Hello all! It's Tuesday and that means it's time for a new chapter!

I hope you enjoyed the prologue to this little story. Now, though, you get to meet our first main character. Take pity on her, she's having a rough time of it.

As a reminder, this is one of three stories I'll be running concurrently. They're all totally unrelated though, so don't feel you are missing out if you don't read all of them.

Transmorphosis updates on Mondays as it follows our trans hero as she seeks to unlock the secrets of being able to transition people so she can bring it to those who need it. Follow it here:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/60625288/chapters/154797610

And starting this Wednesday will be Red, a story about a transgirl witch in Boise struggling to help her local gayboi werewolves defeat a longstanding curse threatening their existence.

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Enjoy!

One

Grey clouds hung low over the valley, shrouding the tops of surrounding mountains in a cold, cheerless blanket. A wind blew between them, like the futile attempt of some imp of spring to drive winter’s last storms away. It made a mournful sound as it whipped flags and ropes about, an appropriate enough sound for the prayers written on the flags.

Small waves of drifting snow were pushed along by the wind. Tall piles of somber, orderly stone boxes blocked their progress, forcing them to whisk around the sides before curling and tumbling in eddies behind. There, the wind confused, the snow settled out in large drifts, frozen dunes with no more sense of life to them than anything else in the cheerless place.

Beside one such pile of stones, oblivious to the wind, a cloaked figure stood still. Wind caught at stray black hairs, flicking them across the reddened skin of an exposed face. An aching hand lifted to one of the stone boxes, brushing away the snow that had accumulated atop it. The tips of  fingers traced the words carved into the warmth sapping stone.

“‘Blaistrupe, Son of Fiskeyorn, Captain of the Clans.’” The woman’s fingers dropped away and she sighed, her voice bleak. “They didn’t mention ‘beloved husband’.” She pulled the hood of her cloak down, letting long, loose black hair flow freely in the frosty air. She leaned forward to press a forehead against the stone, long tresses falling forward to cover her face and protect her eyelashes from softly falling flakes of snow. “Bastards. You’d have said it. Before you went off and got yourself killed.” A fist softly struck the top of the stone. “Bastard.”

She could hear the sound of a boot grinding the muck of half frozen meltwater and mud into the stone of the path behind her. Grimacing, the woman turned her head to the side, resting an ear against the cairn she was leaning on. “You have something to say, Isoli?”

Ice blue eyes looked back at her from a face neatly framed by twin golden braids and delicate sideburns. “You shouldn’t be doing that, Brayve. You’ll freeze your face to the stone.” The much larger woman stepped forward and attempted to lift the black haired woman’s hood back up over her head. Bravye’s hand came up to swat the effort aside, and Isoli gave her a disapproving look. “Stop that. You’ll catch your death from this cold.”

“Maybe it would be better if I did,” Brayve replied. She watched as Isoli’s face tightened, and laughed. “Oh, you fret too much. Do you really think I’d do something like that? It was a joke. Besides,” she fished around in the heavy black fur cloak covering her, pulling out a flask. “This keeps me warm enough to last until spring arrives for real.” She uncorked the flask and took a good swallow, enjoying the sensation of heat spreading through her belly.

She could tell that Isoli wasn’t satisfied, but mercifully the maid kept her peace. Replacing the cork, Brayve shoved the flask back inside her cloak. Her attention turned back to the small stone coffin holding her husband’s ashes. “Do you know it’s been five months, Blaistrupe? Nine months since they took you from me, promising you’d come back heaped in glory. But how did you come back? Gone only four months, and you came back in a rock.”

Her voice, which had been soft at first, began to climb, the smooth alto turning shrill. “How dare you?” Her hand slapped the stone. “How dare you leave me like this? You bastard. You fucking bastard!”

“Bravye!” Isoli barked. “People will hear you!”

Bravya laughed, the sound mocking. “So what? Let them hear.” The woman spun around, her long hair spreading behind her in the unbraided style known as the Widow’s Cloak. “I don’t care if they hear, Isoli. They could have left him here to run the factory. Instead, they pulled him away and sent him off to play soldier with those oversized popguns he made for them.” She spat. “They took him from me! They took him, and sent him to die for them. I hate them. I hate them all, and I don’t care who knows about it!”

Isoli was staring at her from her superior height, but not with an expression of worry, or even fear. The tall, blond woman’s face spoke of disgust and pity both.

Shocked by the sight of it, Bravye’s eyes darted around. Here and there among the cairns were the figures of others, some widows, some children, and even a few elderly souls, and all of them were very carefully not taking any notice of her.

Suddenly all too self aware, she hunched down into her cloak, hiding her face behind the ruff. Sullenly she muttered, “It’s not even our clan’s war.”

“I know,” Isoli replied. She stepped over and tucked the hood back over Brayve’s head and then looked up at the flakes dropping from above. “Come along. I think the snow is getting worse. We should get you back home before it gets serious about dumping another foot on us.”

“Isn’t it supposed to be spring already?” Brayve muttered, but there was no life to it. Chastened, she allowed herself to be led off by her maid, splashing uncaringly through the muck that the brief warmth of yesterday had created. She knew without looking that Isoli was wincing at each spatter of mud that was kicked up to mar the bottom of her cloak and to stain the hem of her dress, but really, she couldn’t be bothered to care.

The walk out of the garden of the dead was not a long one. Tucked in a small side valley, it quickly opened into the main valley between the mountains, and the city that nestled in it. The walk home from there  wouldn’t ordinarily be all that far, but Isoli insisted on hiring a carriage to take them back. Brayve made a token effort to object, but quickly subsided, letting herself be chivied up into the coach. Once settled in, she fished around in her cloak once again, pulling out the flask and uncorking it once more.

“I’ll take that if you please,” Isoli said, snatching the flask away and retrieving the cork to plug it.

Brayve felt her eyes shoot daggers at the maid. “I don’t please. Give it back.”

“You’ve had quite enough for one day already.” Isole glared at the flask and the potent green liquid inside. 

“I need it. I’m cold.”

“I told you to wear the thicker wool skirts,” Isoli chastised.

“It was too much trouble.” Brayve sulked deeper down into her cloak. “Now give me back my flask.”

The item of contention disappeared somewhere within Isoli’s dark colored garments. “I’ll draw you a hot bath when we get back and bring you something warm and soothing once you’re in it.” Isoli leaned back in her seat.

“I should send you away. You’re a lousy maid.” Brayve propped her chin in her hand and glared out the window of the carriage.

Isoli, for her part, said nothing.

The carriage rattled through the narrow streets, squeezing past wagons and crowds of passers-by. Crowded into the hollows and vales of the northern mountains, space was a rare commodity. The room to transport people from point A to point B was only grudgingly accepted as necessary. Buildings crowded the streets from either side, and second and third stories often extended beyond the first floor walls out into the air above, pinching the view of the frigid clouds above into the narrowest of niches, or sometimes even closing it off completely.

Blaistrupe had once told Bravye that some of the other races thought the clans lived in caves, mistaking the streets for tunnels. She’d laughed at him then, pointing out how absurd a concept that was.

Staring out at night-dark streets in the middle of the day, with only occasional brighter patches lit by the barely lighter skies above she now found herself full of gloomy understanding. It really did feel like being swallowed up into a cave. Dark, foreboding, cold, and dank. She could even envision the dirty piles of snow as fallen debris if she just squinted a little, feel a stuffiness to the air that could only have spoken of stale, stagnant depths beneath the mountains. It was altogether a miserable place.

The sound of shouting interrupted her reverie. The coach slowed and squeezed over to the side of the road as far as it could, the window next to Isoli darkening as a soot stained wall was brought within a handsbreath of the wheels. Surprised, Brayve stuck her head out of her own window and peered up at the driver. “Why are we stopping?”

The driver glanced back down at her from atop his seat. “Prisoners, good lady. From the war. I’m afraid I can’t get around them. We’ll just have to wait for them to pass us by.”

Interested in spite of herself, Bravye leaned further out the window. She’d known that prisoners taken during the fighting in the south were being put to work in factories nearby. She had not, however, ever seen any of them. Though the elves were far from mythic, as her own widowed state attested to far too well, they had never really been seen inland. 

“Why do you suppose they’re walking? Surely the dragon road would have been better for everyone than blocking the streets.”

The coachman shrugged, and turned to watch forward as the first of the column came into view from her lower position.

She wasn’t prepared for what she saw. The soldiers marching along in their kilts and coats were a familiar sight from the fanfare that had been put on all summer as the war started. The only real difference between then and now was the mud spattered onto their boots, the wool winter leggings beneath the kilts, and the bone weary looks in their eyes. What they were guarding, however, was something altogether too alien for her to quite understand.

Elves, she suddenly discovered, were tall. Almost twice the height of any ordinary man of the clans, they marched with heads threatening to bump against overhanging eaves. It was fortunate that most of them were staring down at the ground, slouching, though whether from exhaustion, bitter defeat, or misery from the cold and wet she couldn’t say. Worse, though, was how thin they were. Even as her mind insisted that it was impossible, her eyes told her that the broadest of them was thinner than she, and she had always been teased for being so little a woman.

“It’s like saplings walking,” she muttered. “It’s just… wrong.”

She felt the coach shift as Isoli shifted over to look out the window as well, but she didn’t glance over. Something else had caught her eye, adding even more to her growing discomfort. Unable to stop herself, she called out. “Soldier! Are those gags?”

The soldier she’d called to stopped, and looked over at an unusually dressed, shackled, and heavily guarded group of the prisoners. “Yeah,” he called, not taking his eyes off them. “We have to keep these ones gagged. Magic users.” He spat in the street. “We don’t dare let the bastards speak.”

She watched as he turned towards the coach. “I tell you what, if it were up to me I’d cut…” The man’s words sputtered to a halt as he saw who he was talking to. “Sorry, Great Lady. Beg your pardon.” His cheeks colored beneath his beard as he spun and hurried back down the line of prisoners.

Brayve took one last look at the prisoners. She could see the cracking of the lips and the way the corners of their mouths were chaffed by the rags stuffed inside them and bound around their faces. In the cold, moisture from their breath had soaked the rags and then froze, and the grey color indicating the early stages of frostbite was displacing the angry red of wind-burned skin. Shuddering, she fell back into the coach, turning away from the window. She felt sick to her stomach, uncertain whether the revulsion she was feeling was from her first encounter with the people who had killed her husband, or from the horrible conditions imposed on them by their captivity. 

Desperately she began searching her cloak. Isoli said nothing as she pressed the flask into Bravye’s hand.