You kids don't know how good you have it here. Our wind-weaving in this little land is the talk of Saovia all over- Smokeless fires, flameless light- We've even got automated security at our borders somehow- I never knew a thing about coding back where I used to live, and I only barely get the principles of wind-weaving enough to put together some party tricks or a nasty surprise. How do you even turn invisible string into “if/then” statements?!
The monks are probably going to be confused by that, but I trust you among us immigrants to get them up to speed. They're nice folks.
As I write this, Meika's reading over my shoulder and laughing at my complaints, so I think I'll get on with my first point.
Back in my fifth year, fresh off the freeing of Meika and with only a day of walking, she and I had to rough it in the wilderness.
First of all, the most obvious, flattest part to pitch a tent was in the middle of the road to Ashvale. That's right out- The possibility of getting stepped on by a draft horse, crushed by a cart or stomped on by a moose might be low, but it's guaranteed to get someone mad for blocking the way, and angry people come armed with deadly weapons. Never mind the low but non zero chance of thieves or outlaws or grizzly bears stumbling on an obvious target.
So the second best is off to the side in the woods as close to the road as you can be, right? After all, if you avoid angering the commuters of Saovia and keep close enough to the road for the patrol men to have an eye on you while at the same time not sticking out like a sore thumb, things will be just about as perfect as a medieval wilderness can be expected to be! But that's also wrong, since the ditch on the side of the main road to Ashvale and by extension all the woods on either side of the road within a mile is covered with wet leaves and almost swampy in comparison to the solid dirt. Sure you can pitch a tent, but you can bet your tent will sink if you do.
The actual best choice was almost two miles away from the road at the base of a hill untouched by man or Velak for a millennium. Hard won experience told me such a place was the least cold I could find short of digging a hole into the hillside, and we would need all that we could get. It was accessed through nasty wet leaves, muck, branches that whipped back into your face and lots and lots of thorns.
Oh by the way, if you ever grow up like I had to, you will be expected to endure all of this and only complain about it years later in writing (Which you are reading now). I had to drag an exhausted Meika with me and quietly agree as she complained enough for the both of us.
Now what makes a tent?
Mostly a strong plain canvas made of cotton, wool fiber and linen. It keeps the rain off of you and holds well in a snow storm, but there are no handy springs, hooks or zippers. Ours was meant to fit six people, so naturally it comfortably held one and a half.
Fair enough, right? At least I had someone whose company I enjoyed to share it with instead of a perfect stranger with offensive odor.
But it is in the setting up and tying down of this tent that is the trouble. The dang thing never agreed with me no matter how many helpful marks I notched into its poles and I've had it for five years. Every single knot and lashing I learned to set it up was a trial by fire. If a grown man in strange clothes asks you how to tie his shoes, I'm sure some of you would tell him to find his mommy for help- This was the way I was treated for trying to ask about the lashings everyone already knew.
Meika, God bless her, knew even less about knots and lashing and was only strong enough to “hold this” and “pull that” and “the other way, please”. She was a waitress, never a sellsword, and her time in slavery did nothing to broaden her horizons (But you know this already. Some of you are still so very kind to her to this day). With our combined efforts, we probably extended the time needed to set it up by a quarter of an hour.
I was never sure I pitched that tent correctly until the worst had failed to happen, but after a quick supper of close-to-expiring pork jerky with watery wine to wash it down (salt with a side of vinegar, anyone? A feast fit for a king!), The two of us snuffed out our meager fire and piled into the tent.
Wool is practical. It's quite warm without much effort, stays warm even when near completely soaked, and given how many sheep there are in Saovia you can bet on being able to buy wool for cheap. But from the harsh, stupid sheep it is shorn and woven, it's scratchy like no other cloth in all the empire, so beneath the four wool blankets we packed, I tucked us in under the one cotton blanket I had to shield us from the fibrous assault on our senses. Between that one cotton blanket, the two very ratty pillows I had, and the two hay bedrolls generously donated to us by a midwife going the opposite way (What is back there other than a fortress and pure wilderness?), we had just enough luxury to fall asleep once all other options of escaping the discomfort were denied.
I will admit, sleeping with a furry companion in my arms made these sleeping conditions significantly better than my time alone as a sellsword, but if you asked me then whether I preferred the guardsman's bed to this (and I certainly asked myself), I would have told you the guardsman's bed was by far the better.
Still, the worst was yet to come. I'll get off my high horse and talk about actual problems on this first night with Meika at this point, so make sure you're reading carefully if you're here for my memoirs.
First was the silence. If you weren't experienced, you'd expect any forest in the wilderness to have some level of noise outside of winter, but I don't know if I had simply noticed it this time or if it really was strange that nothing called at night. It felt too dark because of it.
When normally the calls of crickets or owls would have been my lullaby, I felt six years old again, missing my green brontosaurus nightlight my father always double checked was plugged in before telling me goodnight.
Meika, however, was far too exhausted to be any kind of scared and quickly drifted off to sleep. I focused on her breathing- Softly in and out without a bit of snoring- And was a little jealous that I wasn't as tired.
Listening to Meika breathe was almost enough to finally drift me off to sleep too when she started twitching- Little, subconscious dreaming movements in her sleep that would have been cute and nothing else if she had done nothing more, but they were distracting enough, and disturbed from my sleep I watched her move.
Then she started moaning and I knew she was having a nightmare. My thoughts spiraled as I worried about whether I should leave her be or hold her close, but she didn't improve on her own.
Moaning turned to yelping.
Yelping became incoherent half-talking as she began to thrash under the blankets.
I truly started to get worried when her half-talking became screams and coherent words-
“Master, don't!”
“Get off of me!”
“PLEASE DON'T!”
“Not today... Please! It hurts so much!”
“Not my tail!”
“No! NO!”
“God save me! Please God!”
Then with one last scream, she flung herself up and bit me. It cut into my forearm deep, but the taste of my blood woke her up and she started crying- That same soft cry she had been conditioned into.
“Austin- Turkar was in my dreams and-” She couldn't finish the sentence before she fully broke down. All the better- I only know some details about what Turkar did to her, and I never asked for specifics about the rape because I was sure I couldn't stomach it.
I was pretty sure the bite wasn't deep enough to worry about, so I hugged her tightly, told her it was okay and to go back to sleep, and tucked her in under the blankets again.
That alone would have been enough to remember, but it wasn't even the last time it happened.
Sleeping,
twitching,
moaning,
yelping,
thrashing,
waking,
bite,
then crying.
“I'm sorry Austin, I saw it again!”
Sleep,
twitch,
moan,
yelp,
thrash,
wake,
bite,
cry.
“I can't sleep! The dreams won't stop!”
Sleep,
twitch,
moan,
yelp,
thrash,
wake,
bite,
cry.
“Austin, why won't it stop?! I just want to sleep!”
Again.
“Help me, Austin!”
Again.
“Please! I'm sorry, just make it stop!”
Again.
“Austin, don't let me bite you- Just put me outside I'll be fine-”
(That was a firm “no”, by the way. She went right back next to me under the blankets because it was something like 24 degrees out there.)
I don't know how many more times it happened, but at three-o-clock in the morning I had at least ten or twelve various bites or scratches, no sleep at all, and possibly more pain and suffering on the way as she entered the moan stage of her cycle.
I was completely out of ideas staring at this gut-wrenching display, and short of wrapping her up tightly in the blankets and sitting on her, there didn't seem to be any way both of us would be able to share the tent and sleep at the same time.
But when my hand brushed her head, ready to wake her up so at least I wouldn't be bleeding anymore as we both lost sleep, the words of Psalm 23 came to me unbidden.
I propped her up and cradled her in my arms, and as she twitched and moaned, I recited the words to every Christian kid's Sunday School favorite.
“The Lord is My Shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul.
Even though I walk in the valley of The Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
My throat hitched up as tears began to flow freely, but The Holy Spirit guided my tongue to finish. I begged God this would somehow work.
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of The Lord forever.”
And finally, mercifully, My Meika drifted off to deep sleep with a relieved sigh.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
I said a thankful prayer as once again I tucked my friend in beside me.
Different from all my petty complaints, the one thing I'm so glad the kids today haven't yet had to deal with is true PTSD. It is not fun to have, and it is not fun to love someone who has it.
As a sellsword, I would sometimes stay up in my tent thinking about my first job- The serial murderer who's intestines I spilled on the dirt... And then think about it. ...And think about it. ...And again. ...And again- Over and over and lose far too much sleep over it, and see it when I looked at sausage or smelled blood or got too close to a butcher's shop.
God only knows what was stuck in her head and how it showed up in her dreams, and while I'm thankful that I learned an easier way to stop her nightmares until they eventually died away much later, I wouldn't wish PTSD on anyone.
…
My favorite thing about camping as a child wasn't ever going to bed- The excitement of the day lingered for too long and my parents probably knew my siblings and I didn't go to sleep until quite a while after they did. I wanted to explore and play and listen to the night time sounds, but every child who defies Bedtime eventually succumbs.
I would not say it was waking up either, but it was close- Second only to arriving at the campsite. As my eyes drifted open, I'd become aware of how my body had grown accustomed to my sleeping bag and air mattress. I'd feel safe in a small world of my own, consisting of only the large, two room tent, my parents on one side, and my older brother and sister next to me on the other. My sleeping bag was a barrier against the chill of the morning air as I lingered a while and listened to the birdsong outside, untarnished by the normal sound of my home neighborhood's morning commute.
Waking up in my Loathsome Awful Tent, on the other hand?
That morning the wool blankets had done their job, but not without a cost as every part of my skin they had managed to reach around to touch itched. The hay-filled bedrolls had conspired with the former in a two-pronged attack on my senses and prickled me everywhere my right side laid (Take note- older hay is softer). An insidious headache had begun to form and would likely not dissipate until the afternoon, while my stomach threatened to eat itself- Clearly it wasn't happy with how little food last night's supper consisted of.
Despite every meager concession to comfort I could manage, I was cramped and sore. My wounds in battle with the nightmares after Meika were starting to swell, and there was the thought they might be infected- I would have to keep them clean and hope a doctor did business in Ashvale. And on top of it all, I had developed a fine bouquet of morning stink that I knew would only get worse until my next rare opportunity to bathe. At least there I was in good company- Apart from expensive oils that nobles, scholars or the wealthy had access to, people generally smelled a little funny and no one would notice mine.
But then I noticed a ball of living warmth pressed into and wrapped around my body, safely hidden away beneath our shared bedding, and all the morning pains faded away in the profound sense of relief that nothing else had gone wrong.
No more shallow, quiet breathing, it was obvious she was asleep as she clung to me like a life raft in a sea of blankets, not quite snoring, stirring only to give me a squeeze in the midst of dreamless sleep.
It was a profound tragedy that she had to wake up for more of my awful pork and wine for breakfast.
I squeezed her back as I lifted the both of us to a sitting position.
She seemed stronger this morning, and she gently pulled away to stretch. Her guardsman's uniform, probably like mine, was wrinkled from sleeping funny and she mournfully tried to pull it straight.
“If only wrinkling was all that has ever happened to mine,” I said to her.
Concerned, she took my arm and studied it, wincing in guilt and sympathetic pain.
“I'm sorry... I didn't think I'd do that. You're going to get infected-”
“Don't feel sorry for me, Meika. You're not going to recover from all of that overnight.”
“But I hurt you!”
“You hurt me every day you were in that cell. When I went through PTSD, I was alone, and I'm sure as hell not going to let you go through it alone too.”
“What's PTSD? Is it like the plague? I don't have anything like the plague, do I? We have to get a doctor!”
“Meika, no, it's not that. It's... Not as simple as a plague.”
It's a bit tricky talking to a native about my world, but Meika was more patient than most. At least with everyone else so far I only convinced them I was drunk instead of practicing witchcraft.
Things are easy. Lightning is powerful and there are legends and tall tales of Saovian warriors harnessing lightning into a weapon, so telling Meika we made lightning and moved it through metal in the walls (electricity and power outlets) wasn't a big stretch. More complex things like robots and computers had their mythical parallels in golems and all-knowing gems/crystals/mirrors/shinies. Telling her these things were real and not as exciting was plenty believable.
But the culture of Saovia outside the territory of myth was rigid and took few exceptions. If you were a peasant, you did peasanty things. A lord? You behaved in a lordly way. Guards guarded, farmers farmed, kings were kingly, warriors fought and women bore children.
Meika maybe once knew something different, but I've seen maps of Saovia. If the mapmakers were correct in any way, almost two 3rds of the continent was under their banner, and the rest of the small nations it neighbored were inevitably influenced by its culture, either through friendship or force.
People did what they were supposed to, and they liked it that way. Such had its good and bad elements- Few sought to rise above their station and even fewer thought they ought to. Though contentment to a humble life of service was more admired and never looked at as “settling for less”, there was little place for people like myself who took every better opportunity they could find and made friends in as many places as they could.
But worst of all, when someone could not act within their station, there was something wrong with them- Historically if someone heard voices, both patient and doctor would have blamed a demon and they would have drilled a small hole in their skull to make it leave.
Basically, psychological help amounted to telling the person to stop being weird and get on with their life, but no amount of telling someone to stop having intrusive thoughts and nightmares was going to make it even slow down.
“PTSD stands for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It's when... How do I put this? It's what we called it when your mind or your body or both are hurt much much more than is normal. … People aren't supposed to be watching other people die, so soldiers get it. A child who had to watch his mother get beat nearly to death by his father isn't supposed to see his parents getting hurt, so he'd get it. And well... There's you. ...And there also was me.”
Meika stared at me with soulful yellow eyes and didn't seem comforted.
“It's like a scar so deep it hurts a joint, but for your brain- Or rather your mind. People with PTSD have too much hurt to process and don't know how to do it so they pick at it and look at it and rip it open all over again and it keeps hurting in all the wrong times and places...”
“Like when I'm sleeping,” Said Meika.
“Like when you're sleeping.”
“So I have to stop picking at it-”
“No, Meika! No, definitely not- I mean... You have to accept it.”
Meika glowered at me. “I don't have to accept anything that monster did to me, Austin.”
“No. Just accept that it was real. Accept that it happened, and accept that it's over. Don't deny anything and don't cram it away and try to forget it.” I slid to her side and put a hand on her knee. She remained patient with me.
“I... I accept that I've killed people. A lot of them. A man like me doesn't sign up to a guard station at the border of the Saovian empire without at least the knowledge of how to do it so it stared me in the face every day for a year and two months whether I drew my sword or not. But I don't have to like it. I don't have to say it was good and I never will- The most I can ever say is that I had to do it or they would kill me or someone else-”
I swallowed- my own trauma was numbed but still sometimes if rarely resurfaced. Meika put her hand on mine and leaned against me, and I found the words to finish.
“But if something's bad enough, I guess it's hard to put it in the past where it belongs. ...And it helps to have someone to help you do it.”
Tenderly, Meika cupped my face in her hands. As I felt her pads touch the stubble on my chin, I saw the motion as an echo of what I did for her through the bars of her cell.
“I wish I could have hugged you then like you did for me tonight... I remember something about a shadow of death, but I felt so safe-” Bashfully, she pulled her hands away and brushed her tail.
“Well,” I laughed nervously, “That was a miracle. I don't know what I'm going to do if you ever do that again. Maybe I'll have to recite another psalm.”
She dropped her tail and locked eyes with me in total, complete and authentic compassion.
“I hurt you...” She concluded at nearly a whisper.
I've never seen her eyes look like that before or since, but she tells me now that she resolved on that morning to do everything she could to help me.
I pulled her into another hug- Warm and thankful unlike the desperate cradling I had done for her all night, before parting to rummage through our supplies.
Regrettably, it didn't take long to reach our rations for the morning.
I broke the tension by displaying the absolute delectable specimen that was old pork jerky.
“Hungry, Meika?” I asked, my smile radiating mischief and irony.
“No,” She replied, looking at the portion like something someone had run over with a cart.
Just then my stomach growled loudly, but I tossed the ration into her lap and pulled out some for myself. She picked it up like it would bite her and bravely bit it back.
“Too bad for us,” I said, gnawing into the hard, stale meat and enjoying not a second of it. “Ashvale is still another day away and we need the energy to get going.”
After we finished our pork and agreed there wouldn't be any more, we drank as much from the wineskin as we could stand and began packing away our camp.
Destruction of the tent took far less time than its assembly, and like usual I deemed the snarl of rope, mess of poles and tangle of cloth close enough to a well wrapped tent to call it packed. Meika shouldered part of our gear this time and took to my side as we stepped over the thorns, around the branches and through the mucky forest floor to head back to the road- Our one traveling companion for the rest of the journey there.
It was slightly too dark to see clearly and barely on the wrong side of warm as we walked. Like the night before, no animals called in the forest and the eerie, all too natural silence was only broken by the occasional rustle of leaves in the wind and unseen animals running from our approach.
An hour later, the thought stewing in my head finally popped out of my mouth.
“Meika, you are not free.”
Sensing the worry in my voice, she shrugged her shoulders and gave me a nudge.
“Not yet, 'Master Austin',” She smiled at me with her genuine toothy grin.
I'm not made of stone. If she smiled at me like that, it was going to improve my mood. Nonetheless I wasn't finished.
“Were you bought in Ashvale?”
“It was another town several miles east, but I don't know if it's all that different.”
I fixed my gaze at the road ahead as it faded into the horizon.
“It won't be, Meika. I've been to a hundred places in five years. If I let you wander the streets without me to 'keep you in check', someone new would slap a collar on you and take you to market. You were bought at an orphaned slave auction where they charge a discount to people outside the trade. Good masters pay high prices for good slaves.”
As her smile faded, I meaningfully eyed her teeth and tail.
“Unless we play pretend and you obey my commands and do not wander away, you will be damaged goods sold to bidders who can't manage 40 marks.”
“No...” Her lip quivered, but I fuzzed her cheek fur to assure her-
“I won't let that happen. If we need to play their game, we'll do it by our rules. You can talk to me as much as you like and you can order for yourself. If there's a place that won't let you in then we won't enter. If there's something they will not sell me because of you then I'll pay a bribe. Everything we're going to do in Ashvale will tell them I want you to be free and if I could, I would.”
She nodded in thought.
I had to be careful- I knew my history. Some slave owners never freed their slaves because they feared what would happen to them. If I was going to make anything right with Meika, she and every Velak I could would have to be truly free... And it didn't have to be in Saovia.
“Long term goals: Free the Velak,” She grinned at me.
I remembered our time in the guard station kitchen. “And conquer Saovia,” I chuckled.
“And steal The King's teeth?”
“Let's not be too hasty, Meika- Some things are impossible.”
