Am I a Criminal?

Ivorie went back to the stone cottage. The cat was being too much of a typical cat. Emily made a makeshift bag from another cape she found, luckily the holes in it were quite small. Tying the ends securely. She picked up all the peaches and apples she had found from the trees, to her joy, most of them hadn't had worms. She went to the apple tree trunk and shook the tree gently.

The apples fell in abundance.

She had to make sure she had food. She had no idea of the lay of the land, and had no assurance that she was going to ever come across more fruits, or food for that matter. She had been told that the land had been cursed. For a good number of years, and that meant, perhaps no flour, no bread, no shops.

The forest was quiet. Almost all the birds were mute. But she did see them. There were insects too. She wondered if whomever lay the curse on the land, found the sounds of animals' offensive. She wondered at the prospect of such great power. Almost godlike. To curse the very land. She dwelt on the details of the curse. Did the magician or god or goddess let nothing grow? But the forest was thick and luxuriant. That must not be part of the Curse.

She went back to the cottage, and she stood up in the tiny walled yard, It was walled, but not closed off.

It had a collapsed corner. She looked up the sky, the smaller moon was a crescent, and the larger one was full. There were a smattering of stars. Like a thousand jewels strung in a celestial map. Foreign constellations. But for a moment she felt like she knew them. One was called Draco, and the other was Kintora, the washerwoman, there was Eluris, the mute shepherd. She shook her head. Perhaps the body she came in had memories of its own.

She went to the trunk and stared at the wanted poster.

It was old and crinkly, and if the mirror wasn't deceiving her, it was a passable likeness. There was a dreamy quality to the picture, as if it was drawn by an admirer. She wondered what crime she had committed. It was quite the hefty bounty. She could never see herself as a murderer.

Perhaps she had killed a high ranking noble?

A merchant who dealt with the crowned heads? No, she shook her head. She even cringed at the idea of killing bugs. She had an extremely weak stomach for violence, and had been toying with the idea of going plant based or vegetarian for years, since she hated needless death.

Perhaps she was a swindler or a confidence woman. Stealing, perhaps that was it.

A sudden sound startled her, she hid behind the shade of a tree that vaguely resembled an oak, but the purple fruits had hair, a thick brown matting.

It was a bird's cry, loud and piercing through the silence.

Wary of other animals who might have the capacity to talk, she waited until the hawk was out of sight.

It was nearly dark when she got back to the cottage.

Stillness is an odd state. The lack of sound and movement can deceive the senses into thinking that time had hardly passed. The only marked difference was the darkness.

+++

Alixtair's Point of View

The hawk circled in large, elegant loops and landed perfectly on a tree branch. She glared at the cat who was grooming his paws. They were some hundred yards away from the cottage, in a small clearing, a stone hitching post was where the cat was delicately perched. They were located at a perfect spot to spy on Ivorie, to see where she was coming and going.

"I have a mind to eat you, but I don't eat grisly, self-obsessed jerks." The hawk muttered. The cat yawned and pointedly ignored the threat.

"I don't care."

"She's here."

The minute the words left the bird's beak, when the bird fell from the twelve-foot stone hitching post and started convulsively twitching. It began to flail, in a mess of feathers and dirt.

The cat seemed to enjoy itself looking at the other animal's obvious discomfort. A smug look on its adorable face. Yet looks could be deceiving. But unlike the cat, which took overnight to recover, the hawk regained her composure almost instantly.

"I would have warned you, but being the great lady general Tamarys, you obviously don't mind a little pain. You military types are all sadists."

"And you overdressed fathead lords are all sensitive and indulgent dandies."

"Good to see you too, Alixtair."

"Likewise General Tamarys."

The cat bowed ever so slightly, and the hawk returned the courtesy. The two quit their good-natured ribbing and continued talking.

"She doesn't remember a thing, doesn't she?"

"No, nothing at all. She said she was an accountant, sounds like a completely made-up job. But it was her, no doubt. The most beautiful lady to grace the soil of Four Realms. I remember when she first made her way to the palace, the entire hall hushed up. "

The hawk scoffs. She wasn't impressed with how everyone fawned on the former queen's beauty. First General Lady Tamarys had other considerations for admiration, strength, and physical ability, these were the things she held in high esteem. Not empty beauty. But to give credit where it was due, the woman was kind, with a tender, giving heart.

It was Ivorie's idea to accept the human refugees from Tybal the Fyre Kingdom where the Lord Piers originally hailed from. They fled in the thousands when a twenty-four-hour window of escape was allowed to celebrate the Grand Dragon's Five Hundredth Birthday. The Fyre Lords and Ladies did not have the oversight to think that they treated their human servants and slaves abusively.

And the result was a complete disaster. The Tybalese population was cut by three fourths, and for once in a few hundreds of years, the Dragon Nobility had to wash their own clothes and dishes. It was also her idea to give everyone civil rights, humans, Greater Beasts and even foreigners from across the Emerald Seas. This was a powerful move that made Ostarii the most prosperous merchant hub in the four Realms.

Alixtair sighed. He had been born a wealthy merchant, and through various machinations had cunningly put himself in Royal High Council of the Red Flamed Court. But now, he was nothing but a mouser. Yet he was most grateful. His wife and children had been turned to dust, such was the result of the wrath of the Sorceress Most Exalted, She Who Walks Among the Deities, HInaya.

"Are you telling the Court?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Tell me Tamarys, when your wife Amalthea vanished, did you lose your zest for life?"

"I still had my job. I still had something to live for. Back in Itawen, Amalthea and I were nearly stoned to death for loving each other. The gods of that land did not abide with men living with other men, nor women loving women. I live in honor of her memory. Of the life we had."

"Good for you. It's been thirty years, and some change. But my wife Satorsha and litte Davi and Silva still haunt my dreams. A part of me died, when they did."

The hawk stared wistfully at the darkening sky. It was odd for the usually narcissistic cat who used to be the highest-ranking civilian noble on the Royal Council to be emotional. He was usually sarcastic and clever. The hawk spoke in a voice not appropriate for her appearance, a low raspy female voice.

"Why do you ask?"

The hawk seemed to regret asking the question. She cocked her head sideways and was for a moment, lost in deep thought. Alixtair then spoke, answering her question. Measuring his words evenly. It took a few years before Tamarys could take Alixtair's cursed form seriously. He looked too adorable to be not taken lightly.

"Grief affects us all differently. I don't think she – I mean Ivorie, would ever come back. She asked me to come with her, I wanted to, but fear, I know these forests are full of Greater Beasts loyal to the Sorceress. Every bird in the forest had gone quiet listening to us. Fear overcame me. I wanted to be brave, I really did. The minute I wanted to speak my mind, the image of my children and dear wife turning into dust came into my mind."

The hawk nodded.

"That's your truth. I respect that. I have seen many horrible things in battle. Blood, gore but nothing scared me more than seeing my troops be dust in the wind. I know how you felt. I never felt so worthless."

"Do you think, she should have just gone over to the Sorceress and left Lord Piers?"

The hawk scoffed, it sounded somewhere between a snort and a chirp.

"No, we should not think such useless thoughts. It is but a waste of effort. You underestimate how much her majesty loved; no, adored his majesty. She would have willingly slit her own throat if he so desired. She could never betray him."

The cat sighed. It was such a precious sound. But what the bird said was true.

All Alixtair wanted was to see his family again.

His one job was to make sure that Ivorie was safely on her way to the castle. But Alixtair's spirit had lost fight.

All the years of being turned into an animal had taken its' toll. He no longer felt like himself on some days. Some days, he was afraid he was losing his ability to speak. The lack of practice made his tongue all lazy and unable to make the proper sounds.

And the thought no longer terrified him like it did.

He was losing the memory of his wife and twins. It was like losing bits and pieces of a puzzle. One day he couldn't remember what color the twin's eyes were. Or the sound of their voices. But there was no doubt, being a cat was indeed heavenly. Just lounging around, sleeping and not a care in the world, just where the next meal was coming from. It turned out he was a better hunter as a cat, rather than he ever was as a mortal man. The forest never ran out of small birds, mice, raccoons, and small rodents almost his size, they looked like guinea pigs, but were larger and filled with juicy flesh.

"I'll be going in a little bit, so what has she planned for tomorrow?" The hawk again felt to the ground and had an apoplexy. The cat looked concerned for a minute, but then walked to the ground. He had tediously cleared the hard ground of leaves hours earlier. He then scratched out an answer on the ground. A way around the curse. Clever, but terribly difficult for someone without thumbs nor proper fingers. After fifteen minutes, the hawk was fine. She was disoriented for a few seconds, but soon got over it. She had perfect vision and could read what the cat scrawled on the earth, in the dimming dusk.

"Leave. ..she's leaving the cottage." The hawk nodded as a goodbye to the cat, who returned the gesture, and in a space of a couple of heartbeats, the incredibly elegant beast was high in the sky.

The cat looked ever so longingly at the sky, at the vanishing speck in the distance. He always wanted to fly. But he was terribly afraid of heights. There used to be dragon gondolas, where Lesser Dragons (regular dragons who did not have the power of speech), enormous tame beasts the size of large houses carried customers to various mountain top stations in the Four Realms. He dreaded it so much that he traveled separately from his family. He spent weeks in jostling uncomfortable carriages that felt like his spine was being re-arranged. with the lower folk, the servants, and a wagon train and the common items like flour and cloth. Alixtair had awful air sickness. There had been talk of machines being powered by steam and coals. But since Ostarii was a merchant city that supported the great Royal Flame University in the capital Osta, all talk of the great machines and the iron railways that were going to be built to keep them on track was gone.

The engineers and mathematicians were all claiming it the next great innovation since the flushing commode. All the inventions that came from the University kept the economy afloat, since there were factories and workshops in the merchant districts.

He went back to the cottage and stared at the sleeping Ivorie. He sighed. He went to the kitchen and lapped up some water. He noted the small ersatz sack of peaches and the apples stuffed in the leather satchel. He lay down behind the girl. He then snuggled at the space behind her back. It was warm. He liked being warm.