Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 42861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 171(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 171(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
“Hi, Roger. How are you?” Gruff greets the troll with a casual comment.
I’m shocked. I expected Gruff to be struck with fear, but he greets this fifteen-foot-tall monstrosity like an old friend.
“I think I have something of yours,” Roger says. “She smelled like you.”
“Yes. She’s mine. Thank you for bringing her back.”
"She was in the bog,” Roger the troll reveals. “About to be attacked by a buck. I ate him, but you should be more careful. It’s not like when the goats wander. They’ll try to do unspeakable things to her if they get hold of her.”
“Oh, I know. And so does she.”
“Would it be too much trouble for you to put me down, please?” I make the request very politely.
“Where do you want her?” Roger asks Gruff. “Do you have a secure pen?”
“Unfortunately, she’s free range,” Gruff says. “You can put her down.”
My feet finally meet the ground again, and I am no longer in Roger’s grip.
“Go inside,” Gruff says, barely looking at me. “Clean yourself up.”
He’s mad. Fuck. I guess I knew he would be mad if I, from his perspective, ran away, but I did tell him I was driven to do just that.
“Stay for dinner,” I hear Gruff saying to Roger. The troll is as tall as the house, so I have no idea how that is supposed to work, but I have bigger problems. I am filthy, covered in troll scent, and smeared with blood, mud, and bog.
I go upstairs, strip my filthy clothes off, and run the bath. I am eager to wash the events of the day off myself. I feel as though I will come to regret much of what I have done today. The way Gruff looked at me was more intense than previous expressions. He wasn’t just angry, or disappointed. He was pissed.
I hear the stairs creaking, and a moment later, Gruff is with me. I am filthy and naked. That does not stop his palm from meeting my ass, covering both cheeks in a spread-fingered slap designed to catch as much of my bare skin as possible.
I knew it was coming, and I was braced for it, but the yelp that escapes me still belies just how much it stings. I’m lucky he gives me just the one smack before launching into a lecture.
“Do you want to die? Is that it? Is it so impossibly terrible here with me that you insist on throwing yourself into increasingly stupid dangerous situations in which you barely survive?”
“No! I love it here with you!”
“Then why,” he says, quite miserably. “Do you keep leaving?”
“I…” I draw a breath and try to explain. I’ve tried to explain this before, and I don’t know if I will ever manage to put it into words in a way he will be able to understand. “I’m an explorer, Gruff. I was sent here to spend years learning the planet. That’s still my mission.”
“A mission you're carrying out for hostile men who sent you here to be hurt and killed.”
“It’s not their mission,” I say. “I mean, it is, but it’s also mine. I joined EET because I wanted to be an explorer more than I wanted to be anything else. I craved adventure. And I’m having adventures.”
“Adventures,” he sighs. “Get in the bath. The water is getting cold.”
I get in the bath obediently and almost immediately the water looks like a microcosm of the bog I recently departed. There are some kinds of filthiness that baths are just incapable of handling.
He looks at me, in a bath that is going to have to be refilled with fresh water in order to even vaguely approximate cleanliness. I am marinating in the filth of the world, covered in scratches and scrapes, and with a head full of new experiences, some of them fascinating, and many of them traumatic. I don’t think I will ever forget what it looks like to see a massive, powerful buck torn apart by troll fangs and devoured like a desert ration pack.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you,” he says, wonderingly. “There is nothing domestic about you. You are a wild thing, and you insist on running to the wild no matter how comfortable I make you.”
I give him an apologetic look. I do feel guilty for my actions. I know I am driving him mad, that I must seem ungrateful at best, and uncaring at worst.
“Finish cleaning up,” he orders. “I have work for you to do, and you won’t be getting out of it just because you’re covered in scrapes and bruises. Use the herbal soap. No. Not that one. The green one with the yellow flecks, it has healing and antiseptic properties.”
I pick up the bar he tells me to take, give myself a quick once over with it, then empty the bath, and dutifully refill it. Gruff has retreated back downstairs. I can hear him and Roger laughing together, getting on together like old friends. Gruff told me once that he had plenty of defenses. I never imagined one of them would be a fifteen-foot troll.