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Finals came and went, Domitia earning SSS rank in Trig, Combat Spellcasting, and Alchemy essentials. A well-beyond-exceptional S in Mana Storing Organs would put her on track towards valedictorian. This track record was somewhat blemished by a paltry B in history – though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Razan had managed to hard-carry her through to a passable victory in that one.
For his part, Razan got an A in Dungeons, Dragons, and 3 Credit Hours (largely a freebie, and they seldom gave out prestige S-ranks for such basic coursework) and Nonhuman Folkways. His beautiful and instructive sparring partner helped him ace Combat Spellcasting with an S, while On Mana Storing Organs proved to be a dark horse interesting subject matter to him, netting an SS. Alchemy Essentials meanwhile languished at a B-, and once again, perhaps Domitia deserved the credit hours there for dragging him over the finish line.
With the end of the semester came the start of their first official couples’ vacation. They received their final grades, and then were aboard a ship for Fellmire the next morning.
An entire minor in recent magical-technological innovations was available at the college. Razan would’ve gone for it but the scheduling was inconsistent and awkward. Where in their grandparents’ time the journey across the sprawling inland sea connecting Shiverfast, Fellmire, and a half-dozen other biomes ranging from frozen to tropical rainforest would have taken six months and come with a necessary bout of scurvy. Not so now; with the simple application of a spellbound flame djinn being exposed to a alchemy-concocted water elemental, ships could fly across the sea on steam power. What was once six months one way now took three days there and back.
Three days round trip to Fellmire (and thereabouts a day and a half for Rivergale) made journeys back home between semesters viable. They also produced rapid cultural exchange, such that two people from opposite ends of the inland sea could meet in a third corner. Simply put, it was the reason why Domitia and Razan ever had a chance to meet at all. It had turned their alma mater from a sleepy little monastic cloister for the magically endowed into a sprawling campus that anchored the entire town of Shiverfast.
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Domitia and Razan had their own private room deep in the interior of this steam ship. It was a third class ticket – they were still college students on a limited income, after all, and neither wanted to go back and beg the family (or the clan) for extra funds.
“Mmmm. Cafeteria has carnivore offerings.” Domitia returned to the room, rack of skewered dire-rat in tow. “It’s a local delicacy. You’ll have to try it once we’re home. This cafeteria food, eh, it’s not quite authentic.”
“Is that so?” Razan eyed the skewer. “Heck, I’ll try anything once.”
Dietary concerns were only one concern within interspecies relationships. They’d both packed some snacks just in case they needed to tide themselves over – snow hare in Domitia’s case, the coveted cuisine of the potato in Razan’s.
Relationships between any two humans were blase and bog standard. A mage from Shiverfast and a noble scion from Rivergale would’ve scarcely been worth batting an eye at these days, regardless of contrasting cultures. But one dwarf-orc couple moves into the burgh and suddenly the gossip of every guild in the Hanse is all ‘how does it work?’ and ‘will the offspring have beards?’ Which is to say that more and more Gob-kin boarded the transport ship at various stops along the way, homeward bound, but vanishingly few Gob-human couples, or Gob-anything else.
Nevertheless, Razan accompanied Domitia up on deck for the twice-daily sunbathing supplementals. It was how she got essential non-nitrogen-based nutrients – synthesized them right out of the sun. By the afternoon after they set sail and rapidly moved towards warmer climes, her complexion had already deepened into a verdant emerald green.
“Ahhh, this is much better,” said the SMC sophomore, dressed in loose-fitting school color athletic wear.
Domitia’s eyes were closed as she lounged back in a chair.
“Yeah, having to burn mana on illumination magic thrice-daily was a bit of a drag. I’m surprised I still had enough left over for Combat Spellcasting,” Domitia said.
Mirrored glasses covered her eyes as she sunbathed. If Razan looked over, he could see himself reflected in full.
“How did your family get to be landowners around Shiverfast anyway? If – if you don’t mind me asking?”
Razan lounged back in a chair beside her – though he didn’t get a fraction of the benefits she did, the extra tan wouldn’t hurt.
“Hmmm. Probably best to explain before you meet the entire clan.” Domitia remained lounging back, pensive. “So, dad was something of the black dire-sheep of the family. He moved away to get some distance from rather nosy internal politicking – no privacy in the burrow, right? Anyway, of course he takes mom up to the frigid, dark north while she’s pregnant with a full litter. That’s how me and my fraternal brothers were wound up born on-campus; dad got a job teaching Gob-origin illumination magic, eventually made some property investments and bought some off-campus housing. So, if you’re thankful for our discounted rent, be sure to say out a prayer to him during the festival.”
“A… a litter?”
Domitia’s expression was unchanged, save for her lips which angled up into the slightest of smiles.
“Oh? They didn’t mention this even once in Nonhuman Folkways, lover boy? Figured it would’ve come up in cross-species anthropology the previous semester at least. A birth with five bouncing bundles of joy is considered normal. If we get a little sloppy you could be providing for a family of up to nine by senior year. Might have to find a larger apartment…
“I, uh…”
“Relax.” Domitia reached over and playfully slapped her hand against his bicep. “I’m on herbs. Wouldn’t do anything that would cut my jousting career short anyway. Also, we don’t really eat solid foods until we’re near our teens – run off photosynthesis only. Ought to save on food expenses.”
Razan exhaled slowly. Crisis averted.
“Anyway…” Domitia, too, seemed eager to change the subject. “Dear departed dad somewhat fled from gob-culture. Would’ve passed as a human mage if he could’ve found a proper glamour for it. But mother never did get used to the cold winter nights. So, with dad no longer with us, mother returned to Fellmire shortly thereafter. One additional litter from dad, and another from her new marriage make for seven semi-feral preteen younger brothers. Family reunions are a raucous affair.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I’m sure…”
Somehow those hectic family feasts back at the ancestral Rivergale keep didn’t seem half as hectic as they could be.
“So, when we get to Fellmire,” Razan began.
“We’ll be picked up by my auntie – mom’s littermate. She’s prone to judge. Then we’ll get a cart out to the burrow, go downstairs, meet mom, my brothers, and the rest of the clan. And then…”
Domitia leaned forward, smiling slyly.
“… I complete my mission to seduce naïve magically-inclined undergrads and trick them into our hovel, where we cook and eat you to inherit your mana base.”
“…”
“That’s a joke.” Domitia leaned back into her seat. “In case it wasn’t clear. People say Gob-humor is dark. I don’t think I have a grasp on it. Been living up in the snow for too long. Still, if I’m going to be home for long, might want to get back in the groove of things.”
The sun went behind the clouds. The numerous gob-kin passengers got out of their chairs and ventured below decks; their daily allotment of sun acquired.
“Home.” Domitia chuckled to herself. “Only been back here for family reunions. And yet…”
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The ship made three quick stops on its trip skirting the inland sea. One in Widetower, the administrative city, mostly to pick up documents and offload tuition payments. The next was in the Warmarshes. Once a wild and untamed marsh (hence the name) used as orc breeding grounds for their egg clutches, it was cleared out some six generations ago to ensure the Freedom and Liberty of prospective future colonists.
From there, the ship made one last stop in Centreport, an island in the inland sea, and major trading hub. Here was where most of the passengers either disembarked or boarded from. As little more than an extended-stay ferry, it parked in each location for no more than an hour or two. Crews worked hastily, ushering along passengers and cargo in a well-ordered machine.
For the Centreport to Fellmire trip, roughly half the passengers were Gob or Gob-adjacent. The ferry would continue onward after Fellmire, up the coast to the north and east until eventually circling all the way back around to Shiverfast. In fact, it would be how they got back for their return trip for the next semester. But for now, the arid sand and jagged rocks of Fellmire awaited…
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Fellmire was both a desert and a mire – again, hence the name. Water seeped out of natural springs in the ground but seldom fell from the sky, resulting in plenty of streams and rivers but also scorching cloudless skies.
“You’ve been here before?” Domitia asked.
Razan nodded. “Once before. On a cruise. Didn’t really leave Port Fellmire.”
“Eh, tourists seldom do. C’mon, this is hardly my first family get-together. Auntie should be waiting for us right outside customs.”
Auntie was, in fact, waiting for them right outside customs. Razan could certainly see the family resemblance; she looked like Domitia if she were thirty years older and if certain features had zigged instead of zagged. A nose and brow had a slightly less well-defined slope to them. One assumed Domitia’s mother looked somewhere between the two.
Regardless, Domitia hugged her aunt. They hadn’t met in at least six years.
“Ay, you haven’t been photosenthesizing dear. Your skin’s going to turn pallid.”
Domitia cringed as said Auntie pinched at her cheeks.
“The college doesn’t get a lot of – ouch – sun!” she protested.
“I’m serious. You should summon a UV orb at least twice a day. You already are? Then four times a day! We don’t want your skin to wither and look like a – hi! You must be Razan, yes? She’s written so much about you in her letters to the burrow. Got a thing for armor, eh?”
There was little time for Razan to react to that. His cheeks flushed, but before Domitia’s aunt could inflict some withering criticism or another, she was interrupted by a blaring horn from an enchanted carriage. It was the two-minute warning that the carriage was about to depart. Steam rose from the front car as the fettered flame djinn was apparently quite angry.
“Oh, but enough about that, let’s get you to the old hovel, dears.”
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Enchanted carriages on this side of the inland sea were not so different from the one Razan took to get from Rivergale to SMC. A little less headroom, maybe. The pair kept their luggage and effects down near their knees.
Auntie (for her name was apparently unpronounceable by human tongues, though perhaps that was a lie she told as a joke) had not lived with or around Domitia when she was growing up in cold, far-off Shiverfast. But she had plenty of embarrassing childhood stories acquired secondhand to repeat. Domitia’s cheeks blushed a very pretty shade of brown as Auntie regaled her beau with the time she’d hunted down and ate her first carnivorous kill.
They rode along a rail for a few hours, along the rocky outcroppings and low-lying pools of Fellmire. It was a beautiful country. Truly a land of contrasts.
Having disembarked just before noon, the sun hung low in the west – in the direction of Razan’s home – by the time they neared a rockier, less-mire-y region atop a high plateau. The enchanted carriage stopped, being at the end of its line. The paltry few passengers remaining got out at a simple platform, and the tram continued backwards towards the port, leagues in the distance.
Of course, Razan possessed zero clue where to go. Auntie and Domitia led the way, leaving Razan to handle most of the luggage. They walked through the arid landscape, the sun mercifully less harsh here in the late-late afternoon. They walked to the far corner of the plateau, where it gradually petered out into more desert-marsh. Razan found himself peering down a truly massive, layered pit.
There, sunken into the very rock, was a hole. And in that hole lived his girlfriend’s extended family.
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“Welcome to the burrow!” Auntie explained as they stepped down a winding series of steps circling the pit. “Whole extended clan lives in here. Grew up here with Domitia’s mom and the rest of the litter. Most are still around. Of course, she went off with Grubnab for a time. But, why, here she is now!”
Indeed, Domitia’s mother and a gaggle of other various cousins, siblings, and clanmates
“Psst. Who is Grubnab again?” Razan asked before the gob-tide was upon them.
“Dad,” she said. “Went by ‘Professor Bob’ in Shiverfast. Don’t worry about it, sweetie, you’re doing great.”
All of a sudden, Razan found a scurrying flock of knee-high creatures with sharp but miniature teeth gnawing at his ankles. The creatures bit at him intently, though their bite force was a little lacking, the only thing that saved the poor mage’s shins.
“Ah, must be the litter from the new guy,” Domitia said.
“You should say hi to your new stepfather, Domitia,” came a voice from someone who could just be Domitia if she were twenty years older. “Reknarb is a kindly gob of high standing. And he respects the old ways unlike some.”
Domitia let out a low grumble at that but was quickly drowned out by the din of a few dozen extended family members. Auntie came to herd the newborns away from Razan’s vulnerable feet.
“Say, Domitia,” Auntie began. “What about your brothers? We were so hoping to get all the litters in one place.”
“Well? Grek is in school but we seldom have classes together. Drek is in the merchant marine and maybe stops by once ever six months. Oh, and Grob and Drob ran off to join some bandit clan out in the tundra.”
“Aya, aya,” Domitia’s mother said. “It’s because they go away from home and lose track of the old ways. I should have brought you all back to the burrow when your father passed.”
Domitia’s frown sunk even deeper. Meanwhile, Razan had taken to cavorting with another litter (of Domitia’s full brothers, albeit a younger cohort) that were thereabouts three heads shorter than the aspirant mage.
“Heheh. Looks like you’re going to last longer than the last guy,” said one.
“Hohoho. Not like the last guy. He got scared and ran mid-reunion.”
“W-what last guy?”
Domitia draped her arm around Razan’s. She let out a frustrated tsk.
“Never mind all that. Let’s go get your luggage sorted out.”
The couple traveled down, winding along the outside of the massive pit that marked Domitia’s family burrow.
“Did I do anything wrong?” Razan asked.
She kissed his forearm. “Nothing of the sort. Just… ah, this was a lot right out of the gate. It kind of has me off-balance. Keep doing what you’re doing, dear, and just find a way to get me some fresh air if it looks like I’m about to explode.”
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