Prysmcat

 A quick who's-who reminder (or possibly clarification), since there are a lot of characters and who's in which family matters!

“I hope the food’s good,” Aelfeva said, forcing her tone to stay light. “I’m ravenous. Stopping for lunch was a very long time ago. Shall we go sit down? I’m sure Rich won’t take long.” She hoped fervently that he wouldn’t. Teoda declining his company even for the brief walk to her own door was out of character and suggested that she wanted to make sure Aelfeva wasn’t alone with their parents.

“Y-yes,” Melisend said, gathering herself mentally. “He’ll be hungry too. Leo’s... Leo’s clothes fit you well. Did Teoda do your hair?”

“She found me struggling with it and offered to help. I told her I overstrained a muscle in my left shoulder on the way here, just to excuse the clumsiness. She offered to help me tomorrow, too, and however long it takes to heal. The sort of kind and thoughtful gesture we all tend to take for granted from her, I suppose, although we really shouldn’t. It should never have been a surprise that Rich is so in love with her. The surprise should be that more men aren’t.”

“Teoda is a very nice girl.” That might have sounded inane even to Melisend, given the faint pink Aelfeva saw in her cheeks.

Someone had already uncovered several sun-crystal lamps hanging from wall-hooks around the room, chasing away the gathering gloom outside. Under one of them, a sideboard table held a broad basin of beautifully-glazed pottery and a large matching pitcher, with a pristine linen towel hanging from a bar along the front of the table.

Einwulf said not a single word as the three of them washed their hands and sat down at the table. There was enough room for six, so no one was going to be giving lavish dinner parties, but it was all more decorated, with fancier furniture, than their own at home.

The cook appeared from a door Aelfeva hadn’t noticed previously—it must go to a space opposite the room that held the stairs, and presumably linked to the kitchen somehow. An unexpectedly-young woman of perhaps thirty, she was neatly clad in a yellowish-green dress with the sleeves gathered so they were closer to her shoulders and less likely to get into the food, her blonde hair smoothly braided and coiled. She greeted them with a smile and a deep nod that was almost a bow.

“Shall I bring the food out?”

“Yes, please,” Melisend said.

The meal turned out to be broad bowls of red-glazed pottery, filled with a thick stew that had more than a little meat in it—some kind of bird, Aelfeva thought. With it was ample fresh white bread.

Richold returned, washed his hands quickly, and took the seat across from Aelfeva. “Sorry. I wanted to at least keep watch to make sure no one bothered her.”

“She’s safely home?” Aelfeva said.

“Yes. Stew? I expected something a lot more exotic, in the capital.”

“It would be difficult to plan for our arrival and the time at which we might want to eat,” Melisend said. “This is something that could be kept warm with no loss of quality for a much wider window than most meals.”

“It may be an ordinary kind of food,” Aelfeva said, “but it’s brilliantly done and absolutely delicious.”

It was, to say the least, a quiet meal. That might have been a normal thing after a very long day spent on the road followed by the flurry of discovering Leofeva’s absence, but the atmosphere felt uncharacteristically brittle and strained. Despite the flavourful and satisfying food, Aelfeva felt only relief when she finished and excused herself to go to bed.

On the lowest floor, between the stairs and the entrance parlour, was a privy connected directly to a complex system of sewers beneath the city; Aelfeva supposed that with so many people so close together, anything simpler would be dangerous. It didn’t allow for bathing, but there was a seat with a cover and a table with a basin and a pitcher of water.

Teoda had explained to her, with gentle tact but explicitly nonetheless, what would be necessary for keeping herself clean. Aelfeva was grateful to her all over again, although no explanation could possibly have made the experience less unsettling or surreal. Her mind kept insisting that this was simply not how this whole process was supposed to proceed or how it was supposed to feel. Even had there been more light than a single small suspended sun-crystal, she couldn’t actually have seen anything with the layers of skirts in the way—and trying to manage those increased the difficulty of the rest significantly. Re-tying the loincloth under her skirts was just impossible, so she folded that down into a tight handful and just took it with her.

She was more than ready to collapse when she climbed the dim stairs to the top floor and sought out the room she’d chosen. Two wall-mounted sun-crystal lamps had already been uncovered, at opposite ends of the room. That maid Herlinde had mentioned was as diligent as she was stealthy.

The trunks had all been moved, she discovered, tossing the length of loincloth linen on the bed; her own had been added to her chosen room. The door of the largest room, at the back, was closed; the one beside hers was open still, and she heard motion.

“Rich? Did you move mine?”

“When I did the rest, yes.” Richold shoved his own into place and straightened.

“Thanks. Between you and Teoda looking out for me, I might really make it through this.” Long enough to talk to her missing sister, at least.

“At least you have enough sense to let us.” Richold glanced in her direction, shrugged, and began to unfasten the toggles down the front of his jerkin.

“I’m out of my depth. I need help. Why would I not let you?”

“You’d better come in and close the door.” Richold waited until she had. “Because you usually don’t? You’re a lot like Father that way. You delegate and you trust that the rest of us will do our part.” Richold shrugged off the jerkin and laid it on top of the trunk, then sat on the edge of the bed to loosen the laces on his boots. “Much more than him, you’re almost always willing to listen and help and not generalize broadly. But you are really bad at ever asking for help, or admitting that you need it. For real, I mean, not in a ‘this is too heavy, come take the other end, would you?’ kind of sense. It makes it hard sometimes for the people you do your best to look out for to do anything back. And don’t think I don’t know how often you’ve been in arguments with Father, trying to convince him that Teoda and I belong together. She knows too. And we both knew that if we kept refusing anyone else for long enough, eventually it would be up to you instead and you’d probably drag us to the temple the day after mourning ended. I think maybe you’re so caught up in being what you’re supposed to be all the time, son and heir and big brother and all, that you forget that you’re allowed to want and need things and tell the rest of us what they are.”

Aelfeva listened in silence. “Oh. I... didn’t know I did that. I mean, wanting you to have what you want to be happy, yes, and that’s always been you and Teoda in the Orchard Cottage. But I didn’t know that I don’t admit I need help.” Her forehead furrowed, and she leaned against the wall next to the door; she crossed her arms, then uncrossed them because that felt awkward with breasts in the way. “That actually sounds like a really good way to end up being Father in another two decades. I don’t want to be someone who can’t get outside of that kind of rigid shell. It’s showing badly at the moment. He can’t admit that he’s scared too, of the situation and for me, and it’s showing up as anger and outrage. And if I didn’t know that, I’d be feeling brutally hurt and rejected right now, just from trying to stay calm and rational in an irrational situation I didn’t create.”

“I’m not sure you could ever be Father. He tries to do the right thing. You care about people. They’re both good, but they aren’t the same. Anyway. It’s been too long a day for this. Teoda and I are absolutely and unconditionally behind you and we’ll do everything we can, and I could list reasons for that but there’s no point. We’ll sort this out somehow.” He heaved a sigh. “I really hope Leofeva really is at Fritha’s temple, or at least in some safe bed somewhere we haven’t thought of. She won’t ask for help either, otherwise we wouldn’t be wondering where she is and hoping she’s safe. Maybe we’ll wake up rested with some sort of inspiration about a solution.”

“That would be wonderful. Sweet dreams. See you at breakfast.”

She went back to her own room, and closed the door. As she crossed the floor, she untied her belt, which had had to be tied tighter than before around her narrower waist; she’d needed to adjust the positions of her purse and small utilitarian knife, and hoped that the crease in the belt where it had been tied until now wasn’t too obvious.

Hoping that she’d be able to tighten the laces again tomorrow the way Teoda had showed her, Aelfeva loosened them on either side and wriggled the orange dress off over her head, draping it over the back of the armchair. The chemise was easier, and she left it over the chair as well.

Entirely naked for the first time since Herlinde’s visit, she looked down at herself, wondering how she looked to someone else. Well, Richold had said she looked like a pretty girl but still herself, and Teoda had said she looked like an attractive, if tired, young woman. Presumably, then, there was nothing Josceran would have reason to find objectionable—as though that were even relevant.

It was an oddly pleasant thought, that people might find her appealing. She wasn’t sure she’d ever really cared before, beyond making sure she was presentable and well-dressed on occasions when that mattered; she preferred to be reasonably clean, at least around her favourite activities since neither was conducive to that. She found facial hair itchy and annoying so quite liked the current trend towards shaving, but then, so did Richold, despite their father’s disdainful attitude towards it. She’d cared more about being fit and healthy and active, able to freely do what she chose to do.

Which tended to be either practising with her sword, alone when she couldn’t find someone else from the short list of possible company for that in Rosebridge, or working with one horse or another, patiently training or simply riding for pleasure under the excuse of patrolling the area for anything of interest to Einwulf as reeve of Rosebridge. She didn’t spend her free time at the Cristovals’ Fishing Fox Inn, dressed to kill and flirting with all the local girls, the way unmarried men her age often did; she didn’t have a single girl she was courting, or one she just enjoyed spending time with aside from the two Cristovals and her sister. Her friends had pointed out to her a number of times that one girl or another had been flirting with her, and she’d completely failed to recognize that fact. Her attempts at romantic experimentation had been sporadic and lacklustre, more an effort to understand and to do what she was supposed to, and she’d abandoned it early as just not for her. It was mostly an annoyance that her position as the Glaedwin heir made her one of the most desirable bachelors in Rosebridge.

She was more likely to hang out with Guillen, and if neither swords nor horses were involved, that usually meant the two of them and a pitcher of good ale or even wine in a quiet part of the stables. Sometimes Ferrand joined them, since he was often around the inn but rarely in the taproom, and now and then any of the others. Except Josceran recently for obvious reasons. They all knew each other too well for appearance to matter.

Why did she care whether a female version of herself was pretty?

Well, it might keep Josceran in a better mood than the possibility of marrying someone who wasn’t. That was the only reason she could think of, so that must be it.

She didn’t even want to think about the question of whether to tell him who she was or try to hide that. For any number of reasons, she doubted the latter would be a success.

She looked down at herself, and did a few experimental stretches and bends. She was at least as flexible as before, possibly more so, though her legs were relatively longer, her torso shorter. Definitely curves, from wider hips to narrower waist and gently-rounded belly to breasts that overflowed her hands, but she thought it probably was all in proportion. Smooth skin, not much hair except barely-visible soft blonde down on lower arms and legs, and the triangle of blonde curls between her legs where something was missing. It wasn’t an absence that troubled her in particular, any more than the rest of the changes—the obsession many men seemed to have with that anatomy was one of the things she’d never quite been able to figure out, but at least that probably made this less traumatic. No scars, no calluses—the latter would be inconvenient if she needed to ride or, for some reason, use her sword.

Could she, even?

She picked up her sword, balancing its sheathed weight across her palms. It felt heavier, but not unmanageably so, rather like the trunk; it definitely felt larger, though, since her hands were smaller. She drew it and dropped into an alert guard stance. At least her body remembered how to do that, but her centre of balance was off, it was too low, and that would turn familiar moves into something new unless she learned to compensate for it. It would be possible, at least.

Except that she shouldn’t need to, because in a sennight either she’d be herself again, or she’d be married to Josceran and it was unlikely that any man wanted a wife who was better than him with a sword—or who rode an enormous stallion who obeyed only her, which was a heartbreaking thought. She couldn’t give up Dragon. Josceran wouldn’t demand that. Would he? That one, she’d fight any way she could.

It wasn’t like the old days, when a husband had the authority over his wife that he had over his livestock. He couldn’t beat her with impunity, and her property and income remained her own, and she could petition to divorce him for any of several reasons, keeping her property and a portion of the shared assets added since marriage. There remained a power imbalance, though, one she’d never spent much time thinking about. Until it suddenly applied to her in a whole new way.

For the moment, she sheathed the sword and left it in the corner behind her own trunk. It was quite a good sword—not the sort that a titled lord might have, or a rich merchant, no fancy decorative touches, but the quality was high and the balance was excellent. A travelling merchant who had stayed at the Fox had been carrying a number of them; Ximeno had helped her and Guillen and Richold and the Denisot brothers choose, steering them away from the flashy and towards the serviceable. The money he’d used to build the Fox had come from military service, before he’d fallen in love with an innkeeper’s daughter who wanted to see more of the world; they’d finally settled in Rosebridge when she’d gotten pregnant. While the merchant had been a little disappointed not to sell the more profitable ones, he’d respected Ximeno’s experience.

If she kept playing with it right now, naked and off-balance, it felt entirely too likely that she would inflict some embarrassing damage on some unfamiliar parts of her anatomy.

Maybe if she’d grown up with this body, instead of having it imposed on her in a matter of moments, it wouldn’t feel so strange.

Under most conditions, she slept naked, but that was not currently a comfortable idea.

She rummaged in her own trunk, avoiding the weighted wooden practice sword she’d jammed into it expecting her and Guillen to be at loose ends a lot of the time, and pulled a clean shirt over her head. The shoulders were too wide, the sleeves too long, but she rolled them into broad cuffs until they were on her forearms. The bottom reached down past her hips. It wasn’t ideal, but it would be better than nothing to sleep in, and she wasn’t likely to need to wear it during the day immediately.

She dropped the covers over both hanging lamps, and in the dark, made her way to the bed.

The linen felt very soft against her skin, and the mattress beneath was comfortable.

Exhausted, she closed her eyes and let herself drop heavily into sleep.