(http://images.epilogue.net/users/dark-spider/ninfa2.jpg)<br/><br/>A troupeleader with two brain to rub together would have given the realm of Arges a wide berth.  A troupeleader with even one brain rattling around in its lonesome in a strawpacked head would have been especially careful not to put the troupe in Arges less than a month before the onset of winter.  Willam, Rosabella therefore concluded in a loud tone of voice that she was certain carried to the head wagon, had not a single brain to keep the straw company.<br/><br/>It was not that she had anything against Arges or its Witch Queen.  Indeed, for all that she joked that she had been hidden away in the wagons by the Fair Folk, Rosabella had been born in that kingdom twenty years previously, and knew the hospitality of that country was certainly not the worst in the world.  But roving players like her tended to be the objects of rumors (whether fairly or not) that even the best of them was on his best of days a black-tongued liar, swindler, ready to rob a man blind, ravish his daughter, make off with his last pair of pennies.  And the stories she’d heard about women in her occupation made them worse than the men at times.  Mayhap in the privacy of the troupe, it was safe to laugh about the superstitious glamour townsfolk attached to their wandering ways and the wild stories that grew about their proclivities, but rumor had it that the Witch Queen’s sense of justice was draconian at best, and the last thing they needed was an accusation of theft that began in whiskey and ended in manacles.<br/><br/>“It’s going to rain,” Rosabella said, with an overly theatrical sigh, and pulled the shutters closed.  The cold night breeze was like a palm on skin that was flushed from the glow of the tavern’s fire, and the exertions of her craft from which she had been given a brief break.  She turned just in time to artfully dodge a pair of thrown stockings lobbed at her heat by her roommate and fellow performer in Willam’s troop, a shapely woman of dusky skin and pearly teeth that was known as Thorne.  Rose and her Thorne, and hadn’t Willam laughed when he dreamed of pairing the two of them together.<br/><br/>“There are babes yet unborn, who will be born deaf, dumb, and blind, who nevertheless have divined what you have stated as fact, Rosie Red,” Thorne mocked with an actresses’ elocution.  She was naked but for a thin dressing gown that clung to her voluptuous curves with the sweat that glistened against her dark skin, and Rosabella felt the simultaneous flush of desire and stab of envy that made up the sum of her emotions towards her partner.  That she should lust for her was a matter of course; few women were as lovely as the exotic beauty with her mocha tresses and coppery skin, and the envy came from the knowledge that her own looks, while not unpleasant at all, only seemed to serve to make Thorne seem more elegant, more beautiful, more shapely.<br/><br/>Without missing a beat, Rosabella struck the “Saucy Wench” pose she would use in a pantomime.  “And since the misfortune is mine is to share bed and board with one born without the sense of a child deaf, dumb, and blind, I must explain even such things as ‘water is wet,’ and ‘it is going to rain.”  She laughed, a light, fair sound like the ringing of delicate bells, and hurriedly stripped her own skintight costume.  Thorne diplomatically turned to the wardrobe and retrieved a clean outfit for her partner.<br/><br/>Rosabella continued.  “I will forgive your ignorance on account of being a hopelessly ignorant foreign wench of no repute, hopeless ignorance, and shameful makeup skills.”  Thorne all but darted to the mirror to see just what Rose was insinuating, causing Rose to laugh again and dance across the room to steal Thorne’s spot in front of the wardrobe, which was also, conveniently, the warmest spot from the drafty window.  “But it is well known that the last rains in Arges fall without wail within a week of the first winter snows.  All the mud and muck we hauled ourselves through the last tenday to get here will ice up and break into pots and ruts like….like…”<br/><br/>“Yes, go on…” Thorne prompted.<br/><br/>Rosabella tried a few more words that fell flat in her mind, before shrugging as she folded her arms nearly double behind her back, lacing up the costume with blind expertise born of long practice.  “Like something so extraordinarily potted and rutted that you cannot drive wagons across it.  We are wintering in Arges, Thorne.”<br/><br/>“It doesn’t seem so bad,” Thorne said.  “Fortune has favored us these last few months; and the innkeeper seemed glad to have us.  I bet we earn our keep and more besides if we enjoy so warm a reception once word spreads.”<br/><br/>“Perhaps,” Rosabella said.  “But the Queen of Arges is a…” she lowered her voice.  “A witch, so they say, and –“<br/><br/>Whatever she had been about to say was cut off when a ham-handed knock rapped at the door.  “One minute!” called Willam, who as usual managed to convey in those two words that the inn was very much in danger of catching fire, his wife Ellistra in danger of succumbing to the plague, that the world itself would end, if she and Thorne were so much as a second late.<br/><br/>Rosabella made a minute adjustment to Thorne’s costume, and Thorne did the same for her before the older woman left the room, brushing past Willam with a coquettish laugh.  Rosabella looked at herself in the mirror for a half-second longer, unclenching her thighs and trying not to look like a besotted calf.<br/><br/>She was twenty years, but in her face and in the diminutive frame of her body was the look of a much younger girl.  Only her bosom, made more ample than it was by nature (not an inconsiderable amount) betrayed that she more than just a girl on the threshold of womanhood.  Dark red hair the color that some call auburn fell from her face, plastered still against her temple and brow by dark strands wet with her sweat.  She brushed those strands back over her ears, but then let it hang loose beside her face again.  Tucking it back only emphasized the sharpness of her chin.  More lipstick?  Her lips were a pale pink color, but should she draw attention to her mouth, perhaps with a red from Thorne’s collection?<br/><br/>“No time,” Willam said, tapping his foot.<br/>Rosabella sighed, and gave her dancer’s costume, tight and suggestive against her chest, loose and flowing with a many-layered skirt on the bottom, and cut sweetly along the sides from her ankles to her thigh…she did not delude herself into thinking that the value she brought to Willam’s playing was based entirely on her skills as a dancer.<br/><br/>“Ready boss,” she chirped as she followed Thorne down the stair to the dining room.<br/>