Savage Saints (Monsters of Saint Mark's)

No. I’m really starting to get sick of it, actually. And I barely fit in that tub anymore. My wood nymph self is much taller than my old self. I can’t even take a shower because the water hits me in the neck.

“Helloooo? Cottage redecorating gods? Can you hear me? I need a redesign!”

I’ve been asking—nicely, I might add—for this little retrofit project since the whole epic magical dragon-moth-bloodhorn scene several weeks ago, but they’re not listening. Or maybe they just don’t care.

I sit down on the bed and check out my hooves. They are pretty but… they are starting to crack along the edges. Like… I need a hoof polish. But if I’m the slave caretaker in charge of giving hoof polishes, who will polish my feet?

Holy crap, Pie. That’s not a good road to go down. You polish your own feet, princess.

This makes me laugh out loud. But that’s short-lived because I picture how much work it will be to make new polishing paste. Pell made me throw out all the herbs. He was gonna make me throw out the crystals too, but luckily, he came to his senses. How would we get new crystals? Those don’t grow in the greenhouse.

It wasn’t feasible. But every jar filled with magical stuff in this sanctuary is now empty.

Well. Except for one. Of course.

My eyes involuntarily migrate over to the tall jar of tomb tokens the Freckle Monster made me. He’s got a ton of freckles, obviously, so I’m calling him Frecks. He’s very good with plants—Tomas put him in charge of the greenhouse—so he harvested a shitload of bloodhorn. Then Tomas, unhelpful traitor that he is, went down to the dungeon and gathered up bags and bags and bags—did I mention he found bags?—of tiny little dragon scales.

When Tarq first came through the tomb with my Book of Debt and explained that I was his new employee, I was pretty sure this was not gonna happen because you need dragon scales to do that whole portal spell. And we were fresh out because Tomas isn’t a dragon anymore. He’s a dragon chimera and the scales on his legs don’t work. Probably because it’s an illusion or something. Because when he walks through the gate, he has no scales on the outside. As far as the outside world is concerned, Tomas is just another hot guy who lives in the rural P woods. So we think his scales don’t work because they’re not real.

Actually, there’s nothing ‘we’ about that. I wasn’t involved in working out the new portal door spell rules. The monsters did it. They are seriously invested in my new job for some reason.

Anyway, after the whole Reckoning thing the monsters went looking for dragon scales in the dungeon and it was empty. Completely empty. Like… not even a couple of dust bunnies in the corner kind of empty.

But then when Tomas went down to look, he came back with bags, and bags, and bags of tiny fucking dragon scales.

What a little traitor Tomas turned out to be. Why did he go back down there to look?

I get it, the dungeon is probably like the hallways upstairs, or something. And he probably had nothing to do with finding them all down there.

But for fuck’s sake. When you go check a dungeon for dragon scales and find none, you do not go back and double-check! Am I right? I’m so right.

Then Freckle Monster made me a whole giant jar of little bloodhorn and dragon scale brooches, and necklaces, and earrings, and bracelets. He even made me hair clips.

So now I have all the keys I need to go to work.

Isn’t it wonderful?

I try the water again. Still cold.

“Jeez. Why is this all so hard?” I go downstairs, check the furnace, and find that the entire fire has gone out. Not even a smoldering coal.

“Fuck this,” I mutter, then go back upstairs and just get dressed. No bath for me today. Which is just great. My first day at my new job and I have to go in with day-old hair.

But. I do like the outfit. I look down at my skirt again and smile as I take off my t-shirt and slip on the blouse. And when I look at myself in the mirror I have to admit, I’m a damn pretty wood nymph.

My fur is even more golden than Pell’s. And my hair is longer. Like much longer. And bouncy. It’s like my hair got one of those expensive blowouts at a top-notch salon. Downside, it needs a lot of taming or I just end up looking like… well. Wild. I look wild. Like a true wood nymph.

Which I am, according to Ostanes. But now that time has passed between that little visit to… whatever realm or dreamworld I was in while Ostanes was talking—yeah, the further away I get from that day, the less likely I believe that it was real.

I’m starting to think I made it up. I hallucinated. I mean, I’m kinda known for hallucinating.

But then I think about my new job. Which requires me to step through a tomb portal to get there.

And if that’s real, then all of this is real.

But it’s still very confusing. And I still miss Pia. Even though Ostanes said she was just another part of me, she didn’t feel like just another part of me. She felt like a whole other person. She was always making me feel better, and cautioning me, and making me happy. I miss her opinions, and her little voice, and even though she’s still technically here—well, not here here, but around here somewhere—it’s not even close to being the same.

What good is a bird if she can’t talk? What good is a bird who can’t caution me when I get bad ideas? What good is a bird who can’t offer up fashion advice?