SN Chapter 31

Kuh-HUK kuh-HUK! Rikardis choked on air, the cough burning the back of his throat. He questioned his own ears. He was not entirely unacquainted with flattery—but from this particular source, in this particular form, he had never imagined it. The compliment had arrived like an ambush. The damage was considerable. The escort knights nearby could not even manage a proper cough. They made sounds instead—hkk—the sound of something landing directly in each Adam's apple.

"Drag her out—" came a whisper from somewhere behind him. That had been the measure deployed, years back, against a certain noble lady who'd sent twenty marriage proposals a day and shown no sign of stopping.

"The volume of your musculature is quite considerable, and the form is remarkably beautiful, Your Highness." Rosaline continued, entirely undeterred. "I would like to develop something similar—all those ridges and definition—but my physical constitution differs from a man's in rather too many respects. I envy you."

He looked. Her eyes were completely sincere. Genuine envy, unalloyed with anything else whatsoever.

Ah, stand down, stand down. The collective exhale from the knights—a communal fwhew—reached him as they pressed hands against their own chests.

"...I suppose you would."

Rikardis's expression compressed, then released. Yes. This was Rosaline. What more could one expect from this particular knight. The momentary discomposure smoothed itself flat, as though it had never occurred—like standing before a well-executed painting and noting: the color palette is beautiful. Technically a compliment. Professionally, an assessment. Nothing to take personal offense at, which was precisely why it needled him, inexplicably and specifically.

He glanced at her. She was tracing the lines of his physique in the air with graceful, unhurried gestures, apparently rendering the contours from memory to her own satisfaction.

'...That seems excessive. Even a woman with genuinely full curves wouldn't produce a silhouette quite like that...'

Rosaline received a sharp smack on her offending hand from Itserion before she could complete the aerial diagram. She turned to him with an expression of complete incomprehension.

The ensuing scolding for sexual harassment was extensive. Itserion, jaw set and muttering about the immediate necessity of sex education, summoned Raymond under the heading of legal guardian.

Raymond attempted to redirect this obligation under the heading of Kallix of Redwheel, who is technically the one responsible— It was a transparent transfer attempt and deceived no one.

While Itserion and Raymond conducted their animated negotiations over who exactly would be administering what to whom, Rosaline noticed the faint smear of dried blood on Rikardis's abdomen. She produced her canteen. She wetted her handkerchief.

Rikardis, observing this development, produced an expression that communicated, with some force: no way.

"Your pardon, Your Highness."

"No way."

The exact words he'd been thinking. Rosaline strode forward and applied the dampened cloth to the dried bloodstain. The fabric grazed his skin—he flinched. She scrubbed. He flinched again. The blood had set, which apparently warranted more substantial effort; she went to one knee, gripped the hem of his trousers for stability, and applied herself with genuine dedication. Each time her hands made contact, his eyebrow produced an involuntary response he was unable to prevent.

"......"

Before him: a woman on her knee, gripping his waistband, cleaning his abdomen with persistent industry.

Rikardis directed his gaze upward, toward the sky, and considered quietly what word applied to this.

Dumbfounded. Wretchedly absurd. Neither quite captured it. He was not certain any available language was adequate to his current state of mind.

He took the handkerchief from her. Firmly.

This escort knight—who had apparently mislaid every available social convention—had been producing this specific variety of bewilderment with increasing frequency lately. He opened his mouth. "You—" He stopped. "No, really—" He stopped again. He looked up at the sky.

"Enough......"

Distantly, wistfully. Not quite to her. Not quite to anyone.

Rosaline departed for the forest once the senior knights had finished their hunting and returned. He watched her back disappear between the trees for a moment, then looked away.

Itserion and Raymond stood briefly frozen over the scene they had just witnessed. Then, separately and privately, each arrived at the same grim resolution: tenfold. Whatever the current sex education schedule was, it required immediate expansion by a factor of ten.

A single figure moved through the green forest.

The animals she passed registered nothing—no disturbance to the air, no sound from the leaf litter. She moved through the high canopy in a sequence of leaps, reaching heights that no single jump alone could achieve. The landscape swished past in rapid succession. The trees here rose tall as in Illavénia, but the climate was different—the fragrance the forest breathed was subtly its own.

Rosaline moved from branch to branch, searching for prey. She'd given her evening rabbits to Rikardis, which left her needing separate provisions. The greatest discovery since her transformation into a human had been food. Humans combined meat and fruit and vegetables in intricate layers—single ingredients achieving complex harmonies of flavor that exceeded what any one thing alone could produce. She found this astonishing, interesting, and excellent. Yes: it was after becoming Rosaline that she'd first understood the concept of delicious. Missing a single meal was a genuine loss. She sharpened her attention to a fine edge and read the wide landscape with her whole body.

Working through the canopy, she encountered a familiar section of forest—the area near where she'd walked with the guide. She'd been through here before. The traps, she remembered suddenly. Rosaline dropped from the tall tree.

The ground should have shaken. It did not. Whatever sound the landing owed the earth, the earth collected in silence.

Beee— peee—

Animal cries. She identified the source immediately—she had consumed enough animals to know. Deer. She found the owner of those sounds within moments.

A young deer was caught in a hunter's net, blinking. Moisture caught the light in the black irises. The deer struggled against the mesh, working to free itself, and then found her, and went completely rigid. The posture of a child caught doing something it should not have been.

Rosaline narrowed her eyes at the young deer. More precisely: at what was inside the light brown coat. She watched quietly the current of magical energy circulating within the deer's form.

She recognized what this was at once. This was the first of her own kind she had encountered since gaining intelligence—since becoming aware of herself. Magical power was not something one detected unless it was in use. Meeting kin here was coincidence.

The magical energy moving strongly inside the deer was the sign that preceded transformation. If she hadn't come here at all, the creature would already have shifted into something smaller than the net's mesh and slipped free. She could simply leave.

She was starting to rise when she heard footsteps—not far off. Metal. Regular intervals. The held-breath movement of trained bodies. The delegation.

Rosaline crouched and met the young deer's eyes.

"Run."

The deer appeared to glare at her. You need to disappear first. A flat, reproachful look. This animal, wearing a deer's face, managed a remarkable range of expressions. Rosaline raised one arm. On the back of her hand, something like reptilian scales began to push up through the skin—clik-click-clik—the characteristic of the alligator she'd consumed some time ago.

The deer studied her hand with eyes that grew rounder still. Not at the reptilian surface—at the magical energy that had just begun to stir inside that form. The deer understood. The woman in front of it was the same species.

"Go."

Resolution crossed the young animal's eyes. Color began to drain from the legs tangled in the net—from light brown to the color of bark, then to complete black. The darkness spread, slowly covering the deer's entire body. The silhouette, dark as a deer's own shadow, began to break apart at its edges. It spread and dissolved, like sand, like smoke. In the time it took to blink, a small squirrel remained in the deer's place.

The small animal worked its nose, studying Rosaline at length. Her face reflected in the black, polished eyes. As the knights' footsteps drew closer, the squirrel freed itself from the net in one quick motion—but before climbing the tree, it looked back at her once more.

When the knights arrived to check the trap, both the squirrel and the woman had dissolved into the forest and left no trace.

The hillside camp was in an uproar.

Fires burned at intervals and the smell coming off them was extraordinary. People walked around with water canteens and behaved as though they'd been drinking something considerably stronger. It would have put a proper festival to shame.

"Rosaline! Rosaline!"

"Rosaline!"

"Best in camp, Rosaline!"

"You're magnificent, Rosaline!"

Senior knights passed with broad laughter, thumping her back as they went. Rosaline lifted the corners of her mouth in return. Five-tenths of the meat currently feeding this entire assembly was her contribution—which meant she'd also been substantially responsible for creating the festival atmosphere in the first place.

Two days of surviving on dry field rations and strips of jerky. Categorically insufficient for people carrying swords and armor up a mountainside. Their prince had told them to hunt for themselves and manage accordingly, but most knights, however excellent their swordsmanship, had hunting skills that could be charitably described as unremarkable. Someone had caught a frog. Someone else had arrived bearing the half-eaten carcass of some prior predator's abandoned meal, and received appropriate commentary from those nearby.

Into this context, Rosaline had walked out of the dark forest with a full-grown boar across one shoulder. An animal roughly the size of an adult man, clearly weighing twice that. She'd put it down in the camp, told the lower knights to dress it, reserved the best cuts for the prince, and told the rest to help themselves freely.

Many people had regarded her with something resembling devotion after that. Nestor in particular—who had, after all, caught a frog—gazed at her with an unfocused, transported expression.

She was magnificent.