, with the water and the vale.”

“Aye, it t’was these things thet me granfers thought settlin.”

“Well for me this place has been wonderful and I’ll always have The Corner as a piece of my heart after all of this.”

He takes one of the baskets. “Well it’s the same fer us. I dinna know what it was thet ye did in the alchemy tent but I know ye worked yer butt off and thet ye were wiping up sick and washin things getting hit and doing a whole bunch of work they ye really dinna have te do…hell’s lass ye dinna hafta even cross the walls.”

“I couldn’t not come here without good conscience sir.”

We end up at the main hall and he sets the basket down. “Inna case I dona see ye fer a while.”

He takes my had and this fisher man a fellow you’d never expect chivalry from takes my hand and he kisses my hand like we’re in a grand courtyard instead of the back porch of the village hall beside two baskets of fish.

I hear my father’s voice in my mind.

“You can breed title but not nobility Christian.”

I can’t help the smile that forms from this and I grip my skirt and I do what I hope is a decent curtsey.

It’s worth the smile I get back.

He gives me a tug of his cap and he’s on the way to do his own work and I head inside where it’s warm.

Oh course the fish are well received and I’m helping out and cooking and heating water and there’s breakfasts going out both from the kitchen in the way I imagine a tavern would do and also from out the back and that’s where I see Alaan again.

I give him a plate of fried fish with grain mash on the side and fresh bread and a scoop of farmers cheese and he takes it gratefully and I take mine too and I go and sit with him and he looks at me and there’s some blushing as we find a place at the edge of the back porch to sit and there’s a lot of glances our way.

There’s some giggles too from the women and young girls passing us.

He’s quite red faced. “They heard us.”

I nod and blush some too. “I…I was very loud I think and the walls of your tent are thin.”

“Well they’re cloth.”

I nod but I eat some fish, actually I shove some fish in my mouth. I’m starved with the sex and the swimming and this has been on my mind since we started the frying up. I chew and swallow then look at him. “I’m leaving soon, I have questions.”

He finishes chewing and he nods. “About your mother and what she could do.”

I nod. “Please.”

He eats for a bit more but he nodded and I eat too and wait until he gathers his thoughts and we’re done and he’s on his mug of tea before he starts.

“I was a squire when we met and she was in one of the battlefields I was helping at and she was healing.”

“She was a healer?”

“Well much in the same sense as me yes she was educated in it and she had great talent too as a surgeon.”

“Oh?”

Alaan nods. “She could move metal like you but she was older and she had a lot more practice in that and she could burn shut wounds and even skin. I seen her do a lot of the things that you do now like with the water and heating it and then there were other things…charms she’d lay to ease pain or stop pain I honestly wasn’t sure how she did some of that but now I think it’s because the nerves use lightning we cannot see to do such things”

“Oh, wow that’s something.”

He nods. “She said she travelled and studied. Where exactly I’m not sure of but nearly everywhere I have been or everyone that might have cause to know of her knew of her.”

I think to the sphere and if she could send me here she could do that for herself then travel might not have been a huge problem for her.

“And the sex?”

“I was young and she was drinking and she decided to take a shine to me and show me the ways of women and men.”

“So she was like the women here? A lot more free in their choices?”

“She was bolder than that…Aurora was a force of nature almost, she did as she pleased but she did it with honorable intent and conscience. As for the seed and sex issue I was panicking since I had no oil of vervaine with me.”

“Oil of vervaine?”

“It’s a herb, one where it’s cooked in oil then strained and when applied to sex…it kills a man’s seed.”

I raise an eyebrow. “I’ve never heard of such a thing is it common here?”

“Fairly much it’s from the elves but the dwarves use it quite much and with such it’s become a thing here.”

“And the immunity to illnesses?”

“The same conversation actually. She told or rather explained to me that she is always generating power, lightning through her body and that because if those energies anything like that either never would settle in or on her.”

“Then how did she have me?”

“Magic as I said would be my guess. She would have to do some sort of spell to have had you or perhaps once you grew enough inside of her you would have the powers that you have now naturally and she would only have to protect you for so long.”

He looks at me and Alaan gives me this honest shrug. “There’s a lot that I don’t know yet of magic and the workings of it.”

I nod. “You think this Lady Tatiana would know more?”

“Definitely, she’s very well versed in so many things and those that she’s not she hires those that are and keeps them close.”

“And she was my mother’s friend.”

“Aurora’s yes, for certain perhaps more.”

“More?”

“They had much the same senses of personal freedoms, and a lot of that she has shared with her people.”

“Can you think of anything else?”

“Nothing from my experiences, but she knew so many of the crafts.”

“Crafts like tradesmen?”

“Those but more like those with powers, druids and hedgemages and witches and mystics of all sorts Chrissy find some of them and they might be able to tell you more. Like anything I imagine that there are some inside secrets that only one with gifts would know or the like.”

I nod and I lean over and I kiss him lightly. “Thank you Alaan this helped.”

“I hoped it would.”

I smile and get up. “She was only an occasional figure in my life so anything I did not know is much more than what I did.”

“You’re both very much alike and not just in bed Christiana you are both very good women.”

I nod but sigh taking our dishes. “I hope so it seems that between both sets of parents I may have some very large shoes to fill.”

He slips off the porch and adjusts his sword belt. “You’ll do fine.”

I head back inside and there’s a few looks and knowing smiles and there’s some grins that make me blush and one of the ladies gives me this whole “wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more dearie” and some of the other’s grin and laugh but I see a few are just burning with questions… “A lady doesn’t tell.” I say and I head to the serving line but I look around and I slice up bread and leave a seven inch long half a loaf and cough several times and that sets them off all giggling and laughing. I’m still blushing as I’m pass out fried fish and spoonfuls of farmers cheese for the bread and Taylor’s there. “Good feed, it’s a fine way to end this off.”

“Ending? We’re leaving?”

“Aye, things are well in hand, and we needs to get you to where you need to go and finish our own duties.”

I nod. “I’ll be ready, it’s not like I have many things to pack.”

It’s kind of bittersweet and it’s getting very emotional as the food’s getting done and I’m getting repeated hugs from first the ladies I’ve been working with and then others and I’m tearful too because they’re tearful over me.

I have more help than I need packing at first and then I need the help as gifts come, the most of which are clothes and some of them are being handed down to me. There’s tops and skirts under things and socks and there’s new sandals and soft hide boots and a lovely heavy woolen coat that is very long on me like a robe and it has wooden buttons and a leather belt with loops and then there’s provisions and little gifts of little carved tokens and I use my memory trick to remember their names and what they gave me…every single thing, every little thing.

There’s lot of sniffles and kisses on cheeks and hugs.

And now I have two leather handled cloth bags of clothes, a draw string duffle and I’ve changed into some new clothes a set of woolen socks and then a skirt not too long to drag and then there’s my blouse under a nice tanned leather vest and my long coat of heavy wool with my dagger and sheath and a few pouches of iron ingots I asked Aiden the smith for.

He passes me a staff. It’s a good thick quarterstaff well dried and of hickory. “I think ye might be needing something like this.”

I take it and give it a few spins and then hold it in front guard position. “It’s wonderful.”

Yes I can use a staff, it’s literally the first weapon you’re taught in most arms training, long for reach and available plus if you learn staff then you’re learning a spear the most common of infantry weapons.

“Yeh kin use it I see.”

I smile. “A little better than a broomstick yes.”

We hug again and he walks me back to the others and we’re all set and the wagon’s hooked to the team of horses and we’re all ready to go and we start heading out of the village and the elders are there and we are shaking hands and then there’s Aiden and Megan.

I take his hand and we shake and he kisses it and I dip. “You’re staying?” I ask.

“We are at least another week just to be sure.”

“Fare you well then.”

“You as well sorceress.” He says it fondly.

Toss it…I step up and reach up and pull him down to a kiss, a long one that leaves the elders coughing and a few grins and him turning red and I break the kiss and there’s a few whistles from the others of the village and I move to Megan and she’s blushing and looking at him and she looks at me and then Alaan.

I shake hands with her and smile. “It was an honor spending the night with you Squire.”

There’s sudden silence and I take the chance to do the same with Megan and pull her down into a long kiss and that lasts until we’re coughed into breaking it too.

Alaan’s watching us the whole time and then I break the kiss look fondly at both of them and say. “Taylor are we ready?”

Taylor chuckles and cracks the leads and we start moving and I catch a seat on the back of the wagon waving and smiling as both Alaan and Megan are still looking at each other and I see Megan take her hands and stick them in her trouser pockets and walk away like she’s innocent.

I look over to see Jessa/Hawk looking at me. “Both?”

I turn sideways in the wagon and set my staff against my shoulder and my legs up and then grin at her as I innocently shove my hands into my coat pockets.