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Love Meme: Reid and Regine

Feb27

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here is [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s third prompt. Reid and Regine are from Addergoole. This was a wee bit tricky~

Reid and Regine

For all of her noble quest to show the value of half-bloods, when Reid met Regine, she still had many of the prejudices of the pure-blooded.

Reid had been dealing with those prejudices for nearly as long as Regine had been having them. He found them irritating on a good day, angering on a bad day, and on his worst days, they tempted him into shouting.

She had a good project, a good plan, and a good point, so he set his jaw and joined her program, and that would have been it – a carefully polite working relationship, line drawn and never budged, colleagues and nothing more.

Except one of those bad days happened through no fault of Regine’s.

There was a phone call. It was a long-distance call, and such things were expensive. It was quiet, it was intense, and nobody but Reid heard it.

And that would’ve been it. He had long experience not blowing his lid, not showing his anger, but Regine chose that day, that exact time when he had just hung up, to ask/demand something in her particularly Grigori way.

And Reid exploded. He snarled and shouted and swore, all of it bloody with the rage that was his birthright and name-right, and informed Regine in no uncertain terms that if she had hired an expert in Mind Workings than she damn well ought to respect his expertise.

And Regine, in a move unprecedented for her, bowed her head and very humbly apologized. And then – and this might have been the kicker – she asked Reid if he would show her the Working she’d been asking about.

It wasn’t a Magic Moment. It didn’t change her forever. But it did allow Reid to talk to her as a colleague and, sometimes, as a friend, and that, in the end, helped more than anything else.

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Head South

Feb26

Cya, after the apocalypse but before her kids go to Addergoole

Cya knew she was one of the good guys.

That was: she knew she was one of Boom, and she knew Boom were the good guys.

She knew that was all that kept her from going off the rails most days.

Some days, all it did was remind her how to cover it up.

She looked at the boy – man – the Kept in front of her and sighed. “You’re a mess, darling,” she muttered. He was sleeping. The Working she’d done would keep him that way for a while.

She wrote him a note anyway, because Cya believed in planning ahead. I had to run an errand. If I’m not back by Wednesday night, take this note to Howard and tell him “look South.”

Of course, almost everything was south from the Ranch, except Canada, but she didn’t want her Kept to guess where she was going.

She took her car. It shouldn’t still be running, but at this stage, she wasn’t the only one with a much-repaired vehicle still on the road, and hey, she could turn dirt into gas, which did help matters.

She tried not to hold on too tight to the steering wheel, but there was a small fire of anger deep in her gut. It was, like everything she felt at that point, a cold fire, a lump rather than a storm.

It was going to hurt someone anyway.

The man sleeping in her bed… When she talked to Addergoole, they told her things were better. They were old fae and had old memories, and they meant Things like what happened to Eris will never happen again. They meant, if it was Luke, who had seen it, or Mike, who paid more attention than he was given credit for, they meant we’ll try to make sure what happened to Leo doesn’t happen again. Leo was harder. She knew that, even though she didn’t really forgive it. Leo’s breaking hadn’t been nearly as visible as Eris bleeding in the halls.

They told her things were better, but there was only so far they were willing to go. Some people just weren’t meant to Keep and some people just shouldn’t be Kept, and those mistakes, Addergoole wasn’t going to fix any time soon.

And sometimes people were just too good at hiding their poison; some people were just too good at hiding their wounds. Agi, the man sleeping on her bed – he was one of those. His keeper had been sharp with her knife and careful, and her abuse had been subtle enough that it had never been picked up on. He’d gone through the next three years at Addergoole thinking it’d been his fault.

She knew the story too well. This time, someone was going to pay.

She held onto the steering wheel a little too tightly and whispered Repair Workings at the road ahead of her. There was no reason not to clean up as she went, and if this went south instead of just South, Howard would have a trail to follow.

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The Funeral – a beginning of a tale

Feb24

This started out as something else, but it appears like in addition, it wants to be a murder mystery. Fae apoc, pre-apoc era, possibly 2010.

Senga didn’t believe it until she saw the body. Ellehemaei did not die very often, and they almost never died of natural causes; until she did a very quiet Working on the body itself, she was still working under the assumption that this was some trick of her Great-Aunt Mirabella’s.

The confirmation that it was real took her breath away. She walked past the body again, looking at what her diagnosis told her more than the corpse. Natural causes? Well, hawthorn was natural, she supposed, and her aunt was chock full of it.

“Miss Attenoin? Do please come to my office at noon. There’s the will reading.” The suited man stank of lawyer, and his suit stank of money. No surprise, considering her great-aunt. But…

“The will?” Senga frowned. “Great-Aunt Mirabella and I weren’t all that close…”

“Nevertheless, she has listed you in the will. Noon. It’s quite important that you be there on time.”

He was a pushy little man. Senga gave him her best eats-bullets-for-breakfast smile. “I’ll be there. Now, if you’ll excuse me… my aunt is dead.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

He scurried off, presumably to bother someone else. Senga stared at the body. At least she’d worn black, and something respectful, at that. There’d been this urge to wear something flamboyant, just to show Great-Aunt Mirabella that she wasn’t bothered by all the spectacle.

Some part of her still thought it was a farce of some sort. She muttered the diagnostic again, just to see if she’d missed something. A fake-death working? It would be hard to pull off with all that hawthorn in the blood. But, then again, the hawthorn would mask it.

“It’s real.” The voice came from above her left ear. She looked up nonchalantly to find that one of the other mourners had moved close to her. He’d snuck up on her. It offended her professional pride. “I didn’t believe it either.” And he seemed entirely unaware that he shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on her.

She looked him up and down — with a good deal of up. He was wearing still-black black jeans, a white button-down, and a black vest. Everything looked as if he’d bought it new, everything except the (also black) cowboy boots. His face was so clean-shaven he had to have used a Working for it, and his hair looked like it wasn’t used to being so freshly washed or so tightly ponytailed.

He looked her down in turn. One eyebrow quirked as his gaze slid over her hip — had he noticed the sheath there? if he had, had he noticed the other two? She was fairly confident about the one at the small of her back, at least.

He was wearing — she looked again — at least two weapons.

“It’s real?” she parroted back at him.

“Her. She’s really gone.” He frowned. “I thought she’d outlive us all.”

Senga stepped away from the coffin, tilting her head to invite him to do the same. “You knew her well?” Great-Aunt Mirabella had run a tidy, if stealthy, empire of businesses, many of them legal. Many people had thought that they knew her.

“I did some work for her, now and then.” He followed her invitation towards a corner of the room, and their place at the coffin was replaced by other funeral attendees — Senga hesitated to call them mourners. She was not here to mourn and she doubted this tall man was, either. “And what about you? Were you one of her associates?”

She chose to ignore the suggestion that she might have been one of Mirabella’s employees. “She’s — she was — my father’s aunt. She outlived him, his mother, and their parents.” By having at least one of them killed. Senga had never been sure about the others.

“Ah. Family.” His expression changed. His whole body language changed. He didn’t quite take a step back, but his hand did drop towards his hip.

Senga smirked. “I don’t suppose you’d believe I was the white sheep?” She kept her own hands where they were, holding her ridiculous clutch purse.

He relaxed infinitesimally. “That would explain why I’d never met you.”

“Ah, so you’ve met some of the other family members, then?” As if on cue, her cousin Muirgen entered the room, with entourage, sobbing loudly and unconvincingly.

He winced. “Yes. DId some work for some of them, too.”

“Great-Aunt Mirabella must have been paying you very well.” There were things she could say that he couldn’t, even now. There were things she could say that, as far as she knew, nobody else could. That had been her condolence prize for her father’s untimely death.

“Something like that, yeah.” He shifted his weight. “Damnit, if it weren’t for that will-reading…”

“You must have done very good work for her.” A glance around the funeral home told Senga that about a third of of the mourners were family; she recognized about a quarter of the rest of them as staff, friends of the family, and important people in the city, including two local newscasters and one woman who ran the highest-class brothel in the city out of her East Ave Mansion. There was the chief of police, and there was the current CEO of the Gleason Steel Works.

“I’m the best at what I do. And I go way back with Mirabella. Been working for her since —” He noted the people standing close enough to overhear and modified his original sentence. “—we were both up-and-coming.”

Hundreds of years, then. Senga hopes her own nerves didn’t show on her face. “I see. So you’ve done a lot of work for her.”

“I—” He was cut off by a wail from cousin Eavan.

“I can’t believe she’s really gone! She can’t be! It’s a lie. You’re making this up to get her money, you bastard law-breaker, you no good half-blood!”

She was swinging her designer purse at an exquisitely dressed person — their back was to Senga, but the cut of the suit was impeccable — with a braid of black hair that reached their thighs. The hair, and the specific (and inappropriate for the setting) insults Eavean was throwing told her who it was.

“Alencaustel,” she breathed softly. “This family reunion just got interesting.”

next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1265057.html

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Love Meme: Pelletier and Luke

Feb20

A long time ago

“Don’t mind them.”

The fur-taker looked up to see a man filling her doorway, wings spread, carrying something on a tray. Bowls, mugs – whatever it was, it smelled good.

“Come in,” she offered weakly. The threshold here was so much less than her swamp, so thin she was fairly certain it held only out of courtesy. Even in her little house in the Village, Regine’s magic weighed heavily. In here, in her office…

It was nice of him to pretend, anyway.

“You’re Luca, aren’t you? The Hunting Hawk.”

“And you’re the pelt-taker. Regine said you’re using the name ‘Shira’ here?” He stepped inside and closed the door with his foot.

“It’s close enough.” The Fur-taker wondered if she ought to be worried, but he was not giving off any sense of menace or danger, spread wings or no.

“The others…” He sat down and put the tray between them on a small table. Stew. And tea. “Don’t mind them.”

“You said that already.” Which meant he had more meaning in mind than the words themselves held.

“They’re…” He shrugged. “… Fancy.”

The fur-taker smirked. “And I am not.” She plucked at the hem of her sleeve, a loaned outfit – from Luca here, not from one of the women – and comfortable.

“I’m not, either. But it suits us. They’re not sure about seers. The pure-bloods, they don’t like what they don’t understand.”

The fur-taker smiled her sharp smile, the one that said life is hard. “And they understand so little. But you.” She looked at him, Looked at him, and nodded. “You understand too much. Be ware, Hawk, or it will cripple you.”

It would, she already saw it. But there were paths in which it would free him, too.

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here is [personal profile] chanter_greenie‘s first prompt.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1255494.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Love Meme: Kai and Rozen, Autumn and Ink

Feb15

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here are [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s second and [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s first prompts. Kailani and Rozen are from Addergoole; Autumn from Stranded World.

Kai and Rozen
End of Year Five

Some days it felt like she hardly had time to think, like Conrad was too busy to even look at her, like nobody in the suite but her would look at Tolly’s child, because the boy was Tolly’s, even though he was hers.

Kai had the twins in a stroller and was walking down the halls. It was a week before graduation; she doubted anyone was going to try to attack her now. Besides, she still had Conrad collared, even if he was acting more like it was a collar now and less like a trophy.

She noticed someone sneaking up on her anyway. One of the Thorne Girls might’ve done something clever, like going around in circles until they were behind their stalker.

Kai wasn’t that sort of clever. She turned around so that the stroller was behind her.

“Rozen.” She found she was pleased but not too startled, and smiled. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Nobody ever does.” He smirked, proud of himself. “You’re looking good, Red. Motherhood suits you.”

“Yeah?” There was nobody around to yell at her for blushing, which was good, because she hadn’t figured out a Working to get around that yet. “Thank you.”

“I mean, it would suit you more if those were my brats, but hey. Take what you can get, hey?”

Kai rolled her eyes at him, but she was still smiling. “They’re not brats. And I think they’re happier with their mother having some free will.”

“Yeah, well.” He leaned down to whisper in her ear, his breath tickling her. “Some day you might feel differently.”

What she felt had nothing to do with it. She didn’t think she needed to say that, though. “Some day.”

He was leaving soon, after all, and it was a big world. She’d probably never see him again.

Autumn and Ink

Autumn would probably always remember the first time she’d put ink to her skin.

Winter was struggling to teach her, their mother was busy with Spring and Summer, and their father had been dead for two years. Autumn’s skills weren’t falling into line with Winter’s, with their mother’s, or even with what they could remember of their father, so she had gone on her own to a family friend and asked him to teach her.

Pastor Jim had taken a long look at the wide-eyed child and sighed. “All right. But we keep this between us and your mother, all right? We don’t need to tell the parishioners.”

“Church magic is church magic and Strand magic is Strand Magic.” Even then, Autumn understood that.

“Good. Now.” He’d called her mother, been very very polite and respectful – everyone was polite and respectful when it came to Autumn’s mother, but he was even more so. When he’d hung up the phone, he’d headed to the daycare section behind the church and come back with some washable Crayola markers. “Let’s see, shall we, if what works for me works for you.”

He drew a circle on the back of Autumn’s wrist, and suddenly, she understood so much more.

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Love Meme: Doug and Fridmar, Cxaidin and Zizny

Feb15

The meme is here: Give me the names of two characters and I will tell you why character A loves character B.

Here are rix_scaedu‘s and kelkyag‘s first prompts. Doug and Fridmar are from Addergoole; Cxaidin and Zizny from Dragons Next Door. To quote Zizny in an earlier piece:

“For a grown adult dragon, the pronoun is ‘thez.’”

“Theza” is the possessive.

Doug and Agmund Fridmar

Some people went into battle like a well-oiled machine. Doug’s father, for example; he moved with sparse, sharp movement, did what needed to be doing, and drank afterwards with the same mechanical precision.

Some people fought like it was sex: with ridiculous intensity, angry, wild, some strikes almost like caresses, some like orgasms. Of the Thorne Girls, Massima fought the most like that, and she fucked like she fought. Afterwards, she drank as if she was going to take the bottle to bed with her, too. Sometimes Doug felt as if he envied the bottle, and other times he pitied it.

But so very few people fought like a dance, like every move had a place and yet was beautiful. So few people fought such that you could choreograph your movements around theirs and they would notice and do the same right back at you.

Agmund Fridmar, big, fierce, bearish Agmund, fought like a ballet, like a symphony, like a dance, and afterwards, when they drank, his movements had the same precision.

Once, once, Doug had thought of an old and awful quote on dancing bears: “The marvel is not that the bear dances well, but that the bear dances at all.”

That proverb had it wrong, Doug was sure. The marvel of Agmund Fridmar was definitely in how well the Bear danced.

Cxaidin and Zizny

Zizny had fire.

In a literal sense, of course, all dragons had fire. It was their birthright, their gift, their curse.

But dragons were a long, long-lived race, one of the oldest, and they tended, after a few times of setting their nest alight, to be calmer, more thought-out creatures than their flamey breath would suggest.

Zizny was not calm.

Zizny questioned resolutely. Not only the assumptions of others, not only the writings of dragons and other-creatures of the past, but theza own assumptions, theza own truths. Zizny would ask one day why the sun was rising as it always had, and then the next day ask exactly why the dragons got along with humans – or, perhaps, why they shouldn’t get along better with said humans. Thez would question the entire stork arrangement and then snarl at a passing centaur for some comment about dragon history and its habit of going up in smoke.

(This did happen, sadly, but most of the very important dragon records were carved in stone or etched in metal. Very heat-durable metal).

Cxaidin loved Zizny’s fire, the sparks that seemed to fly off whenever Zizney was involved in a new quest, the way thez made Cxaidin question even thezself. Above all, and after all, and in spite of all, Cxaidin loved Zizny’s heat.

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Love and Letters, reposts on Patreon

Feb14

❥

This is a series of tiny stories written to an old Love Meme – little vignettes of various characters in various types of love.

Taro and Kailani, from Addergoole the Original Series

First week of Year 5:
“She’s gorgeous,” Taro told Conrad, who had heard it all already at least a hundred times. “Those eyes. Those legs. That hair. Gods, Con, I’ve got to have her.”
💖
read on…

In the spirit of the greats, I offer a rhyming couplet poem I wrote in 2013 as a signal boost incentive. I only got through G, but I do think it’s still a fun poem.
It’s a survey of my characters and my worlds, from A through, well, G.

With annotations.

A for Aelfgifu, for Audrey, and Autumn,
Addergoole, and Aelfgar’s myriad daughters.

read on…

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Buffy: the Invitation (an Addergoole Crossover), Part 24

Feb12

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
Part IX
Part X
Part XI
 		Part XII
Part XIII
Part XIV
Part XV
Part XVI
Part XVII
Part 18
Part 19
Part 20
Part 21
Part 22

“Are you sure we should be leaving Buffy?” Willow turned to look behind them as they walked out of the gym. “She’s rarring for a fight, you know.”

“I believe that the most combat-ready members of our staff and students ought to, at the very least, be able to give her a workout,” Regine answered calmly. Far too calmly. “They will be fine. Willow, you’ve expressed an interest in Professor Valerian’s teaching, but I believe you’ll also be able to gain useful information from Professors Solomon and Pelletier.”

“Academics,” Willow squeaked. “Yes. Teachers. Yes.” When Xander glanced at her, she was blushing hotly.

“I will leave you in Laurel Valerian’s capable hands then.” The Director knocked sharply on a door; a moment later, the door swung open. “Laurel…”

“Ah, Willow. You came back. Do come on in.”

“She should talk with Reid and Shira as well. Others, as it suits you. Buffy is sparring with a selection of cy’Luca and with the cy’Doug. I imagine she will be quite a while.”

“I… nevermind.” Xander was surprised that Buffy hadn’t popped her head out of the gym yet, chirping “done!” Then again, this place had been surprising from start to finish.

“I’m sure we can find a way to pass the time. Do come in, Willow. We can discuss… academics.”
Even Xander could tell that Professor Valerian was flirting with Willow. Why wasn’t the Director saying anything? And Willow, Willow was blushing and trying not to smile.

Xander wanted to shout, “Hey. What about Oz?!” but he wasn’t feeling quite that hypocritical. He’d been ready to follow Magnolia anywhere – especially into that hot tub. He couldn’t complain if Will was feeling the same…

…even about another woman.

A woman.

A teacher. Well, he couldn’t say anything about that. Except. “Will? You’re sure she’s not a giant bug?”

“I’ll double-check, Xander.” She hugged him. “Go do what you’re doing, and try not to turn into a fish.”

Okay, he deserved that. He hugged her back a little longer than he needed to, then cleared his throat. It took effort to look the Director in the eye.

She looked – maybe – slightly interested. “It seems that things are more chaotic down in ‘Sunnydale’ than your Mentor suggested, and he suggested quite a bit of chaos.”

“Oh, yeah.” Xander shrugged. “Wacky stuff happens every week. Sometimes it’s wackier than others – see fish thing – and sometimes it’s dangerous and awful. But what are we going to do?” He shrugged. “I mean, we can’t very well just ignore it. Especially not with the Buffster being the Slayer and all. You’re taking the existence of vampires very calmly, I have to say. Is it because you have a vampire taking classes here?”

“The creatures that you call vampires are in a different category from Dysmas. Those things – I have encountered them before, in my past. They thrive near these ‘Hellmouths,’ but they can live anywhere. No.” She shook her head. “The Hellmouth itself is what concerns me. They should not be opening so soon. It is far too early.”

“Wait, what? You know about Hellmouths and your worry is that they’re early? Come on, you’re messing with me, right?”

“I assure you, young man.” Regine’s voice was firm but something about her expression looked amused. “When I ‘mess with’ you, you will most definitely notice it.”

“Right, right, don’t bother the scary lady, she can mess with me. So. Why early? Why not worry that they’re coming at all?”

She studied him. “Normally, I would say that I did not worry.” Her voice had dropped to something like a whisper. “I will do you the honor of being a little more honest with you. I have done my worrying about the gates opening. I have been worried about them for — shall we say, a very long time? — and I have prepared. But that there are mouths to other locations open in Sunnydale — that’s worrisome because it is new information, and because it is far earlier than expected.”

Xander cleared his throat, suddenly uncomfortable. “So there are more coming?”

“There are more coming. Your friend is going to find that there are warriors here with training that very nearly matches her own — because we are going to need far more than one dedicated Slayer-of-demons when the time comes.”

“No more Buffy dying!” It came out before he’d thought about it, like most of the things that came out of Xander’s mouth. He thought about slapping his hand over his mouth, but thought that probably wouldn’t go over well with this lady. “I’m serious. I don’t care how much we need more Slayers, Buffy isn’t dying again.”

“I—” She looked taken aback, oh, no. He’d taken the Director aback, and she’d realize what a bad idea it was to invite him here, and he’d have to leave Buffy and Will all to themselves in this place with the hot catgirls…

His brain was doing a Willow. Xander shook his head to clear it.

“That’s how you make a new Slayer. When one is dead, another is called. Giles didn’t tell you?”

“We are certainly not going to attempt to kill and revive your friend to see the results on ‘calling’ new ‘Slayers.’” She certainly looked tempted, though. “What I meant was simply that we needed hunters, other people who could fight. We are, ah, not run-of-the-mill, as I believe you might have already noticed.”

“Yeah, I noticed the vampire and the giant and the cat-girl and the little demon girl.”

“Little… ah. Ivette, I imagine. They were all told to keep their Masks up, but, of course, a directive like that is sometimes just seen as a challenge.”

“Masks? Wait, Professor Valerian said something like that to Magnolia. Something about ‘Mask up?”

“A Mask is, ah. Some of us are unusual-looking, as you’ve noticed. Not everyone can see that — to some people, Magnolia would look like merely a pretty girl no matter what. But with a ‘Mask,’ up, she looks like that to everyone.”

“So, uh, there could be giant bug-demons here? And I wouldn’t be able to tell?” Xander gulped. “I could do without that.”

“We have no giant bug-demons here. There are… spells that allow one to reveal such things, and I know all of those spells.” Regine’s smile was actually reassuring. Xander wondered briefly about his life, that that was what reassured him.

“Well, that’s good. I mean, as far as ‘good’ goes here.” Xander looked at the woman uncomfortably. “You’re way too calm about this whole magic thing, you know. I don’t know anyone nearly as calm as you about this stuff.”

“Eventually,” came a voice from behind Xander — no, purred a voice, a deep alto that was probably male — “you will learn that Regine is far too calm about all ‘stuff.’ And that she is not, by far, the only one.”

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In Which They Are Dirty

Feb9

First: A beginning of a story which obnoxiously cuts off just before the description,
Previous: In Which There is a Kiss.

🐝

“So,” she murmured, her head against his chest, his heartbeat pounding in her ear, “what next?”

“You’re asking me?” She could hear the way his chuckle rumbled and then caught. “Well. I think we could start with another kiss.”

“That sounds very nice.” She sat down on the floor and tugged on his arm, encouraging him to sit next to her. The carpet was soft here – two layers of throw rug criss-crossed. It made for uneven walking but kept the place warm.

Not what she should be worrying about at the moment, either. She looked at Amrit, considered the logistics, and squirmed until she was sitting in his lap, straddling him.

He pressed his hand against the small of her back, holding her close, and gave her a wry smile. “This, I admit, I never thought would happen. Not with you, maybe not ever again anywhere. Not that I’m complaining…!”

“Well, that’s a first,” Mieve teased. She saw his expression start to darken, his nose wrinkling, and ducked in to plant a kiss on his lips. “I’m glad you’re not complaining.”

“Me too.” He looked a little startled by that, enough that he repeated himself, a little more slowly. “Me, too. I’m glad I’m not — I’m glad I’ve got nothing to complain about.”

“There will still be work tomorrow,” she warned him — reminded herself, same thing, in the end.

“I’ve never minded the work. Keeps me busy. I mean, if you wanted to keep me busy some other way…” He grinned down at her.

“I imagine I could manage a little bit of that,” she allowed. “If you think that would hold your attention.”

What was she doing? Well, she suggested to herself, maybe she was kissing him. That sounded like a good idea, so she twisted in his lap and kissed him again.

He made a warm, throaty noise in the back of his throat that she found sent little shivers up and down her spine. His hand snaked inside her shirt and for a very brief moment, Mieve had a very pre-war sort of I am not dressed to be undressed sort of feeling.

Neither was he, and still a bit stinky from the exertion and the woods, she reminded herself. WHich gave her an idea. “You said you needed a bath… I could use one, too.”

“You can go first.” He sounded a little hurt. She suppose it sounded like she was trying to cut things off here. “I’ll get the water all heated up for you.”

“I was thinking… it’s quite a large tub. Bigger than you’d expect, in a cabin this size.” She forced herself to sound casual, even as worried as she was that he’d take that wrong, too.

“I can heat up a lot more than a tub… oh.” He looked at her face, and then looked again. “Oh, really?”

“Even for your gigantic height, yeah. Plenty of room for two.” Now she grinned at him, because his expression looked anything but reluctant.

“I’d like that.” His voice had gotten husky again. “If you would…?” He brushed his hand lightly against her cheek. It was a surprisingly tender gesture from him, and it made Mieve’s stomach flip-flop oddly.

“It’s not the sort of thing I’d offer if I didn’t want it.” She didn’t want to sound snappish and forced her voice level and friendly again. “So… shall we?”

“Yeah. Yeah, let’s do that.” He scooped her up in his arms and stood up all in one movement. Mieve clung to his neck.

“Amrit!” She did not squeal. Her dignity insisted that it wasn’t a squeal. “What are you doing?.”

“Going to the tub.” His grin was far too mischievous for her liking. It made her cling just a little bit more tightly to his neck. “I would’ve thought that much was obvious.”
🐝

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