Excerpt: Wanderlust

In order to reach Veriah, their small party had to go through a valley known as the Valley of the Laisha. Laisha was what the valley, the people who lived there and their town was called. The town was moderate in size but unusually peaceful, more than likely because of how the residents were exceptionally well-disciplined. The town had a set of rules that its people followed strictly, and imposed on outsiders as they stayed in or went through the town. Very few did however, no matter how pleasant a place the town of Laisha was, because of a particularly troublesome and some would say ridiculous rule it had: No single man was to be allowed entry into the town.

Despite the feminine-sounding name of the place, Laisha was a town populated with very few women. To prevent running out of the female-folk, only women, children, and men married or engaged to women along with the woman they were engaged or married to, were allowed into town. Men who came with no women or groups who had more men than women in them were forced to go over the mountains on either side of the valley— a dangerous path that would take five long days and that their group no longer had enough supplies for, after the incident back at Shikharkim nearly a week ago from now.

But as it had posed a problem to many groups before them, so it did to Celestia’s escort party. Being the only girl in the group, only she could possibly enter Laisha unchecked. Letting the princess off on her own was unacceptable, and Lawrencio and Sefhyr still distrusted each other enough to refuse the other from acting as the princess’s partner and go stay in town while the rest of the group took to the mountains. They both thought the other could take the chance and flee with the princess.

Finally, after much arguing that Kyriel and Jay excused themselves from watching by leaving to gather firewood and prepare dinner, they finally decided that Sefhyr’s apprentice would escort the princess. Not only would Jay never leave her Master Sefhyr behind, this much was more than apparent to all of them in the group, there was nothing for her to be had in bringing the princess back to Veriah on her own. Kyriel could claim to finish Lawrencio’s mission for him whereas Jay could not accomplish Sefhyr’s. As an extra precaution, Sefhyr would allow that the pair be accompanied by Kyriel’s pet white crow.

Celestia had been sitting idly while Sefhyr smoked and Lawrencio cleaned his sword when Kyriel and Jay finally returned from gathering firewood to camp. They old the pair the plan and Jay, as she had expected, was quick to protest. She knew he simply would not leave Sefhyr’s side and let the three go off to the mountains on their own. Lawrencio immediately assured him that they would not harm Sefhyr, but their youngest member shook his head again. He pointed at the mountains, no, to a point beyond the mountains.

“I can feel a big storm is coming,” he said quietly.

Sefhyr stood up from where he sat cross-legged on the ground and stepped up next to him. A frown appeared on his face as he peered into the distance. “I can see it,” he said at length, “it will be too dangerous to climb the mountain until it passes and even then—”

“—we would not know if the paths have become impassable because of the storm,” Lawrencio finished, looking grim. “How far away is it? Can we go over the mountains before the storm hits?”

“Both Jay and I can already feel it and Master Sefhyr has seen the storm clouds,” Kyriel said, joining them as Jay took over the task of taking out their utensils. Celestia came over to help him too, though kept an ear on the three men’s conversation. “It will be here by late in the afternoon tomorrow,” he paused, “and will probably go on for a week.”

“We do not even have enough supplies to last us that long!” Lawrencio said, outraged. Celestia saw Kyriel immediately flit to his side, gripping one of his forearms. It was a gesture she had seen him do many times, especially when the knight from Veriah seemed particularly agitated, and had connected it to Kyriel’s calming ‘Renz, calm down.’ While he did not say them now, Celestia could practically feel the frustration drain away a little from Lawrencio even from where she stood.

“We cannot risk having the princess get sick by staying under such weather either. We need to enter the town and get shelter,” Sefhyr added gravely and without his tone changing continued, “One of you will need to dress like a woman.”

“What?” The knight and the healer exclaimed together, and Celestia herself dropped the plate she had been holding. It was not breakable, but Jay caught it before it could fall to dirt floor anyway. The princess stuttered out her apologies, as equally surprised with Master Sefhyr’s sudden statement as the boys were. Jay was either not paying attention to the discussion or was unfazed by it as he simply continued with what he was doing.

“Only women and men with women can enter that town,” Sefhyr said, “Princess Celestia will be able to pass the gates easily, but the problem is with us four men.” He took a drag off his pipe and blew smoke into the air easily. “Jay will dress like a woman and act as my wife, while one of you does the same for the other.” The pair spluttered in surprise and then—

“No way! I won’t do it!”

Celestia laughed at the chorused protest of the two best friends, both of whom looked as if they had been told that they would need to go on a diet composed solely of worms for the next five days. Although, come to think of it, perhaps they would rather eat worms than dress like a woman and act as the other’s partner. They were so flustered by the suggestion that they did not even realize that Celestia could pose as the remaining man’s fiancée if the suggestion of playing being together with the other was too horrible. Not that she would volunteer. She liked either of them fine and had been mistaken for Kyriel’s lover many times, and had even almost gotten the young healer removed from his position back in Lorentia because of it, but the opportunity to see the two men act like they were in love each other, no matter how awkwardly they would do it, looked to be far too amusing to pass up on.

“Not unless you are willing to leave the princess to me and Jay, or take the chance of getting her sick out here with the two of you, you have no choice,” Sefhyr reminded the two of them, reminding Celestia, too, of the last member of their party. She turned to look at Jay to see his reaction to his master’s decision on what action to take, but could not read the young man’s expression. There was no repulsion on his young face, just surprise, though for some reason Celestia could not attribute his astonishment to being told that he had to dress like a woman.

“Jay?” she said quietly, touching the other’s hand. The young man’s head turned towards her, his eerie scarlet eyes moving from his master to meet her own probably worried ones. Jay did not smile, he rarely did, but the way Jay raised their hands before removing his from beneath hers was reassuring.

“I’m alright,” he answered the unasked question before taking the small pile of plates and utensils from her hands to bring to the cooking area of their small camp. She watched him tend to the fire for awhile, before re-joining the others, passing Master Sefhyr, who bowed to her, though it looked as if the gesture was made on pure reflex, as he made his way to where Jay was. She sat next to the empty space beside Lawrencio where he sat on a log of wood and curiously watched Kyriel nervously palm an unfamiliar and rather large gold coin.

“What are you doing?” she asked, noting how the knight did not even look at her as she sat down next to him. His blue eyes were trained on the coin intensely. Kyriel smiled at her weakly, and then held up the coin between his thumb and index finger for her to see. A rose was engraved on one side while Celestia saw a crest on the other as Kyriel turned it for her. She recognized it as the crest of their kingdom, but was it a coin from Veriah? It was a little disheartening how she could not even tell money from her own kingdom.

“A lulah toss, to decide which one between the two of us will be wearing a dress,” Kyriel told her, rolling the coin to his palm and curling his fingers around it to hide it from view. The princess remained looking at it with interest and he opened his hand again. “I forgot you’ve never seen this,” he said, “This is what some of us in Veriah use to settle small disputes. It’s called a lulah. Rather than a simple coin toss that relies heavily on luck, the lulah will always show the side that bears the best solution, the best course of action, for the future,” he explained, his weak smile turning a little more like his usual bright one.

Beside her, Lawrencio snorted. “Don’t believe him. That’s all just crazy superstitious talk. You can’t even call lulahs as a legend or traditional items because they have only been around for about five years,” he said, earning himself a slight glare from his best friend. But he simply pushed his hair back and snorted, continuing, “True, they are popular back home, but Kyriel just likes to buy stuff like that all the time. They’re not real. And to think he’s supposed to be the one who knows more about magic between the two of us.”

“But the earrings work…” Kyriel said quietly, sounding just a little bit hurt. The healer rubbed at the cuff around his earlobe uncertainly. Celestia frowned at Lawrencio, who had the decency to be already looking like he regretted his harsh words. He could not take them back however.

“Just throw it already, OK?” he said, though not unkindly. Kyriel nodded his head and tossed the coin, catching it deftly with the same hand before putting down on the back of his other.

“If it’s the rose, you get to dress up like a girl, right?” he asked.

“Yeah. And if it’s the kingdom’s crest, you’ll do it,” Lawrencio agreed. Kyriel walked over towards them and bent down at the waist, allowing his best friend to reached over and knock on his hand which covered the coin. He straightened and lifted away his hand to reveal which side up was facing, and made no attempts to stop the groan that came out of him. Lawrencio whooped in victory.

“Rotten luck,” the healer grumbled, and Celestia offered him a comforting smile.

“I’ll let you borrow one of my dresses. You’re closer to my size than Lawrencio is anyway,” she said, succeeding only in getting another groan out of the young man. Unable to help it and not knowing what else to do, she just laughed.