Forty-one

"I think I have a fatal brain haemorrhage," Basaltine said from his recumbent position with all four paws in the air, "and only immediate massage and emergency cuddles can save me." In case she didn't get the message, he feebly coughed once or twice.

"Aw, that sounds terrible." The words did not go well with her amused tone. However, Sylvie sat down unceremoniously, and gave Basaltine a rather vigorous belly-rub.

"I'm a martyr to my health--" The rest of Basaltine's sentence came out as a contented sort of upside-down groan.

It jolly well was a big green dragon, and it had found this place again - although, truth be told, it had no understanding that this was somewhere it had been before.

The outside walls of the inn had been repaired, anyway, since the dragon had passed, which by itself might possibly have accounted for the lack of recognition.

It investigated the stables, empty after months of disuse except for some old nails and a crusted tin of wood stain. The dragon found a pebble and rolled this around the flagstones until it became wedged in a crack. After this, the dragon, tail wavering behind, continued along the roadside on a reasonably direct course towards the inn. It wasn't watching where it put its feet.

"Hey! Watch it, you overgrown tit," was all she said, the one standing by the door, holding it open and glaring after some winged nut. His only response was to show the newcomer a very rude gesture, which she didn't return. She huffed and stepped inside to spread the dust from the road and the mud from the paths into the establishment's floor. It wasn't quite an afterthought to shake some of the dust off her dark blue cloak as she walked on.

Helmine was tired, dusty and thirsty. Not only that, her nerves were utterly gone. That was the last time she was going to work for the Greater Marisch count, let alone the last time she was going to do anything for that senile old codger she'd had to coddle on an assignment so many years ago.

She grabbed a seat and simply leaned backwards in it, staring a sudden question at the ceiling.

Where the fuck am I?

The woman, most presumably a half-elf, looked left and right suspiciously, lowering the hand she had raised to the strips tightening her only externally visible piece of armour. Then the silver-haired, visibly annoyed Helmine raised the hands again and rubbed her face with their heels.

Great. And here I thought the season seemed a bit strange. Great going, Mimi.

"I've seen that expression before," remarked someone, straightening up from behind the bar where de had been looking through a crate of ceramic drinks cans.

The someone looked like an elf with very pale skin and irregular tan patches (think Jack Russell terrier). De had no hair, but what looked like large glass fish fins were implanted all down the sides of des head. De was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with some words in common language printed on the front.

"You didn't mean to come here, right? We get that a lot." The elf was neither smiling nor frowning - and neither clearly male nor obviously female.

'Mimi' opened her eyes and focused them on the person. The whole lack of gender thing was bad enough, but the fish fins caused her mental gears to grind and screech as if someone had tossed sand -- or worse -- between them. She still said almost automatically: "Get a lot of people going out, too?" If she sounded a little harsh, she couldn't help it.

De bruefly studied the woman. Body language... oh, of course, disquiet. That tallied. Consequently, because de was minded to be convenient, the elf's body shape changed throughout des response, losing the patches and growing a head of hair while the fins shrank and folded away.

"Oh, yes. Of course, some of them have difficulty. If you find yourself stuck, ask someone to show you the knack."

She was female now, and a rusty brunette. With freckles, even. Was that better? She regarded Helmine inquisitively.

Helmine was quiet for a time. She grabbed the shrike that she could sometimes be by the throat, tied her with some rope and kicked her down the stairs into the basement of her mind.

"So. What or who are you then?" she finally asked in a neutral tone she usually used when dealing with any kind of magic users, magic creatures or just magic.

Hmm, that didn't seem to have worked quite as planned. Female was supposed to be less threatening, right? Or was that in gnolls? Ah, darnit.

The elf spread her arms in what she hoped was a friendly gesture for this sort of people. "I'm Mendel and round here I'm nobody important. And you... would male be better, by the way?" She gestured at herself.

She raised both eyebrows, eyes half-lidded. "Mendel. Maybe you'll want to stay put for long enough to set me at ease," she said in a dry tone, dragging a fingertip over the table as she spoke, inspecting it after the swipe. "That is, if you're trying to put me at ease to get the jump on me. What is it that you're doing?"

She wrinkled her nose at her fingertip.

"I'm striking up a conversation, because that's - that is what people do, isn't it? I didn't think I'd been out of touch all that long." Mendel folded her long arms and looked skeptical.

"Who are you that I would want the jump on you? You don't seem like a courier. Not one carrying anything I need."

Helmine felt the tentative beginnings of a migraine behind her right eye. "All right. I apologise. Look at it from my point of view, though."

"No need to apologise." Mendel obligingly looked down at herself from behind a reasonable impersonation of Helmine's face.

Helmine blinked and bursted into laughter. "Not bad!"

"Right." Mendel smiled and swapped back her previous freckled elfin face. For continuity's sake.

"There's not much happening hereabouts at the moment. Sometimes there's a market. If you come up with questions, feel free to ask them."

"Let's start with what must be a classic by now -- where the hell am I?"

"Most seem to call it the Crossed Roads, unoriginally enough," the elf girl said, glancing out of the window to where four roads met.

"You aren't so much 'somewhere' as you are on your way to somewhere. Lots of ways, in fact, to lots of places. It just so happens that they bottleneck here."

Mendel was deliberately not being as clear as she might. Call it an intelligence test, or perhaps a test of flexibility.

"Oh, wonderful," Helmine commented dryly, looking perpetually frustrated and a fair bit bored. "I take it where I am going from here is not necessarily where I want to go."

"And where is that?" Mendel asked.