by Jeremy White Stout
Xyla crouched in the underbrush, not as much to conceal herself as she wanted to be relaxed so she could think. The merc crew she had followed out of town was settling in after their evening meal and were starting to bed down. There were several crude comments directed at the two women in the group, who smirked and threatened until the teasing passed. Xyla shook her head. Men, she thought, but without disparity. She had travelled with many male-heavy groups, but none of them were ever this vulgar. Once, it had even been an entire party of barbarians, but they were very respectful of the women in their crew.
She picked up a couple of small rocks and twiddled them absently while she gauged the makeup of this particular team: two fighters (one of them female), a barbarian, a rogue, some healer-type (the other female) and the leader, an ex-soldier type who was the one who had exactly what she was there for. She’d seen it in town while she was assisting Felden on an info gathering jaunt of his. She enjoyed working with other rogues, but she chose her partners differently than most others of her profession did: they had to have something about them she liked. With Felden, it was his stutter. Everyone who knew him called him Twitch because of it, but Xyla didn’t: his name was Felden and so he was Felden. She didn’t make fun of him: she thought the stutter was kind of endearing.
