Seasons of Heroes: A D&D-inspired Adventure!

2:1

They left in the bright light of day, and it wasn't long before Naja began making comments. "So, Lotte, I saw that Frederick left your room this morning."

"No she did not," Karle said, with a smirk that was almost playful instead of cutting. "You wake up far too late for that, I believe. Instead, she heard it from gossip from the other members of our order. However, you should know, Lotte, that while gossip may follow you, your choices are quite clearly your own. I shall not judge you."

Lotte honestly doubted that, but she understood that Karle meant well. "We didn't… nothing happened." But that was a lie, and they must have been able to see it as she slithered along beside them. So she added something more true, thinking of what had happened and the strange dreams, almost like memories, that had come with sleep. So she added, hastily, "We didn't have sex."

"Then what happened?" Aisling asked, raising an eyebrow.

"We… cuddled, and then I went to sleep. He left in the morning," Lotte said.

"You know, I actually believe that." Aisling nodded to herself and then went back to scanning the far horizon.

"I don't know if I do. You should have seen him, whenever he showed up." Naja waved a hand grandly. "He had something for you."

"We kissed, but he might have left then," Lotte said, aware that she wasn't helping her case. She had somehow managed to keep the fact that it wasn't a curse secret, but that wasn't the same as something like this.

"Oh, who cares. If she fucked him, more power to him, and if she didn't it's fine. He didn't ask any deep secrets of you while you were snuggled up, right?" Pippa asked it as she threw her hands up in the air.

"No, not at all." He hadn't even asked. He'd known not to ask the kinds of questions that could have destroyed her.

"Then I don't get what the problem is."

"There's no problem," Naja insisted. "Just curiosity. You seem different."

"I'm not sure… I had strange dreams, and I feel a little different now. I could… I could see far better in the dark than I could the night before."

Naja and Karle exchanged glances. "Lotte," Karle said, clearly deciding to take the lead. "This seems as if it might be your soul settling some into place. With any change, the soul is first discomfited, and then it begins to settle until it is stable. Or at least, stable until any such curse or transformation is undone."

Naja nodded, and Lotte stared ahead, thinking about what that might mean. They continued onward, but Lotte was quiet for most of the day.

******

"Yes."

His face seemed to almost glow as he stepped closer. "Thank you, Lotte."

"Could you… could you not say my name," Lotte said, the sudden impulse gripping her tight and shaking her about. She was starting to suspect certain things that she'd been told repeatedly might not be entirely wrong. She wasn't sure, and she wanted as little uncertainty as she could get. She didn't want to worry or wonder tonight.

"I can do that," Frederick said. "I would do far more than that for you… handsome." He said it like someone taking a bowshot they were almost sure wouldn't hit, but they needed the meat before winter. (Lotte had taken many of those shots, and hit more than she should be able to on average. But she'd missed plenty, of course.)

Lotte flushed, aware that her every pleased emotion was shown on her face.

"So, uh. Here are all of these pillows and blankets. I can't really sleep in a bed, unless it's a big one." Bigger than she'd ever had before.

"That'll be just fine. What am I… what do you want me to do?"

"Hold me. You can… you can touch my lower half, but not, not close to anything. But I know you're curious, right? You have to be curious. It's weird and strange and new--"

"It's lovely, you're handsome, and I will make sure to do nothing more than what you request." He nodded, as if that solved everything, and said, "I assume you want to get to bed early?"

Lotte thought about what they'd be doing in between first and second sleep, and said, "Yes. We can… figure things out when we wake up again then."

Frederick smiled, and Lotte began to arrange the blankets. He stripped off his shirt, and Lotte didn't keep from staring. He wasn't muscular, and he was thin, but there was still something about his bare chest that sent Lotte's blush crawling for her hair. "I could go and get a night shirt, but I usually sleep naked." Despite saying that, he didn't remove his pants.

Lotte herself usually slept in clothes during the winter, and at most a thin cloth dress during the summer… and that only for modesty. She'd been sleeping in her clothes since she went on the road, but that was because there was always a chance to be attacked.

She took a breath, and said, "If you don't normally wear anything, you don't have to wear anything…"

She felt positively… something for saying that. But a part of her did want to see his…

Even if they were doing nothing at all. Which they weren't. She didn't want to imagine it doing things, but she still wanted to imagine it. Lotte barely understood herself on better days, let alone now.

"If you are fine with it…"

Lotte nodded, taking off her own shirt, and what little else there was. Frederick's eyes found her bare chest, and his smile was alight with carefully controlled desire. Lotte couldn't pretend she wasn't looking too as he slipped off his tunic, his undershirt, and then began to work down his hose. He had smooth legs, not entirely hairless but certainly looking as if they were cared for, in the manner of the rich. Lotte's, when she'd had legs, had been hairy, legs that she'd never once shaved. Which seemed better for cold days, anyways, out in the woods.

Then, his member was exposed. It was odd, because Lotte had seen cocks before, human ones even, since few enough men in the fields have any modesty to cover up when they're peeing. Frederick's cock should have seemed perfectly normal. It wasn't--objectively--an bigger or smaller than Lotte's vague understanding of the average, erect as it was. Nor was it particularly pretty, or covered in warts and foul looking hair, the way Lotte had heard one girl say about a boy whose marriage proposal didn't suit her. But it looked large enough, that close, and it was… it seemed large. And it was pointing at her.

She didn't know how to describe, or quantify, her feelings. It wasn't hot, mindless passion, but something slower and more simmering, and so she was able to tamp it down and lay down on the bed of blankets and pillows, and he snuggled up to her, not trying to do anything more, but apparently unwilling to turn away just because his desire was clear.

He reached down to stroke at her scales, and it was strange. She'd been able to slither over rock and grass and gravel as if she'd been wearing a boot, and yet his touch felt powerful. It was like those sorts of people with feet like boot leather, who nonetheless fell victim to tickling.

It was pleasant, and he said, almost absently, "Smooth."

Lotte nodded, and they huddled together in the warmth of the blankets, and she enjoyed his heat and presence. Even the lust felt muted, pleasantly warm rather than burning. She drifted off.

Her dreams were strange, a little like watching a tree for signs of movement, or walking on an endless road. She didn't quite remember them, but she remembered staring up at the sky, and seeing that it was night and there was still a sun, and she remembered staring at the moon that was in the sky as well, and--

She blinked awake, and saw that Frederick was headed for the door. But it was first waking, not the morning. "What?" she asked, baffled, as she rose up with a yawn, thinking about whether she wanted to pray or not.

"I needed to use the privy," Frederick said, and Lotte stared at him from behind. He'd grabbed a blanket to cover himself, but he was still exposed, his slim, delicate back, and well-shaped legs, and everything else…

She saw it far better than she should have been able to in the darkness, and knew at once that it had to be some sort of strange power, or characteristic of her new nature. "Oh, when we get back, do you… what Gods do you know?"

A true believer always wanted to hear about more Gods, and if Frederick truly knew many Knowledge Gods, she should learn them.

"Oh, I can tell you much about that. I've met so many Gods, and many of them to you. We could be here for a long time. Just let me hurry away, and I'll be back soon."

Lotte watched him go, and then lay there, feeling oddly contented. When he returned, he lay down next to her and stared up at her. His eyes caught hers and something passed across his features, something like awe.

"What is it?"

"Your eyes are beautiful. I almost can't look away," he said, and there was something about his voice that felt as if it was slightly distant, as if this wasn't simply poetical exaggeration. He did pull his eyes away, nodded to himself, and looked back again. This time Lotte could feel it. She wanted him to look into her eyes, wanted him to see her, only her, and not whatever else there was.

"Then don't. And tell me about… about Gods."

He didn't look away. When she blinked, he'd wait until her eyes opened and meet her gaze again, and so she didn't try not to blink, wasn't sure what to do with this trick.

"The strangest cult I've ever met must be the one that believes that the ocean, the one to the south, was made by a… worm, or a clam, or a sea urchin, or a giant fish… a God of some sort, that meant for it to be like a nest, with great leviathans deep in it waiting to hatch and wreak havoc. But as long as they are fed, the leviathans won't wake and the God will bless those who sail on its seas. Despite all that it will one day seek to do, they spoke of it as impossibly kind, but quickly wearying of how many it aided, who swore that were in its debt, and yet thought that its weakness was to be exploited. Or so their holy stories say." He spoke slowly, and yet with growing confidence. "They had a prayer I can't quite remember, it went… wait, I can remember it. Your eyes are something, really. It's like, with a part of me calm, the rest of me can grasp it better. But their prayer was, 'Oh Many Armed, Many Formed One--'"

Something in Lotte jumped, leapt out at her. This was a God's True Name, something powerful and real. "Oh."

"May your children always rest, may the debts be always paid, may the sea be merciful and your wives and daughters, sons and children, always happy. Take this offering, which I give into the sea, knowing that all things flow into you."

"Huh."

"It really is something. There's another God I think would interest you. Incu Malu, who despite his name is not one of the Sepult Gods of smithing."

Lotte assumed his name meant 'smith' or something like that. "What is he?"

"He's the God of grief. He's like the Nachtmater. She doesn't give great boons, but keeps darkness away from you, or so they say. He is the anvil which grief, anger, despair… loss beats against. A Sepult rages in his grief, calls Him a thousand cursed names, and still he forbears. Still he is the chest, they say, upon which anyone can cry. He will not hug, he will not wipe tears, but through Him you can reach the part where sorrow gutters for lack of fuel. He doesn't bring people back to life, but he can help their desire for death dwindle. A father rages in grief at a child whose life was cut short with just three short decades… but bit by bit he prays, and bit by bit he realizes there's still a world outside of his aching fists, beating against the Gods' anvil."

He said it slowly, and then added, "I've had times when Incu Malu helped me keep going."

"He sounds like a good God, though is he only for the Sepult?"

"Primarily, but it is said He sometimes listens to others. Do you want to hear another?"

Lotte sighed, already feeling sleepy. She had time for perhaps one more, and then they'd drift off. So they walked through it, staring at each other, until sleep came again.

******

Her eyes didn't go back to being better than they should be. She couldn't see in the dark as if it were day, but she could see well enough that hunting on even a moonless night in the forest might be possible. She wouldn't want to take the risks, since you want every advantage when taking a shot, but that should have been outside the realm of possibility entirely, without a lot of luck.

As they made their way north, Lotte began to pay more attention to how she hunted, the way she had when she'd been honing her skills before. She didn't yet have cause to try to track anyone, but what if she was chased? She figured out a few facts. First, you could always move slower. Second, there was a move of her tail that could actually clear out tracks in dust. It might still reveal that someone had been through, if someone knew to look at the thickness of dust on the ground… but someone who knew that probably could see a thousand unseen signs.

Moving unseen also involved taking risks and not taking risks. Lotte learned, during her hunts, the way that you had to avoid riling up the animals in the area. But this didn't just mean avoiding their notice. Sometimes it meant just going through the forest as if you belonged there. But there was something else. Sometimes her skin itched when she really didn't want to be seen, and she wasn't. It didn't make all that much sense, and she'd think she was imagining it, except… there were too many odd coincidences to imagine.

It was almost two days north before Naja finally said what Lotte had been distantly aware of. "We're going to be passing near your home village. I think, right?"

"Yes."

"So, do you want to… leave a message? Or even go yourself? Maybe we can figure out how to fix this, but if we don't…"

Lotte didn't know what to think, could tell that if she didn't say anything about it, if she kept on slithering down the road in front of them, nobody besides Naja would bring it up. The others were footsore, and they wouldn't complain about not going out of the way a little. But she also guessed that they wouldn't complain if we stopped for a while to let her talk to them. Or send one of them, probably Naja because of her noble bearing, to send a message of… what?

Mostly lies, no doubt.


What does Lotte do?

[] Move on. Her parents aren't likely to worry that they haven't heard anything from her, at least not yet. Perhaps they will later, but Lotte would rather put off any confrontation as long as possible, even if she now knows that they weren't aware that Lotte was actually a lamia, and a demigod. Or perhaps especially because of that.
[] Send Naja with a gold coin that Lotte earned, and stories of her deeds. It shouldn't be too hard to convince them that if Lotte could come, she would, but that she was desperately busy with an adventure and had tasked a friend and former employer to send along some of what she earned. They'd have to guess that she'd earned quite a lot, to have that much to send back home, and hopefully they'd be happy and have words for her in return.
[] Send Naja to fetch them out into the forest, to talk to Lotte. She… she doesn't have a reason to confront them any longer, but she needs to tell them… all sorts of things. But if this ends badly, it could destroy her hopes of having somewhere to go back to, and people who love her. There'd be no way to ease them into it, to send money on occasion or anything else to hope that when it comes out there would be more understanding.

*******

A/N: So, we begin a new adventure somewhat slowly. It will build up, as always.

2:2

Lotte knew these woods far too well. They had changed, but in ways that she had predicted. So she slithered through them, aware now that she'd have to be more careful how and where she moved. She had a longer 'train' than before, and that meant that she had to be more careful with how she moved. But she felt as if in some ways that only made her better at it. She'd learned and grown a lot, even in this small time. She hummed a little, imagining it in the deeper pitch that Aisling had taught her. They were beyond this forest, in the next town over. They wouldn't be there if this… went too wrong, but she knew her parents.

They loved her. They wouldn't run back to the village to gather a mob, even if they never wanted to see her again. If all their love was in a moment extinguished, like a weak flame, then that last flicker would still warm her, however briefly. This felt like… like cold comfort, of course. But they weren't like some parents in the village. They had chosen to have her, had chosen all that had come up to here.

So she slithered around, in a circle, unable to leave the area and yet unwilling to stay entirely in one place.

She just had to hope Naja could get them to go out of their way like that.

******
This was it. The village that Lotte had been born in, and at the outskirts, the home that held the people who had raised her. She'd knocked on the door, not sure whether anyone would be there, and the wife had gone for the husband, leaving her there. When they finally arrived, Naja considered them, and Naja… couldn't really see it.

They seemed like pleasant enough people, but the longing in Lotte's voice, and the stories she'd forced on them on the way here about her village had talked it up as being far more than a little nothing in the middle of nowhere. Her parents seemed like nice, reasonably prosperous farmers, and that was all.

This wasn't nothing. The house was well-kept, and they seemed to have plenty of land, but Naja still felt as if she'd prepared too much. Of course, they hadn't known she was coming, wherein she had bathed, and dressed in her best boots, tunic, everything needed to look like an adventurer.

'You look too boyish. What sort of woman would be attracted to that?' her father had snorted. 'Or boy for that matter.' He had been a great wanderer in his own youth, a man who'd been inside dozens of Sepult ruins, but old age had narrowed his mind, even as it had in its way sharpened it. He'd loved her, but hadn't much cared for her mother, and had loved Karle's father more than everyone else in the world combined.

"This must be about Lotte. You aren't any noble we've seen around here," Henrik said, with a very careful bow. The man did look a little like Lotte, in the sense only that he was larger than a man should be. Lotte sometimes didn't seem to realize just how imposing her height had been, and even for that height she seemed huge. Naja's envious, desire-riddled looks had come genuinely. "Though, Naja, that sounds familiar." He stroked his beard, which was one habit that Lotte couldn't pick up.

The man was Henrik, the woman Anelie, her plumpness proof of her husbands' success. Both of them showed what old age and success could bring, for all that Henrik looked like he could still shake the rafters. Naja could never imagine Lotte, even at her forties, softening like that. (It'd also look pretty silly with a snake lower body, honestly. But then, there were things about Lotte's new form that made Naja nervous in a way Karle--oh so cosmopolitan Karle--at least was able to hide.)

"Naja von Siebert. Perhaps you've heard of my father? Either way, I'm here because of your… child, Lotte." Naja had heard what Aisling had guessed about who Lotte was, but Naja still thought it more likely that it was just Aisling's bizarre ideas of masculinity and femininity. Would Aisling accuse her of being a man, next, just because she liked wearing big stomping boots and a dashing nobleman-style tunic? She wore it, and thus it was women's clothing.

But perhaps she was wrong with regards to Lotte and Aisling was right. It wouldn't be the first time that Aisling was right and she was wrong, nor the last.

"What about her?" Henrik asked. "Is she okay?" He leaned in, and Naja didn't know how to answer that.

"I… would say so. But it is a long story, and already Lotte has done great deeds, ones that have found their way into song and story. 'Lotte the lanky, kind and humble/ skilled hunter of the forest' is her moniker in a song about her deeds involving a martyr and theft at a Temple. She has met the Nachtmater twice, conversing with her as a hero might a God. I knew only rumors of the first time and the song when I set out to try to gain an advantage."

Henrik was gaping, and gestured to their table. "Please, sit down, and explain."

Naja sat at a chair, and said, "So you see, I have someone who is like a brother to me. An annoying brother I despise, but like a brother nonetheless, deny it though he will." Though Karle had been a lot more tolerable, this last week. He was still annoying, and clearly still hated her, but…

She didn't understand how he didn't grasp that if he accepted the connection, he wouldn't be 'like' a brother to her, but quite possibly better than one. If he merely pretended he was of a kind with his father, then her father would have all but handed everything to him, would have helped him into some careful noble match, would have… no, not cast her aside, but helped her into a marriage worthy of her station if that was what would be best for him. Instead, Naja was going to inherit the estates.

"His father was a very prosperous farmer, and loved by my father more than he loved any other man or woman. After his father's death, we grew up together, and both of us competed in everything, including the study of ancient ruins. When we heard of a group of heroes who had exposed a family whose line had won glory killing a holy martyr, and who were servants of a Forgotten God, we both decided that what better person to help us explore a Sepult ruin?"

"Our Lotte did that?" Anelie asked, sounding as if she was going to faint.

"It's a little complicated, but yes. So Karle and I went to her, and I hired her on a promise of a gold coin afterwards. What happened then is hard to explain, but she's still alive, and she's not crippled. In fact, we're on our way to… another adventure, and Karle is along as well." Naja coughed, not sure how she was supposed to say it. "She wanted you to have this." Naja took out a Holy Vanning, as they were called. Naja had decided that they deserved a larger gold coin than she had been planning on giving to Lotte.

(Best of all, if Lotte asked, Naja would be able to tell the absolute truth, that she'd given them a gold coin.)

"I… I've never seen one quite that large," Anelie said.

"I've never seen one at all. Anelie, where did you--"

"When I was adventuring, of course."

Naja looked at the woman. She was an ex-adventurer?

"We all split a gold coin in four, once, after a particularly dangerous mission. But it was a small coin, not like this. Do you know how much this is?"

"What you'd make in a few months, but all at once?" Naja guessed. She frowned. She didn't really know what things cost, at least beyond the fact that everyone knew innkeepers cheated adventurers of room costs all across the world.

Anelie was now looking at her as if she were stupid, as if she didn't know what she was saying.

"There's a reason people adventure to seek their fortune," Henrik said. "If Lotte has already made that much, I'm almost surprised she hasn't come back. The life you could make with just one of those coins…"

Naja frowned, and shrugged her shoulders. "Lotte wants to adventure. It's not about making a fortune, I don't think. But she has done well so far, for a new adventurer. She's certainly shown more good sense and bravery than I have."

"So, is that all you came here for?" Henrik asked, looking as if he was going to be deep in his cups tonight.

"No, Lotte wants to talk, but doesn't feel as if she can enter the village, things being as they are now. She asked me to lead you to her." Naja pointed to herself, trying her most cocksure grin. "So, I know you have a long day of… important work ahead of you." Naja tried to sound confident of that, but whatever they were doing couldn't be all that important compared to the revelations, and they were rich and could no doubt pay someone else to do their farm work and merely supervise, if they wished.

She was sure that would hurt their pride, and certainly their daughter, Lotte, was proud in a strange way that almost looked like humility. (Or was she humble in a way that almost looked like pride, as if the world and all its splendours, however beautiful, could not corrupt her straightforward honesty. Perhaps Naja was reading too much into Lotte, seeing too much, but at times she seemed almost to glow.)

They looked as if they'd heard her tone and didn't like it, but she continued. "But Lotte is waiting in the woods to talk to you. As I said. I'm going to lead you to her, if I can remember her directions. She acts like the woods is a road anyone knows."

"That does sound like her," Anelie muttered. "But you're wrong to think it isn't. Don't they still sing it? 'Everyone knows the road in their heart/ Everyone knows where the journey will start/ First one step/ Then the other.'"

Naja goggled at her, not having expected to hear an old drinking song for adventurers come out of the mouth of a mild-mannered wife, especially since she knew that the song went on to espouse the joys of the road, including not just adventure and new sights, but the favor of willing men and maidens. Perhaps she hadn't known those particular lyrics?

(Or perhaps Naja just didn't want to imagine the fact that one day she'd be old enough that young men and women would struggle to imagine how she had aroused such passions, or participate in them. She didn't like thinking of these things. She wanted to imagine herself young and adventuresome forever.)

"I-it is true that they sometimes sing that. So, are you going to come along with me? I'll… talk a little about what happened, on the way."

Henrik frowned, glanced at Anelie, and saw whatever he expected there because he nodded. "Of course."

Henrik brought a heavy stick with him, for safety from animals. They wandered the path, Naja stopping every so often to try to remember which way she'd gone. Okay, maybe she didn't have much of a sense of direction. But it was a fine day to walk, and she definitely wasn't hoping they didn't ask any questions about--

"What happened to her?" Anelie asked, not struggling at all to keep up, even when Naja increased the pace.

"We took her to a Sepult ruin, which turned out to be containing a… temple of some sort to Forgotten God, the God whose servants she had thwarted, if I'm following the implications of what's happened. She was captured, and something was done."

"Well? I can tell you're dragging the tale out." Henrik snorted, and she turned to look into his blue eyes.

"She was changed, transformed from a human into… not human. Her mind is still intact, and she seems no different from before except in body, but we've been looking for a cure."

"Not human?" Anelie asked, sharply. Oh, she realized that Naja was very careful not to say what. She had to guess that if the story was 'Lotte now had elf-ears and would live for centuries' then there wouldn't be quite as much awkwardness. It'd be odd, of course, but elves weren't killed, at least in the Central Lands, for being elves.

She was glad of that when she thought of Aisling, who somehow had become someone she didn't want to be without.

"Just this way, she should be… around here. Though, I suppose she would sli… ide off." From the look on Henrik and Anelie's faces when she turned to check, they'd noticed her awkward, last minute change of words.

Then they saw Lotte, in the distance.

Henrik and Anelie stared for a long moment, and then Henrik said, as Lotte turned and saw them, "Lotte?!"

"Oh, well, uh. I'm going to go, and I'll be back in an hour to make sure that nobody's heart's been broken and, er, all of that…"

Naja babbled these excuses as she fled. Perhaps she should have stayed to act as moral support, but she thought maybe this was something they should do themselves.

******

"Ma, Pa?" Lotte asked, dropping the singing voice she'd been practicing, and talking as if nothing had changed. "I'm… I'm glad Naja brought you."

"Do you think she wouldn't?" Henrik asked, his voice guarded, his body stiff. He looked like an animal trying to decide whether to pounce, or whether he should flee.

"I… I don't know. I know this is a lot to take in."

"It really is you," Anelie said, frowning as she got closer. "You look different, besides… that."

"Little things," Lotte said. "There's things she probably didn't tell you. The Forgotten God is some sort of snake God, but I've been lying to her." Lotte's heart ached, and she looked away as she slithered closer. "And the Nachtmater confirmed it."

"Confirmed what?" Henrik asked. "What do you mean? You talked to her?"

"Twice," Lotte said, quietly. "Once just a few days ago. I asked her whether you knew that this was going to happen."

"How would we know you were going to be transformed into a… into a… lamia." Henrik looked horrified.

Her mother, on the other hand, was still frowning, a little stunned but thinking.

"I'm… the Forgotten God said, and the Nachtmater confirmed, that I'm some form of… that it was the one who gave birth to me. Then the Nachtmater must have taken me and dropped me off at your doorstep."

"In the night," Anelie whispered. "I'd prayed so many times for a babe, for our sex at night to--really, Lotte?"

Lotte was blushing, and if she could see herself, she'd see someone whose face was as if she'd bitten into something rotten. "S-sorry."

"I'd prayed a lot, and then you arrived. And you claim you're a demigod? Lotte, this is interesting."

"Interesting? Anelie, what are you saying?"

"I've met Beastfolk before, even a lamia. They… not everything that's said about them is wrong. They're outsiders, and their Gods are evil, including this Forgotten God. But not all of them were terrible, and most just lived their lives, wrong as their faith is. Their Gods are the problem, not them." She spoke with such assurance, but Lotte wasn't sure.

"I don't know what the Forgotten God wants. They are aggrieved at what has been done to their people, but I don't know anything else. She didn't seem like she was going to force me to do anything, not yet. He was… strange and dangerous and I'm pretty sure I can't trust him. But I knew that, knew to expect it," Lotte babbled. "I was… I was so scared when the change first happened, but I don't think it can be undone."

"So you're lying to your friends?" Henrik asked, sounding like a desperate man scrambling in the dust for anything that made sense.

"I'm afraid. Of what they'd say, of what you'd say. I don't know anything about being a Demigod."

"I do," Anelie said. "I am not one, but I met one, for a while. Then we parted ways.. He was the son of a demigod. But it isn't math. You don't halve divine blood each generation, it decays more slowly, like noble families of Naja von Siebert's sort. His name was Zelig Noll, and from what I've heard he has a son, a famous adventurer. One thing I learned then was one of the hidden divine abilities."

"Really? You never told me of this," Henrik said.

"Because you would be jealous, dear. I don't ask you about Natasha, the wandering bard from the east. I had to get that story out of the neighbors, years ago."

She was saying that her and Noll had… or…

Ew.

Lotte didn't like thinking of it, and it was strange to imagine her parents pining after anyone but each other.

Henrik laughed, unexpectedly, and admitted, "You're right. I was, and I still am, just a little."

"He could always sense when there was a God nearby, or when another demigod was close, though the more powerful they were, he said, the more easily he could track them. So… if you've been wandering around, it's possible you could be followed, and it's possible you could follow others. I don't know that much else. You have powers, I assume. But if the Nachtmater is talking to you, then… I think there has to be a divine plan."

"Oh, yes there is. The plan of some bizarre God who is her parent." Henrik spoke slowly, as if trying to give Anelie a chance to change her mind.

"Never that," Lotte said, desperately. "You're my parents. They just gave birth to me. I don't know how that part of it works. I… are you still?"

"Your parents?" Henrik asked, sounding appalled. "Of course. You should… you should get away from this God, and stay here."

"Where, Henrik? Do we bring her into the village. Hope nobody notices she does not have legs anymore? She can't stay here."

"She could stay in the woods," Henrik said.

"Yes, because that's far less lonely than having people like Naja around her?" Anelie said.

"I'm not coming back, even if you agreed on that." Lotte wanted to make that very clear. "I said I wanted to be an adventurer, and that hasn't changed, despite everything else."

"Everything?" Henrik asked. "When it comes down to it, I'm worried about you, but you're still our daughter and I love you. So that's another thing that hasn't changed."

Well… Lotte hissed nervously, not sure what to say. She wasn't sure whether she was actually their daughter, either, but she had to admit that both of them standing there, reluctantly and uncertainly accepting all that had happened was better than she'd hoped.

Does Lotte talk about her… gender thoughts/feelings?

[] Yes. She trusts and loves her parents, even if this is clearly not the sort of thing they'd have experience in. And she might as well tell everything now. Perhaps saying it aloud to someone would help make it real, and help it all to make sense.
[] No. They're dealing with enough to try to understand about how she's changed. Plus, what if they think it's a mental change, or… something like that. Besides, Lotte really isn't sure of her own feelings, so perhaps talking now, when she doesn't know whether it's anything or not would be a mistake.

******

A/N: Confused, hesitant acceptance… with love. Far from the worst possible outcome thus far.