Laresa Ch. 13: Brigid
By Deathlynx
Please note that although this takes place in the early dark ages, somewhere in England, I have not tried to do any translations or dialect. I'm horrible with languages and make no apologies for what I cannot do. Still I hope you enjoy the story.
623 C.E., Northern England, near what is now the Scottish border.
Brigid frowned as she looked at the leaf. The plant was unfamiliar, something she had never seen before. She grumbled in frustration. It had been her inability to remember the various plants that had cursed her as a failure. Why had the Goddess given her such a poor memory if she had been chosen to succeed her mother? The answer was simple. She wasn't meant to follow her mother; she was meant for expulsion for poisoning her young husband.
It had been an accident, although no one believed her. They all spoke of her as one who liked other women. 'Unnatural' they called it and her. It was true, but his death had been an accident. He had asked for a potion to increase his potency. When she explained that she couldn't remember the ingredients, he insisted. Mother had said it was the mandrake that killed him.
Now she lived on her own and was forced to fend for herself. Fortunately, the animals were as afraid of her concoctions as her clan had been. After setting them to boil outside her cave for a few days the predators stopped coming to investigate. In the months that followed she had taught herself to hunt as well as scavenge. Now
she
was the most dangerous animal around.
Today she scavenged. Meat she had, smoked and cured, back in her cave, but she knew she needed more herbs. That was where she had discovered this strange plant. She carefully turned the leaf one way and then the next in investigation. She knew better than to eat any part of it unless there were others nearby which had been eaten already. She wished she could ask her mother.
That was when she noticed the glint coming from underneath the root of a rowan tree. Brigid couldn't help her curiosity. The animalistic woman scurried over to the tree to investigate. Beneath, she discovered a small ring with a large amber piece set within. She turned it over and around in her hands. She had never seen a ring of this design before. Once upon a time traders had roamed freely. Unfortunately, the Romans had wandered as freely. The loss of trade had been a small price to pay to lose the Romans as well, or so said the stories Gran had learned from her Gran.
Brigid shrugged and slipped the ring onto her finger as she wandered back to her cave. Perhaps she could trade it to someone, if she ever saw another human being. If no one wanted it she found it pretty enough. It certainly didn't look offensive where it sat on her finger. Stopping at the entrance to her makeshift home she began shifting it back and forth, letting the amber catch the fading afternoon light. She smiled and began into the comfortable dwelling. She hoped not to find someone to trade it to.
Suddenly the ring grew warm on her hand. Startled, she tried to tug it off but it wouldn't budge. She became afraid as smoke began to pour forth from the cursed device. Brigid had heard stories of such artifacts. She knew people became trapped in them, or cursed by them. Only the most experienced could afford to work magic without being harmed by it. Her mother would have been safe, but she had no sachets made. She scrambled to the shelf where she kept her prized jars full of herbs and roots but did not know what to burn to counter this force.
Slowly the smoke coalesced into a woman. In spite of her fear and caution, Brigid felt her loins tighten at the sight of the spirit. She was thin, true, but her hips and chest were large. Her skin seemed almost flawlessly smooth and pale. She wore very little, her chest covered by a green vest and her sex barely covered by a single piece of fabric that somehow wrapped around both hips and between her legs without a seam. It clung too tightly to have been cut from a single piece. Around the woman spirit's legs was some mysterious fabric that seemed almost invisible; like a finely woven spider's web.
Despite her lust, Brigid scurried to the corner to clutch her spear protectively before her. She knew they came to take you away. No one agreed why the Sidhe took people, but the Great Hunt was well known.
"You have called me Master, er, Mistress, what do you desire?" Laresa saw the crude wooden spear, clutched in the dirty hands of the feral woman and misjudged the era by a few millennia. Her hands came up in a pacifying gesture but her mistress only tensed, fearing the casting of magic. "I'm not here to hurt you, but to serve you!" The genie was almost as panicked as her mistress. She could not remember ever having a master or mistress who had not know of the legend of genies. Some had feared her a demon in disguise and many had doubted her but all understood she would grant them wishes. This woman seemed too primal to understand. Would she be stuck in the ring, through millennia, until communication developed to the point where someone was capable of lying to her?
"You...Sidhe?" Brigid struggled to remember how to speak. She had been many years in isolation. It took a moment for Laresa to realize the woman was accusing her of being a noble fae rather than acknowledging her gender.
"No. I am a form of spirit, I suppose, but I am not of the Sidhe. I am of the Djiin tribe. I am a genie and here to serve your desires and grant your wishes."
The more the woman spoke, the more Brigid remembered how to say. All the while she could not help but gaze at the strange pants that barely crossed between the spirit's legs. Warmth grew between her own hips. The people of her clan had been right in accusing her of desiring women over men, but they had been wrong that it was unnatural. Simply because the old Romans had accepted it did not make it wrong. "You are here...to give me what I desire? Why?"
