Private Tales What Has It Got In Its Pocketses? (Fraeya)

[Harrier]

A door shut with finality, separating Harrier and Fraeya from the cultists, the naga, and all the rest of the mess. Harrier's skeleton underlings took up guard positions. Nothing outside was coming in. Nothing inside was, at a guess, getting out.

Harrier eyed the gutsy young pickpocket.

"You can keep the purse, " she said. "The undead lizard should probably come back to me if it knows what's good for it."

The dried secruyu lizard wriggled nervously in the coins.

 

[Fraeya]

Fraeya gulped again.

Surrounded by snakes and skeletons. Just another day. Clammy palms shifted against the purse she clutched, nearly forgetting she had it as she looked at the woman that smelled like gravedirt.

Eyes like meadows bulged as the thing on top of those coins moved. "Undead?" A hitch in her voice even though she was definitely past puberty. "Sorry," she spoke to the lizard, eyeing it inside.

"Sorry!" She burst to the....witch?

Ha, as if apologies could save her hide now.

Fraeya gently set the purse, opened, on the floor between them, passing on the option of getting too close to this woman or the dried undead lizard thing inside. "I don't need...it," she stammered and half-lied. "I just needed to do it," the girl tried explaining. Fingers balled into fists at her sides. "Just, whatever you're going to do. Will it hurt?" She braced herself, mentally. Eyes squeezed closed then one popped open in wary anticipation.

 

[Harrier]

Harrier frowned, first at the purse and then at the very scared young woman.

"Am I that terrifying? Pull yourself together, please. Have some dignity."

The undead lizard scurried out of the purse and took up a position on Harrier's shoulder.

"Honestly, I should be thanking you for getting me out of what was becoming a highly awkward situation with that naga."

 

[Fraeya]

Her other eye popped open when no blow came.

"You have an undead lizard in your purse and a cadre of skeletons. Is that supposed to give me the warm and fuzzies?"

Hand lifted to rub at the back of her neck.

"So," voice trailed off. "You're not going to kill me? That's good and all if you don't but those snakes out there might have a different idea."

 

[Harrier]

"Yes, well, fair enough. I can't eat my cake and have it too. Approachable human? Respectable necromancer?" She held up both hands like the sides of a scale and mimed balancing them. "Both have their uses. Neither one is going to kill you. I'm curious - what drove you to pick the most...intimidating pocket around?"

The naga hadn't had pockets; naga didn't wear pants.

 

[Fraeya]

Fraeya slow blinks at the necromancer, "Because you had the only pocket."

 

[Harrier]

"You're telling me none of those robed cultists who appeared from nowhere had...you know, when I put it like that..."

Harrier turned back, got a skeleton out of the way, and glanced out the door.

"They're still out there. You're the local - any idea who these knuckleheads are?"

 

[Fraeya]

"Not really a local but explaining is probably not the best time right now," sticky-hands shoved into her pockets. Shoe scuffed at the floor. A lot to explain about how the fae dragged her about using the ancient fae roads and the travel only they seemed to know how to do.

The inbetween.

Made her always feel like her brain was about to be pulled through her nose when they made her do it with them.

"Best option would be to try to make it to the coast and get a boat out of their territory." Eyes tracked to all the skeletons. "Or maybe a ship for everyone. How would one of your boney-ones care to be a distraction?"

 

[Harrier]

"Astute plan all around. Mallo, you're up."

One of the skeletal sentries clattered out the door, grabbing a splintery broom on the way. Soon the sound of thwacking permeated the little village. Cultists shrieked.

"Mallo won't mind if they shatter him," Harrier explained. "Remarkably fatalistic for a skeleton. Marsh, make us a door, please."

Opposite the shack's actual entrance, the second skeleton disassembled a portion of the wall - brutally, but quietly. Harrier adjusted her ragged cloak and flicked a beetle out of her hair.

"This may be a stupid question, but which way is the coast?"

 

[Fraeya]

"They have names?" More of an exclamation than a question. Mala's beard, who was this woman?! How long had Harrier walked this earth with her cadre of skeletons?

Fraeya didn't hesitate as she scooped up Harrier's coin purse on the way out. Waste not want not. She needed...coin and wasn't about to leave it to the naga.

The sticky air of the jungle was oppressing. She envied the skeletons for their skinless and clothless selves, if only for a moment. Head snapped toward a tangle of vines that could just as well be hiding snakes among them.

"That way. Hope you and your lot are up for a little jungle trek." She plunged ahead to show the way even as her knees wobbled. She just hoped they found a way across the murky waters of the Shinga river. And avoided the Adder's den.

 

[Harrier]

"Always, always. We live in the Bayou Garramarisma, a little town called Crossroad Mire that'sa refuge for people like us. Trudging through squishy, humid, aggressive terrain is our lot in life."

They were perhaps thirty or forty yards into the jungle, out of sight of the village, when Mallo caught up. Or rather, his skull did, tumbling and bouncing along. The rest of him was strewn across the ground back there as bone chips, but his skull had escaped the stomp. Harrier scooped it up.

"River ahead, yes?" she asked Fraeya. "Also we should hurry."