Page 10 of Lonely Orcish Girl

"Your father seems to be a great man. Is he still living in your tribe?" he asked politely.

"Yeah, he is," Katuri answered ambiguously.

"Do you miss him?"

Katuri furrowed her brow and looked at Reed in surprise. For a moment, he thought she found the question too personal, but then her expression softened, and she smiled. "Yes, I do. But my parents visit me from time to time."

"I see," Reed replied shortly and fell silent.

Katuri also delved into her thoughts for a moment but then turned to him and said, "I'm sorry, I digress. I actually meant to tell you about the reasons for my banishment." She shook her head with an apologetic look.

“It’s okay, I understand it’s complicated.”

"No! I mean, you're right, it's complicated. But I want to tell you everything, just like you did. It's only fair, isn’t it? And everything I've told you so far relates to… my punishment. You know, I inherited more from my mother than just green skin—I got her temper and stubbornness, too. But I took it to a whole other level."

Katuri giggled briefly, again at her own memories, but then she became more serious. "The adults of the tribe, even if they didn't like my presence, usually hadn't expressed it. Or they simply accepted me out of respect for my mother. But with my peers, it was different. They had no problem showing me they thought I was inferior. They treated me like a lesser version of an orc, especially the other girls when we all hit puberty.”

"They were jealous of you?" Reed asked on impulse, not realizing he was complimenting her.

"Possibly," Katuri smirked briefly. "But you must know that life as a teenager among orcs was a constant competition for almost everything. Who could hunt better, who was a more skilled fighter, or… who could get more attention from the boys. And while I was definitely better at hunting, the girls of the tribemade sure I wasn't better at anything else. Especially when the boys were watching."

"What would they do?"

"Well, everything they could to embarrass me. For example, when we trained to fight, they would try to dominate me. And they succeeded in most cases because I wasn't as big and strong as they were. Even if I was really better at something than they were, like hunting or… just because I was damn smarter than them, they would diminish and ridicule everything else I could do. Then they'd make remarks about my body and spread rumors that I was too soft and sickly for an orc, or that I was too weak to grow proper tusks, or… that I wouldn't be able to procreate with orcs, which of course was a ridiculous lie, but it worked. This scared the young orcs away from me, even though at first, they were interested in my different appearance. After a while, they all thought I was a freak."

"I'm very sorry to hear that," Reed said sympathetically.

Katuri waved her hand dismissively, but it was clear to Reed that she wasn't so unmoved. "Anyway, it kind of backfired on them. But mostly on me, of course, hah! Because the more they mocked me or laughed at me, the more I wanted to rebel against the tribe. I wanted to show them. So I stayed away from my peers, constantly sneaking out and going in all kinds of directions. I liked to spend time alone in nature. And during one of my excursions, I came across a caravan that was stationed close to my village for a while. They were… elves."

Reed was silent, as he sensed that Katuri needed time and space to gather her thoughts. He was aware that her story didn't have a happy ending but couldn't deny that it was intriguing. A caravan of elves? To Reed, it sounded like a fairy tale. He had never met an elf in his life.

"Obviously, the elves were very different from the orcs. Wealthy and worldly, with elegant clothing, ostentatiouscarriages, and so on. They also had armed guards. Of course, I only watched them from a distance because I knew they would surely react badly if they spotted a savage orc nearby." Katuri winced a little but continued, "I was very careful, but one day, when I was on my way back, I met a lost boy in the forest." She smiled ruefully. “Yeah, the irony isn’t lost on me, believe me!”

"Oh…" Reed gasped.

"He was the son of the richest nobleman in the caravan. His name was… Ehrendil," Katuri pronounced this word with a hint of nostalgia.

"Sounds very exotic," Reed replied cautiously, guessing what Katuri thought about that elf.

"Yes. He was startled when he saw me, but only because we ran into each other so unexpectedly, not because of… my appearance." She paused to clear her throat. Her voice was still hoarse when she spoke again. "He was friendly and seemed interested in getting to know me."

Reed just listened, not daring to interrupt her, though he was curious and wanted to ask many questions. He could sense that it wasn't easy for Katuri to open up like this.

"That first day, we talked a lot, and Ehrendil seemed fascinated by meeting an orcish girl. And I… I was fascinated to meet the first friendly boy in my life. Someone who seemed to have no prejudice against me," Katuri spoke quietly. She pulled her knees to her chest.

"I was shocked at how… beautiful Ehrendil was. It was almost unreal. Tall, slender but wiry, hair like molten gold, a face so perfect you couldn't even describe it. It seemed impossible that anyone could be so beautiful," there was still a hint of disbelief in her voice. She shook her head.

Reed felt a strange twinge of irrational jealousy. He was considered handsome in Stagmoor—with his tall stance andstrawberry blond curls—but he certainly couldn't compare himself to a beautiful elf.

"I felt like an ugly troll. Like a swamp monster next to a prince. But Ehrendil never made me feel that way. He told me that I was beautiful. That I looked like a heroine from the books he read. He even brought one of them with him and showed me illustrations depicting barely clothed women built like me, tall, muscular, and so on. It seemed he liked that type."

Reed tried to listen without interrupting her, as he didn't want to make himself the center of attention. He sensed how much it cost her to tell this story. But when he heard Katuri come down hard on herself, he just couldn't let it pass.

"Hey, don't say things like that. I'm sure a lot of people would find you very attractive," he interjected with a firm tone to his voice. He also tried to make his statement sound more like an objective opinion, not his own observation.

Katuri looked at him and blinked a few times as if taken aback by his words. Then she smiled somewhat ruefully but made no comment; she simply continued with her story.

"I was a naive eighteen-year-old, so I fell for his courteous words, for his interest and attention. I knew there was only a slim chance for us to be together, but… I fell for it anyway. I don't know, there was something exciting in our secretive meetings. And I was so head over heels for him. I just wanted to be… to be wanted." Katuri swallowed and averted her gaze, her jaw tightening. She blinked rapidly as if trying to get rid of the tears.

---