COMPASS OF TRUE LOVE - CHAPTER 40

Chapter 40: Rizishman Nights

-Marion-

Lumielle led us down the Tangir River, the one we’d crossed before entering the dwarven homeland. It was nice to finally put a name to it. Sadly, the route she’d chosen for us would lead us straight to Rizishma, without visiting Eletheo first. It was a shame; I’d heard so much about the shining jewel of the south, the last independent elven city on Jarrainoria, a remnant of their colonial empire.

But Lumielle was clear about Lorelei and her mother’s wishes that we return quickly, so if we wanted to have some time to explore Rizishma, we needed to take the most direct route possible.

The Tangir River led straight into Rizishma and – even more importantly – there was a trade post only three days from Ironhold where we were sure to find a ship to take us the rest of the way, massively cutting down on our travel time.

Liana also got her wish of seeing the desert. At the end of our first day of travel, the large pine trees grew more and more sparse, until the treeline fully opened up to a massive sea of dunes, far as the eye could see. Only around the Tangir River was a small strip of greenery and even that was more ochre than green.

We camped that night under the shade of the trees, before venturing out across the desert the next day. Lorelei and I placed our bedrolls directly next to one another and when we woke up the next morning, we’d somehow ended up wrapped up in each other’s arms.

“Truly a mystery, how could that have happened…” Liana commented. It wasn’t fair how our relationship had become so glaringly obvious that even the kids quipped about it. Lumielle’s constant teasing was already a lot to handle on its own, I didn’t need two hormonal teenagers to add to that as well.

Not that I was actually bothered by it. I loved the attention and being able to shower Lorelei with affection without worrying about others seeing, I loved even more.

Two days later, we arrived at Helama, the trading post. I was a cluster of sandstone buildings huddled up against the river on both sides; the only thing connecting them to one another being two flatboat ferries that were tied to a rope pull mechanism. The area around the outpost was a very cultivated oasis. The usual ochre turned to a lush green around these parts and instead of a small strip, it expanded into an area large enough for a couple of farms and a lumber yard to harvest around it.

Despite being a relatively small place, the streets were bustling with people.; and not just humans. Elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, satyrs and many many orcs and goblins. In fact, almost half the population, if not more, were orcs and goblins. The entire experience was unnerving, for two reasons. Firstly, we were actually back in civilization for the first time since Ghis Castle, more than two weeks ago and secondly, while orcs and goblins did sometimes live among humans, even in Argonne, our people mostly knew them as the vicious raiders from the southern border.

Obviously, I was smart enough not to let my prejudices, based on one raid-happy tribe, affect my judgement of these people, but it was still something that I had to wrap my head around. There was a goblin yelling out orders at the harbour wearing a suit!

Also, I couldn’t understand a damn word most anyone was saying. There were a few bits of New Elven, which I could understand a few basic phrases of, but the vast majority spoke Riza.

Which meant that Liana, Rosie and I stood behind Lorelei and Lumielle awkwardly, while the two of them chatted up one merchant after the other, finding out whether they were headed for Eletheo or Khibili, the largest rizishman settlement along the Tangir.

We had arrived in the afternoon and by the time we’d booked passage into Rizishma, on the vessel of that goblin merchant, no less, it was already past sundown.

Lumielle invited us to a traditional rizishman food stall, which turned out to be a both exhilarating and painful experience at the same time. Unlike the north of Jarrainoria, the south was well known to use a much larger variety of herbs and spices to season their food. Vilesian cuisine was known to utterly destroy any simple tastes one would have. Northern nobility vied to hire the best vilesian chefs and paid horrendous sums to import the herbs and spices that were required for their dishes.

But this far south? Those herbs and spices were as common as salt. The cheap street food we got tasted absolutely divine. There was a variety of foods impaled on wooden sticks and one would choose a sauce that they would be dipped in. Loreilei and Lumielle both took the spiciest sauce they had, while Liana, Rosie and I settled for the mildest one available, which tasted more sweet than spicy.

My gravest mistake, that night, was trying to be cute and sneakily taking a bite out of some chicken on Lorelei’s stick when she wasn’t looking. Saying that their sauce had been spicy was the understatement of the century. I coughed for, like, ten minutes straight and had to down three whole cups of milk, which the vendor thankfully had on demand, before finally getting my bearings again.

After dinner, Lumielle led us to a small inn near the harbour and got us a couple of rooms. Sadly, there were only two available, so Lorelei and I once again had to share our quarters with someone else.

The next morning we got up early and met with the goblin merchant, who went by the name of Snarky Salesman. I didn’t know if that was his title, or if he was actually called Snarky. It was entirely possible, considering goblin naming traditions. Safe to say, he made sure to honour his name full heartedly, barking orders at his crew nonstop, even when we were out of the outpost and there was literally nothing to order anyone around about.

The river was calm throughout the four days of travel. On the second day, we officially crossed into Rizishma. The towering sandstone castle that sat right up against the river of the same name was the clearest sign that we were now in the empire, but it couldn’t compare to the sight of Khibili.

We arrived in the late afternoon. The massive city sprawled out along the shores of a huge lake, larger even than the Moorrest lake at Omar. The city’s sandstone buildings were contrasted, even from afar, by countless of colourful linen canopies and lush green palm trees. The harbour was easily larger than the one in Segronne and if there was a variety of people in Helama, Khibili was on a whole other level entirely. I saw species I didn’t even know existed before. People with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a snake, lizard people fully clad in scales in all kinds of colours, people with feline features or canine features, that reminded me a lot of how Rosie looked. There was even an elephant person. An orc sized elephant but walking on two legs and with hands that had opposable thumbs. There were even mermaids swimming in the lake, greeting the ships that came through.

The more I took in this place, the more I understood why it was such an open place for people like me. With so much diversity going on… who even had the time to worry about one another’s differences? To question them? It would be much easier to simply focus on the things you had in common, instead.

Like how that half-snake woman held the hands of that humanoid tigress with interlocked fingers as they went around the stalls in the harbour. Openly, not a care in the world and no one else cared either.

Without missing a beat, I reached out and grabbed Lorelei’s hand as we followed the stream of people from the harbour towards the city centre. She interlocked our fingers and gave me a gentle smile, before squeezing our hands, once, twice. Like a heartbeat.

We made our way into the city centre, mostly on the lookout for a place to stay for two or three nights and I began to notice one thing: There were a lot of guards around. Nearly at every street corner stood a pair of them, keeping watch. I had yet to decide whether that filled me with a feeling of safety or worry.

Finally, after a good hour of going door-to-door from one inn to the next, we ran into one that still had three rooms available for three nights. Liana and Rosie excitedly ran off into the largest room we got, leaving Lumielle, Lorelei and I standing dumbfoundedly in the hallway.

Lumielle was the first to recover, laughing manically about the loss of our beautiful double-bed, before slipping into her own single bedroom. Lorelei and I sighed heavily and made our way into the two-bedroom. I had to grind my teeth, looking at the two small beds, standing on opposite sides of the room, divided by two nightstands in the middle.

“We could always just… cosy up?” Lorelei suggested. I could tell she way trying really hard to be uplifting, but it didn’t help much. The beds were made for people much smaller than us, so it would already be cramped just by yourself; adding another person would mean lying on top of one another the whole night through. Which I wouldn’t have minded, usually, but it was also absolutely scalding, even now that the sun was going down. We would literally melt before we could get a wink of sleep in those conditions.

Letting out another heavy sigh, I let myself fall down face first into one of the beds. “Another time maybe,” I mumbled into the covers.

I felt a hand caress the back of my head, stroking through my beautiful black hair. “Okay Marion,” Lorelei whispered. “We’ll have our moment, I’m sure.”

With that, she have me one last kiss on my head, before shuffling over to her own tiny bed.

“Night, Marion.”

“Good night, Lolo.”

“Sweet dreams!”

And I did.

*****

I shunted ‘awake’ in a familiar place. A small cosy room in a wooden house. A bed large enough for two pushed up against the tilted wall, where the roof was angled down. A window, shutters closed, right above the soft mattress. Books were strewn about everywhere, on the carpet covered wooden floor, on the dark wooden desk, even some in the half-opened wardrobe. A singular candle was still burning on the nightstand, about two-thirds burnt down, spending just a tiny bit of warmth in the chill of the night.

I sat up cross-legged and pulled part the warm blanket around me against the cold, leaving the rest of it wrapped around the adorable sleeping form of Sephie, her back turned to me. She was always so beautiful to look at. Her long ginger hair, her slender waist, it took everything in my power not to cuddle up to her right this moment. But I knew I shouldn’t.

I’d dreamt this dream many times now, just varying things slightly from time to time – lucid dreaming was a great tool for such things – but now I knew that things were different. Sephie was here and if the past three dreams I’ve had with her were any indication, it was very likely that this wasn’t just a lucid dream anymore. It was very likely that Sephie was very much here.

She stirred slightly, shifting from one side to the other, a gentle moan escaping her lips - a content one, rather than a sexual one – and moments after, her shining blue eyes opened slowly.

“Marion?” she asked softly, still half asleep and blinking away the sleepiness.

I smiled at her and nodded. “Hey there, Sephie… Long time no see.”

She shifted again, slowly righting herself up until she sat cross-legged like me, huddling her side of the blanket around herself as well.

“Hey…” she whispered. “It’s… been a while, yeah.” She looked more awake with each passing second. “Oh gods there is so much to talk about. I’ve been trying to reach you for over two weeks now, but I can’t seem to control this dream power in any way. Wait, Nydia told me you were going through the Wildlands! Are you okay? Where are you now?”

“Woah there, slow down a little,” I giggled and placed a hand on her shoulder. I realised I maybe shouldn’t have, but now it was too late anyways, so I let it stay. Sephie didn’t seem to mind either. “We’ve crossed the Wildlands already and then sailed through the Southlands after that. We actually just arrived in Rizishma the other day, it’s our first night back on land.”

Her eyes were practically sparkling as she heard my story. I told her about the tournament, the dragon, my transformation. Then I told her how I ran into Lorelei and Liana, how we escaped from the maw demon, about the tribes hunting us across the Wildlands and the ancient dwarf city where we cursed Rosie of her curse and how we met Lumielle. Then, finally, I told her how we arrived in Khibili, how diverse everyone and everything was down here, how women walked together holding hands like any other couple.

She seemed absolutely ecstatic. Then I told her about… the other stuff.

“And I… kind of… have a girlfriend now?” I formulated carefully.

Sephie’s eyes lit up. “You do? That’s amazing! Tell me everything about her!”

“Oh, uhh. I already did. Kind of. She’s… Lorelei. The elven princess travelling with us.”

“Oh my gods! You’re actually dating a princess! Wow that beats me…” she scratched the back of her head shyly.

“W-what do you mean, beats you?” I frowned.

“W-well I also have a girlfriend… two of them, actually. You’ve met Nydia before and then there’s also Cassie. I thought Nydia was a princess before, but apparently, she’s someth-“

“She’s a demon, I know.” I cut her off.

Her eyes went wide. “How do you-“

“I saw her in that dream… she wasn’t hiding it, really.”

Sephie bit her lip gently. “You… you’re not mad I’m dating a demon, are you?”

“What? No! I mean, she’s terrifying, but she seems… nice. And she looks-“

“Oh my gods she’s so fucking hot, right? It’s absurd! Do you think she has, like, some supernatural beauty because of the lust demon heritage?”

We continued chatting, gushing about our respective girlfriends and such. Then Stephanie began talking about her experiences. How she was there when Omar was attacked, how she was chased after by two demons and a creepy old man who wanted to get her artefact and how she wanted to meet up with me in the wildlands, but got off course because of the pursuers.

“We roughly knew where you were, because… well.” She looked down towards the mattress. “The artefact I got… It’s a compass that shows me where my ‘One True Love’ is, except it showed me six of them instead. I… uhm. I knew where you were because one of the needles is you.” She bit her lip and glanced back up at me and I felt a pang like no other in my heart.

I launched myself at her immediately and tackled her in a big hug, pressing her against me tightly until she needed air.

“I’m so sorry, Sephie! I- I never should have left you back then.” Tears were starting to run down my face and through my blurry vision, I saw Sephie welling up as well. “I just- I never thought you would… That you would still want me like this.”

“Marion… H-honestly, had you told me back then, I don’t know what I would have thought. But I know that I love you, with all my heart and that I love you still, even in your girlish self… especially in your girlish self. That night… when I first met the real you. It started to make me question myself. My attraction, my preferences. I think… I think some subconscious part of me always knew you were a girl, because – and I can’t believe I’m saying this – I might be the gayest girl to ever live.”

I couldn’t help but giggle a little at the end, rubbing away the tears in my eyes. “I’m… I’m really glad you still love me. I- I love you too, still. Although, I don’t know how Lorelei feels about that, so…”

“It’s okay!” Sephie reassured me, squeezing me softly. “I’m just… happy we both still feel the same way. I’m not in any rush to… rekindle things. Even though we did have that one night…” Her entire face was beet red within seconds. “B-but you should definitely talk to Lorelei about it first! Yes!”

I giggled again and squeezed her back. “Thank you, Sephie.”

We stayed like that for a while until Sephie spoke up again.

“I have honestly no clue when we’ll get to see each other again. Like… really see each other. No dreams and stuff. You’re all the way in Rizishma now and I’m… OH shit I didn’t even tell you! There is a whole civilization living in the Wolfland Forest! We escaped there when the demons hunted us and there was just this… massive woodland city and there are a bunch more in the forest and and AND there is a third continent! East of the Wolfland and we’re sailing there right now!”

What? Wait! “What?!”

Her eyes lit up again and she clapped excitedly. “Yes! Oh my gods I still have sooooo much stuff to tell you about! Did you ever drink something called a cocktail?”

END OF PART I