The Gnoll's Tail Legend

By: Vesence Posted on: November 20, 2008

My ears pricked up to the echo of the clock tower droning out the hour. Midnight, just like the nights before. This rat hole wasn't worth the dirt it was built on before dark; after Lady Sol set it was another story altogether. Dark brought out the best of people's worst in these parts and the Gnoll's Tail tavern was center stage. No one who came here called it by its name, most people here couldn't care less what it was called.

I was swimming through my third flagon of the night, taking in the usual debauchery of the regulars. The steady bass resonance from the boarding room above signaling that the resident siren-more disheveled and unkempt than beautiful-had gotten to her business of "comforting" a clueless and soused House neophyte straight off a row with his teen sweetheart. Across the room through the haze of pipe and wood smoke, two ill-looking Tsol'aa were exchanging hard earned or easy swindled sovereigns for the all too familiar little Ashtani gleam packets sold by Twizy. His name I only caught accidentally when an IOU slipped from his shallow pocket. He kept his business open by slipping the greasy, one eyed Grook some percentage of the take...which apparently was considerable seeing as the tavern stayed open despite a complete lack of service during any manner of respectable hour.

"You've been sittin' in this chair, thi-is same chair boy, for the past three nights." the old Grook croaked. Pulling the stool opposite mine out he dropped himself across the table, his dirty hands leaving greased smears in the dust on the slab.

"You come, you drink, you stare at the business I let go on here." Saying the last bit too loudly he let out a cough that caused the Tsol'aa pair to scurry to the door and Twizy nearly tripped over his own cloak running for the stairs. "You have a reason for bein' here?"

Had I been sober, opening up to slime like this would have been my last thought, tonight it was my first. "You mean besides being the only person not here to screw or buy gleam?" I quipped, "I'm waiting for someone..."

"You mean you're waiting for her." It wasn't a question, he knew it and so did I. She was a doll, not the fashionable kind, a real beauty, work of art. "Why are y..." but I wasn't hearing the rest of his question. My nose had caught the last smoldering smoke of my pipe and my mind grabbed on, floating away with the vapors to that first night, the night I followed that dame...that wisp of amber smoke...to the Gnoll's Tail.

I'd pass by that run down tavern every day, but every night I was glad I lived on the other side of Cyrene. Every night except that one; I had been late before but this was different. Hurrying like I was it didn't really surprise me when I ran into someone on the street. Unlike everyone else out there though, she didn't ask for money. Instead it was the distinct and charming clatter of coins that met my ears as she hurried to balance herself and double her pace. In the dim light of the makeshift torches lining the street I questioned my own vision. Perfect hair the color of blood-red autumn leaves fell to her shoulders beneath a hurriedly wrapped scarf about her head. Porcelain skin of her barely exposed wrists caught the light intermittently as she ran in the direction I had come. I stared after her, there was nothing down that street except the tenements and a few shoddy businesses hocking crude elixirs and rusted swords.

That twitch down my spine, the one that ends in my tail told me this doll was either in trouble, or she was trouble. "She'll be both by the end," I told myself and despite my lateness and the cooling meat on the table at home I doubled back, hoping I could catch her before she vanished into the night.

Despite her attempts to be subtle my ears caught the clicking of heels on the filthy cobblestone walk not five minutes after I decided this dame was worth more of my time than dinner. Heels, in a place like this. She definitely was in trouble. Even the whores around here kept out of heels so they could run if an all too common snake decided to make a pass at more action than he deserved.

"You're in more trouble than you know, if you're down here girl." The whisper was under my breath, and she was still a building and a half ahead of me, never meant for her to hear. Something on the wind must have carried my words to her because before I could finish she turned and stared, wide eyes orange in the torchlight, right into me, through me. She couldn't see me? Or could she? Her eyes looked so hollow; they drove arrows so far through me I couldn't be sure until she started running. She took off so hard her heels sounded like hammers on a smithy's anvil, echoing, beating through the filth soaked air.

I caught her, literally, when her heel finally retired in a sewer grate down the alley. As much as those heels should have slowed her I had to book it myself just to keep pace. "Careful there honey or you're going to mess yourself up worse than the folk around here'll do." I whispered as I helped her up, finally getting a good look at her in the moonlight that filtered into the alleyway.

"No worse than you'll do I suppose...what do you want? I don't have anything I can give -you-." It wasn't a lie, the way she said it, and I knew whatever money I heard was meant for someone in the only place that would draw a girl this sweet looking, the Gnoll's Tail.

Her cherry lips started to form more protestations, but I took the time to interject. "I'm not going to rob you, sweetie, it just makes me wonder what a girl like you is doing in a hole like this."

"Nothing you need to worry about." The dismissal was final, and so was her attempt to be rid of my aid. She struck off down the alley again, that hair falling out from where she had tucked it, the chase having done what gravity couldn't.

"Now wait a minute here." I said, pacing her, "It's my prerogative to worry about a beautiful woman like you, especially on this side of Cyrene. You're apt to meet a lot more trouble than you're already in." She turned, her sweet face a mix of desperation and pride, her eyes, gray in the moonlight dripping a tear or two. "Honey you've got yourself in a real mess, haven't you?"

"Nothing, it's nothing. Nothing I can't handle." She turned again, rounding the corner and making her way out of the alley. If it were anyone but her, this beauty, I would've turned tail and went home...but she had me, for whatever reason I couldn't let her go where I knew she was headed.

"You really want to walk into the Gnoll's Tail alone, honey?" I whispered from the corner of the building, hoping she'd catch my last attempt to rescue her from whatever she'd gotten into. "What's so bad you have to come here to fix it?"

"Gods will you just leave me alone!?" She cracked. I had hoped both ways that she would and wouldn't break down now...I guess I called it wrong. "I have to disappear, I can't stay where I am anymore and the new owner said he'd arrange for supplies and a place in the wild for me to stay long enough to be forgotten." She was choking on tears and lack of breath as she finished, leaning against the boarded up windows and façade of the tavern. "If I go in there with anyone, if anyone knows what I'm doing, I'm a dead woman."

"Then why tell me?" It wasn't an illegitimate question as far as I was concerned, after all, who was I -not- to turn this woman in for whatever she needed to disappear from? But I couldn't, for whatever reason I knew she was right, whatever she had to do was right. What's more I wanted to do it with her. Something in her eyes, those orange-in-the-torchlight eyes piercing through me and reading my soul, beckoned me to disappear with her. "I'll go with you..."

"What?" She came back, towards me for the first time. Her walk was stole my body like her eyes had stolen my soul, and something welling inside me was overwhelming any reason I had to deny her. "You...you can't, I have to go...I, you...I."

I couldn't let her finish, couldn't let those red lips say another word in protest and the only way I could quiet her was to do what every inch of fur compelled me to do. I locked my lips with hers, pulling her against me, waiting for what I knew would come, for what I knew would happen as she swayed towards me.

"Alright," She whispered as she relaxed and pulled away, "but you can't go in there with me tonight, you can't know where we're going until tomorrow."

"Why, what's stopping us?"

"My husband, he watches me all the time. That's why I have to disappear. If I do anything but make it look like I'm delivering a business letter for him to the bartender he'll have me locked away, he won't let me go." I finally understood why she was here, everything that would compel a dame like this to descend from obvious finery to these dredges.

"How will we get away then, where can I find you?"

"Meet me here, in the tavern tomorrow night, the bartender will have arranged my husband and his men to be called away to Delos for business and I'll slip away. Be here before midnight, I'll come to you..." Her lips met mine one short time again, pure energy making my tail twitch. Then she turned, took a step and whispering through her hair said, "Now get out of here..."

"Wait, your name, you never told m..." She was through the door already, where I dared not follow that night...

"Boy! Boy!" The old Grook snapped me out of my cactus weed and ale induced daze. "You're waiting to hear her aren't you? Walking up to the door in those out of place heels?" Something in his voice made what he said seem almost rhetorical.

"How'd you even..." My mind raced, the liquor must have played more tricks on my mind than that daze.

"I waited for her too, and before me another man wasted his heart waiting for the woman with blood red hair and gray eyes. You'll make the same mistake too, if you don't get yourself out of here soon." It was ludicrous I thought, maybe she told the old Grook about me when she made the deal, or someone spied us outside and tipped him off or "you've been here for three nights, any more and she'll have you waiting for the rest of your life, like me."

"What do you mean like you?" I asked. It wasn't like me to be eluded by the truth, but I didn't know what else to do but ask.

"I sat here for 13 years worth of nights, wasting my money drinking myself to death. The bartender at the time was scarred old Xoran with a bad leg, never said a word to me until the night he died. Told me he never wanted the life he led, that he didn't really even own the bar."

"I don't care if your predecessor wasted his life here, how do you know I'm waiting for her?" I wanted answers, see, it didn't matter now this old frog's life story. "He told me, 'I never meant to take over the bar, but I thought after the old owner died she'd finally come...so I started tending the bar, hoping I'd hear those heels tapping on the stone outside' and that's when I learned the whole story."

"What story?"

"Everything she told you four nights ago was true, and you really followed a woman with red hair and grey eyes here...or at least you followed what's left of her, I'm sure you felt it, how she could touch your soul."

"So you're sayin' I followed a ghost?"

"Something like that, I don't know how far it goes back, not really. It could have been fifty years or one hundred and fifty. It's impossible to tell how many people's hearts she's stolen but one things for sure...it's not love, boy."

"I don't believe you." I don't know if I really didn't or didn't want to, but the more I heard the more I wondered, three nights of waiting and not a word, anything could have happened to her.

"Here's what I think happened, if you'll take an old frog's words to heart." His good eye looked almost wet, teary if an old Grook could still cry, "However long ago, whatever man first chased her down, offered to disappear with her, and promised to wait, didn't. Whoever he was he took the girls story, not struck by her beauty nor taken by her heart like we were, and went back to her husband looking for a reward for the information he had. It doesn't matter if he got something for what he told her jealous husband, but she must've gotten what she foresaw from her husband."

"And?"

"And now she catches any man with a good heart, out of jealousy or revenge or maybe her spirit still searches for that one heart she thought she found that night. Looking for someone to disappear with even though she's forever bound to wander lost and never walk through that door."

"It's a nice story," It wasn't, but I wanted to try and steer this enlightening conversation back to reality. "I bet you cooked this up just to get me to leave, then some old man like you can try to live your sick fantasy when she shows up, you can't get rid of me that easily."

"Suit yourself, stay as long as you want and I'll pour the ale until I drop and you take the place from me," His eye was bitter, his mouth curled down and his hands clenched...I thought he was going to keel over right there or make me do the same...but he hoisted himself off the shoddy stool and walked back towards the bar, the room now empty save for us. "She'll drive you crazy, you know. You'll hear her coming, or you'll start to; those heels clicking down the street, every night getting closer. She'll never make it to the door boy, never..."

I pricked up my ears halfway through swallowing my ale, a little more bitter tonight, the clock tower pounded out twelve. As the echoes faded through the thin walls of the Gnoll's Tail I swear I heard on the street, far off, a few familiar taps of heals hitting stone. They faded like the echoes of the clock. Taking my finger I somberly traced into the film of dust and grease the number four. I hoped, if she didn't come, that the pipe smoke and ale in my gut would take me back to that night of her promise to meet me...I didn't care how many times I had to come back. I'd wait forever for that girl, wait forever to disappear.