The Real Folktale Blues Part 27

"You stole my spell!" Nera cried to me. I pushed myself to stand completely up again, feeling confident after that.

"You steal my cloak. Let's call it not even close to even." I growled and leaned a hand back to the wall to hold me up. My head lolled and I blinked a few times as the drops of blood from my head streamed past my eyes and plopped to the ground.

My eyes settled on the red, sitting there so gently and undisturbed. It was strange to think of how fast it must have been moving through my body only to end up stationary now.

Nera stepped forward, scooping up her hand and storing it in her dress sash. Then she picked up the blue fedora Hue usually wore and slipped it on her head before grinning wickedly. "You don't even deny that I am too much for you and will definitely take your cloak from you."

I choked on my words at first before getting them out. "I don't care if you do, because no matter where you go I'll find you, kill you, and take it back."

She laughed and took a few more steps toward me. I continued, "What I want to know is why you need them."

She stopped in mid-step and her eyebrows rose. "You are serious?" She leaned her head in closer like she was studying me from a distance. "You are serious. This is amusing you don't even know what your cloak and this hat are."

"What? They were made by my grandmother. There's nothing that special about them. Except sentimental value and some enchantments." I explained.

"Interesting. You don't know. And you never will." Nera snarled with amus.e.m.e.nt glittered in her feline eyes. She ripped her hand forward and twisted it before a blue stream swirled out of her palm and in to my chest. I dropped to my knees in exhaustion and a pain that nearly pushed me to pa.s.sing out again.

"Sweet dreams, Red Faerie." Nera mused as she stepped to me and yanked my cloak until I spun free from it and landed on my back in the dirt. The sky was spinning over my head and my mind kept whispering to me that everything would be better with a little sleep.

But I fought it and gripped the ground with my fingers digging in to it. I forced energy through the earth and caused the area to tremble. It tossed Nera a few feet back from me as I threw my head to see something else besides an empty day sky.

My eyelids flopped down over my eyes, but I strained them back open with what felt like every last ounce of my energy.

"I'm going to enjoy your death so very much, Red Faerie." Nera bemused herself. My eyes burned, trying to keep them open longer. My body was feeling too heavy to move.

"And the best part is you'll never know it happened, thanks to my sleeping spell." She grinned which spread her skin way too thinly over her cheeks. "You can't even do anything about it."

"She can't do anything, but I certainly can." Ashe's voice pierced my ears like a soothing melody. I could make out her ashen chocolate hair waving around, from my upside-down view.

"Ashe..." I moaned as my eyelids flittered closed for just a second. I forced them back open just in time to see a swarm of gnomes skittering all over Nera as she cried out. One of them snagged her hand from her dress while their guffaws were like the back-up singers to Ashe's sweet voice.

I heard my roommate talk, but I couldn't make out what she said. It was all blurry like my vision started to become before I felt a terrible wave of energy release across the area and saw the illumination of another blue bubble that Nera must have been in. She lifted into the sky and faded with the blue of it, my cloak and Hue's hat were in a single hand together.

Some part of me felt like that would be the last time I saw my cloak. So I tried to cherish it in my mind as my eyes flickered between the darkness behind my eyelids and the s.h.i.+ning light. My body shook softly on the floor, but I couldn't do more than get my hands to my stomach.

Gnomes seemed to flutter around me and each time my eyes opened and closed I could see Ashe slowly running closer and closer to me. It all kind of felt like a dream, especially when her voice rung through my head and her face appeared right in front of my eyes after I opened them again.

"Hang on Gnidori, please." I heard her say as she squeezed on one of my hands. I lifted a hand slowly toward her puffy cheeks and s.h.i.+mmering dimples but her face seemed to get further away until finally my arm was just too much to lift and it fell again.

"Gnidori, you'll be okay. I promise." She whispered to me as my eyes closed again and felt the splash of rain against me. The Darkness was so pleasant I just wanted to drift through it, but her voice kept pulling me back. So I opened my eyes again to see the tears from her face dropping toward me.

She was trying to comfort me even as she cried. I accepted the words and attempted a nod as my eyes closed again.

"I know." I yawned in reply. My hand lifted to land on top of Ashe's hand as it held my other one. I patted it and held her fingers close with all of mine.

I could still feel the drops of her tears touching my face but it was masked by the warmth of her hand against me.

She soothed me enough to drift off toward the darkness as I yawned one last time. "It's just nice to hear you say it."

Twenty-Nine.

Seeing Double I squeaked out happy stretching sounds while pulling at the sheets I was laying in until I found warm skin next to me. I yanked the warm body to me and nuzzled against the soft flesh before I heard a giggle which forced my eyes open.

I was staring at Ashe's chest right up against my face; that explained the softness at least. I had thought I grabbed a warm pillow. My face flushed red as I looked up at her smile through a few strands of my messy hair.

She was grinning so softly, and her voice rung still like a melody. "Good Afternoon, sleepy head." She teased.

I readjusted myself so I was using a normal pillow instead of her, before rasping. "Sorry."

"It's okay." She replied impossibly quick before pressing her lips together till they turned white then added, "It was actually adorable. And you spent most of the day laying on me anyway."

"I did?" My eyes brightened from the sleepiness and I shrunk away from my roommate in embarra.s.sment.

"It's okay, really." She tried comforting me again, before she reached a hand out to pull me back closer to her. She grazed my cheek with hers then sighed contently. I smiled through my embarra.s.sment.

"What happened?" I finally asked as she settled her head on the same pillow as me. Our hair was practically tangled together in a mix of chocolate and raspberry. I could catch an almost earthy smell like a garden coming from her.

"I found out I could talk to those elementals too and I got the one I trapped in the cabinet to rally the others with me then came searching for you." Ashe started to explain while her hand caressed along my arm then settled at my waist comfortably.

"They attacked that faerie woman but she got away with your cloak still." She frowned while my mouth fell open a bit.

"You could talk to the elementals?" I asked, absolutely amazed.

She nodded, causing her hair to swish against the pillow. "The gnomes anyway. They were nice once I informed them they were just being used till they died. One of them even brushed my hair last night."

She giggled nervously and I couldn't help but smile before saying, "You do know that means you have elemental blood in you? You aren't just nature-touched like an elf or half-elf."

"What does that mean?" She almost looked worried but I grabbed her hand on my waist and held it up to my lips to kiss it.

"It means what I already knew. You're special. You probably have some type of earth elemental blood in you. It just means you are a part of nature. Have you ever talked to flowers or trees too?" I continued while laying our hands between each other.

"Well... yeah. In your garden, but I thought they were just magic flowers you had." She averted her eyes downward and my grin grew.

"No, that was all you. I avoid magic things like that, they tend to just cause problems or draw unwanted attention."

"Oh..." She looked back up at me. "So I am half gnome or something?"

"No, probably one of the higher elementals, like a nymph most likely if you can talk to animals too. Probably from a long line in your blood, nymphs are about as common as elves are with having relations with humans."

She nodded again and looked lost in her thoughts. After some silence I finally asked, "You said afternoon? I only slept for a couple of hours?"

Her eyes refocused and she gave me a half grin. "It's the next day. If it wasn't for you stirring and snuggling up to me each time I laid down with you I would have been afraid you fell under the sleeping curse here!" She explained, her eyes filling with amus.e.m.e.nt toward me.

"Oh, and you would then have to kiss me awake?" I jested and her face lit with blush, so I prodded on, "My prince! Come to save me!" Then I swooned with my hand to my head and everything. She sat up and pulled a pillow out to hit me with it while I laughed.

At some point she started laughing too. Probably, when I jumped on top of her and started tickling, after faking that my head injury hurt.

"No fair!" She cried while squirming to get away from me. I leaned down over her, with my legs straddling her body and kissed her softly. She stopped moving at all.

When I lifted my face from her, her mouth fell open and she started sputtering some words out. "W-what was that for?"

I smiled at the corners of my mouth and bit down on my lower lip in thought. "A lot: for being my savior, my medic, my friend, for living and putting up with me, for laughing with me, fighting by my side, and also for being my pillow when I probably needed it most."

She laid below me in silence, staring up at me with her mouth only partly open before finally asking, "One kiss means all that?"

"No," I shook my head and my smile seemed to just seep up to my eyes. "Every kiss I give you means all that, and a lot more I'm probably not thinking of right now."

She shot her upper body up and her hands pulled at my face somewhere between my neck and my cheek as her lips were suddenly against mine with so much pa.s.sion buzzing from her. I breathed into her kiss and then gave myself to it just as she had done.

We were both breathing heavy by the time we broke apart, and I could feel Ashe's heart thumping against my chest as she lifted a hand up to brush my hair out of my face while I just looked at her and my smile slowly grew. I finally said, "You definitely would have woke me with that one."

Her face grew crimson before she pushed me playfully away from her. I rolled off of her and to the edge of the bed sticking my tongue out at her as she crushed her lips together again and smiled back at me, clearly embarra.s.sed.

"Come on," I sighed, not wanting to leave the bed even though my foot stepped off it. "We should probably get going. I shouldn't have slept so much."

I touched the bandage at my head as I stood up completely from the bed. The wound wasn't hurting and the bandages were clean, which meant Ashe must have changed them a few times. My eyes fell back to her as I saw her slip from the bed on the other side.

"Um..." I began, somewhat unsure of what it was I entirely wanted to say. Her cocoa powder hair tossed around as she looked toward me with such an innocent face despite only being in her undergarments. "Do..." I chickened out and finished, "... do you still have her hand?"

She blinked then her eyes s.h.i.+mmered with brilliance before she darted past me and out the room.

I heard Goldie yell. "Oh come on! You could at least put clothes on after doing it."

My cheeks flushed, I could have only imagined how Ashe felt in that moment. I would have followed her out if it hadn't been for the shorts I had already started pulling on.

Ashe returned a few minutes later when I was fully clothed and pulling my hair up into a ponytail like I always did. She was holding the shriveled hand with a cloth before setting it down on the bed.

Her eyes fell to me inquisitively as I stepped closer to her and leaned in to give her a peck on the lips while smiling. "You could have at least gotten dressed first. But thanks. It'll be useful for tracking the exact location we need."

She blushed and looked down at herself, before das.h.i.+ng over to her bag and digging through it. She pulled out two outfits and glanced to me as I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the hand on the bed. "Dress or overalls and s.h.i.+rt?"

"Overalls. Your dress has no pockets for me to fit."

"Fit?" She squeaked.

"Yes, it's time we met the other Gnidori, and I'm not going to let Goldie carry me around when I'm a fox. Be good to me okay?" I grinned as I touched the doorway leading out of the room.

"I'm always good to you!" She fumed while I led myself out of the room with a soft laugh.

"I know..." I whispered to myself as I walked down the hall to be able to set up the spell that would track Nera by her shriveled hand, It was maybe an hour before we were all set and heading along the spiny trail being led by a dead hand pointing the way, and a few guffawing gnomes appearing and disappearing around us.

Ashe and Goldie talked mostly on the way to the tower, sometimes I caught small bits of what they were saying like when Goldie yelled, "How would I know what to do?"

It frightened me to think of what they were talking about, but I just let it be. I had enough of eavesdropping and just stayed ahead of them till we reached the tower.

We only stood in the brush near the tower while I figured out which direction we needed to take to get to the cras.h.i.+ng s.h.i.+p. Both Ashe and Goldie mentioned how uninspiring and ugly the place looked when they had been expecting it to be creepy, and I realized that their original reactions I saw first, were actually their second time seeing this place.

My roommate finally fell along side of me as we headed to the s.h.i.+p's destination through the annoying brush I so easily remembered from before.

"So you'll be a fox." She stated simply. I think I knew where this was going.

"Yes."

"Will I be able to communicate with you?"

"Of course, I can still hear you."

"No, I mean like my way?"

"I'm not really sure," I sighed and shrugged. "I don't know everything, but it might work if it works with Reynard."

"Good." She nodded. "So I could have a private conversation with you, in theory?"

I leaned in to Ashe with a smile and teased, "You're having a private conversation with me now."

She pushed me away from her gently and I stumbled as we reached the open area near the sand bar. "You know what I mean."

I raised my eyebrows, "We're here. So let's find out."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, drawing in the images I had of Reynard. Luckily I didn't need to be exact since all the patches of creme and custard would have destroyed my psyche without having a physical image to work from.

I looked down then opened my eyes to watch the hand signs I made and make sure I got them right. When satisfied I focused on Reynard's image again and let the magic run through my body.

I didn't open my eyes again until the pain from the change had pa.s.sed. My eyes took in the light around me and saw the large-looking Ashe scoop me up while I heard her giggle loudly. I could even catch the subtle scent of me on her which made me feel strangely safer with being held by Ashe.

This is weird. I had thought only to have Ashe hold me to her cheek and nuzzle my fur which made me s.h.i.+ver excitedly.

Don't do that! I tried yelling but only a tiny yip that didn't sound at all like me had come out.

Oh sorry... I heard Ashe's voice in my head, as she pulled away and instead cuddled me against her chest. I guess she thought that was better?

I was going to die before this was over.

You can hear me? I tried thinking and immediately I could feel Ashe was smiling. I couldn't explain it, I just knew what I asked had made her happy.

Of course, can I keep you like this all the time? She continued in my mind while starting to stroke my fur which made me s.h.i.+ver again and want it even more. Yet for some reason my mind told me this was really messed up.

No! You have a fox you'll get to play with like this. Just put me in the pocket. I explained and she pouted before pulling her chest pocket out and dumping me in it. She could have at least been a little nicer about it.

I quickly realized why all the fox had done was sleep when I had him. It was dark and comfy in the pocket so there wasn't much else to do. I stood up and poked my head out, feeling my ears twitch as I pulled them back.

Ashe giggled. You're adorable.