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The Wild Girls (chapter story)

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YuBiusk Ink

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CHAPTER FOUR: FOREVER

“Thanks,” Heather said awkwardly, as Ken took the chamber pot from her without a word to carry it outside. She shifted and stretched from her seated position on the mattress. “So… what’s your plan, Ken?”

“We’ll keep you here until you can use that leg.” Ken returned and shut the door with a grimace. “Um… maybe two days? Three?”

“And I’m stuck here until then.” Heather stuck her tongue into the inside of her cheek. “Look… what’s your angle on this?”

“Angle?”

“You know.” Heather rolled her eyes. “You’re fishing for something. You’re being nice and all, but what kind of wanderer goes out of her way to help a bandit?”

“I’m not a wanderer.” Ken blinked. “Are you saying you’re a bandit?”

Inwardly, Heather flinched. She suddenly wasn’t sure how honest she could afford to be. She was feeling a little out-of-sorts, and Ken’s emotionless stare didn’t help, and hadn’t… surely Ken had guessed?

Actually, Heather belatedly realized, it might not be so obvious. She wasn’t dressed like a bandit right now. Her watery gray eyes were framed by no signature black mask, and her fit, compact form was dressed in simple mottled brown attire—old, cheap hand-me-downs the bandits had no other use for. She wasn’t even armed, since the three Bandit Camp wards were forbidden from carrying weapons outside the camp, just in case they ran into yellowjackets. Yellowjackets usually stopped short of going after unarmed targets. Usually. Sometimes.

It kind of depended on how far north you were.

“I’m…” She bit her lip. “Hey, what do you mean, ‘we’?”

“Oh, me and Belle.” Ken stooped down and plucked up the hostile bird from earlier—the chicken gave a little squawk, startled at being lifted from her comfortable nest of wood shavings and shredded paper on the corner of the workdesk. “It’s just us up here. Well, us and the bees.”

19-Nov-2020 03:49:04

YuBiusk Ink

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“... bees?”

“Sure.” Ken gestured outside. “I have a whole hive outside.”

“How… how did you get bees up here?” Heather felt like she was asking stupid questions, but she also felt like she couldn’t not ask. Her brain kept hitting a wall. A bees-shaped wall.

“They used to be in a hollow log,” Ken explained. “It came up the Lum and washed up on the shores near the Enclave Ruins.”

Heather’s brain stuttered. Clicked. Then her eyes widened in understanding. “A canoe.”

“Yes!” Ken beamed. “At least, I think so, I don’t think the log flowed upstream. So I managed to roll it onto the sled by pushing it with a long stick, and then I managed to drag it all the way back home.”

“Wh—” Heather snickered, suddenly overtaken with a mental image. “What idiot tried to canoe with a log full of bees?”

“I dunno! Dragging it was really hard, though.” Ken’s eyes were almost aglow with excitement now. “I had to hide twice on the trip, because things kept noticing the log and getting curious, and I remember I was really worried that something would disturb the hive so much that all the bees would die, especially when the rev goblin showed up. I can’t believe any of them survived the trip.”

“I can’t believe the idiot survived the trip!”

Ken giggled. Her voice started to rise in volume and speed, almost tripping over itself like a dog over its own legs, bubbling like the brook around a waterfall. “So I would have gotten a jar, but—a-and I thought about it, because—because I had a jar back at the cottage back then, it’s what I put the honey in nowadays.” She pointed excitedly to the jar by the crackling stove. “But the trip back would’ve taken too long, and it wasn’t—I wouldn’t—I didn’t want to leave the log alone for long, right?”

“... weren’t they stinging you?”

“Oh, not too much.” Ken waved a hand dismissively. “I wasn’t losing too many.”

“Too many?”

19-Nov-2020 03:50:29

YuBiusk Ink

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“Bees!” Ken nodded eagerly. “They die when they sting you, you know. It’s for—they do it to protect the hive, but it kills them in the process. It almost—almost always. The stinger gets ripped out and lodges in you to keep putting in venom and irritating you, but losing the stinger is generally not—it’s generally very fatal. That’s actually why I was worried about leaving them. I knew a big swarm of angry bees could handle just about anything short of some—of any—anything short of a dragon, but there weren’t a ton of bees left as it was, so—”

“So they were stinging you.” Heather put up her hands, trying to stem the nonstop tide. She recognized the glint in Ken’s eyes. She’d seen that glint in the eyes of Old Ninefingers back at the Bandit Camp. When he’d been alive, Ninefingers had been known to talk for hours about his knife collection and never get tired. Bandits had quickly learned not to ask. He’d been touched, too, but in a way that was useful, so nobody ever really cared. “We must be miles from the Enclave Ruins. How did you drag them that far?

“Well, I was being careful,” Ken said firmly. “And they stopped stinging me after they realized I was helping.”

Heather raised an eyebrow. “I... don’t think that’s even a little how bees work.”

“It’s how the Wilderness works.” Catteken sniffed.

“It’s the opposite of how—” Heather bit back an infuriated retort. How could someone live up this far north and not understand?

19-Nov-2020 03:50:46

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“The bees knew they were in a dangerous place.” Ken scratched her chin, expression distant. “Animals know that. And wherever they’d come from, they sensed that they wouldn’t survive on their own. Animals tend to start—to go quiet when they go farther north. Timid, you know?” She glanced back at Heather, who opened her mouth to object—but Catteken continued, clearly not really looking for a response. “They only get vicious once they’ve been alone for a while. So they gave up stinging me after some time went by and I kept dragging them without trying to break in.”

Heather stared without expression up up at Catteken She very much wanted to argue with this, but… well, if the girl was mad, what was the point of arguing? And if it was true, then Heather would just look like a stubborn fool. She barely knew what bees were to begin with. It had been a long time.

Besides, she supposed grudgingly, Ken seemed to really be enjoying telling the story. It seemed a shame to get in the way of that. Especially when Heather was so tired.

So she just sat still and listened, sipping at her tea. Ken didn’t seem to need much more input than an occasional smile, nod or noise of agreement, after all, and the young hermit seemed quite happy to chatter on as she expounded to Heather about the tribulations of her journey back—hiding from a goblin revenant she’d twice encountered, avoiding an inquisitive yellowjacket wanderer, and, of course, finding safe spaces to sleep for the two nights spent away from home.

Heather believed… well, more of it than she felt she really should, but less of it than Ken’s clear convictions sought. Ken seemed utterly sure of herself, and it was hard to argue with such painstaking, absolutely exhausting detail. But Heather just couldn’t wrap her head around anyone making it two days alone in the Wilderness.

19-Nov-2020 03:50:57

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Her eyes flitted over the cozy cabin, settling unsteadily on the cracking fireplace. Let alone anyone making this sort of living of it on their own.

She politely waited for Ken to finish the story, but the longer she waited, the more unease swept through her toward a fluttering storm. This wasn’t natural. This couldn’t be normal. There had to be something wrong with this strange girl. Right?

Dimly, she realized Ken had somehow switched topics, and had begun rambling about giant spider venom for some reason.

Heather cleared her throat. “So,” she said loudly, driving her voice through Ken’s meandering threads like an axe through a stubborn log, “um, so. It’s you, the bird, and the bees?”

“Just about.” Ken bit her lip, cheeks going red, as if she too hadn’t even realized until this moment how off-topic she’d gone. “It’s sometimes tight for food, but…” She took a deep breath. “I’ve got it basically worked out by now.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes!” Ken began tapping her fingers as she listed items. ”Belle gives me eggs every now and then, which are great for protein. The bees give me honey, and the icewater from the glacier is safe for drinking if you dig down a half-foot at least. The surface ice is bad, but the older stuff is—and so you can dig holes, and—and there’s sometimes old sealed jars of food in the ruins that haven’t gone bad, so you can get some good stuff there sometimes. I have a few traps set out around the place—two rat traps, six snares and a deadfall—and—”

“Just…” Heather put up a hand quickly, trying not to sound too annoyed. “I’m just asking if you’re up here, like, alone .” She gave Ken a firm, unyielding stare. “No other people with you.”

“Oh.” Catteken blinked once. Twice. “Well… yes.”

19-Nov-2020 03:51:18

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Her eyes darted toward the door, then toward the desk, then down at her feet. Her right hand gripped her left arm below the elbow and squeezed slightly. “It’s just me.”

Silence settled over her like a passing shadow.

Heather stared at Catteken for a long moment. A lot of emotions were swirling inside her—some she didn’t understand, and many she didn’t much care to recognize right now. She rolled her eyes, settling on sarcasm. “Well, I wasn’t trying to ask something big and dramatic. Zamorak, I was just—”

Ken’s eyes shot to her. “Why do you keep saying that?”

Heather was taken aback. “Don’t tell me you don’t know who Zamorak is.”

“I know who he is.” Ken glared down at Heather, cheeks going red again. “I mean why do you keep swearing by him? I mean...” She pursed her lips, averting her gaze again. “... I mean, isn’t he very, very evil?”

“... I worship Zamorak.”

“Oh.”

There was a long silence.

Heather raised an eyebrow. “Is that a problem?”

“Oh, no!” Ken’s hands shot up defensively. “No, no, I’m—I mean, I know lots of worshipers, but… I mean, well, you know—” She gave a nervous laugh. “I mean, even the yellowjackets I’ve met, the ones who, um, talk to me instead of trying to kill me—even they usually go with Bandos or Guthix, so, um, I guess I don’t really know much about Zamorak at all.”

“Right.” Heather snorted, recalling a snippet from the old rhyme. “ Bandos, for the butcher who’d be ruled by his cleaver. Guthix, with a web feared by its own weaver. Live by the blade and you’ve sown what you’ll reap. Live as a coward and die in your sleep. ” She took a sip.

Ken fiddled with something on the desk. “I worship Guthix, actually.”

19-Nov-2020 03:51:43

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Heather choked on her tea. “ Oh! W-Well, that’s—that’s just great , um—I-I’ve always—I mean—” She panicked and decided to drown out her stammering reply with another deep drought from the mug.

Zamorak, what’s wrong with me right now? she railed inwardly. Of course she worships Guthix, you idiot! A Saradominist wouldn’t be so fine with finding a Zamorakian right in front of her! And why did you even tell her...

In the awkward silence, Ken gave a sheepish smile.

After a moment, Heather lowered the mug and, unable to help it, smiled back. It was too uncomfortable not to smile. She rubbed the back of her neck. “Y-Yeah, um…” She chewed over a limited vocabulary for remorse. After a moment, she settled on, “My bad. Guthix is… I mean, it’s better than Saradomin.”

“I try to keep an open mind, I guess.” Ken shrugged, though she seemed to relax a little bit. “Sorry for saying Zamorak was evil.”

“I mean… he kind of is?” Despite her nerves—or rather, because of them—Heather couldn’t help but giggle. “I mean, I mean, like—” She shook herself slightly, annoyed to find herself still stammering. “He’s a huge asshat. But this is the Wilderness. Who isn’t, you know?”

Catteken didn’t say anything, but she nodded, still smiling slightly.

19-Nov-2020 03:52:10

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Heather shifted in her bed. She was trying not to stare at Ken—at least, not when the wild girl was looking—but it was getting harder and harder. This just felt so… odd. Almost dreamlike. It was so different from the kinds of conversations she normally had. Not in a bad way, exactly. Just different. Weird. Friendly, almost. And she didn’t know this place, and Catteken seemed almost unreal to Heather. Like she didn’t belong here at all.

“How… how long have you been out here, anyways?” she asked, keeping her tone casual, flippant, as if she was asking about the weather.

Ken tilted her head slightly and frowned. “Forever,” she said, though she sounded a little unsure herself.

As Heather absorbed what she’d said, Catteken turned and walked back to her desk, examining a small ornate box.

“Almost out of rosehips,” Heather heard her murmur, as she closed the box and put it back in the drawer.

Forever.

Heather swallowed.

This girl was strange. Off-putting. Totally bizarre in her manner and her beliefs. Heather wasn’t sure whether she felt scared or… or something else. Something she didn’t care to examine too closely right now.

She wasn’t sure whether to be creeped out or charmed.

19-Nov-2020 03:52:23

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