The Healing Souls

Fae Village Market

[Pyla]

The human realm was different from the fae realm. There was no magic in the air and the whole world seemed dull in comparison. The makeup of the buildings was even different.

Back home, I lived in a hut with my father, his true mate, and my two younger siblings. It was made of wood and earth and sparkled with magic. Though the house was not large, it was big enough for all of us.

My father’s true mate always treated me kindly, even though I was only half lizard person. I loved my siblings and I missed them in the human realm. They would live at home until they were seventy-five. Most fae lived at home until they came of age.

Coming to the human realm to live with my mother was a shock to the senses, but the biggest shock had been meeting Forrest Montblanc. I wasn’t normally as shy as I’d been meeting all these different creatures, but there were so many rules.

In the fae realm, it might be decades before we saw people of other species. It was a big reason why I was considered so strange to the people of my village. My father went out searching for his true mate and ended up entangled with my mother. She didn’t want to raise me, so she hunted him down and dumped me into his arms.

One would think that would make me less inclined to live with her now, but I needed some sort of introduction to the world of trolls. They seemed to have some similar personality traits, except that they seemed to take pleasure in being rude to others. We were straightforward, but not intentionally rude.

Except for Forrest. He was just as straightforward as a lizard man, but not as stiff. I liked his relaxed personality. He didn’t stand on formality and he hugged me every time I saw him. It made me blush and made my tail stand straight up. Stupid tail.

Lizard people occasionally had that problem, but they didn’t tell others what it meant. I was embarrassed when Harmony pointed it out and accurately guessed what it meant at the last dinner we had at Carmen and Rock’s house. They didn’t tease me about it, though, as others might have.

Seeing Rock and Carmen gave me hope for what my relationship could be in the future. Part of me was hoping that Forrest was my true mate. Though, I was a little worried that he was just putting on an act to get close to me. Then I’d see him interacting with Carmen and she didn’t think it was strange at all. If he were pretending, then she would have been put off by it… right?

My mother liked that I was appealing to so many young men from strong families. When I returned from the dinner where Forrest had fought Elbio, she was ecstatic. Forrest explained it to me before taking me home and my tail stood straight up for an hour. I was glad he never seemed to figure out what it meant.

Back home, it never did that. I remembered seeing a female who had an unruly tail and feeling sorry for her. Whenever she was around the male she found attractive, her tail stood up on its own.

The best way I can describe it is getting turned on in a very obvious way. Since most lizard women had the entrance to their cloaca at the base of their tail, lifting of the tail was part of the mating process. I wasn’t built the same as them, though.

Not that I didn’t feel that way when Forrest hugged me. Even if it weren’t a weird subconscious thing, Forrest was a troll I’d definitely raise my tail for. The idea of it made me blush whenever it happened.

Even though I found lizard men attractive, I also found trolls attractive. Though I was attracted to their looks, it was their behavior that was the biggest factor in my interest. I thought Elbio was attractive, but the more I saw his behavior change from when I first met him, the less attractive he was to me.

My mother was preparing a big dinner for her and her mate. They were celebrating that Forrest fought for me. All of her friends wanted to have a reason to party and she was no different. It was things like this that made me frustrated with my mother.

We went to the forest village for the fae to buy food and decorations. It was cheaper to feed trolls by shopping at the fae market than it was to shop in the human markets. They would hunt animals in the fae realm and sell the meat in the human realm.

It was set up like a street market and I loved the atmosphere. I was with my mother to help her carry things and I was hoping to find something to give Forrest as a gift. He said I had to claim him as well and lizard people claimed with necklaces. We would find a magic stone and use our claws to dig a hole in it, then use leather from fae beasts to create a string for it.

My claws weren’t as big as others from my village, but I was hoping to find a stone I could use and some leather straps to hold it up. They could imbue them with the strength to withstand being worn by a troll.

We split up in the market and I went to look at the gems and baubles in the stands. There was one with stones and gems from the fae realm. I looked over all of the options they offered, but none of them seemed right. I sighed and turned away from the shop.

“Wait, is there something I can help you find? If you tell me what you’re looking for, I can direct you, and not all of my wares are out here. There are some things we all hold back,” the shopkeeper said to me.

“I’m looking for a stone for my… my boyfriend…. He’s a mountain troll. All of these seem too small for him, though,” I replied.

“Ah, I see that you’re part lizard person. I know of this tradition. Claiming him with a stone. I think it’s a sweet tradition. I happen to have a single rock snake eye. They are rare, but not used for much, so they don’t sell well. Would you like to see it?” he asked.

“Yes, please!”

He turned to a chest behind him and started opening the drawers in front of it. When he found what he was looking for, he turned back around and showed it to me. The stone was bigger than his hand.

It glittered in the sunlight in a pretty way. The outer part of it was an amber color that was mottled with lines of copper and gold. Toward the center, there was a darker amber with some bits of black in a horizontal line. A solid onyx line cut through it the pattern vertically. It was beautiful.

“How much is this?” I asked.

“Two hundred human dollars. It’s greatly reduced because it has been in my inventory for so long. These are hard to come by. They are usually destroyed in the hunt.”

I searched through my bag for my wallet. I wanted this and I was pretty sure I had something like what he was asking for. Trading my fae gold for human currency had gotten me more money than I’d expected, but I’d used much of it buying clothes more appropriate for living here.

Rock snakes were hard to kill. As their name implied, they had scales that were stone-like. They made hunting them very difficult. If a team of hunters could take one down, though, the meat from it could feed my village for a few days.

We would break it down, using every part of the body. Scales were used for armor, bones were used for tools, weapons, and utensils. The poison sack would be used to create a numbing salve and several other medicines. We weren’t prone to being harmed by the poison.

If an eye did make it, then it was sold with the money going to the village coffers for anything we couldn’t provide ourselves. I never saw them leave with a rock snake eye and come back with anything less than a bag full of coins. A perfect stone like this one was worth far more than two hundred human dollars. It was worth closer to half a million.

“Why are you selling this for so cheap? You could sell it in the fae realm for far more than this.”

“Partly, because I don’t sell in the fae realm. My cousin gives me things he finds there and I sell them here. Partly, because I would like the space. Mostly, because you seem like you’re a very earnest and caring troll. You didn’t come to my shop and denigrate my wares in hopes of getting a cheaper price. Even when you didn’t find what you were looking for, you were respectful.

“I believe these stones all find their home when they’re supposed to. You were meant to have this one. I don’t lose anything by selling it to you. If you would like it, I will sell it to you for that price and I will give you a note for my friend a few stalls down. He will help you with a strip of leather that can stand up to a mountain troll’s skin.

“All you need after that is something to punch through that eye. No offense, but I don’t think your claws will be strong enough. This is where human tools might be of use to you. They might make a drill bit strong enough to get through it. If it was meant to be, the goddess will guide you to it,” the shopkeeper told me.

I nodded. That was definitely my belief. Maybe the goddess had guided me to this shop for this reason. I paid him and he slipped the stone into a cloth bag and tied it up. I put the stone into my bag and bowed to him before leaving the store with his note.

Finding the other shop wasn’t hard. As he said, it was only a few stalls down and I could smell the scent of leather coming from it. It was a familiar scent. My father was an armor maker in our village and he used leather for the base. It smelled like home and made me a little wistful.

When I went into the shop, I found the owner and gave him the note. He looked at me and then read the note.

“I have exactly what you’re looking for over here,” he said, and guided me to some lengths of leather.

He picked out one that was a beautiful, slightly scaled strip of leather. I looked up at him. This was mountain viper skin. They were small but hard to kill and very deadly to everything except lizard people. Finding a skin this long was rare. No one hunted these.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

“My brother raises mountain vipers for troll customers. They don’t need to be imbued with anything to stand up to their skin. They’re popular for accessories. This length should be perfect for your necklace. It’s thirty human dollars.”

I pulled out the money for him and he put the leather in another little bag for me. I accepted it and bowed to him before I put it into my bag with the stone. This was perfect.

The stone and the leather would definitely let people know who it was that claimed Forrest. I blushed and my tail swished happily behind me. The man smiled at me and waved as I left the shop.

As I stepped back into the press of people, I got my bearings. My mother was meeting with the butcher and told me what direction to go in. I just had to sniff it out.

Before I could get very far, I was stopped by two troll women. When I tried to walk around them, they stepped back into my path. I looked up at them. I didn’t recognize one of them, but the other I knew was Shayle.

I remembered her from the barbecue when I met Forrest. She was his date that night and another mountain troll. I was fairly certain this was the other woman Forrest thought could be his mate. She was my rival.