"Story Time" is copyright © 1997 by Morgan MacLeod, all rights reserved. Do not distribute, archive, or repost without prior permission from the author.

Xena and Gabrielle belong to MCA/Renaissance Pictures. Some characters herein are also based on situations belonging to Paramount. All these characters are used here in a strictly non-profit manner, and their appearance is in no way intended to infringe on the trademarks of MCA, Renaissance Pictures, or Paramount.

Gabrielle snorted. "As if that makes a difference anymore." She set her cup aside and pulled her knees up, clasping them tightly. "You just don't want to accept that I've learned how to take care of myself."

"I never said that. But you're not a warrior. There are things even a trained warrior can't stand against. This could be one of them."

"But you're going to try anyway, aren't you? What is it? Why are we out here? Where are we going?"

Xena dropped her eyes, and looked down into the cup of steaming liquid in her hands, as if seeing images from the past deep within its depths. Almost as though she were in a dream, she started to speak. "It was my first year in command of my own warband. We'd had a good summer, gotten very rich, lost hardly any fighters, and we were on our way south to winter quarters. We were marching along the valley, not far north of Tirente when one of my scouts brought word of an ambush ahead. Two other warlords had joined forces against us. I guess they planned to take all the booty we'd won and split it between them. We were outnumbered, and the men were tired, so I decided to skip the fight. I led my men into these mountains, just a little north of here.

"I guessed right when I figured they wouldn't follow us in, but I didn't figure on them camping out at the foot of every pass I could have taken back out. It was getting cold up here, colder than where they were. So I decided to cross the mountains, and travel down the seacoast, pass 'em by completely.

"We'd just crossed over the summit, and were heading down, when we saw the thing." She looked up, holding both her listeners in her gaze. "It was - I don't know what it was - half lizard, half bat, half raptor, even, but bigger than any creature I'd ever seen before, and its wings were like giant sails. It had a buck deer in its talons, and it wasn't even flying hard."

Gabrielle's eyes had grown wide. "A dragon..." she breathed. "You saw a dragon."

"It wasn't like any dragon I'd ever heard of." Xena replied, shaking her head. "Ugly thing, with leathery skin, and a big bony head. No flaming breath, either."

"A roc, maybe?"

"I thought they had feathers. This didn't." She sat lost in thought for another moment, as if trying to find the words to describe the monster out of her past, and failing. "Anyway, whatever it was, it flew past us, but from that point on I had the scouts looking up at the sky as well as forward. Thing that can pick up a deer, can pick up a man just as easily."

Rillian leaned forward. "You saw this...creature? With your own eyes?"

"Oh yes," Xena's voice was hard, and bitter. "Twice more, in fact, as we marched down that mountain. Why? Do you know anything about it?"

"I don't know. My people have... legends about creatures something like this, but the stories say they all died out many years ago."

"Maybe they did, where you come from. But this thing was real. And the last time I saw it on that march down the mountain side, it had a girl in its claws. She was still alive when we saw her, and fighting. We could hear her screaming until after it flew out of sight."

Gabrielle stared at Xena, horror in her eyes. "What did you do?"

"It was flying too high for the archers or spearmen to hit it. I sent two scouts to try and follow it from the ground, but they lost it in among the canyons."

The younger woman shuddered, and drew in a quavering breath. "What a horrible way to die."

"It was worse than you think."

"What do you mean?"

"We found out when we got out of the pass, and stopped at the town down below. They'd staked the poor girl out for the creature to take. Some crazy idea that if they fed it, they could control their losses."

"Like Andromeda, and Perseus... she was supposed to be a sacrifice to the dragon sent by Poseidon..."

"Maybe, Gabrielle. Or maybe that story started here, with these people. They told us they'd done this sort of thing for generations. Every once in a while, one of these ugly flying things comes down out of the mountains. Whenever it does, all the towns along this part of the coast get together and pick a few young girls, and they feed them to this thing until finally it goes away."

"They send their own daughters to... That's just as bad as anything I've ever heard of. How could anyone do such a thing? I mean, unless it was somebody like Dagnin, or..." Gabrielle fell silent, but Xena could guess the name that had frozen on her lips.

Rillian broke the stillness. "My people say that whatever traits, good or evil, can be found written large in any one man, can be found in lesser measure but waiting to grow in many more..."

Xena grimaced. "Tell me about it."

"What happened then?" Gabrielle asked.

"I told them, no more sacrifices. We put a goat out for bait. Like I'd thought, it didn't care one way or the other what it ate. All it cared about was easy prey." Her lips twisted bitterly on the words. "It came. We fought it. Two of my men died, four more were wounded so badly, they'd never fight again, but we killed it. They gave us all they had, they were so happy. I took what they gave us, and we marched away. They thought that we'd finished the job. After all, the stories only ever mentioned one beast. As far as they knew, it woke up every few years, ate a few girls, and went back to sleep. We all thought it was over for good."

"But it wasn't, was it?" asked Rillian.

"No".

The word hung in the air for a moment, bringing a chill to all three women. Rillian was the first to break the silence. "Let me serve up this stew before it burns, and then you can tell us the rest."

Gabrielle opened her mouth, as if to protest, or at least to urge Xena on with her tale, but then closed it abruptly, as she caught sight of Xena's whitened knuckles on the hand which still held her cooling drink. Telling this tale was clearly not an easy thing for Xena, and Rillian had the right of it, she needed a break to collect herself before going on. Gabrielle directed an angry retort to herself. Xena always seemed so strong, so self-contained, that sometimes she forgot to think about the woman inside the armour. No matter how cool Xena's outer demeanor, there was someone inside who felt all the pain and fear and horror at the things she'd seen that Gabrielle herself would have felt. It was easier, sometimes, to think of Xena as just a little more than human, than to realise that she was only human, and fought on anyway.

"Great idea, Rillian. I'm starving, and that stew smells like ambrosia... well, not really, since I've smelled ambrosia, of course, so I should say it smells like I would imagine ambrosia would smell if I hadn't actually smelled it. Here, I'll cut up the nutbread."

Rillian tossed the packet to Gabrielle, then turned around and rooted through her pack for a moment, pulling out several plates. As she scooped generous portions of the thick stew onto the dishes, one for each of them, Xena roused herself from the images of the past, and added a few of the larger, partly dried branches to the fire. Gabrielle, meanwhile, had opened up the packet of nutbread, and divided it into three thick slabs. For a few minutes, the only sounds heard over the wind and rain were of spoons clinking against plates, and lips and tongues smacking over the savoury meal.

Her hunger somewhat sated, Gabrielle stared down at her plate. "I guess I can't blame the beast. From the sounds of it, it would look at us like we look at this rabbit." She looked at Rillian and smiled. "And a very tasty rabbit it is, too."

Xena nodded. "I'm pretty good with herbs, but there's a few flavours in here I don't know at all. Delicious."

"I carry some herbs that are common where I come from. It makes things more familiar when I'm on the road."

"Where are you from, Rillian?" asked Gabrielle.

"A long ways away. I don't think you'd have heard of it."

Xena looked up from her meal. "A good friend of mine was just as dark as you are. He told me once his family was originally from Kush, somewhere to the south of Aegypt."

"I've been in Kush. But I come from further away than that. As far as I know, none of my people have ever journeyed here before."

"What on earth made you travel so far, then?" asked Gabrielle, her mouth half-full of nutbread.

"It's a tradition among my people. You see, I want to become a story teller."

"Like a bard?" Rillian nodded at Gabrielle's question. "Me too. I'm sort of doing it now, telling stories at festivals, and sometimes in inns when we actually have the chance to stay in one." She shot a quick smile at Xena, who responded with a grin.

"In my homeland, it's an honoured calling, but it takes a long time to become one. We have a saying, she who would speak, must first know how to listen..."

Xena sputtered over her drink, clapping her hand to her mouth to stop the full throated laugh that threatened to erupt. Gabrielle glared at her. "Xena, that was not funny. And I do know how to listen."

"I know, Gabrielle. It just... struck me funny, that's all. I'm sorry."

"I could still go back to the Academy, you know."

"I know, Gabrielle. I didn't mean to laugh at you. And I don't want you to leave, all right?"

The younger woman sent one last look of annoyance at Xena, and then turned back to Rillian, while Xena watched, lips twitching, still swallowing her laughter. "I still don't understand, what does becoming a bard have to do with you being here?"

"We're supposed to travel, learn about other people, their languages, customs, histories, listen to the tales of their heroes... then, once we have listened enough, we can go home, and start telling our friends and families what we've heard."

"All your bards do that?"

"Yes. In fact, most other people, once they learn more about us, just call us the listeners. It's what we're known for." She smiled and picked up her empty plate. "And, as a listener who wants to hear the end of Xena's story, I'll just collect those dishes, pour you both another cup of chi-ka, and then perhaps we can hear the rest of the tale..." She glanced at Xena. "That is, if you're ready to go on."

Xena nodded, handing her plate to Gabrielle, who passed both their plates across to Rillian as she prompted her friend to continue. "You thought you'd killed the flying monster once and for all, but you hadn't, right? It survived somehow?"

"Something like that. Years passed, I forgot all about it. One day, I was in the middle of a war..., and a messenger came. It was from the same town. The creature was back. They wanted my help again."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing."

"What?" Gabrielle's face was a mask of shock and disbelief.

Xena shook her head slowly. "Gabrielle, a lot of time had gone by. A lot of changes in me. I wasn't as... willing to help as I was when I first became a warlord. The town was poor, I'd already taken all they owned of any worth the last time, and I was in the middle of a war. I had a reputation to uphold. I couldn't walk off the battlefield like that, just to go exterminate something that should have stayed dead. Or at least, that's how I thought then."

"So you let the townspeople go back to killing their daughters."

"Gabrielle, you know what I was. I've done many things I regret. This is one of them."

"I thought you never killed women or children."

"The way I saw it then, it wasn't me who killed those girls, it was their parents."

"You could have stopped it."

"Yes, I could have. Maybe. It's my fault for not trying." There was a long, tense silence, as Xena and Gabrielle stared unflinchingly at each other.

"I'm sorry, Xena," Gabrielle whispered at last. "I know you'd never do anything like that now."

A short, muffled cough from Rillian startled them both. "Do you know what happened after that?"

Xena tore her eyes away from Gabrielle's, and turned toward Rillian. "We did go, later on. As usual, the beast had only been seen for a few months, and then it disappeared again. I led some search parties up into the mountains, but we didn't see any sign of it. We left."

"And now?"

"It started to bother me, over the years. Why the thing only shows up for a few months, and disappears for years in between. Why it appeared again after we killed it. I realised the people around here were wrong. It wasn't just one beast, but it was one beast at a time."

"What do you mean?"

"I think it's very small for most of its life. Probably flies around here eating rabbits. Nobody ever sees it. Or if they do, they never think it could be the same creature. Then, when it's ready, it eats everything in sight, grows very large, and lays its eggs. Then it dies. I guess the babies fight so only one survives, or maybe it only has one. That's why it came back, or so they thought. It had already spawned when we killed it. We didn't think. We didn't track it to its lair, we just killed it when it came for the goat. The egg survived."

Rillian nodded. "And you think it hatched, and when it was ready to reproduce, that's when it appeared again... the time you didn't go."

"Yeah. And so it spawned again."

A look of horror covered Gabrielle's face. "That's what you heard in the inn. They're sacrificing their children again!"

Xena shook her head quickly. "Not yet. At least, I hope not. I thought it might be getting close to the time again, so I've been listening for little things around these mountains. Less small game than there should be. Too many goats and sheep going missing. That sort of thing. That's what I heard in the inn. Some huntsmen complaining that suddenly there's no game out here."

"And your plan?" asked Rillian.

Xena shrugged. "Get there before anyone gets hurt. Track the thing to its lair, and destroy the eggs first. Then kill it if I can, or at least keep the townsfolk from feeding any more girls to it if I can't. If I'm right, it only flies so far, and eats so much, just before it breeds and dies. We only need a little time." Abruptly, Xena stood up, and reached for her cloak, now dried by the heat of the fire. "I'm going for a walk. I won't be long. While I'm gone, Rillian, you decide which watch you want to take." She turned and walked out into the rain.

Both women looked after her for a moment. Then Gabrielle turned to Rillian. "Don't take offense. She's a very...complicated person. She just needs time to be by herself sometimes."

"She's certainly a very interesting person. How long have you known her?"

Gabrielle started to answer, but instead started to shake her head in astonishment. "You know, it feels like we've been together forever, but it's been less than two years. She saved my life, you know... that's how we met. There was this warlord, and he captured all the women from my village to be sold as slaves. Xena fought them all, and freed us, and somehow, I just knew that I'd been waiting for her... well, maybe not her, but someone just like her..."

"So you went with her. You're lovers?"

"Oh no. That is, it's not like that with us. She... I don't think she has any room for something like that, not now. Maybe not ever." A brief hint of some emotion flickered across Gabrielle's face, but she dismissed it quickly. "But she really needs a friend. And sometimes I think she needs someone to remind her of what went wrong, back when she turned into the kind of person she fights against now. I think I do that for her. And besides, every warrior needs a bard to follow them around, and write all about their heroic deeds, right?"

"Now that is a bardic paradise. A whole lifetime of great material, all your own. Have you written anything about her yet?"

"Some things, sure. How she saved Poteidia - that's my village -and how she stopped the war between the Amazons and the Centaurs, and..."

"You'll have to tell me all your stories, before I leave."

"Before you leave? From the sounds of it, we'll be leaving in the morning."

"I think I'll go along with you for now. Every bard in training needs to take advantage of new material when it lands in her lap, right?"

"I heard that," came a voice out of the darkness, as Xena rejoined them. "It'll be dangerous."

"I gathered that. I'll take my chances."

"Don't say I didn't warn you." Xena hung up her cloak again, and squatted down beside the fire. "So, who takes first watch?"

"I will", said Rillian. "I spent my day catching rabbits, not a difficult task. Go to sleep, I'll wake you when I'm tired."

Xena stood up again, and grabbed the bedrolls from the beside the fire. "You coming to sleep now, Gabrielle?"

"I'm still feeling kind of buzzy, actually. You go, I want to doze here by the fire a while."

"Right. I'll set out your blankets. Til morning, then." Xena walked back into the crevice, and settled herself down in the shadows. As she laid out the blankets for herself and Gabrielle, and removed her leathers and her armour, she could hear the two women by the fire, talking about being bards: how to choose the right stories to tell, finding a point of view, learning what to tell and what to leave out. She smiled. There was a familiar tone to their conversation, the tone of two professionals sharing the secrets of the trade. Not unlike the way she used to talk with other warriors, on quiet nights around a campfire, learning her the intricacies of her craft. Except, of course, that all her talk then had been of how to wound, or to conquer, or to kill, and they were talking of how to make a memory live forever.

Crawling into her bedroll, she thought about the fates, who seemed to have brought another kindred spirit to Gabrielle. One the one hand, she was glad that Gabrielle would have someone to talk to about these kinds of things, at least for a while. She didn't always appreciate Gabrielle's bardic inclinations. And all the gods in Olympus help her, but she could not listen to that damned song about Perdicas one more time. She knew that Gabrielle had to grieve, but it was beyond human endurance for her to sit and listen to the virtues of Perdicas when all she wanted to do was... no, down that train of thought lay madness, and she was not going to lose control. She had endured Gabrielle's wedding, she could endure anything for Gabrielle, except watching her leave again. And that was what lay in the other hand she did not care to think about. Would Gabrielle leave her again, for this Rillian? The worst of it was, she liked Rillian herself. Resolutely, she banished all thoughts of the dark complected stranger from her mind, and, breathing deeply and slowly to summon the sleep she needed, fixed her mind's eye firmly on a sweet, gently rounded, smiling face, framed with bangs and flowing tresses of strawberry blonde.