Tears run unnoticed down Lacuna’s cheeks. The song fills her head making thoughts hard to form. She does not want to get lost in it again. She sits by her campfire and stares into her cup. Memories come unbidden…
~~~~
Lacuna sits in the corner of a bar in Fairhaven brooding over her drink. She can hear the song again, niggling, calling her back.
She had decided to check out the nations first for her sisters before heading to the Old Lands. Her longing for the comfort of sisterhood outweighing the need to understand the wrongness of the marauder camp. Yrkanis had been a complete dead-end. Even though the trail lead her there, there was no definite sign of her sisters in the city: though there was an unsubstantiated rumour of a homine matching Marikka description getting into a brawl with the city guard. She had searched the city for any of the sigils that Lost Girls use to pass on messages to no avail. Searching had been a nightmare due to her undeserved reputation as a Jena hating she-devil. Seriously, the Matis had a collective stick up their butt, no wonder they run so funnily.
It was only a few pornographic cartoons of their so-called goddess, and the charge of murder was way over-the-top. How can the accidental deaths of a few homins be murder. They were all male! Surely that counted as a civic service. But oh no, the holier-than-thou, pasty faced yelk-farts called it ‘an unprovoked brutal assault.’ A minor misdemeanour, of defacing property was all it should have been. If anything she should have had compensation for her dress being completely ruined. She never asked them to run up screaming about blasphemy. And if you are going to attack an innocent, defenceless homine going about her law abiding business, you deserved to get stabbed. Admittedly, the last guard had technically been running away at the time, but still, it was a simple matter of self-defence. It was three against one, how could it not be self-defence! Males!
Anyway, ever since then the Matis had treated her as persona non-grata. That hurt. It was not like she was evil, like Mithian or Rykal, or a unsanitary, public nuisance like Revvy. Consequently, she had been forced to sneak about the city after dark trying to find any sign of her sisters, all because the Matis couldn’t take a joke. As for the charge of intimidation, how could the helpful suggestion of the need to buy fire insurance be considered a crime! Everyone knew how easy Matis were to set on fire. She had just tried to be helpful; and this was her reward.
After a week, she had finally had to admit defeat and travelled south to Heretic’s Hovel and the portal to Aeden Aqueous.
Fairhaven had proved to be no more productive than Yrkanis, though easier to search. Lacuna hated Liberty Lakes and had never came here to raid much, so the Trykers knew her mainly by reputation. Though the Lost Girl Orphan’s Fund scam did mean that her name was mud here too. Seriously, what as wrong with some homins. They only said they were collecting money for orphans; they never said they were, actually, going to give the money to them! It was all Marichia’s fault! Lacuna had just wanted to suggest to a few merchants that travelling without protection was dangerous, but no, Marchia had to get clever. To be fair, the scheme worked extremely well, especially when they combined it with the feathered amps scam. It was amazing what you could get a male to believe - add some glitter and feathers, tell them it was boosted and they fell over themselves to give you their dappers. Idiots!
She wonders where she should go next. She very much doubts her sisters have gone to any of the desert cities; they all hate the Fyros’ slavish devotion to Ma-Duck, not to mention the average Fyros male’s deplorable hygiene habits. As for Zora, she hadn’t been back there since she and Spettra were thrown out of GoS. Saying that, it might be worth checking out the stashes they’d had to leave when they fled the Cities of Intuition for the sanctuary of the marauder camp…
---