We wandered through the slave market.
It was a dizzying array of misery! Creatures of every size and shape were beaten and cowed in horrid cells like the one I just left.
Suddenly we were out into the city.
It looked like morning! I must have been awake for nearly the whole night inside that lightless dungeon!
People were just beginning their days.
The sun was low over the buildings and city walls. The whole place looked like a Renaissance fair! Dark gray stone buildings with hanging shingles out front proclaiming the trades housed within using simple pictures.
There were tankards on some hanging placards, proclaiming open ale houses. Others painted cloth or clothing, and still others showed meats or grains.
Men at arms casually rode armored horses up the street in double columns, drawing my gawking stare.
Other people were peasants, with rope-bound 'L' shaped platforms piled high with grains of some kind in bags, or stacks of leafy green plants. Still others hauled heavy loads of firewood on those miserable-looking packs.
The place was a wonder! It was like suddenly stepping a thousand years back in time!
And just as suddenly, we popped out through the city gates and out into the country.
We were definitely not in Texas anymore!
If the temperate green surrounding fields were not enough the missive, craggy mountains that surrounded on the three sides I could see away from the city gave it away!
And then there was the massive black spike that shot into the sky, back-dropped by high snow-capped mountains. If I was not completely delusional it looked like a single black tower, spearing the sky, incredibly high over the carpet of tiny trees below. The whole scene up a gently sloping rise all the way up from the city gates up to the mountains far beyond the tower.
I gawked and shook my head disbelieving that something so far away could exist so large and proud on its own. Nothing here showed any greater technological power than ox-driven wagons and muscle-driven tools!
This was all overwhelming!
The plethora of rich foods growing in the fields did not even require my first-semester cooking school's product knowledge course. The beautifully cultivated lands at the base of the city's walls screamed that this was a rich food-producing region.
The fields around the town were lush and heavy with crops ready to harvest. I noticed everything from wheat to corn, tomatoes to barley, and hops for beer. There were rows of climbing beans interlaced with the high corn stalks and broad-leafed squash plants.
Apple, peach, pear, cherry, and plum orchards split the fields occasionally, all surrounding plush little farmhouses with chickens and other animals roaming about in the open fields under the trees.
I stumbled to a halt, gaping open-mouthed, at the magnificent fields and farmsteads, as a far too cool and temperate breeze for this early in November in Texas.
Three shocks hit me in rapid succession, as I stopped too abruptly for my captors to realize, and I reached the end of my lead.
I danced at the electric shock, accidentally administered through my collar.
The three younger girls laughed, while the older smirked sourly.
I sighed and ran my fingers under the heavy collar, before quipping and thinking, "I'm glad I amuse you all!"
Red shook her electric shock lead, demanding, "Walk Hummie. We will never get there if we don't move. You have work to help with this afternoon after we finish our walk home."
I cringed, considering work after a half day's walk!
I asked, still pretty awestruck, "Haven't you ever seen these fields? This is beautiful farmland."
Gray corrected derisively, "I thought Hummies were supposed to be smart? How do you think people eat? Food does not just fall out of the sky onto your plate!"
Purple teased, "Auntie, the Wizard can make good food fall out of the sky, and replace the brown."
Gray snapped, "Quiet your mouth, Vespera! Or you won't eat for a week!"
Blue guffawed, while Red smiled, at a joke I was not privy to.
The elder glared at the three, jaw tight and set hard.
Red took a step, slowly taking up slack on her lead, ordering calmly, "Come, stinky Hummie. You can look while we walk."
I was feeling rancid as I walked. Like a horrific hangover was sweating out in the sun.
The thick oily sweat felt like it was oozing out into my armpits and clothing. It was that feeling you get when you eat healthy for months on end, and then suddenly through necessity or poor decisions, you are forced to eat some heavy, oily, greasy, manufactured fast-food products. That heavy, rolling feeling in the stomach passed, but now your body is frantically trying to expel the grease, and you get that thick sickly feeling of clumpy sweat.
That was what it felt like.
But this shit just kept oozing and sloshing out of every pore.
My clothes felt heavy, slick, and disgusting on the inside as they wiped away the sickly thick residue as I walked. I was definitely sweating out some horrid toxic waste from that overpowered knockout drink that damn succubus costumed girl at Liam's party slipped me.
The longer we walked, the more each heartbeat throbbed in my head. Well, the little green imps pulling my electrocuting leads walked, and I trudged. I could feel every time my heart beat in my chest, as my head surged, while I was sweating much more than the tepid afternoon in the mountain air should normally have demanded of me.
Granted, I did not spend much time practicing my drinking anymore. But just like that diabolic drink warranted, sweating out this hangover was like excising a demon from my own blood.
After about thirty pace counts up to a hundred the throbbing headache faded. And while my body felt dirty, sticky, and slick inside my clothes, it felt like my headache sort of stabilized to a simple dehydrated dull ache in my skull.
I restarted my pace count, silently counting each step.
A few times I caught curious eyes watching my ritual out of the side-eye. My longer strides meant that as I forced myself into the hike, striding out each step in the direction we were going, shorter legs had to struggle to keep up.
That put us into that occasional annoying accordion where I was getting ahead and then being dragged back by the leads. Then at other times, when I worked to deliberately slow, I started falling behind, being dragged forward.
Keeping my hungover pace count worked better. I did not feel as fatigued because I could focus on the count. And since I was the prisoner, if the jailers could not keep up, that was their problem.
My eye caught a familiar plant, growing thick and lush, to my hip height by the side of the road. Looking over, I spotted basil!
I pointed it out, and named the plant drawing four sets of eyes as I slowed, "Hey! We call that one Basil! It's a seasoning we use in a lot of cooking."
Three looked between me and the plant as we ambled past.
The Gray one barked, "I hate it!" When I pointed it out she even went so far as to mutter at it under her breath as we passed.
I asked, "Why?"
Gray snapped, "That is a foul-tasting plant! A bitter and sour thing. I do not know why anyone would consider it useful."
Blue pointed out helpfully, "Because flavor, Auntie."
Gray went ballistic! "Elara! You are not too old for me to yank your britches down and turn your little green bottom red!"
As we passed farmstead after farmstead, and they began to thin remarkably giving way to the thick forest leading uphill to the ever-growing black spike, I was starting to pick up a theme regarding food, especially from old Gray.
Once we passed into the deeper forest, past some invisible boundary, or marker I had not seen the land became more wild. The trees were larger and older with brush and low plants crowding the edge of the road in a tall green wall going all the way up to the treetops. All the plants reaching for the sun shining through the gap the perfectly straight and somehow perfectly maintained dirt road cut into the larger trees.
Looking up the road, it still went straight to the unbelievably massive tower. Looking back, the road connected directly to the walled city's massive gate. And we still had to be miles and miles away from the tower!
I noticed mint by the side of the road.
Seeing she was the least interested I gripped Auntie's lead and gently held it up, adding slack, and slightly turning her, much to her frustration.
The others noticed and turned with me adding slack to their leads.
I scooped my hand under the lush green mint leaves examining the perfect back-and-forth stagger of the mint leaves.
The gray one, Auntie, ordered, "Stop playing with every weed along the side of the road."
Red agreed, "Zephyra is correct, Hummie. Leave the weeds alone. There is plenty of that stuff to cut from the Master's gardens."
Blue offered, "Maybe that should be Stinky's job. He likes weeds so much that maybe he should cut them all for us."
I glared at her, the thin branch and leaves still gently cradled in my palm.
Purple just laughed at my look.
The two younger Goblin girls with the spears and armor both seemed to have a better sense of humor. Even if they were directed at me mostly. They seemed more spritely and young. They were the happy and playful side of life, that Red seemed to be taking more seriously and Auntie-Gray was actively shunning.
I looked back at the plant and noticed that my hands were the wrong color. My skin carried a molted stained brownish-tan-gray filth inconsistently splattered across my skin.
I cringed while keeping the mint on my left palm. I shoved my left sleeve up. Sure enough, the faded brown filth from slave pens was caught mostly by my shirt sleeve.
Blue made a 'Blah!' sound looking over my shoulder at my now exposed forearm, and mocked, "Hummie is even paler and more sickly looking than I thought!"
Purple piled on, sharing, "Why can't he be a healthy green? Instead of that sickly pink and brown color?"
Ignoring them, I looked at the mint again.
I wondered if they truly considered mint an invasive weed that consumed their Master's gardens. The stuff would expand into all the space you gave it in a garden, which was why my Dad always kept it potted, and never in the ground.
But still, mint was too useful not to have in quantity.
I circled the stem and pulled, stripping a dozen large leaves into my palm. Crushing the mint into my hands, I rolled the lush green leaves between my palms.
When the mint was a leafy paste I offered the mash in my hands to the Goblin-girls, "Smell."
Blue and Purple just made disgusted, 'Blah!' sounds and leaned back.
I singled them out and offered my hands to the little purple girl.
