Annie and the Sorceress
The low mound of earth wasn't a grave, Annie told herself. No matter what it looked like. She sat cross-legged on the leaf litter in amongst the trees, comfortable in her shapeless robe even with the autumn beginning to make its chill felt in the air. Annie busied her hands with pretty fallen leaves and tried not to sound sad.
"You'd like her," she said to the mound. "I mean, I think you'd like her as much as you like anyone. She swears you'll be up and around again come springtime. That'll make me very happy, to see you again. I know you don't like being inside places, but you can live here, in this little wood. Doing--" Annie shrugged. "Doing woods girl stuff, I guess. We're freed now, by the way. Not pleasure slaves any more. I mean, it was fun while it lasted, but she really likes cocks better than cunts, and frankly, I don't blame her. So I'm her lady-in-waiting now, and drawing a wage." Annie thought for a minute. "We still sleep together, though. And bathe together. And we've fingered each other most days. So, I think I'm more of a hireling-with-benefits? Anyway, everything will be good when you're all better. So rest now."
Annie patted the heaped up dirt where they'd buried (no,
planted
) Muffin and got to her feet. Amqueth's tower loomed over the wood from its place atop the small rocky cliffs that dominated the hollow of the lakeside, and Annie picked her way by degrees over uneven footing until she came to the low outbuildings that clustered at the hill's base. She checked in on Drucius, Amqueth's elderly but infinitely patient donkey, in his little barn before starting up the perilous cliffside stairway that was the only way in and out of the tower from the ground.
The outside door was heavy, iron-studded hardwood that was never locked -- at least, not by anything so ordinary as a lock and key -- but Annie still had to put her whole body into the effort to move it. Leaving her woven rope sandals in the entryway, she padded up the inside stairs all the way up to the tower's top floor.
Amqueth sat in the center of a smooth-polished stone slab, which took up most of the laboratory room, which in turn took up most of the top floor of the tower.Annie peeked in through the archway from the stairs and waited. She'd learned early on that the sorceress was not to be disturbed when she was working, even if it looked like she was only sitting in meditation.
Annie could definitely see something happening now, though; the slab was covered in dozens of shiny metal beads, all rolling about by themselves as if someone was invisibly titling the slab back and forth. They swirled around Amqueth in singles and bunches, forming patterns and unforming them just as quickly. She shied back to the stairs and sat. It didn't seem like the sort of magic it was harmful to be near, but like any good peasant she preferred to take no chances.
Eventually, the hiss anc click of the rolling beads subsided, and even before Annie could get up and look in again, Amqueth called her in.
"How may I attend you, Mistress?" Annie asked.
"You may, first of all, not refer to me as 'Mistress,'" Amqueth said. "It's strange enough having you around."
"Do I not please you?" Annie said.
"You know very well how much you please me, you little brat. I never planned to have a pleasure slave. I don't even care for the company of women, generally. But in the short time you've been here, I've come to value your skills very highly." Amqueth stood in the archway, towering over Annie even more than the difference in their heights by being one step above her.
