Chapter Text
Gideon was drunk - partially on fresh air and freedom, but mostly on the shockingly strong home brew the bus driver had offered her. If breezes that smelled like plants and free booze was a quarter of what this valley had to offer, she fucking loved it here already.
She definitely didn’t trip over her own two feet getting off the bus. Definitely not. Gideon Nav was beauty, she was grace, she would punch you in the face for even suggesting she could trip, etc. etc. etc.
“You didn’t see that,” she said, pressed to the pleasantly warm, soft chest of the person who’d caught her when she absolutely did not fall even a little bit.
Clean air, free booze, and a face full of tits on arrival. She’d had tropical vacations that weren’t as nice.
Her rescuer literally lifted all sixish muscled feet of Gideon and stood her back up, a move that nearly prompted her to swoon in response. She’d never swooned before, but it seemed easy enough.
As a corporate stooge, days had two phases - working, and whatever took up the time before she went back to the office, aka going to the gym. Gideon had spent a lot of time in a lot of gyms, and she had a certain butch lesbian aesthetic to uphold, so she kept things tight.
The woman in front of her probably never saw the inside of a gym - Gideon would be surprised if this rinky dink place even had one - but her biceps could give Gideon’s a run for their money. Damn. She was tanned dark, with dark eyes and hair to match in a sharp, swingy bob. And over one shoulder, making Gideon weak-kneed by its very presence, was the leather-and-silver hilt of a motherfucking sword.
If the woman hadn’t also been wearing a ring on her left hand, Gideon might have proposed right there. Instead, she realized she’d been staring for what seemed like a horrifyingly long time and stuck her hand out instead.
“I’m Gideon Nav.”
“Camilla Hect,” said Camilla Hect. “I take it Mercy was feeling generous with the whiskey?”
Gideon whistled. “And how.”
“Nothing says welcome to the valley like hooch brewed in the backyard, as the philosophers said. Anyway, the mayor asked me to show you over to the farm.” Camilla looked Gideon up and down, clearly assessing whether or not she could walk on her own.
She resisted the urge to straighten to her full height and flex her biceps a little, ring or no ring. Instead she reached down, grabbing the rucksack she’d dropped while generously giving Camilla the opportunity to catch Gideon’s face with her boobs. This required no flexing of her biceps whatsoever, because it contained three white t-shirts, a pack of underwear, a pack of socks, and one pair of Carhartt overalls.
Everything else she’d owned had been corporate-friendly blazers and trousers (donated with glee the same day she’d chucked her father, her job, and her life) or expensive gym wear (she was a farmer now, she didn’t need the gym! She had the outdoors!)
It was very possible she’d also been drunk while boxing up her condo. It had occurred to her that she might have been under-doing it on the clothing side, but that was quitter talk, and despite all recent evidence to the contrary, Gideon Nav was not a quitter.
“...are you coming?”
She looked up to find her erstwhile guide nearly out of sight as Gideon stood there at the bus stop, listing vaguely to the side like a somewhat drunk and clothing-obsessed statue.
“Yeah, yeah, sorry, just... taking it all in.”
Perfect. Gideon mentally rated herself a 7 out of 10 on the ‘weird and crazy new neighbor’ scale.
Hustling down the dirt path, she yanked her mind away from the perfectly acceptable state of her current wardrobe and on to a much better topic.
“Cool sword,” she said, coolly, and not at all like someone who had always wanted to hit things with swords and never been allowed. “What’s that about? There a lot of sword-on-sword violence around here? Roving bands of street gangs with sharp pointy things?”
Oh, god, she sounded like a dick, didn’t she? Total dickatude. Fuck.
“Shit, I’m sorry, you know what, just like, leave me here in the woods to get eaten by a bear or something, it’s cool.”
Camilla laughed and patted Gideon’s shoulder as they walked in a move that was only barely not a punch.
“No street gangs, just a forest full of creatures that’ll attack you without so much as an invitation. Skeletons, shadow monsters, bugs the size of your head - we’ve got them all. I run the local branch of the adventurer’s guild; we help keep the population down, make sure nothing wanders down Main Street and makes someone into a snack.”
That was so fucking badass Gideon didn’t know what to say, and then the farm came into view and she didn’t know what to say for a whole different reason.