Great White Witch Excerpt #3: Fire Manes

Coughing, sputtering back to life, I hastily sat up to expel the rest into a cupped hand. The fit seemed endless, bringing tears to my eyes and small dribbles of spit to my lips, until I felt something very warm ball out. Once I saw what it was, I grew nauseous and began to wobble back. An appalling amount of blood-filled phlegm dripped between my fingers. Something caught me by the head.
“Got ye right n’ the lung din’ she?”

It was the little old man. His voice was deep but had a sharp aspect to it, like a bear mixed with a mouse, and nested a twang that I can't quite explain. Like a dragon, his breath blasted out with sundry smokes and a pungent smell of wine. Having not noticed it before, I found that his massive whiskers also had little gold rings on each end, causing them to fray wildly beyond the metal. We were inside a pelt tent of sorts, though it looked terribly broken and stepped-through in some places, which I soon recognized was my fault.
“Hot-headed, that one, evryn’ knows yer s’pose to aim fer the heart.”
He slipped the hand back to his side once I summoned the strength to sit upright again. Then proceeded to pull out a familiar looking pipe that appeared pieced together with a sloppy amount of sap, bringing it to his bushy whisker-hidden lips, and puffed on it for a few moments before speaking again.
“Looks like it got the job done though. Gotcha deep. Why, when I found ye lyin’ an' bleedin’ in that mud, you were pretty dead. Luckeh for you, if I hadn’ come along, nobody else could've dug out this damn thing-” He reached back and held out two ends of split and bloodied arrow with a red fletching, the head looked hooked and devious, three fingers in width. “made it me self.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say. Thankful for saving me but very confused as to why he, a complete stranger, would do so, the words were hard to find in the fog. I felt groggy and empty, and most of all, very cold. When I rubbed my eyes to inspect the tent further, I blinked at the pewter light of dusk and little stars that had begun to twinkle in the sky. Shakily feeling for the wound, I noticed a little lit lamp beside us, and that my robe was gone. Awareness steeply came back, I wasn’t wearing any actual clothes at all. Scrambling back into the corner after letting out an abrupt yowl, I tightly covered my chest in arms and locked my legs, glaring drawn-eared at him.
“Awww, I’m sorreh lil’ one, din’t see nothin’ if that makes ye feel better, not with all the fluff yeh cats got.” He looked out and smiled to himself, bringing the pipe to his hidden lips again, "especially yers". I felt greatly embarrassed and even more so disturbed. He smelled of pinecones and other wonderful scents of the forest, but noticeably hadn't bathed for a long while. Neither had I, at least for a moon or two, my fur felt grossly clumped and greasy in many places. As if he were reading my thoughts, "K'll be back from washin' up any moment now, if ye want to rinse all that blood away. Might wanna stay out of those robes fer a bit anyway, whole reason she didn' trust ye in the first place. She doesn' like magic, you see. But don't worreh, she ain't gon' set off on ye again. Made damn sure of that." He said this between white puffs, giving me plenty of time to think of how to escape. As far as I could tell, nothing was keeping me from leaving save the mushroom, a pair of boots, and my apprentice's robe.
"Wan' some tea?" He asked.
Shy from having been seen bare, though utterly awake, I didn't say a word. But, I was curious what "Tea" was, and nodded my head almost unnoticeably. He toked his pipe deeply, exhausting what was left, then pushed the tent flap aside and pulled it back suspiciously like a tavern's curtain. Outside, a fire crackled, and some metal pots among other utensils clanked together soon after he disappeared. Leaving me alone and naked with the lamp, and a roll of bandages.

Later, tea was being poured into little pewter cups, and the old man called. I entered the open meekly, still attempting to cover myself. He glanced from the pot to me, and smiled for only a second, then did a double take. Worry rushed my mind, thinking the happy man may get furious at what I'd done. His cheeks raised immensely as he stifled a laugh. "Y'know yer s'pose to cover wounds with those, not your bits. Ye look like a mummy." I had a thick layer of gauze wrapped around my hips, waist and chest, then crossed over my mark and to my bitten shoulder, like some odd dress with big gaps in its midsection. Though I knew it would not last long, I was quite proud of my shoddy tailorship, and a small smile curled into my cheeks upon hearing his remark. He held out a thin-metaled mug for me from afar. I took it comfortably, constantly trying to keep my new covers from becoming unwound with every step.

Tea just tastes like water with grass stirred in. No special color or smell. Nonetheless I drank it all to be polite, and partly because I was extremely thirsty, then handed the cup to him with a silent thank you. We were sat upon two fallen trees around the fire, stripped and smoothed by the river, with a barked third left empty set across from mine. With a gleeful expression, the elf in his smelly sleeve-rolled tunic stoked and poked the fire, sending a thousand little red sparks into the blackened sky. Khenarthi breathed life into it and through the tips of the dead long grass around us, rustling them gently into a mesmerizing sway. The sight and radiance calmed my thoughts of "This doesn't make sense, why hadn't they skinned me?". Then, I realized that nothing in the past few days had made much sense at all, and played along with his temperance as if this were any normal day. The fire dried and cracked the mud plastered to my face fur. Sitting tightly cross-legged and scratching the log with my claws, I thought about his offer of taking a bath.
"Do you have any soap?" Were my first words to him since the day before, though I didn't tear my eyes from the fire.
"O'course.
“But I don't know if yeh cats can use bars." He said as he sprinkled more leaves into his pipe. "There's a pale jus' over there-" A loose-skinned and boney finger pointed towards another tent just behind the third log, still trampled, and beside it an uneven bucket whose contents; lumpy self-made soap from the fat of a troll, practically spilled. I nodded again in thanks, lifting away from my claw-scarred seat, as he attempted to light his pipe with a branch amusingly too big. On my tip-toeing trip to the soap, I conjured a flame at my middle fingertip and snapped. The charred opening of his pipe flared, and his little leaves caught light as I smiled, continuing on my way without looking back. Pipes and other harmful pleasures such as sweet sugars were not a seldom sight in my caravan. I was often called to help set the things for Ma’dran in addition to Ri'saad's fellowship, and if anything, this was the least I could do for the elf's courteous conduct and otherwise humble hospitality. Of course, since I had never done anything so precise with flame, I was worried his red beard might catch fire. Out of the corner of my eye, he looked genuinely confused when I did it, but it made me feel nice and my tail uncontrollable. There was a spring in my steps as I went, bounding merrily through the tallgrass like wildlife, going from tiptoe to tiptop. Until I met her.
Utterly and shamelessly naked spare the axe amulet and holding her bandana in one hand, she stood so close I was afraid her nipple would poke me in the eye. I hadn't noticed her in the warmth of my success, the old man's surprised expression playing over and over in my head, otherwise I would have made sure to be armies away. She smelled nice, and dripped big puddles from every end when she stopped, obviously having just finished her wash. Unlike before, she seemed restrained, barely. There was a look about her tightened lips that said she was holding back a very strong urge to strangle me. I tried to stare at my feet as much as I could, holding my tongue and breath, cautious and considerate enough not to look at anything else. I wished she'd done the same. The bush woman ran her wet hip into my arm after what seemed like two moons of mortification, though there was plenty of space to go around, and left me staring into the distance at nothing. And I stayed in this spell of anxiety as I self-consciously unraveled and stepped into the once green water, now oranged by clouded streaks of Falmer fluid, where a few curly red whiskers floated. Frightened at first by its freezing coat, and chilled by a hideous remembrance, I bravely let it level at my knees and no further. Then melted the fire mane's soap to a slippery white sludge in my palm and scraped away at the crust of mud and my own blood.

I had no idea people could be so... pink.

How anyone could be comfortable so bare, baffled me. Does she not feel the fingertips play upon her spine and the shudder that ensues? Does she not tense upon the caress of an unfamiliar breeze? I thought as she guzzled innumerable bottles of the glazed drink labeled as hers across from me, letting it trickle, sometimes cascade unmannerly from her low lip, down her chin, and onto her sinewy thighs. A truly terrible sight. Relief filled me when the Nord finally tied on linen unders in the firelight, as the old man asked of her, which soon faded once she began to stare and continue drinking. I tried looking to the fire instead of the discomforting sight. But, even in its presence, the relaxation and imperturbability the flame sustained before ebbed, contested. This was a woman of fire both in appearance and passion, she must have been playing with it or overpowered it, because here there was a ward between us yet no sensation of safety. Evasively, I tried to wash myself with licks just to avoid eye-contact, although I'd just cleaned in the lake. No matter what I did, where she went, an untrusting eye was trained upon me with a furrowed and bushy brow. Though I had my sullied bandages wrapped carefully to cover everything, her icy sapphire eyes that gleamed like a dagger's point exposed me, and were digging deeper and deeper, searching furiously through the dancing flames for every secret, any trace of who I really was, and into the deepest darkest desires of my soul.
What more could she possibly want? Revenge already belonged to her, fulfilled the moment she pierced my side and brought upon me an agonizing yet fascinating pain. Did she want death? How much had she seen in our battle of mind boring? I prayed that Ra would overlook my current state, if she were to show, I would wake within a mountain of gore; a hideous way without reason for defending me that I will never understand. Which left only what was among us to a claim savior. The fire may not be able to fight one of its own Ilk and save from this savage, but there was one who could.
"Be back, gotta take a leak" He gruffly announced, lifting from the log and interrupting what to him must have been a very long and awkward silence. The one called "K" put on an unsavory grin that I did not like.
Leak?
"But it isn't raining-" I tried to say, holding perilously onto the hope that he'd stay, but he danced a funny way into the dark before a thing could be said, and was gone. Nothing. Devoid of defense, swamps of consternation drowned my mind, and I started to shake. At any moment fire would be upon me, to stab, skin, and devour, as any hunter should. As curiosity dared, I turned with an utmost unwillingness and terror only to find her seat empty.