"Inherited Traits"
>-Chapter One- In Which We Meet Our Hera, as She Gets Kicked Out -<
The snow bank flew up and met my face. It was traveling too fast to avoid, and I landed in it, face first. As I pushed my way out of the deep, soft snow, my back-pack landed beside me. I shook my head, clearing the white wet substance from my eyes and hair. Behind me I heard a comanding voice say
"And stay out!"
I turned and spat. "Your mother was a troll, and your father was a near-sighted Doppelganger!"
One would think that doors that big and majestic couldn't be slammed. Despite this the door slammed in my somewhat less that witty comeback's wake. I finished extracting myself from the snow, and started brushing my clothes off. Leather, silk and fishnet don't keep you very warm, after all, and it's even worse when they're wet. I picked up my backpack and took one more look at the mountain citadel that had been my home for as long as I could remember.
And wished I had a can of spray paint.
Then I pulled my only coat- a long leather trench coat- out of the pack and slipped it on. My arms were going my numb, and my feet were beating them there. And I'm not even going to mention my ears. Felt like they were going into deep freeze storage, and the wind that was pickng up didn't help at all. I shouldered the remarkably small burden of my worldly possesions and headed down the mountain. Then I looked back and saw another snow storm picking up. I smiled, nastily, and put my hands in my armpits to warm them up, watching the storm clouds get closer, moving slowly towrds and over the ice-bound citadel. My fingers finished thawing, and I pulled my poor, much abused digits out into the cold. They sparkled with magic as I pulled every string I could to make the storm stay, against their own weather workers, and be truly nasty. No good deed goes unpunished after all.
"Whew." My ears were well and truly frozen. I laid them as far back as I could into my hair, and replaced my hands in my armpits. They weren't as cold as they could have been, since I'd been working magic, but they were still complaining. I started walking again.
Now you might be wondering at this point who, and quite possibly what I am.
Well I'm what happenes when a human sorceress has too much time, power and hormones on her hands, and an elf in her bed. I'm a half-elf. Rare, if not unique, not very well liked, and among other things, a thief. Which is how I'd gotten myself thrown out of the Step. I get the feeling they would have killed me. However there are a few good things about being me. They didn't want to get my mother mad, but they didn't want me collaborating with her- well that's providing I could stand her, I'm not sure if I could- so they didn't want to send me back to her, or kill me. Which is why they just threw me out with next to no supplies. That way they technically didn't kill me. It's their way of prescribing a death sentence without carrying it out. They were gonna be really suprised. I had no intentions of dying in this icy waste. Like the elves, for me it was death only by violence.
I smiled to myself, and suddenly a huge gust of wind almost blew me off my feet and into a snowbank. An icy, snow laden gust of wind. I turned around to look back one more time, and realised I may have over done it a bit. The storm had grown, and it had started out bigger than I thought and it was about to over take me, as well as bury those highnosed bastards in the Step. I started running, eyes scanning for some kind of shelter. Because when that storm caught up with me, I was going to need it.
The wind caught up with me, freezing me solid till I couldn't feel the parts of my body move. My breath steamed up, obscuring my already decreasing vision drastically. I hate the cold. I really, really, hate being cold. Which is slightly weird when you think about it, because I'm called Ice. As in as cold as. Well, more frequently it's more like as frigid as a penguin on an iceberg. But they call me Ice. Sometimes. But they'd be calling me a corpse if I didn't get under shelter before the brunt of that very large storm hit me. I tripped and started rolling, snow caking to my thick, black hair, turning it white, and getting in my eyes, as well as everywhere else. After what seemed like a eternity I finaly stopped rolling. Through a supreme effort of will, I lifted my head, and dimly, through the snow crusted in my eyelashes, saw a stand of trees and a small cave. Cursing like a sailor, I crawled forward, alternating between spitting at the weather and cursing the clothes that I wore. First off it was a skirt, which hardly kept the snow and cold out. And another thing, it was slit up to my hip on my right side. What there was of my bodice wasn't worth mentioning, and I cursed the men who defined the women's styles. I cursed the cave for being so far away. I cursed the sneaky bastard who had manage to catch me and get my kicked out of the Step. I was cursing so hard it almost warmed me, I wouldn't have noticed when I entered the cave, if it wasn't for the wind that stopped howling around me. With a sense of relief I fell on my face. For a few moments I let myself lay there on the leaf covered floor of the cave, enjoying the relative warmth. But it was only relative and the wind whistled through the mouth of the cave, and up my soaked legs. I counted myself as lucky to have found one of the few wooded areas. The trees doubtless were sheltering the cave. But not nearly enough.
"Fuck and damn it's cold." I snarled to no one in particular. I pulled myself into a ball and lit a small witchlight to go through my bags with. The glimmering white-blue light floated just above my head as I scrubbed the crusted snow out of my hair and face distastefully. Another thread of magic kept the wind from blowing the snow into my small shelter. Pratical magic. I hated it, but it was preliminaries for any of the good stuff. Besides, with the proper aplication it could be plenty nasty. Witchlights could be used to blind, and storms like the one I'd stirred up would cover any escape, and the charm to keep the wind out could be wrapped like a cloth around someone's head, to smother them.
Frozen fingers pulled a pair of velvet leggins out of my bag, and I spared a brief moment to wonder why I owned no pratical clothing. I shed my fishnet stockings and pulled the breeches up under the skirt, sighing, as they trapped the warmth by body gave off.
"That's better." I muttered to myself, and found a big, flannel-backed satin shirt to pull over my bodice. Dressed in several layers I slowly began to warm up, and found the energy to expend inspecting my surroundings. I was in the mouth of a cave, and in the light of my witch flame, I could see it extended far back into the hill. My curiosity fired up and I longed to go explore- but first, I had to warm up. I was nowhere near as hardy as my elvin relatives. As genetics go, I think I pretty much grabbed the short end of the stick. I age slower than a human, how much slower I'm not sure, but slower. I look like an elf, and don't get sick, but, well, cold affects me more than I'd ever seen it effect any of those bastards, which is all I have to go on. Anyhow, I was cold and I was grumpy and I had, in that cave, enough dry wood to start a fire.
Less than fifteen minutes later, I was well on the way to warm and dry. Another small spell kept the wood burning hotter, for longer than it normally would. The air in the cave was heating up to a tolerable level and the warmer it got, the friskier I got. Hours later, when I was finally completely dry, I was ready to explore the cave behind me. I may not have the spectacular endurance of my elven brethren, but I knew if I went to sleep, even with the fire, I might not wake up. The cave was only warm in comparison to outside.
Besides, I was bloody curious, and I never sleep well when I'm itching with unfufilled curiosity. So, witchlight bobbing at my shoulder, I headed cautiously into the recesses of the cave. Okay, maybe recesses is an overly dramatic term. I went further back into the cave. It didn't exactly go into recesses. All in all, I probably didn't go further back than fifty more yards, the cave mouth I was set up in being about three yards across and two and a half yards tall. Which suited me just fine, because once I switched to low-heeled boots, I just barely fit, when both I and my ears were standing up. So I went back into the cave. As I walked, the cave narrowed, till it was about yard, then slowly began to narrow more, and even more slowly, began to get shorter. I was about to stop, inching along sideways is not my idea of fun, when it widened again, just enoguh for me to face forward, which was just as well, as I had to duck to get into a small chamber. The chamber glistened slightly with what I originally thought was moisture, but it was cooler here than in the rest of the cave, and closer inspection proved the walls to sparkle with mica and quartz. But huddled against the back of the cave was a very dead, and freeze-dried corpse. My ears perked in curiosity and I cursed as they hit the ceiling. I knelt down and scooted forward to get a better look. I sent my witchlight to hover over the corpse, drawing the long dagger I wear along my hip to prod the body with. I prodded the dried shell, gently, then harder. It fell over with a crash and I jumped slightly. What the figure, it was male, was curled around a sword.
"Oh yeah...." I breathed. It was a bit preemptive, considering that I didn't know what the blade was like. I pried it from the dead guy's fingers without a second thought. He had it and I wanted it, and he could have been a live troll, and I would have gotten it anyway. I inspected it carefully, and suddenly discovered the joys of charlyhorses. My curse vocablary was reexercised, as I carefully streched it out, banging my head in the rough stone ceiling several times in the process. After rubbing my head a bit to calm the ache, I decided to take the sword back into the main part of the cave. After a second thought, I grabbed the corpse's cape, it was tattered and stained, but it was thick and looked warm. At very least I could get a scarf out of it, at best a blanket.
It took me a little longer to worm my way out, carrying the cape and the sword, but I did it. After all, I thought as I reached the cave mouth where my pack was waiting beside the small, and warming fire, it was at least something to think about for a while. But first I rummaged in my pack and came up with a stick of jerky. I placed it around cold in how much I liked it, but it was there, and it was food. I may have been able to get by on less food than an average mortal, but, again, I wasn't an elf. Which my body was reminding me of. It said "SLEEP YOU IDIOT!" "I NEED FOOD!"
At least I wasn't cold anymore. Beside the fire it was very nice. I shook the cloak I'd scavenged out and sprinkled a fair bit of herbs over it to mask and dissolve any remaining odors its previous owner might have left on it. That, over a bank of dried leaves made a comfortable seat. I put on a couple extra layers, just in case. Then I laid the sword beside the fire, extinguished the magelight and fell asleep.