Tansy of the Wilds

Chapter Sixteen

Tansy basked in the sunshine for a bit longer. The cold damp of the mountain caves clung to her bones but with each inhale it was like she was taking the bright sunny day straight into her lungs.

"We must go, Tansy of the Wild!" One of the kobold's chittering filtered into her ears and she let her hand drop from Xer'tal's arm as she turned to wave at the scouting group.

"Thank you so much for taking us through the mountain pass! I really do appreciate it." She did, she really did. She knew that the other ways would have been much longer and it really did help them out a lot.

"You are friends of the Kelpfar kobolds! We help where we can!" Another one called it out and Tansy waved to him as well.

"May you always taste poor," Tansy started in kobold and the group laughed.

"And never stop talking!" It was a chorus from the group as they headed off in the opposite direction of Yarkin. It left her and Xer'tal alone and she heaved out a happy sigh.

"We should go, lass, daylight's wastin'." The orc grumbled it out in that low voice and Tansy smiled at him.

"Okay, Xer'tal." She reached out and grasped his arm again, tucking her hand in the crook of his elbow. "Where do you want us to go? Back to Yarkin or should we start straight for the journey back to my family's lumberyard?" She was a little curious to see what his plan would be now that they had the trade agreement settled and were on the homeward trek.

"No need to go back to Yarkin, lass," He frowned slightly as he looked out over the traveler's path. "Your kobolds packed us enough. We should head back to your family's lumberyard. You have a trade agreement to bring back."

She nodded her agreement to his words. "That's true, we should probably head straight back." She had already been gone for nearly five days. It was best they headed straight for the lumberyard, it was still a good four days walk away.

With that settled, they started out. Tansy had been silent for a bit before she slowly started chattering again. Their day passed with her talking about nothing and everything at the same time. Occasionally she would catch him looking at her with that same quiet intensity in his garnet coloured eyes. It always made her breath hitch in her chest and a warmth pool low in her stomach.

She couldn't really lie to herself, she liked Xer'tal and not in the general sense. She did like him in the general sense but she was finding she was highly attracted to him. It also didn't help that he had taken to helping her over the fallen trees a bit more. He would grasp her hand, holding it as she climbed over it, and, for one of the larger ones, he had actually wrapped his large hands around her waist and lifted her over it without a word. Each touch left her flustered and the more flustered she got, the more she rambled.

But day slowly fell to night and they set up camp. Their supper was ration fare but she supposed it was better than nothing and it kept her belly full. "So we occasionally have elves come to the lumberyard. They can be interesting creatures, quite subdued usually. Then again I guess everyone is subdued compared to me." She rambled over the campfire Xer'tal had made as she absently took out her braid, finger combing her hair because she was too lazy to dig in her pack for her wooden comb. "But elves are interesting, they see trees as an extension of themselves. It's a whole thing in their culture about respecting trees and what not. It's why I had to negotiate with the Grenwick elves over boundary lines. We made a neutral zone. We can't cross it to cut trees, and they won't cross it to give us shit for cutting trees on our side. It has definitely helped keep the peace."

She gave a small hum, "I know some people call them stuck up or snobbish but they have always been polite to me. They tend to believe you shouldn't speak unless you have something important to say. They relish in the quiet but surprisingly they have alway been polite to me, despite my, as you called it, jabbering." Tansy gave a small chuckle as she said it. "Thornin, the elf I deal with the most, jokes occasionally that I need to go to his troupe so he can show them he isn't as chatty as they say he is and to showcase he could be a lot worse." Xer'tal gave a grunt at that, poking the fire hard enough a spray of sparks flew into the air.

"If my elvish is clear, they tend to call me a chattering babe most of the time. It's probably why they never have their bows up when they realize it's me." She smiled at that. It was almost comical how quickly bows were shouldered when they realized it was her who was walking around or when she came over to see if there was an issue and that's why they were in the lumberyard. "Whenever they have to talk to anyone else, their bows are always half up. They can be a little twitchy, definitely untrusting. They don't like my brothers. Which I can understand to an extent. They can be quite pushy and loud at times."

"Have you ever interacted with elves?" She looked over at Xer'tal as he stared at the fire, his red eyes flashing in the firelight.

He grunted, "Not in any way that matters, lass. Have fought them, killed them, fought beside them, been reviled by them. The best interaction I've had with them was with a cold neutrality at best. Orcs and elves don't mix." His eyebrows pulled low over his eyes as they glinted in the firelight. "The tree lovers have no use for brutish, bloodthirsty beasts." There was a lot he left unsaid with the words that had Tansy's stomach sinking slightly.

"People..." She paused for a moment, trying to gather herself. "People really don't treat orcs well... do they?" She had known that, she had. She had even said it. It was in how the workers at the lumberyard always tightened their hands on their axes as a lone orc would wander in. It was in how she was shoved to the front to talk to them while everyone hung back until the orc let her know what they needed. It was this inherent wariness, a distrust that seemed to follow them just on the basis of their species. She knew the lumberyard was better than most, if an orc was okay then everyone relaxed, her mama and papa always talked to them, asking how they could help but Tansy knew her view of the world, where people needed to be judge don their individual merits, wasn't how the world worked.

"No, woman. They don't." It came out of him clipped and almost angry. "We are brutish, stupid, uncouth, violent, bloodthirsty. If ye can name the insult it has been hurled at an orc. Some of us lean into it, others avoid it, but we are judged on the basis of how we look, not on who we are. Ya get used to it."

She watched as he poked the fire again, his eyes glinting dangerously in the dark. She swallowed hard, "That's not fair." It came out of her softly because it wasn't. It wasn't fair to live a life fighting against what people believed you were simply because of how you looked.

"No, it's not, the world isn't fair, get used to it." It was a gritted out rumble that had her lowering her gaze. "We don't live in a fairy tale, Tansy Wilde. We aren't pretty and elegant elves, we are orcs. People aren't like ya, lass, they don't care."

"But I do." She couldn't help being defensive as she said it.

He gave a mirthless chuckle that rumbled around them darkly. "I know ya do and I have no idea how or why ya do it. Ya shouldn't. Yer old enough to see how this world works and for some reason ya keep this innocent naivety about being kind to everyone. Ya talked to Drok like he was a person and he wouldn't have thought twice about splitting ya in half with his axe. Ya gave him the benefit of the doubt and I have no clue why the fuck it worked."

A thick silence fell and Tansy stared at the fire, hugging her knees close to her chest, trying to figure out how to respond to his words. She was who she was, she had always been like that. "Why would I make it worse?" She finally asked, glancing at him over the fire.

"What?" He grumbled it out, looking sullen and angry.

"The world we live in is already so horrible to people, why would I make it worse?" She asked softly, watching him carefully over the crackling flames. "Why would I make people feel like I do sometimes? Like I don't matter? Like nothing I do or say will ever matter? Why would I make this world worse when it costs me nothing to be kind?" She watched as his heavy brows furrowed and he gently poked at the fire.

"Who told ya that ya don't matter?" He asked it rather abruptly, his red eyes intense on her and she shrugged. He seemed to study her but she wasn't going to tell him because it wasn't that someone told her she didn't matter. It was a hundred different ways she was shown it. That was much harder to explain and it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. "Ya matter, Tansy. Ya matter a lot." He finally rumbled it out, his eyes intent on her.

"And you matter too." She said it because it was true. He mattered, he mattered a lot. And he mattered to her in a way no one else had ever mattered before. She liked him, liked being around him and he liked her chattering. He never told her to be quiet and that mattered to her more than he could ever know.