She must have experienced a bout of temporary insanity. Yes, that was it. She had gone momentarily insane. How else could she explain finding herself riding hidden in the performers’ wagon as they made their way out of the city that afternoon? She had never been overly trusting, that was what had kept her alive all these years on her own. Somehow, a couple of minutes with these two unusual strangers had caused her to lose her marbles.

Ari was currently kicking herself for having agreed to go with them. True, she needed the help, but with the guards pointed in the wrong direction, she knew that she could probably have taken care of herself from there. Now, with Collin sitting at the front steering the horse, Landen at the entrance to the back, and a tiny barred window as the only other opening, there was going to be no escape until they stopped to rest for the night, and God knew where they would have taken her by then.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she muttered, smacking her forehead. As soon as she did it, though, she realized that Landen was probably watching. He was so quiet, she had almost forgotten he was there. She looked up at him to find that he was, indeed, staring, but he made no comment other than a single raised eyebrow.

She settled back down against the pile of oddly shaped burlap sacks and tried to think of a plan. She kept an eye on Landen, making sure he didn’t pull anything funny while she wasn’t paying attention. Not that he would really have any cause to, since he could have fed her to the wolves long ago if he had wanted to. Still, one can never be too careful.

Surreptitiously checking to make sure that her knives were all in place, she resigned herself to waiting until she had an opening. And then…and then she would decide what to do when the time came. She may have been hasty in her decision to follow them, but that didn’t mean she still wasn’t curious. They were the first people she had ever encountered who had discovered her secret without instantly deciding to drown her in a lake or tie her up to a stake and send her up in flames. Well, maybe not first… She shuddered, turning her thoughts back to the present matter: What exactly did they want?

With these thoughts rolling over and over in her head, Ari fell asleep amongst the odds and ends in the carriage of the two mysterious performers.

&

A couple hours later, Collin pulled back on the reins, bringing the old mare and the cart to a smooth stop on the edge of a small clearing in the woods a couple miles out of town. Landen promptly lifted the flap of cloth that covered the back opening of the wagon and hopped out.

Wordlessly, they began their nightly routine of setting up camp, completely forgetting about the girl that they’d picked up until Collin went to cook dinner and found her curled up on top of the sack of cooking utensils. One would think that, with such an exciting day and such odd occurances, the girl would have been their first interest, but that’s men for you.

“What do we do about her?” Collin murmured to Landen, breaking the comfortable silence.

Landen merely shrugged.

The older man rolled his eyes, muttering under his breath, “Why do I even ask?” Turning to the girl, he bent down to pick her up and move her out of the way, but the strangest thing happened. One second he was slipping his arms around her tiny form, and the next, he found himself shooting out of the back of the wagon and landing on his back with a painful Thump!

Landen looked at his friend with a quizzically raised eyebrow.

Scrambling up and ignoring his aching backside, he pulled back the cloth to find the girl crouched in the corner with two blades in her hands, teeth bared. It was too dark to make out much more than the outline of her form and the glint of firelight on her blades and teeth.

“Don’t. Touch. Me,” came the menacing growl from inside the wagon. It sounded more like it came from a wild bear than a scrawny little girl.

Collin shot Landen a look that clearly screamed, What the hell?? “Uh…Sorry?” he ventured. “I was just, er… trying to get my cooking things to er… make food. They’re in that sack you were sleeping on.”

He heard some shuffling, but he couldn’t quite make out what she was doing. A moment later, a sack came flying at his head. Were it not for his fast reflexes, he probably would have ended up on his back for the second time in the span of a few minutes, probably with a broken nose to boot. As it was, he just let out a low grunt as he caught the heavy bag.

Dropping the curtain of the cart, he turned around and plopped the sack down on the ground with a muffled clatter. He looked slightly disgruntled, but said nothing more than a muttered, “She’s strong” as he set about preparing a meal for the three of them.

&

A short while later, Ari emerged from the wagon. She eyed them both warily, but otherwise made no mention of the incident. Landen tossed her a small bag. “There’s a not spring over there,” he said, jerking his head to indicate where ‘there’ was. “Take a bath.”

“No way!” she protested immediately. Who knew what they were planning? She was not about to undress herself with two strange men in such close proximity.

Landen seemed unperturbed. “Yes. You will. And you will scrub so that all those little buggies living on you will come off in the water instead of into our beds. I flatly refuse to sleep next to a flea infestation.”

Perhaps she was just surprised that that was the most she’d heard him say since they met, but Ari simply walked off with an angry “Hmph.”

“We’re a scream away if you need us,” called Collin at her back.

“As if I would,” she muttered to herself, though he seemed to have heard since she heard him chuckle softly.

It was only when she reached the hot spring that she realized how much she wanted the bath. Other street rats grew up dirty and the only time they were probably ever bathed was at birth, and some not even then. Ari, however, grew up in a home and she knew what it felt to be clean.

She shed her oversized rags quickly and slipped into the pool with a happy sigh. It was just the right temperature, comfortably warm without being intolerably hot or unpleasantly lukewarm. She swam a couple laps before setting about scrubbing herself rigorously from head to foot with the bar of soap and the rough towel that she found in the bag.

When she finally emerged, she was loathe to put on the infested rags that had been her only set of clothing for many years. Fortunately, she found a fresh set of clothes waiting for her next to her old ones. As soon as she saw this, however, she wanted to run back into the water or scream obscenities, or both. One of the guys had crept up on her while she was bathing and left it for her.

I wasn’t just the realization that she might have gotten herself involved with a couple of lechers, there was more. Did they see? Her hand subconsciously crept to that spot at the base of her spine and she shuddered.

The worst part was, she hadn’t even heard them.

&

“So what do you think?” Collin asked as soon as they were sure she was out of earshot.

Landen, predictably, shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“But she’s so young.”

“That’s not our concern.”

Collin grunted in frustration. “How can you be so cold about it. I would think that you especially-”

Landen silenced him with a wave of his hand. “She’s coming back.”

Ari found both men huddled around the fire, oddly silent, when she emerged from the woods, an image of hellish, fire-spitting fury.

“Which one of you was it?” she demanded.

“Uh…was what?” asked Collin, confused.

“One of you went to-to the hotspring and-and-and dropped off…these,” she finished lamely, gesturing at her clothes. Were she one to blush, her cheeks would have been on fire; she was greatful just then that she wasn’t.

Landen, seeing what she was trying to say, remained silent, but a tiny smirk played at the corner of his mouth, hardly noticeable to the untrained eye. Collin, however, wasn’t quite as quick.

“Your welcome?” he ventured.

She snarled and her glare fixed on him, eyes narrowing. “You!” she seethed.

Collin gulped, getting that nagging feeling that he’d somehow made a big mistake. Without warning, the bar of soap they’d given her came hurtling towards his head. He barely dodged that, only to be hit in the face by the wet rag that followed after. He removed it quickly to find the rampaging bear that he had once mistaken for a scrawny teenage girl rampaging across the clearing towards him.

“Wait,” he said, backing up nervously, his hands held before him in what he hoped was a placating manner. “Ari, calm down a minute. I think we should-Umph!” His words were cut off as he tripped over a bedroll. Almost as soon as he felt his back touch the ground (for the second time that night) another, lighter weight landed on his chest.

“What did you see you sneaky, perverted little weasel?” she growled, a fist cocked and ready, the other hand holding onto the collar of his shirt.

“W-what?” asked Collin, still completely lost. “What are you talking about? Landen, could you please…” He trailed off as he looked over at his friend. “Landen? Are you…okay?”

The younger man was still sitting by the fire, but now he was bent over, clutching his stomach. His entire form seemed to be quivering as he emitted tiny gurgling sounds. At Collin’s question, Landen couldn’t hold it in anymore, he threw his head back and unleashed…laughter?

Pointing a wavering finger in the general direction of his wrestling companions, he attempted to explain, “You – Haha – y-you – Hahaha gasp Ha gasp Hahahahahahahaha…” He seemed to give up as he bent double again and continued laughing.

Collin raised an eyebrow. “Uh…okay…what’s so funny over there?”

Landen attempted to compose himself, taking deep breaths between laughs. “Ha gasp haha gasp ha gasp EVERYTHING! Hahahahahaha…”

“Okay, first, I think I’m gonna ask what you fed him. And then I’m gonna politely decline when you offer it to me,” said Ari, momentarily forgetting about her anger. She was actually even getting a tiny bit scared of the other man. Maybe they’re not rapists. Maybe they’re just crazy.

“Maybe we should give him some space,” suggested Collin.

Ari nodded dazedly and climbed off of Collin, walking over to the other edge of the clearing. She’d spotted an extra bedroll (the one Collin had tripped over) put out for her and she proceeded to find a spot that was close enough to the fire yet as far away from the two men as possible to lay it out. She’d never laid out a bedroll before, but it wasn’t overly difficult to figure out. She may not have been as deft as her companions in setting up camp, but she managed alright in the end.

As she worked, she kept casting confused glances at Landen, who was still cackling like a hyena, though he seemed to be pulling himself together. That’s not normal. Definitely not normal.