Trying To Get By Ch. 02

Rhisu chuckled, "I don't know if it's ever occurred to you all, but we're the ones who have to live in the mountains because of the way we've all hated each other forever. There's not much in the way of wood where I come from, not for more than burning to keep a hearth lit on a cold night, anyway."

"But all of that's someplace else for you and me now, isn't it?

"I'm asking you to think a minute.

"Do you really want to keep up a fight between us that means nothing here? I don't know where we are or how to get back. If you do, please tell me and I'll do what I can to help you to get us back there so we can kill each other properly.

"Because if we go back to it right here, those people over there will think we're both pretty stupid and I'm thinking that they'd be right for thinking it.

"Now you look to me to be better than that. I know without a doubt that I am. My male is dead thanks to your kind, but I won't hold you to account over it because to do that would be as stupid as the rest of it all.

"Wherever we are now, the war's back there somewhere behind us. It's not here - and I'll tell you for nothing that I've no want to see more of it fought out in this place, between two people who are now somewhere where there IS no war as far as I'm knowing - unless they bring it here themselves."

She leaned forward a little and her smile widened, "And I've no intention of bringing it."

Her eyes flicked down toward the tip of the lance which wavered a little at the level of her throat for a moment before they were looking steadily into Lelly's eyes again.

She smiled as disarmingly as she could, "Oh, there's no need to be so nervous, friend. As I've told you, I've no mind to harm you in any way - though you might want to lower your lance just as a kindness to me before I begin to think that you'd look better with it wrapped around your fine neck there."

Lelly lowered the lance and Rhisu nodded her thanks. "Just looking at you, I'd say you've likely killed a few of mine, just as I've killed a few of yours. This isn't that place, so I'm willing to leave my ghosts where they lie.

"If you can do the same, then I'd say that we can try to get along and wonder what the mess that these bastards took us from was all about."

She held out her hand but saw in an instant that there would be nothing like that sort of gesture from the other one, so she lowered it again.

"I see," she said with a bit of sadness after a moment, "Well I'm sorry to be bothering you and I wish you a good day - or whatever passes for one here."

She looked in her pack and pulled out a folded article, "Here."

Lelly looked at it and then at Rhisu, "What am I supposed to do with that?"

Rhisu snorted, "Look, you just can't be this proud and stupid. Acting proud and stupid is what Highlanders like me are for - when we're not acting stupid and proud because we got the order of it a little wrong.

"It's a blanket; you must have seen one before, no?

"You might be too cold to have noticed, but you don't have much of anything else, sweet thing. You'll freeze to death out here without at least something on you. I'm giving you this blanket so that it hopefully doesn't happen."

Lelly looked down and then back at Rhisu, "Why?"

Rhisu shook her head and muttered "Fuck me," to the snow.

She looked over, "Because I don't want you to die.

"I don't know what you thought that I've been saying - or if you were even listening to me at all.

She sighed loudly, "Just try to pay attention now, alright? I promise that I'll only take up another minute or two of your busy day, so just listen.

"We're not on our own world anymore. Even if we were and I saw you outside on a day like this, dressed like that where I'm from, I'd tell you the same thing."

"Why?" Lelly asked again, "I know of your people. The strongest breed of the Highlanders, the mightiest of their warriors.

"The very best of their killers.

She jabbed out in the air between them with a finger pointed at the blonde, "You kill my people easier than I can draw a breath. They say that one of you can kill two hundred in an hour by yourself. Is it true?"

"Doesn't matter," Rhisu said, "That was then, in a place where there was a war.

"I could do a lot better than that or none at all depending on where I was and if I had orders and the ammunition or ordnance for it. No orders, no killing. And all of it makes no difference here except for one thing.

"I won't kill you here - unless you try to kill me.

"If there was somebody from back there - here right now ordering me to kill you, I'd stand right next to you with my arm over your lovely shoulder like we're the best of friends and tell him to fuck himself. There's no war here. You understand now?

Lelly tilted her head, "Now you give me this? What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing," Rhisu said, "It's a thick and heavy blanket.

"Simple to operate, no moving parts.

"Only one previous owner, since I used it for a pillow last night, but I'm thinking that if you get cold enough, you won't mind it's history too much. I'm giving it to you because I care enough about another person who is enough like me that I wish her no harm - as I've said before, if you were even listening at all. I offered you a coat for starters, but you talked me out of it, so I want to give you a blanket at least.

"Look, I'm sorry if the war has made you so wary that you can't accept some goodwill from another person simply because she cares whether you live or you die. But that's what I am and it's what you need whether you like me or not."

She leaned forward and spoke slowly, "We. Are. Not. There. Anymore.

"You got that? Alright, here's the second part of the sermon. Are you ready?

"There. Is. No. War. Here."

Lelly shook her head, "Why not? What stops you from killing me here?"

Rhisu looked down, ready to pull her own hair out.

She looked back up, "Maybe you heard that line of shite about us eating Lowlander babies alive and lapping up the blood of your fallen. Let me set you straight about something that you seem to be reluctant to accept here.

"Highlanders don't go around drooling and hoping for the next fresh meat to slay while it's on the hoof. It takes an order from somebody higher than we are to get us to do anything.

"Why would I want to kill you here or anywhere? There's nobody ordering me to kill you, is there? How many times have I got to tell you the same thing?

"Look, I'm a Highlander, yeah? You spotted me right off, you sly girl, you.

"Now, I don't know what you've been told, but you can trust me on this part here, Precious.

"A Highlander only does what he or she's ordered to do. If I don't hear any orders, I stand around, wishing I could get something hot to eat or go back to bed. That's it. That's all. Nothing to see here, people, just move along."

Lelly opened her mouth, but Rhisu held up her hand.

"Just trust me. Please just trust me enough to listen and believe this one thing. The only war here is in your heart - and that's only if you still carry it there. I surely do not carry it in mine any longer - friend."

She jabbed her finger at the folded blanket in her other hand. "If you've been wondering why your fingers, your ears, those pretty tits, and your lovely nose are all tingling, that's because it's cold here, not like where you're from, Lowlander. If you've a brain and you think you'd like to live for another day at least, then you'll put this around yourself and try to stay at least a little warm.

"Please.

"Here's the important stuff boiled down to keep it simple, alright? Repeat after me if you need to convince yourself. I don't want to kill you, it's just a blanket, there's nothing wrong with it, and I don't want you to die."

She tossed it to Lelly, who watched it come, hit her softly under her breasts and then land in the snow at her feet.

Rhisu said, "Good day to you and you're welcome."

She turned and walked off to stand some distance away.

After a moment, she took a full magazine from her pouch and slapped it into her weapon before she hung it back where it had been on her shoulder. She looked back to see the Lowlander glaring at her, but at least she was wearing the blanket.

Rhisu made no sign that she noticed or cared and looked off again in another direction.

Lelly quietly exhaled the breath that she'd seemed to be holding. The whole interlude had been terrifying for her.

After a few minutes, Rhisu heard someone else come down the ramp from the ship.

She didn't turn around.

By the sounds, whoever it was had four feet and hooves, so she guessed that it was either another Lowlander or with her luck, it might be one of her kind, just as full of unthinking hatred as the lowland girl.

She wanted neither one now. She just wanted to be left alone.

Some moments later, she heard someone not far away exhale heavily and the sound carried some shivering in it. Rhisu turned and was a little amazed.

The newcomer was another lowlander, but a different kind from the equatorial jungles by the look of her, so she didn't have a stake in an old war. She liked the sweet black bottom end of her right off. It gave her a few dirty thoughts which surprised her very much.

She was also surprised at how much she liked having them.

The girl's skin was very dark and her incredibly long hair tumbled far down in a mass of waves and ringlets. She carried a lance of a kind, though Rhisu could see charms hanging from it here and there.

Backing out her view to look again, she could see a fair bit of surprisingly ornate jewellery from her throat to her breast, even on her hands. Mostly, she saw a ton of pearls on gold chain and ..

Her gaze snapped back up to her face and her bare chest then.

And gorgeous tits.

Two things; Rhisu thought.

One, this girl was not carrying anything more than what she could see, so death by exposure was a possibility which grew more certain with every passing second, since she was far, far out of her element in this place.

Two, cold or not, she was looking at the most amazing beauty that she'd ever seen in her life, not that she considered herself to be much of a judge of that sort of thing.

The dark one looked at Rhisu and finally crossed her arms over her breasts because of the cold, "Please excuse me ..."

Rhisu pulled out her spare coat and held it out, "Here.

"You need this on you.

"Now."

She unfolded the garment with one flick of her wrist and threw most of it over the dark girl's back, then holding up the rest, she said, "Put your arms into the sleeves and pull it up around your shoulders so that it gets close to your throat. I'll spread out the rest over your back end."

With that done, Rhisu stepped around to the front of the newcomer and said, "Now bend your head down a little so I can pull up the hood before your ears freeze solid and fall right off."

"My - my ears would freeze?" the girl asked.

Rhisu shrugged as she moved the black mane forward before pulling up the hood, "By the look that I see on you, I'm guessing that you've never seen land like this in your life. And for sure, you've never seen snow before either."

"No," the girl said, though it was pretty self-evident, "My name is Zhizah. My hair ..."

"Don't you worry about your hair," Rhisu smiled as she worked, "It won't bother you much even if it did freeze, but frostbitten ears hurt something awful. I'll tell you that for nothing."

She looked with a curious smile, trying not to stare as the dark girl raised her head, "And I really like your fine name."

It was the strangest thing; she was still so taken with the way that this girl looked, cold or otherwise, and as far as she was able to think back, she'd never had the passing thought that it would be so good to kiss another girl's lips just once. Well, this one's lips, anyway.

It was the sort of thought that Rhisu might have had over some males - especially one that she still missed, but this was very different in a way ...

She wanted to give her head a shake but didn't.

Those lips were trembling with cold as Rhisu began to close the many buttons at the front, making sure that the inner wind flaps were across the girl's chest as she did. She saw that her companion was trying to look down at what she was doing.

"Don't mind what I'm doing," Rhisu smiled, "This is a good coat, so the maker of it thought of everything - and what he didn't think of, I reminded him to be sure to add. There are flaps to it on the inside. I'm pulling them so that they'll lie across each other against you, if you know what I'm sayin'. To block the wind, right?

"So when the thing's closed and done up, there'll be no wind that gets in against your chest. There's nothing worse on a cold windy day than feeling that and not being able to do anything about it. It feels something like a cold spear being pushed in very slowly, in case you were wondering."

"Thank you for this," the girl said as she began to look up, "I have never felt any ... thing this cold before and ..."

Zhizah fell silent, looking into such a startlingly beautiful face. She'd never seen such light skin or ... long, fine hair that made the term 'blonde' make sense to her at last now that she'd actually seen it and ...

Her eyes took in as much of the view as they could.

Her benefactor was tall and muscular with a heavy and quite obviously strong lower end which was a light golden tan everywhere. And even so, all that she could see was a lovely and powerfully-made female who was not stocky but proportioned more like a girl half her size.

She didn't think that it was possible. Any of the males where she was from even a little near to this girl's size had torsos shaped like tree trunks.

Her hair was like spun flax, there on her head, her tail, and even over her lovely hocks when she lifted her hooves. It spoke to her of strength and power and ... and even good cheer, which she took to be a little amazing as well.

Then she discovered another first for her list on this day.

Blue eyes - as light as the sky ...

She felt as though there was some sort of spell at work here, holding her gaze like some kind of ...

She'd never seen eyes like ...

It took her a moment to hear what was being said to her.

"Zhizah?

"Zhizah, can you hear me?"

She came back to herself and nodded, feeling a little foolish, "Yes. I am sorry. I do not know where I was for a moment. What is your name please? We have a spirit which looks as you do."

"My name's Rhisu," the blonde smiled easily, completely taken with the gentle accent that she heard, "but I'm not a spirit - at least not yet.

"Is that spirit a good one? I could use a little of that, I think. It would make a nice change for me.

"Here, let me get the last of these buttons done up for you. Your hands look to be a little stiff and I can get it done in a shake. If you feel a little on each side of you, you'll find pockets where you can warm your hands a bit."

Zhizah's eyes widened after a thought came to her, "You have given me your coat. What will you wear? That armour looks as cold as anything else here."

Rhisu shook her head, "Don't give it a thought. It was a spare one that I've kept from my better days. I've another that I'll put on later on if it gets colder. My armour has thick and heavy padding so I'll not feel the cold of the steel against my tits or anywhere else."

She looked around, "I was born to a much colder land than this, Zhizah. Where I'm from, there's not much to the place - other than a lot of mountains, rocks, the sky, and cold winds that never stop blowing. They just change direction a little now and then to let you know they're still there is all."

She grinned with a pleased-sounding sigh, "I'm just a girl from the highlands."

She looked over and her smile stayed lit, "And you're from a lot farther down on the world I was taken from, unless I miss my guess, seeing as we can understand each other.

"By the way that you're ... not dressed for this weather, you must be from the jungle lands where the people have far too much sense to want to live where I'm from. It was where I was going when those things caught me. One minute, I was just getting around to taking my armour off and then I woke up in a stall inside that thing over there."

Zhizah nodded, "It went the same for me.

"Why were you coming to the rainy wet forest - if it is not too personal?"

Rhisu laughed, "You mean other than to see the sights? All of those fine-looking people walking around without a stitch on - as it should be to my mind. I think that's the way to live.

"Oh," she chuckled to see Zhizah's doubting smile, "You're serious."

She shrugged, "It had to be better than where I was, was my thinking at the time. I was tired of the war where I lived. It's been going on a lot longer than I've been alive, and I've served for longer than a lot of us live in wartime, since I started young. I wanted to see some other parts of the world, I guess.

"I just wanted to be in a place where I stood a better chance of not waking up dead every other morning. I lost almost everyone that I knew to the war. I even lost my male to it. I was tired of losing people just to feed a hatred that I didn't really feel toward anyone. I guess that once I realised that it was someone else's hatred, I decided I'd had enough and went my own way for the first time in my life."

Zhizah's eyes widened a little, "But Rhisu ... by what I see ... how you are dressed and armed, you are a fighter."

Rhisu nodded, "I was, though now I work for myself. I was a ground pounder flight leader who worked her way up from fighting in the mud to a flying command. But I started out on the ground. When they give you a weapon; a sword or a gun or even a paring knife, they want you to keep it close. If I was ever shot down and if I lived, then I'd be back to being a foot soldier in the mud again for a little while.

"I come from a long line of warriors so I was born to it, Zhizah. That doesn't mean that I had to like it. A soldier follows orders and that's it. They'd tell me go, I went. I just got weary of being told to kill somebody that I had no quarrel with, that's all, especially when there was so little pay in it to soothe my conscience with. Think a minute. If I did my job, some people I didn't know would die. It got to bothering me after a time.

"We'd take some of their land and three days later, they'd take most of it back, but by then it was covered with the bodies from two battles and neither side cared.

"But I did. I just wanted the thing to be over and done with. Something that's stuck with me is that wherever I've seen happy people, there's been no war. Hard to beat that logic, yeah?

"I don't believe in war as a solution to anything, as hard as that might be to believe. I was just a little girl when my family packed me off to a military school, the first in a line of them. It's the way of my family. Been like that forever.

"Some folks might say that I deserted, but I've enough of their worthless medals to make wearing a dress uniform look lumpy, more than most generals, so they sure can't call me a coward. They want their gear back; they can come and take it from me.

"As near as I can tell, maybe the war started because the Lowlanders next to our mountains were as stupidly stubborn as we can be ourselves. There's one of them right over there, that lovely wildling girl. It has to be just as plain to her that we're not even on the world where we were born, but she's still stuck in hating me for what I am.

"If we were still there, I could understand her attitude. But we're here and I have some doubts that we're ever going back somehow. I tried to talk to her but she waved her sharp little stick in my face, so I decided to leave the war behind me and let her live. I tried to tell her that I don't want to play anymore, but she's not buying it, not that I blame her for it. I'm just annoyed that she won't listen at all."