Watching Cat watch Lilly as she moved logs around inside the campfire, as it was lit and burning, I smiled in awe.

  She looked absolutely stunned. As if she was witnessing a miracle.

  “Honestly it’s a little dry. I think this winter will be a cold one,” Lilly said absentmindedly as she finished messing with the burning logs and finally pulled her hand from the flames.

  “Oh…? Wouldn’t it be more wet if the winter would be bad?” I asked.

  “Sometimes. I just feel the dryness in the air is a little off. I could be wrong, but usually I’m not,” Lilly said as we three watched the campfire grow hotter and stronger. Lilly had somehow arranged the logs perfectly, for airflow and whatnot, and they were now readily burning away.

  Could I have done that? Have my hand in such hot flames for as long as she had, without even flinching?

  Her hand and arm didn’t look burnt. I didn’t even smell any hairs singed or anything.

  Lilly being strong wasn’t a doubt in my head. Although I’d never seen proof of her strength, I’d heard plenty of times from many people… not just Vim, that Lilly was strong. The kind of strong that made people scared of her, even before her attitude or personality.

  So her not being bothered by flames, at least in such a way, wasn’t a surprise to me… but I still couldn’t help but compare her to myself.

  I was almost half tempted to stick my hand and arm into the fire to see how quickly I’d want to pull it back out.

  I’d been burnt before. Many times. Enough to know better than to let any part wander near flames. So I kind of knew already what I’d find if I tried it, but here I was wanting to do it anyway.

  “I’d like a harsh winter, actually. After spending all summer in the south, I think it’d be nice,” I said, still staring at the fire.

  “Easy for you to say, you got warm bits hanging on you. Heavy snow sucks for those like me,” Cat said with a sigh.

  I smirked at that. Warm bits? Did she think my ears and tail alone could keep me warm in the snow? A funny thought. They were usually the first to freeze up and feel like they were going to fall off, somehow. I never understood the how or why, but it was usually how it went.

  Stepping over next to Cat, I sat down next to her on the small broken stump. We had set camp in a small meadow. One that was, as Lilly mentioned, strangely dry. The forest we had just left had been covered in dew and moisture so it was a little enjoyable to sit on something and not feel my pants grow soaked.

  “Can I start making tea?” Cat asked as she grabbed a bag and opened it, as to dig through it and find the tea leaves and pot.

  “We’re going to need to talk about your rations,” Lilly said as Cat went to unfold the little metal stand I’d found in that wagon on our way to Telmik. Or well, the one Oplar and the rest had found. I had simply taken possession of it since none of them had seemed to want it.

  It was a neat little thing, it was like a little fold-able table that could be used to cook food or boil water, or make tea, with only a little movement. The only real downsides to it was both that I had to fold it up and pack it away, and thus carry it, but also that it took a long while for it to cool down after using it. It meant that if a day ever came I had to abandon a campsite quickly; it was very likely I’d have to abandon it too.

  “What’s wrong with our rations?” Cat asked for me as I watched her put the pot onto the stand, and then go to pick up the water jug we’d filled a little bit ago.

  “It’s not that there’s really anything wrong. It’s more that you just don’t have enough. This is our third day making camp, and this is the third time I’ll be drinking your tea. Please, next time, let me pack our supplies or at the very least let me add to them,” Lilly spoke evenly, but almost sounded like she was begging.

  “Is the tea that bad? I thought it was nice. Oplar gave the leaves to me,” I said as I reached over to grab the small box Cat had just spooned some leaves from as to pour into the pot.

  Smelling the leaves, I wondered what was wrong with them. They smelled fine. And from experience, as Lilly said our last few camps, I knew they tasted fine when boiled too.

  “It’s not that they’re bad… I just like variety. Listen, I traveled with Vim for years. You should know what that means, Renn. I really thought you’d be better than him,” Lilly said with a sigh.

  “Oh…? Wait… are you saying Vim doesn’t, or didn’t feed you well?” I asked.

  “No…? I mean he fed me, and whatnot. He just never cared to add variety or flavor. He doesn’t eat or drink, ever, so it’s not his fault. He just doesn’t notice or care. Geuh…” She made a weird sound as she smelled the tea that had started to boil. “I’ll just have water I think this time…” she complained.

  I smiled at her, although Cat only shook her head in confusion.

  “Vim’s always fed me well. Though I’ll be honest I don’t care much for his real cooking. His personal dishes are annoyingly smelly, for some reason,” I said.

  Lilly sighed and nodded. “Right…? Nasty stuff isn’t it?”

  “Well it’s usually not bad,” I admitted.

  “Yes it is Renn. Don’t trust your tongue. If your nose, eyes, ears and everything else are telling you the stuff is nasty then it is. Don’t let your tongue fool your senses,” she said with a grin.

  I smirked back at her and found that hilarious.

  “Tea’s done,” Cat then said, interrupting our conversation.

  I leaned forward, to accept a cup from Cat. She then handed one to Lilly, and then she lifted the pot off the metal bracket table and went to filling our cups.

  Or well, my cup and Cat’s. Lilly held her cup closer to herself, not extending it when Cat offered to fill it for her.

  “I’ll drink water,” Lilly said calmly.

  “Oh…? Okay…” Cat nodded, putting the pot down onto a rock, and then handed Lilly the water jug.

  Cat didn’t seem too bothered, likely because of Lilly’s earlier complaint about tea… but I had realized something else.

  The last few camps we’d made… Cat had only cooked, or prepared tea, one other time. That time too Lilly had not accepted any tea, or food. Claiming that she wasn’t hungry or thirsty.

  Yet the other times we’d camped, when I or Lilly had prepared the meals and drinks… she had eaten heartily and without hesitation. Even going so far as to vocally complain that the food had been taking too long.

  Sipping my tea, which was a little too hot still, I studied Lilly who finished pouring water into her cup. She looked bored.

  Surely not right?

  She didn’t hate humans so much that she… actually wouldn’t drink or eat anything they had prepared…? Surely? I mean… it was the same food, and tea, that I prepared. Or she did. It wasn’t like it was any different.

  Yet somehow it made perfect sense to me.

  Lilly had refused the tea… simply because Cat had been the one to make it.

  I kind of wanted to test my theory, but at the same time didn’t. Because all it would do is make me sad.

  Cat was a nice woman. A little young and odd, but nice. She was no threat. Not a danger or harm to either of us, or the Society.

  But Lilly didn’t care. She didn’t see that.

  All she saw was a human.

  She could talk to her, though. Hold whole conversations.

  She had even allowed Cat to hold her baby for a little while, back at the house before we had left. She had only done it when she had been nearby, and I had noticed Lilly had watched Cat and Root like a hawk during those moments, but… she had still allowed it.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Maybe I was just looking too deeply into it. Surely.

  Though even if I was right in my assumption… did it matter?

  It wasn’t like I could change Lilly’s perspective on humans. And it wasn’t like I really felt the need to either. If Lilly truly hated humans to such a degree she’d not even drink tea prepared by them… then odds are there was a good reason for it. A reason so ingrained, so deeply rooted into her, that there was nothing anyone could do or anything that could happen to change those beliefs.

  Her hatred was likely as pure as Vim’s belief in free-will. Unbreakable.

  “We should be nearing some lakes soon. I don’t outright recognize this meadow, but I feel like I should. I bet I’ll start to remember things we pass soon. Near the lakes is a human village. Puddle. Worst case scenario we can find that and I can get home from there,” Cat said after a drink of her tea.

  “Puddle?” Lilly asked.

  “We trade with them. Sometimes. Sparingly. Honestly we don’t mingle with them much, but I’ve been there a few times,” Cat said.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “They trade in children. They sell any children born past their firstborns to nearby nobility in the west. We don’t like that,” Cat said.

  Lilly scoffed, but I frowned.

  “Your saint allows that?” I asked.

  “Of course not? But we can’t face them. Every so often she sees one of the children being sold, or running away in the middle of the night, and we get sent to pick them up. But we can’t do much more than that. The village is many hundred strong, and they have a small mercenary band. They’re too strong to face upfront outright, not without great losses. Plus… well…” Cat shifted a little and shrugged. “Lots of villages around us do it. So if we tried to stop them, the rest might figure out about us and send people out to destroy us. It’s a hard reality, but there’s not much we can do about it,” Cat explained.

  Lilly nodded as she sipped her water. “Yeah, unless you’d be willing to kill the whole village off all it’d do is get you a lot of enemies for no reason.”

  “Still…” I mumbled.

  Hadn’t she said that one of the men Vim had killed, a brave man, had been strong? Very strong? Blessed by their saint? Why hadn’t he been able to handle the village?

  “Humans don’t wage war easily Renn. Not like that anyway,” Lilly said, likely noticing my thoughts.

  “Since when has the north had such a thing happen anyway? I don’t remember there being slaves or anything last I checked,” I said. Not like there were down south at least, near Landi’s place.

  “Been that way forever, I guess? It got worse when Telmik really grew powerful. When the Nation of the Blind outlawed slavery, they forced all the people who liked it or supported it out of their nation and surrounding territories. Up here got a good chunk of them. I’ve had to deal with them over the years too, with Vim. They usually sell the slaves off at the ports, either at the western ocean or near Lumen at the inland sea to those far away,” Lilly explained.

  “You guys hunt slavers?” Cat asked.

  “We used to. But most of that had been because they had been capturing and selling our people. We used to be more well known amongst the humans, so the eccentric and wealthy had tried to buy us all the time. When I was younger a king had once offered Vim a hundred chests of gold and silver in my weight for me,” Lilly said with a huge grin, as if proud and happy to tell us about it.

  “Whoa…!” Cat whispered in awe, which only made Lilly smile even prouder.

  A… hundred chests? In her weight?

  Lilly was a tad taller than me, but still somewhat skinny. More like me than Oplar or Brandy. But even still she was likely talking about a vast fortune. Maybe even as much as the vaults in Lumen had within them.

  “Still, I suppose that is one thing I got to give those idiot sisters credit for. As much as it pains me to admit it, I guess,” Lilly said with a sigh, her smile fading.

  “Sisters?” Cat asked.

  “The Sisters of Songs. The religion that Telmik is founded around. The one Celine and the rest made. They outlawed slavery, amongst other things. I don’t care for humans or about them, but I at least got to admit that was a positive. It wasn’t like it was easy. It took a lot of deaths, and stress and pain, but they did it. At least in their own corner of the world,” Lilly said.

  “Huh… I thought all those people walking around in those bland robes had been slaves,” Cat said as she thought about Telmik.

  “Vim says they are, in a way,” I said as I took a drink of tea.

  Lilly giggled. “He does! And he’s kind of right. They’re slaves to their gods. Their religion. It’s true, in a way, I guess,” Lilly said.

  “Huh… does that mean I’m a slave to Elaine then? Since I do whatever she asks?” Cat asked.

  “Well… maybe? In a broad sense, I guess? But I’ve always figured a slave is someone who obeyed another under the duress of death or pain, not because they wanted to,” Lilly said.

  “Vim would argue we are all slaves, I think,” I said as I thought of how he looked at life.

  “Vim’s got a broken brain. His thinking is all weird, you can’t use him as a base,” Lilly said.

  Cat giggled happily as I smiled and nodded. “He is odd.”

  “The funny part though is that Telmik, the people who outlawed slavery, had used slaves to build most of that city. Hypocrites,” Lilly said with a shake of her head.

  “Wait what…? Really?” I asked, surely not right?

  She nodded though, and it made me groan.

  “That probably took forever,” Cat mumbled.

  Yes. Telmik was huge. Even discounting the massive churches and cathedrals, it was still huge. Bigger even than Lumen.

  “I’m surprised Vim allowed that,” I said.

  “Why? Because of his free-will doctrine? It is a powerful thing, but he doesn’t force his will on anyone. Not even those without freedom. They have to ask for it first. Which, by the way, they eventually did. That’s how I think the religion of the blind found its humanitarian side and abolished the act of slavery,” Lilly said.

  “You think Vim did it?” I asked.

  “I do. Though I don’t know when or how he did it. I just returned one day to find all the slaves freed, and it outlawed. Celine was a saint, a real one, and damnably annoying in her convictions, but she would not have abolished slavery so readily. Like I said. She and her people used them to build half that town,” she said.

  Huh… “I’m starting to not like this Saint Celine. I thought all saints were good people?” Cat said, reminding the two of us she was still here.

  Or at least, reminding me. Odds are Lilly never forgot her presence.

  “Right? If I can put up with you long enough I’ll let you know all about the saints Vim and I hunted down in the beginning! There were some nasty ones, doing crazy stuff you know?” Lilly said proudly. A little too proudly.

  “I would like to hear that, but maybe not now…” I said gently, hoping to slightly hint to Lilly that she should probably avoid such a topic.

  After all, the entire reason we…

  “You’re… not going to kill her, are you?” Cat then asked.

  I flinched, but had expected it. Lilly had kind of hit that topic on the nose with her earlier comment.

  “Kill who?” Lilly asked for me, not realizing what she’d done.

  “Saint Elaine. She’s… a kind woman. Really. I don’t know why you’re so worried about her, but she really is a kind person. She tries so hard to help when she can, where she can, and…!” Cat began to almost beg for her saint’s life.

  “Whoa… Cat… Wait a moment,” I quickly stopped her before she got too heated, and she gave me a terribly sad look. As if her heart had just broke.

  “Why lead us to her if you thought we’d be killing her?” Lilly asked.

  “I hadn’t thought I’d been doing that. Or well… I still kind of don’t I guess? Vim said, he promised, you’d not hurt her. Not if she was a good saint. A good person. But suddenly I just got… worried, I guess,” Cat grew a little red in the face as she spoke, and I felt bad for her.

  It was obvious that our previous conversation, or at least Lilly’s comments, had sparked this worry and fear in her. And the worst part was that her fears were honestly not unfounded.

  Lilly had not lied. I had no doubt she and Vim had hunted saints. He hated them as much as he hated monarchs, somehow.

  Yet she should have known better than to say it aloud, here in front of Cat, when we were about to meet the woman’s saint and holy woman.

  “This is your fault,” I said to Lilly.

  “What? Why me?” Lilly sat up straighter, as if shocked I’d even suggest such a thing.

  “You don’t like humans, Lilly. And it kind of shows,” I said. I’d not point out the earlier comments or the way she had not accepted Cat’s tea, simply because it had been she who had made it. It wasn’t just her dislike for drinking the same thing so often so recently. It was also pure prejudice and discrimination.

  As if to prove my words true, Cat nodded quickly.

  “Bah!” Lilly huffed but didn’t seem too upset or bothered over it.

  Turning to Cat, I nudged her ever so slightly with my tail as to get her attention. She turned to look at me, and smiled at me in a way that reminded me of Ginny or Nory. That smile was instinctual. As if it’d plant itself on their faces no matter the situation, as long as they looked at me.

  Vim had that too.

  “We don’t want to hurt her. Don’t plan to. In fact, Vim only wants to talk to her. He just wants to make sure her prophecies are correct, and likely to hear more about them. He doesn’t like the creatures she told you to hunt down and kill, before it was born. He hates them fiercely,” I said.

  “You have no idea how much he hates those things. Really,” Lilly nodded, supporting my statement.

  “Is he a saint too?” Cat then asked.

  Lilly chuckled. “Saints can only be women.”

  “Wait, really?” I asked. You’re kidding!

  “What you didn’t know?” Lilly asked back, almost offended I had doubted her.

  “Well… I assumed but…” I mumbled as I thought about it. Had anyone told me that before? Maybe? I felt almost as if Vim had mentioned it somehow, yet couldn’t quite recall it. Which was strange. I could remember practically every word he’s ever said… even the ones he thought I hadn’t overheard.

  “You’ve been with Vim how long?” Lilly asked.

  “Hm…? Two years?” I asked Cat.

  “Why ask me…?” she mumbled with a frown.

  Looking back at Lilly, I found her smiling and shaking her head at me.

  “What?” I asked. What was that look?

  “For you to know so little after all that time? Either Vim’s as absentminded with you as he is with all of us, are you two only flirt all day and don’t even talk about anything else,” she said, teasing me.

  “They do flirt rather well!” Cat didn’t hesitate to let the world know.

  “Oh? Do tell,” Lilly lifted her empty cup, as if to accept tea from her finally.

  Cat didn’t hesitate to fill her cup up with freshly boiled tea, or to tell her of all the stuff she had noticed during our stay in Telmik… and even a few things she had noticed on her way there with Vim.

  Patreon for early access to 16 chapters ahead!