Go west

“I think we should trust Dove.” I say.

Kiara’s mouth goes wide open from surprise. Another one of those moments where I wish her eyes weren’t hidden by her hood.

“You can’t be serious. She’s the one who **** you, right?”

I turn away dejectedly and sigh. “Yes, she did.”

“Then why would you even listen to her?”

“Because she apologized a lot for what she was doing.” I explain. “Like she knew she was doing the wrong thing, but her desperation to help her people pushed her into doing it anyways.”

This time it is Kiara’s turn to sigh.

“Despair. It’s a powerful thing, isn’t it?”

Kiara decides to give in and we head westward. We take Dove’s warning into account and search for some food on the way there. We are fortunate enough to find a wild raspberry bush and fill our stomachs with its berries.

When we continue our journey, we come across a few monsters. But I am strong enough to defeat them, and Kiara has regained enough mana to use her shadow manipulation again.

By the time we reach the dwarven village, it is already night. None of the villagers are still outside, so we head straight for the inn. We have to duck through a small door to get inside. Once there, we see a lot of dwarven men and women drinking and eating. One by one they fall silent and stare at us.

“Good evening.” I say. “Just two humble travelers on their way to Riledo. Any chance we can buy some food, a few drinks and hire a room for the night?”

A dwarven woman who looks like she runs the place walks up to us and says, “Of course, not a problem. It is just a rare thing for us to be visited by a pair of humans. Your people don’t often come here.”

“Yes, well. We originally weren’t supposed to pass here either. But then we had to escape the harpy village a bit away from here and …” I try to explain, but the innkeeper was so surprised she interrupts us and asks, “You escaped from the harpies?!”

This resulted in a couple of the dwarves gasping. Well, guess I’m going to have to tell the whole story now.

Kiara and I knelt at one of their tables, as the chairs were simply too short for us to sit on, and I start telling them our story. The villagers much approved of us serving as guards for dwarven merchants and sighed disapprovingly when they learned how the harpies captured me. That is when Kiara steps in and starts telling her side of the story. How she infiltrated the harpy village to find and rescue me, drawing even more gasps from the crowd.

When I am about to tell the tale of our escape, we finally get our food. The dwarves have to wait a little now, but they understand that we are close to starving. After a few bites, I continue the story in between my meal. Both how Kiara glamered me to look like a harpy, how we made it to the ground and eventually got told by Dove to come this way.

Some of the people in our audience didn’t believe me getting turned into a harpy so Kiara put that glamer on me again. I then stood and showed of my feminine and birdlike body and everybody had a good laugh.

“By the goddess, you two must be some of the few humans that ever escaped from them.” The innkeeper says.

Kiara ends her glamer and I casually mention, “Yeah well, they must not have captured many adventurers from the Dark Dragon guild.”

The villagers gasped again. Guess they heard of the Dark Dragons as well. Well, it is a pretty old guild. I guess so far away from Riledo the guild might seem more exotic and legendary.

“For the moment we just want to return home.” I say as I pay the innkeeper. “We’ll simply rent a room for this night, and tomorrow we’ll be on our way again.”

“You better also pay for your clothes to be washed too. The both of you smell.” A male dwarf comments.

I guess our clothes could use a wash, but we have nothing else to wear. I try to explain, but the innkeeper laughs it off.

“Come now, you’re not going to tell me you are too shy to share a nude night with your girlfriend here?”

I try to explain how Kiara and I are not a couple, but the other villagers already start cracking jokes about how in love we were. Including some inappropriate ones.

My biggest surprise was Kiara placing her hand on my shoulder and telling me that we still have to go a long way and our clothes do reek. I finally give in and also pay for mine and Kiara’s clothes to be washed.

The innkeeper then brings us to our room. There are two dwarven sized beds in there, but after putting the beds together they are long enough for me and Kiara to fit in. Kiara then asks for some extra blankets and has me wait outside for a while. I assume that she is changing out of her clothes.

I am quite nervous, though. I’ve been friends with Kiara for such a long time, yet I have never seen her face. If her clothes are going to be washed, that means she will be without her hood for a while. I will finally get to see what color eyes she has. But she’ll also be sleeping next to me in the nude. Is this how it was for Oliver after he and Emma arrived at his uncle? A man and a woman sleeping next to each other, in the same bed, both nude, but also not fooling around. Sexual tension building up night after night until eventually both can’t stand it anymore. Could that really happen between me and Kiara?

My thoughts are interrupted when I hear Kiara shout “You can come in.”

I open the door and see Kiara already in bed … with a white sheet covering most of her body including her face, like a hood. I was so surprised I couldn’t help but start snickering.

“What’s wrong?” Kiara asks.

I suppress my laughter and say, “You really love hiding your face, don’t you?”

“We’ve been friends for quite a while now.” Kiara says. “I guess I can tell you. Feel free to start changing out of your clothes in the meanwhile, I won’t look.”

With Kiara sitting on the left side of the bed, I move to the right side of the room and start taking off my clothes. It is quite difficult though. Taking off your clothes in a room so small you have to duck all the time.

“When I was 11 years old, I lived in a village. Similar as you.” Kiara starts her story. “Then one day, criminals came to my village. They killed all of the adults, including my parents, and captured the children, including myself.”

Holy gods! I turn to face Kiara but only see her sheet covered backside. That at least confirms she is indeed not watching. But the way she starts her story, and how casually she talks about it. Well, it happened when she was 11. She is like 24 now. I guess she’s had time to come to terms with it.

“After that, they put us into cages and transported us to their camp. To use us as slaves.” Kiara continues. “On the way there, they kept mocking us. Me specifically. Since I was a pretty girl, they often told me all the things they were planning to do to me once I became old enough. Even the women amongst them told me of the fantasies they had planned for me. All because of my pretty face. That is when I developed the fear of people seeing me.”

Once I finish taking off my clothes, I grab one of the extra sheets and wrap it around my body similar to Kiara. I did keep my guild necklace on though.

“So, is that why you started researching negative emotions? Because you wanted to understand your own fears? I’m done changing, by the way.” I say.

Kiara then turns around, her face still covered by the sheets. Though I can now see how her lips are no longer black. She must have taken the lipstick off. It is so weird. Those black lips were the only facial feature of hers that I knew. With her lipstick gone, it almost feels like I’m talking to another person.

“Yes.” Kiara says. “To first understand where my fear comes from, why it got created, and then to overcome it. I haven’t figured out that last part, though.”

“So, how did you escape those slavers?” I ask.

“I didn’t.” Kiara tells me. “We were stuck there until a group of adventurers attacked the bandits. It were those adventurers who saved us and by sheer luck they happened to be from the Dark Dragon guild. Since the closest city was in the elven kingdom, they brought us there first. To pass us on to an orphanage. I befriended one of the female Dark Dragons on the way there. It was also during that trip that I started covering my face with a scarf. I simply felt more at ease when people couldn’t see me.”

“Did that woman adopt you?”

“Not at first. The man in charge of the orphanage didn’t like me wearing that scarf, so he took it from me. Once my face was revealed, and I could feel dozens of people staring at me, I felt so anxious. I was so scared to be looked at, to be judged, of people paying attention to me. I started screaming and tried to get my scarf back. I even bit the owner of the orphanage. He was then so angry that he refused to take me in. As far as he cared, I could just live on the street. That is when the woman I befriended decided to adopt me.”

“I see. And then you traveled with her to Riledo, Right?”

“Indeed. That is when I started living amongst the Dark Dragons in their guild. So many of them took care of me. I heard so many stories of adventure and heroism on a daily basis. It is then when I developed a desire to become an adventurer just like them. I wanted to become just like my new family. Make my own adventure stories to tell. I wanted to give something back to them. But most importantly, once I became 18, I didn’t want to leave the guild and lose another family. If I became an adventurer, I could join them as a guild member and become their equal.”

“Wow, that is quite a story.”

There is a small moment of silence between us. Then Kiara says, “You should hand our clothes to the innkeeper. They’ll never get washed otherwise.”

I pick up my pants, underwear and shirt with my left hand, and then also Kiara’s clothes with that same left hand. I need my right hand to keep the bed sheets on me closed. If I don’t, they’ll open up and I’ll expose everything. I the head outside the room and find the innkeeper. When I hand her our clothes, she makes another joke about us hopefully not making too much noise tonight.

“I’m sorry to dash your hopes of romance, ma’m. But Kiara and I are actually not a couple?” I tell the dwarf woman.

The woman looks at me as if I said something weird.

“Listen lad.” The dwarf lady says. “You may have pretty eyes, but ye sure don’t know how to use em.”

“Excuse me?” I ask.

“From the story you two told us, that Kiara gall infiltrated a harpy village just to save ye.” The innkeeper explains. “I don’t know of any woman who would face such a danger for someone who is just a friend. That gall has a crush on you, lad.”

The woman’s words leave a confused look on my face. Kiara has feelings for me? For real?

“Now, don’t you go and ruin it by doing something creepy, alright?” The innkeeper continues. “Try romance instead. Say a few nice things to her. Let her know you notice her as a potential partner and before you know it, the two of you will be making out.”

Then the innkeeper winks at me and leaves with our clothes.

On my way back to the room I wonder about what she said. It just feels so strange to me for Kiara to already have a crush on me. Could it be that I have friend zoned her? Then I try to imagine myself in romantic situations with Kiara. Holding hands with her, kissing her, or maybe even making love to her. You know what, that actually doesn’t sound too bad.

I started thinking of some nice things that I could tell Kiara. But once I got back to our room, I noticed that she was already fast asleep. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

I walk to my side of the bed. I take off the sheets and place them on the nightstand. Then I get into bed and lie next to Kiara. It doesn’t take me long to fall asleep either.