By the time the sun was setting that evening, the men were still training outside of the farm. Lunette sat by the window, wrapped in a blanket, watching Arvel instruct them.

“Handsome, huh?” Fidget asked, as she put a bowl of soup on the windowsill.

“What?” Lunette asked, slowly reaching out of her blanket to pick up the bowl of soup, looking down at the little goblin beside her.

Fidget pushed a footstool over beside Lunette’s chair so she could stand and look out the window too. She rested her elbows on the windowsill, and her chin in her hands as she smiled wistfully and said, “He’s handsome for a human. Even with weird piggy skin, and long lanky limbs, he looks handsome.”

“I wasn’t staring at Arvel,” Lunette said quietly, before taking a sip from her soup.

Fidget grinned up at her, like the cat that caught the canary, and said, “I never said Arvel!”

“Well you obviously weren’t talking about Frederik,” Lunette replied with a smirk.

Fidget pouted at Lunette’s calm response, not even a little flustered by the idea that she might’ve been caught admitting Arvel was handsome. Fidget then tilted her head and asked, “Why a soldier?”

“I’m surprised you’d ask me a thing like that,” Lunette replied, “I thought all goblins fought, regardless of their gender.”

“Yeah, but not all humans!” said Fidget, “Rain said you either fight or make babies, but not both. So why do you not want babies?”

Lunette paused, and lowered her soup bowl, looking at Fidget. She sighed softly and said, “I’m not surprised you’d leap to that conclusion, but it’s not exactly right.”

“Explain!” demanded Fidget.

Lunette smiled faintly, and held out a frail hand to pet the top of Fidget’s head, saying, “I will try. You see, I came from a large family. I had three older sisters, two older brothers, and two younger brothers. It was very hard to make sure everyone was fed.”

“That’s big?” Fidget asked, “Fidget had twelve brothers and sisters!”

“Twelve?!” Lunette asked, surprised, “How did you keep track of everyone?”

Fidget shrugged, and said, “We didn’t. Sometimes brother went and lived with other family. One day new sister showed up and stuck around. When den split up, some lived one place and some lived another, so family got smaller.”

“It sounds like a very flexible arrangement,” Lunette said with a small smile, “For humans, things are a little more rigid. By the time I was fourteen, all of my sisters had moved out and started families of their own, and they too struggled to make sure everyone was fed. My older brothers, meanwhile, had decided to join the militia.”

“To protect humans?” Fidget asked, a bit warily, “Like knights?”

“In a way,” said Lunette, “It was not for honor, or to serve nobility, like knights. They protected their homes, and the pay was decent. I saw how my elder sisters struggled with poverty and starvation, and decided I didn’t want that for myself. So, I joined the militia as well.”

“But Lunette is knight now?” Fidget asked, “Lunette is a sir— a serrrr.”

Lunette chuckled at Fidget’s firm over-pronunciation, and said, “Yes, I am. In the militia, I was underestimated as a woman. They were convinced I’d leave to start a family as soon as things got too hard. But one day, the marchioness’s soldiers were passing through and noticed me. They offered me the opportunity to become a knight, to train in the capital, in Fairvale, to become a proper knight and serve the marchioness’s family as a guard.”

“To serve Rain?” Fidget asked.

“Not at the time,” said Lunette, “Not directly at least. At the time, Rain’s mother was the marchioness of Nathulan. She wanted a female knight in her service with whom she could entrust her daughter’s safety. As such, I was trained not only in combat, but how to read and write, and speak eloquently. Lady Deleraine— ah, Rain... she was just a little girl at the time, but by the time I had completed my training, she was a young woman who was ready to make her social debut, and it became my duty to watch over her. I could follow her into spaces that were only for women, and protect her from threats.”

“Only for women?” Fidget asked, confused.

“Yes, of course,” said Lunette, “Into a ladies’ parlor or boudoir, or watch over her while she bathed.”

Fidget furrowed her brow and said, “Humans are weird about bodies.”

The front door opened, and Fidget excitedly leapt off of her stool to run and greet Arvel as he was walking inside. He was wearing only a pair of trousers, and resting his shovel against his bare shoulder before he hung it on a hook by the door, whilst working to kick his boots off into the corner. His skin was still glistening with a faint sheen of sweat.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“Done training?” Fidget asked, “Fidget made soup!”

“Sounds good,” Arvel said with a grin. He looked at Lunette and asked, “You eating?”

Lunette nodded, and lifted her bowl to drink the last of it in one long draw. When she lowered the bowl, she was surprised to see Arvel right in front of her. He reached down and scooped her up with ease, lifting her from her chair and turning to walk for the bedroom.

“Y-You don’t have to—” she stammered.

“It’s time to change your bandages,” Arvel replied, “and if you weren’t so unsteady on your feet you’d have done it yourself.”

Lunette fell quiet, not arguing with him. She slowly let herself relax as he carried her, and laid her head on his shoulder. Though she had once sparred with him on equal footing, he was now so much stronger than her. She could barely walk from one side of a room to the other without becoming winded, and here he was carrying her with ease after spending his entire day outside doing chores and training men to fight. The scent of his skin was strong, as he hadn’t even bothered to splash off with water in hours.

“Was it good?” Arvel asked.

“Huh?”

“The soup,” he said, “Fidget’s been getting all experimental-like with some of the new ingredients from the settlers.”

Lunette smirked and said, “I’m still not sure what I think about pickles in soup.”

Arvel chuckled, and laid Lunette down on the mattress. The bed was stripped bare, with all of the sheets, blankets, and pillows piled on the floor instead. Since they came back down from the mountain, no one had slept on the bed, and it had instead become a place where Lunette’s bandages were changed.

As Arvel opened up her blanket, Lunette closed her eyes and turned her head away.

“Hey,” he said quietly, “If you’d rather, I can go get Rain.”

“It’s fine,” Lunette replied softly.

Arvel was quiet, as he opened up the box of clean bandages that Fidget kept stocked on the bedside table. He started to pull off the bandages from one of Lunette’s arms, laying the blood-stained wrappings in a nearby bucket, as he said, “You don’t want to look, do you?”

She said nothing.

“I know you’ve gotta be cold,” said Arvel, “So I get why you keep yourself wrapped up, but even for a few minutes like this, you don’t want to look at your own body. Is it... the new scar I gave you?”

“No!” Lunette answered, turning her head to look up at him, “It’s not that.”

Her eyes drifted down to her arm in his hand. Her once deeply tanned arm had lost some of its rich color, and her muscle was gone, leaving a skinny, nearly emaciated looking limb covered in healing cuts and scratches. She bit her lip, and looked away again.

“You said you died before,” Arvel told her quietly, “Twice, I think.”

“Once when I was eleven,” said Lunette, “and again at fifteen.”

Arvel grimaced, and said, “That had to be real hard.”

“It was,” she replied, “My village’s priestess had died the season before I was born, and the midwife was held up by snow until the morning after, so no one knew what star I was born under. They found out when I fell out of a tree and broke my neck.”

“Bet your family was real happy for the surprise,” he said with a smirk, as he wrapped clean bandages around her arm.

“Terrified,” she replied, smirking weakly, “They thought my body was possessed at first. But they were grateful, when they finished screaming.”

“And the next time?” he asked.

“I was a scrawny little girl in ill fitting armor,” she said, “I’d only been training with the militia for three months when goblins attacked. My spear was too heavy for me to even use properly. When my commander gave the order to retreat, I fell behind. Of course, no one slowed down to help.”

“Goblins can be real vicious fighters,” he said with a wince, beginning to unwrap her other arm.

“For a mercy, it was quick,” she said, “A blow to the back of the head, right at the base of the neck, I believe. Like striking a rabbit to quickly put it down.”

“You ‘n your neck,” he said with a small smirk, “Betcha your gorget’s the first piece of armor that goes on every day.”

“Doesn’t work that way,” she said with a soft chuckle, “But when I was in training as a knight, I severely beat one of my peers who thought it was funny to hit me on the back of the head with a training sword.”

“Can’t say I blame you,” Arvel replied, dropping a handful of stained bandages into a bucket before beginning to wrap her arm with fresh dressings, “Do you think you can sit up for me to do the rest?”

“I should be able,” she said, watching him finish wrapping her arm.

Once he had secured the bandages, she put her hands down on the mattress and slowly sat up. Arvel didn’t help her, letting her take her time to find her own strength, shifting until she turned her back to him. She sat up cross-legged, pulled her sleeveless tunic off over her head, and pulled her long golden hair over her shoulder, baring her back to him. The bandages wrapped around her torso had a small blood stain, just to the left of her spine.

“You’re healin’ up good,” he said quietly, unfastening the wrappings to let them loosen. He began to ball up the end of the bandages, and passed it around her side, letting Lunette pass them across her body and to the other side of her ribs.

“Good,” she said quietly, “I hope I’ll be able to train again soon.”

“I’m sure you will,” he said, “You’re gettin’ stronger every day.”

She did not answer.

“You are,” he said, “I know you don’t feel it but I see it. You ain’t died in how many years now? That was a whole long time of getting stronger, so you can’t expect to be back there in a day or two.”

“I don’t expect that,” she replied, “but I don’t expect I’ll ever get back to where I was. Not only did it take years of constant training to get where I was, but I’ve never been so frail in my entire life.”

“So what else are you gonna do?” asked Arvel, “Give up?”

Lunette was silent.

“That wasn’t the kinda question you don’t answer!” he said.

“A rhetorical question?”

“Yeah, it ain’t that!” he said, pulling the last of the stained bandages from around her body and throwing them into the bucket beside him with some force.

Lunette slowly looked back over her shoulder, her green eyes misted with tears, and asked, “What if I were to give up?”