Reluctantly Rogue Pt. 01 Ch. 006

(Note: This is a long, ongoing story. It is a story with sex. It's a sexy story. It is in many ways a story about sex. But, it is not strictly a sex story. Many chapters may even be SFW.)

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CHAPTER SIX

In the Birdhouse

Atyr opened his eyes and sat up. He was in a room. Pink morning light glowed in through arched, glazed windows in the white plaster walls. He looked down, and found himself naked, in a bed, thin blankets pooled over and around him. Four other beds were spaced across the floor. Three were empty, rough, grey blankets neatly folded atop them, but the farthest held a covered figure, face to the wall, snoring with whistling, uneven breaths.

He was unimaginably thirsty, and his stomach felt as though it had given up on ever again seeing a meal, and so was dining on itself.

Sitting on the edge of the foot board, a miniature, winged figure sat, bouncing its tiny heels playfully against the rough-hewn wood. A soft white glow drifted off her as she stared out the window.

"That's twice now. I think you owe me a pretty big favor."

Atyr blinked, unsure what she was referencing. "Where are we? And why are you here?"

"We're exactly where you wanted to go. And your second question is inside out, so I'll answer it turned around the right way." Now she looked at him. "You're here because I am." She flitted over to his knees and alighted on the rough fabric. "So you owe me."

"Pesky, I am so tired, I don't know what you-"

"It was a lot of work getting in here." She gestured over at the window closest to the bed, and Atyr noticed that a pane on the lowest row had been broken out. "So maybe you owe me even more."

"I mean it, I really have no idea -- "

"Atyr." The sprite's voice was serious, firm.

He stopped, losing track of his thoughts.

"Elatla almost ate you." She paused, looking up thoughtfully. The brief seriousness vanished entirely. "Actually she did eat you. Very impressively."

Atyr sighed and rolled his eyes, flopping back on the bed.

"She almost killed you, and I made her stop. Then you decided to die on your way here." She stretched her tiny arms dramatically, as if trying to envelop the entire room. "You kept on trying, so I made you stop. But, but I had to-"

Atyr cut in, exasperation already taking over. "I did not, decide to die. My leg turned sour on me, it's not like I decided that should happen." Her last words caught up to him. "Wait... but you had to what?"

Pesky stood very still, opened her tiny lips to respond, then her head snapped up to look over his shoulder, and she vanished out the broken window.

"You're awake! I knew you wouldn't die, Mother said you would but I just really knew you wouldn't!"

Atyr jumped and twisted to look behind him. A young woman stood in the doorway, an unkempt grey robe and stained smock draped over her slight shoulders, and a rough scarf of the same material bundled about her head. The look on her face was one of open-mouthed delight. She moved smoothly across the floor towards him, dance-like fluidity at odds with her lumpy, unshapely attire. At the bedside she stopped, looking down at him.

"I've been here for over a year now, and there's just so much awful that happens I really can't tell you how happy it makes me to see you awake." Her smile was more restrained now, becoming almost reserved and polite, though losing none of its sincerity. "I am very pleased- We all are so pleased at your recovery. You did come in looking so very poorly, I was really the only one who believed you--"

"Kella!" A distant, scratchy voice came through the open doorway. "Kella, I told you that I would be taking care of the young man in the Ending Room." The voice was getting louder, shuffling footsteps approaching. "I understand he's a good looking boy, but death doesn't care a feather's weight about beauty. And fae take me if I don't wonder if you're half smitten just because he has such a large--"

The old woman stopped in the doorway, voice and feet coming to an abrupt halt. "Oh. Oh. Well." He creased face smiled widely under her grey headscarf, and she patted her hands on a grey smock and robe such as the younger woman was wearing. "Well, well. Well." She glanced from Atyr to the petrified young woman, and then back. "Well then." She looked straight into Atyr's face, and her bright eyes narrowed slightly, her smiling lips parting as though a curious thought had hit her.

Kella, her cheeks red, squeaked out, "Mother. He's awake."

"And we're all very glad to see it." The old woman's voice was earnest and pleasant. "And he looks far more healthy and hale than he has any right to be." She looked back intently at Atyr. "I've rarely seen a body come back from death once the blood soured, much less sit right up, as though a good night's sleep was all he needed."

Warm and soothing though her voice was, her stare made the young man feel that he was supposed to know something which he didn't. That she was letting him know she had found out his secret. Only, he didn't think he had a secret. Well, unless being stalked by the world's most annoying sprite was a secret, but honestly, he would happily tell the world about Pesky. He felt no responsibility to keep secrets for her. He looked around the room, his gaze pausing on the broken pane, but she was still gone. That was the only thing that stopped him from saying, "yes, I'm being followed by a faerie that won't leave me in peace." It would sound ridiculous.

"Kella." The older woman was speaking again, raspy voice now brusque and professional. "Alertness is no guarantee of health, or even survival. I've seen many a patient spring vigorously away from death's threshold, only to stumble backward into death's open cellar door. That dressing will need changing, and we need to make sure the wound itself looks as much better as..." She blinked expectantly at Atyr, who stared blankly back.

"You are...?" She prodded, smiling like a teacher bemused at a student's failure of memory.

Atyr realized he hadn't yet said a word to either woman, and had been staring dumbly from one to the other this whole time.

"Oh! Oh. I, um, I'm Atyr. Bracken. I'm... thank you?"

"I'm Bird. You're very welcome." She turned her amused gaze back to Kella. "We need to make sure the wound itself is as recovered as Atyr here seems to be." She looked back at him, and her sparkling eyes crinkled tighter with a hint of youthful mischief. "You're in good hands. Kella here has been at your side caring for you every spare moment of the day. Even after I told her to leave you in my care, and to attend to her other duties, it seems."

Kella stared down at her feet, apparently very interested in rubbing the toes of one shoe against the other.

Atyr swallowed, breath catching slightly. "Oh, no, thank you. I- I feel perfectly fine! I can just, I don't have any coin, but I'll be earning- I came to work and trade a bit so I can pay you in a couple days. I'm really fine. I'll just go and-- " The young man paused and looked around. "Um, where are my clothes?"

Bird ignored the stream of words, and patted Kella's arm. "I have to go to the Leaving Room; another reckless boy is waiting. He has one of his fingers on sideways." She looked back at Atyr and smiled, warmth and a hint of a knowing question on her face. "And I would very much like to talk to you again before you flee."

She turned away, walking to the sleeping figure. She bent over the bed for a brief moment, checking some thing or other. Kella and Atyr both watched her, not looking at each other, until she straightened and sighed, then, with no further words or acknowledgment to either of them, shuffled back out of the room and away. They heard her voice come back faintly through the door. "Well, young man, would you like me to put that finger back right, or were you trying to fully remove it? We can do whichever you prefer!" There was a brief protest in response, then a door shut, and it became quiet in the Ending Room.

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It was very quiet. Very, very quiet. Actually, there were plenty of noises: the ragged, choking snores from the other occupied bed, the distant sounds of the town outside, a brief, muffled yelp that carried through the walls from the direction Bird had left in. But there were no noises of the sort that could mask the uncomfortable fact that neither Atyr nor Kella seemed to have any intention of being the first to speak.

Finally, Kella coughed gently and broke the stillness of the room. "Um, you really don't have to pay for any of this, you know."

Atyr flushed, and shook his head, frowning. "No, I can! I came in from the Brookwood because I need a few things here in town, so I'll be finding what work I can anyway. I earn my way." He looked up at her. "Wait, this is Woodstead, right?"

Kella seemed relieved to have a solid question to answer. "Oh yes! This is Woodstead. You're in the Birdhouse, sorry, we call it that, you're in the Healing House here. Have you been here before? Well, not here in the House I mean, obviously, because I would know, because I'm always here. Well, unless you were here a while ago, I've really only worked here a year and a bit, Mother doesn't let anyone apprentice until they're full adult, which she says is a score of summers. She says, and I really think she's right, she says no child should grow up knowing death like we have to." The young woman paused, and glanced down at Atyr where he sat on the bed. "I really am happy to see you healthy."

Atyr was quiet for a moment, trying to sift the torrent of words. Before he could pick a topic to respond to, Kella raced on.

"Oh, but sorry, you really don't have to pay. It's not because you're poor," She reddened again, "Not that you're poor of course! I didn't mean that, just that you came in with only-- I mean, if you were poor, which would be fine, really, most people are poor, but if you were, that wouldn't matter because no one pays here. If the Lord and Lady themselves were sick and came to us we wouldn't make them pay here. Well, of course we wouldn't, they're the Lord and Lady, and also why would they ever come to Woodstead, but what I mean is, even if say, a landowner or, or a wealthy merchant..." She trailed off. "Woodstead takes a collection at the start of every season. Everyone in town gives what they can, and we use that to cover costs here. That's what I'm trying to say. I'm really sorry, I really don't usually talk quite this much."

It was quiet again for a moment. Atyr nodded slowly, chewing his bottom lip.

"So, you're Kella?" A nod and a smile. "And Bird is... your mother? And, I'm sorry, her name is, she did say 'Bird', right?"

Kella laughed, "Oh, no no no, she's not really my mother, my mother is probably the age to be her granddaughter, Bird is much older even than she looks. She's The Mother, here at the Birdh- at the Healing House. Oh, and no, her real name is Abarabirdadellet, but you really can't expect people to remember a name like that, especially sick and injured people, and I guess over the years everyone just started calling her Bird. Only the oldest folks in town call her by her full name." Kella met his eyes again. "Your name was Atyr?"

Atyr nodded. She nodded back at him. After the chaotic flurry of conversation, silence returned. Kella smiled at him. He smiled back and they both looked away. The moment dragged long. Atyr shifted around and then looked down at his hands, running his fingers uncomfortably around his palms.

"Soooo, I'd get out of this bed but..." His face heated. "I uh... Could I have my clothes, please?"

Kella responded quickly, "Oh, it doesn't bother me, I've already seen--," She choked. Atyr's face burned. They both looked away.

Swallowing, he steadied his voice. "I should really get going, I -- I have a lot to do in town before I head back into the Brookwood. Could I have my clothes, please?"

"Yes of course! I can get them from the first room. We have your things there as well, only..." There was a long pause, and Atyr looked up at her, finding her face as red as his own.

"Only, Mother did say I should make sure you're really fit to go and..." She faltered, but adopted a poise of nearly convincing professionalism. "She really is right, it is very unusual for someone with sour blood to just get up and go back to living their life. Mother really is right that you really should be dead. We need to make sure you're really going to be ok." She looked at his face, questioningly. Atyr shifted and without realizing he was doing it, drew the blankets a bit higher about him. "I have dressed and cleaned your wound several times these past three days," she continued. "I, it, I mean..." She cleared her throat softly. "This is my work. This will only take a few moments."

Her fingers rested on the edge of the blankets and her gaze met his, brows raised in a polite, questioning manner.

Atyr froze. He stared back into her eyes. They were a deep, dark brown, nearly black. Looking into them, his heart beat hard and he tried to steady it. He blinked.

"Honestly, I'm fine. If I can just have my clothes and my things I'll be all set to go."

Kella's fingers were trembling where they touched the blankets at his waist, but she smiled up at him. "I do really need to make sure you really are better."

Atyr looked at her earnest, questioning expression, swallowed, stared at the ceiling, and nodded.

His gaze remained fixed on the ceiling, studying the fine craquelure of the plaster between the dark wood beams that spanned the house. He felt her draw the blanket down to his knees, baring him to the room.

"I'll just remove the dressing on your wound now. Please tell me if anything is painful or uncomfortable." There was a pause. Atyr realized she was waiting for a response and glanced down to see her face looking up at him, the careful objectivity of her tone and expression undercut by the color of her cheeks; as bright red as his own must be.

He looked swiftly back at the ceiling, and managed a curt, "Mhm." He stared at the beams, and tried to think about weight, and bearing, and all the knowledge relevant to building that, a few days prior, had been fresh in his mind. None of it seemed able to hold his attention now, as he felt fingers delicately pulling at the knots of the bandage around his upper thigh. For a moment, and for the first time since waking, he realized with curiosity that he felt no pain from his leg at all. That welcome distraction was swiftly dashed however, as Kella's calm professional voice spoke again, with only a slight quaver at the end.

"Excuse me, I will just have to adjust you slightly." Soft fingers gently lifted his penis and moved it to the side, flopping it across his other leg. It was a fleeting moment of contact, then gone, and she was carefully unwinding the dressing. With horror, Atyr felt himself begin to stiffen. Beams, he thought, posts. Weight, plaster, how thick must hundred-year oak be to hold a ceiling at this span? If there was a floor above, how did that change things? He felt his penis relentlessly continuing to fill. The fingers unwinding the dressing paused, but Atyr was too afraid to look down.

The unwrapping resumed. The erection continued. Atyr risked a quick glance down, and found Kella's burning face staring away at a wall as she removed the bandage.

Should he say something? Surely she saw... this sort of thing all the time, no? Before he had time to consider, he heard himself blurt out, "I'm really sorry. I didn't-- It's not you, it's--" he choked on his words and the hands stopped moving again. Kella said nothing, and the hands continued.

He felt the full weight of social horror on him as he realized what he'd said. It's not you? He tried to fix it. "I mean, not that you aren't-- that I don't find you..." He stopped short again. And just how had he planned to finish that sentence?

The hands kept working. How could it take this long to unwind a bandage? Surely it had been an eternity already?

Kella cleared her throat. Her voice was as calm and unaffected as could possibly be desired. "It's really not a worry. It is not uncommon for men to-- please don't worry."

Then the bandage was off, and Atyr heard a small gasp. He looked down. He saw Kella's surprised expression. Then he saw his erect penis, pointing mortifyingly into the air. And then he saw what she was looking at. His wound was gone. Not just healed over, but gone. No swelling, no redness. Perhaps there was a faint white line, like an old scar, barely visible.

Kella sat down heavily at the foot of the bed. She looked up at his face, the redness fading from her cheeks, replaced now with a look of surprise, almost of shock.

"Last night-- last night you were bleeding. There was pus, and swelling, and your whole leg was streaked with the sour blood, it--," she stared at him. "You don't know how weird this is. I don't..."

Atyr just stared back at her. Slowly, he reached down and pulled the blankets up over his lap, restoring whatever modesty it was possible to. Thankfully, her reaction and the weirdness of the situation were quickly killing off his penis's untimely disobedience.

The two of them sat there for a long moment before Kella spoke again.

"I, um, I'll go talk to Mother, but I think you should be all set to leave." She stood up. "Let me go get your clothes. I'll be right back."

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Atyr was dressed, sitting on the bed, trying to wrap his head around several things when Bird came back into the room. He stood up to greet her.

"Hi. Thanks for everything. I understand I wouldn't be alive without out your healing."

The wise, old eyes stared straight at him. "Oh, I don't think that's true. There's nothing I can do for a wound once the blood goes sour." She tilted her head. "And yours was as sour as sour gets when they carried you in here. All we did, all we tried to do, was to make your end in this world a little less painful."

Silence fell in the room as Atyr tried to digest that. Bird continued.

"Kella tells me you have hardly a scar. She says you looks as if nothing had happened to you." The warm eyes twinkled at him as the elderly woman waited patiently for a response.

"I, I guess I must have healed up while I was here. Kella says it's been a few days?"

"Three days, yes. On the first day, I looked you over, and I thought you'd be dead by the second. On the second day you looked worse, and I knew you'd be dead by morning. On the third day, you were fading quickly, very quickly, and I knew it wouldn't be long. I made Kella leave you then; she has been overly invested in your care." She tilted her head and met his eyes.

Atyr chewed his lip and looked down at his hands, and she continued. "Yet, here we are, the morning of the fourth day, and... I would say you are recovered, but that's not exactly right, is it? You are restored. You are fully well, almost as if you were never hurt."

A long pause followed, and Atyr knew she was waiting for him to speak, but he had nothing to say. There was clearly something she expected him to tell her, he had realized that earlier in they day at their first brief meeting. But now, as then, he had no idea what it was. If anything, he was more confused than he had been an hour prior.

Bird sighed, and spoke again. "When I was a young woman." She twisted her lips at him. "And that was even longer ago than you think. When I was a young woman, I had a very strange experience. I met a man-- I thought he was a man, but he wasn't." She looked at Atyr, as if expecting a reaction. Finding none, she carried on with the story. "He was not a man, but one of the Fae. I didn't know it then, but he was."

Here Atyr started. Bird took note, and smiled at him. "Yes, I thought as much. And do you know what he offered me?"

Atyr froze, thinking of the sorts of things the two fae creatures he had encountered seemed likely to offer a young girl. He was most certainly not about to start making guesses of that nature to this ancient woman.

Bird frowned at him, noting his sudden discomfort and seemingly confused by it. She hesitated. "... No guesses? Well then, he told me he had a quest, a quest for me, and that only I could fulfill this destiny. He wanted me to travel with him to a distant land, and to delve into a secret cave, where he told me his daughter was imprisoned by a spell which weakened her so that, should she leave the cave, she would die. He said that only a true healer such as myself could cure her."

Atyr looked at her. A week ago, he would have smiled at the charm of what was obviously a child's fable. Today, he stared at the aged healer with a curious interest.

"And?"

"And?" She leaned towards him, her voice hushed, dramatic. "He promised me new power, he promised me ability in healing beyond the mundane. He promised me magic, Atyr. He spoke of things I didn't understand; levels and classes and..." She nodded knowingly as Atyr's eyes widened in recognition. Her face looked distant, lost for a moment in old memory. "His voice was the weirdest part of him; it filled me with a feeling of great calmness and trust, of nobility, of the exhilarating desire to help, and to defend."

Atyr thought to himself that that was certainly not how he would describe the particular weirdness of Pesky's voice, but he kept that to himself. "And so you went on the quest, and you... you have fae magic? That's what healed me? Fae magic?"

The old woman seemed taken somewhat aback. "... No. No. I was a young woman, almost a girl, and a strange man promised me magic and adventure and destiny. However convincing he may have seemed, I did exactly what any wise young girl would do, when presented with such an obviously impossible proposition. I laughed, politely made my excuses, and I left. And I never saw him again."

Atyr frowned, "But, but then how--"

"That's not the choice you made, is it Atyr?"

His mind whirled with confusion, but a dreamlike flicker caught at the edge of memory. Darkness, death, and a voice, a voice imploring him to follow it, to go on an adventure. But he remembered more. He had made a decision.

"Bird." She looked at him. "I, I don't understand. I don't know what you... it's been a very strange few days. I did make a choice."

The old healer smiled and nodded at him.

He continued, chewing his lip hard. "I made a choice. I chose to die."

The smile remained on her face, but her brows drew down.

"Let me see your arms," she demanded brusquely.

"What?" She had caught him unprepared.

"Let me see your arms."

He held them out. Bird grasped his wrists, and twisted his forearms this way and that, staring down at them with furrowed brow.

She began an explanation as she examined him, her scratched voice rushing now.

"I may have rejected my own fae quest, but if once you meet one of their kind, you can no longer miss seeing their influence on the world. It is rare, but even here in Woodstead, I have twice encountered someone on a quest of their own. It is in the shadow behind the eyes, a look. It is the music behind the voice. But also, more tangibly..." She kept searching his forearms, and the moment lengthened.

"Aha! See? There." She tapped her finger on his skin, just below the elbow. He looked and saw nothing.

"I don't know what you're looking at."

"There!" She said again. "There!"

He looked again at her crooked, wizened finger, pressed to his arm and still saw nothing. Then, almost as though it swam into being as he watched, he saw a barely visible pattern. It looked like writing of some sort, though different than most he had seen, with wide swooping curves and spirals, and harsh, jagged angles, and with irregular shapes and sizes to the characters, all of it contained within a series of circles of various colors. As he stared, it almost seemed that the pattern darkened and the edges became crisper, and though he still didn't recognize the symbols, a meaning came into his mind.

Ranger - Level 0

Rogue (Subclass) - Level 0

He stared down at his arm for a long moment, then looked up into the kindly face in front of him.

"What is this?"

She smiled at him, almost eagerly. "You have met with the fae."

He thought of Pesky, and of his brief but intense encounters with Elatla. 'Met' was certainly a polite way of describing it, but he nodded. "I have...?"

The wrinkled face smiled. "Well. Well then. I think that your question would be better served to them than to me. I can't read this, but I know that it's there." The smile lingered on her face, but a shadow tinged it now, a gentle melancholy at the memory of a life not lived. "You seem to have made a better choice than I did."

He looked up, young eyes searching her old ones, the bewilderment of his gaze meeting a bittersweet hope in her own.

"I do not believe that you chose to die, Atyr."

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Kella returned, and showed him out, through three more rooms. In the first room, two patients resting in the beds there smiled and waved as Atyr passed through, wishing him well. In the second room a young boy sat by the window with a woman, presumably his mother, who was fussing over a nasty looking scrape across the majority of his forehead.

In the last room, Kella retrieved his pack and few belongings. A wealthy looking man in odd, black and red garb was leaning against the far wall, staring listlessly out the window as though resigned to a long wait. Kella paid him no mind, and he showed no interest in the two young people. Atyr assumed he was waiting for Bird to attend to him.

He chatted awkwardly with Kella for a few moments until they finally made their farewells, and then lingered, unsure what to do next. They said goodbye again. Atyr made some reference to his need to pick up supplies. Kella said she should attend to the patients. Atyr said he really should be going. They made their farewells again, and fell silent, neither quite sure if it was actually time to part.

The well-dressed man in the corner glanced over disinterestedly, but his eyes caught on Atyr. They widened slightly, and the stare grew thoughtful. That was just the kick Atyr needed to actually leave, and so he said goodbye yet again, and left through the open door.

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Thank you so much for reading Chapter Six! Chapter Seven will be out in just a couple days.

-ScryBells