1:5
Lotte wasn't sure what a good proof was. Clearly, there was nothing she could say that would be new knowledge, at least not of the field lore she knew. Nor did she know any new stories, only old ones told again and again, worn out the way any practical person used cloth until it was good for nothing but the jakes, and then used it in the jakes.
But if she revealed the names of the Forgotten God, people would ask where she'd gotten them. Now, there was another thing she could do that would be a little more explainable. If she carved the Nachtmater as she remembered the Goddess, that would be something! But when asked how she knew how it looked, she could tell the story of meeting the Goddess. It was an extraordinary story, but it was the kind of story that did honor to her rather than the inverse. If they asked why or how a Lamia had the right to see her, Lotte would just…
Say nothing?
Lotte found a large log and began working on it at night, though she was sure some had guessed her purpose. It felt like it was best, despite the difficulties of lighting, to do such a holy act at night.
*******
Karle was a strange one. He talked like something out of a story about a scholar who had to be saved by adventurers, but there was a solidity to him. He didn't complain about the conditions, and he knew what made good firewood, and could dress an animal decently enough. It was nothing that would have allowed him to survive out as a wild-man, but it was impressive. He was the mirror-image of all of those effete nobles in stories who turned out to be hardier than they looked. He was as sturdy as a mighty tree, and about as unbending. Lotte was a little intimidated, and so she only got up the courage to really talk to him once in the four days it took to travel to the monastery.
"Have you met Lamia before?" Lotte asked, while they were taking a break by the stream and refilling their skins.
"A few, now and again. There are some in most cities, in the beastly quarters." Karle frowned, thoughtfully. "You've never been to a city, have you? The conditions in the quarters are bad, but then the lives of the poor in such unhealthful places are rarely pleasant. Not good for the humours, I'm told."
Lotte had heard just about the same thing before. She leaned down to continue to fill her water. The babble of the stream was a relaxing counterpoint to this heavy talk. "So, they just… lived?"
"Oh, yes. I suppose there are some professions Lamia cannot manage. I've never heard of a lamia burglar leaping from rooftop to rooftop."
"But aren't lamia known as…"
"Thieves? Liars? I suppose there would be some, though are there that many more than in any population? I cannot know." Karle nodded to himself. "If you cannot find a way to unravel the curse, I am sure that you can still have a life as an adventurer. You surely have the spirit for it."
Lotte flushed at the words of praise, and looked away. "Thank you."
"You shouldn't thank me for telling the truth. I am a scholar: lies get us nowhere except helplessly lost." Karle turned away, and Lotte could tell that he was done with the conversation. His expression even grew distant, and so she decided not to press her luck.
******
"What did you mean by all the questions?" Lotte asked Aisling, when the two of them scouted around the campsite on the second day. They wanted to be sure that there was nothing untoward, so that their sleep wouldn't be disturbed. There were the usual critters out there, but the air smelled clean and the road had not been too dusty. Now that there were five people traveling, including a scholar, multiple guards, and someone just as clearly a noble, Lotte didn't stand out.
(This wasn't true. It was more that Lotte was no longer an easy target. But it felt more true, and so Lotte was able to endure.)
"I mean that there are things about you that make me curious." Aisling looked around, her eyes narrowed. "I've always felt that Central Lands understandings of identity are so simplistic. Especially for a people whose Gods are not always either male or female."
Lotte frowned, thinking of examples. Everyone used it or they to refer to the Waldherz, and the Forgotten God was a 'they' as well. But wasn't that just what being a God could mean? Humans certainly couldn't do half of the things Gods were, so of course neither could they be half of the things Gods were.
Or, did she think that Lotte was somehow different? But if she thought that, then it'd be because she knew Lotte was some sort of demigod. But how could she? "Yes, but that's the Gods."
"Moreover, the Fae themselves can shift, from male to female and back again. They are ever-changing, though some are more definite, more sure of who and what they are. Unlike your Gods, we often… talk to them far more often, and even disagree with them." Aisling looked nervous, and no doubt because what she was saying was a sort of heresy. The Gods didn't demand unthinking obedience, though it was perhaps true that most didn't meet them. But then, Lotte bet that most Elves didn't meet the most powerful of the Fae. (She knew enough stories to know they ranged from pixies and brownies to beings of immense power.)
"It is not like that," Lotte said.
"Perhaps not. But either way, I want to tell you a story."
"You mean, like a fairy tale?" Lotte asked, suddenly enthusiastic. She really had heard too few stories from other lands. Wouldn't that be just a little like adventuring to the isles themselves?
"...I suppose so."
Lotte nodded, now knowing that she would have to listen carefully for the important moral to the story, and look beneath the words. It wasn't that some of it hadn't happened, but she'd been told that fairy tales were supposed to teach moral lessons. So she had to focus on that.
"I once knew a girl who was very different." Aisling said.
"Oh?" Lotte nervously said, leaning forward to listen.
"Many people thought she was a man, because she had been born with a… well, your parents are farmers, so I'm sure you've seen it. A prick. Yet she was a woman, and also one of the best bakers I'd ever seen. She was an impressive person, you know. Others doubted who she was, but she believed in herself." Aisling laughed. "Considering how dark and hopeless the world can be a lot of the time, it was honestly kind of impressive. I do like earnest, honest sorts of people." Aisling's ears twitched, and she snorted. "Look at me."
"Honest sorts of people?" Lotte asked, still trying to find out what the moral of the story was. Was it about being yourself? Or perhaps honesty?
"Well, there's Naja. No matter what sort of person she can be, she's very honest with being it. Not that we're doing anything other than fucking, of course." Aisling's face was a little flushed. "Still, even when she's being manipulative, she can't help but bring her faux-dashing adventure routine into it. It is really annoying, but… Lotte, what are you doing?"
Lotte was staring hard at her, and the faint blush on her face with a wide-eyed, happy look. Because it seemed so romantic! A guard and her charge, disagreeing and talking back to each other but clearly feeling far more than either one of them would admit! "Are you in love with her?"
"Of course I'm not. It's silly that you think that," Aisling said, with a roll of her eyes. "I'm fond of her, and she's attractive of course. You've noticed that yourself."
"Well, she is." Lotte couldn't even really deny it.
"But fondness and attraction do not add up to love, unless you're really desperate," Aisling said. "And--wait, you're distracting me! What I was saying was, she had to struggle to realize who she was. Because you can think you're one way but be another way and not even realize it."
Lotte winced at that, thinking about how different her soul and past was from what she thought it was. Were her parents secretly worshippers of the Forgotten One?
"And it's important to be true to yourself, I suppose…"
It was obvious now. Aisling suspected that Lotte was actually a lamia, rather than cursed to be one. She was trying to tell Lotte that it was okay, but there was no way she'd admit to it. She needed to hide it, right?
"W-what would any of that have to do with me? True to myself?"
Aisling sighed, like an air-bladder deflating. "Well, you see, her own journey of discovery began with--"
"Hey, guys. Are you done yet?" Naja called out, walking up. "I really need a buffer between Karle and myself. He's looking at me as if I am an idiot, rather than the bold adventurer that went into the prison of a God."
Aisling snorted. "It could no more hold a God than you can hold your liquor."
"You know, I am paying you."
"If you'd like to stop, you can." Aisling waved her hand, and strode back towards the camp. "But I don't think you'd dare."
Ah, love! It was a lot nicer to think about that than the obvious message of the story thus far: Aisling knew about Lotte's secret identity as a demi-god.
How was she supposed to convince Aisling not to believe something so true?
*******
Lotte almost spaced out, that night, as she carved. It was as if she was drifting away, and yet her fingers moved all the same, carving out the shape of the moth-God, the mother of Night. But it felt like she was adding what wasn't there, trying to capture something that couldn't be seen. Her fingers didn't feel up to the task, but then a lot of her didn't.
She was still getting used to her new body, but at least her fingers seemed to whittle as well as ever. At least she could rely on that. She went to sleep still clutching the log, now well on its way to becoming an idol.
She dreamed of bright wings.
******
"I wasn't done with the story," Aisling said, at the next possible moment, while they were eating dinner the next day. "I want to tell you more. I never got to my point."
"O-oh?" Lotte asked. "W-well, you know, I don't…"
"This girl I knew, the one I was telling you about, that thought they were a man for a while, before they realized otherwise…"
"Yes?" Lotte asked, with a resigned sigh.
"I'm trying to help you." Aisling rolled her eyes. "She didn't feel comfortable in the body she had. She was never happy masturbating, she told me, because she didn't like her cock. And she hated the facial hair she was growing, and the fact that she looked at her chest and couldn't' see breasts. She hated how deep her voice was, and she hated how she was expected by her parents to not care about cooking, cleaning, and especially baking. How she was supposed to like fighting and hunting when they bored her." Aisling spoke slowly, but with obvious fondness. "She was a woman, before she even realized this."
"I'm touched, but confused," Lotte admitted, frowning at Aisling and trying to divine what exactly she was telling Lotte this for. Were they bonding?
"Only you can say this for sure, but I think you might be a man."
Lotte's heart stopped beating for what felt like an eternity. When people talked about hearts skipping beats, they made it sound romantic rather than terrifying. "W-what would make you think that?" Lotte asked, already backing away.
"Your hatred of your breasts, how you carry yourself, the fact that you were able to enter a wing that neither of us were, the clothes you prefer aren't really much of a hint, but when we consider it all together, it does seem a little telling." Aisling frowned thoughtfully.
"The w-wing?"
"We couldn't enter the wing you could, you couldn't the one we could. What else could it have to do with?"
Lamia souls? But then, what about the man who was in there. The man--
No, impossible. "D-don't s-s-say stuff like that about me," Lotte hissed, a stammar finding its way into her voice when she'd never had one before. She was so terrified she almost couldn't think. "I'm already a lamia, a freak, and--"
"Are you calling her a freak?" Aisling asked, sharply.
"N-no. I'm calling myself…"
Aisling sighed, and Lotte could see the way that she wanted to continue the conversation. "You can be a guy if you want to be. The question is: do you want to be? Do you really? If the answer is yes, then as far as I can tell that means you've always been a guy. It's that simple?"
"What about any of that is simple?" Lotte demanded, her voice cracking a little.
"All of it. What it isn't is easy." Aisling shrugged. "You're an adventurer, you didn't sign up for easy."
"I don't have to--"
"Just think about it. It's annoying, but I do care about your happiness, and I think you'd be happier if you actually considered it and came to a real answer, not just the default."
Lotte shook her head. "I suppose I can… think about it."
Lotte was lying again. She wanted to ask again, what the things she'd done wrong were, so that she could stop doing them wrong and giving off the impression she was a boy. Surely she hadn't been doing being a girl wrong? Was there even a wrong way? There had to be, and somehow she was managing it.
But she was not smart, but she wasn't stupid enough to believe that she'd fix it by just pretending to like whatever Aisling considered womanly. Skirts, and baking, and whatever else. It didn't work like that.
Even she knew that.
She'd just… try to ignore it.
******
Somehow this turned into neither Aisling or Lotte talking at all, even while the day slithered on, and they finally approached the monastery.
"There's a particular outbuilding on the grounds that houses the route in. Of course, there's also a path within the main building, but we won't be granted entrance through that way," Karle said.
"Wait, so is it actually kept secret from the nuns and monks?" Lotte asked.
"Not really, no." Naja shrugged, answering before Karle, who glared at her for butting in. "How could they?"
"Oh."
*****
The building on top of the hill was truly impressive. It seemed as much a manor as anything else, two floors high, with a gate around the area stretching almost that high. The top of the building was flat, no doubt to allow stargazing, and there were plentiful fields and even villages all around the base and in all directions from the monastery. If it really did come down to finding a building, squat and plain, near the base of the hill. It seemed to hold little more than extra equipment, spare plows for disasters, that sort of thing. It smelled a little terrible, but also a little familiar, and there was barely room for all of them. Karle had to walk around, banging his feet on the ground in some sort of pattern, until at last there was a click, and a part of the floor opened up into what seemed like a long, if rather steep, stairwell.
"I will go first," Karle said. "There's no danger."
"Ah! Karle!" the call came from down below as he walked just out of view. "It has been too long, and I've been too bored standing guard at this back entrance like this. Are you here alone?"
"Not at all. There's an entire party, including a lamia. But you will not believe the story that comes with them. Scholastic knowledge about… all sorts of things is about to be rewritten!"
"Ah, yes, send down this lamia of yours."
"Not mine at all, and considering she can hear us… please do come down, Lotte. And everyone else, after her."
It had to be a while after, since Lotte was long enough that you couldn't exactly press yourself up against her back while walking, not unless they knew her rather better than any of them here did. It felt a little odd, slithering down stairs. But it wasn't difficult, whereas Lotte had no idea what she would do if it came to ladders. In fact, now she was wondering whether Lamia houses had second stories, or whether they dug down instead. The Temple had been built tall, but that was a Temple. Temples tended to do the impossible to demonstrate the depth of feeling behind them. Or so the stories said.
The man Lotte was meant to see was short, and had a thick beard. It didn't look that well cared for, by the standards of beards, but a part of her--
"Only you can say this for sure, but I think you might be a man."
Lotte tried to push down any emotions the beard of anything else, barely looking at the dark-haired man, and then looked away.
"Huh. Interesting. I think Freddy will like this, if there's an interesting story behind it. And she's strong, too, carrying all of those packs." Lotte was festooned with them, since she'd agreed to carry a lot of the supplies in. There was also the carving she had to show.
"She's an adventurer. A new one, but already made a name for herself," Karle asked. "I can explain later, but she stumbled across something momentous in a ruin that Lady von Siebert found."
"You mean, your sister found--"
"She is not my sister," Karle said, voice thunderous. "But it is the woman you are thinking of."
The man's sigh was the gusty winds to that thunder. "I swear, Karle, one of these days you are going to attack someone who mentions her."
"I would never." Karle sniffed. "Everyone, you can come on down instead of listening in!"
Eventually all of them were piled into the almost-too-small underground pathway, which only went deeper down. They were required to wait for a while, part of the way through while the man--Louis von Vener--went on ahead to tell the others. Then they were guided into a circular room. In the center of which was a platform, upon which stood a man in his thirties, clean-shaven, with a strong jawline. His nut-brown hair looked like it was starting to recede, but it also looked as if it might be as soft as the best grass.
Lotte kind of hated that she noticed, considering she had so many other things to be concerned with at the moment than how well he filled out a green tunic, or how well his hose looked on his leg. She hadn't even heard him speak, so she knew it was nothing more than silly, animal attraction. People were distressingly like the pigs, cows, and horses, who certainly didn't mate for personality or mutual respect of interests. Though, she sometimes wondered, watching them, just how animals worked.
Certainly, affection among animals couldn't be denied. Cows could have friends, deer could frolic, birds chittered and chattered and sang out their conflicts and their passions. Humans--and in fact all the races of the world--were supposed to be different, though.
So it was with a blush that Lotte entered and tried to look away, glancing instead at the door they'd no doubt go through once they provided the payment.
"Frederick. It is good to see you." Karle nodded in his direction.
"And you as well, Karle." Frederick waited until they'd all filed in and took their places. Then he declared, "Karle, you've already paid, but nobody else has." His voice was deep, though his tone was casual. "So first, your guard--"
"Well, how about gossip. Does that count?" the guard, Sofia, said. "An Orimish tribe managed to beat back the Kurzach Kingdom in a skirmish. But there are fears that the Kurzachs will be back, and in greater numbers. If they are, they the Orime of that tribe will need allies. Can't know if they'll find them, but that's useful information, right?"
"I believe I will accept it. War and news of war is of little interest to many in our society, but not all. And news on the Orime is always appreciated."
Karle snorted at that, but for what reason Lotte couldn't say.
"Alright, I will go next. May I approach the podium? I talked to Karle about the character of the Keeper of this Library, that is yourself, and so decided that this bit of information would be something you'd like." Aisling smirked as she stepped forward.
"H-hey, you don't have to characterize me to random guards, Karle!" Frederick protested. But he bent down and listened to whatever Aisling whispered in his ear. His face went red, and he said, "O-oh, really? Very well, then. That works. Next, Naja von Siebert, then?"
"Well, this is just the start of it. But Lotte here was in fact cursed into the form of a lamia mere weeks ago. Karle and I can both testify to seeing her with legs, a perfectly extraordinary human hunter."
"You mean perfectly ordinary?" Frederick asked, with a frown.
"I said what I meant," Naja said. "She was exceptional before the curse, and she'll be exceptional once it is broken. Is that an interesting enough bit of information? It's why we're here, after all."
"Hmm. Yes, yes, that will work. And what about you… Lotte, was it?" Frederick asked.
"M-me? Well, there's this…"
Lotte opened one of the bags and carefully took out the carving, which was tall enough to go from the top of her chest to her brow, and wide enough with the wings to be very cumbersome. No doubt everyone else must have guessed what it was.
Frederick, on the other hand, stared at it. "You've seen Her, haven't you? It looks exactly like her."
Lotte, who knew her whittling and carving skills weren't that good, said, "I have, but it's not a very good likeness."
"Are you sure you aren't magical? Because I can see the rough parts. It is just a carved figure, but something about it invokes the… invokes the Goddess herself. Divinity, too. I saw Her just once, a decade ago, but one doesn't forget these things." Frederick's eyes seemed to gleam as he leapt down from the podium. Up close, Lotte could see that they were hazel, and very intense. "Could I please show this to the monastery? I don't have to tell them who made it, though know you're welcome to stay as long as you wish. Such payment is well worth the year you would get for providing an entrance fee."
"You would kick me out after three weeks," Karle said. "But then, this is quite expected of you, all things considered."
"You can show them, as long as they don't…" Lotte began.
"Ah, right. Never worry, Lotte," he said, with a gallant bow.
"If you are quite done flirting," Aisling muttered.
Frederick looked as red as a tomato, and Lotte was blushing as well when she looked away. "Anyways!" he finally said, with considerable bluster. "You may enter, and stay for at least a week, if not more. However long you need to take to do the research. This way, then, this way. There are cells for you to sleep in, and you'll of course have what privacy you need. There are only a handful of people here right now, and only one visiting researcher." He threw open the doors, and Lotte coughed at the smell. Books, books, and more books, and a considerable amount of dust as entered the space.
There were levels of floors piled on top of each other, with the bookshelves reaching to the very top of each floor, and a warren of passages, chairs, tables, rugs, and more making this place one bad candle from disaster, or so it seemed, but also strangely beautiful.
It was not the sort of place that interested Lotte, not being much of a reader, but it impressed her. "There have to be thousands of books here!"
"Tens of thousands," Frederick said. "The largest collection for a thousand miles. Larger even than that of the universities. And more than books, at that. Good luck, we have something of an organization, but there's a lot that remains tucked away."
Lotte wished Karle good luck, since of course she was not going to be any help at all in this.
While Lotte's waiting, what do they do? (Choose 2)
[] Since all of the searching is going to be about lamias only indirectly, and a lot more about curses, Lotte could *try* to find information and books about Lamia. How likely she'd be to succeed and then get much useful out of it is… unknown, but perhaps it's worth trying?
[] There was apparently one researcher already here. That meant a new person to meet and greet, and while this could end really, really badly considering that Lotte was now a lamia, perhaps they'd be a friend. And if not, one could still learn things.
[] Exploring the area in general could be done even if you didn't expect to find works. Look at everywhere there is, figure out what this place is even about.
[] Ask more about the monastery above. What would the people up above do if they learned there was a lamia beneath there. Did the Nachtmater ever visit? What could be done to divert them if they did?
[] Frederick was handsome, if a little strange. Would it be perhaps a little foolish to hang around and get to know someone better, just because you feel an entirely superficial and likely fleeting attraction to them? Yes. Is Lotte in fact eighteen years old? Also yes.
[] It wasn't Lotte's business, not directly. She could indeed spend some time in the cell, relaxing and napping, and otherwise keeping out of the way in favor of relaxation.
******
A/N: A lot going on in this one. Hopefully you enjoyed.
