There was a soft chime at the door, and a voice played through the plaque slightly fuzzy with some strange crystalline qualities subtly modulating the sound of the words like static through a phone.
“Vivian, Micheal.” Luna's gentle voice came. “Everyone is ready and we have a spot reserved in the legion bath. You don't have to join us, but the baths are booked full else. We'd all like to see you two.” She said and the chime sounded again as the room once more went quiet.
Micheal shifted in Vivian's embrace. The sun had set some little time ago and he had no idea how long he had laid here with her like this. They were chest to chest and still completely bare and uncovered on the bed. They had pulled a pillow down under their heads and lay nose to nose. Micheal had lost track of time somewhere between listening to the beat of her heart and the soft whisper of her breath. Her arms were loosely around his neck and her legs were hooked in and tangled up with his. His arm was wedged under the pillow and Vivian's head and the limb was half asleep though he hardly minded the dull ache of that. His other arm lay along her spine holding her slender body close.
Her long muscular body made him feel bulky and awkward even as skinny as he felt now. Her hands were almost delicate compared to his, and her feet just about half the size of his own. Still she was only a little shorter than him. He liked that. When they were standing that made hugging feel natural with her against his chest and able to lay her head upon his shoulder and not need to raise herself far to kiss his cheek. And she fit in arms perfectly somehow. He could pull her in close and she could find the just right spot to lean in against him folded perfectly into his arms.
She sighed and her lovely eyes flickered open. He stared into iris's which were nearly as wide as the whole of her eye, and watched as they dilated and focused on him in the low light. They seemed to slowly begin to glow in the dark of their room.
“We should go with them.” She said softly. “There's robes in the wash room. We won't need much else.”
They quietly went down behind the others, mostly staying back and keeping to themselves. It was then Micheal had time to pick out the others. A shy and short human girl who looked very familiar with light brown hair and eyes. A faeborn girl stayed near her with a black tail as dark as her hair, very much like that of a cat swishing out from under her linen robe, and her short triangular ears twitching as she laughed and talked with the shy girl beside her. There was a quiet man with a short beard peppered with white, perhaps close to Micheal's own age unlike Mike and Lindsey who seemed to be younger than him by a handful of years. The married couple held hands as they walked. The stoic older man looked happy enough to watch over everyone beside the woman Evatain and was another of the tallest humans Micheal had met so far. Micheal thought he had seen the man reading a book when he came into the room the last two times, but he didn't have long to look either time.
Evatain appeared to be some kind of dark elf. Maybe ones of the Shrouded Kin Vivian had mentioned. She was tall like Vivian, only shorter by an inch at most, but made up for it in the curves of her body that showed even through the modest bathing robe. Her skin was dark and with a slightly unnatural gray color mixed in with the darker shades of tan not at all like the more natural colors Dexter's deep African-like skin tone. Her hair was almost purple black, silky with an almost iridescent luster, and her eyes very much a shade of violet. She was pretty in a haughty sort of way, and confident with it in a way that didn’t exactly impress Micheal. It made her seem like another pretty popular girl. There had been so many back in his high school days.
Luna hovered at the edge of the group and gave him a questioning look, but he waved her off. She frowned, but went to others. She whispered to them and soft words were spread through the group ahead. Some of them looked back at them, but most seemed to accept that if Vivian wanted a little time to herself she could have it, but they did look worried too. The three young Bunnary males looked half furious with their sharp glances at him barely hiding their mistrust, but he tried not to let them phase him.
They made their way down the stairs to the bottom floor and then to a door with a large symbol of a bathtub above its frame. They went inside and were quickly heading down a rough stone stairway as the air began to warm and eventually grow hot. They came through another thick timber door into a wide stone lined room. Inside was a single massive bath that looked to be three feet deep or so, but was at least thirty feet long and more than eight feet wide. A trough filled with steaming water lay against the wall opposite the bath lined with stools and large wooden ladles and all sorts of scrubbing utensils next to baskets of multi-colored soaps. Everyone very casually began slipping out of their robes to hang them on a large rack near the door. Or at least attempted some casualness in Luna and Dexter's case.
Micheal blinked and watched almost amazed as he very quickly saw all the people he had just met naked. He tried to train his eyes, and mentally slapped himself on the forehead. A legion bath. Of course it was a bath made to take care of large groups all at once. He didn't get long to think about that all too much as Vivian came close and pulled open the tie of his robes and took his robe with hers to hang on the rack.
The others were filled with nervous laughter, and some of the girls giggled at this or that, actually most of the giggling was either coming from or caused by Lindsey. The shy girl Micheal recognized was giving squeaky protest as Lindsey remarked on how well she was filling out as well as investigating those filled out parts with her hands. That quickly had most everyone in the other group laughing as the shy girl quickly scuttled to the far end of the bath with the cat-eared girl following after her both laughing and reassuring the shy young woman.
Everyone broke in groups and soon soaps were being handed between each other, being sniffed, traded and remarked upon. Dexter and Luna both looked to be either taken by the close heat of the room or their proximity to one another as they were left next to each other near the door. Luna quickly sat at the nearest stool to set before the trough and waved Dexter over with a frantic hand handing him a ladle with strict instructions to not get any water in her ears.
Micheal led Vivian by the hand to the stool nearest the two and the door away from the group. Vivian kept her eyes down and hadn't fixed her loose hair either so it draped over her face and hid her gaze except when she shifted about or held it out of her face with her hand. Micheal knelt down beside her and fell into the motions of washing her back and hair like he had when in the bath with Vivian before. She stretched out using her arms as brace against her knees and leaned back against him as he washed her arms and quickly went over her front. She made a point of making him wash her neck and face carefully once more after besides, and she took his hands by the wrists to guide him more than once. Her eyes flashed darkly at him whenever he resisted the blatant touches across her naked body.
Micheal couldn't help but feel like he was being watched, but it didn't take much force to have himself focusing on the gentle intimacy of washing her. He worked her long hair out in his hands, and used a wooden comb to gently work free the knots and run the soap out from the strands. Vivian sighed and took deep breaths every time he took the dipper from the trough of hot water and poured it down her back. It wasn't long before he had her totally clean once again. It had only been a day since their last bath anyhow, but he wasn't going to argue with Vivian's insistence on being clean as often as she could manage, especially with all the dust they seemed to pick up on the roads. He had smelled shopkeepers and village people who didn't share the desire to bathe and he was glad for the preference.
Vivian quietly traded places with him once he was done. As he sat down a few ladles of water were flung on the other side of the room and someone got soap in their eye. The sturdy man with the white flecked beard and the woman Darrain jumped on the Bunnary boys and after a short bit of shouting everything was settled again, the red eye caused by the soap cleansed at a touch from the shy young woman who had been half chased to the far end of the bath by Lindsey's over friendly teasing.
It was only then that Micheal noticed Luna staring at his bare back and arms with her hands still on Dexter's back. Her mouth hung open and Dexter had looked over his shoulder to see what was taking her so long to start, but he caught her gaze. His eyes flashed over and went a little wide, but he came back to himself quickly and reached back to pat Luna on the knee. She flushed, and met Micheal's eyes for a moment clearly startled and embarrassed that she had been looking. He managed to give her a sad smile and she looked very much to want to say something, but Dexter patted her knee again and she snapped herself into washing Dexter's half scale covered back.
She almost seemed fascinated by the patterns and worked carefully where Dexter looked to have a breakout of something that looked a lot like advanced eczema on the edges where skin and scale met that cropped up almost as an outbreak of some rash themselves. He kept an eye on her and she worked her friends back tenderly. Once she carefully pulled free a scale and handed it forward to Dexter who seemed to chuckle and palmed it. They really were like some kind of rash, and Micheal would have called them that if not for the uniformity in design and pattern. Its incompleteness was all that seemed to stress Dexter's body like pimples during puberty. It made Micheal wonder just how long until Dexter would be considered ‘full grown’ or mature by his own kind. For now all he knew Dexter was nineteen going on twenty.
Meanwhile Vivian soaked his own hair, and ran soapy hands down his back. Her fingers followed the myriad scars on his back, and she kept her body close, almost always touching him as she worked. For the most part he just let her gentle hands work away the little grime and sweat he had on him and let his focus drift and then his mind get lost the sensations of her hands. Before he knew it she hung herself over his back and ran her arms down his to put her hands over top of his on his knees. The weight of her was comforting even with almost all of her body weight on him. The strength that came with her seeming light weight was startling, but she couldn't have weighed more than one hundred and fifty pounds with her hair wet regardless of her height. Though she did have a good deal of muscle actually.
She kissed his shoulder once and whispered in his ear. “Come on.”
The two of them and a number of the others got up to get into the long bath. The entrance side was sharp square walled and deep going up just shy of his groin with a gentle slope rising to go up against the wall with a sharp curve as the end. It was just about the same angle as a good summer lawn chair worked into the stone. There was a small ledge against the wall that held a number of tough looking oil treated linen cushions of various stale looking colors that might once have been bright. They were flat and almost hard, but definitely softer than the stone.
Vivian sat him down against the end nearest the large cauldron mechanism that hung over a brick built firepit at the end of the huge bath. Chains ran from the cauldron to pulleys and to a large crank wheel at the foot of the large kettle. There were a number of cranks and levers built into it nearby as well and he picked out the leaky clay pipe spout sealed with a large wooden cap on a lever on a tight chain that must have been the spout for water to the cauldron. He wondered idly where the water for the bath was sourced and stored on the grounds.
“In the winter they usually have an attendant who keeps the water and the room warm with the fire here.” Vivian explained, guessing some of his thoughts. “It's not the best idea to sit here then, but it's fine during the summer like this. There's water in a large wooden tank above that they fill from a deep water well on the grounds. There are water filled caves all over this area that have cleaner water than the rivers provide though many people don't have the luxury to have someone use magic to dig a well that deep.”
“You read my mind.” He said as she moved in beside him. She took his arm and laid it over her chest making use of his wide shoulders in doing so. He felt a little uncomfortable at first as she pressed his arm against her body, and his hand laid over her bright red pubic hair, but she curled her arms around his once she had a few of the hard little pillows set up on the ledge behind her head and let out a long, soft sigh. The others certainly noticed the deliberate action on her part.
Luna came into the bath some little time after as they soaked and Dexter followed after. Both he and the nomad man were fighting a war with their eyes to keep them off Luna's backside and fluffy little tail that rested atop her butt. Luna greeted them both with a shy wave and sat a little ways off from Vivian in the bath. She was often decked out in those fancy dresses so maybe Micheal hadn't noticed before, but the Bunnary woman had quite the shapely athletic figure.
He raised his free hand to her in greeting and gave Dexter an appreciative shrug with one shoulder as he subtly gestured at Luna as she turned to sit. Dexter blinked and tried to hide his grin, but slipped a little and almost put himself atop Luna as she sat down. The resulting shriek and stir of water was enough to bring Vivian out of what might have been a light snooze.
Her eyes blinked open and she watched the two of them sit down beside them. Darrian, Micheal noticed as they sat, was watching and seemingly growing angry over the loss of her chance to take a place near Vivian. Due to the recent antagonism Micheal was glad she didn't get a chance to strike back at either him or Vivian.
The bath quieted as people sank up to their necks in the steamy water. Lindsey was talking softly with her husband Mike next to Dexter, and some other idle chatter popped up from time to time until an attendant came to inform them their time was up and preparations for the next group would be underway in a few minutes. And just like that the bath episode was over, robes went back on, and everyone was making their way, yawning, and sometimes leaning together as they went back up all four flights of stairs to their shared guild apartment.
Once inside Vivian finally spoke to the other members of the group. Her quiet voice got the attention of everyone.
“I'm sorry everyone.” She said beside Micheal once the door to the sitting room was shut behind her. “Especially you Eva.” She added once everyone had turned and quieted. The dark elf woman crossed her arms and sighed as she stepped forward, but eyed Micheal once before she nodded.
“There is no problem of which you need to be forgiven.” She said in a haughty, but still somewhat sincere voice. Her voice was a little deeper than he had expected actually, a little husky and breathy, but delightfully feminine.
“I am like the others curious about your tall companion with all the scars, but it is late and you are tired from travel.” She said holding a hand up to others. They were holding their tongues, but Evatain seemed to think she needed to keep them quiet. The way she spoke screamed of some sort of nobility; pretend or otherwise. She bowed and covered her face with a fan snapped out from her sleeve into her hand. Her outstretched fingers gestured to their door. “Please retire and we will start again as though you just arrived in the morning.”
Everyone in the room brightened a little hearing those last words. A few yawned all the same, and fought back waves of sleepiness; Lindsey among them though she drowsily hung on her husbands' arm seeming to somehow both encourage the young man forward and to hang on him all at once.
Vivian stood a little straighter than she had been and smiled at her dark skinned co-Captain.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Thank you Eva.” She said before pulling Micheal by the hand into their room without another word or mention.
Once inside she slid out of her robe and put up her hair tied back with a dark green ribbon from her pack. She took slow gliding steps to his side with her head down. She touched his arm with both of her hands, fingers sliding just over the surface of his skin and down into his palm. She touched the mark on the back of his hand and her fingers played over the surface of the mark that had its pair on her back.
“I will introduce you to everyone properly tomorrow.” She said in an almost whisper. “And I'll get Eva and Forgen to sign you into the guild charter. Or we can go to the Mages Guild first and see if they have someone there or someone they can get a hold of to properly break down and analyze what your abilities can do. They will likely not charge you in exchange for seeing your unique skill and recording its effects.” She said, still touching the mark.
“We can walk Jack in the yard so he doesn't cause trouble. Then we should probably go to the temple and ask for reprieve. We're still at silver threat rank and from what I saw in the bath its not affected by the others being here.” She added softly.
“I need to train you to fight better and we need to know what you can do before you're put in a situation where you have to fight again. I never did tell you how proud I was that you fought off those goblins and that orc like that. You and Jack saved Luna. Dexter won't say it, but he was terrified when he saw the remnants of the fighting. Luna can only use her wands so fast and she's always been so squeamish about learning melee combat.”
Micheal listened carefully trying to hold up his own mood though seeing Vivian holding herself low like this was making it hard. He took his free hand and turned her face up to look at him.
“This isn't you Vivian.” He said to her, he slipped his other hand free of her grasp and put it to her shoulders. He drew up her chin in his hand and used his other arm to stand her up straight. He looked at her still drooping ears with consternation and then brought her into a gentle hug. She sank into the embrace, but still seemed mopey. So using a guise of an affectionate nuzzling of her cheek he quickly found her left ear with his lips and teeth. The resulting squeal and struggle to get loose from his grip as he devilishly tickled her ears got her fighting spirit back.
In the end she danced away from him as easily as a ballerina mid act, and her expression was a mix of bewildered humor and pure consternation.
“That's a little better.” He said with a nervous chuckle and pulled loose the tie to his robe. “You saw those two in the bath right?” He asked, changing the subject.
Vivian gave him a patient look, but then her smile broadened a little. “Luna's always liked Dexter, but Dexter can be hard to pin down. He's always saying his Path is going to lead him into danger like Luna's mark won't do just as much someday. Dexter doesn't look it, but he's quite young, and Luna is much older than nineteen.” Vivian explained with more of her normal energy coming back.
“You don't think Dexter could just--” Micheal began and swung his arms down under her legs and back and hefted her into the air. She gave a little muffled squeak at the sudden motion, but clung to his neck in reaction. “-ya know pick her up and give her the smokey eyebrow look and take her into bed?” He said doing his cheesiest impression of Clooney as he did indeed take her to the bed.
She laughed softly and gazed up at him. “'Smokey eyebrow?” She laughed. “Is that what your people call that?” She asked as he put his knee down on the bed to lean over and lay her against the pillows, but she grinned as one of her feet found the top of his thigh and she pulled herself up around him with her arms around his neck.
She kicked his knee off the bed and all he could do was tumble on top of her. She laughed as his weight fell down on top of her and as he struggled to get his balance back. Instead of cooperating she pressed in and started nibbling his ear; seeming so in revenge for what he had done to her. Even as she did that, and he frantically tried to get her to let go, beginning to laugh a little himself she hooked her legs around his middle as he pushed himself up on hands and knees so she stuck with him as he moved.
He laughed and tried to unhook her legs from his waist, but she just put them right back when he pulled them off. They tousled and wrangled with each other for grip until Micheal finally got a good hook on her leg and one arm through her grip on his neck and around her arm and managed a sort of half cradle reverse half nelson with the two. Her eyes shone with delight and heat as the resulting position had her legs spread open beneath him. She was smiling, but he quickly pulled his grip away from her neck. Even though they were mostly rough housing it felt wrong to have her laid exposed like this in any kind of submission hold after what she had said before.
She panted a few heavy breaths. Her skin shown with light and clean perspiration despite the magic air conditioning of the room. Her leg in his other arm lifted further displaying her flexibility and one her hands drifted down to pull at his hip and draw him toward her. The light in her eyes was warm and hungry. She was smiling and happy. He couldn't resist and drew close to kiss her. One of her arms went back around his neck while the other guided him in. And his worries slipped from his mind as they both answered the call of their instincts and reveled in their mutual desire for one another before falling asleep in a tangle of sheets and limbs once again. Seeing her smiling, panting, gasping and clinging to him, feeling her body heat and the fatigue of his body reminded him more than anything that he was alive. Despite all the horrible things that had been done to him, and worse that he had seen he was alive here and now and so was she. That fact glittered in his mind like the longing in her eyes, the hungry way she pulled and clung to him, and most clearly when they stared into each other's eyes when they finally came to rest.
Luna hung the bathing robe on its peg in the washroom and quickly donned her sleeping garb. The green and yellow silk pajamas were a secret treasure of hers. Jack, a little unnervingly, watched as she dressed with a curious eye as he sat on the large soft square of spare blankets she had had brought up. She climbed into the large bed glad to be in a proper one once again as she made a small triangular opening and carefully slid herself between the sheets. She pulled the pillows down and tossed aside one that was just a little too fluffy for one that was just right. And she lay her head back only to feel quite wide awake despite how tired she had felt after coming up the stairs. She had fallen into her habit again on the way up, this time taking Dexter's arm as her escort and Micheal beforehand. She didn't know why that of all things stuck with her. Maybe it was because her mother had trained and retrained her so often in it that it was just burned into her now. She laid there and thought about Dexter and even about Micheal.
The image of Micheal's back filled her spine with ice. Not only did seeing him naked confirm what was always there, that he was orcish in size, almost a giant really, but his scars told another story entirely. There were ravine-like scars everywhere across his back in ridges and lines of stiff flesh. Like he had been strapped with iron cords. The backs of his arms and legs were just as bad, and there were even a number of scars on his chest. When she saw that it had startled her greatly.
Bunnary, especially the girls, were usually some form of empath to living things around them. Seeing that had filled her mind with phantom pains and stinging sensations across her body. She remembered the way Micheal had charged in through the brush with his staff, angry and shouting wordlessly, ignoring the wounds he had taken as he fought on recklessly. She remembered the way he struck at them with a sort of sloppy, but brutal efficiency to get to her.
His footwork was just like Vivian's in some places, but it was clear most of his action was driven by rage. Each thrust he delivered carried the weight of his body while not putting him off balance, and each strike was measured at the proper distance, and each targeted soft and critical areas of the body, but it had been done with all his strength. She winced and shivered remembering the feel of her Wand of Embers in her hand. She felt a little sick remembering the smell of burning filthy bodies and the way they screamed as they burned alive. She remembered and almost seemed to hear again the sounds of bone and the cartilage of throat crunching under the vicious blows of Micheal's quarterstaff and she shook. She remembered the feel of hot blood spraying against her skin, saw it in her mind as it dripped from Jack's broad fanged mouth and savage claws.
Her heart began to pound like it had been then. She remembered each blow that landed on Jack; how he whirled and turned about her, always forcing her back and away and staying at her side. She remembered the blood matting in his heavy fur, how it dripped in thick foamy droplets from his chest, and off the hanging skin of his belly to mix with the loamy forest floor. She remembered the goblins reeling back trying to hold in their stinking bloody innards after their middles had been ripped open with Jack's finger length black claws. She remembered the ones that fell and scrambled, unable to breathe with their crushed throats and how even those horrid creatures managed to die in terrible agony. Death was hard to contemplate when faced with its reality. Micheal's lack of proper weaponry had not prevented him from finishing foes quickly when he put them to ground. The sounds in her mind twisted her gut.
She covered her eyes and tried not to think of that any more. She had seen the guild sorcerers and mages fling spells into enemies before, and she'd used her songs to not only inspire, but magically bolster her allies. Before she had always been at the back, or seen the damage after it was done, or at least been able to look away. She tried to think of all the spell songs she knew that would help grow fields or return life to a forest after a wildfire that made the flames look tame with the tongues of green that would spread from where she stood. She tried to think of being back in the Royal Burrow with all her many siblings and large extended family at court, but it all seemed so long ago already. She tried to think of her mother's face, but it just wasn't as clear as it should have been. She shivered and let out a sob.
Why did they make these rooms so cold? Was it just her? More than anything right then she wanted to go home. She wanted to be in the deep rooms of the Royal Burrow. She wanted to smell the earth around her, and have ten or so of her young siblings cuddled up to her in bed all warm after crowding together to be read a story. They would play with her ears, pull her tail, and climb all over her, but she would tire them out and get them all to sleep before long. She sobbed, missing them horribly, until a wet cold nose touched her hand at the side of the bed.
She gasped and sat up in bed, but it was only Jack. With just his nose above the bed and his ears perked up he looked so innocent. Now that she wasn't so focused she could hear his little tail going in the dark. He also seemed to wiggle slightly whenever his tail was wagging and she could make that out pretty plainly even with the curtains hiding the moonlight.
She looked at the Bear Dog for a moment remembering yet again the creature that had once broken into the Root Garden of the Royal Burrow in search of food, but also and again seeing Jack at her side during that horrid encirclement. She had run as hard as she could and would have been captured and had unspeakable things done to her if this creature hadn't been so valiant in her defense. Both him and Micheal his master. She gulped and patted the bed near her feet.
It was an odd mix of fear and safety she felt around Jack. She hadn't entirely meant to keep him in her room, but it had turned out that way after Vivian's difficulties adjusting to her race's particular...particularities... Jack hesitated a moment wiggling his tail and butt nervously, but bounded up onto bed with a little struggle born mostly of his uncertainty.
His claws pulled at the sheets a little as he circled once and then twice, but then he laid down with his head laid on her lap. His head alone was actually quite heavy. He wiggled his tail and snuffled and licked her hands as she pet him for a moment before she laid back down. Jack laid out beside her then with his head still up on her for a little while before he wiggled a little into a better position along her side. The big bear dog was warm against her side and she rested a hand outside the blanket on his head.
She worked her fingers delicately around his ears and she could feel his tail beat a slow rhythm down by her feet. She still remembered all those things. She still missed her family. But she wasn't alone. Micheal's Bear Dog familiar she was sure would have defended her to the last even against that orc. She didn't know how Micheal had changed the monster with his magic or how different Jack was from any other Bear Dog. She had once been told they were the most vicious when protecting their young or members of their small packs, but she didn't know how true that was not until now. She could only think of how Jack pushed her around with his heavy shoulders and backside and kept her free of harm. And how proud the wounded Jack was when the fight was over and Micheal had praised him with a few words; his tail had beating like it was now, or back in the common room of the potted pickle when she came down to see him and check on his resting.
He was a good boy just like Micheal had said. She was certain.
Dexter held the key of Luna's room in his hand in the quiet sitting room. Luna knew he would simply sleep in the sitting room and wake when the first person to come out of their room did so, but she had given him one anyway. They had only kissed on the road to Mayonn, nothing more. It was just a sign of affection right?
Dexter hated to admit to himself that he didn't know. Micheal went about it like it was no big deal at all, and for that matter so did Vivian. He laid his head back against his cloak with the three scales Luna had pulled from his back in his hand. He should have thrown them away already, but they had been bothering him for a little while. He could feel them being pushed up and caught by the others around it. He could have managed to loosen them with a little rubbing on a tree or they might have fallen out in the bath without her help, but he couldn't help but remember her hands on his back, and the gentle way she had worked them out. She had also been careful of the sensitive areas of his skin. She even gave him a lotion before she went to bed a little bit ago that would help with the dryness. He cursed that Bear Dog's position inside the room.
It felt foolish. It was foolish. The dog was sleeping on a mat. A small voice in his head reminded him he was laying on a bedroll of a sitting room up against the wall of that same room instead of being in there with her. He sighed and put his head back and tried to calm his mind enough to find sleep. It came with restless surety some time late into the night when his eyes grew tired of staring at the ceiling.
Vivian awoke in the depths of the night as she often did when she slept beside Micheal. He was breathing hard already and his shaking had been what woke her. She was still part way in his arms, they had come a little undone as they both found more comfortable positions to sleep and more so as they moved in slumber, but this seemed to happen almost every night. Micheal didn't talk about it or didn't remember whatever nightmares he had. Maybe he never really came all the way awake, or maybe his mind was still sheltering him from what horrors lay in his memory.
She gently touched his hands as they gripped and pulled hard at the blankets, and moved herself in close to him as his jerking slowed and finally stopped. He seemed to wake momentarily with a gasp and a bit of growl, but she only guided his arms back around her. She was low in the bed now beside him and as he finally started to relax once again she found a spot where his arm and the pillow overlapped with a bit of his chest so she could lay her head against him. He panted hard breaths and then curled around her. She lifted her legs over his as he pulled in close and adjusted the sheets to cover them both properly. She laid half on her back with him on his side curled around her.
She let out something that was half sigh, half yawn, and laid her head back against the pillow and his arm below it. She shuffled her shoulders a little and settled in against his chest.
He was warm. Wonderfully so. The chill of the night sometimes woke her when she slept alone so it was nice usually to have him close even in the summer. He would be a treasure during the winter if she could just find a way to stop his nightmares. It had to be something to do with the way his mind retreated when goblins were brought up or some mention of the camp made him think of something. Yet he was troubled greatly by what he experienced whether he talked about it or not and she knew that for certain. She had small doubts in her mind about the Spirit Mark he had put on her, but like the days since she ended the day no more tired than when she awoke. She could still sleep fine. In fact she fell asleep rather quickly even when they didn't copulate beforehand.
She lay there thinking about what she had said to him. In her anger she had hurt him. He had almost shut himself off from her even, shut down. She hated that. It wasn't like him to be cold. He liked to share and make people laugh. At least...she thought so. She admitted to herself that she didn't know him as much as she might like. She needed to spend more time with him, but things with their marks weren't going well. She didn't understand why a silver rank threat wouldn't go down while they were inside the city. She couldn't think of anything that would do that. If it was a danger of that level surely other adventurers would pick up on it. It would have to be almost obvious. There was something she was missing or hadn't noticed.
Maybe Micheal had some sort of curse? Or maybe the fact that he was a Human Elder Kin? It meant that he was perhaps destined for a certain fate, his blood carrying the mixed and congealed essence of the Gods, and likely explained his level of strength so far, but it did explain some other things. She had been distracted after getting the confirmation she needed. It shouldn't have surprised her to see that he was something more than ordinary, but it had, just a little. And some of the things he had been saying...speaking of strange technology in passing, his understanding and education... She had trusted his words, maybe foolishly, but he knew so little that there was no other logical reason for him to lack the knowledge that he did. That he still did. He'd never seen fields like those of Mayonn. He even asked after their crops and rotations; demonstrating knowledge of farming such that he should at least know the names of each plant. He even reacted to the Angler Horses, Boldershell Turtle, and Bull Frogs like they were as strange a thing as he had ever seen.
Still a Human Elder Kin... if what she remembered was right Micheal would have to have been born of a line, or several lines of ancient blood leading back to the first age after the Fall when the first gods walked among men, and fae born alike.
All things Elder Kin had incredible potential, and grew more and more formidable with age, often coming as a sign the world was about to change. She wondered about that, and watched his face in the gray half light of her kinds adapted dark vision.
‘What would their children look like?’ She wondered.
She felt the soft muscle of her relaxed lower abdomen right above her womb. The thought didn't feel so strange as it might have given her powerful instincts to accomplish such a task with her chosen lover. Part of her wanted desperately for some sign of child to show as impatient and slightly crazy as that was. Maybe that would end her cycle and she could think normally again without having to drag her Elder Kin partner into bed first. But it was just as likely that her cycle would continue in that case. It wasn't odd for a High Elf of her kind to have even up to three babies take hold over a period of months before her cycle stopped either for the baby, to pick up after or end entirely with the first children to take root. She could only imagine the trouble of delivering one baby, but then one or two more weeks or months later? That was almost insane. She knew those women who expected multiple babies always retreated to communes or into the shelter of their own father’s harem when that happened, but she wondered what she would do in that situation.
Would a human midwife know what to expect when her other babies didn't come with the first if she didn't just go back to her own mother? She was almost sure human twins, or triplets, as they called them, came within at most a day of one another. She had to roll her eyes as a stray thought brought Eva into the position of most reliable midwife of her kin she knew or had access to. That would be awful. There was always the option of home for her in that case, a promise she barely remembered now made to her mother in the days of her youth, but her home was oh so very far away.
She turned to watch his breath settle into something much easier. She fished out a long lock of her hair from under her shoulder to put it near his face. She smiled as he almost immediately cuddled a little closer to her. She could love him couldn't she? Even without her body's reproductive cycle making her a little unbalanced? She pulled his arm between her breasts and drew the sheets over them again before feeling herself fall easily back to sleep in his arms.