Tuesday Tale Challenge on Glitterlady's blog

Read the other stories here.

Cold gnawed her hand, yet she picked up the brittle flower from the snow. It was dead, as she should be. Envy surged through her; she crushed the wilted flower inside her fist. Her life had been an average one: she’d married, had children, then died calmly.

It was what came after the death that had frightened her; the realization that she was leaving her loved ones behind and stepping into a new plane of existence. Her feelings had been lugubrious, a clump of sorrow and fear lodged in her heart.

She should have been afraid of the offer of immortality instead.

7 virtues: Charity

The kind lord had no friends at this table. Many would benefit from his untimely death; some would draw only pleasure from it. She looked at their faces, but none would meet her gaze. Suddenly she knew why.

She reached for her lord’s cup and drank deeply. The sharp taste of poison danced on her tongue, before flowing down her throat.

She smiled feebly at the shocked faces of the lord’s enemies. Tears ran down the lord’s face as he realized what she had done.

Her sacrifice had not gone in vain; her brother the lord would live another day.

7 virtues: Temperance

“Bring the thief before me!”

The guards dragged the man before him.

“Mercy, High Judge!” the accused pleaded.

He knew that face. Before him was the boy who’d bullied him as a child. Who’d pushed his face into the mud, kicked him in the stomach and worse. How ironic that now he was at his mercy. As High Judge, he was the one who decided. The evidence spoke of innocence, but…

It would feel good to lop off his hand.

No, I would be no better than him.

“The evidence shows another committed the crime. Free him.”

Creatures of Verannia: Meet Cricri - and her tails

Her thoughts were interrupted by snoring; she had found who she sought. Puppy or Cricri as she preferred, was resting under a Healing Tree when Siri finally came. Cricri yawned and stretched her furry body before rising to her legs and padding over to the fellow hunter. Her appearance was canine except for the colouring: her underside was white as snow and her back blue as a lake, with darker stripes running over her ribs. She greeted Siri with a look only puppies and small girls mastered.

Cricri is a wurmtail hound – a canine creature with two snakes for tails, originally born out of a magical mishap. The legend goes that a young wizard wanted a unique pet and tried to dye his dog blue with a simple spell. Something went wrong and instead he found himself the proud owner of something even more unique: a snake-tailed talking blue dog. The first wurmtail hound was born.

Since then the hounds have bred stubbornly in the woods of Verannia, despite the obstacles. Reproduction has never been easy for wurmtail hounds, since each individual houses three personalities in one body. On top of that the personalities of the tails are often completely opposite: atheist-true believer, social butterfly-hermit, chaste-lecherous etc. Cricri’s tails Pink and Blue are a bimbo-scholar pair:

“I didn’t hear anything,” Siri searched her memories for something she might have heard, but found nothing worth notice.

“You're human,” Blue noted. “That's near deaf.”

“I thought snakes were near deaf,” Pink interrupted.

“Just because we don't have outer ears doesn't mean we can't hear, Pinkie.” Blue rolled her eyes, and gave Pink a sidelong glance of embarrassment.

“How could I know that!” She protested. “We're a woodland creature, not a biology student.”

“Well how then can I hear you ask about most obvious things, and question, and question and question my answers until I'm insane!” Blue hissed with fury.

Pink answered by sticking her pink, forked tongue at her.

---

“Technically, I've got three persons in one body,” Cricri said and glanced over her shoulder at Pink and Blue, “though it feels like I'm mothering two morons.”

“Oi!” Blue snapped.

“Huh?” Pink lifted her head from a patch of ice. “Sorry, but what did she say? I was busy admiring me eyelashes.”

“We don't have eyelashes.” Blue hung her head in chagrin, then added: “We don't even have eyelids.”

“Stop that!” Cricri bellowed, before giving chase to her tails.

So it is not very difficult to understand why wurmtail hounds usually prefer a solitary life. Every spring they gather to the annual Wurmtail Hound Courtship Gathering, an event the Elder Hounds have created to ensure the survival of the species. After two weeks of pairing up, the hounds sigh in relief and return to their solitary lives.

Wurmtail hounds never consent to become pets, even though they may sometimes outsource hunting to a Foodmaster in return for their services. Cricri’s Foodmaster Siri provides her with leftovers and in return the hound protects Siri from possible threats and warns if either of her uncles is searching for her. Though Cricri is no one’s pet, she has become attached to her young Foodmaster.

She was distracted by a cold, wet touch on her shoulder, followed by a warm body curling against her back.

“Stop eavesdropping and go to sleep,” Cricri muttered. “You know you can’t look tired if you’ve been sleeping.”

7 virtues: Chastity

She walked past the sneering brutes, holding her head high though her spirits were low. They had besieged her village for days now. Hopefully their offer was a sensible one.

Wishful thinking.

“Spend the night in my bed.” The leader lifted his eyes long enough to see the scorn on her face.

“Never.”

Upon returning to the village her friend asked:

”You turned down his offer. Why?”

“Witches lose their power if they bed.” She rose to the wall, power dancing at her fingertips. “He might keep his word, but the village would be left defenseless against others.”