The Brewmaster

Originally Written 8/30/2019

The sun beat down hard on the dusty land that Rael moved through. She looked around, her crimson eyes darting over the remains of the past from before the bombs fell. Rusty old Corvettes once painted cherry red now sat rusted with peeling paint. Old buildings in the small hamlet of Vloriss had been repurposed, pasted together by sheets of metal and wood. There wasn’t a soul in sight, save for a small orange tabby cat that stared at her curiously before it darted back into the shadows. 

Rael followed the path. Making her way toward the strong, pungent scents that cascaded toward her. She came upon a house-turned-shop. A sign read “Potions, salves, & remedies”. Rael’s heart ached and it made her clutch her chest and close her eyes. Slowly, a resolute expression dawned on her face. Unsure if she should knock or not she compromised and knocked as she eased the door open. 

“Hello?” She called out, her voice was dainty and weak “I am looking for the Brewmaster,” She looked around the assortment of things inside the dimly lit room. A thin musk of fog hung in the air and various herbs were hung around the walls and ceiling. 

Gabriel stood and was muttering to herself beside a big, cast-iron pot. She was in the middle of brewing an inflammation remedy for one patient and racking her mind for some way to stop an infection from a gangrenous sore another patient had. She spun around, her hair like a raven feathered halo around her head, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the room. Her eyes went wide with shock for a moment at Rael, the creature that had crept through her door. For Rael was no ordinary woman. 

Gabriel’s hazel eyes trailed over the pure white form of Rael. The creature shuffled on it’s eight long legs that sprung out from a large spider’s torso that attached to a human female’s upper half. Gabriel cocked her head to the side as Rael pushed long white strands of hair behind her elongated ear. Gabriel had seen strange mutants, but never one like this.

“Aye, that’s me. You can call me Gabby,” She said in a soft twangy voice. “How can I help you?” she gave her usual casual smile, still eyeing Rael and quietly wondering what she needed. Everyone and everything needed a cure for something in a time when medicine was scarce and knowledge of it was impossible to find. 

“My name is Rael, and I am looking for a love potion.” a dark painted smile spread across her lips. Both deadly and alluring. 

Gabriel huffed and her smile faded from her features. She sighed deeply. Gabriel was a potion master. She could brew anything to mend wounds or ailments. But she couldn’t conjure love. In truth, she was just a pharmacist in the wrong era. She closed her eyes and tried to have patience. Rael, after all, didn’t know.

“Love potion? Love potion.” Gabriel rolled her eyes despite her best efforts and looked back down to her boiling pot. She stirred the contents while Rael made a soft simpering sound behind her. “I don’t make elixirs that cause people to feel anything more than calm from lavender,” She stated flatly.

Rael flushed deeply and turned away. “Oh,” she sniffed repeatedly and stared at the floor. She twisted her delicate hands together and looked awkward. Though still unwilling to leave despite Gabriel’s response. “Well then,” Rael stated softly. “Perhaps something for a broken heart?” she asked hopefully and mournfully.

Gabriel turned back to her, her shoulders slacked and her expression softening. She said in a gentle voice. “I wish I could help you, I really do.” Gabriel couldn’t stand the look of someone in pain. 

Rael looked her up and down, licking her lips and wiping her eyes. She spoke softly, still staring at the cobbled woodwork of Gabriel’s home. “Would you do me the honor of a drink with you?” she asked hopefully.

Gabriel put down her ladle and stood upright with a slow smile. “A drink I can do,” she replied and gestured to the table for Rael to take a seat. Gabriel walked over and pulled down a bottle of dusty red wine she’d been saving. Something about this woman made Gabriel want to break it out just for her.  

Rael face lit up and she click-clacked with her eight legs through the small area of Gabriel’s living room/kitchen and gently lowered herself onto the floor beside the table. She reached out for the wine and said in a trembling voice, “A drink with a friendly face.” She returned Gabriel’s smile with her own and made her heart swell. This was what she really needed from Gabriel. 

Gabriel listened to Rael’s tremble, who was now looking so happy to have some kind of company. It brought Gabriel back to a time when she was just as emotional as the creature before her. When she first got there, to the city of the green waves, Floanal.  She had come such a long way, through musty forest and swamps. All to come to the granite masoned archway, pelican heads were hewn into either side of it. She trembled then, she remembered. The gates made a resounding click, click, clang, click, click, clank as the rusty iron gate between the arch rose up upon her arrival. 

Gabriel remembered how the guards leered down at her. The smell of kelp and seaweed breezing through the gatehouse. 

A hoarse voice barked from somewhere in the rafters. “You may proceed into the city!” 

Gabriel jumped and scurried along with a pitter-patter of soft booted feet across the bridge and into the city without more prompting than that. It had been a very frightening night, that first one. A lonely one too. That was nearly fifteen years ago. Now Gabriel sat before Rael who looked so pleased for the company as she surely would have been on her first night.

Gabriel felt a great surge of sympathy as she watched Rael sitting across from her and nursing her drink. Eyes swollen and a broken look on her face that spoke volumes. Gabriel knew what heartbreak looked like. “So, why you needing company, sugar?” her voice warm and soft now.

Rael flushed a deep shade of crimson on her white cheeks and the tip of her nose, giving the appearance of blood on snow. She was quiet for a long while and then suddenly thumped her mug onto the wash-worn wooden table. “My heart is broken. There is no magic cure as the townsfolk said, and it shall never be fixed!” she declared. Tears welled in her eyes as she stared over Gabriel accusing, as though it was Gabriel’s fault. 

With wild raven hair in curls, bushy around her head like a dark halo, Gabriel stared wearily with hazel eyes across the table. Even as she screamed her protest at her plight through a waterfall of white locks, Gabriel sensed she was far more than the sniveling creature before her.

“Who broke your heart then?” Gabriel asked with a raised brow.

Rael looked slightly taken aback. Her lips parted and she set her cup down on the washed-out tabletop. She stared for a long time at the woodwork, saying nothing as Gabriel stared relentlessly at her as though she might find an answer. 

Finally, she spoke in a small voice, a dainty little simper. “It was you,”

For a moment Gabriel was lost, her eyes widening with shock. Her mouth parted in a small gap. She brought her thick brows together and cocked her head to the side asking, “What?” with the quizzical look of a cat. 

Suddenly the half-woman rose from her crouch at the table and brought herself up to her full six feet in height. The eight legs that held her spider torso and supported her human upper body trembled as she spoke.  

“I said it was you!” she accused with a finger pointed at her. Her voice raised once more before the surprised and perplexed Gabriel could ask how. Rael pointed. “You, you saunter through the streets. Your hair blowing in the wind across that delicate skin, your body moving like a leopard on the hunt as you search the city and outlands for herbs. So many days I have watched you and so many days you have failed to see me!” Large, ugly tears started to spill out of her eyes. Softly finishing her rant with “It aches to not be seen.” 

Gabriel didn’t look in the least bit surprised by this and she just sighed and took another deep drink of her wine. 

“I take it you’ve heard the rumors. That I refuse any kind of advances, huh?”

Tears slipped down Rael’s pale face as she stared back. Slowly she nodded. “I have. I have also heard you do not take any suitor.” 

Gabriel felt her heart pang from the pain in Rael’s eyes, but it didn’t stop her resolve “No, I don’t,” she stated simply “If it’s my heart you seek, you’ll find nothing. If it’s drink or potion you’re asking for, then I can help.” She shrugs. “But I ain’t gonna jump you just because you said pretty words.” She gave a sideways smile.

Rael’s dabbed at her eyes and dried them. “Well,” She paused and smiled a little. “I can fix that with more pretty things,” she tempted in the voice of a spider leading a fly into its web. 

Gabriel laughed and grinned at her. “Ain’t nothing more pretty here than you and that ain’t done it,” she points out. Rael’s face fell and blushed bright red as she buried herself back into her mug. Her sweet words did nothing to the Brewmaster. Gabriel didn’t chase Rael off though. Instead, she poured her another drink.

She cocked her head to the side, making the long black locks cascade down like a waterfall over half her face. Gabriel gazed quietly at the tearful woman and felt an attraction there. After all, not all her suitors had gone so far or so brazen as to ask her for a love potion only to confess it was to use on her.  

Watching Rael for so long sulking into her mug and looking like the world had crashed down around her, Gabriel found it touched her heart. 

Her voice was gentle and quiet when she asked, “You really love me, don’t you?”  

Rael nodded very fast, wiping her red-rimmed eyes and she stared unblinkingly into Gabriel’s revealed hazel one. “Yes, I do.” The conviction was in her every syllable. “Since I first saw you.”  

Gabriel heard the earnestness in her voice and looked her up and down. “Then maybe there is a chance for you to capture my heart,” she said with a vague smile on dirt-smudged lips. She brought the mug back to them and sipped as Rael sat at attention. Her lips slightly parted and crimson eyes widened with hope. 

“How?” she breathed. 

“There’s a cat. Little orange Queen that runs around these parts. If you can catch her and get that key off around her neck, then my heart is yours.” Gabriel shrugged. “I’ll marry you and be yours. But it ain’t gonna be easy, sugar.” She winked devilishly. She finished her drink without answering another question on the matter. 

They drank for a long while in silence. Rael’s face had started to turn from the sullen expression into a resolute one. She left, thanking Gabriel for the drink and bidding the Brewmaster good evening. She set out and scanning the wasteland as she did.

Her eyes darted throughout the whole area, desperate to find the orange cat. It was her only thought but to find that cat, retrieve the key and get Gabriel’s heart. The fact that so many others stumbled over themselves didn’t appear to bother Rael. She knew what she wanted and she wanted Gabriel. 

For many days, she wandered around the inside and outskirts of the town, always looking. In time, she noticed many others doing the same. Every now and again she’d see the cat run across and several men and women topple over themselves like clowns to get to it. But it was a slippery thing, it would not be caught until it wanted to be. Every action the cat took seemed deliberate. Running down a tree and under a broken-down Cadillac, causing several suitors to hit the rusted steel with a deafening bang and many groans as they scrabbled to get up. Rael never chased it though, she watched.

She thought of the bright and beautiful Brewmaster, with a voice like a twang of an old guitar. Everywhere she stepped, it seemed like green things sprouted behind her, though it was the green things she took. She had the largest house, with the most wealth, and beauty that it was no wonder nearly every bachelor, and bachelorette seemed so keen to take up Gabriel’s test to get the key off the cat that ran through streets like they were hers. So much like the Brewmaster herself. 

Rael had already known that many sought Gabriel’s hand, and that didn’t stop her. Her desire was palpable for the femme. She found a spot atop a hill and waited.

The night arrived when all those who had sought the cat came to a halt. A nearby festival calling them all away for a night of leisure, drink, and other depraved things. This night, Rael didn’t seek the festivities.

Finally, she moved. Slowly as she could she made her way down. Eyes darted around until she spotted the feline grooming herself and waiting for the next chase casually.

Rael drew no closer than twenty feet. Coming to rest with her spider torso on the ground slowly. She pulled from her side pouch of small fish, the smell slightly rancid but still good. She smiled softly and made a gentle clicking sound toward the cat. It looked up at her with large hazel eyes that stared deep into Rael’s. The fish landed exactly between them. 

Like molasses, the queen shimmied over. Low to the ground and tail wagging back and forth like a hypnotic clock behind her. She came to rest, still staring into the eyes of her provider, she took small bites of the fish. It seemed like hours as the two sat there and when the cat had finished its fish, Rael brought out another and threw it, again between the two of them. The cat took less time to decide to come out toward it this go-around. When she was done, she stood up and stretched. 

“Here kitty, kitty,” Rael clicked her tongue and said in a soothing tone. She held out her hand for the cat to come to her and waited. She felt a great surge of excitement when the feline moved just out of her reach, a fluttering of butterflies in her stomach. But she never lunged to grab her. She just waited for the cat to take her next gift of touch. 

For hours she sat like this, her body trembling and shuttering from the cold and aching muscles. The cat dancing just out of her reach. The small break of sunlight over the mountains peeked out and threatened to burst out and shatter the darkness. Her arm shook from time to time, but she never took it away. She was determined, even with the fog of sleep deprivation.

Light casts across Rael’s face. As she was drifting off she felt the feel of soft fur. The vibrations of a gentle purr echoing from the feline. Rael watched with wide eyes as she absently stroked the cat. It curled up around her. Rael’s hands shook and slowly she reached out and unclasped the key from the collar of the cat. Her face lit up at how easily it was. 

Rael picked the cat up with her and rose. Tiredly walking with dragging legs picking up dirt toward the Brewmaster’s house. The cat cradled and purring in one arm and the key from its collar in her other hand. A smile on her face, her lips pale and eyes drooping, but she was pleased with herself as she made her way to her new wife’s house.

She tapped lightly on the door once before it opened itself up and Rael peeked inside. Gabriel was nowhere to be found. The house held an empty feel.  Rael’s voice was full of sleep but it kept the dainty quality to it. “Gabriel. I have done as you asked,” she cooed into the empty room. 

The orange queen jumped from Rael’s grasp and landed. It trotted around and came to rest on its back legs and stared up at Rael.

The cat changed as it stood on its hind legs and reached up toward the ceiling with its paws. Slowly the form of a woman appeared. Fur disappearing, easing back into pale skin. As the eyes narrowed from the hazel, wide orbs of a cat to the almond-shaped ones of Gabriel, Rael gasped and clutched her hand over her mouth. Gabriel stood there unabashedly naked and smiled as raven hair fell into her face and along her chest.  

“It was you?” Rael said in an exasperated voice. 

Calmly the Brewmaster replied, “It was me. I’ve been running around for years. Waiting. I knew I couldn’t be with a person who didn’t have any patience and brains. I don’t think I couldn’t’ve gotten luckier with who finally figured it out.” She smiled widely and held her arms out to the shocked spider-woman.

“Now… You wanna live here or you got someplace else in mind?” Gabriel asked with a cant of her head and a wide smile. Rael’s shock faded and she skittered into Gabriel’s arms. 

“Yours!” she practically cried, voice muffled in Gabriel’s shoulder as she stroked her back and softly twanged in her ear. 

“That works just fine with me, sugar.”