"Deceptive Appearance"
(Whodunit Smut-off entry, lesbians)

Sometimes, the world made more sense seen through the bottom of a glass. Not often, though, as getting drunk isn’t exactly recommended for a woman plying the mercenary job. But, yeah, sometimes, looking through the bottom of a glass, you can see some weird things.

But, first, let me introduce myself. Name’s Laervia, and back then I was a sword-for-hire, mostly escorting caravans and the like. Not too fancy stuff, but the pay was decent, it slaked my wanderlust and it got me away from my birthplace. Yeah, growing up as the daughter of a watch sergeant and with five brothers sorta conditioned me for this life. But when my father decided it was time I got married, I decided it was time to leave. Hurt like hell, but I simply couldn’t stand the idea of wasting my life giving birth to child after child.
Now, what you gotta understand is, a woman in the mercenary work is either “one of the guys”, or a whore. So I worked hard to be “one of the guys”. Men who didn’t get the message I didn’t wanted them in my pants ended up spitting teeth. Combined to the fact I was actually good in a scrap and a decent shot with a bow, it got me respected for my skills. Still, being constantly confronted with idiots who couldn’t imagine a female other than barefoot and pregnant kinda made me lose interest in men, and fast.

This situation almost changed when we recruited Khalis, our mage. Unlike the others, he was reserved and shy instead of being an obnoxious pile of muscles.  He reminded me of my youngest brother, and I slowly warmed to him. Getting him to talk wasn’t easy, though. Despite having caught him looking at me a couple of times, he mostly kept to himself unless his magic was called upon. However, a couple of voyages later, I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and told him to come celebrate with us once we finished our escort job. He’d saved our sorry asses from a lizardman ambush by incinerating both their war-leader and shaman on the spot, effectively demoralizing them, so he deserved better than just sitting there with his book.

Once there, we ordered the inn’s best and I tried talking with him. He refused to drink, saying that alcohol and magic mixed poorly, but seemed happy enough to enjoy a real meal. Still, even with his back to the wall, he behaved like a cornered rat, his gaze darting around nervously at anything that moved. Trying to put him at ease, I told him something of my past. That elected a reaction from him, all right, but the look of… adoration was unexpected. Not like a man hitting on me, he looked at me like a priest experiencing a vision. He made me decidedly uncomfortable, so I was happy for the distraction when a brawl broke out between the boys and the locals.

So, I took advantage of the lull to actually down a glass and enjoy the spectacle, except something weird caught my attention: for some reason, Khalis’ reflection through the bottom of the glass looked completely off. Now, I wasn’t a complete stranger to magic, I’d used some low-end glamours to appear unarmed while fully armed on occasion; so I quickly got the point. Considering he’d had all the chances in the world to do us harm, I doubted he disguised himself for nefarious purposes, and didn’t call him out on the spot. Still, when the brawl turned into an all-out fight, I comradely threw an arm round his shoulders, and steered him away toward the inn’s rooms, intent on finding out.

Not being a subtle woman, I immediately asked him: “Khalis, why are you glamouring yourself constantly?” as soon as we were alone. Again, that got him to react in a completely unexpected way. He started to tremble, looking at me in fright and mumbling “Please… no…” over and over again. Instead of restraining him, I had to actually support him, and I gently insisted: “Khalis, you saved our sorry arses back there, so I’m not mad, but I want to trust you. Tell me what’s wrong!” He looked up at me, with a gaze so full of pain and terror it made me shiver, and then the illusion slowly started to fade. Moments later, I was no longer facing a lanky young man, but the strangest and most eerily beautiful woman I’d ever met. She had smooth alabaster pale skin and a fair, flawless visage; except for the pair of small horns jutting upwards and twisting from her brows. But her most striking feature was her eyes, two pools of liquid black that caught the beholder, drowning him in a starless sky.

It was my very first contact with a plane-touched, so I just gazed at her stupidly. When I got that she was still too terrified of me to talk for some reason, I blurted out: “Why in the Nine Hells would you change your appearance to that of a man?” She merely gazed back, so I insisted: “Khalis? Talk to me…”
“Why…” she murmured, “don’t you… find me repulsive?”
Up to that point, I’d mostly been losing myself in her gaze, so I actually gave her a good look. “Hell no,” I said, “you’d give all women I’ve known a run for the crown of River Queen, if I had any say in the matter”, referring to one of the old festivals back home, where the men elected the most beautiful woman as ‘queen’ for the ceremony.

She stared at me for another long moment, and then she threw herself at me, and curled up against me. I awkwardly gathered her into my arms as she started to cling to me for dear life and cry like my youngest brother had years ago. At a loss what to do, I merely hugged her and waited for her to calm down. She started speaking then, her voice muffled, but I need only the few words I got to understand: “…abomination… always calling me monster, demon whore… ran out of town, stoned, almost killed… afraid, so afraid!” I hugged her, gently, any resentment I could have felt washing away by the wave of pity and commiseration that welled up inside me. I could easily relate to what she’d lived, although I had been able to (often quite literally) beat any idiot giving me shit into submission.

“You… You… You’re so exceptional”, she stammered, looking up at me, “you… I… I admire you, I so want to be like you, but I’m just a monster, so I hid, to be close to you and…”
That’s where I cut her off. As far as confessions went, it was both the most endearing and awkward I’d heard, but I had long ago learnt that self-pity didn’t help, so a shock treatment was in order. I grabbed a fistful of her long, silky hair, and not too roughly pulled her head back before kissing her. She tensed up, but quickly answered in kind, mewling and whimpering softly as she returned the gesture. 
“I have your full attention now, Khalis?” I asked when we finally parted. “Good! Now, listen up, because I’m not going to repeat myself: you’re not a monster. The next time I hear you say so; I’ll beat the everliving shit out of you. You won’t get people to respect you by letting them walk all over you, so you need to man up. Luckily for you, I’m good at it, and willing to help. So, tell me what you want.”
“You…” I waited, but no more words came out.
“Me?”
“Yes! You! If only I’d understood faster that you didn’t like men…”
That got my suspicions back up, so I asked: “And yow long exactly have you been stalking me, you naughty girl?” hoisting her off the floor.
“Too long…” she answered, resting her head in my neck.
I snorted at that, and told her: “All right! First lesson! Waiting passively for things to happen is bad. Get proactive!” She smiled at me then, with eyes still moist, but with tears of joy, and she kissed me.

Unlike what she believed, it’s not that I hated men, and I actually hadn’t lain with another woman before then. But I had enough experience to know what to do, and that night, I became intimately acquainted with her supple, soft body. As I already said, she was eerily beautiful, her inhuman heritage actually enhancing her natural features, granting her a flawless, soft and very sensitive skin; and the small “flaws” of her rather prominent backbone, small tail and horns merely enhanced her beauty. On top of that, she was a passionate lover, a grabber and a screamer, so it wasn’t exactly difficult to know and extremely rewarding when you did things right.  We both ended up a mess, sweaty, aching covered in each other’s love juices, me with scratches all over the body from her grabbing and her with a couple of bruises when I’d been a little over-enthusiastic in manhandling her. It was the first of many a wonderful nights I spent with her, and I never regretted it.

The next day, I told her to glamour herself back up, and I took most of our fellows’ jibes, who were having a jealous blast sniding about “The Ice Queen melting up!” and worse. They were decent enough fellows, but they wouldn’t have accepted a plane-touched as easily as I did, so she kept to her “mage” disguise.  As for what came later, we kept at the mercenary work for a couple of years, before setting out to become full adventurers with a couple of other decent people we’d met during our travels. But those are stories for another time…