“Don’t be alarmed when we go over to the caravan,” I said after I slipped on my new gambeson, using my Uwrish accent. Since I now knew for a fact that certain people would be after me, I decided that I would need to make some changes to my outward appearance. My size wasn’t something I could alter, and I wasn’t confident I could change my skin color on command, so without the time to cut or dye my hair the simplest thing I could do was make myself sound less foreign. I could alter my scars a bit as well, I thought, but that will probably need some preparation, given what Koyl said about removing the skin of the face.

“Yeyhhayseytay,” Vaozey swore under her breath. “First the arm, now this. You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

“I need to alter my appearance as well,” I said. “I was thinking of shaving my head.” Maybe she knows a quick way to do it, I thought, her hair is quite short, she must trim it often.

“What, and ruin that perfect haircut you have?” Vaozey scoffed. There were many ways to interpret her sarcasm, and I wasn’t sure which one was correct. “You planning to do that now?” she asked, more seriously.

“I don’t have the supplies for it,” I replied. “I don’t think any of my weapons would be sharp enough for an even shave.”

“Just use what you use for your face,” Vaozey shrugged.

“I don’t need to use anything on my face,” I replied. “I don’t grow facial hair.” Vaozey looked at me like she was waiting for a punchline.

“What kind of man can’t grow a beard?” she laughed. “Are you serious?”

“What do you use to cut your hair?” I asked, ignoring the question. “You keep it short, barely over two centimeters long, so you must cut it frequently.”

“Just a kitchen knife, usually,” Vaozey replied. “One time I had some shears, but those ended up getting blood all over them and rusting. If you want to hide your hair for some reason, why not just use that fabric to wrap your head? They do that over in Uwlsayniyah, and since you’re ‘half-Uwlsayniyahn’ it would make sense for you to adopt the practice, wouldn’t it?” The accusation in the question wasn’t lost on me, but the idea was good.

“Like this?” I asked, starting to wrap the fabric around my skull.

“Yaytgayao help me,” Vaozey groaned. “Just give me that, I’ll do it. Sit still and don't make this take longer than it has to.”

By the time my new head garment was finished, the sun was up enough that people were coming out to go about their business in the street. Though I felt ridiculous, I didn’t draw as many stares as I thought I would when we walked out of the alley to go over to the meetup point. We were still very early, so the only other person who was present was an older woman hanging around the three wagons. Though she did have wrinkles and gray hair, her movements were still very spry, so I estimated she couldn’t have been more than seventy years of age.

“You must be my passengers” the woman croaked when we approached. “You two travel pretty light, don’t you?”

“You were told what we looked like?” I asked.

“No, just your names,” the old woman grunted. “You two look like the sort of trouble I was expecting though, and I’m rarely wrong.” She finished putting the crate she was holding in the back of the wagon, dusted her hands off, then walked up to me. At most, she was one hundred and seventy-five centimeters tall, making me dwarf her in comparison. “Ngvahp,” she said, “you must be Yuwniht.” Her orange eyes reminded me of Yaavtey, but her curly hair was nothing like his.

“I am,” I replied, handing her the letter of introduction. “Was payment pre-arranged? I was provided with money for personal use, but the details of my travel arrangements weren’t given to me.” Ngvahp laughed, then slapped my arm. The impact was surprisingly strong for someone who was so lean, but not enough to be dangerous.

“Forget the letters, help me load this wagon,” she said, pointing to the pile of boxes. “You too young lady, consider it part of the cost of passage.”

“Seytoydh tperl,” Vaozey swore under her breath, shooting me an angry glare.

Two more drivers and eight guards filtered in over the next few hours as Vaozey and I worked to load up and organize all the wagons. Ngvahp didn’t shy away from her share of the labor, seemingly making sure to show us she was contributing. She even took crates far too heavy for her, breaking her arms a few times as she tried to lift them, only to laugh it off when I came over to assist. Her effort made it all the more obvious that the other two drivers were doing very little whenever they weren’t being watched.

“I’m going to rip your jhoyt off and shove it through your ngehvzaat if you don’t hurry your ass up!” Vaozey swore at the first driver, a blonde Uwrish man with a scraggly beard who was bumbling around with a single light crate. He wore some kind of badge for a company that I didn’t recognize, and his expression was somewhere between totally uncaring and totally unmotivated. The second driver, a porky man with near-black skin and a bald head, stomped over to Vaozey in his defense.

“We weren’t hired to load,” he retorted, gesturing to his own emblem. It was different than the young man’s emblem, but they shared a common theme of having three columns in the background. So the animal must be rank, I thought, the young man is a ferret, and he’s a… wolf? No, that’s not a canid, it looks more feline, just with strange ears. Bobcat? But it has a long and bushy tail…

“Were you hired to get your asses kicked?” Vaozey snapped, eyes widening in rage as she dropped her crates. She spread her arms wide, approaching the man who stood nearly my height and had close to my mass, though distributed differently, with no fear. Bobcat, as I decided to call him, looked confused but held his ground, unsure of how to react. “You and your vawnerzmey coworker over there have been milling around all morning while him-” she jabbed a finger at me, “-and I do three-quarters of the work.”

“That’s your job, porter, not ours,” Bobcat responded flippantly, and Vaozey slugged him in the jaw. He took a step back, then spat some blood on the ground. Everyone at the loading point went silent for a moment, and the guards looked on, hands on their weapons.

“Vaozey,” I said. “I’m leaving Kahvahrniydah today, I don’t plan on spending a night in a jail cell. The work is getting done either way, I don’t care if they slack off as long as we get out of here.”

“Crazy ngoyth,” Bobcat snarled, stomping off and bringing Ferret with him.

“I’m done,” Vaozey announced, then she stormed off in the opposite direction. I looked at the pile of remaining crates, and then at Ngvahp, who was looking on with an amused smile.

“Do you have food?” I asked.

“Of course,” she replied gently, “we’re all going to need some once we’re done.”

We ate grains and jerky after finishing the loading, and I made sure to take as much as I could fit in my stomach. I was filling back out in the places where I needed normal fat for protection, but I estimated it would take at least another week to regain the full mass I had before healing my arm. The arm in question drew a few stares when my sleeve accidentally pulled up and displayed some pallid skin during the loading of a particularly heavy crate, but nobody made any comments. It’s not that bad anyway, I thought, Vaozey’s exposed skin, what little of it there is, looks far worse.

The caravan left at noon, as scheduled, with Vaozey and I bringing up the rear because we weren’t explicitly in any sort of guard role. The official guards weren’t happy about that, probably because of Vaozey’s outburst and the fact that both of us still smelled of blood, but when Ngvahp ordered them to “do their jobs” they backed down. The drivers, especially the one Vaozey had punched, seemed pleased that they didn’t have to interact with us at all.

When we set down for the night Ngvahp invited Vaozey and me to join her at her fire, but Vaozey declined almost immediately and walked away from the rest of the group. The old woman had proven herself quite talkative during the day, spewing an almost endless stream of gossip and chatter, and I assumed Vaozey was as exhausted as I was from hearing it. I also declined, more politely than Vaozey, and grabbed some dry firewood from the back of one of the wagons to use for myself. Our rations were largely some kind of dense and fatty soup stored in metal bottles, so the fire was just for reheating and didn’t have to be very large. I could have used magic, but I was trying not to be conspicuous.

Vaozey, after attempting to drink cold soup for about ten minutes, finally went and got a piece of firewood for herself, then returned to her spot. I watched as she placed her hand directly on it, then winced and pulled back a moment later as flames erupted between her fingers. After wiping the ash off her gauntlet, she tried a few different positions for holding the bottle in the flames before finding one where she wasn’t cooking her hand. The whole time, her expression looked conflicted, and she went to sleep as soon as she finished her food.

The next day the open plains we were crossing started to sprout more trees than usual, and Ngvahp informed the caravan that we would soon be entering a forest so we should watch out for curious wildlife. Just like she had predicted, about an hour later I spotted some cat-like animals following along behind the caravan, watching us with wide and hungry eyes. They weren’t overly large, about the size of a large attack dog on Earth, but considering that they could have magic I wasn’t about to underestimate them. Before dusk, they broke off, apparently deciding we were too much of a risky target.

That night, as I was cooking a small squirrel-like animal I had caught while we were setting down the caravan, Vaozey walked over from her secluded area and joined me at my fire. She put her soup ration nearby for heating, but her eyes kept snapping to my squirrel skewer and then darting away to look off into the darkness.

“Why didn’t you make your own fire?” I asked, pulling my skewer out of the fire. The rodent’s meat was sparse and bony, but I wasn’t exactly picky about what I ate, so I crunched through its skull first. Could use some spice, I thought, maybe there are some plants around here I could use for that. Vaozey looked on, apparently disgusted with the sound of my chewing, then sighed.

“I…” she began, but then she paused, frozen in place. Again, she took a deep breath and sighed, then removed her helmet and face covering and put them on the ground beside her. “I… appreciate you helping me with the… fire thing when we were with Zhervaol,” she said, staring into the fire and acting as though uttering each word was painful. “Thanks, okay?” she huffed, finally meeting my gaze.

“You came here to say that?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“You are unbelievable,” Vaozey growled, then she angrily gulped down part of her now-heated soup. “Seyt,” she choked, spitting out something into her hand that wriggled and tried to crawl up her arm. “Seytoydh ants,” she swore, crushing the insect. “Little tawtzeytayz get into everything.” After checking my skewer for any insects and confirming that it was clean, I took another bite and crunched my way through the ribs of the squirrel, disappointed with how bland it was in comparison to the skull. Again, Vaozey winced at the sound of my chewing.

“If that’s it, you don’t have to use my fire if you don’t want to,” I said with my mouth half full.

“What is it with you?” Vaozey snapped back. “You think you’re too good to be thanks or something mister ‘Gwahloab’?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked back, sighing in confusion.

“You’re really going to pretend that story isn’t fake?” Vaozey asked. “You’re not even doing the accent anymore, it’s obvious. Seyt, even before that it was obvious. I doubt you’ve met a Gwahlaob in your life-”

“I’ve met one,” I interjected.

“One,” Vaozey emphasized. “I could believe that you’ve met one Gwahlaob, but you’re not from Sihz or Yahn, that’s for damned sure. I knew a bunch of Gwahlaob when I was younger and they’re nothing like you at all, and I’m not just talking about their size. I want to know the truth, what is it with you? Who the seyt are you really?” So I did something you think is worthy of thanks, but after thanking me you demand more, I thought, snorting to myself with amusement. “Npoyt,” Vaozey huffed.

“So is this the real reason you came over here?” I asked. “For some reason, you wanted to know this, and you thought that thanking me would enable you to extract the information from me? Even if it did work, what use would that information be to you?”

“You’re going to the noypeyyoyjh right?” Vaozey asked, her glare growing in intensity at the mention of something Rehvite-related.

“I am,” I replied, seeing no reason to lie.

“You’re going to kill a bunch of those Rehvite yeyhhayseytayb while you’re there, and on the way, right?” she asked.

“That isn’t the goal, but I’m fairly confident I’ll have to,” I answered. “They aren’t leaving me much choice in the matter.” Vaozey was silent for a moment, and I took the time to glance around and make sure we weren’t being listened to. Thankfully, everyone else looked distracted with their own business.

“I might be inclined to go with you,” Vaozey muttered, and I looked back to see she had broken eye contact to look into the dark again. “I can’t go back to Owsahlk, and there’s nothing there worth saving anyway, not anymore.”

“It’s very likely you’ll die if you come with me,” I said, recalling Koyl’s words from the letter. I didn’t much care if I died, so long as I completed my mission, but I knew humans weren’t the same at all. Though it would be better if I survived, wouldn’t it? I suddenly thought, surprising myself.

“You think I give a shit about that?” Vaozey retorted. “Seyt yourself, you npoyt. We’re going in the same direction anyway, so I’m going regardless of what you think. I’m giving you the choice of working together instead of just being two people that happen to be going east at the same time. If you want to be a little npaoyeyjhawley who thinks it’s better to work alone, it’s your loss.” Despite her strong rebuke, Vaozey didn’t get up and leave. Instead, she watched me and waited for a response.

“So, knowing almost nothing about me angers you, but you would still trust me enough to work with me on a goal you don’t fully understand,” I summarized.

“You can always just stop being so seytoydh secretive,” Vaozey snapped back.

“Why don’t you guess?” I challenged.

“What?” Vaozey blinked.

“Guess at my origins,” I suggested. “Guess some details about my life, not just broad strokes like being trained in combat. Guess why I’m going to the noypeyyoyjh, since it’s not just to kill. If you can make an accurate guess at any one of those things, I’ll agree to work ‘with’ you instead of just being someone ‘going in the same direction’.” And, regardless of what you guess, as long as you’re confident in it I’ll admit to it, I thought, Then I’ll have a new backstory, and this issue will be settled.

“I have a better idea,” Vaozey said, pulling out some dice from her pocket. “We play seven games. For every round I win, you tell me something about yourself. If you beat me more than twice in a row, I’ll drop it.” Why can't she just act predictably? I sighed.

“No,” I replied.

“I’m not going to help you make up a new fake identity,” Vaozey smiled deviously, flashing teeth through her melted lips. “I’m not a fool, but you’re beginning to look like a coward, shying away from a challenge.” How transparent, I thought.

“I don’t play games like this,” I countered. “Taunting aside, I don’t know the rules.”

“The rules of gawmbao nertay are pretty easy,” Vaozey jabbed back. “Surely, someone smart enough to re-grow their whole arm in half a month can figure them out.” That’s the same game from the gambling den, I recalled.

“That’s a game for betting money with groups of people,” I said. “It’s not suitable for determining easy winners and losers in head-to-head competitions.”

“You don’t know the rules, but you know enough to make that judgment?” Vaozey smiled. “Stop trying to squirm out of this. We’ll roll five times per round, and whoever scores highest wins the round. Come on, you’re not just going to back down, are you?”

“We don’t even have cups to roll with,” I said.

“We can use our hands,” Vaozey replied. That is a very poor choice for you, I thought.

“Fine,” I replied, “I’ll go first.”

Vaozey ended up losing eleven games before giving up, insisting that we keep playing even after the “reward” was removed out of some stubborn drive to not be beaten. Not even once did she suspect that my preferred method of rolling and slapping the dice into the dirt was actually a cover for cheating by locking in certain patterns with force magic, or if she did she didn’t say anything about it. I don’t know if it would work as well with a cup, but I should investigate this further, I thought, cheating at gambling could be a good way of gathering funds. Vaozey eventually went to sleep still angry and the issue of whether or not we would “work together” went unresolved, though I wasn't sure that it ever was an issue, or even the purpose of out interaction at all.