“I can’t believe it’s rainedallweek.” It was Friday afternoon and the tavern was dead quiet. It had been dead quiet since the rain started on Monday. It had kept up all week, raining harder every day and driving visitors away. It was driving half the vendors away, for that matter. Nobody needed to have a whole staff on hand when only a handful of attendees were coming through the gates. That morning there’d been a very brief break in the weather, but even that had only seen just a few very determined faire-goers trudging through the muddy fairgrounds. They all looked miserable, and nobody wanted to have a pint, in that weather.
Laurie couldn’t blame them. He was pretty sure he was growing mold, or at least moss. The last time they’d needed to bring supplies in had been Monday morning. That had also been the last time he’d seen Briana Gilson. Briana Gilson, leaping gracefully off the moving truck like she was some kind of fabulous gazelle, not a mountain goat. Although to be honest, Laurie didn’t really have much sense of how graceful mountain goats were or weren’t.
Hewas, however, pretty confident they were more graceful than bears, so he probably shouldn’t throw any stones.
We should not throw stones at our mate anyway,his bear said, somewhat shocked, and Laurie, lying on one of the tavern’s picnic tables like a maiden fainting on a chaise lounge, actually giggled.
That’s true. We shouldn’t. Whatever was I thinking.He had been lying on the table for a while now, and Jon hadn’t yelled at him because Jon was actuallynappingon another one. If there wasn’t the very faintest risk of a customer showing up, Laurie was pretty sure Jon would be napping as a big warm cozy bear. Instead he’d dragged a cloak over himself and folded his doublet under his head and had been sleeping for at least half an hour.
Laurie, consequently, was deeply, profoundlybored.
Even if it wasn’t dumping rain, the fairgrounds were soaked through. Far too wet to walk around in. There was so muchmud. There had even been a couple of minor mudslides in the mountains, reported by hikers but not threatening anybody so far.
That ‘so far’ weighed heavily, though, because the fairgroundsdidabut the mountains, and there was far more runoff water than usual. It wasn’t quite flooding. It was just…really, reallywet.
Although honestly, watching the rivulets of water cut through the mud on the gentle downward slant toward the distant parking lot, it wasn’t far off to say it was flooding, after all. Laurie rolled to sitting on the table so he could judge how much water was washing through the site, and found himself watching a very prissy-looking mountain goat make its way up toward the tavern.
It moved very delicately through the mud, although it looked like it was making sure of its footing, not trying to avoid getting dirty. Laurie, who had never seen a mountain goat up close,thought it seemed about the right size—somewhere around three and a half feet tall at the shoulder—except he also knew in this particular case that the goat was a female, and he was almost certain she was flippin’hugefor a female.
Of course, the only reason he knew it was a female was that the only mountain goat likely to be in the fairgrounds was Briana. Given that it had a beard, horns, and a generally malevolent look to it, he might otherwise have assumed it was a male. Fascinated, he watched as she minced her way up the sodden path. She was nowhere near as fluffy as he expected: he thought of mountain goats as having tremendously thick fur. But Briana’s fur was cropped short, like she’d been shorn, except for one massive hunk of wool sticking to the middle of her back. The middle of Laurie’s own back suddenly itched.
Her short fur made the goat’s insanely powerful form very, very visible. She was nothing but muscle beneath the white buzz, and she was, Laurie thought, just incredibly…cute. Broad black nose, a little seam of a mouth that was currently frowning with concentration, ridged horns between pointy ears laid back as she paid attention to where she placed her feet. The rain didn’t seem to bother her at all, even where it pelted her shorter fur, although as she walked up to the tavern he saw her back twitch a couple of times like the weight of wool at its middle was irritating her.
She walked rightinto the tavern, eyeing him momentarily, then eyeing not only the rest of the tavern, but the paths leading to it. The weather was miserable enough that no one was on the approach, making Laurie and Jon the only people around, and one of them was asleep. But shifters didn’t stay secret by taking unnecessary risks, so after that brief examining pause, Briana headed toward the bar. It offered enough cover for someone to shift, although there was a small storage room behind it that was even better. Her back twitched again as she walked by, and Laurie blurted, “Wait!”
Briana stopped, one front foot lifted, then planted it again and braced herself as she gave him a wary look. Laurie had the no-doubt-correct impression that if he made a mis-step here, that braced stance would turn into a kick that could knock him across the fairgrounds. Hands lifted to suggest he wasn’t a threat, he nodded at the patch of fur on her back. “Do you need help getting that loose?”
He had never seen a goat look so irritated, which, given that most of the pictures he’d seen of adult goats looked kind of grumpy, was saying something. She glared at him like if he’d been rude by even asking, but also heaved a positively enormous sigh and stomped over to him.
Laurie immediately wondered what on earth had gotten into him. He didn’t know how to de-wool a goat. Given that this was the only patch of thick fur left on her, he guessed that mountain goats must naturally shed their winter coats, which he didn’t think was true of sheep, but he still didn’t know what todoabout it. Suddenly nervous, he mumbled, “I’ll try not to pull,” and cautiously grasped a handful of the fluff to see if it would easily come off.
Bits and pieces did, but not anything meaningful. He tried to get a deeper handful and gave another gentle tug, which didn’t help. With a mutter, he carefully worked his fingers into the wool right along her back, mumbling another apology. But it started to peel away as he scritched along her spine, and she hunched her back like it felt good. It took a few minutes of effort, but he finally pulled the thick wad of wool away and without thinking, gave her back an extra rub where it had been. “There. Hopefully that’s better.”
Briana bounced away like he’d taken liberties, but also gave a pleased-looking twisting buck that resembled happy baby goats bouncing on trampolines. She headed toward the bar, stopping to rub her side along it, which made it clear that unless she laydown on her back and squirmed, that section of wool Laurie had just taken off was in a place she really couldn’t easily reach. Then she went behind the bar and, with a flash of the partitioning curtain that led to the little storage room, she went into the back.
A moment later she returned in human form, both hands twisted around to her spine to give it a good solid scratching. She said, “Thank you,” in a sort of begrudging tone. “That was driving me nuts.”
Laurie nodded, trying not to make too big a deal of it. “I didn’t know mountain goats…shed?”
“Yeah, shed. You should see us in spring, we look like half-peeled bananas. Usually my family helps each other get the wool off the tricky spots, but I haven’t seen them this summer.”
Laurie looked at the handful of wool he was still holding, which was soft and light and also somehow remarkably substantial, then looked back at Briana. “That must be a huge amount of wool. What do you do with it all?”
“My mom knits. If you ever see me in a sweater, it’s probably made from my own wool.” Briana glanced away with her jaw set, like she expected to be laughed at, though her expression relaxed into a groan. “If this rain doesn’t stop…”
“That’s really cool,” Laurie said, meaning it, then followed her gaze to the dumping rain. “Yeah, I know. We’ve had about eleven customers this entire week.”
“Us too, and it’s just me and Damien in the shop. I’m pretty sure he’s sick of me and sent me up here to get me out of his hair.”
Of course it had been too much to hope Briana wanted to come visithim. On the other hand, she could have gone home instead of coming up to the tavern, so Laurie took it as a tentative win. “Jon and I are pretty sick of each other, too.” He gestured at his sleeping brother, and Briana glanced that way, nodding.
“You don’t have anybody else working?”
“Usually we would, but with this weather there’s no point. I’m not sure there’s any point in even having the Faire open, honestly.”
“I don’t think there is. I had a wander around before coming up here.”
“As amountain goat?”
