Restless Soul - The New Adventures of Niamh & Looch Options

[PhonAntiPhon]

A Word To The Wise:
This story continues directly on from the end of what was the final tale: 21/09/13 - "From Darkness" - HERE. For anyone reading this who isn't familiar with the adventures of a certain Bosmer, a little background reading might help - (check my sig, or the link above) - for those of you who are, well it's nice to be back.
And yes, I *know* it's not Cyrodiil, but it will be, we just have to get there, be patient...
======================================================

-RESTLESS SOUL-
.I.

A soft lambency filled the apartment, from outside and far below the muted hum of early morning traffic filtered in through a half-open window. Lucinda awoke slowly, lay for a time under the covers, her head resting on the soft pillow, staring up at the smooth white ceiling. Beside her the woman from the night before slept peacefully on, her breathing slow and regular.

She'd said her name was Niamh E., just that and nothing more. She was the singer in one of the bands that played at weekends down at the waterfront bars. Luciana herself had worked in a grill bar on the front and had seen her about from time-to-time, had even stopped in Gracy's on the way home to hear her band once. Not really her thing, a bit too punky but none too shabby nevertheless. She had found the woman herself though more than a little intriguing; all tight leathers and colourful hair woven with red linen strips; piercings and heavy black makeup completed her look.

She'd come across as sassy onstage, giving hecklers and fans alike as good as they gave her, all the time following whisky with whisky, cigarette with cigarette. By the last song she'd stripped to her bra and knickers, skinny body jerking and weaving to the jittery beat of the music, hair lank about her face and shoulders, her liberally tattooed porcelain skin running with silvery sweat. As the final chords jangled out she was laughing and bouncing, dark eyes glinting under the stage lights, her body a blur as she spun around and around, arms stretched out, screaming at the top of her voice before finally collapsing onto the stage and crawling off on hands and knees to cheers and whistles and applause from the crowd. Lucinda remembered how jealous she had felt of Niamh's energy and life and how she had wished, and did still, that she too could be more like her.

Lucinda was not naturally attracted to women, but even she'd had to admit to herself that there was undoubtedly something about Niamh, she was a force of nature for sure and mysterious also, somehow, not just her manner or her looks on stage but, something, there was something about her that Lucinda could not quite place her finger upon; a look or an expression that betrayed something deeper maybe. Life moved on however, her job changed to another part of town and with it came a relationship with a guy who seemed - as they always do - to be The One.

He was not, as it turned out, and six months later she found herself single and alone, feeling sorry for herself in her apartment on the the tenth floor of a low rent block on N- Street. It was already dark and she had perhaps had a little too much wine when she found her thoughts turning once again to a certain mysterious and intriguing woman, in a band, on the waterfront.

-x-

So she found herself once again in Gracy's, standing at the bar sipping a gin and tonic and watching a whirlwind of life spin and dance across the stage and thinking, "why am I here? For the life? For the energy? Or for her..." in truth she did not know, but regardless clapped and cheered with the rest as once more, quivering with nervous energy, the real reason for her coming out crawled from the stage, a strange and spindly thing, dripping wet in dark underwear.

The performance over, the rest of the band left the stage and the audience drifted back to their seats and into their booths. A growing sussuration of whispered conversation and piped songs replaced the live music of only a few moments earlier. Around her the long bar began to fill up and Lucinda, still on her first drink and rapidly feeling more and more out of place and alone despite the crowded space, finished up and turned to go, placing the empty glass on the counter.

"Buy me drink?" Came a voice directly behind her. Lucinda froze, her blood draining into her feet. Heart hammering, she turned around. She was standing there, right there. Nodding her head slightly, she raised an eyebrow at Lucinda. "Hi, I'm Niamh E., just that." Lucinda froze for a moment. "Whu..." She said, her mind working furiously. Niamh chuckled, chewing at the silver ring that passed through her lower lip. Turning to the bar, she signalled the barman. "Whisky." She looked at Lucinda, grinned again. "She'll have the same, so she will."
The drinks duly arrived, and Lucinda numbly handed over the money. "Keep the change." She croaked when the barman brought back a handful of coins. "You have a voice, then." Said Niamh with a smile. "Don't mind if I do..." So saying she pocketed the change.

Niamh's long black hair was tied up in a high ponytail, and Lucinda could now see it was shot through with streaks of dark red and burgundy. "You have a name?" Niamh turned to face Lucinda as she asked, and it occurred to the latter later that it was quite possible that she had genuinely expected her to not actually have one. "Lucinda." She replied. "...Lucy for short."

Just for a moment, something passed behind Niamh's big chestnut eyes. "Lucy." She repeated the name slowly, turning it over in her mouth as if it reminded her of something. Then she blinked and gave a brief little half-smile; raising her glass she said, "I'll call ya Lucy, then." Lucy nodded. "If you like." Niamh paused, her glass halfway to her lips, regarded the other from under furrowed brows. "I might, at that..." Lucy felt herself blush.

-x-

It was impossible not to get on with Niamh. It was like fighting with some inexorable maelstrom; no matter how hard you struggled, you just kept getting drawn in. Not that Lucy was doing a great deal of struggling mind, on the contrary, another whisky later and Lucy, who had already had two glasses of red wine before leaving the flat, found herself close in a booth with Niamh, who seemed almost totally untouched by what she had drunk, and regarded the other woman across the table with wry amusement as Lucy flubbed her words and giggled behind her hands.

Back in the present, Lucy smiled, and cast a glance to her side at Niamh's still sleeping form. From out of the window the street down below had grown busier and the room was definitely lighter. Never mind, she was content. Closing her eyes she let her mind drift back to the evening before, it already seemed so far away.
One thing she did remember was that, before the evening got a little... hazy, she had sat and looked at Niamh as they talked, taking her in, as if wanting to record every detail of that first time they had met, as if it were the first time she had ever met anyone.

They'd downed the first shot in one, in silence, and Lucy had somehow ended up paying for another and Niamh had again taken the change. Lucy, feeling like some awkward teenager on a first date instead of a thirty-five year old divorcee, stumbled over further introductions and obvious questions about Niamh's band. Somewhere along the way though the answers and the conversation drifted away to be replaced by a silence that seemed to enclose the two of them in a comfortable isolating sphere and cut off all sound, leaving only vision and that, it felt to Lucy, was enhanced, somehow.

Niamh's face was long and angular, yet somehow delicate, "elfin" might have been the way to describe it; full lips and a small nose and two widely-set eyes, large and chestnut coloured, set in deep and shadowed sockets. Within the pupils though there was depth, like they were two unfathomable pools. Her eyes were captivating and seemed to drag Lucinda's attention back to them every time she moved her own gaze away. Around her left eye a horseshoe of multicoloured circles had been tattooed, with a small blue star just beneath. Her ears seemed overly large in comparison to her head, and they were heavily pierced through with rings; in addition to these there was a ring in her lip and another through her nostril, they were all thick bands of silver, and she was constantly chewing at the one in her lip.

Lucinda remembered that her gaze had looped lazily downwards, past Niamh's mouth; her lips, coated in black lipstick, moving silently it seemed to Lucy as she spoke, and down over her shoulders. It occurred to her now, here in bed with sobriety once more crystallising her thoughts, that the other woman had been watching her, Lucy, looking at her, all the time...
Niamh had been wearing some kind of tight black leather affair that left little to the imagination, it was unzipped to just below her chest and left her long, slender yet surprisingly muscular-looking arms bare - (and she was indeed, as Lucy was to find out later, considerably stronger and more sinewy than she seemed) - her skin was porcelain white, and unmarked but for numerous swirling tattoos of many colours, consisting, it turned out, exclusively of various shapes; circles and squares, stars and crescents. The effect was to make it seem like she was wearing some kind of dazzle camouflage, like the ships that Lucy had read about had been painted with in the war. Later, in the flat, it had been difficult to keep track of her movements, or perhaps that had just been the whisky.

"...another." The sound of the bar and its occupants crashed back in on Lucy. Feeling as if she were falling forwards, she snapped suddenly upright on the seat. Niamh waited patiently for her to compose herself, her head cocked on one side, long fingers steepled before her, the nails painted a deep black. "I said, get us another, I have to pee." Except Lucy heard it as: "...Ai harv t'pee..." Niamh's accent had a curious Gaelic quality to it, neither Scottish nor Irish, but some strange mixture of both. There was an odd sing-song quality to it also, a kind of underlying musicality present in every word she said. It was a little weird but rather pleasant at the same time - (a lot like Niamh herself, Lucinda thought). "Whisky?" Asked Lucy. Niamh winked. "Aye, that's my drink." She got up from the table but then paused, looking at Lucy with that same curious half-smile, and again Lucinda had the oddest feeling that Niamh recognised her somehow. After a moment Niamh said, "Don't worry, you're doin' just fine." So saying she leant quickly across the table and kissed Lucy once on the lips, before moving off and away, smoothly disappearing into the crowd.

Lucy raised her fingers to her mouth, the impression of Niamh's lips fading only slowly. Her touch, her closeness at that moment, her scent; cinnamon and sweat, whisky and something... exotic; Lucy took a deep breath, her heart was beating way too fast and for a moment she felt sure that the other woman had drugged her. "She's clearly not your type." Said her stern inner voice. "You've paid for the drinks all night and now she's poisoned you! walk away Lucy..." Nevertheless she found herself at the bar once more, and her second thoughts grumbled into silence, ignored for the moment at least.

It was very late by now and the bar, though still certainly lively, was nowhere near as full as it had been previously in the evening, and as such Lucy was able to get herself served fairly quickly. "I see you've got something goin' there with Niamh." Said the barman as he came over and took her order. He was a large man with a green mohican, a wide nose and a wider mouth, his name tag identified him as Boris. Lucy smiled and shrugged in a kind of "Maybe, sort of" way. "This is it." She thought. "This is where he tells me she's no good." Deep in her mind, her inner Lucinda sat up and grinned smuggly. Boris poured the drinks and waved away her money when she offered it. "Nah, keep it, it's on me. She'll fleece you that girl will, and you'll still love her for it." He raised a stubby finger. "Word to the wise though, be careful with 'er, she's more fragile than she looks, is Niamh." Lucy raised an eyebrow, squinting slightly from the whisky she'd drunk. "How do you mean? " Boris looked around him, then leant forward conspiratorially. "Just that she's been through a lot, that's all. Acts all tough and brash she does but she ain't as hard as she thinks that she is, I know." He pointed a finger at himself. "I've been like a father to 'er these past few years..." Lucy wanted to ask more, and it seemed Boris was about tell her something further, but other customers had by then arrived and, with a final glance at her and a brisk nod, he left to serve them.

Lucy was, as far as was possible given her increasing level of inebriation, somewhat more thoughtful when she returned to the booth. Niamh had already returned, and was slouched nonchalantly on one of the bench seats, toying with the silver ring that pierced her nostril. As Lucy sat down and passed her the whisky, Niamh gestured with her chin to the barman. "Boris collared you, did he?" She asked. "Yeah, he did..." She paused for a moment, took a sip of whisky. "He said, um..." It was her fourth or fifth of the night and the words in her head came only reluctantly to her lips. "I know what old Boris says." Interjected Niamh. "Now though, now's not the time for serious talk."

"What... is it now the time for?" Asked Lucy, suddenly breathless, her voice catching in her throat. Very deliberately Niamh drained her glass and placed it on the table. She licked her lips and stared directly at the other woman. "Well," she said, her curiously accented voice lilting musically, "I suppose we'll just have to see, won't we?"

-x-

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: Jul 22 2015, 11:36 PM

[PhonAntiPhon]

.IV.

Caught completely off guard, Lucy fell face first into the damp grass, only to have Niamh's fingers close round the collar of her blouse and yank her to her feet, she promptly stumbled again, holding her hands out in the darkness to brace herself against the impact with the ground.
Only a few feet from where the two women had been sitting, the slope dropped off sharply, Lucy's fall took her over the edge and sent her tumbling head over heels down the hill.

Niamh, her fingers tangling in the collar of Lucy's blouse, was thrown off balance and fell with her, cursing all the way, until the two of them fetched up painfully against the side of a fallen tree some twenty feet downslope from where they had been. Niamh sat up almost immediately, shaking her head to clear it, her senses reeling.
Looking up the slope, she could see three or maybe four dark shapes moving amongst the trees, and heard snatches of harsh, whispered conversation. Fortuitously their tumble down the hill appeared for the moment to have thrown off their attackers, whoever they were.

Turning to Lucy she was equally gratified to note that she was at least mostly conscious and appeared unhurt.
"Lucy..." She whispered, then again: "Lucy! cum on, ye hav tai moov, naow!"
Lucy rolled her head back until she hit the wood of the old tree behind her, opening her eyes she tried to focus on Niamh.
"Whu? Whu jus..." She asked groggily.
"Nae tyme!" rasped Niamh, grabbing hold of Lucy's collar once again and looking nervously upslope. Her hearing, far more sensitive than Lucy's even at the best of times, picked up the by now fainter sounds of their attackers heading off somewhere to their left.
"Possblee skuttyn' roon'..." She muttered to herself.

getting up into a crouch, she dragged the still dazed Lucy around to the end of the fallen tree, where, thankfully, she found that the middle of the trunk had rotted away, leaving a hole deep enough to hide a body.
Without further ado she pushed Lucy into the trunk and covered her with leaves. Ignoring Lucy's feeble protests and flopping limbs she leant into the trunk and grabbing the other woman's face to keep her head still, brought her own face in close.
"Stae heeyar, Lucy." She hissed. "Stai heeyar, ai WULL be bak, ye ken?"
Hoping that at least the most salient points of her admonition had got through, she turned to go, but stopping, turned back and leaning into the hole once more and with only the barest of pauses, kissed Lucy on her unprotesting lips.
Then she was gone into the darkness of the forest.

-x-

With a squeal, Lucy was dragged feet first into open, her flailing limbs throwing the hitherto concealing blanket of leaves hither and thither. Though dazed from the fall, she'd nonetheless been awake just enough to comprehend what Niamh had told her and had dutifully, once she had come round, lain still and quiet in the warm, enclosed, and mould-scented darkness of the trunk.
At some point she had, lulled by the sense of security she felt around her, dozed off, buried under a covering of leaves. What she had dreamed, she could not have said, and certainly was not now in a position to even attempt to recall.

"Niamh...?" She asked, lying on her back on the grass, blinking in the all-too-bright light of a blue-skied dawn.
The creature looking down at her was very definitely not Niamh, in fact, aside from the Spider-Thing, she had never in her life seen anything as hideous before. What was worse was that it was Here, right over her.

In a flash she took in all the detail she needed: humanoid, but massive and with a greenish-hue to its leathery skin. A bestial face with short pointed ears, dark pig-like eyes and a thick-lipped mouth full of tusk-like teeth looked down at her with an expression that mixed malice with open and unfettered lascivious hunger.
Opening her mouth, Lucy drew in as deep a breath as she could, and screamed.

The creature pulled its head back, momentarily perplexed, but upon realising that little harm was about to come to it from the pale and screeching woman on the ground beneath it, it grinned hugely and opening its own enormous maw, bellowed back at Lucy who, stunned, instantly ceased yelling and shut her mouth hard enough to clack her teeth painfully together.

Lucy lay on the grass and goggled up at the creature from eyes saucer-wide with fear, her face a bloodless mask of porcelain skin.
"Well well..." Rumbled the beast, dropping its wickedly curved and broad-bladed sword to the ground with a heavy thud.
"What 'ave we 'ere...?"

Bending down it observed her closely through squinted eyes, Lucy wrinkled her nose at the unwashed animal stench that emanated from its body, and its sour, rotting-meat breath.
"Hur, like a Princess." It said, standing up and blocking out the sun. "You 'ain't from round 'ere that's fer sure, but no matter, you'll gi' Old Graggus sumfin' at least, to show fer all this night's efforts."
Graggus laughed nastily, his voice thick and clotted as he eagerly surveyed his catch.

Lucy shuddered and tried to rearrange what was left of her clothing.
"Nah." Said Graggus. "Shouldn't bovva, girlie, I'm only gonna take it all off of ya anyway." He looked round momentarily. "Gave that Elf that was wiv yer the slip I did, oh yes, but I fink I'll take you somewhere a little more private."
He leant down and ran a hand roughly over Lucy's chest, prodding at her with a fat finger.
"An' then, " he said, a small string of silvery slobber forming at the corner of his mouth, "I can see about Taking You Somewhere A Little More Private, aha hur..."
Lucy cringed away from him as he loomed over her, laughing at his own joke.

Then, suddenly there was a dull thudding sound, and he stiffened, his enormous brows knotted together as his face took on a look of quizzical surprise, and like one of the massive fallen trees strewn round about, he toppled over onto the grass.
With extraordinary presence of mind Lucy rolled away from him, avoiding being crushed as he fell fowards onto his face. Lucy sat up, her heart pounding in her chest.

There was a dent in the back of the creature's head, from which greenish blood was welling lazily. Graggus moaned softly and snorted, one hand moving to investigate his wounded skull. Taking advantage of the situation, Lucy was in the process of scuttling backwards away from him on her hands and feet when from out of the bushes behind Graggus came a familiar figure.
Hurtling out of undergrowth, Niamh threw herself upon the prone creature, her face a mask of malignant fury.

"Ye leeve her a-loan, ya Orc Bastyd!" She yelled, and drawing back an arm swung the rock she was holding in her fist down upon Graggus' skull. Once, twice, thrice, until the hard sound of rock on bone was replaced by the wet, sloppy sound of rock mashing into brains and gore. Niamh, sitting astride the still twitching creature's back, stopped her assault and, taking a moment to catch her breath, threw the stone away from her and wiped her blood-and-matter-streaked hand and arm upon the Graggus' roughspun tunic.

Lucy gaped first at Niamh, and then at Graggus' rapidly cooling corpse.
"You... He was going to..." She began.
"Aye, tha's ryte, an' he wuid-a too..." She shuddered as she climbed off the body. "An' b'leev me whun ai sai, yt isnae suthyn yr ferget, neetha."
She walked over to where Lucy still sat huddled against the fallen tree and, bending over, she gently took her arm.
"Stand up naow, Lucy, lessee ye, an' whut's whut."

Shakily, Lucy got to her feet. Niamh, taking a step back, looked her up and down.
"Wull, ai thynk ye'll lyve. Haow's ye breethyn?" Niamh looked at Lucy intently, head to one side, dark eyes probing her face.
Lucy took a deep, slightly experimental breath. Despite everything, it did feel a little easier. Paradoxically the sleep from which she'd been so suddenly and terrifyingly awakened seemed to have done some good.
"It's better..."
"Guid." Replied Niamh, her voice soft.

Lucy, remembering something, placed her fingers momentarily on her own lips, lightly touching them.
"You kissed me..." She said.
"Aye, ai dyd." Replied Niamh. "Yf'n ai cun kip y'alyve fer loang 'nuff ai'll kyss ye agin too..."
Lucy studied Niamh for a moment, her eyes critical. The Elf met her gaze directly and openly.
"I'm not sure, still, whether I want you to, Niamh" Lucy lowered her eyes, looked sideways at her companion. "You are the reason I'm here..."
"Ai am." Niamh's response was immediate and loaded.

Lucy shook her head and smiled ruefully. It was a paradox that precluded resolution. On the one hand it was because of Niamh that Lucy found herself in this new world; on the other, it was because Niamh saved her life, when she could have left her, that Lucy was here. She could either make the best of it, or she could spend the rest of... however long... resenting the Elf and being lonely and miserable.

She studied Niamh a moment longer. The attraction was still there, undeniably - more perhaps, given the fact that the woman standing opposite her was quite literally exotic, rather than just appearing to be so. She sighed, it was she supposed better to give in and have a Niamh and the promise of... something, than to have no Niamh at all and potentially nothing.

Lucy, visibly relaxing for perhaps the first time, chuckled, shaking her head at Niamh.
"Whut?" Asked the Elf, a quizzical look on her face.
"Do you have this effect on all the women you meet?"
Niamh was silent for a moment, then grinned lopsidedly. "Sum."
"You win." Said Lucy quietly, and stepped close to Niamh, her arms spread.

The two women held each other tightly, and lucy closed her eyes and rested her head on the other's shoulder. Niamh was so skinny, and yet her body pulsed with life and strength. She had the physique of Bruce Lee. Lucy remembered being impressed by her physicality that first time, oh so long ago now, it seemed.
She breathed in, and again the heady scent of cinnamon and mysterious spices, mixed now with sweat and dirt filled her senses.
"Ai'll luik afta ye, Lucy." Said Niamh quietly.
"You better." Replied the other. There was a brief squeeze from the Elf in acknowledgement.

They remained that way, arms locked around each other, eyes closed and bodies pressed tightly together for some moments, relishing the closeness and the calm it brought with it after the chaos of the last few hours and days. A cool breeze ruffled their hair and all was silent apart from the gentle soughing of the branches around them, and the calling of birds up in the trees deeper into the forest.

Finally Lucy opened her eyes and reality, such as it was, once again made its presence felt.
"What is that?" She asked, barely keeping the shudder from her voice.
Niamh broke away and turned to look.
"Tha' thair yz a Orc." She said.
"Are they all like that?" Asked Lucy, her face screwing up into an expression of disgust as she studied the massive corpse. A pool of dark green blood was coagulating slowly around its smashed skull.
"Whut, vy-olent Raipysts? Aye sum o'em yus - jus' lyke hyoomenz, an' Elves." Niamh shrugged. "Theeyar nae dyff'runt yn theeyar wai, buit nae, Lucy, no' evree wun."
She put her hands on Lucy's shoulders and looked into her face, her dark eyes wide.
"Ye hae a lotte tae lurn, Looz, buit nae wurree, ai'll b'heeyar."
For a moment the two women studied each other, then Lucy nodded, once, and grinned. "Yeah, I believe you will."
"Guid." Replied Niamh, and leaning forward, kissed Lucy lightly on the end of her nose.

"Noo," she said stepping back, "We hae tae gette ye oot o' tha' stuffe." She gestured at the remnants of Lucy's clothing.
Lucy looked dubiously around the clearing.
"This is hardly the time, Niamh, and besides you could be a little less brusque about it..."
The Elf looked at her for a moment in puzzlement, then realisation dawned.
"Och, noo! Theeyar'll b' tyme enuff fer that layta." She said with a wink. "Nae, Yoo stycke oot lyke a spare prycke atte a weddyn' yn them cloths."
"Well what do you suggest?" Replied Lucy, blushing somewhat at the thought of "later".
"Wull, gimme a sec an' ai'll hae ye sum nue thredz."

With that, and before Lucy could say anything, Niamh had disappeared into the bushes once again, heading back in the direction from which she had come. Lucy, having put as much distance between herself and the dead orc as was possible, waited nervously for her companion to reappear.
As she waited, she looked down at herself with a critical eye. Her feet were bare, her shoes having long since come adrift, her skirt was mostly in one piece, though it was filthy and stained, and ripped around the hem.

Her blouse seemed to have come off worst overall, the knot with which she had secured it across her belly was still holding at least but one of the sleeves was ripped almost off at the elbow, and the collar was hanging loosely over one shoulder. It had once been white, but was now dirt- and blood-stained, and smelt strongly of stale, sour sweat.
More than anything she wanted a bath, even over the gnawing feeling of hunger that was growing in her stomach, but a part of her was very much resigned to the fact that the dirt covering her exposed skin was only going to get worse before it got better.

Niamh returned soon enough, and handed Lucy the bundle.
"What's this?" Lucy asked dubiously.
"Wun o' the Bandytz wuz a wumman, an smallysh, 'boot ur syze." Explained Niamh. "Ai figgured ye hae moar yoos fer the thredz than she dydde..."
"You want me to wear this?" Lucy untangled the clothing and held it at arms length. It smelt even worse than hers did and was if anything even more filthy. There was a pair of tan, brushed leather trousers and a jacket of similar material. Both had lace fastenings made from strips of leather. A pair of boots, darker brown and worn but evidently sturdy fell from the bundle onto the ground at Lucy's feet.
"Yus." Said Niamh, and then looked nervously around the clearing. "An b' kwyk too, ey? We hae tae gette oot o' heeyar sharp, kais o' moar o' theez bastidz..." She looked pointedly at the dead orc as she said the last word.

There didn't seem much point being modest.
Lucy untied her blouse and stripped it off, then slid her skirt down her legs, aware as she stepped out of it that Niamh was quite openly watching her.
"Ye'll wun't tae drop ye keks." Said Niamh, pointing at Lucy's knickers.
"What?" Said Lucy, freezing midway to picking up the ex-bandit's trousers.
"Ye keks. s'betta tae hae sum ayr roon' ye nethas." Replied Niamh matter-of-factly. "Twull be a wyle tyl ye hae a wosh, an' yu'll be ryte skanky yf'n ye kepe them onne. Trus' me."

Lucy paused for a moment longer and then, shrugging, pulled off her underwear.
"Yooz the byndin' onne ye boobz." Niamh pointed at the strip of dark green cloth on the ground. It had fallen, hitherto unnoticed, from the jacket.
Lucy fastened the trousers and bending once again, picked up the length of cloth; the material, though softer than the rest of her attire, was no less dirty, in fact it had an unpleasantly greasy feel to it.
"Aye." Niamh nodded encouragingly. "Yu'll blend yn betta an' yu'll b' moar cumfee." Niamh pointed at herself, and looking at her, Lucy noticed for the first time what the Elf was wearing: form-fitting, dark-blue or black leather trousers and jacket, knee-length boots of a softer-looking material, though still just as dark. The jacket was open almost to her navel, revealing beneath it a binding similar to the one that Lucy now held, but of better quality.
Niamh had tied her deep black hair up in a high ponytail, holding it fast with red cloth, saving for two tightly wound braids that hung down in front of her long, pointed ears which stuck out, their trailing edges pierced by multiple silver rings, from the sides of her long, narrow skull. Her true nature was thoroughly ascendant now and Lucy saw confirmation, if any were needed, that Niamh herself was a creature very different from the apparent reflection she had fallen in with in her world.

It took Lucy a few minutes more to dress herself, and when she was done, Niamh looked her over and nodded approvingly.
"Aye, ye'll doo." She said.
"Just that?" Replied Lucy, feeling more than a little self-conscious. Frowning, she reached under the jacket and tugged at the chest-binding. The clothes mostly fitted, but aside from their dirty condition, the material was rough and scratchy. The boots were comfortable enough, if a little tight. Lucy had been briefly concerned that she might get blisters, before figuring that blisters, at least, were very much down on her priority list at the moment.
"Yup, 's'enuff fer the mo'." Answered Niamh. "An' noo, we hae tae go."
"Which way?" Lucy, having lost all sense of what bearings she had following the earlier tumble down the slope, looked blankly to left and right.
"South." Said Niamh, and checking to make sure Lucy followed, headed out of the clearing and into the trees.

-x-

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: May 3 2016, 06:16 AM