I was having a nightmare, I was somehow aware of that, and yet I could do nothing to stop it. I was trapped in a cocoon made of spider’s silk, and I could feel their many feet stepping on me tightening their strings around me. This was probably going to be a recurring one, or maybe that drake was going to take a more prominent role. What a fiasco that had been, I kept telling the people back at the village that I didn’t want to do women's work and at the first sign of danger I run away like some coward. Just because I didn’t want to do traditional women's job and end up trapped with some man didn’t mean I wanted to become some stupid warrior.

Ideally, I would like to go to the capital and study at the university to become a scholar or an architect or something. I knew that was pretty expensive however so if that didn’t work out I would just become a hunter and maybe join the adventurer’s guild. I could shoot a bow pretty well, and I sometimes got to help skin the animals for supper back home. The blood was pretty gross at first, and I often got dizzy and had to step away to get some fresh air, but I got used to it.

The people back at the village would doubtless point to this and say that women weren’t supposed to run around in the woods and that it wasn’t natural or some other bullshit like it. The fact that I was taken by those wolf spider’s wouldn’t help my case, I would not agree to be married off to some boy, I was only thirteen years old. It was not that I didn’t like boy’s, I do, at least I think I do, but with my blond hair and the fact that I had… developed faster than the other girls my age meant that I got more attention. It was strange, friends I had known my whole life started acting differently all of a sudden. Boys stared at me oddly when they thought I wasn’t looking, and Randal who was practically my best friend acted all shy and quiet around me all of a sudden, it sucked, why couldn’t we all just go back to the way things used to be? Girls I had thought were my friends suddenly became angry at me, seemingly blaming me for getting so much attention, but what was I supposed to do I would gladly trade places with them if I could, and they could have all the attention they could stomach, and I could go back to living my life.

Anyway, then that strange lady had cut me out of the cocoon and, what healed me or something? There had been a strange light, and a feeling of comfort flowed through me, then I didn’t remember anything else. The way she had looked at me had been so reassuring, I remembered her armor now, had she been some sort of warrior, as a woman? How had she managed that? As soon as I tried to do something even remotely out of the norm, people yelled at me, saying it wasn’t normal. Did she really heal me? Was she a mage and a warrior? Maybe she had some sort of magic item gran told us about in her stories. I found myself wondering about this woman, whoever she was she had rescued me, and I was grateful for that.

I turned my attention back to the dream I was supposed to be having, this was very strange, I had never heard of anyone that knew their dreams were dreams but couldn’t do anything about them. I’d have to ask gran about it when I got back home, the webbing was torn away from me by a spider which proceeded to sink its fangs in my neck. Even though I knew it was a dream it was still scary, but the dream ended there, and I sat bolt upright and screamed at the top of my lungs. I was in the middle of some sort of camp in the middle of the woods, I looked around wildly panting heavily as I slowly calmed down. Then I saw her, the woman who must have saved me. She didn’t have her armor on anymore, but I recognized those eyes, they were blue and slit down the middle like a cat’s, they would be hard to mistake.

Those eyes were staring at me now from the edge of the camp with a startled and slightly bemused expression I thought. She had a couple of dry looking sticks in her arms so she must have just come back from gathering firewood. ‘Had she heard me scream and come rushing back to see what was going on?’ The thought occurred to me unbidden, and I could feel my cheeks turning red at the idea, she smiled at me then seeming to take some amusement at my embarrassment.

I stood up in a huff intending to give this woman a piece of my mind when my eyes traveled down her body, and I discovered that where her legs should be, were instead what looked like a huge scaled snake tail. My face grew pale, and I stumbled over the blankets I had been sleeping in, to fall backward and land on my butt. I quickly tried to crawl away, but soon enough my back hit the tree, and my progress was stopped. My heart felt like it was going to beat itself out of my chest it was beating so fast. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see the moment when she attacked me. What was she, some escaped experiment from the mage’s guild? Why wasn’t she attacking, was she toying with me? Why would she go through all this trouble of rescuing me if she was just going to kill me now?

I slowly opened one of my eyes to peak at her, but she stood in the same spot as before. I opened my other eye and looked at her fully, she wrung her hands in front of herself as if unsure of what to do. Her smile was gone for sure, and now she looked sad somehow before I could get a better look at her she turned around and quickly disappeared into the forest. I sat there a moment, my back against the tree, trying to figure out what had just happened. She had rescued me from the wolf spiders and possibly healed me, she had brought me to this camp, and I had probably slept through the night judging by the morning sunlight coming through the trees. She had heard my scream and come back to the camp, I had seen her tail and freaked out, and she had gone back into the forest. I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure she wasn’t a monster, but why go through all this trouble then? Hadn’t she said something about my father waiting for me?

It looked more and more like she was the benevolent rescuer I had first thought, ‘well she won’t be benevolent much longer if you act like an asshole.’ I stood up from my seated position, I would have to apologize not only was I in the wrong but I needed her help to get out of these woods as I had no idea where we were. I went into the forest in the direction I thought she had gone, trying to find her was not easy but eventually, I stumbled upon a forest glade where I found her soaking in the morning sun. She had not gone far, and she had her eyes closed, so she didn’t notice when I started to approach her. I admired her beauty as I got closer, she had dark almost black hair that seemed to almost shine in the morning sunlight and her skin was beautiful and slightly tanned not to mention that she was very gifted in the chest department. She looked very solid somehow, with muscular arms and shoulders she still managed to seem feminine. My admiration for her went up without me being able to help it, she must have killed the spiders to be able to rescue me, and I hadn’t seen anyone else since waking up. Yet, she was a woman, it was clear to see, she was living proof to me that I could follow in her footsteps. Perhaps no to become some great fighter or warrior but I could throw off the mantle of tradition that seemed to keep me down from my village.

“Was there something you wanted, or are you just going to keep staring at me?” She said with eyes still closed, I blushed again at the realization that I had been admiring her ‘at least she assumed I was just staring and not… whatever I was doing’ and cleared my throat before speaking.

“I-I wanted to thank you for rescuing me from that burrow of spiders,” I said my voice hesitant at first.

“You’re welcome,” she answered shortly, still with eyes closed and seemingly basking in the sun.

“And to say I’m sorry,” she turned to me then and looked at me, she smirked slightly. “I’m sorry for the way I acted, I shouldn’t have done that.” Her smirk turned into a genuine smile, and she hugged me while saying.

“Apology accepted,” she let me go and looked at me before continuing. “To be honest with you your not the first to react that way to see me. Everyone I run into on the mainland seems to act as you did back there. I guess you were just surprised,” I nodded at this, curious about where she came from since she called this land the mainland. “I suppose I should apologize too, I shouldn’t have been so angry with you, but I suppose I got tired of being looked at like I’m some monster. I’m a bit homesick I guess, I never knew I would miss people not paying attention to me.” She chuckled at this, and I joined in after a moment's hesitation. “Anyway, should we pack up camp and get you back to your father?”

“Yes, please, he’s probably worried sick by now.”

“Yes, sick is the right word, I’m Eshanai by the way.”

“Oh, hello Eshanai, my name’s Lilian,” I introduced myself end held out my hand which she took and shook up and down. We moved back to the campsite, and I was about to ask what I could do to help when the blanket Eshanai was holding turned into glowing red light and flew into her stomach.

“What was that, how did you do that?” I asked, incredulous when my mind stopped reeling. Eshanai seemed to give it some thought before she answered my question.

“You mean this?” She said as she made another blanket turn into light in her hand, I nodded at that, too busy watching the pretty glow to give a verbal confirmation. “It’s a bit of a trick of mine, I can store things in a secret place and bring them back out at a later time if I want.” I suddenly had a thought, and it burst out of my mouth in my excitement.

“That must be where the armor I saw you were before is, I was wondering where you kept it,”

“That’s right Lilian, your pretty smart for your age,” she said with a smile, and I could feel myself blushing again. With this ability of Eshanai’s packing up the camp went very quickly, ‘it must be extremely convenient, I wonder how many things she can keep in there? She will basically not have to carry anything for the rest of her life.’ We started on the journey back to the village with Eshanai leading and me following, holding her hand.