by Guin Archer
My hair!
I snatched my hands up to my scalp and was relieved to feel my hair still there. Still silky and in one piece even if it was braided back.
I didn’t care how much I looked like a Tauren now…I didn’t want to lose my hair and have a fuzzy scalp.
Funny that I freaked out more about my hair than that fact that I now had wings.
My priorities might’ve been a little askew.
“Calliope,” Vorch’s kindly rumble tuned me back in to my current predicament. He was back on his feet and in front of me, holding out a big hand to help me up. His smile was gentler now and his demonic eyes held tenderness. “Allow me to dress You. You will need to learn how to do so with Your wings now fully formed.”
“I can do it,” I retorted bitchily. I ignored his offered hand to stagger to my own two feet. My balance was shit and he had to catch me from falling back down to the floor. Not that me and it weren’t well acquainted by now.
With my nose pressing into his upper abdomen, I realized he smelled nice. Very nice. Kinda like sage with a hint of tobacco.
He stroked my hair and I felt another pang for missing the chime of my serah. For as much as I thought I hated them at first, I really did grow to love their merry little tunes. I think I was also subconsciously missing the meaning behind them, a physical sign to everyone that I was a claimed woman. It showed – according to the Lubrei – that I was special.
I felt more naked with their absence than I did without clothes on.
“Easy,” Vorch purred down to me.
I peered up at him and found his eyes on me. He was rubbing a hand lightly on the small of my back while sporting a twitterpated expression on his face.
Ooh boy. I had a new member of my fan club.
“You will grow used to this form soon enough. Until then, I will be Your guide.
Whatever, Jiminy. But you ain’t no cricket and I ain’t no puppet even if it feels like my strings are cut.
“Vorch!?” At the loud entreaty through the closed doorway, said male’s muscles bunched tight and a subsonic growl peppered the air.
“What?!”
Oh-ho! Somebody’s feeling crabby.
“You are needed. Wakuu cannot gain control of his ship.” Then, lower, “they believe we are hiding Her away from them.”
“Ekt,” Vorch swore again, his too-deep voice burning with upset.
“Go,” I urged him simply, pushing him away from me. Well, I tried to. I’d almost like to see Kor and Vorch go at it because it’d be like watching a clash of the titans. I’d half expect thunder to roll and lightning to flash.
Oh, wait, that was me!
Just call me Mother Nature.
Queue the eye-roll.
“Allow me to dress You before I leave.” He hooked a huge hand behind my scalp to draw me back into him. His manhandling was a lot more effective than mine was.
I shook my head and slapped his sides. The leather of his vest felt butter-soft under my fingers.
“Let me go and be off with you. I can dress myself.”
“Your wings,” he began pleadingly only for me to hiss like a scalded cat. His browridge raised in surprise and then mirth.
“Off with you!” When I shoved him this time I was successful. I was also left pinwheeling my arms and falling backwards. I braced myself, ready to crash to my ass on the unforgiving wood floor.
Instead, my wings swept hard to either side and buffered me with a gust of wind that knocked the bed curtains aside like physical hands. I tipped forward only to have them curl ahead of me. Two more times of this and I was awkwardly standing on my elongated feet, heels shoulder-width apart and hands facing wide out to the ground.
I felt like a new foal must’ve after gaining their feet for the first time. Or one of those damn sock-em clowns from a coon’s age ago.
Vorch nodded stiffly at me, but I read pride in his lavender aura. It was in his eyes, too, along with that smile.
“You see? You will adjust quickly.”
“You are still here?” Okay, that was bitchy of me, but who had room to judge? I’d just come back from the dead – albeit not for the first time. I had a right to be a little snippy about it.
His smile turned more to smirk.
“You are opari, Biis’a.” He took a short step backwards towards the door, dropping the bolt of fabric onto a heavy-looking chair on his way. One of his talon-tipped fingers pointed at it. “Dress. I will have a tray delivered to You. Rest.”
Sit. Stay. Roll over.
This guy had a lot to learn if he thought he could tell me to do anything. I was an obstinate little termagant. Plus, I was in a new place with a newish body, away from my Udon. He’d have better luck lassoing a twister than getting me to sit back.
As soon as I got better acclimated with my funky feet, I was blowing this floating suite.
Vorch left the room and I saw, before the wide panel was shut, three other Tauren following at his heels. Each of them looked through the open doorway and to me, their shuttered faces not giving anything away. Other than Ruune or most of the females I came into contact with, Vorch was possibly the most expressive orc-man I’d ever been in contact with.
Damned people were so stone-faced. North or South, you’d think they’d never laughed in their lives.
Once the door shut, I stumble-teeter-walked to the chair. I rocked into the back of it, smashing my knees against the hard wood.
Ow.
A quick peak at the fabric told me it was nothing more than a sarong of a sort. A braided ribbon went around the back of my neck, fused with two full panels of silky material that was not see-through. It took some doing to wrap the two ends crossways across my bust, around to my back, and then back again until all my private bits were covered.
My newfound wings, once I focused on them, were easy to manipulate. It was vaguely like having another set of arms. Moving them was natural, but more dexterous maneuvers took concentration.
Once I was dressed, sans footwear, I peered around the spacious bedroom-slash-office. I assumed I was in ‘Captain’s quarters’ and that made the layout functionally understandable.
Vorch had a bed, which was smaller than my pallet in my pillau, with cozy bed curtains and many pillows. A great many of them were knocked to the rug-scattered floor. There were bookshelves and the desk he’d been sat at. A longish table with six chairs sat to the rear of the room and separating the two ‘spaces’ of bedroom and office. The ceilings were tall, but there were rafters stretching between the two far walls that I knew to be the ship’s sides. I knew this because the entire rear wall – not the one with the main doorway in it – consisted of floor-to-ceiling, gilded windows. Daylight poured in and bounced off the pretty chandelier hanging dead center from the ceiling.
I hadn’t seen such blatant luxury since my time as a slave in the North. I’d admit, too, if only to myself, that the room was attractive.
I didn’t give myself the chance to snoop around like my inner nosey-Nellie told me to. Instead, I gathered my balance and bravery in one breath before easing to the door.
It wasn’t locked.
Thank God.
Although, with the power Vorch said I now had, I could probably blow a hole through the wall if I had a hissy-fit. Knowing my luck, though, I’d just sink the whole ship and take myself down with it.
Better not.
The door opened into a t-shaped hallway with the quarters to the flat top. A smaller doorway was tucked off to either side and much closer than where I knew the ship’s sides to be. The long, central leg of the hallway ended in yet another door.
I went straight.
I had to fold my wings in to squeeze through all the portals. Then again, the glowing, nearly translucent tips just dissolved to fog before reforming into a ‘solid’ mass if they grazed the walls to either side of me, so they could’ve probably been kept open.
They were so huge. They were going to take time to get used to. If I could get used to th
em.
Once I was out of the hallway, I was literally out of the ship. I stepped onto the deck and into open sea air. I inhaled deeply, luxuriating in the crisp aroma of unspoiled ocean. It wasn’t that the quarters I just came from were musty or unpleasant. I spent too long cooped up and in chains before the Udon and now that I’d been so long in the sunshine and outside, I kinda hated being in.
There had been chattering before I emerged from the hallway. Not-so now.
Blinking against the glare of daylight, I looked all around me and could see that the utterly massive deck was bustling with an all-male crew. Each of them was staring at me, too.
Awkward.
The whoosh-flutter of my wings gave away my nervousness. So too did the way I shuffled on my feet. I was used to being in the spotlight for a different group than this one.
So, feeling the better part of foolish, I gulped my intimidation down and surveyed the ship I was on now that it wasn’t so dark from the storm.
Now, I’d never been on a cruise before. Never had the time free from my shop to steam across the world on an ocean liner. That being said, I wasn’t an idiot or ignorant. I knew that cruise ships were epic. I knew they were their own floating cities.
This wooden vessel had to have been just as fucking terrific in size.
Some seven or more masts. A deck big enough to host a ball. Behind me was another, yet higher, deck that I assumed the wheel was perched on. And absolutely everything was carved from the same bonewood of the Southlands with golden filigree and accents. The carvings in everything that wasn’t walked on were masterpieces, hyper realistic depictions of Intau’s natural world.
It was extraordinary that they had the ability to make the vessel I now stood on. Much like the pyramids in Egypt were a wonder given their age.
“Innintani,” one of the crew rasped before clearing his throat. He did the same hands-spread show of deference the Lubrei preferred before locking eyes with me. Funny, but he didn’t seem as tall as I was used to Tauren being.
Glancing down at my lifted feet with my new, babyishly clawed toes, I realized belatedly that I’d gotten taller between my death and reawakening. Not too much, but I thought I could’ve been six-and-a-half. Give or take an inch. Probably give since I really didn’t have any familiar shit to compare my size against.
Sweet. I was a leggy enough to walk a runway now.
…probably’ll flutter right off the catwalk with these damn wings if I tried, though.
I shook my head clear of my thoughts when I noticed the expectant way the male was looking down at me. He’d been talking and I hadn’t paid him a lick of attention.
Whoops.
“My apologies.” I stuck with Burdah instead of the janky mix of languages Vorch favored. “What did you say?”
“You are still weak, Innintani. You will return to Vorch’s villup? He has ordered a meal be prepared for You.”
Villup…his quarters? Good guess.
Still, not happening. A small kiss of freedom was just what the doctor ordered. It didn’t matter how big Vorch’s villup was; I liked to not be cooped up.
“I am good here. Thank you.”
“Innintani…”
My wings snapped wide and I knew they were responding according to my spike of irritation. The sky, too, which had been shifting from overcast to sunny darkened immediately with heavy cloud cover. The crew flinched back from me instantly, their heads bowing in deference and quieting their voices.
“Stop angering Her,” another male growled from on high and behind me. I turned my head and dropped a single wing to see a Tauren male of bronze skin and jewel-studded hair perched with his arms crossed on the deck above us. His obsidian eyes glared down at the man that’d unwittingly pissed me off.
“If you make Vorch return to his Pasha being irate, I will not save you from his wrath.”
“I am not that los’kah’s Pasha,” my growl was lost to the kicking winds. My wings beat once, twice, three times, lifting my feet off the deck.
“Holy shit!” I shouted in a combination of shock and excitement.
These bitches weren’t just for ornamentation!
I could fucking fly!
“No!”
A different sort of scream came out of me when I was charged from all sides. The hands that came out to nab me were careful, but firm. They shackled my ankles since I’d lifted myself a good eight feet into the air.
They tried to pull me down, but the glow from my wings flared so bright that they hurt even my eyes. The ends sizzled against their skins as the wisps of prismatic colors brushed against them. They were forced to let me go with grunts of pain or else face further agony.
Self-preservation had me flying – it was an uncoordinated affair – towards the nearest boom. I scrabbled for it with my daintily-clawed fingers because I couldn’t manage a graceful ascent or landing. Not the least of which I gave fault for due to the buffering winds coming off the sea.
I figured the crew were getting a funny view – funny for them, embarrassing for me – of my naked hooha as I dragged my weight up.
I thought I could’ve been a bit classier than I was in that moment. I needed to work on my flying etiquette and grace.
There a ‘For Dummies’ guide for that?
I blinked owlishly once I was on the boom and stared down my legs to my screwy feet and beyond. Comically, the crew were huddled directly under where I was sitting, prepared to catch me if I crashed. I wasn’t too stubborn to admit that it had been a possibility.
I was a veritable Bambi with these pretty-ass wings on my back.
I waved my fingers – only two since I used my mauled hand – at them before looking around from my new height.
Stretched out around the ship was some hybrid of Shipwreck Cove and Waterworld.
While this big magilla of a ship was ‘free’ from the attachment of the others, there had to have been some dozen other ships of varying sizes and styles. Some looked more like barges. Others floating citadels. Yet more looked like sisters to the ship I was on. All of them were moored together and interconnected by gangways and swinging bridges. It looked like a city made of ships.
No, it didn’t just look like it. It was a city.
Shit. Where did I wake up now?
Squinting past the floating city and then again behind me, I was dismayed to see there weren’t any visible land masses. I wouldn’t be able to tell anything from a peek at a shoreline, sure, but I’d never been to sea on Intau before.
Where was Luintak? How far away was I from the desert? Where was my this-world family?
More importantly…
…how long was I dead?
I chewed my upper lip, distantly elated that I didn’t feel extreme dagger teeth to go along with my newfound tusks. That would’ve butchered my lip up bad. Instead, I just poked them into hurting and stopped immediately.
“I beg of You, Innintani! Do not fall!”
A chuckle bubbled up in my throat at that earnest plea. Yeah, right. Now that my ass was planted, I wasn’t going to topple over. I mean, I was pathetic, but not hopeless.
A flash of white running across one of the gangways drew my attention that way. It didn’t take any effort to see Vorch, trailed by a handful of other males, rushing back to this ship.
Two guesses on why.
I waved at him, too, when he appeared under me with the rest of the crew. His face was a thunderous scowl, absent of its prior joviality, and I knew I was on his shitlist.
“Biis’a,” he snarled in poorly-contained ire, “bring Yourself back down here. It is not safe for You up there.”
“Am I no longer your ‘sweet’?” I kicked my legs like a petulant child. My merriment at teasing him was lightening the sky by the second. Having my moods broadcast via the weather was insane. First I’m magical and capable of healing; now I can control the elements?
What’s next? Eternal life?
My stomach churned unpleasantly at that unsettling thought. It
should’ve occurred to me sooner that if I couldn’t stay dead that it was likely that I could live forever.
Fucking-A. Don’t think about it.
I cut the head off those thoughts because I didn’t need Hurricane Calliope, version 2.0, to show its ugly face. Vorch was right. With my power, I could sink his ships.
“You are always my sweet, Calliope, but right now You are testing me in a way that I do not like.” He had the nerve to point at the empty space beside him. “Here, Biis’a.”
Woof woof, motherfucker. I ain’t no dog.
“I do not think I will. It is nice up here.” Silently, I added that I didn’t think I could get back down. Not in the same way I came up, anyway. The only way I was safely getting down was to crawl across the boom to the mast and use the rungs imbedded in the carved wood. If I tried gliding down with my wings, I kinda-sorta worried that I’d end up coasting into the ocean.
I remembered Frankenstein’s kraken – step back Jules Verne – lurking in the water outside of the net they caught me in. I wasn’t submitting myself to being chum-bait for that creature.
“I will come and get You if I must.”
Not my best moment, but I stuck my tongue out at him.
The male barked out a vicious sound before unclipping the chains securing his vest. He was already stomping towards the mast.
Oops.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I lay over Vorch’s shoulder, my elbows braced on his wide back, and watched as he competently brought us both down. His boney, hard-assed shoulder hurt pressed against my stomach, but I wasn’t going to bitch.
Dude was cranky right now. Best to leave mean dogs to lie.
His clawed hand flexed on the backs of my thighs and bare ass, his warm flesh having slipped up under the skirt, and I had no problem hearing the aggravated growl that radiated from his chest. In turn, I scritched my claws into the bare expanse of has back. His growl turned from mad to glad. His tense muscles eased and I knew my ‘affectionate’ actions appeased him.
He had golden skol weaving up and along his spine. They branched over his shoulders on all sides and trailed halfway down his upper arms. Their presence told me he had been a member of the Horde at one point in time.