Mermaids are Menacing (Book 2) Complete

8.) The Orc Way

The sun was high overhead and the air smelled faintly of ocean mist, despite being a wooded area. It was a village of these round house's with roofs made of long thick grasses. There was a pang of familiarity. A busy village far from others. Homes bustling with noises, I could hear the small sounds of children and the honking of fat birds.

Different smells mingled together as we walked through the village, although I was mostly being pushed forward when I gawked at my surroundings.
Earth, sweat, shit, animals, fish, smoke, trees, and a dozen other things I couldn't place. They filled my sences and made me dizzy. My skin itched, and I nervously picked at the film attached to me. I pulled off a piece and inspected it in the light. A clear thin substance with scaled patterns. What in the abyss is this? Did I fall into a giant spider web?

"Bait peeling." Ortha remarked. "Sun burned skin bad?"

"Hmmm, weak hide like babe." Gorza agreed looking at the peeled skin float off when I dropped it. "Put mud on skin, not burn." She advised me with a knowing nod.

My eyebrows cinched together, I had never "peeled" in my life well not before I met Cerastes, and definitely not from being out in the sun. I squinted, looking at the sun suspiciously. I doubt it was the culprit. No, like everything els this was probably Cerastes doing and even if it wasn't I was going to blame him for it anyway. Then what theh said registerd.

"Wait this is my skin?!" I said pulling off another piece.

"Yup." Ortha said shrugging.

"How do I make it stop?" I worried. Would I peel and peel till there was no skin left?

"Not die." Ortha assured me as she walked infront. He big arms folded behind her head. "New soft skin grow."

That didn't answer my question. I inspecting my skin, the places where the skin had peeled was in fact soft. My two companions were similiar and different all at once. Tall, green, buff women, with two protruding fangs. Ortha was shorter than the more muscular Gorza. By comparison, Orthas features were almost delicate, her figure a lean muscular build.
As we walked there were more green, muscular people who eyed us as we walked on a well trodden path.

Gorza pleased with the attention puffed out her chest and walked with her chin held high, leading the way. My neck was thoroughly hunched down between my shoulders. Walls of my loose black hair covered most my face clinging to bits of shedding skin. The place where we were going was easy to find because it was the tallest building in the area. Smoke billowed from the top of the building in a dark thick steam. There was no door to this building only an entry way seperated by a blanket.

The room quickly became crowded. As people began to sit around the fire in the middle of the room. I had expected to see a set up similiar to the mountain. A male sitting at the end of a long room on an imposing throne surrounded by some manner of treasures but this was nothing like that. This room was simple and without a self important chair. Only a fire and little elbow room to spare.

Gorza pushed me down to the floor to set squished between her and Ortha. People talked loudly and their accent was so think it sounded almost like a different language at times. Bowls were being passed around, I assumed food was in it because as it was passed each person took out a piece and ate it. When Gorza received the wooden bowl she took a piece of the red substance and ate it before passing it. I reached out my hands to receive it but she pulled the bowl out of my reach.

"Only Ork eat ocher, not for others." She said with her lips dyed red as she passed the bowl to Ortha. I felt a twinge of embarrassment reaching for something that was not meant for me. I looked in the bowl Ortha held, the ocher looked like dirt. Red dirt. I felt relief that I wouldn't have to put that dry substance in my mouth. Yet, the hunger I felt growing in my stomach was monstrous.