Emily on the Road

The weather outside Castle Elid was sunny and warm, the sky marked by a scattering of fluffy clouds. The heat felt somehow soft, unlike what Emily was accustomed to in her own world--the prickling scorch of Earth's sun was strangely absent. Whether this was down to the nature of this world or the protection of the Stoneshell, Emily had a feeling that she would not need to worry about sunburn. Some consolation for a naked girl on a long journey.

Once the initial shock of stepping out into the open wore off, Emily walked calmly, arms swinging at her sides, boots crunching on the dirt path. The feeling of sun against almost every inch of her skin was a new but not wholly unwelcome sensation. It was a very surreal, dreamlike experience, overall, though a knot of tension remained in Emily's throat and would spike every time there was a bend in the road, lest another traveler appear behind it.

After some miles, Emily realized she hadn't eaten anything since arriving in this world. Her stomach growled fiercely, and she placed a hand on it, feeling weak and light-headed. "I'm starved."

"Ah yes," said Aria. "Flesh requires food. Let me see... over there, a Starvine bush!"

Emily's eyes followed Aria's gesture to a small bush by the side of the road, its branches heavy with clusters of big, gleaming purple berries. She raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Are you sure they're not poisonous?"

"Certainly not!" Aria scoffed. "Don't you have Starvine berries in your world?"

Emily shook her head.

"Then you're in for a treat, my dear Emily! They were one of my favourite things to eat, back when I had need of food."

"I don't know," replied Emily, "I've never eaten anything that glowed like that before..."

"The glow is what gives them their divine sweetness!"

Emily's stomach growled again, and that decided the matter. She plucked a berry from the bush and rolled it between her fingers. It was smooth to the touch, and once plucked, its steady glow became a pulse.

"Oh how I envy you!" cried Aria, staring intently at the berry between Emily's fingers. "What I would give to taste a Starvine berry again..."

Emily took a cautious bite. Sweetness burst onto her tongue, followed by a tart, spicy quality with an earthy undertone. "This is delicious!" she said, before finishing off the berry in a second bite. She could feel energy spreading to every part of her body.

Purple berry juices dripped down Emily's chin and stained her fingers as she wolfed down another three berries. As she was reaching for a fourth, Aria stopped her. "Too many Starvine berries can make you sick."

"I'll take some for the road, then," Emily replied, plucking another berry. "Just... oh, I guess I don't have anywhere to put them."

"I'll carry them for you," Aria said, taking the berry from Emily and dropping it down the front of her gown.

"I miss being able to do that," Emily replied, glancing down at her bare breasts.

With Emily's hunger sated, the two travelers continued their journey. In the late afternoon, the wind started to pick up. At first, the sudden coolness of the light breeze was refreshing, but as the wind continued to strengthen, it whipped Emily's hair into a wild inferno. She found herself constantly blinking and spitting, swiping away the long strands every few steps.

After one such futile swipe, she caught sight of the hairband still encircling her wrist. Swiftly, she gathered up her chestnut-brown locks and twisted them into a hasty bun, snapped into place with the tie. Finally, her vision was clear and her face free of constant tickling. But with all her hair piled up on top of her skull, the sensations of the wind against the skin of her shoulders and neck were a fresh reminder of her nudity.

"What a marvellous device!" Aria said, and it took Emily a moment to realize that she was referring to the hair tie. "How it grows and shrinks in your fingers!"

Emily chuckled. "It's great for windy days like this, but it does make me feel a tad more... exposed."

Aria's soft laughter blended with the howl of the wind.

Some time later, when the wind had relented and the pair's shadows were growing longer in the approaching dusk, Aria pointed out a dark shape on the horizon. "Someone approaches!"

Emily squinted at the distant shape, which was slowly growing larger. It appeared to be a horse-drawn caravan. If she looked really closely, she could just about make out the shadow of a man sitting at its front.

"That looks like the traveling merchant we've been awaiting," said Aria. "What luck! Emily?"

In a flash of pale skin, Emily had darted backwards and was now crouching behind Aria's marble form. "I can't let him see me like this!" she squealed.

"Oh, yes, of course," said Aria. "I will stay rooted to this spot and you may hide yourself behind me." Aria spread her arms out at her sides, causing her marble gown to drape. "We'll explain the situation and have you in a dress and cloak in no time!"

"Thanks Aria," said Emily, blushing as the caravan came ever closer, its wheels and the clip-clop of horse's hooves now audible.

Before long, it was possible to make out the details of the traveling merchant's face. He was an older man, though still quite handsome, with a head of gray hair and a neat gray beard which framed strong brown eyes set into a lined face. A curious air came over his complexion as he approached what to him must have appeared to be a marble statue curiously placed in the middle of the road.

A shiver ran down Emily's spine. She'd been embarrassed once she'd learned that the statues in the castle were alive, but that had been tempered somewhat by the strangeness of the situation and their relative inhumanity. Now that a flesh-and-blood human being was almost in spitting distance, this embarrassment was renewed and magnified tenfold. Here she was, completely naked in the middle of a country road, about to ask a strange older man for a dress she could wear. But first, she would need to get his attention.

"Hi there!" Emily squeaked, standing on tip-toes to poke her head over the much taller Aria's arm. She waved her arms over her head, and this seemed to catch the man's attention. "Please! Don't come any closer!"

The man made eye contact with Emily, and it was all she could do to keep herself from ducking back behind Aria and curling into a fetal position. Even though only her head was visible to the merchant, she could feel every inch of her exposed skin as he held her gaze.

"G'd afternoon, ma'am," the man said, speaking in a slow drawl. "How may I be of service?"

"Hail and well met!" said Aria. "Might you be a traveling merchant?"

At this, the merchant almost leaped off his seat. "A talking statue! What in the world?!"

Emily smiled at his shock. Clearly talking statues weren't all that much more common in this world than in her own.

"My name is Lady Aria of Castle Elid," said Aria. "Many years ago, I was cursed by a mage to inhabit this body of stone for all eternity. I wish you no harm."

The man scratched the back of his head and sat in contemplation for a while. Then his face broke out in a grin. "Those mages, right bastards the lot of 'em. I met one in the last town who wasn't happy with the price I gave him for his home-grown cabbages. Enchanted my coin purse over it! I had pieces of silver jumping around like grasshoppers! Lucky it only lasted a day..."

Aria contemplated the dirt. "Yes, it is a profession often undertaken by those of a capricious nature."

"You can say that again!"

A moment of silence passed as the man silently observed the sad, contemplative talking statue and the human girl hiding behind her. It could hardly have escaped his notice that both were quite beautiful. "It's a pleasure to make the acquaintance of two lovely ladies," he said. "The name's Brevin. I'm a traveling merchant."

"Excellent!" cried Aria, the melancholy disappearing instantly from her marble features. "Might you have some ladies' garments among your fine wares? My companion Emily is in need of a new wardrobe."

Brevin stroked his bearded chin. "I have a fine selection of outfits to dazzle the eye and delight the skin. If Miss Emily would be so good as to step this way, we can pick something out."

Emily blushed. "Well, uh, actually... the thing is..."

Brevin dismounted the front of his cart and stood a few feet from Aria, cocking a curious eyebrow.

"My companion is in desperate need of clothing because she does not currently have any," said Aria.

Emily smiled weakly, blushing again. She rose up slightly more on her toes, just enough to expose a single bare shoulder.

"Oh!" exclaimed Brevin, eyes widening. "Begging your pardon then. I'll go fetch some things from the back and hand them over."

"Thank you!" Emily squealed.

"It's a pleasure doing business," said Brevin. "Heh, you ladies sure are lucky I came along. Just bought this stock too."

"An act of Providence," said Aria.

Brevin disappeared around the side of the caravan, his footsteps muffled on the soft ground. Aria turned her gaze towards Emily, a sweet smile carved into her marble face. "What wondrous luck!"

Emily sighed, the tension in her body releasing slightly as she leaned against Aria's cool stone form. "Keep yourself between us. He seems kind, but I don't want to flash him."

"Of course." Aria puffed out her chest and spread her arms wider than before. "You won't have to worry about your modesty for too much longer."

Sounds of clattering and ruffling echoed from the other side of the caravan, interspersed with Brevin's low muttering. These were followed by footfalls, and Brevin re-emerged with a large pile of fabrics. It was all Emily could do to stop herself from salivating at the sight. He placed the bundle on the ground and took a few steps back before turning around. "I've brought a few options for you to choose from. At least one should be both your size and to your liking. I'll not look while you fetch the garments, ma'am."

Emily peeked out from behind Aria, her eyes darting between the pile of clothing and Brevin's back. "Thank you, she whispered, before scampering out from behind her statue friend, snatching up the bundle, which was almost too big for her to get her arms around, and backtracking in a half-crouch. Brevin did not budge.

"Let me know when you're decent," Brevin said. "Take all the time you need."

The feeling of soft fabric against her skin was immensely comforting after Emily's hours of nudity. It was with some reluctance that she released the bundle of clothing and laid it out before her.

Brevin had brought her a selection of shifts, corsets, petticoats, dresses and cloaks of different colors. After contemplating her options for a moment, Emily decided to keep things simple and picked out a white shift and a dress of deep burgundy.

Slipping the shift over her head, Emily felt an immediate sense of relaxation. Though she was still in a strange land, far away from home, the sensation of fabric against her skin brought some sense of normality.

The shift was fitted, but not overly tight. The hemline came just past her knees and its long sleeves almost covered her hands. Back in her own world, she had regularly worn full outfits that showed more skin than this, and it was a mere undergarment.

Apart from its rich color, the burgundy dress was simple and plain, with a hemline that almost trailed on the ground, coming to rest against the tops of Emily's boots. Feeling slightly overdressed, but giddy at the prospect of further covering her poor, overexposed flesh, she picked out a matching cloak to complete the outfit. She would leave the hood down for now.

Step one, get some clothing. Check. Now she could focus on step two, finding her way home. Thoughts of the adventure ahead of her, with her mysterious and elegant friend Aria by her side, stirred something in her blood. Now that she was properly attired, she would face the world of Thessolan head-on.

Emily stepped out from behind Aria and did a small twirl to show off her outfit. "What do you think?" she asked.

"Beautiful," said Aria. "Your outfit makes me long for the days when I too wore colorful clothing."

"You can look now, Mr Brevin!" called Emily, a beaming grin overtaking her face.

Brevin slowly turned and smiled as he saw Emily properly for the first time. "A perfect fit. You're a vision, Miss Emily."

"All thanks to you!"

"Just doing business." Brevin walked past Emily, still enraptured with her new outfit, and gathered up the clothing she hadn't chosen, his careful merchant's eye noting what was missing. "Now, that will be two silver for the dress, one for the shift and one silver eight copper for the cloak. Four-eight is your total."

Emily's face fell. A small voice in the back of her mind had been nagging her about the problem of money, but she'd done her best to ignore it in her desperation to get clothes. She darted over to Aria and looked her pleadingly in the eyes, but was met with an embarrassed and apologetic grin.

"I... have not had much occasion to deal with money," Aria said softly. "My sister always handled those matters for both of us."

"But you have some, right?" Emily whispered sharply.

Aria shook her head sadly.

"You said we would buy a dress and cloak from a traveling merchant!"

"Ah, yes, I did say that, didn't I?" Aria adopted a thoughtful posture, with a hand on her chin.

"How did you expect to get money?! Surely you could see that I didn't have any! I'm not even from this world!" Emily was red in the face, gesticulating wildly, and the tall statue seemed to shrink at her anger.

"Well... uh... I suppose I didn't think it all the way through. I'm sorry, Emily."

Emily took a deep breath and gripped the bridge of her nose between her fingers, which usually helped to calm her down. "It's fine. We'll figure something out. Brevin seems kind. I'm sure... I'm sure he wouldn't just take the clothes back."

Emily turned around and approached Brevin, who had been waiting by his caravan, staring into the distance. He was clearly trying to give the impression of not having heard the ladies' discussion.

"Mr Brevin," Emily began, her heart pounding in her chest. "First off, I would like to make it clear how much I love these clothes. They are a perfect fit, well-made and clearly of high-quality material. I am certain they will last me a long time. And they must, for they are the only clothes that I have."

Brevin nodded but remained silent, a curious squint appearing on his face.

"Unfortunately, neither I nor my companion have any money. We have just emerged from Castle Elid, perhaps you've heard of it. My companion, Lady Aria, was cursed to roam its halls for centuries, and it is only through the recovery of--hey!"

A forceful stone elbow nudged Emily, almost knocking her over. Emily looked angrily at Aria, who had suddenly appeared by her side but was struck into silence by the severe look on the statue's face. Where moments before there had been a sheepish grin, there was now only a stony scowl of resolution.

Cold marble brushed against Emily's ear. "Say nothing of the Stoneshell," Aria rasped, in a tone that sent shivers down Emily's spine.

Dumbfounded and quivering, Emily shut her mouth tight. Brevin raised a curious eyebrow.

"Mr Brevin," Aria began. "As my companion has related, we have no money. Indeed, before we made your fortunate acquaintance, the only possession we had between us was an old pair of boots, found abandoned. We are two ladies in distress, in dire need of charity. Without your gift of clothing, poor Emily would be force to wander the land of Thessolan entirely naked, at the mercy of nature."

"She has boots," retorted Brevin, eyes pointed down. "And not a bad pair."

"Please, good Brevin, see it in your heart to do an act of kindness to a lady in great need. Only your charity can defend her honor. The gods will surely smile upon such a selfless act."

There was a long pause, during which Brevin attempted to hide the beginnings of a knowing grin. Emily felt she might be sick.

"Listen," said Brevin. "I've got a wife back home and twelve hungry children to feed. Maybe you don't understand that so well, statue, but we of flesh and blood need to eat. I can't part with nearly five silver of goods out of charity!"

Emily blushed and looked down at her burgundy dress, cursing herself for choosing such a beautiful and probably expensive color. "I can take something cheaper!"

Brevin eyed her. "That lot's near the bottom of the barrel already. And you've messed on it!"

Emily followed Brevin's accusatory stare to a purple mark on her dress and blushed furiously. The Starvine berries!

"I'm sorry!" she cried.

"It's fine, just return them," Brevin replied. "Out of the goodness of my heart, I won't change you for cleaning."

"That's very kind of you," Emily said, trying her best to sound sincere. "Listen, what if I give back the cloak and dress and just take the shift?" She had grown quite enamoured with the dress and cloak and would be sad to lose them, but the shift alone would be a more than adequate covering.

"You're still asking for me to give you one silver! Half my children will go without their supper!"

"You can't just send me away naked!" At this, Emily fell to her knees, begging and pleading, her eyes wide and desperate. "Please, I need something to wear! There must be some way..."

"I won't be taken in by your wiles, if that's what you mean," Brevin snorted. "My Dolores is the only one for me. Stand up, woman, you're dirtying my wares!"

Emily gasped at the implication, which took a moment to sink in. "What? No! I wasn't suggesting that! I'm not that kind of girl!"

"Running around the countryside with no clothes on, people might think otherwise."

"Does it look like I want to be naked?!" Emily was on the verge of tears.

"Well.. I s'pose not." There was a softening in Brevin's tone.

Emily continued to haggle with him, racking her brains for some way she and Aria could pay for the dress. She offered to travel with Brevin and work for him, feeding the horses and running errands, but he was quite uninterested. "That statue'll weigh down the cart."

Eventually, Emily ran out of ideas and could only plead again for Brevin's charity, for him to part with at least the shift.

"I can't do it," he said with an air of finality. "But I won't make you go naked. I have something in the back, I've just remembered. A piece of clothing left in my caravan by a stowaway I chased out just yesterday. That item didn't cost me anything, and I won't be able to sell it. I can give you that, and we both walk away happy."

Emily wiped a tear from her eye. "That sounds wonderful. Thank you, Mr Brevin."

Twenty minutes later, as the caravan was disappearing into the distance, Emily cringed at the memory of those words. In his vagueness, Brevin had neglected to mention that the stowaway had been a gnome and the item of clothing a pair of threadbare gnome britches. "Quite a fat gnome," Brevin had said, but that wasn't much of a consolation. Changing into the new "outfit" had been a slow and mournful process.

Emily now stood on the road with her arms folded across her bare chest and the britches stretched over her hips. The gnome had been squat, so the legs barely made it down to her mid-thigh and the waist was very low-rise. Though the britches were quite large for a gnome, Emily could not force their top button closed, and curls of hair poked out indecently.

Aria gave her a sympathetic look. "At least we shan't be the cause of his children's hunger."

Emily pouted, dearly missing her long burgundy dress. Wearing that, she had felt like a plucky medieval maiden out on an epic adventure. In her current outfit, she just felt like a slut. Too-tight shorts were better than complete nudity, but not by a lot.