Chapel Orahamm

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The chuckle that followed me into the dark left my skin tingling. Maybe I’d gained some bit of respect from Rowan. I’d never hit someone before and my fingers throbbed enough to tell me Wallace hadn’t either. I didn’t really want to repeat the experience.

I sighed. The deep forest under the neon lights of an alien aurora glittered and undulated in an uncanny fashion. Leaf litter was leaf litter like it was in Central Park or back home in the gullies. “Might as well be an alternative reality.” I mused up at one of the three moons circling this world.

This world. It had agriculture, intelligent beings, ale, and crochety old racist ladies. I snorted. So, what was so different from there and here? More people who hated people. The same old political intrigue and power struggles. I just wanted to dance.

I stretched, reaching for the sky and was appauled at how tight my hamstrings were. I folded and couldn’t even reach my toes. The splits were going to be right out. But there was no giving dancing up under this type of sky. It was too beautiful not too.

First, second, fifth. Hand rounded, fingers delicate and directing, I rose to releve. Arabesque was going to take work with this body. Step, step, step, I drifted through the woods and turned in a piroutte. And I lost myself to the dancing aurora above me. I found myself doing the zombie arms of Gizelle, channeling the ghosts as a laugh at the woods, and maybe at myself, my new body, and the ideas Rowan had.

“Matchstick!” The call came from behind me. “Oh.”

Glancing back, I spotted Rowan and Farrow’s jaw slacked stare. I guess they could be quiet when they wanted to be. I hadn’t heard them coming up behind me.

“What?” I snapped. “He calls my whole carrier path dirty again and I’ll shove him in a tree.”

Farrow stalled, shivering. “He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t, would he?”

Rowan shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, he probably doesn’t know if he can or can’t and might just do it to find out.”

“Tempting. I’ll take a dataset and find out which trees are the easiest to push you into, then I’ll know for future reference which one to leave you in.” I leaned against a sapphire colored tree to watch their maddeningly slow approach through the brush I hadn’t even noticed.

“You can’t seriously trust this sorcerer, Rowan. I’ve never met this guy. You said you only met him this morning. You can’t trust him.” Farrow stalled.

“Nah. I think I can trust him more than probably the High Priestess.”

“Blasphemy, Rowan. No one’s more trustworthy than the High Priestess.” Farrow cowered at that comment as they both emerged from a dusky emerald thicket in the evening light.

“No. I’m pretty sure.” Rowan strode up to me, leaned against the tree, and stared into my eyes. This time he was close enough for me to revise my initial impression of hazel. He was heterochromic with inner rings of gold and outer rings of silver. Far enough away, one could think he had brownish green.

“I have, honest to the twelve heavenly bodies of Hambor, no reason to believe that,” Farrow huffed.

Rowan chuckled. He snaked a hand behind my head, tunneled his fingers into my hair and dragged me to a ravenous mouth that caught me off guard and made the world slip sideways. Closing my eyes to his delving tongue was a purely involuntary reaction. Same with the low throb that hit like a punch to the gut. He let go just as fast as he came in, and I was left blinking. Drawing in a deep breath to recentre, I scowled at him.

“Hey, you were the one who said you wanted to fuck me. As far as I know, that sounds like pressing,” Rowan’s wolfish smile could have been endearing if I let it. And I was tempted to let it.

“What?” Farrow croaked.

I raised an eyebrow in his direction. “Hey, I got all ownership rights of this body from the prior soul, so don’t what me, you prejudiced pig.”

“I -, he -, you –“

“Yep, those are all pronouns. Now, what about a verb? You could try: sit, or maybe stay. You’ll need to choose which verb tense first I guess.” I decided to roll with it. If Farrow was someone Rowan was comfortable teasing enough to get into my bubble after this morning’s adventures in proximity, then it was probably worth throwing on the social mask for a lark. And he was cute in a cinnamon-roll plushy sort of way.

Farrow’s voice strangled in his throat as he turned ten shades of red. I slowly looked him down and up once, one of my suspicions being proven right by the tightness of his pants across his crotch. Hooding my eyes, I smiled a toothy, cat-like grin and left my sapphire tree. Farrow made to step back, but froze as I got close to him. I was just a couple of inches taller than him. “Rowan’s good, but you’ll be fun.” I grabbed him by the throat and kissed him the way Rowan kissed me.

His legs sank from beneath him and he dropped to his butt on the leaf littered ground when I let go. I huffed a proud chuckle and returned to my tree to return Rowan’s stare. He raised an eyebrow at my antics and gave me an amused grin. “Now, why couldn’t you have done that to me earlier when I had you in your tower. No. You go and shove me against a wall and make those Manders hold onto me while you went and stripped.”

“Because you need a firmer hand,” I teased. Farrow gurgled at the exchange.

Rowan returned back to his man. He squatted down to frown at him. “Farrow, Farrow, tender heart, now that you’ve been kissed by the most powerful sorcerer in the world, what says you, I, and Tanwyn pack up a little bit and set out on a quick jaunt out of here?”

“Out-out-out of here where?” Farrow’s wide eyes swung from him to me.

“If it means somewhere I don’t have to meet the Emperor and queen and Prissy-pants, I don’t really bloody care,” I chimed in.

“I was thinking Kawl,” Rowan offered.

“Kawl?” Farrow sank lower into the leaf litter. “Kawl? As in the Rugoshi homeland?”

Rowan nodded once.

Farrow got hold of his shoulders. “That’s on the complete opposite end of the continent, Rowan! That will take almost a whole year to get there. That takes us through Findou. Findou doesn’t like people like us.”

“No. But I’m going home.”

“It’s not your home, you giant burden-beast. You weren’t born there! Your parents had you here in Herenhuis!”

Rowan shrugged. “And yet, I’m going home. Come with me.” He gave Farrow an endearing smile that mollified the redhead into staring at him silently. Frowning, Farrow pursed his lips and nodded. “Fine. Fine. Let’s go somewhere a bit more hospitable.”

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