“So you do this completely naked?” cried a beardless youth in armor so oversized it made him look like a turtle.

Hilda finished draining another pitcher of ale and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Well, yes, but men are not allowed to enter the temple. I do this alone, in nature.” she smiled for some reason, though she didn’t plan to.

She wondered if she should have another pitcher. She wondered if she should have two. It would save her the extra trip. Her footing wasn’t very sure at the moment.

“Hot…” said someone who didn’t estimate how good Hilda’s sense of hearing was. Hilda wanted to give him a crossed look, but she was already cross-eyed from all the ale. She also felt slightly broiled. She's been sitting too close to the fire for a while now.

“Without even your ghoul?” The armored boy insisted.

“Well…” Hilda tried to use her non-existent telepathic powers to make the pitcher come to her. “She’s always there but I think of her like, well, like…”

“A girlfriend?” Someone across the campfire shouted.

“No!” Hilda cried out, almost falling from her rock. “Like furniture.”

“So you guys never--”

“Alright!” Said Orel, the captain of the guard. “That's enough! Hilda is a paladin of the moon and a knight of the realm. Show some class, will you?”

“That’s okay…” Hilda said, almost toppling from the tall rock she sat on. If only the damn thing could sit still for one moment… “The boy is just curious.”

“I’m not a boy!” the armor with the kid in it protested.

Hilda snorted and leaned back to look at the swirling night sky and its cantaloupe slice of a moon. It was barely a sliver, but it was so, so beautiful. Her goddess was beautiful. The sky was beautiful. The trees were beautiful. Hilda belched. She was very drunk.

“I’m not a boy!” the warrior repeated. Hilda should have thrown something at him, but she was too content to get mad. All her life she’d heard stories about how humans were dumb, vicious brutes. Basically orcs with better organization. However, the more she saw of these oversized humanoids, the more she liked them. If only they weren’t so damn tall. Whenever she spoke to someone, they’d lean to talk to her, as if speaking to a child. It made her feel like she really was a child and not a 7th level character with a rare prestige class. Oh Goddess, she was getting nauseated.

Hilda lazily raised her head and looked at the boy through drooping eyes. “I have socks I haven’t washed for longer than you’ve been alive.”

There was a gaggle of laughter around the fire. Hilda smiled, which felt strange since she didn’t use her smiling muscles very often. She was more the scowling type, at least when sober. “It’s basically like taking a bath except you clean your soul too.” She added. “Stone giants do it too.”

“Naked?” asked a young warrior who was fixing his crossbow in a way that was likely to shoot his balls off someday.

Hilda snorted. “Stone giants are always naked!”

As it turned out, these people had never seen a moon dwarf and were totally fascinated by Hilda. She could have recited the alphabet and they’d still stare at her with wide-eyed fascination.

Presently, they all sat around a large pfire and listened with rapt attention to whatever random trivia about blurted out. This was the warriors’ fire. There were many other fires in the large clearing in which the caravan had stopped for the night. Seemed like every class of people had a fire of their own; the artisans, the wives, the children… only the merchants didn’t have a fire. They each sat in their own wagon and did whatever merchants did when no one was looking. Counting money probably.

From time to time, people came from other fires, alone or in small groups, to watch the dwarf in their midst. Some asked questions. Some took notes. Most just looked and listened. Children peeped from behind trees and ran away when Hilda looked at them, doubtlessly making up stories about her.

“So you’re going home to do one of your moon rituals?” A man asked after a while. He was an older man with a mane of ginger hair and a handful of medals that were too blurry to read. Everything was too blurry to read.

“Shit, no!” Hilda shouted, swinging her pitcher and spilling some ale on herself. “Last thing I need is some decisor’s wife telling me I should get a tattoo on my butt or something. I’m going to buy minerals for, um, some dudes. They’re really evil and have a baby-skull based economy but,” she belched, “they’re gonna pay me a lot of,” she swallowed some bile, “money.” Hilda took another swig to drown the nausea. “Then I’ll buy you lot, um, stuff. Like, beer and, um, stuff.”

“What mineral?” came the urbane and effeminate voice of the merchant Nabulu, who sat in his wagon, going over endless ledgers with his glowing fairy dragon secretary.

“Ob-obsidian!” Hilda shouted. “It’s black glass. Very pretty. Very sharp. You can shave with it or you can make arrows with it or you can--”

“Please come see me in my office tomorrow morning. I may have an option for you.”

Hilda grabbed a branch and dragged herself to her feet. “Let’s talk now,” she said. “We dwarfs are night creatures.” She explained to the men following the exchange. “We’re sharpest at night.”

A judgemental huff came from the unseen merchant. “Come tomorrow. I don’t deal with drunk creatures.”

“Bleh,” Hilda said and fell off her rock. The whole camp laughed. She was too drunk to get angry. She joined in the laughter.

Hilda woke up feeling parched and slightly nauseated inside a gently rolling wagon with the midday sun glittering through the shutters. She was dressed in her tunic and had a soft blanket thrown over her. Under her head there was a pillow that would probably have to be burned after she got up. Her armor, and presumably the rest of her items, were stuffed under the bench was lying on.

Hilda studied her surroundings through the one eye she managed to open. It smelled of lavender and had a homey feel to it. Must be a woman’s home. Human men generally smelled like dwarf men five days after they died.

Nice of them, whoever they were, to put her under a woman’s care. Hilda didn’t think any of the men would do anything malicious to her, but some of them were awfully curious about dwarf anatomy. They wouldn’t dissect her or anything, but…

Hilda noticed a little girl in a white summer dress sitting on the opposing bench, scribbling animatedly on a sheet of bark with her tongue hanging out. The girl had green skin, red eyes, black hair and tusks you could skewer marshmallows on. However, she didn’t have hair anywhere except on the top of her head and wasn’t eating Hilda’s face. Must be a half-orc. Why the gods allowed these silly things to exist was beyond Hilda. There were heroic races and monster races. Why mix it up and confuse everyone? A whole species of Phillies, Goddess help us.

Hilda yawned and sat up. The girl scowled at her and turned the bark vertically before continuing her frenzied sketching.

“What are you doing?” Hilda asked, stretching the clicks out of her sore joints. The girl couldn't have been older than twelve but she was already about as tall as Hilda, though nowhere as broad or powerful.

“I’m drawing you.” The girl said. “Want to see?”

“Later,” Hilda grunted. “Where can I find--”

“Look!” The girl said and showed Hilda her work. It was basically a series of circles with some lines sticking from them, representing the dwarf’s braids and… claws? whiskers? Hilda didn’t care for the sketch. She wasn’t round. She was athletic. She had 18 Strength. She just wasn’t stretched long like the natives of this planet were…

“Lovely,” Hilda muttered and opened the shutters, squinting at the bright daylight. The caravan was on the move. Orel smiled at Hilda and touched the tip of his helmet, which was the human way of saying hello. Hilda nodded in return and turned back into the wagon.

“Where’s your mother?”

The girl shrugged, took out a box from under her bench and started sorting out ragdolls. “This is Angina. This is Pica. This is Diarrhea. This is Influenza--”

Hilda closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. “Girl, where’s your mother?”

The girl’s head bounced up. “My name is Zara!” She offered Hilda her hand. “What’s yours?”

“Hilda…” the dwarf looked outside, ignoring the outstretched hand. She saw riders, rooftop archers, a few familiars stretching their wings, trees, trees, more trees… All was well. She returned her attention to the girl, who’d finished sorting her dolls and was now scattering ugly drawings on the floor. “Zara, where’s your mother?”

“She did an intentional door. She will be back for supper. We will have mushrooms. Do you like mushrooms?”

Hilda narrowed her eyes. “She did a what?”

The girl sighed with infinite exhasberation. “A magical door! To the place with the water people!”

“Oh,” Hilda said. “A dimensional door. Your mother is a wizard? Do you know if she can detect minerals?”

The girl shrugged. “Look, this is a picture of an octasus. It is a horse with eight legs. I invented it.”

“Lovely…” Hilda muttered. She rubbed at her eyes and yawned. “Is there anything to eat here?”

“You can eat me…” the girl said with a sly smile while making two dolls kiss. “But I prefer you didn’t.”

Hilda shook her head. “You know, if you were a dwarf, you’d be beaten a lot.”

“Poor dwarfs…” the girl said. “Mom told me to hold you so you don’t escape.”

Hilda snorted joylessly. “And how do you plan to do that?”

“I’ll be so cute you won’t be able to go away.” The girl said, never raising her eyes from her dolls and images of animals with the wrong number of limbs. They were engaged in either an orgy or a massacre, it was hard to tell.

“Honey,” Hilda said, not without sympathy, “this only works if you have tits.”

The girl shrugged while trying to stuff one toy into another.

Hilda smoothed her tunic, raised her chin and whispered a quick blessing for success. “Now, I have an important business meeting to attend. I’m going to buy obsidian!”