OvidLemma Hi, everybody!
Below is a portrait of Jasil, Val's first crush and first girlfriend. Though they're no longer romantically involved, Val considers her a good friend. Jasil is a member of the Sheore, a nomadic people who are often performers and travelling merchants - Jasil is an acrobat, a dancer, and an expert flute player. However, since they have their own language and customs, the Sheore are often viewed with distrust and are subject to persecution - a fact that Jasil has had to deal with throughout her life. Jasil is an accomplished jewelry-maker who also learned the basics of leather-hardening alchemy from Val. She is fiercely protective of her younger brother and cousins and has taken it upon herself to protect them from her father, who becomes violent when drunk.
41. Friends... or More?
"They think it's normal," Ette had whispered...
Val mulled that over - they think it's normal. What did it mean? Something about their training classes was abnormal, with students showing far more aptitude than might be expected. Priestess Oestel had said the same thing about their magic classes at the temple. And even Levin had remarked upon it, commenting that he'd been blowing past his own magical and academic hurdles, things he'd been struggling with for years. Val didn't feel any different, but perhaps that was to be expected - she hadn't been blessed by some miraculous gift of knowledge or ability from the gods. Rather, she made consistent and rapid progress in any discipline she put her mind to. And Ette had picked up on it before anybody else, training them in every area he could think of without being willing to risk bringing light to whatever magic was at risk.
How long had he known? Did he even love Val, or was he just using her to get what he wanted, just like everybody else? Val shook that thought from her mind. Those were ugly orphan thoughts. This was Ette, who'd spent an hour in the woods carefully working Val through her frustration with archery. Who referred to her as his daughter without mentioning to anybody that they'd been acquainted for just under a year…
Ouch! Val needed to pay attention - now she was sparring practice swords with Sir Andrat, and she wasn't nearly as good with the sword as she was with a knife or quarterstaff. They reset to forward guard positions.
"I'm not going to tell you where it's coming from," the weaponsmaster said. He advanced on Val again - klonk-klik-thup he smacked Val's doublet on the third go. "Better - note that I can come back around like that with my blade… and that I’m open for an instant when I do."
"Noted," Val said. She rubbed her side - Ette had told Andrat that they didn't take it easy during sparring and, after a few tentative rounds, he seemed to have taken it to heart.
"That's some hardening you've got there…" he pointed to her doublet with the tip of his sword. "Some of the best I've seen. Who made it?"
"I did it myself," Val said. Klonk-klik-klonk-thup. Andrat got her again - his momentary opening had been a bit too momentary. "It's not that good," she said.
"Am I hitting too hard?"
Yes. "No," Val said. She might get a few bruises out of their sparring, but if she didn't get whacked for screwing up then she wouldn't learn from her mistakes.
"It braces almost immediately." Andrat pointed to the leather bracers he wore on his forearms and shins. "You could give some pointers to the Sheore girl I bought these from."
"Sheore girl?" Val said.
He wiped the sweat from his brow and nodded. "Down at the Port Bazaar. A group of them showed up last week… they have a bad reputation, but they're honest folk in my opinion."
"They are," Val agreed. Suddenly, her senses were primed, the summer air blooming in her lungs, her heart thudding in her chest. Would Jasil be there?
Klonk-klik-klik-klonk-klik-klonk. Andrat paused, nodding his approval. "Better. Again." They reset to forward guard positions.
Val didn't mention anything about it to anybody, but instead rushed right to the bazaar right after breakfast. Not waiting to retrieve Tulip from the stables, Val dashed from the palace and down the hillside, down the broad avenue curving toward the port. She had two guards with her - she was supposed to have two at all times - but she nearly lost them among the bustle.
She wasn't trying to lose them, but they were slowed by their armor and weapons, whereas Val had just stripped her doublet and boots after practice and wore only her breeches, light leather shoes, and the utilitarian top she'd worn beneath her doublet during practice. It was muggy and warm, but she cooled from the sheer pace of her sprinting, the guards calling after her to slow, which only helped things. Perhaps thinking she was a thief, people turned to gawp, making a nice pathway of parted pedestrians to run along.
It was perhaps a mile to the Port Bazaar, so it took Val five minutes to make the run. She turned and waved to the guards, just in case they'd lost track of her, before heading for the central boulevard, where vendors crammed their carts, stalls, and great gaudy blankets between the three fountains, each spouting water twenty feet into the air and sporting a statue of one of the probably-mythical founders of the city thousands of years before.
Val paced along the way, passing an young woman selling suede slippers, a man hawking a hundred kinds of dried fruit from faraway lands, and an old woman selling magical elixirs that didn't appear to have anything magical about them. Then she spotted her - sitting in a pool of hazy sunlight, a midnight-haired girl sitting cross-legged upon a turquoise blanket, a dozen beautiful bracelets upon one wrist, boxes of jewelry and simple articles of 'mage-hardened leather' arrayed around her.
Val bounced on the balls of her feet. "Jasil!"
The girl looked up, gasped, and broke into a beautiful grin, marred only by the fact that one side of her lip was cracked and swollen. "Val!" she said, springing into a hug.
Jasil's hair smelled like the charcoal and incense of the bazaar, concentrated and mixed with subtle hibiscus. A glittering white-silver band parted her black hair. Jasil squeezed Val for a minute and didn't want to let go, so Val didn't make her.
Still clutching onto Jasil, Val muttered, "did your dad do that to you?"
That got Jasil to pull away. She looked at Val uncertainly, her brow creasing with worry. She ran her fingers through Val's hair. "Wow… I think you're as tall as me now…"
She was right. Where Jasil had been a few inches taller than Val before, they were standing eye-to-eye. And she was also avoiding the subject. Val pulled Jasil's sleeve up, revealing a line of old, brown bruises on her arm. "Your father did this," Val said.
Jasil bit her lip and winced, forgetting that it was swollen. She managed an almost-imperceptible nod. People milled about, hawking and buying wares around them. "It… it was my fault," Jasil said. "My dad… he caught me again… um…"
"Kissing a girl?"
"Yeah…"
Blood rushed through Val's ears. Her fists clenched like stones. She could have punched through plate armor. "Come with me," she said.
"I… I can't just leave my spot…"
"I'll buy enough for the rest of your day," Val said. "Will you come?"
Jasil folded her blanket up, wrapping all of her goods in a carefully-practiced manner until it was a big, faintly-jingling bundle of woven turquoise. She rolled two leather straps around it and hoisted the big bundle over her back. "Where are we going?"
"The palace…"
"The what?"
Val couldn't fault Jasil for her nervous reaction upon approaching the palace. Val had been pretty nervous her first time entering the ducal palace… granted, she'd been escorted by the ducal guard at the time. But now Val was being escorted by two of the earl's guards, which wasn't all that different. They walked into the great big vestibule, sunlight reflecting off the parquet marble from the skylight eighty feet above, servants and guards going about their business, their footsteps echoing in the bright-lit hall. Jasil looked upward, her mouth agape as she took in the ceiling mural, the forms of cupids, dogodas, and other mythical creatures floating through an azure with puffy white clouds, so masterfully painted it might have been real.
"Come on," Val said.
She grabbed Jasil's hand and pulled her along. They continued to the nobles' suites, where the whole Vinzennos & Friends clan was staying - in the smaller rooms, in case somebody actually important needed somewhere to stay. These were the rooms that petty lords and knights might stay in, but they were a lot nicer than anywhere that Val had stayed before that. Her room had a full-sized bed, a divan, a study corner, a screened-off changing and wardrobe area, and a room with a view onto the nobles' courtyard and its little garden, across from which were more windows to the rooms of low-ranking nobles. There was a tiny patio, too, but it was currently occupied by a few potted plants and there was no room to stand.
Jasil was still too stunned to speak as Val pulled her into her room and set her on the divan, fetching some healing balm that she'd made in her alchemy practice. It was no blood-based healing potion, but it would take care of minor wounds and infections several times faster than natural healing and prevent scarring. She dabbed some onto a little bit of cotton gauze before applying it to her friend's wound, her brow knitting in anger as she took in the red gash of her split lip. Then she applied some to the bruises along her arm.
"Have you got any others?"
Jasil nodded. "On my side…"
She unwrapped the tie of her light green blouse and pulled it up, revealing her wonderfully firm acrobat's abdomen, marred on the side by three purple welts the size of teaspoons. They were newer than the bruises on Jasil's arm and had probably been inflicted at the same time she'd got the split lip. Val dabbed some balm there, too, and then carefully pressed a bandage on top of it so her clothes wouldn't rub it up before her skin soaked it up.
Val scooted so she and Jasil were facing one another and looked her in her lovely hazel eyes. "You should stay here with me in the palace. You'll be safe here…"
Jasil looked away, her cheeks going red with shame. "I can't," she said softly. "I have to protect my brother. And I've got a little cousin, too…"
"Standing in between you and your brother and being a punching bag isn't protecting him. Hells, it might give him bad ideas about how men can treat women. I almost got killed by a group of men not so long before I met you, Jasil. And when I escaped, I swore that I'd never be weak like that again. If I'm better and smarter than the bastards who want me hurt or worse, then I'll be ready when they come for me next time - and there will always be a next time. Wait here… I'll be right back."
Val padded over to the palace library and tracked down the beginner's book on magic - the one that would walk you through the basics of Old Sudran and how to read and practice simple spell circles. Izzy had already borrowed the book a few times, so she'd be ready just in case she ever got the Gift, but Val and Niko could always teach her and Jasil probably wouldn't have Val around when she needed help.
Val returned to her study desk, inked her quill, and carefully added two spell circles to the book, one beneath the Magister's Lamp, the floating glow-orb that served as the second of the book's three beginner's spells. This one, she labeled Niko's Superflash. Then she flipped to the blank last page and traced a slightly more-complex circle, which she labeled Catch 'em Invisi-net.
"This book will teach you enough magic that you can defend yourself with it," Val said. "It might take a few weeks to learn it all, but… oh!"
Jasil wrapped Val in a big, incense-and-hibiscus scented hug, curling her head into Val's shoulder. She just clutched onto Val, her fingers grabbing onto Val's sleeves like she was worried she might float away. They just sat there for a minute, and Val was glad she could comfort Jasil, if only a little bit.
"I don't know how I can thank you," she said in a small voice.
"Give your father what's coming to him and I'll consider it even and then some."
Jasil pulled away enough to look Val in the eyes and then leaned in to kiss her. And Val wanted to kiss her back, too. She remembered how the two of them never got to finish their evening back on Mittvanter when Jasil's dad had caught them. They could finish it now. Her and Jasil, with her midnight hair and her acrobatic spins, her dark-lashed hazel eyes…
No. Val turned her head at the last second and Jasil smooched the side of her face instead. She pulled back, confused, something pleading flickering in her eyes.
"I've got a girlfriend now," Val said. "Another one, I mean. And it sounds like you might, too."
Jasil smiled, but it was a sad sort of smile. She sighed. "Yeah, I might," she said.
"Okay. You can stay as long as you like. Why don't I walk you through the first part of the book, and then I'll take a look at your things to see what brilliant jewelry I want to buy, and then you'll have to promise to visit me before you leave."
Her smile became incrementally happier - it was good enough. "That sounds nice," she said.
Jasil stayed with Val on the divan until late afternoon, stopping only for snacks and a break to look over Jasil's latest jewelry creations. Then Val showed her friend to the steps of the palace, and they hugged again before Jasil kissed Val's cheek and thanked her, almost breaking down into tears. But she didn't cry until Val started to cry, and Jasil hugged her again and promised she'd stop in before her family continued their eastward trek.
OvidLemma
An Obligatory Message from the Author
Thanks for reading, and make sure you follow me here to catch my latest releases! I know these pleas for support are annoying to read, but the only thing keeping me from making daily chapter updates of the stories you love is the fact that I need a regular job. Please consider helping me realize my goal of writing full-time if you can. And if you can't, no worries! I don't want anybody breaking the bank on my behalf. Regardless of whether or not you can chip in, I hope you continue to read and enjoy my stories!
I plan on releasing chapters of this story 2-3 times a week, but I haven't decided on what days yet. Advance chapters are available on my Patreon. If you liked this story, don't forget to check out my many other stories Scribble Hub, Patreon, or Amazon (free with Kindle Unlimited)!
https://www.patreon.com/OvidLemma
https://www.amazon.com/s?i=digital-text&rh=p_27:Ovid+Lemma
-Ovid
OvidLemma Hi, everybody!
Below is a portrait of Jasil, Val's first crush and first girlfriend. Though they're no longer romantically involved, Val considers her a good friend. Jasil is a member of the Sheore, a nomadic people who are often performers and travelling merchants - Jasil is an acrobat, a dancer, and an expert flute player. However, since they have their own language and customs, the Sheore are often viewed with distrust and are subject to persecution - a fact that Jasil has had to deal with throughout her life. Jasil is an accomplished jewelry-maker who also learned the basics of leather-hardening alchemy from Val. She is fiercely protective of her younger brother and cousins and has taken it upon herself to protect them from her father, who becomes violent when drunk.
41. Friends... or More?
"They think it's normal," Ette had whispered...
Val mulled that over - they think it's normal. What did it mean? Something about their training classes was abnormal, with students showing far more aptitude than might be expected. Priestess Oestel had said the same thing about their magic classes at the temple. And even Levin had remarked upon it, commenting that he'd been blowing past his own magical and academic hurdles, things he'd been struggling with for years. Val didn't feel any different, but perhaps that was to be expected - she hadn't been blessed by some miraculous gift of knowledge or ability from the gods. Rather, she made consistent and rapid progress in any discipline she put her mind to. And Ette had picked up on it before anybody else, training them in every area he could think of without being willing to risk bringing light to whatever magic was at risk.
How long had he known? Did he even love Val, or was he just using her to get what he wanted, just like everybody else? Val shook that thought from her mind. Those were ugly orphan thoughts. This was Ette, who'd spent an hour in the woods carefully working Val through her frustration with archery. Who referred to her as his daughter without mentioning to anybody that they'd been acquainted for just under a year…
Ouch! Val needed to pay attention - now she was sparring practice swords with Sir Andrat, and she wasn't nearly as good with the sword as she was with a knife or quarterstaff. They reset to forward guard positions.
"I'm not going to tell you where it's coming from," the weaponsmaster said. He advanced on Val again - klonk-klik-thup he smacked Val's doublet on the third go. "Better - note that I can come back around like that with my blade… and that I’m open for an instant when I do."
"Noted," Val said. She rubbed her side - Ette had told Andrat that they didn't take it easy during sparring and, after a few tentative rounds, he seemed to have taken it to heart.
"That's some hardening you've got there…" he pointed to her doublet with the tip of his sword. "Some of the best I've seen. Who made it?"
"I did it myself," Val said. Klonk-klik-klonk-thup. Andrat got her again - his momentary opening had been a bit too momentary. "It's not that good," she said.
"Am I hitting too hard?"
Yes. "No," Val said. She might get a few bruises out of their sparring, but if she didn't get whacked for screwing up then she wouldn't learn from her mistakes.
"It braces almost immediately." Andrat pointed to the leather bracers he wore on his forearms and shins. "You could give some pointers to the Sheore girl I bought these from."
"Sheore girl?" Val said.
He wiped the sweat from his brow and nodded. "Down at the Port Bazaar. A group of them showed up last week… they have a bad reputation, but they're honest folk in my opinion."
"They are," Val agreed. Suddenly, her senses were primed, the summer air blooming in her lungs, her heart thudding in her chest. Would Jasil be there?
Klonk-klik-klik-klonk-klik-klonk. Andrat paused, nodding his approval. "Better. Again." They reset to forward guard positions.
Val didn't mention anything about it to anybody, but instead rushed right to the bazaar right after breakfast. Not waiting to retrieve Tulip from the stables, Val dashed from the palace and down the hillside, down the broad avenue curving toward the port. She had two guards with her - she was supposed to have two at all times - but she nearly lost them among the bustle.
She wasn't trying to lose them, but they were slowed by their armor and weapons, whereas Val had just stripped her doublet and boots after practice and wore only her breeches, light leather shoes, and the utilitarian top she'd worn beneath her doublet during practice. It was muggy and warm, but she cooled from the sheer pace of her sprinting, the guards calling after her to slow, which only helped things. Perhaps thinking she was a thief, people turned to gawp, making a nice pathway of parted pedestrians to run along.
It was perhaps a mile to the Port Bazaar, so it took Val five minutes to make the run. She turned and waved to the guards, just in case they'd lost track of her, before heading for the central boulevard, where vendors crammed their carts, stalls, and great gaudy blankets between the three fountains, each spouting water twenty feet into the air and sporting a statue of one of the probably-mythical founders of the city thousands of years before.
Val paced along the way, passing an young woman selling suede slippers, a man hawking a hundred kinds of dried fruit from faraway lands, and an old woman selling magical elixirs that didn't appear to have anything magical about them. Then she spotted her - sitting in a pool of hazy sunlight, a midnight-haired girl sitting cross-legged upon a turquoise blanket, a dozen beautiful bracelets upon one wrist, boxes of jewelry and simple articles of 'mage-hardened leather' arrayed around her.
Val bounced on the balls of her feet. "Jasil!"
The girl looked up, gasped, and broke into a beautiful grin, marred only by the fact that one side of her lip was cracked and swollen. "Val!" she said, springing into a hug.
Jasil's hair smelled like the charcoal and incense of the bazaar, concentrated and mixed with subtle hibiscus. A glittering white-silver band parted her black hair. Jasil squeezed Val for a minute and didn't want to let go, so Val didn't make her.
Still clutching onto Jasil, Val muttered, "did your dad do that to you?"
That got Jasil to pull away. She looked at Val uncertainly, her brow creasing with worry. She ran her fingers through Val's hair. "Wow… I think you're as tall as me now…"
She was right. Where Jasil had been a few inches taller than Val before, they were standing eye-to-eye. And she was also avoiding the subject. Val pulled Jasil's sleeve up, revealing a line of old, brown bruises on her arm. "Your father did this," Val said.
Jasil bit her lip and winced, forgetting that it was swollen. She managed an almost-imperceptible nod. People milled about, hawking and buying wares around them. "It… it was my fault," Jasil said. "My dad… he caught me again… um…"
"Kissing a girl?"
"Yeah…"
Blood rushed through Val's ears. Her fists clenched like stones. She could have punched through plate armor. "Come with me," she said.
"I… I can't just leave my spot…"
"I'll buy enough for the rest of your day," Val said. "Will you come?"
Jasil folded her blanket up, wrapping all of her goods in a carefully-practiced manner until it was a big, faintly-jingling bundle of woven turquoise. She rolled two leather straps around it and hoisted the big bundle over her back. "Where are we going?"
"The palace…"
"The what?"
Val couldn't fault Jasil for her nervous reaction upon approaching the palace. Val had been pretty nervous her first time entering the ducal palace… granted, she'd been escorted by the ducal guard at the time. But now Val was being escorted by two of the earl's guards, which wasn't all that different. They walked into the great big vestibule, sunlight reflecting off the parquet marble from the skylight eighty feet above, servants and guards going about their business, their footsteps echoing in the bright-lit hall. Jasil looked upward, her mouth agape as she took in the ceiling mural, the forms of cupids, dogodas, and other mythical creatures floating through an azure with puffy white clouds, so masterfully painted it might have been real.
"Come on," Val said.
She grabbed Jasil's hand and pulled her along. They continued to the nobles' suites, where the whole Vinzennos & Friends clan was staying - in the smaller rooms, in case somebody actually important needed somewhere to stay. These were the rooms that petty lords and knights might stay in, but they were a lot nicer than anywhere that Val had stayed before that. Her room had a full-sized bed, a divan, a study corner, a screened-off changing and wardrobe area, and a room with a view onto the nobles' courtyard and its little garden, across from which were more windows to the rooms of low-ranking nobles. There was a tiny patio, too, but it was currently occupied by a few potted plants and there was no room to stand.
Jasil was still too stunned to speak as Val pulled her into her room and set her on the divan, fetching some healing balm that she'd made in her alchemy practice. It was no blood-based healing potion, but it would take care of minor wounds and infections several times faster than natural healing and prevent scarring. She dabbed some onto a little bit of cotton gauze before applying it to her friend's wound, her brow knitting in anger as she took in the red gash of her split lip. Then she applied some to the bruises along her arm.
"Have you got any others?"
Jasil nodded. "On my side…"
She unwrapped the tie of her light green blouse and pulled it up, revealing her wonderfully firm acrobat's abdomen, marred on the side by three purple welts the size of teaspoons. They were newer than the bruises on Jasil's arm and had probably been inflicted at the same time she'd got the split lip. Val dabbed some balm there, too, and then carefully pressed a bandage on top of it so her clothes wouldn't rub it up before her skin soaked it up.
Val scooted so she and Jasil were facing one another and looked her in her lovely hazel eyes. "You should stay here with me in the palace. You'll be safe here…"
Jasil looked away, her cheeks going red with shame. "I can't," she said softly. "I have to protect my brother. And I've got a little cousin, too…"
"Standing in between you and your brother and being a punching bag isn't protecting him. Hells, it might give him bad ideas about how men can treat women. I almost got killed by a group of men not so long before I met you, Jasil. And when I escaped, I swore that I'd never be weak like that again. If I'm better and smarter than the bastards who want me hurt or worse, then I'll be ready when they come for me next time - and there will always be a next time. Wait here… I'll be right back."
Val padded over to the palace library and tracked down the beginner's book on magic - the one that would walk you through the basics of Old Sudran and how to read and practice simple spell circles. Izzy had already borrowed the book a few times, so she'd be ready just in case she ever got the Gift, but Val and Niko could always teach her and Jasil probably wouldn't have Val around when she needed help.
Val returned to her study desk, inked her quill, and carefully added two spell circles to the book, one beneath the Magister's Lamp, the floating glow-orb that served as the second of the book's three beginner's spells. This one, she labeled Niko's Superflash. Then she flipped to the blank last page and traced a slightly more-complex circle, which she labeled Catch 'em Invisi-net.
"This book will teach you enough magic that you can defend yourself with it," Val said. "It might take a few weeks to learn it all, but… oh!"
Jasil wrapped Val in a big, incense-and-hibiscus scented hug, curling her head into Val's shoulder. She just clutched onto Val, her fingers grabbing onto Val's sleeves like she was worried she might float away. They just sat there for a minute, and Val was glad she could comfort Jasil, if only a little bit.
"I don't know how I can thank you," she said in a small voice.
"Give your father what's coming to him and I'll consider it even and then some."
Jasil pulled away enough to look Val in the eyes and then leaned in to kiss her. And Val wanted to kiss her back, too. She remembered how the two of them never got to finish their evening back on Mittvanter when Jasil's dad had caught them. They could finish it now. Her and Jasil, with her midnight hair and her acrobatic spins, her dark-lashed hazel eyes…
No. Val turned her head at the last second and Jasil smooched the side of her face instead. She pulled back, confused, something pleading flickering in her eyes.
"I've got a girlfriend now," Val said. "Another one, I mean. And it sounds like you might, too."
Jasil smiled, but it was a sad sort of smile. She sighed. "Yeah, I might," she said.
"Okay. You can stay as long as you like. Why don't I walk you through the first part of the book, and then I'll take a look at your things to see what brilliant jewelry I want to buy, and then you'll have to promise to visit me before you leave."
Her smile became incrementally happier - it was good enough. "That sounds nice," she said.
Jasil stayed with Val on the divan until late afternoon, stopping only for snacks and a break to look over Jasil's latest jewelry creations. Then Val showed her friend to the steps of the palace, and they hugged again before Jasil kissed Val's cheek and thanked her, almost breaking down into tears. But she didn't cry until Val started to cry, and Jasil hugged her again and promised she'd stop in before her family continued their eastward trek.
OvidLemma
An Obligatory Message from the Author
Thanks for reading, and make sure you follow me here to catch my latest releases! I know these pleas for support are annoying to read, but the only thing keeping me from making daily chapter updates of the stories you love is the fact that I need a regular job. Please consider helping me realize my goal of writing full-time if you can. And if you can't, no worries! I don't want anybody breaking the bank on my behalf. Regardless of whether or not you can chip in, I hope you continue to read and enjoy my stories!
I plan on releasing chapters of this story 2-3 times a week, but I haven't decided on what days yet. Advance chapters are available on my Patreon. If you liked this story, don't forget to check out my many other stories Scribble Hub, Patreon, or Amazon (free with Kindle Unlimited)!
https://www.patreon.com/OvidLemma
https://www.amazon.com/s?i=digital-text&rh=p_27:Ovid+Lemma
-Ovid
