At first, Dervit thought he’d done something wrong, but when she smiled at him, he relaxed.
“Thought you could use some company,” she said.
Dervit gave a timid smile and shrugged. “I’m used to being alone with my thoughts, but it would be nice to have someone other than myself to talk to.”
Jahrra laughed. “I know what you mean.”
“What shall we discuss?”
“To be honest,” Jahrra said, “I don’t know a thing about limbits. Well, I know a little bit, but not much.”
Dervit gave Jahrra a quick look over. She was tall, taller than his kind, of course, but he thought she might be tall for her kind as well. She wore simple deerskin pants and a white tunic beneath a brown vest that fit her more closely than his fit him. Her hair was long and golden blond, and her blue grey eyes lit up when she smiled. He decided then he liked her very much. She could have easily turned him away, like that brooding Tanaan dragon, but she had been nothing but kind to him, despite what had happened at the pool earlier. The memory made him blush a little. He hadn’t meant to sneak up on her, but he’d been just about to leave the brambles behind for a drink when she arrived with the dragon, and he had no choice but to remain hidden until she was done with her bath.
Shaking his head, Dervit took a breath and considered what she had said before letting his thoughts wander.
“How about you start by telling me what you think you know. We critter folk are often portrayed differently than how we truly are,” Dervit offered.
“Good idea. Although, I hope the picture I’ve been given is a good one. I learned about your kind in one of my classes at the university in Lidien.”
Dervit nodded for Jahrra to go on, his cap slipping a little from its perch atop his head. He straightened it and pricked his ears forward to help keep it in place.
“My professor told us that limbits are similar to elves, except for a few obvious differences. You are much smaller, and from the waist down you resemble animals.”
Jahrra screwed up her face a little, trying to remember all the wild creatures Anthar had listed off. Unfortunately, her notes were back in Jaax’s house, tucked away in a trunk for safekeeping.
“Not all of you look like foxes. Some of you take after rabbits, badgers, weasels, beavers, hedgehogs, skunks, porcupines, possums …”
She held up a finger for each animal she named, then started over again once she ran out of fingers.
Dervit found his first impression of Jahrra, that she sported a very accepting and kind nature, had been correct. Unlike her dragon guardian, she was open with her thoughts and shared them willingly in an attempt to befriend him. Ellyesce seemed reasonable as well, but there was an emptiness about him, something he tried to fill with good humor and quick wit. But Dervit had learned early on how to read people, and although the elf did a fine job of disguising the hollowness that haunted him, he couldn’t quite banish it altogether. Dervit decided he would tread lightly around Jaax and Ellyesce, but he would very much enjoy getting to know Jahrra. Perhaps, he might even call her his friend someday.
You’ve never really had friends before, he told himself, wondering what that might be like.
“According to my professor,” Jahrra continued on, breaking into his musings, “limbits live in dens and feed themselves by foraging, hunting and growing their own food. They are very shy and stay hidden away from other forms of society.”
Jahrra huffed out a breath and let her hands drop to the front of the saddle. Dervit took note that it had four pommels, two in front and two in the back and wondered why the elf’s didn’t have the same. A question for another time, perhaps.
“How far off am I?” she asked, regaining his attention.
“Not too far off. Yes, we do have variants, even within our own families. My father was a fox limbit, my mother was a squirrel limbit. All of my sisters took after my mother. Only I took after my father.”
The reminder of his sisters brought a pang of sadness with it, but Dervit refused to let it overwhelm him.
A new life, remember? You can do nothing for them now.
“We are not all shy, we just prefer to stick to our own kind.”
“Really?” Jahrra wondered aloud, eyeing him dubiously.
Dervit grinned. “Very well, that’s not entirely true. Most of us consider outsiders and other races to be dangerous. Either we believe non-limbits will murder us for sport, or they’ll teach us new ideas that will somehow destroy our traditions. I never thought either of those were true. Yet another reason I was an outcast. Of course, the former ended up proving to be somewhat true.”
He grimaced at the reminder of his brush with death, and Jahrra gave him a sympathetic look.
“We are, however, very superstitious,” he continued, ready to forget about the ordeal at the crossroads.
“Superstitious? How so? I wouldn’t have guessed that about you.”
Dervit shrugged. “I try to tell myself that I’m not, and I’m better at ignoring the old superstitions. But I still won’t eat the first apple picked at harvest.”
Jahrra just stared at him. “You’re joking.”
He held up a hand, the pale cream fur of his palm stained with dirt. “I swear it. It’s bad luck to eat the first apple pulled from the tree in the orchard. If you do, then the harvest will be bad next year.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Jahrra said with a laugh.
“Superstition, remember?” her limbit friend answered with a small grin.
“What else?” she demanded. “What else is considered superstitious for you?”
For some reason, Jahrra found this subject fascinating, so Dervit proceeded to list as many as he could think of off the top of his head.
“Always get at least one toe wet when crossing an unfamiliar stream. When pulling weeds in the garden, never mix the blooming ones with those free of flowers. You have to make two piles. When fishing, never bring home an uneven number of fish. If you see an owl before sunset or after sunrise, then you must recite an incantation or else be stricken with bad luck until the day is over. Oh, and never pass between the split trunks of a tree,” he added, pointing out an ancient oak just off the side of the road. The tree had two distinct trunks with enough space between them for someone to walk through.
“What happens if you do that?” Jahrra asked.
Dervit took a deep breath and released it. “You will summon unwanted attention.”
Jahrra quirked an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”
The limbit shrugged one shoulder. “No one knows until it happens.”
Jahrra snorted, but kept her opinion to herself. It was beginning to sound like fortune-teller’s magic to her. Any misfortune could be blamed on some random act that had nothing to do with it. Regardless of her disbelief in virtually everything Dervit was telling her, she pressed him to go on. Silly as it may be, it was fun to hear what got the limbit folk so jumpy.
“If a garden tool breaks or is damaged, you cannot fix it or make a new one yourself. You must ask a neighbor and then pay them part of the harvest reaped from the new tool. If you find a cracked egg in the henhouse, then you must put away one trovet for each cracked egg.”
“What’s a trovet?” Jahrra asked.
“It’s what we use as currency. It isn’t worth much, but if you have some clumsy hens in your coop, you’ll end up stowing all of your money away and have nothing left to buy dyed wool or new sewing needles at the market on the last work day of the week.”