Part Three

Over the course of the following days, they fell into the routine of travel. Etim had his first blisters and learned how to pack his boots, and when to take Hhaardha up on the offer of her sling and when to give her a break. He learned how to lean into her in a way that took some of the weight from the sling and kept him out of the movement of her arm, except when he fell asleep. More importantly, he learned where he could help, things he could do along the way. Had he been on his own, Etim would have been quite helpless; he probably would not even have lasted to the first shingerin attack. But his mind was still sharp even if his eyes were not, and the weariness of travel had the strange effect of making him want to do things. Though he had not cooked before leaving the Stand – or not in any meaningful way – he picked up on boiling water and making the stew, or a mash of grains and water for pan bread, or making a soup of greens and salt and eggs pilfered along the way. It came to him naturally, so that by the fourth day he was batting Hhaardha’s claws away and telling her he knew what he was doing as he stirred the pot.

He could tie knots, of course, but that extended to other things like rebraiding frayed rope, mending worn laces, and working the bone needle through the stitches where her pack was splitting; he could do that in the sling, even, when she was carrying him. When he was afoot himself, he had to keep his attention on the path; that was obvious enough after the first few stumbles.

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At Lonely Stand, Etim was the one who finally answered Hhaardha’s worries by suggesting he remained hidden, waiting outside. As close to the stand as he got (they’d passed a few workers even the morning before, but could hear the traffic at the main ramp where he remained), the danger from beasts was next to nothing. Still, Etim clutched Hhaardha’s other blade the whole time she was inside, making her trades and purchases. The roots beneath the Stand were riddled with little cave systems, though, and crawling with every kind of insect and dirt animal, which Etim found somewhat fascinating. How could he have lived his whole life in Rrarringk Stand and never even spent one day down in the roots, when it was so different from above?

A week past Lonely Stand, the plains were quite different. Etim had thought it must be the same all the way to the sea and to Molt, all cracked land as far as one could walk, but here the shattered stone had eroded more substantially, and the water moved like a tide, even if the sea was still far off. Moving water meant it was brackish but not quite salty, not quite safe to drink, but cleaner than the mucky marshes at the bottom of the ravines back by the stands. Here, great stands gave way to smaller copses or even single great bent trees, at the bottom of which might be a single homestead. Some vestiges of plateaus still stood as pillars or even arches, but most of the land was now short bluffs and rolling hills. Grass still covered much of it, but it fought with thicker greens, and when they passed a homestead with a garden, the soil was rich and dark. Here, too, the water was less individual threads through the cracks, and more a network between the hills, one big sea taken over by puzzle-piece islands.

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It was on one of these island where Etim was poking around in a large hole. Birds here tended to be as large as him, but weren’t the big soaring types he was used to from the Stand. Here they waded in and out of the water, or flew short distances, and just a couple of eggs stolen from a clutch made a meal almost too big to finish. He would have never braved a guarded nest on his own, but with Hhaardha to scare the bird off, or in the case where a hole seemed to be momentarily abandoned and she could watch his back…

But this shallow hole was more like a small cave. No wonder – it was beneath one of the lonely great trees. No nest awaited him at the back; it just sort of tapered and became a burrow. That should have been reason enough for him to back away from the hole and return – and doubtless Hhaardha would have preferred that – but curiosity got the better of him and he hunched down and pressed through, going to his knees and then his belly. There was light ahead of him, and a smell… a very familiar smell.

He was gone far too long, ignoring any call for him to return, and there was no way Hhaardha would have been able to squeeze through that burrow after him, not even as slender as she was. But when his voice came at last, his shout was filled with excitement, not fear. “Hhaardha! Hhaardha Spots! It’s a cellar! It’s an abandoned cellar. It is FULL of preserves. Something’s been into the meats, but there are jars on jars. Come around – there must be a house above the ladder, but I can’t lift the trap door at the top of the stairs – it is Rriigkhan-heavy.”

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Hhaardha was already down on her hands and knees with her snout nearly poked into the burrow to sniff after Etim, (increasingly frantically the longer he was gone,) while the end of her tail lifted above the level of her head to flick from side to side.

“Etim, I don't think –” she warily began, very close to demanding he turn around, when he called up. Her ears perked as she sat back, then lifted her muzzle to peer ahead. The land sloped gently upward ahead of her, but the thicket of shade-loving scrub growing up amongst the tangle of roots blocked her view – and her path. It wasn't going to be easy to pick her way through.

“Don't move, Pet!” she called back to him as she scrambled up, her tail now moving with broader, sinuous but rapid swishes of consternation. She glanced back at her bag, impatiently shifting her weight from paw to paw, one fist opening and closing while the other touched the hilt of her machete. She quickly decided that lugging all of her bags through the vegetation would slow her down too much. She hated for Etim to be out of her sight for even a moment! Decision made, she went trotting off toward the thicket, head bobbing up and down as she stooped and then went up on her toes searching for a suitable path – limbs to step over, roots to duck under. In her haste she let tiny branches claw at her armor without pausing to move them aside with her hands. The bushes were about as tall as she was and tangled with choke vines.

It wasn't long before she stumbled out into a clearing at the crest of a hill. She had to pause for a moment to stare in wonder – she was looking at the back garden behind a cottage. It was quite a large cottage, though single storied, with bark shingles for a roof and rough stone-and-mud walls overgrown with vines. It looked as though two new sections had been added sometime after the first big room had been built, but no one had cared for the place in at least a year – the shingles needed replacing. Hhaardha was certain from a quick glance that the roof leaked.

The windows were all shuttered, though. Hhaardha stepped easily over a leaning wattle fence into what once had been a garden. Some of the plants had reseeded themselves and struggled valiantly on despite the choking weeds. The back door, when she tried the rusted pull-ring, opened outward easily enough, and she stepped into the gloomy interior without bothering to call out. Even if she hadn't known from the appearance of the place, she could smell no trace of any people.

The only light inside came from cracks where the shutters did not quite close, and from gaps in the shingles. The inside smelled quite musty – the day was a dry, bright one, but it no doubt got damp inside on rainy days. It was strangely barren inside, even though there was furniture. She'd stepped into a kitchen area, but aside from a small pantry on her left, the space was open and undivided into actual rooms. A Rriigkhan sized stool sat beside a human one in front of the hearth, and in the center of the space stood a table for food preparation. But there were no adornments, and the kitchen lacked the amount of pots and cups and other utensils one might expect to see cluttering the mantle over the hearth. Hhaardha guessed that anything of real value had been taken away.

She left the door wide open to let in as much light as possible, and that was barely enough for her to make out the outline of the trap door at the back of the pantry. Rather, it was gaps in the shingles overhead that allowed slivers of light to fall across the dirt floor in that tiny room.

“Etim! I'm here!” she called as she stooped to tug up the door. Moisture had caused the wood to swell and warp, creating a moment of panic when she realized it wasn't budging. It was only after Hhaardha stood upright to pull with her arms fully extended that the door suddenly gave.

“Oop!” She stumbled back against a shelf when the trap door clanked open. There were preserves on the shelves here, too, and lidded baskets and all sorts of jugs, empty drooping sacks with mouse-holes chewed in the bottoms, and smelly black lumps that had once been vegetables, then rot, and now compost.

“Etim! I was worried sick about you! Don't go running off into holes without me!” she cried, mockingly admonishing, and immediately bent toward the hole in the ground to pick him up by the armpits, lifting him up and cradling him against her side. She ducked her head to press her damp nose to his temple, making the kiss sound herself since she couldn't properly kiss him. “Kiss kiss kiss! Now, what did you find down there? There so much stuff in here, Etim! But let's go about and open up the shutters so we can actually see. Even I'm half blind in here.” She squeezed him, then turned back into the kitchen to set him on his feet out there. She was worried he'd bump into all those shelves or fall down into the trap door again if she set him down in the pantry.

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Over the previous weeks, Etim had grown increasingly independent. That wasn’t to say that he wandered frequently from Hhaardha’s side, but he could. He’d promised her – practically insisted – that he could remain by himself while she did her shopping in Lonely Stand, and despite all the creatures that wandered through the little pocket where he waited, he’d put on a brilliant smile for her on her return and stood up to spread his arms as if to prove he was all there upon her return. Likewise, pushing into the burrow had been proof that he had been capable of doing something even without her keeping hold of his hand.

Rather, he did more for himself and her. He never asked for help when he had to dress and undress, and helping Hhaardha in and out of her armor was second nature now. He had become quite fastidious about the packing of her bag and ensuring everything had her place, though if he noticed the diminishing supplies, he didn’t mention it. One thing that he had not taken over from her, even though he probably could, was tending to his own shallow wound after she bled him. Not that she ever hurt him so badly that his hands shook too much to do it himself, but it was part of the ritual, of opening him up and putting him back together again, and it was just as important to him as her holding him in her lap afterward and those special moments where they felt more together and content than any other.

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What it meant, though, was that he was more likely to decline her help lifting him out of the cellar once the door was lifted – but not this time. Not, especially, when both hands were full with cool crockery bottles sealed with wax cloth and bark corks. The markings on them indicating what was inside had been nearly smeared off on one, but the other suggested it held pickled ground knobs: starchy, onion-like vegetables that would hold their crisp crunch and some of their bite even through brine and vinegar. He was absolutely filthy – face and hands and hair and clothes – but his eyes and teeth seemed especially bright through the dirt smears and the bit of web that clung to him.

“There’s shelves and shelves of it! I couldn’t see anything down there, not really, but I could feel so many! Let me clean up, Lovely Spots, and we can have a feast! Maybe there is a comb set and I can brush out your fur, and we can sleep properly tonight. Look!” He said the last with delight, gesturing to the narrow, vertical slot for split firewood and kindling, which was still stocked about half his height. Some of it was clearly fallen detritus from tree or dried reeds from the channels surrounding this ‘island’, but other pieces were too regular, to red, from trees far away.

Etim set both jars on the table and looked about as though expecting to find an already-filled ewer and basin in the cooking area, which he didn’t, of course. “Just let me clean up first! I feel so dirty! Then we can explore this place.”

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What had once been a single-room structure had clearly been expanded, maybe even in the last generation. The kitchen and pantry weren’t part of the original building, but weren’t quite separated from the big room, either, merely demarcated by newer, shale-like flooring instead of the packed earth and rugs of the rest of the cottage. More interestingly, two separate rooms – probably bedrooms – opened off one side of the main room. In the shuttered dark, the shadows were too deep for Etim to make anything out, and he proceeded straight toward the door outside, but one of the rooms had separate bolts on the inside and outside of the door, typical of a guest room, which was easy to see since the door had been broken off its hinges. Another door to the outside in that room was still bolted shut.

The other room was larger, the door slightly ajar. The barest hint of death clung to the air in that room after what was probably several years of desiccation.

Etim lifted leaned into pulling on the latch of the large, Rriigkhan-scaled front door, but the door swung inward with no more complaint than a creak, revealing a path lined with white stones that descended down the opposite side of the hill from the tree. Several more gardens like the one Hhaardha had seen stood to either side of the path, though they were in far worse condition and had probably been ransacked. A small animal pen was empty, and the door to a shed was off its hinges entirely. Nothing, though, was beyond repair, and small orange fruits hung from two of the non-native trees planted between the gardens.

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It only took a few hundred yards for the path to reach the little island’s ‘coast, or at least the bluff where the patch cut down to a series of steps reinforced with that same shale-like stone. At the bottom of path, a wooden dock with piles stretched out onto the water far enough to accommodate a good-sized boat – nothing that could navigate out to the sea (if a deep draught would even make it through these waters) – but a barge or multi-row trader, for certain.

Etim was so delighted as he made his way down the path that he might have skipped if he were younger. He’d only really stopped to check the two cistern barrels that had gathered water from the roof (or had when it was in better repair) and from channels placed in the tree above. Both were full, but a bit too stagnant and mucky for cleaning. The little dock, on the other hand…

“Isn’t it wonderful, Hhaardha? Who would give this up? We can stay here for a bit, can’t we?”

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Hhaardha made her way along the length of the main room unlatching shutters and pushing them out. When she came to the bedroom with the door ajar she lingered a moment, and then without looking inside she pulled the door fully shut, glancing aside at Etim to see if he had noticed. Of course it was silly to think she could protect him from such a thing – she would have to tell him not to open this room eventually. But for now she wanted to bask in his unchecked glee.

The windows had no glass, and as she opened the last one that was Rriigkhan-sized she set her forearms across the deep sill to lean out while standing up on her toes. (She had to turn her head sideways to fit her horns through the opening.) Tail lifting in an arc to wag behind herself, she sniffed around the outside frame and then lifted her muzzle to the air to close her eyes and smile into the dappled shade of the great tree. The fresh air wafting in was an immediate improvement over the mustiness inside.

Beside each door was a smaller, lower to the ground window that a human could easily reach. The windows in the kitchen were doubled, one window above and one below, letting in lots of light for what would most likely be a human person working there. (Hhaardha didn't like the irreverence of kicking those shutters open with her foot, so she'd bent to unlatch and then carefully push each one open with the pads of her fingers.)

After she heard the front door creaking open Hhaardha pulled back in through the window to float along after him, leaving the door wide open as she stepped out. After watching Etim decline the cistern barrels she gripped one of them by the rim and tilted it until the stagnant water came rushing out like a waterfall, goosh, the flood of water combing the grass in one direction. She repeated the action with the second barrel and set them both upright exactly where they'd been, already thinking to herself how she might go about repairing the roof and those channels up there.

She paused in the yard, though, one hand on the hilt of a sword and the other hooked into her belt, and again she lifted her muzzle with eyes closed in bliss. Her family hadn't grown oyes in their orchard, but the fruity aroma was similar...

“It smells... it smells like home,” she sighed. Her toes flexed inside her boots; she longed to dig them into the soil! The end of her tail drifted from side to side in a slow wag. As she opened her eyes her ears sprang up and she grinned down at Etim when her gaze found his, the movements of her tail quickening.

“Well... yes. I suppose there's no reason we can't stay. A few hearty meals will do us good, and when the food is running low we'll take the rest that we can carry. Obviously no one's going to miss it. Oh, Etim, it's just like being home!” She was so excited that she grabbed for his hand, holding it between her thumb and finger, and gave him a happy jiggle. When she released him she looked at the smear of dirt on her pads and laughed. “We've got to wash you up! Oh! I should have looked for soap inside the house! Imagine that, Etim, real soap! If there's any left. It looks like some things may have been pilfered.” She made no move to return to the house, though.

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“Pfff,” Etim said dismissively, waving off the suggestion of soap with lazy, happy indifference. “There will be time for soap later. If we can start a fire, after food we can boil water for a hot bath! There was a half-barrel tub under the table in the kitchen. I bet after we empty it out it will hold water. Long enough, anyway! A hot bath! Wouldn’t that feel so nice? Even if you don’t want to soak, I will rub you down with a hot, wet rag. Can’t you just feel it already? We shall sleep two nights straight, I bet you. I am so exhausted and sore that my aches have aches. I didn’t want to tell you, because you seemed so worried, but I want to stay. We could stay longer than just a few days, if the food is good. Or find other things to eat! Fruit in the trees, and there are animals for you to hunt, obviously, and… And It will be perfect. Maybe for a season!”

As he spoke, Etim tromped happily down the path, dead set on striding right into the water by the pier. He’d given Hhaardha a moment to have her dirty hand back, but then he reached for it, grabbing for a couple of fingers to drag her down after him. “Come on, Lovely Spots. You can sit on the pier and let the fish nibble your pads if you don’t want to soak.”

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He hadn’t been wearing his coat when he went squirming through the burrow, thank goodness, but what remained of the thin nightshirt he’d left home in, along with the short trousers and his boots were just as filthy as he was. The last, he was unwilling to take with him into the water, so as they reached the bottom of the path, where it cut back onto the slate steps that led to the small, stone-and-mud beach where the pier jutted out of, Etim stopped to sit on the top step and work the laces out of the boots. “These deserve a good brushing too, after you,” he murmured, supposedly to Hhaardha, but more to himself. His once-neat hair was wilder now, not so much longer but lankier and more difficult to pull back into the knot at the back of his head, and it had become a habit to run his fingers through it.

“You’ll stay close, right? I won’t go out far. I don’t know how to swim.” He glanced back at Hhaardha to meet her eye and make sure she wasn’t going to wander before he left his boots on the first wooden blanks of the pier and carefully waded out into the water. “It’s not too cold!” he called when it was up to his ankles, and the pier was already at his chest. His left hand moved from pile to pile, steadying him.

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Little wavelets lapped at the shoreline, so where it wasn’t packed mud or stone at the water, tussocks of grass and the occasional clumps of reeds were undercut where the water moved constantly beneath them. Little in the way of silt muddied the water, so a stroll out onto the pier made it fairly easy to see fish and other water creatures darting away from the new shadow, returning to ambush the insects that alighted at the top of the water. Broadleafed, cabbage-like plants with purple, veiny leaves spread spattered the bottom here, making it difficult to tell just how deep the water was here, but it seemed likely Hhaardha would be able to walk along the bottom to the next island without getting the tips of her horns wet. Far in the distance, a small heard of goat-sized creatures grazed on the nutty knobs at the tops of the reeds, ignoring the birds that circled in above, and then darted in to snatch bits of the soft meat at the center of the nuts that fell from the creatures’ mouths.

The whole place had a tranquil feeling to it, even once Etim crouched to plunge entirely under the water, and came up, sputtering happily and wiping his eyes. Once they were clear, he began wrestling his way out of the clingy sleeves of the wet shirt. “The water isn’t even very salty. I bet we could drink it, if we had to. But with how green it is and how big the tree is, I bet it rains here a lot. We could stay, right? I mean, if anyone lives here, they’ve been gone more than a season. And if we fixed it up a bit, it would be a good trade for what we ate. I just… I want somewhere to be. And there’s a tree! I miss being in the trees.”

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Hhaardha hadn't planned to take off her boots – or anything else. She still had to go back through the forest to retrieve her bags and didn't want to wait for her fur to dry... but Etim's enthusiasm melted her resolve, and she couldn't help the waggle in the end of her tail where it curved up so that the plumy end almost brushed her own back. She allowed herself to be “dragged” by the paw, trotting slowly after him with her back bowed.

“Of course I'll stay close! I can't have my Etim swallowed up by a fish!” That was the sort of joke she absolutely wouldn't have made a week ago, or if any real danger existed. It was only after she'd grown more confident in her ability to protect Etim that Hhaardha allowed herself to relax around him. To a degree. She still slept with her hand on her swords. She still hated letting him out of her sight. But now she easily looked away from him long enough to unstrap her own boots, then clomp-clomp out onto the pier, where she groaned in an exaggerated way and used a piling for support to lower herself down onto her rear. As she sat, she flicked her tail out behind herself. She'd picked a spot not the end of the dock but in the middle, where she could watch Etim easily.

With partially crossed legs, Hhaardha used both hands to wriggle and twist a loosened boot off first one paw and then the other before setting the boots down neatly as a pair beside herself. She rolled up the bottom of her trousers, but they immediately fell down again when she swung her legs out over the water. She flung her arms out around the piling and leaned forward, hugging the post tight to one side of her chest while she peered down at the water. Naturally, her claws gripped at the wood – it was already old and deeply lined, perfect for her claws to dig into. With toes splayed wide and claws stretched out like they'd be looking for purchase she cautiously tap-tap-tapped the surface with her pads. The cold raced in a shiver down her spine from nape to tail, and her tail thumped happily against the dock.

It felt so peaceful! Under the tree the sun hurt her eyes less, but still she wanted to close them and soak up the warmth of the day. She was surrounded by the innocent little chirrups of insects in the reeds, gentle plinks and doops as newts slipped off their rocks into the water, and the low buzz of glasswings skimming over the water. For the first time in ages she felt that she could doze off without worry.

Of course she wasn't going to do that. Bright golden eyes searched out Etim as she peered around her piling, although she squeezed her eyes shut the moment she submerged her toes. Within seconds the shock of the chill dissipated and the water only felt pleasantly cool. The bunched muscles in her thighs relaxed; her paws sank in the water until she was submerged up to her ankles. With knees together she kicked slowly, sending out rolling waves. It felt like walking on clouds.

“Certainly, it smells like it rains a lot here,” Hhaardha agreed. Worry creased her brow. Her eyes darted away from Etim and then back, and she squinted slightly against the painful sunlight. Outside the shade of the tree, it glinted harshly on the water's surface.

She began quietly at first, and then with a touch of guilt, “I don't think anybody's coming back to claim the place if they haven't by now... and it's certainly an enticing idea, Etim, to me as well... But I can't feed only from you forever. I need too much blood... I need, you know, other humans.” She rolled her shoulder. “There is Lonely Stand, of course, and they were quite generous to gift me the blood that they did, but they won't do that indefinitely if I don't come to live within the city walls. If I take only from you, forever and ever, you'll... you'll get very weak.”

She pushed against the piling to sit up straighter, although she still leaned with her shoulder against the post. Tilting her head with an apologetic smile in her eyes, she stretched her arms out to him. Her tail began to thump again. She added brightly, “Come here, I'll lift your shirt away! You look like a kit fighting out of its swaddling!” She laughed by huffing air out of her nose.

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Etim did as suggested, wading toward her, and lifting himself tall at the base of the pier to raise his arms and sleeves above his head. The nightshirt clung to him still, and sucked as his arms as he wriggled his way free of them, but once a bit of air got in there the shirt came away without tearing. It would certainly need more of a wash than just a dip in the placid water. Even before Etim had gotten it filthy crawling through the burrow, the several weeks’ worth of wear had left it yellowed, scuffed, in need of a proper bleaching. His short pants, at least, took the wear better.

Beneath the shirt, it was undeniable that Etim had lost weight along the journey. Where once he’d been soft, arguably plump, his filled-out soft skin now hung a bit more loosely under his arms and on his neck. Long-forgotten muscle showed itself more now when he moved, defining his shoulder and biceps. His ribcage was clear. He had not really been starving, but he better resembled one of the working humans of the swamps outside Rrarringk Stand than he did the well-kept s’gath he’d been before. But even if his cheeks had sunk and his beard was starting to scraggle, his eyes were bright, excited. He wasn’t about to let Hhaardha off the idea so easily as that.

“But there is so much food here! And even when that is gone, there is more to collect. Who knows what is in the tree, or what might grow out of that garden next! There is food enough for a dozen people. I could eat enough to be fat, and then you wouldn’t go hungry. It’s like a wine-cup; keep pouring in to the point of overflowing, and it doesn’t matter how much you sip off the top. But if you need to go to Lonely Stand anyway, we could make trips. Or you could go while I keep the house.”

He'd remained between her legs in the water, so her feet could have pinched around his waist beneath the water if she’d stretched. Now, with a clever grin creeping over his face, he wrapped his arms around both, pulling them together a little so his hands could find the tendons that ran from behind her pads to her ankles. His fingers ran up those like the strings along the neck of an instrument, then stroked back down, pushing, massaging. Gently they went up so as not to fight the grain of the thin fur, but his fingertips kneaded on the way back down, working out the tension from all the working. It would normally be the first foray into working his way up to each calf in turn – those muscles bore so much strain and weight, there was always something to work out of them, just like all the knots in a Rriigkhan neck.

“I’m not asking you to make any promises, Lovely Spots. There could be dozens of reasons not to stay. Perhaps it has bad lighting or smells of funk. Maybe I will taste funny on a diet of pickled knots. We will stay for now. But if we can make ‘for now’ work for longer than a few days, I will make you feel like the best of N’gharas. Lady of Sentinel Tree. Besides, it was quite dark in there when the shutters were closed. I know the bright day is hurting you more, but you could have a shadowy home, and then I can keep just one room bright for me, and we can both be happy. Do you think there are any human clothes in there? There was a chair the right size, and I saw what looked like a sewing kit. I’m going to take off my pants, so let me know if you see any big fish getting too close!”

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Releasing Hhaardha’s legs, Etim shimmied over to a nearby pile and leaned back against it, not moving too much for fear of soggy splinters, and reached down under the water to lift one leg at a time and tug the pants off. Those he kept beneath the water long enough to scrub each side of the cloth against each other, before wringing them out then handing them up to Hhaarda, as though of course she would take them. Only then did he sit back into the open water, disappearing under the surface so he could rub his hands through his hair and over his face.

He emerged again gasping, blowing air through in-turned lips to keep the water out of his mouth, and wiped his eyes clear before he began scrubbing his body more generally: neck, hands, chest, under his armpits, between his legs. “If we didn’t stay though, we’d have to stay somewhere. With other people. Living a week from Lonely Stand is probably more of a sure thing than just walking out there stars know where with who knows in between.”

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As he made his way to the pier, Hhaardha was already tugging off the leather gloves that left her fingers bare so she could peel the soggy shirt up over his head and away from Etim's lifted arms. She flopped it onto the pier beside her boots and gloves with one paw. The other paw, however, followed Etim's wrist down the length of his arm. She touched as if he were a porcelain figurine to be handled with delicacy, or even reverence for the artistry. Her fingers molded around the ball of his shoulder as she was turning back to face him, beaming warmth and levity not only with her eyes but in every little movement of her body, from the tilt of her horns to the wrinkling of the velvet on her nose when she happily squinted. She arched her back and squared her shoulders to sit up straighter while her hips wiggled with barely contained excitement. Her touch became firmer when her pads walked themselves down Etim's back to hold him at the waist, where her other hand came to join now that it was free of the shirt. She stifled the urge to lift him up out of the water and hug him to her chest, wrap her arms around him, and just squeeze him until he couldn't take it anymore.

Her hands withdrew almost as soon as she'd taken hold of him, though not without brushing the backs of her fingers across his belly as she brought her hands back to clasp in her lap. Her fingers seemed much bonier with wet fur plastered flat on them – the talons of a great bird.

Hhaardha thought that the food he ate might define the quality of Etim's blood, but probably not the amount his body could regenerate. Still, she decided not to squash his hope so quickly.

“Perhaps all that is true, Little Precious,” she said patiently as she turned aside to arrange his shirt flat on the planks so it would dry, glancing at him from the side. “Believe me, I would love to stay. Gosh! To see your little head resting on a nice soft pillow would fill me up with joy!” Her foot twitched in his hands but didn't jerk away at the first touch behind her pad. It was a spot that could be sensitive enough to make her toes curl, but Etim had known exactly how to touch her. Locking her arms straight with her hands braced on the faulds in her lap, she hunched her shoulders and closed her eyes, tail thwapping on the pier even more rapidly – thud thud thud thud.

“I saw that chair, too. Maybe there will be a closet packed full of clothes just for you!” she said as he moved off, body and tail relaxing, eyes slowly opening to squint through the brightness. She wrapped her arms around the pillar again, and her entire body went slack as she leaned into it. She was leaning out into a patch of sunlight, so the gold bands on individual strands of fur glinted when the light caught them just so. She wasn't groomed to sleekness anywhere except in those patches around her eyes – the fur there was short enough that dead fur didn't cling in her coat, and she washed her face frequently enough that there, at least, the black masks were glossy under the sun. Lighthearted as she was in that moment, if Hhaardha had been able to see herself she might have caught a glimpse of the young woman she once had been.

Etim had begun to paint a pretty picture for her, and now her imagination was filling in the rest – her gaze turned dopey and distant as it turned inward. “It will be nice to sleep in a bed for a while. And sit you on my lap in front of the fire, a proper fire with wood, and you can doze in my arms while I caress your sweet face... Ah, Pet, I want you to have your own room! A place to put your things, and spread out, and be comfortable! It really would be a dream... A place where you can stay with the door locked while I go out hunting...” She set her jaw atop the piling and clasped the edge of the top of the post with her claws, letting her arms hang down from them while her tail gently thumped. Her legs pumped slowly in the water.

We have to stay somewhere. Hhaardha had always meant for them to join another caravan... but as she watched Etim change, she'd realized more and more that the road was no place for him. It was easy to accept the dangers of the wilderness when she had only her own self to take care of; it was not acceptable to risk Etim's life, too. She understood that now in a way she hadn't at the start of this journey.

“I... I don't know.” Her enthusiasm faltered. She swallowed. They were still so close to Rrarringk Stand – surely the people in Lonely Stand had been informed about the rogue Danghem and her human hostage by now. There might even be trackers after her this very moment. But that was her own worry to shoulder, not Etim's, so she forced her tail to wag and injected cheer into her voice when she spoke again. “I could sell skins, and when the garden is fixed up, maybe we'd have enough preserves to trade! We could really make this place a home, couldn't we? Sentinel Tree. That's nice. Oh, I wish I had a sponge for you right now. The water feels so grand. I'd get in, but – my armor, and I've got to go back through the thicket for our bags. You can look for clothes inside the house while I do that. Oh, but Etim!” She lowered her voice and sat away from the piling, hands on her hips with the elbows turned out as she leaned forward to look at him. “Don't go into the room that I closed. I think the last person to live here, the owner of the house, I think they passed away. I'll go in there and clean it up while you're asleep. Don't you even think about it anymore. Ah! I've got to patch up the hole in the cellar, too. I don't want animals coming in! Don't you go into the cellar again until I've got that fixed, too. There were plenty of things in the pantry to use for now.”

In the past week Hhaardha had begun to worry less about anyone from the Stand catching up with her. Now the possibility was on her mind again. If they made this their permanent home, they'd be practically under the shadow of Rrarringk Stand, and that was a troubling thought. Hhaardha knew she would have to turn this over in her mind for a while.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

The idea of having something to change into was even more enticing than a pillow for his head. He could make do by rolling up the end of a Hhaardha-sized blanket, he’d discovered, but there was no substitute for pulling on a clean shirt, rather than the one that had gone stiff and spent the last two weeks learning to smell like the worst parts of him. Even just one more change of clothes, or stockings and shoes that it better than those clompy boots would make him a very happy man. But he would quite like to sit in her lap by a proper fire. He would like her to relax, to not have to wear her armor or hold her swords. She would need to relax if her hand was going to completely heal, he thought. And while his own bright room where he might look at a book or sing or lay out his clothes would be a delight, he fancied the idea of joining Hhaardha’s dark room at night, too, and cozying up bare back to bare fur, her heavy arm thrown around him. There was no better way to sleep than against the chest of his N’ghara, feeling her heart beat steadily behind him. He missed that most sorely of all.

“Out here, alone, you would not have to lock the door when you went out hunting. There are no great beasts who open doors, are there? Anyway, nothing so dreadful here as on the plains, I’m sure. We shouldn’t have to worry so much if there is a house. But anyway, yes – there will be a place to go, just in case.”

Etim remained still while Hhaardha instructed him, looking back up at her attentively. He’d returned to the space between her feet, and his fingers naturally wanted to gather them beside him and ruffle through the fur on top of her paws where the water lifted it from her skin. It wouldn’t distract him from minding her – his eyes still focused and he nodded – but from the wrinkle in his nose and lower set of his brows, it wasn’t going to stop him from having his own mind on the matter, either. Instead of simply answering with a ‘yes’ right away, Etim tested his weight on her legs, making sure the edge of the pier wasn’t going to hurt her thighs, and then began to pull himself up. He knew his way around Rriigkhan anatomy well enough, but it had been ages since he’d climbed one of them, and he wasn’t quite strong enough any longer just to monkey up in no time flat. Hooking his hand behind an ankle and kicking in the water helped him to get another hand over her opposite knee; from there, he could likely wrangle his way up from her lap and to the pier beside her.

While he would have rathered sat in her lap, or at least leaning into her ribs under arm, since she’d just talked about getting her armor wet and having to go back through the undergrowth, he merely sat as close as he could without covering her with the water that dripped down around him to the slats of the pier. Letting his legs dangle off the side, Etim used his hands to sheet the water off his naked body. That little dip had cleaned so much grime from his body that he looked surprisingly pale, except where the sun had beat down on his face and lower arms, and the middle of his legs, during their journey. But he hadn’t given his face and hair enough of a scrub, and couldn’t feel that there was still dirt in his hairline, or that the water was tinged with mud where it trickled down his face and neck.

“Lovely Spots,” he began, the term clearly meant to offset the argument in his tone. “It is right that you should want to protect your s’gath, and you have full credit for that. But there are no servants here. You cannot do everything yourself, and there are plenty of things I can do – maybe even better than you in some ways. You don’t need to go onto roofs when you have me. I can climb, I am light, I am not bothered by the sun. I can put rocks in the burrow to the cellar if you bring them, and pack the dirt. I should probably not hunt with you, and I don’t know if I would be so good at handling skins. I never had the stomach for butchering. But whether we are a week here or a month or a life of years, you will have to let me be more than s’gath. You know this, right? Beside, it will just give you more time for us to lavish attention on each other.

“Now, if there is a dead body in the room, we should attend to that before all else. We do not know what they died of, and it may be something that should be gotten out of the house right away. And if we are to inherit this home from them, then we should treat them with all the dignity and honor of a Lady of the Stand, don’t you think?”

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

When he pulled himself up to her knees, Hhaardha lifted Etim the rest of the way by picking him up under his arms. It came naturally to do so without asking; she always knew from the way his muscles tensed where he wanted to go, or whether he wanted to be let down. Funny, how Rriigkhans and humans could communicate so effectively without words or even pheromones.

“Oh, I am getting lectured now!” she exclaimed, looking down her muzzle at him with perked ears and a glitter in her eye. She turned aside and leaned in to bop his nose with a pink pad that was still wet, (and still smudged with dirt because she hadn't scrubbed it) claws retracted.

She let her eyes wander down the length of his body unashamedly – he was hers, after all. In other moments like this one Hhaardha would usually be too concerned about protecting Etim to really appreciate that she had him. Today was different. With Etim so near that she imagined she could feel the heat radiating off his little body, her heart quickened. Her eyes hurt that much more, and she didn't realize it was because her pupils dilated to take in more of him. She lifted the elbow nearest Etim so she almost covered him, like a bird tucking a chick under her wing, and let her claws comb lightly through his hair. Her fingertips created new ruts in the wet strands that wanted to plaster to his head.

“I'm no Lady, Etim,” she said softly, “But you're right. As soon as we go back, I will dig a grave. I imagine there must be a shovel in the shed. We'll put that poor person to rest straight away. You're so... independent! You're not what I thought a s'gath would be. Don't you remember how you said you'd be useless out of the Stand? And now here you are crawling into bird holes and ordering me about like a sassy little husband. You've got me by the horns, you know!” Her tail thumped on the pier and the corners of her lips twitched up to show that she was joking. Her palm settled on his scalp with enough weight for Etim to feel that he was wearing a particularly heavy hat. Compared to the water drying in his hair, her big palm was very warm. She wanted to pull him in for a hug, but knew the leather plates of her lamellar would be rough on his naked skin. Instead she smoothed down his hair and let her paw fall to settle on the curve of his hip, which she squeezed.

There was a peculiar feeling she felt, sometimes, when Etim spoke to her. It felt like... being full, in her chest rather than her stomach. She could totally ignore the pain in her skull when Etim turned his attention her way. For no reason at all she suddenly felt like she could cry – he was just too precious. He was more than she deserved! Hhaardha patted the top of his rump and leaned away.

“You look so nice, Etim, you know,” she said, eyes darting sheepishly away and back again, her muzzle angling down and away from him. Her paws picked at her trousers, lifting a pinch of fabric and letting it fall again. “So handsome when you're at ease, your skin so bright and clean and the way your hair lays when its damp. Your eyes when you smile, it's almost too much! You're so... special. More than I ever realized. Stars, I'm being silly.” Hhaardha forced a dry, panting laugh and patted her knees. “We should go back. We've got so much to do!”

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

“I’m not so independent as that,” Etim replied. His tone was playful, matching hers, but his brow creased a bit, as though he were choosing his words seriously. “I am still s’gath, you will see. But it is something I learned from Rrarringk Shayn. Not that she told me directly, but it is something you see watching people interacting with the elder s’gath, when there were older ones. Sometimes the role is just to be treasure, to be treasured. But s’gath are family, and family takes care of each other when care is needed. I would still be useless as a stump without you, Hhaardha! Don’t think otherwise.”

As wonderful as the possibility of clean clothing in the home was (though it would probably be rough cloth with thick, scratchy seams), sitting out under the sun in only his skin to dry was an absolute delight. The golden rays of afternoon felt like fingers caressing his skin; he could close his eyes and lift his face and the warmth would kiss his cheeks and brow. He was already wearing a satisfied smile, but the corners curled up higher and his eyes squinted with delight at her flattery. For the few moments that it lasted he was absolutely content to bask in her attention, legs slowly kicking off the edge of the pier, his hands propped on the planks behind him so he could half-recline, but when she faltered, his head twisted over toward her and he peaked out from one eye. As his hair was drying, the shorter bits above his ears were beginning to stand up like owl ears.

“No, No, Lovely Spots. You are not being silly at all!” Pushing himself forward so he could free an arm, he reached across himself to take one of her large mitts of a paw and bring it up to his cheek. Laying his head into it like it was a bowl, he rubbed his cheeks along her rough pads. “You are being my N’ghara.” He turned his face all the way into it her hand, pressing into the creases between palm and digit, using both hands to cup it about him and gently squeeze. Scent glands in the fur between the fingers were hardly the strongest Rriigkhan had – arguably they were atavisms from before the evolution of howrfs – but humans seemed to have a way of seeking out and burying themselves where those glands were.

Etim turned back to press his cheek to her. “This is what it is supposed to be. You do not have to say the words, but I have to see it in your eyes. This is what you promised me so long ago, do you remember? This is everything that I want, more than anything else. If I look nice, fill your eyes with me. I’ll dance for you, dress for you, undress for you.” His lips pressed kisses to the last pads of several fingers, the last a bit wet, and then he guided her hand down to his chest, rubbing her hand over one side, encouraging her to squeeze the bit of muscle there. “If I feel nice, touch me. Take me onto your lap. Let me kiss you. Lay out for me so I can fondle your ears and massage your scalp. It is this! This! Everything else to do is just for this! If you collect eggs, if you grow plants, it so, at the end of the day, you eat. This is the eating.”

While far from completely dry, Etim had stopped dripping enough now that after a moment of hesitation, he abandoned touching himself with Hhaardha’s hand, to crawl into her lap and press into her armor, legs spread wide so he could straddle her thighs. Reaching up, he took her by the base of her top horns literally, pulling himself up a bit and her head down to face him. His head tilted up and forward, nose pressing to hers so his lips brushed the tangle of teeth in front of him. “After two weeks of walking and being hunted and eating the same soup and smelling like a bucket of armpits, this is what we have to do. Touch me more. Everywhere. Let me be your delight. Let me touch you. Carry me inside if it is too bright, but don’t do anything else but me, just for now.”

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Hhaardha's paws came up to encircle Etim's waist without hesitation when he climbed into her lap, thumbs resting on his belly while her fingers covered his back. Her thighs tensed to make a better seat for him, one he wouldn't slide down toward the water. The eyes that looked down the length of her snout into his were wide-open now, filled with the same wonder and delight that she felt every time this special creature turned his attention to her... no matter how many times he had before. Minute twitches in her brows accompanied the rapid flick of her gaze as it explored his face before resting on his eyes again. Her jaws were always parted to prevent stabbing herself with her longer teeth; now she licked at the roof of her mouth and the backs of her teeth as if uncertain, but then, gently as the falling of a curtain, her eyelids dropped and her ears folded back. A happy sigh escaped her.

He was so close to her nose – the lovely scent she breathed was all Etim. The water, the flora, everything else blurred into the background. She readjusted her paws to cup his bottom in her palms like she was his chair. Her eyes clenched tighter in the same moment she squeezed his cheeks.

“Ooooh!” she whined, eyes snapping open, ears snapping upright, fingers releasing their pinch. She pulled her head back from him without jerking. She didn't want to wrench her horns out of his hands.“But I'm – my fur is all gritty!” Her eyes crossed to look down at her own nose and she smacked her tongue inside her mouth. “My breath! I've got to scrub my tongue. I'm not nice at all! And you're so clean and lovely! Oh!” It sounded like an exclamation of real distress, of pain, even though the wild thumping of her tail on the pier suggested uncontainable joy, and her legs had stretched out before her so her wide-spread toes lifted from the water with her heels still submerged. Her fingers continued to knead him, to grab his meat between thumb and fingers. Her hips wriggled from side to side, but her paws ensured he wasn't going to slide off her lap. Finally she did reach up to pluck his hand away from her horn, taking him gently by the wrist to smush his hand to her cheek, which she nuzzled into while closing her eyes.

“We've got so much to do, little Precious. We've got eggs to collect before we can eat them.” One eye cracked open to watch him and then she dropped his hand, righted her head, and looked fully at him with clear, bright eyes. “You cutie. You absolute dear. Hold on. Hup!” She held Etim with one paw supporting his bottom and the other arm circling round his back as she slid off the peer to stand in knee-deep water, paying no mind that her trousers were now soaked.

She glanced at the shore and her body twitched as if she would move to it before her attention jerked back to her boots still on the pier. For a moment she shifted her weight from leg to leg in a frantic little dance and then, a decision suddenly reached, she leaned over the pier to stuff Etim's clothes into her boots so she could pick them all up with one hand. She went slogging off through the water with long, exaggerated sneaky-steps, tail held high and half-curled, holding Etim's back now with the crook of her elbow while she held her boots.

“You don't mind being naked for a bit, do you?” Hhaardha asked as she reached the shore. “No one here but us. We'll check the closets in the house straight away. Then I'm going back for the bags so I can take my armor off.” Her heart had jumped up into her throat when Etim climbed into her lap, and now it wasn't coming down again. She'd been transported to some joyous head-space, where the world felt hazy as a dream and the air so fresh that it filled and filled her lungs forever when she breathed it in.

But she was scared, too, of Etim. She could not say why, even to herself. Would she make him happy? Would a bright room in this dilapidated house be enough? That strange mix of fear and excitement buzzed under her skin like the reverberation of a gong-peal.

Walking up the shady path with Etim in her arms, the house coming into view as they progressed up the slope – it felt to Hhaardha like coming home. There was still a narrow dirt path that had been trampled flat, though the grass grew long on either side of it. The quality of the air changed when they moved back into the shade of the tree; it felt not only cooler, but utterly serene, and the breeze moving through the boughs over their heads made the leaves rustle so prettily, and the shadows dance. She let Etim down on the path in front of the stoop and draped his wet clothes over the rim of one of the water collection barrels. Surely there had been a laundry line, but weather had taken it down.

“Remember, don't go into the room I shut without me, Etim dear, but do check that other one. I'll be right back! You'll close the front door if you hear so much as a rustle outside, right? Humor me, sweet little thing.” Hhaardha cupped his head and bent with one arm daintily outstretched to “kiss” him by setting her thorny teeth on the top of his scalp. Her lips moved as if mouthing an unspoken word but they did not touch him. Her kiss was a hard, pokey one. She'd been touching Etim with her jaws for some time now and was very confident in her ability to be gentle when she wanted to be and to deftly prick him when she did not. She understood the topography of her own mouth so much better, now.

She returned with her pack in even less time than it had taken her to find the house before, now that she had a general idea of the best way to pick through the foliage. She dropped her bags just inside the door, which she left open to allow the fresh air to circulate.

“Did you find anything?” she called out, grasping doorjamb on either side of herself and leaning backward to glance out at the shed even as she spoke. Loving Etim with a corpse in the house – no, no! It wouldn't do! She was going to dig that grave immediately, and afterward give her dirty paws a good scrub.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

There wasn’t anything materially different about wading about in the water with unknown watercritters lurking in seagrass and standing naked in the cobwebby abandoned home, but the latter felt more vulnerable to him, especially once Hhaardha was off to fetch her bags around on the other side of the island slopes. This place reminded him of home, in a way – it wasn’t quite a stand, but with the tree at the peak of the hill, he could imagine that its roots held together the whole island and reached the hundreds of spans it would have taken to get down to the shore where he waded. Knowing Hhaardha was nearby helped; he could almost feel her rummaging about just there, in that general direction, even though he was probably entirely wrong.

Still, alone in the dark house, he crossed his arms tight across his chest, and not because it was cold.

He didn’t really think about opening the door she’d told him not to. He thought about it, about what sort of dead body might be inside, but didn’t really consider it, any more than he thought about opening the shutters she’d closed. It was just instinct for him to want her to return and be pleased. The first order of business was to open one of the human-sized chests. Several of them were scattered around the house, left alone more than the others, presumably exactly because they were human-sized. Larger chests were opened, contents draped over the side or spilled on the floor around them, where valuable things had been taken or broken down for what was worth carrying, but he opened the nearest chest and found a dress inside, woven and painted with two colors of dye that looked a bit like water reeds. A dress, of course. It was long enough to drape the ground even when he held the shoulders above his head. A human woman must have lived here.

When he was using it to ruffle his hair, he looked up to see that an odd-shaped loft space had been built above the addition of the two rooms, and more large storage – untouched, it seemed – awaited him on the joists. Lowering those boxes for Hhaardha would be a challenge, but imagine what treasures there would be inside! There would be time for that later. Woven-straw sandals atop wooden blocks had tumbled out of the first chest with the dress, and though they were too large for him, too, he only needed to grasp the center strap between his toes to shuffle along on them through the house, a full hand-width above the floor with any nasty bugs or cobwebs.

Wrapping the dress around his shoulders half like a scarf and half like a shawl, he proceeded into the bright room. The fact that it had its own external door was proof enough that it had been a guest room, a traveler’s room – perhaps this home saw frequent travelers, and they, too, could make a bit of resin from those who passed through – but the separate chamberpot and accommodations for human and Rriigkhan both cinched it. He stood in the large doorway for a moment, taking it all in, when he realized it.

For a moment, he congratulated himself on his cleverness. The house had been close, completely locked up when the person died in that other room. Whoever had ransacked the home hadn’t been able to break in through big main doors or the windows, or perhaps hadn’t bothered with them; they’d broken in the guest door instead, and that’s why it hung on its hinges. They must have opened the windows when they got in, and looted a few things through that guest door, too, instead of opening the main door, but why? Why not take more, or come back for more? Perhaps none of this was worth as much as he thought.

.

Etim wandered into the room, letting his eyes dance around and take things in. As a guest room, it was not furnished luxuriously – everything was basic and sturdy – but after two weeks sleeping on a blanket on the ground and walking, it was wonderful. He didn’t even bother to test the straw in the mattress before he flopped onto it, but when he saw what he’d landed on, he gasped.

- - - -

“In here, Hhaardha!” Etim’s choked voice called from the guest room. He was standing against the outer door frame, tucked into the corner the fallen door provided, and motioning down, toward the mattress, the ground. The mattress was disheveled, of course, but that meant little when it was just piles of straw and feather sewn into a huge sheet bag; they usually required pounding back into shape every few mornings. The blankets were strewn about, too, but so was most everything else. But where Etim pointed, blood had spattered, been smeared, and left to dry into the mattress with no attempt to blot it out. It stained the stone floor, too. Both were old – years old – but the faded, flaky brown was identifiable nonetheless.

It wasn’t enough to account for another death, not even for someone Etim’s size, but it had to have meant violence. It was too much for any small accident.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Brows furrowed in concern, and with a sudden tightness in her chest, Hhaardha yanked herself back into the house by the doorjamb. She moved rapidly toward the source of Etim's voice, one hand hooked in the collar of her cuirass. Her claws scraped against the floorboards as she went. As soon as she saw Etim her tension eased – her brow cleared and she let out a held breath, but when her eyes followed Etim's gaze her forehead scrunched again. She leaned forward slightly, nostrils flaring and eyes narrowing. Yes, blood. One ear flicked back while the other swiveled to him.

“Oh no,” she said with quiet dismay. Her shoulders sagged and her tail began to gently sinuate from left to right low to the floor. The paw at her throat dropped to her hip. The other gestured limply. “I guess... I had this idea in my head.... the Rriigkhan of the house died of some natural cause, and the human who lived here must have went away to stay with relatives... but that doesn't make any sense, does it? A human wouldn't walk through the wild alone, and... anyway. I suppose its time I checked the other room.” As she stepped around the bloodstains on the floor she held out a paw to Etim so she could lead him out. She guided him to walk behind and put herself between Etim and the other bedroom door, then squeezed his fingers before releasing him to ease the door open.

It was immediately obvious that a struggle had taken place in the room. A desiccated Rriigkhan corpse lay on the floor beside a bed, horns wedged in the underside of an overturned bench that was in turn shoved up against the legs of a freestanding shelf. Shards of broken pottery were strewn across the floor. Hhaardha had seen death plenty, but now her face tightened, eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly. The movements of her tail stilled as she moved closer. The Rriigkhan lay on top of a huge rust-colored stain. She wore no clothing, although it was difficult to be sure of that when the skin and fur itself looked like a rotted blanket that'd been left outside too long, all matted and clinging to the bones so Hhaardha could clearly see the eyeless skull, the ribs.

Turning slowly to look at the rest of the room, Hhaardha could pick out other signs of struggle, even though it was hard to say what had happened during the initial attack and what had happened later, when the place was ransacked. The wardrobe had been flung open, drawers pulled out. Stiffened, moth-eaten clothes were frozen in time where they'd been yanked out and tossed to the floor. Near the door a mirror had been smashed on the ground. There was so much broken stuff on the floor, like every surface had been slammed into. Hhaardha noticed more smears of blood by the door, on the wall, on the top of a little writing desk below a window.

The female had put up some sort of fight. As she replayed this woman's last moments in her mind a somber mood settled onto Hhaardha. Her face lost its tension, though her lips pulled tighter around her teeth in a sort of grimace.

Of course the foul stench of death was long gone, but the atmosphere wasn't pleasant. A window had been left open and black mold speckled the floorboards and wall on that side of the room. Hhaardha did not want to spend a moment longer inside, and when she turned to come out she felt so much heavier than she had when she'd gone in. She was glad she'd come back to take care of this before anything else.

Hhaardha set herself to the unhappy task of digging a grave at the edge of what she would consider the yard, between the garden and the thicket at the side of the house. It was a cool, shady spot, and clusters of small purple flowers bloomed on one of the nearby bushes. Hhaardha tried not to think about how she was going to maneuver the corpse into the hole, or how she might have dressed the body in the woman's own clothing if the poor dear hadn't been so horribly deteriorated. She had to simply power through the ache in muscles. By the time the grave was dug her arms felt as weak and limp as flower stems. She had to stand for a moment with her back curved and arms hanging down to clutch her knees while she quietly panted. (It wouldn't do to draw Etim's attention. She had to be strong whenever he looked her way.)

In the end she wrapped the body up best she could with a knitted blanket she found folded at the bottom of a closet. Had the human made this for her Mistress? Hhaardha loathed to put something so valuable, something so useful, into the ground to rot away, but it seemed only right. She hoped that human was all right now, wherever she'd ended up, but knew that it wasn't likely. That made the situation so much sadder.

Golden light shone through the wall of brush at the back of the cottage by the time the grave had been filled in and piled up with the rocks, some bigger than Etim's head, that Hhaardha had brought up in her digging. Her pads, shirt sleeves, and the legs of her trousers were all caked with dirt. She brought a bucket of water from the river to scrub the bloodstains from the floors as best as could be done, then returned to the river (with soap!) to scrub herself thoroughly.

Although she'd taken off her armor before digging, she'd left her baldric nearby. Now, as she squatted in the water with her legs crossed so she was submerged up to her chest, her baldric and swords lay on the pier where she could get to them within seconds. She felt no hunger, not for solid food, but her hollow guts ached anyway. Her arms felt so wobbly; the weakness in those muscles made her movements lethargic as she dunked her face and worked soapy fingers into her fur. She'd dunked her clothes in the water and kneaded at the dirt stains a little, but not nearly enough before draping the wet things over the pier. She would give them to Etim to properly wash, later. Tomorrow. After they'd eaten and slept.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Etim was not particularly helpful, thought it wasn't through lack of intent. At the big bedroom door, he'd remained at the doorframe, having pushed open the door again enough for most of his face to fit through. A hand on the door and his bare foot lifted against the edge of it where it swung out into the big common space kept it from going wider or closing further on them, though the edge of the door dug into his cheek. He couldn't see all the details from there - the mattress was big enough for a pair of Rriigkhan and a couple of humans to all share together, the frame was a sturdy wooden box construction, and between that and all the disheveled furniture, he only saw a glimpse of the desiccated body. It was enough, though. He understood, more or less. "What do you think did happen?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

.

There weren't any shovels his side, and even if there were, neither his bare feet or the boots he'd been wearing the last two weeks would have been a good fit for the work. There was something with bent prongs, like fake claws on the end of a handle that was good for loosening dirt or hooking roots, or getting under rocks, but there wasn't any way to use it without getting in the way of Hhaardha's digging, do he mostly stood off to the side, keeping her silent company while she worked, and occasionally sliding down into the deepening hole to bring up one of the stones she'd loosened. Most of them he could work back out of the grave himself, lifting them to chest level, or grabbing them from Hhaardha if she lifted them to him. Either way, just like her, by the time the rocks were piled to keep scavengers from digging up the grave, he was caked in dirt, too. He rinsed a bit at the waterside when they went for the bucket - and thank goodness she didn't send him on his own, because the one sized for him had a rotted stave - but still, when he scrubbed at the floor in the guest room to match what she was doing in the main room, he just replaced a lot of the brick red with a sheet of brown. At least most of that would sweep out eventually, once it dried.

"I've been thinking," Etim said, as they were in the water together near the pier. He was naked again, and most of the fresh dirt had simply lifted from his skin or come off with an easy wipe. It didn't mean he couldn't use a good soapdown as well, but he was getting that indirectly as he focused on Hhaardha, reaching wet fingers into the little stonewear jar of soap flakes so he could run them through her fur, too. She needed a proper scrub and combing, but weary as they both were, he wasn't rushing through it for the sake of it. He would ask her to lift her arms to hold the pier pile behind her head and then massage the muscles under her arms, letting that soap and scrub her fur as he went. He spent a lot of time at her back, practically laying on her as his fingers worked over the muscles in her neck, and scrubbed right up to where her scalp parted around her horns. He took her hands from her own washing to get his fingers between hers and between her pads, and worked with a little reed to get the grit out from her claws.

It was not thorough, not precise. At the rate Etim worked, it might take a whole day to clean Hhaardha entirely, but when he was done every inch of her would have received detailed attention. As he spoke at the moment, he'd lured her closed to the shore, where she could sit on the stonier bottom and still have her ankles propped on his shoulders. His fingers worked along her shins where boots tended to mat and chafe fur away over two weeks, and it distracted him from speaking with a normal quick rhythm. "The blood was very old, right? And the woman who you buried - she had been dead for a long time. But the door that was broken in in my room - that was more recent. Maybe like months ago. If had been a full year, there would be rotten leaves inside from the tree. That was a big problem in the Stand: autumn rains bringing down the leaves all at once so they would molder. It was a big harvest season, because they would be good mulch for the gardens, but if a window wasn't shuttered and it all got inside, it would be a disaster. So... So I think she died a few years ago. Maybe whoever came more recently was a guest of hers - like a merchant would come by once a year? I don't know why they wouldn't bury her either. But they took a few things and left? But that means that when she died, the house was locked up from the inside."

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

On any other day Hhaardha might have been embarrassed (and probably over-excited) to receive such attention from Etim. Now, in her exhaustion, it was too easy to quietly melt into his touch, to let her ears fall limp and her face slacken while he kneaded her neck. At first her eyes rolled up, pupils barely visible through the slits made by drooping eyelids, and then they closed entirely. Touching the base of her horns made her toes curl while her fingers tightened on the pilings of the pier, which she'd turned to face on her knees when Etim clambered up her back. Her tail felt so fat and heavy in the water, too heavy to move. Her howrfs praised him instead, slipping out from her horns to shine their oily gleam in the amber light and provide little snatches of heady scent between tastes of the crisper air. Her head fell forward so her horns thumped up against the pier itself, holding her head up for her, and if Etim had lavished any more attention on her scalp she probably would have started drooling. Her cage of teeth was the only thing keeping her tongue in her mouth just then.

It wasn't that she could ignore the hunger-pains-that-didn't-feel-like-hunger. It throbbed in her head with every heartbeat. They'd been drinking liberally from the skins knowing that a source of clean water lay so close at hand, but the liquid stretching her shriveled stomach felt like a poison that she needed to retch up. She could not stop herself from imagining what it would feel like to swallow a mouthful of Etim's blood, how it would coat her tongue and throat and finally, finally sate her... But Etim's massaging gave her something else to focus on, and there were moments when those physical discomforts seemed more like distant noises that weren't so relevant.

On her back Hhaardha's eyes closed again, head turned aside on the pillow of her bicep so one horn dug into the stony sand. The other paw reached weakly for Etim, but when she discovered she couldn't touch him without tensing her abdominals to lift her torso she let the fist fall to her chest instead. She listened to Etim with half her attention, but when he mentioned leaves her eyes slowly cracked open. Her glazed-over expression of relaxation drained away; eyes narrowed.

“I didn't even think about that,” she said, quiet but serious, still squinting past Etim into the dimming sky. The end of her tail lifted from the shallow water in which it lay and slumped down again. Strands of wet fur fanned out to float in the water.

“Maybe they were bad people,” she said slowly. “Fought with each other over the split of the spoils when they ransacked the place. That's what the blood was from. They never alerted anyone from the Stands to come bury her. Surely she couldn't be alone in the world – surely there is family somewhere to inform about this. So they must've been strangers who didn't tell anyone...”

Hhaardha knew even as she said it that it didn't make sense. It didn't explain the locked doors. Sure, the people could've come in and out through the hole in the cellar, but... why would anyone bother to do that?

Although Etim's shoulder supported her ankle, Hhaardha had been holding her leg to keep almost all of the weight from him. Now she lifted her paw from him and did a little pill bug curl so she could reach forward and take hold of him. As she uncurled and fell back against the shore she pulled Etim down onto her chest to wrap her arms around him and squeeze, trapping him in an embrace of soggy fur that squished and hard, wiry muscle. She was sure there must be something obvious about the house that they were missing. Maybe another door they hadn't noticed. She wasn't seeing it because she was so weary now. Tomorrow it would all be clear, and now she didn't want to think about that poor Rriigkhan and whoever the blood belonged to.

“Ooooh,” she sighed with a unexpected squirt of energy, lethargically rocking Etim left and then right in her arms. “I'm cleaner than a newborn kit. Felt so good, Etim, you little sweet thing. I'm going to cook you the biggest dinner you've had in your life! What do you want? What was in those jars you brought up? I'm going to stuff you until you throw up. In a while.” She slumped in the water until her horns dug into the sand to hold her head off the ground, arms easing up around him, muzzle lifting to the sky, eyes closing. Her paws stroked down his back, one after the other. “After I've held you for a while.”

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

"It's funny that we found it through that animal's burrow," Etim continued, voice musing. "If we had been on the other side of the island, where the pier was, we could have seen the cottage and the gardens and the path from a long way away. I wonder if we've missed a lot of other places. Or maybe - maybe being out on the trail for two weeks, we are more like animals than people?" It was meant more as a joke than as a serious proposition, but there was a hint of something in Etim's voice - a bit of despair or concern. It wasn't the first time he'd had a thought like that, just the first time he could broach the topic without it being an obvious complaint. The trail was not a place for people, not unless they had a destination in mind. He was sure of it. All the things that made him a person seemed to be under growing threat: he sang less than he wanted to; he thought about survival, rather than beauty. He was having trouble remembering what poached greens and rue eggs tasted like, with that extra rock salt crumbled on top.

Just knowing there was a house here, even with all the work it would take to make it cozy and comfortable, he could feel his peopleness returning, coming back. He could imagine ways to make the cottage lovely. He could learn to sew! He could make curtains, and proper pillows, and clothes! Whatever had happened to the people who lived here before, it was long ago, and didn't affect them. "You are probably right," he agreed. "They were bad people. If they weren't, someone would have checked on them before now. It's the right thing to do, making this a home for better people - like us."

When Hhaardha's mood seemed to shift, like a still, listless windmill creaking to life as the first winds of the season arrived, Etim's eyes crinkled to slits. His smile spread into a wide, tooth-baring grin. He had the clean, white teeth of someone who had eaten only finely-ground grains, and a wide variety of foods with plenty of eggshell powder, who had a physician who looked after him, though they'd dulled a bit on the journey. He made sure to turn as she drew him in so his face would be against her coat, which was still wet, but drying enough that it was beginning to stick up every whichway along her chest. It reminded him of the tall grasses of the plateaus springing back up after the great beasts had passed, looking like windswept whorls. He was still plenty wet, too, anyway, plus the smell of her fur so clean reminded him of that promise he'd made her so very long ago in Rrarringk House.

"Oh, I don't want to eat that much. We are going to sleep in a bed tonight, Lovely Spots. I won't give you a single excuse to push me away." While he was quite pliable, allowing Hhaardha to move him around as she wanted, putting him to this side or that, when she released him he sat up, legs spreading to straddle her slender ribs, so his calves were parallel with her flanks and his feet rested idly against here, toes absentmindedly rubbing at her fur. His hands spread in her thin ruff while he peered down at her, eyes searching her face and shifting to her ears. He lowered slowly, shifting so his upper arms rested across her chest just below her collarbone, and his mouth was near hers.

.

Kissing was a neglected art these last few weeks, it seemed. He would make up for that lost time, but not all at once, not with a passion that neither of them had enough energy for now. Fingertips curling like the legs of a crawling crab, as though he'd scritch her but without actually using his nails, he ruffled through the fur at the base of her neck, and leaned in to carefully place a kiss in pieces - a little bit on her lip there where it drooped next to her unfurling canines, gingerly there at the top where her lip parted under her nose, and then down in the corners where it drooped and the tangle of jagged molars wasn't as difficult to navigate. His lips prickled where they'd met her always-sharp tips; he licked at the prickles while he rested against her cheek and brought a finger up to touch those same tips.

Gently, in a soft voice that didn't rise far above the lapping water, he chided her. "You're trembling a little again when I fill your nostrils, Lovely Spots. I've notice that. It only happens when you haven't had any blood for a while. You should do that tonight. Before dinner. Before anything else. Now. You have earned it, haven’t you? Everything you've done? You have brought me safe to this home, for however long it lasts. We can wash it after right here. I know you don't have your little knife - just hold my hand while you use your teeth."

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

The suggestion that they were turning into animals immediately stung. Hhaardha's expression tightened and she opened her muzzle to dispute it, but a pang of guilt stilled her tongue and closed her mouth again. While Hhaardha didn't agree with him at all, she knew that Etim deserved better than what she had given him. She thought about it several times a day, and felt such a heaviness settle over her heart when she did. Now some of that guilt eased away, evaporated under the warmth of a sun so much brighter than the one shining just above the crest of the hill at their backs when he leaned down to kiss her. He was right about one thing – his kisses made all their striving worth it.

Hhaardha's eyes closed and she drew in a sharp, soft breath, chest rising as her lungs filled, paws settling on his back to pet with reverent slowness. It was a treat to touch those subtle curves in the lobes of his back or the swell of his bottom. She squeezed him again and again and knew she would never tire of his shape, his textures, the way he felt against her pads. Her lips tensed and pulled up twitchily, and when he kissed just under her nose her tongue flicked out to brush his lips. Her fingers briefly tightened on him every time he kissed her. When he was done she tilted her head into Etim to squish their cheeks together harder – gently still, but letting more of her heavy skull press against him. She nodded minimally to nuzzle into him.

“Earned it?” she breathed, followed by a hitch in her breathy laugh. Her heart jumped in the same moment. Suddenly she felt light, giddy; she could feel her own pulse hammering away in her howrfs. Frisson tingled up and down her limbs.

“I... I don't think that giving you what I promised entitles me to anything,” she went on in that same breathless voice, barely above a whisper. Her paws began to pet more urgently, stopping to knead and squeeze before moving again, all along his backside. “...But. Stars, Etim, it is true, I thirst for you. I need you, precious little dear. You're so good to me. How lucky I am, to have my Precious. How could I ever say no to so sweet an offer?” While she spoke a new gris coated her howrfs, offering Etim that special cocktail of pheromones that would swaddle him up in a pleasant, heavy warmth. She lifted her cheek from his, eyes opening and head lifting to glance around. She realized there was simply no place along the shore that was a fitting place for her Etim to lay – the mud was far too stony, the grass further up too long and pokey. She would hold him like this, then.

It strained her neck a bit to lift her heavy head from the ground and bend forward enough to bring her muzzle to the juncture of his neck and shoulder, but that was no price at all to pay for the gift of Etim's blood. It helped that he had one arm under his chest, which lifted him closer to the level of her snout. When her nose hovered millimeters from Etim, so he could feel her warm breath puffing against his damp skin and the tips of several of the teeth jutting out from her bottom jaw pressed into his collar bone, her licks across his skin were not as gentle and tender as she'd meant them to be. They were rapid, over-eager, flicking tastes. Her muscles turned rigid around him; her tail writhed in the water, her soggy fur just heavy enough to mute the wagging.

She planned to lap at his skin and softly nibble him before she bit, stroking his back reassuringly all the while, to make this a sensual experience for him... but when the teeth of her upper jaw settled on the muscle stretching from neck to shoulder Hhaardha's jaws trembled unexpectedly. She bit down – not with great force, but not carefully, and when she felt her teeth dimple his skin she tilted her head until one in particular sank in. It sliced so satisfying into his flesh, and then another next to it broke the skin, too, creating two big punctures next to several smaller ones that would only bleed a drop or two. Her entire body shivered around him; the hand petting his back stopped moving and gripped him roughly. Her jaws opened just enough to reposition her teeth. She was still lightly clamped on him so her tongue could access the wounds. When the first drop of blood welled up for her to lick Hhaardha moaned and convulsed beneath him, body rolling once like a wave.

She'd bit him more deeply than she had in days past – the blood gushed more than she expected, enough to pool on her tongue, and although some part of her conscious self cried out in warning she could not yank herself away from the ecstasy that was drinking Etim. It was more than the sharp pleasure of blood on her taste buds. It was in her brain, a tingling orgasmic high. Absolutely everything fell away from her – she did not hear the buzzing insects or feel the cool water lapping gently around her legs, and if a shingerin had come come stalking out of the reeds she wouldn't have smelled it, because only Etim filled her nose. She wanted to speak to him, to reassure him, but all that came from her open jaws was another, longer moan that trailed up at the end. She cradled his sweet head in one great paw while the other gripped his bottom to hold him in place on her torso. After a few seconds she remembered to relax her grip and to pet him, but it was distracted petting while most her attention was in the movement of her tongue as it lapped his rich blood. She hummed soothingly at him. It was the only other way that she could remind him that she, Hhaardha, was still here; the Danghem beast had not taken over completely.

This time her lapping seemed to go on for so much longer than it had before. He was bleeding more heavily than she was used to, but her saliva and the pressure from her tongue inevitably staunched the flow. Like every other time, when the blood was so diluted by the spit she'd slathered over his skin that she couldn't even taste it anymore, she continued to lap – but no longer so feverishly. Her muscles began to unbunch and relax, sinking her down onto the ground. She was now aware that her neck ached from the unnatural position in which she held it. Rather than lay back, however, she wrapped her arms around Etim and lifted her shoulders higher from the ground to curl tight around him, to squeeze him, and she rested her chin on his shoulder. Her chin was drenched with her own saliva, and her black lips glistened with it; drool fell down in strings connecting her to him. She'd been breathing heavily the entire time, alternating between flaring nostrils and soft pants from her jaws.

“Etim, Etim dear,” she whispered, licking ineffectually at her messy lips (her tongue did not get past her twisted teeth) and then letting her jaw hang slack while she panted. Her paw still cradled his face, holding him against her neck. “Are you hurting?”

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

A lifetime in House Rrarringk had obviated the need for Etim to actually see the colorful feather-frond howrfs emerge from the channels in Hhaardha's horns, but they were pretty enough to look at that he stole a moment of staring while she peeked about -- to make sure nobody was there to watch, perhaps? Those little fronds licked the smooth lip of horn as they emerged, much as the leading tip of a water-snail's foot would glide the rounded edge of their shell. Glistening gris twinkled along the edge, and reflex had him breathing deeply even before he could have told himself to do so.

His heart pounded. The excitement of anticipation flooded him - not for the bite or the bleeding, of course, but for the delightful, relaxing bliss of the drug she'd flood the air with. It wasn't quite like being in a gris tent. Outdoors like this, it wouldn't be so thick in the air, and Hhaardha may not have been trained for it, been a professional narcoticist, but he already knew just how strong her gris could be when her emotion - her desire, whatever it was - was most piqued. He couldn't help the smile that parted his lips, and didn't try to. Hands roaming over his naked body and squeezing at him were always enough to produce a partial erection - to thicken him if not make him hard - to bring color to his chest and neck and make his lips begin to plump, but the excitement of the high her howrfs promised was enough to make him arch, his back, to fill him to firmness, to make him naturally want to press into her furry body.

The moan that vibrated from his chest and throat into hers when her muzzle found the corner of his throat was just slightly exaggerated. That, too, was reflex. It wasn't meant to be a lie, but he had been taught to appeal to all of his s'gath's senses, and to let her know when he was enjoying her in turn; he had always been delighted when Shayn began to kiss him in those little nooks and corners. Of course Hhaardha's nuzzling meant the pricks and frequent scrapes of thorn-teeth, but he knew that, knew it was his job to minimize that as much as possible. How could she do as she needed if she was always fussing over whether he was hurt?

The first drag of her tongue-tip across his neck brought a throaty laugh and a little bit of a shift on her lap, so she could relax and wouldn't have to hook under his shoulder at that angle, but she only squeezed him tighter. That, perhaps curiously, made his arousal that much more obvious, more intrusive, against her belly. The laugh fell apart into another moan, this time not faked but bellowed out of his lungs a little more dramatically due to her squeeze, and his own hands, which had just begun to try to wrap around her, now dug into her fur to hold on.

.

Just at the back of his throat, stifled by his tongue in the roof of his mouth, Etim 'squeaked' at the bite, a little acute sound that wasn't meant to escape but surprised him, too. It was like he'd been basking in a warm pool and someone had thrown a bucket of fresh water over his head. It brought him half out of the lovely torpor of the gris-trance, that sharp pain in his shoulder, but he made himself let go of her fur, let his arms slide away, and summoned the effort to make sure his next sound was another pleased moan. He'd convince himself, even if nobody else, that he was back into the swaddling warmth of her gris.

"Hunnh…" he breathed out when she finally let go and began petting him.

"I- I like your kisses," he said a minute later, his voice faltering and distracted. He chuckled again, less certain than before, but his whole body moved with him as he brought his loose arm between them, first to pet through the fine, wet hair on her belly, and then to find his erection between them and squeeze it, then begin gently tugging at it. "Is this okay?" He asked at a murmur.

Though he stopped briefly when she finally pulled away and shifted, his legs came together, knees pressing tight, and his hand didn't leave where it had been. "No, not enough to worry about." It was a lie - of course it hurt, and still stung - all of the licking after the bite just made the wounds raw - but he knew there would cathum for the wounds later or something almost as good, and of course he didn't want her to think about it. "Your gris takes away the pain. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I'm on the edge of sleep, wrapped up in a blanket in the morning in a bed that smells like you. Do you mind much if I finish? I can go back into the water if you want. But I'd like you to hold me."

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

A meal of solid food settling in her belly might have made Hhaardha sleepy. A meal of blood did the opposite – she felt herself coming fully to life. A part of her mind that had not been fully engaged before was sitting up and taking notice of a world that burst into vibrant detail, color, smell. It wasn't only because the hunger pains which permeated every waking moment ebbed away. A deep satisfaction spread across her from the inside out, along with a wonderful sense of togetherness, of fullness. Swallowing Etim's blood joined them more surely than sex ever would. Etim was hers, totally hers – she truly felt that, now. Even if it was a fact she had known, in the moment Hhaardha really felt that it was true, deep in her bones. (It did not matter that she felt like this every time she drank from Etim. Much like an orgasm, the after-effects were always as intense as the times before.)

She sighed in utter bliss, eyelids fluttering but ultimately remaining open and relaxed as she raised her head to gaze across the water. She'd ended up holding onto Etim's butt when he turned onto his side on her belly, her big paw splayed wide, pads exerting gentle pressure on the bottom of his cheeks to really grip him. She had only to lightly tense her fingers and tighten her grip by just that much more to enjoy the squishiness of displaced fat and then the firmness of his muscle underneath. It was a perfect ass, really – it fit into her palm so nicely, and it was hers to touch as she wanted. She did that now, giving him an appreciative pat on the bottom before her fingers found their holds again, some of them under the curve of his cheeks like he was a rock wall she had to get a good grip on.

It charged Hhaardha in a new way when his arousal reached her nose. Muscles deep in her groin that she was rarely aware of relaxed; other tissues expanded to leave her feeling swollen and achy between the legs. Without looking, she understood the motions of his hand, which she could feel against her belly.

“'Course I don't mind that,” she said lightly, dreamily, almost laughing. “I can hold you. I love to hold you. It's my favorite thing.” She draped her free arm across his shoulder so she could hug him tight. She could feel the movements of his wrist translate up through that shoulder, even if he wasn't moving his entire arm. (And wouldn't have been able to, now that her heavy arm was pinning him.)

“I'm not letting you off into the water,” she said, bright eyes rolling down to look at him, even though she couldn't see much – mostly the top of his head, and her own arm blocking the view. Her tail curled up out of the water and smacked wetly down with renewed vigor, with a playfulness she had not felt in a long time. She loosened her hold around his upper body only to find his penis with her fingertips, to steal it from his hand and press it onto her belly while her hips rolled beneath him. Her bucking was gentle and done without thought, and after a few moments it turned into minimal squirming. When she spoke again her voice dropped to a husky near-whisper. “I want you in my fur. I want to smell like my Precious.” She petted down the length of his cock with two fingers, just behind her pads so that it was damp fur stroking him instead of rough skin. She couldn't close her hand around him like she might've if he were Rriigkhan – well, she could, but her two fingers were already about equal to five of his.

She leaned forward again until her chin was level with her own collarbone, so she could look past his head and shoulders and get a better view of what was happening on her belly. Her heart beat strong and steady in Etim's ear, but so much quicker than before.

“Do you want help, little one?” she asked softly, no longer playful but truly inquisitive. “Or simply to be held?”

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

How good it felt to be held, to be wanted. Ssringkha and Shayn chasing him through their chambers while he shrieked and laughed, while they made grabby hands and vague threats about 'getting' him, and he made sure that - even if he was fast and spry enough then that he could have easily escaped them - he made sure they did… It was so vivid, and still felt like a memory of a distant life. At the end, it was painfully obvious to him that he wanted them more than they him, and that disrupted the dynamic. The last time he lay across Shayn's belly, her hands stroked his head and back reassuringly, rather than exploring his body; it had been the same way for the last dozen years, too.

Back when the Rrarringks chased him around their home, he could run around fully aroused with nothing more than the likelihood of being caught to fill him with vigor. Now, moments like this were special. It might have been her strange hunger that drove Hhaardha to him - at least in part - but he was still wanted, cherished, and he would give give give, as much as she wanted, to be able to ride the twin blisses of her howrfs and the intensity of her desire. Her pats brought happy sighs from him, but when her big paws went groping he'd wriggle a bit back into her palm to make sure she knew whatever she could grab was hers.

The motion of his lower arm and wrist had grown less rhythmic as they spoke, but now and again there would be a few even movements again, like he'd just start to remember, and then forget again. "Good," was half his answer to not being freed to the water; the other half was twisting his neck and stretching to press his lips to the closest bit of her he could - her chest, and then her arm. His hand made way for her, but her big mitt seemed to cover half his hips, to make him look even smaller. Not that a Rriigkhan couldn't be delicate and even somewhat dexterous, but there were just things they couldn't do without fingers.

And it didn't matter. Etim's hand formed behind hers, a teaspoon over a ladle, shaping over her middle two knuckles. The goal wasn't to guide her hand, but just to emphasize, to participate. With the gentle bucking of her belly, the slide of the cleavage between her pads, and his own buttocks clenching to press him into her, his extra participation wasn't necessary, but at this point it was unavoidable.

A broad, closed-lipped grin spread across his face at her confession, and he responded with another kiss before closing his eyes and furrowing his brows like he was concentrating.

"You big silly thing." One eye cracked open, rolled up to spy part of her under his white eyebrow. There was a hint of humor in his voice, too - especially at first - but too much emphasis not to be more serious. "Of course I want you to touch me. I dream of it. Why do you think I was feeling so excited already? Because you are holding me. Because your howrfs are in my nose. Because I am against your body without an armor and you're squeezing my bottom. I have not felt like this in so long. I can't help it! But here.” Both of his hands pulled at hers, lifting it away from him so he could bring it to his face. "The water isn't enough after a minute." Neither would this be, perhaps, but it would help: he buried his face in her paws to run his tongue through the creases of her paw, not to taste or lap or titillate (though all of those appealed at the moment) but to transfer saliva. Then he brought her back down into places so her hand fit over him like a loincloth, and his penis would fit between her two middle fingers.

Closing his eyes again, he arched his head back, moaned a little, and began working his hips again before the firmness could begin to fade. "When you touch me… When you kiss me. I feel everything is just right."

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

A dry panting laugh shook Hhaardha's belly, and her arms held onto him tighter so he wouldn't slide off while she laughed. Her entire body thrummed with an energizing glee that she could hardly contain. It felt like the emotion could burst out of her.

“Maybe I am silly,” she said, tail wagging so hard she thought she could sprain it. She let it curl in tighter so it wouldn't lay in the water anymore, but curved up onto the stony mud so it could whap the ground freely. She was going to need a second bath when this over. Where her backside sat just above the waterline, where the mud was wet, her fur was clumping up with the stuff.

“If I'm cautious, it's because I feel like I'm having a dream! That you're mine, all mine – I never thought something so wonderful could ever happen. Okay, that's enough of that sappy talk. It isn't very sensual.” She sucked in a small, sharp breath when his tongue first touched her pads, and a tensing of the muscles in her cheeks turned her eyes into slits. Her palm opened and closed gently around his face while he licked. Though she let him guide her hand where he wanted, her fingers also moved on their own, to stroke a pad over the edge of his ear or to run the side of a knuckle along his jaw. Her claws stretched out to touch his skin but slipped easily back into their sheathes at the lightest pressure. A shiver hunched her shoulders when he ran his tongue into a crease just so. It didn't tickle, exactly, but it was strange, wet, novel. It reminded her of his kisses, and what the human mouth could do that a Rriigkhan's could not.

By the time he'd brought her paw down to cup his groin she was breathing deep and slow, gazing glassily down at him from eyes half-lidded. The movements of her tail had slowed, the end of it now only occasionally lifting and falling softly. She herself moaned when his penis slipped between her fingers, though it was more of a mewl, a tiny “hmm,” that she hadn't expected to make high up in her throat. Those two fingers moved as if she were drumming them on a surface, though slowly, and mostly for her own benefit so she could feel that he was stiff. His penis was seen only in glances, a bit of glistening pink peeking up from between her fingers sometimes, but she could always feel him rubbing against her wet fur. When her drumming stopped she squeezed him the way she might grasp an object between her knuckles to pick it up if it was too delicate a thing to ruin with her claws.

“Do you know how sexy you are, Etim?” she asked in a low voice, mesmerized by the visual treat that was Etim humping her paw. To emphasize her point, the paw on his bottom reached lower to follow his thigh, to squeeze the underside of it where he was meatiest. Her fingers stretched out so that her pads could just brush the backside of his knee, where the skin was so soft. “Someday,” she sighed dreamily, “When we've no walking to do, I'm going to bite the inside of this thigh... I'm going to nibble these calves... They've been getting so firm.” She brought her knees together to trap his legs between them, to squeeze them with her thighs, and subtly bucked her hips to rub her groin up against him. She could smell her own spicy arousal, although Etim probably still only noticed her gris.

Her neck arched to bring her muzzle in close to his ear, or as close as she dared – she rested the back of her jaw on his head so her sharp teeth would not touch him.

“I've got something wetter than water for you, Etim,” she husked to him. “Wetter than gris. Could you smell it, all these nights, with your little human nose? How much I wanted you? Do you know how I dreamed about putting you down between my legs, but never could? Oh, it's going to be so nice these coming days, everything I'm going to do to you, and you to me! I'm finally going to lavish my Precious Pet with all the attention he deserves.” While she spoke her free hand explored him, following the curve of his thigh around to the top so she could smooth her open palm up and over his hip, then his belly. They were both squirming, grinding – sometimes at cross purposes, when Hhaardha squeezed her thighs together to get a little stimulation between her legs – and sometimes not synchronized, but that was okay. Every movement of Etim on her belly and between her fingers was so sensual that Hhaardha could hardly stand it.

She was also exaggerating, a little. She'd often felt a buzz of arousal when Etim was cradled in her arms at night, but she'd been too busy paying attention to everything she could hear and smell to really focus on him. She had not ever been as excited as she was now. Certainly never so wet.

She suspected her paw might be getting too dry again, so Hhaardha lifted her palm to her muzzle to slather her pads with her own broad tongue, after first letting the saliva pool in her jaw. When the fur between her fingers was thoroughly drenched she cupped him again, smothering him in warmth and moisture, sandwiching his cock between two wet fingers.

“There we go,” she cooed near his ear. By now Etim was on his back, and the hand on his belly slid up to stroke pink fingertips over his chest. She enjoyed dragging her pads across the swell of muscle and into the subtle valley between his pecs. She smiled to herself when her pads first brushed over a nipple, and on the second pass of her fingers she stopped to press onto that little button. She was going to nibble him here, too – someday soon.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

"Hmmm," Etim answered, a wide smile stretching across his face, and already-closed eyes squinched up a little tighter. He'd considered giving her a cockier answer (Of course I know how sexy I am) and the thought of being so brassy made the corners of his lips turn up, but he held his tongue as she continued instead. Besides, there was plenty to focus on as he pushed between her fingers, letting his mind flick rapidly between images and sounds and smells conjured by the feeling, reinforced by Hhaardha right there.

"Someday soon?" Until a few moments had passed, it didn't occur to him that she'd possibly meant bite in the same way that she'd bitten him just minute earlier, that there may be good reason for waiting until he wouldn't have to use the leg much afterward. All he could think about was the sort of wrestling, nibbling, and tickling they might do in a bed together - and her legs closing around him didn't help that. "Don't wait too long, Lovely Spots. I might go all soft again after we've been here a while. And… and… I don't want you to wait too long."

Such wonderfully teasing words slithered into his ear! Etim squirmed, so his grin turned this way and that like cistern drain hose slipped free, and his outbreaths were more often moans than pants. "Yes," he gasped, too distracted to make a real conversation about it, but he had smelled her. Whether it was just sweat in her pads or her flavor of gris or sweating leather in her armor, he hadn't been totally sure, but there was a spicy, salty Hhaardha scent he'd become just as familiar with as Shayn's ever was. That he would imagine was for him, that he'd find out more about when his body didn't feel like a rope dragged back and forth across a cleat all day. The smell was there now, too, just a hint in the back of his nose and the center of his tongue.

So close. He was so close when she took her hand away, and squeezed his knees together with the need. He slipped his own hand in quickly to take her place, using a squeezing, udder-milking motion instead of trying to copy the sensation from her, but he relinquished the spot immediately. "Ooohhh." He breathed out, craning his head off to one side and opening up his neck just as he had for her earlier.

Etim had envisioned flipping over, so he'd release on her belly and get it all in her fur as she'd asked, but when the moment came that his toes began to curl and his shoulders wanted to arch back and make a footbridge of his body, he grabbed at her arm instead, clutching her forearm to his sternum and holding her wrist just so he could grind up into the top of the valley between her fingers. "Oh, oh, Oh!" His cheeks puffed out and his brows climbed to a point into the middle, like he really couldn't believe this was happening.

The first pulse was a string with more force behind it than he could remember for years, enough that later he'd remember it was amazement. Nearly an entire bodylength, it pattered down into the water with a satisfying piddleploot. Still breathing just heavily, he arched and squirmed through a few more, gentler pulses that ebbed out between Hhaardha's fingers. His penis move on it own, stretching and recoiling, like it was trying to fling the seed out further, but after that first tremendous shot the rest barely made any distance at all, or just oozed down past the flushed pink head.

.

A laugh-chuckle escaped Etim somewhere in the middle, but once he'd licked his lips and turned his head back the other way to press his cheek and an eye onto Hhaardha's damp fur, it settled down to a controlled, vocalized outbreath, satisfied, "Hnnn," sounds that continued even after he was no longer pumping. A few moments longer and he began petting Hhaardha's arm without letting go of it, and turning a little more to lay on his side again. "Mmm. That felt really good. I wish we could just lay down and sleep right now."

They couldn't, of course. He knew that, and he knew there wasn't any way for Hhaardha to make that happen, nor would it be fair to her. But greedily he stole as many more moments as he could, laying across her so satisfied.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

The moment Etim gripped her arm was the moment Hhaardha stilled with fingers tensed to provide something tight for him to thrust up into. Her heart jumped when she realized he was having an orgasm. The wild wet throb between her legs intensified in a way Hhaardha had forgotten was possible – she felt that a single touch could drive her over the edge, too. She answered his exclamations with her own needy whine, and although the movements of her arm had stopped completely her hips continued to shift minutely from left to right, her buttocks clenching and unclenching to raise her pelvis. She simply could not keep still entirely. Heat and need consumed her, turned her all jittery.

When it was all over her paw relaxed around his cock and rested more heavily over his crotch as her arm relaxed. She could feel the wet sticky mess of seed gobbed in her fur, and sticking his softening flesh to her pads. Though Etim relaxed after it was done – she could feel his body slacken on top of hers – Hhaardha was anything but. Her outbreaths were noisy and rapid through her nostrils, abdominals lightly tensing with each cycled breath. She was totally charged, but wanted, more than anything, to be Etim's soft bed to relax on. Her free hand stroked his sweet head softly, the backs of her fingers petting his temple and cheek.

“Gosh, Etim, that was lovely. You put on quite the show for me.” She tucked her chin down to her collar so she could nudge his head with the top of her nose, then tipped her head back again to relieve pressure on her neck. When the tips of her horns touched the ground she let her lids droop over her eyes until she was watching the darkening sky through slits fuzzed by her lashes.

Her howrfs still fanned out from her horns. The sun had sunk low enough that shafts of orange and gold no longer shone through the thicket, and the shadow of the great tree had crept ever forward over the crest of the hill until the light dimmed and its shadow blended with the dark all around. Her gris no longer glistened, but its smell was as powerful as ever. It was not a strong smell, in fact those yeasty aromas could be quite subtle, but like the tinkling of a music box it colored the mood of the evening so distinctly. Those pheromones called Etim to want her. They could heighten the sensation of fur brushing against his skin. They could make the smell of her arousal all the sharper. They might even seem to blunt pain, if only because it could redirect his attention elsewhere.

“If you do fall asleep I'll carry you inside myself and tuck you into bed.” Her voice dropped to a low, soothing murmur reflecting a passive mood she did not at all feel. “I'd wake you up when dinner's ready.” An image bloomed in Hhaardha's mind. In it, she cradled Etim to her chest while she carried him up the slope to the cottage. He would be mostly limp in her arms, except for the hands weakly clutching at her fur. They hadn't fixed up the mattresses yet, but in this little fantasy Hhaardha would lay him down on one of the beds, pull a blanket up to his chin, tuck it in all around his body, and kiss his forehead before going off to start their meal. She almost wished things would play out that way! But that wouldn't happen because she needed to rinse her fur out first. More than that, she was just too antsy.

It was her hands that betrayed her, if nothing else did. The sticky paw cupping his groin moved just enough to squeeze the inside of his thigh, up close to where it joined his body. The fingers stroking his face moved lower so Hhaardha could run the flat of her palm across his chest, all of her pads closely following the contours of his muscles. There was an obvious hunger in those touches. Her tail resumed its tapping on the beach; her hips shifted. With her toes dug down into the mud in the water, each leg tensed in turn, almost like she was having a dream of walking without fully playing it out. It was maddening, the wet gliding sensation between her legs and the lack of being touched. No, it wasn't the same as being thirsty, not even close! But there was something missing all the same.

Hhaardha went on petting his chest and fidgeting restlessly (though her movements were all so tiny; she wasn't trying to disturb him!) for several long moments before she couldn't take it anymore. She brought her sticky paw to her muzzle to inhale the scent more deeply before she wiped her pads clean on her own body, thick fingers plowing furrows through her fur as her paw moved up over the curve of her ribs and then her chest. She didn't really know why she was doing that – days ago, Hhaardha would never have thought of this, but in the moment it felt unbelievably sexy to have his jism in her fur, and anyway she was going to wash it off before it could get crusty.

Her legs fell apart to give him ample room to slide down between them and her paws rubbed back and forth over his shoulders, squeezing him slowly, exerting light pressure on the tops of his shoulders with the heels of her paws as she did so. She wasn't shoving him, but she was gently urging him down.

“Etim,” she said, her voice thin and high. She lifted her head up to peer down her body at him through lidded eyes, her jaw open and working slightly with every breath. Her tongue moved listlessly in her mouth, pressing to the roof of feeling over the duller teeth that pointed inward. She wanted to kiss him, but he was too far away now. “I've never wanted you as badly as I do right now. Touch me, would you?” When he was between her legs her thighs closed on him, squeezing, squeezing, before those muscles relaxed and she let her legs part again so he could have space to move. She just had to do it. Squeezing gave her a little bit of stimulation.

She felt bad about where they were. Her butt was on the beach, but her ankles were submerged in the lapping water, and if Etim got down between her legs he'd be kneeling in the stones. It was far from an ideal spot for any sort of sexual activity. Her fur above the waterline was still damp, no longer sticking together in thin clumps but beginning to regain a fluffy texture. Because the fur on her underside was so pale a yellow her skin was pink underneath – a blush seen on the inside of her thighs and under the velvet of her teats. It meant, too, that the folds of her vulva were very pink (with a black freckle here or there) just like the pads on all of her paws. Each flattish breast hung to its respective side just above her hip bones. Already the nipples stood erect.

He'd already seen it, of course, but her dark rosettes did trail down the length of her body – down along her flanks in that zone of bright yellow that transitioned to gold along her backside, then a darker copper down the very center of her spine. The spots stopped above her knees, but speckled the sides of her tail for another two feet before petering out into tiny dots.

“I didn't forget you said you'd count all my spots!” she said, then laughed breathily. “But not tonight, right?”

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

"No, no," Etim responded lazily. Those words couldn't really be slurred, but he let his mouth be a bit sloppy anyway, so it could keep the broad smile spreading to his cheeks without expending the extra effort. "I'm not actually going to go to sleep. It's just that lovely, lazy, afternoon nap feeling, sleeping in a sunny spot, except you're the warm sun." He wouldn't leave her with all the work to do, not when there weren't any servants fussing about to help, but convincing her to laze about a bit indoors, away from the elements and the Great Beasts, sounded lovely. They could light a fire beneath an actual chimney with the seasoned wood in the pantry, and he would feast on pickled things whenever the gnawing pit in his stomach overcame his desire to sprawl with her.

The little movements of her paws weren't lost on him, but the translation was - at least at first. For several long moments he continued to let his fingertips ruffle through the fur on her chest while she groped and kneaded. One voice in his head chided him for not waiting until they could be inside together and properly couple, but it hadn't been like that, had it? Hhaardha had what she wanted most from him, and he got to luxuriate in the feelings she gave him in return, and it had all been rather spontaneous. Even now, though, he still felt that kind of almost cloying desire for her, that want to be near her, to touch her, to kiss her. Some s'gath, and definitely some servants talked as if they could read gris-scent like a language, to interpret and read between the lines, but he'd always thought that counterproductive and unproductive. Whether she knew she was doing it or not, her body wanted him close to her still. Even if she just wanted to drink from him again. It was a little cost to pay. She talked sometimes about him becoming weak if she drank too much, but he hadn't seen any sign of that, and how could he become weak with so much food here?

Even when she spread her legs, he didn't pick up on the hint - at first he just adjusted to make sure there was a thigh to support him. But the little nudges, and her breathing, and finding her teat already thick with a chance brush of the side of his foot clued him in just before she said his name. Lifting his head, he looked up at her with wide eyes, which slowly hooded while a toothy grin spread across his face.

"Lovely Spots, you could not sing a sweeter song for my ears," he crooned up at her, as he turned fully so his belly pressed to hers. "Of course I will touch you." His lips pressed into the fine fur of her belly, and when her thighs closed on him, squeezing around his ribs under his arms, he laughed and grinned even while his face flushed pink.

Finding a comfortable place on the stony bank… There was no comfortable place on the stony bank, but it hardly mattered, did it? He'd slept on knobby ground and twisted his ankles on rutted paths; even if his knees were bony, he wasn't so heavy (even lighter after these last couple of weeks), and Hhaardha could still take a lot of his weight.

His gaze slithered down her body after his chest had, and while he nibbled his lips as they lingered at her teats, he stopped entirely between her thighs and narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. Teasing her when she was already this needy was a terrible thing to do, but there was a proper way to this. Shayn would have taken his whole hand into her mouth to wet it, and he nearly asked Hhaardha to do the same before realizing better. Instead, both of his hands slid up the inside of her thighs, pushing hard there not to spread her wide but to give her something to squeeze back on, then cupped her vulva entirely, kneading the outer labia with the whole of his palms and fingers.

One hand came away so he could stick all four of his fingers in his mouth together, but Etim's jaw wasn't so big that he could take to the last knuckle, and he wasn't going to waste more time licking his hand. Carefully (he didn't have his nail polisher or lotion for this trip), Etim lined up his knife of a hand with her channel and began working it in, keeping it rigid, so all four fingers and his palm made one flat surface. At the relative size of a human male and Rriigkhan female, it was still a snug fit, but since his fingers tapered toward his palm, he could move slowly if she withdrew. His thumb remained up, though, so once he was worked in, the pad of his thumbtip would be just below her clitoris, giving her something to grind onto.

The left hand might come back to help, too, but for now it left to gather up her left teat, to give it a squeeze before he found it with his mouth. Wet lips and tongue surrounded it to gently tug and squeeze.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

With Etim safely off her belly and between her legs Hhaardha sat up a little, first with her elbows on the ground propping her up, but soon after she worked herself further up with her palms on the dirt. A crease appeared on her belly where she almost folded to look down her body, to watch the human with a desirous gaze that was almost pained – forehead knitted, ears flat, cheeks tensed and open jaw working with every soft breath. In the water, one ankle hooked another, and gingerly she rested them over the backs of his calves so her thighs were splayed.

“Hnk-” It was a little sound that caught high in the back of her throat before she cut it off when Etim first touched her. Being touched, finally, was a relief in its own way, a soothing balm on burning skin. His fingers slid easily against her slicked labia. When she felt him working past the resisting ring of muscle – the gradual stretching was such a nice sensation, with his fingers rubbing and sliding and creating more pressure the deeper his fingers sank – she whined and angled her muzzle to one side, golden eyes cutting back to watch him from under half-closed lids.

The muscles in her legs twitched; pale thighs tensed on either side of him, claws stretched from their sheathes and half retracted again with the curling of her toes. Her buttocks tensed to lift her groin, to buck up against his hand, but slowly and with restraint. She was consumed with the need to move, to get his fingers rubbing against her insides. At first movement was some involuntary reflex, but when Hhaardha realized how nice it felt her grinding fell into a rhythm that involved minimal rocking of her hips. It was just enough movement to feel a variation in pressure on the inside, and for her clit to smush up against his thumb on the outside. That slow sawing of his hand worked the wet out of her until the fur below her vulva was drenched with it.

“Ah, Little Precious,” she breathed. Etim would feel her living heat occasionally grip his fingers with weak contractions. She wanted to say more, and her hands ached to touch him, but she was helpless to do anything but grind on his hand. His perfect sexy hand. Everything was so perfect! Etim was always attractive to her, of course, but seen through the rosy tint of arousal he glowed.

Her legs squirmed and she lost her rhythm for a moment when he leaned down to take a teat into his mouth. Since she could no longer watch his face anyway, Hhaardha pressed her muzzle to her shoulder and closed her eyes. Her tail spoke nonsense; occasionally the plumy end twitched, or a spasm ran down its length, but otherwise it lay still and too heavy to move. In her mind she saw Etim's body – how gracefully he moved the first night they'd met, when he'd presented her with that dish of eggs so elegantly. She saw the way he crouched to stir the pot or poke the fire, how the tendons in his arm would flex as he reached out. She saw the way his hands moved over his own body when he bathed and the subtle curves in his back and buttocks. That's mine, she thought, Mine forever.

“We'll do this on a bed next time, you know,” she said. Her voice had lost all its usual smoothness and Hhaardha-cadence; it was a blunt but breathy proclamation. “I'm going to put you on my belly like we're cuddling but you'll be inside me down between my thighs and we'll move together like this and it'll be so nice. I'm going to hold you all the time, I'm going to never let you go Etim, not until I have to, I'm gonna squeeze you tight 'til you're sick of me. I'm gonna stretch you out flat on your back and hold your wrists while I lick and nibble every part of you because you're mine. I'm gonna hold your thighs apart while I kiss that soft white flesh and you tug on my fur with those strong little hands.” She realized that she was babbling, and only describing little snippets of fantasies that flashed through her mind without fully explaining them, but she saw each one so clearly. She could hear his laughter and feel his squirming when he tried (or affected to try) to break out of her grip while she held him down and nibbled at his belly. She could imagine him down between her thighs, pumping into her while she offered him her hands to hold onto. The expressions on his face!

“Ah. Ah!” Hhaardha squeaked, realizing she was going to orgasm sooner than she'd thought. Her claws flexed and dug into the mud – it was satisfying to slice through something, although that was the least of the sensations she focused on now. All of her attention left her fantasies to gather on Etim's hand, on the explosions of bliss each time her hips rocked with a sudden desperate fervor. They were relentless twin pleasures, one in her clit when her hips lifted and one springing from the pressure inside when her hips tilted down. Her crossed legs tightened around him until her calves were under his butt and her thighs jerked up, quivering like the flapping wings of a butterfly. Her head lifted so she could watch him, expression transforming from one of dumb, sleepy confusion to one of startlement – eyes growing wide, ears lifting, jaw opening wider.

“Etim!” It was another embarrassingly squeaky sound followed by a gasp as she rode out the waves of the orgasm. Her thighs almost snapped shut on him – they quivered, the muscles clenching and relaxing just as she clenched around his fingers inside. Her thighs themselves squeezed him in a furry embrace before relaxing, falling open, and coming up to squeeze again. There was almost no rhythm in the movement of her hips. They rocked and swiveled erratically. When the orgasm was fading, the last faint aftershocks pulsing through her insides, she continued to grind on him to wring out every last drop of pleasure to be had. There was no longer an intense pleasure or any building up, but it was just plain good. Good to have some part of Etim inside some part of her.

When her grinding slowed to nothing she was panting, chest rising and falling rapidly as a slack, completely sated expression eased away the surprise. Her ears were still swiveled toward him but now they sagged. Her howrfs receded tiredly into her horns, leaving their edges slick with gris. Hhaardha closed her thighs around him again – this time purposefully, gently, and used her legs locked under his butt to tighten the embrace.

“That's good, that's good, it's enough now,” she panted, dropping back onto her elbows again and angling her muzzle to the sky. Her ears twitched upright and she dropped her eyes to gaze dopily at him, the corners of her mouth barely lifting. Every single part of her body wanted to go slack now, but she couldn't, not here. Her legs gradually eased around him to let him up. “That was good. Thank you, Etim. Come... Come lay on me for just a little moment. Then we'll clean up. But first, just for a moment, let me pet you.”

And she did need to clean up. She had dirt on her arms and her entire backside from being on the ground, and she was a total wet mess between her legs – when Etim's fingers came out the pink folds remained splayed, sloppily disarranged. She was soaked. But cleaning up could wait.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

'Enough' was the magic word for Etim to let his hand fall away. Without really thinking about it, he wiped his fingers along his belly, the underside of his arm where she'd dripped along his side, and - once it had occurred to him, sucked at the grooves in the back of his knuckles. He wore a broad, proud smile that was practically plastered on and had been for the last few minutes, but as weary as he felt before, now his body had decided that it really would simply give up on doing anything more useful and relax. His arm was tired - sore from using muscles he hadn't used in some time to provide a sturdy hand for Hhaardha to push against, which had been getting an entirely different kind of use on the road.

He was terribly messy - not from the sex itself as much as crouching on the stony bank and everything before, but without a second thought for it, Etim crawled up onto Hhaardha's belly as requested. Then again, he would have done it even if she hadn't asked, even if he thought she might be newly invigorated and ready to tackle the detritus inside the house. Even if it would have been completely selfish, there was no missing a lie-down across her furry belly afterward. Were he truly worried about being messy, he might have curled up on his side, but Etim tucked his head under her chin and lay prone across her, arms up on her chest and collarbones, legs spread enough so his feet fell to either side of her waist.

"For a long moment," he suggested, and reached as her arms came to pet him, so one would go up to his head.

And though he had no more intention of sleeping there atop her than he had a few minutes earlier, there was such a satisfying sense of completion now, of earned weariness, of safety now that they had a home, a place he knew they would be tomorrow and the next day. It was no Rrarringk Stand, even once they tidied it up, but after weeks of walking and being carried, this House Undertree was the most delightful think he could imagine. And imagining it put a smile on his face as his breath steadied out into an even rhythm, as his arms gave her little squeezes to forestall the impending, and the muscles around his eyes relaxed.

There would be the matter of rehanging the guest-room door, of course, to make sure animals didn't come in and out, even if for tonight it simply meant propping it up in place and security it. It would mean moving as much as possible of the furniture and knickknacks that could be moved into the two side rooms, with maybe just the rocking chair staying by the hearth for tonight. As wonderful as a bed would be when it was restuffed with all the insects and spiders beaten out, just a night warm by a proper fire where they could both sleep deeply would be a blessing. And once Etim swept the main floor and Hhaardha chased out all the cobwebs and moved out what was dryrotten and couldn’t be restored, they would have to raid the pantry. Even if two thirds of it had spoiled - and he knew that preserves at the Stand would often be held a few years, not just a season - There would still be enough for a feast without being wasteful. There would be roots to turn up and fish to catch, and next year a garden!

His breath came out in steady, pleased moans against her chest.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Hhaardha's tired tail thumped in the water when Etim redirected her hand. She couldn't muster up the same energy to animate her face beyond a crinkle in her nose, instead closing her eyes with a happy sigh and covering his skull with one great paw. Those fingers moved minimally to ruffle through his hair while the other petted mindlessly down the entirety of his backside. Earlier her explorations had been hungry, purposeful. Now her paws moved idly over him, only really taking notice of his particular features when her palm moved low enough that she could fill it, briefly, with his bottom. Hhaardha felt loosened up in the same way a massaged muscle could loosen. She'd forgotten how pleasant that was. Even the wet between her legs was oddly comfortable, perhaps because she knew that mess wouldn't get a chance to dry in her fur.

The temperature was dropping now that the sun had set. The sky was a patchwork of silvery clouds and inky pools in which stars twinkled brilliantly. New sounds, the chirps and cheeps of night insects, had begun to fill the air. Now when something moved in the water the little plunks or sloshing sounds stood out all the more, making Hhaardha's ears twitch with lazy interest. Eventually her eyes cracked open and she stared sleepily into the distance, watching those stars while she petted him.

It was a warm night, but the water was growing cooler and Hhaardha knew they'd better wash themselves before Etim's fragile skin could chill. Even so, she couldn't bring herself to disturb this peaceful moment. The weight of Etim on her chest was so... so...

Perfect. It was his place; he belonged just there.

Suddenly, with no warning at all, her chest swelled with emotion. Hhaardha inhaled sharply but quietly, then slowly let out that breath. Her eyes opened fully, brow furrowing, eyes rolling down to watch what she could see of Etim sprawled on her belly. Her mouth opened wider, but she hesitated before her brow smoothed out. When she finally spoke it was in a soft voice that seemed to blend with the sounds of nature around them.

“I wish I could hold onto this moment forever, but we'll have time enough to hold and be held inside the house, Little Pet. In front of a fire.” As she sat up she let her arms fold around him, scooping Etim up so that when she got on her paws with a huff and a groan she held him against her belly. She waded out just a bit to set him on his feet, carefully, laughing softly because the water felt cold again now to the parts of their bodies that had been out of it for so long. She brushed dirt off his knees and legs and helped Etim do the same to her backside, although this time she paid very little mind to being thorough. As soon as the both of them were generally clean she hefted him up again to carry against her ribs so he would not get his feet dirty on the way to the house. One arm was his seat; the other held his head to her chest.

She hummed as she carried him up the path, occasionally breaking into snippets of a half-remembered song from her youth. It had just occurred to her; she didn't know why.

“Hmmmm-hmmm. When the wind's blowing, hmmm, when it blows. Mmmm mmmm mmm. Take me home. The window's are all dark, Etim, but I can just see the day I come back to a cheery yellow light and I smell you cookin' something in there for us!” She exhausted all of her pep with that exclamation, and then quieted again. “Another stew, do you think? We can drop some things in the pot and get a spot to sleep ready while it cooks. Tomorrow – something fried. Mmm! I have a real appetite, for once...”

She banged the door open with her shoulder and finally let Etim down again. Knowing he would be useless in the dark, she got her own tinderbox from her bag to work on lighting a fire in the hearth. It was not, however, totally black inside the house; they'd opened every window so fresh air circulated freely, and with it just enough light for human eyes to make out gray shapes in the house. Soon, though, the red glow of dried grass became the dancing yellow of split firewood burning steadily.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

"I know, I know." He did know, but Etim still shifted his weight just a smidge, just minimally toward her shoulders to make it that much harder (in other words, not much at all) for her to tip forward and it up. "Who says I have to want what's best, though?" After flashing her a quick grin that flickered between guilt and wickedness, he slid down her arms into the water, and dipped to shoo away some large, bumbly, buzzing flying bugs before splashing water over his body.

"Mmm. One more stew." Admittedly, though, it was all he knew how to make, at least with the food that they would have available to them, everything else would take practice, trial and error, and more energy than he'd be able to summon tonight (not to mention extra food to waste). "Maybe fish stew. There is pickled fish, isn't there? I think I saw a jar that said fish, but maybe it is just wishful thinking. Fish and tubers and some kind of sweet-sour wine and other vegetables and a little bit of flour to make it all thick. Mmm, mmm. Mmm!" he repeated again, in mimicry of her last bit of enthusiasm, and then tried to copy a line of her song, though his singing voice was worse than ever. "Mmmm, mmmm, Take me home!"

Once the fire was crackling at the old, dry wood, and he'd used a poker to draw it down under Hhaardha's old travel pot on the slab at the edge of the hearth (there were pots and kettles in the house, too, but they would all need to be scrubbed out down by the water before he'd flavor a stew with them), Etim took a long splinter of wood whose end was aflame and poked off into the pantry. As he'd remembered, rows and rows of jars, sometimes several deep, lined shelves twice as tall as he was. His impromptu torch revealed a stool nearly the right size for him near the back… near the tempting door to the cellar, where even more food awaited them. Tempting, tempting, he peered at the door for a moment, and thought about the leverage he'd need to pull it open by its strap, but the thought of having to climb back up the ladder with jars in his arm - and fire, too - didn't appeal to him.

.

Most of the scratched bark labels had curled too much to be easily legible, but Etim made a few educated guesses and left the room with jars and a small sack tucked under his arms. Only once he'd stamped out the burning splinter (his feet were sufficiently calloused for it now) did he realize there was a lantern hanging just inside the doorway he could have used all along.

Humming more merrily now that real food was only a few stirs of a pot away, Etim returned to fire. The glow of it flickered against his face, making his silver hair shine golden, highlighting the tanned skin on his cheeks and nose. One by one, he peeled the waxed caps from the crockery jars and sniffed at the inside - sometimes more than once, and then ran his finger inside the rim to taste it - before emptying it out into the pot. Most of the contents were bathed in some kind of liquid - usually a brine or vinegar - but since the sack was full of split beans and crushed peas, he added a bit more from the river bucket to help it come to a boil. "If you're wondering what it's going to taste like, I don't know! But it smells like an adventure, Lovely Spots! And I think it would taste good no matter what is in it at this point. But it's got to bubble a bit. Do you need any help with the nest-making?"

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Seeing that he was taking charge of the cooking, Hhaardha lumbered off into the master bedroom where she already knew some blankets remained in a bottom drawer of the wardrobe. Before stepping into the room she paused with a paw on the jamb, the end of her upcurved tail twitching questioningly as she studied the lumpy dark shape of the mattress inside. No, she wouldn't pull it out – not tonight, not when she didn't know what kind of buggies might be living in the stuffing. She glanced back over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of Etim as he disappeared into the pantry. The corners of her lips drew back and her tail waggled softly in a silent, secret smile that wasn't for his seeing. It felt so natural, so comfortable being naked in the house with him. She idly brushed fingers through the damp fur on her own belly before turning back to the bedroom.

She came out later with a few folded blankets under her arm and several others balled and rumpled in her fists. The largest was thick, squash-orange knitted wool. The second largest had the basic blue and gray zigzag pattern that meant it had probably been knitted at home. Most of the others were thin, solid-color linen blankets that wouldn't have kept away an autumn chill by themselves.

“No fur blankets at all. I'm surprised by that,” Hhaardha said as she spread the thick orange blanket on the floor a few feet back from the hearth, then doubled it up on itself so it would create a softer surface for them to lay on. Her legs didn't want soft like her back did – they could hang off on the floor. The second heavy blanket she laid atop the first. “Soon as I have time to spare, you know, after the roof is fixed and all that, I'll be skinning what I hunt, and you can bet I'm gonna make the plushest blanket ever to touch your skin. Doesn't matter how pokey the filling in a mattress might be when you've got fur draped over it. Or, you know – you can just sleep on me.” She threw the rest of the blankets down in a messy pile atop the others, then dropped herself heavily into the rocking chair after dragging it just a little so it stood beside their “bed” on the floor.

As soon as her weight came off her paws her eyes closed and a groan eased out of her, entire body slackening with her hands draped heavily over the armrests. After only a few seconds she felt that she could fall asleep sitting there, even though every time Etim opened a jar the smell of those raw ingredients reminded her of the emptiness in her guts. After a moment her brows lifted though her eyes were still shut, then snapped open wide. She blinked rapidly at the fire then glanced around for her bag, leaning forward slightly. She crossed her legs at the ankles and tucked them under the chair when it rocked forward, pads on the ground so she could control the rock.

“Oh. Oh!” she moaned theatrically, though not loudly, and gestured tiredly to her bag. Her body felt simply too heavy to lift out of the chair again. “Please, little dear, my medicine bag and my mortar? And the small skin? I'll mix up your cathum while you stir that. Hopefully, soon, I will be able to grow my own. I'll save some seeds from this last pod and we'll see if they'll grow. I don't see why they shouldn't. Thank you, thank you.” Tenderly, and with a soft smile shining in squinting eyes she patted Etim's head before he left again to finish emptying out the jars. His humming was all the music she could ever want, and she went about the familiar task of grinding up one of those last hard yellow seeds while rocking herself just a little. Her tail was threaded through a gap at the back and lay half-curled over one of the rockers.

When the cathum was ground and mixed with a little bit of water to make a paste, Hhaardha set all of her kit on a shelf that she could just reach by leaning aside in the chair and stretching out her arm. The mortar she cradled in her lap.

“No, no,” she said when Etim was finally finished with his work. “You can arrange the smaller blankets however you want, though, if you get cold tonight. Stars, that stew smells lovely, Pet! I'm sure your selections will be the tastiest thing we've ever had. I can hardly wait; I might want to eat it while those beans are still hard as rocks. Is your bite stinging at all? Come, turn around.” She beckoned Etim to her with crooking fingers. Even though it was totally unnecessary for her to do so, her hands turned him till his back faced her. After her left paw swept his hair out of her way it settled on his shoulder, while with the other dipped a fingerpad into the cathum to smear over the punctures on that muscle that stretched from neck to shoulder. The excess she wiped on his skin nearby, on the smaller marks that probably didn't really hurt like the big one did. She let his damp hair fall back into place when she leaned forward to set the mortar on the ground near her feet.

As she sat up again Hhaardha scooped him up easily, setting Etim sideways across her thighs, her left arm circling his waist so she could snug him tight to her body. Her right forearm she held horizontally at the level of her sternum, paw dangling on the end of it, but with a single knobby, long-clawed finger lifted toward Etim to take hold of. How she loved holding onto his tiny hands! Her thumb closed over his hand and her fist lowered so that their hands rested on Etim's own thigh. With her other hand splayed over his belly so he was safely cradled in the crook of her arm, Hhaardha began to rock them.

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"I don't really notice it all," Etim said as he tucked in his chin and raised his brows to glance down at the bite wound. It wasn't completely a lie. His body was full of little aches and pains that didn't really merit more attention than any other part, and it would settle in among the other pains by tomorrow. In the water it had stung, but two weeks had done quite a bit to change his view of what to complain about. Once they could lie down for good for the evening, he might check on it, but securing basic needs mattered more than anything else. Still, he went to fetch the cathum.

And when he stopped for her, felt her smear it on, he drew a quick, sharp note through his nose when she touched the main wound. But it was most important - most important of anything - that he didn't make her feel guilty about it. She was so tender about it, so careful, so certain she would be rejected for it. It was his job, obviously, to allay her fears. When she was done, Etim's shoulder rolled forward and then backward and jiggled as though to prove that it was better than ever.

Toes pushing off the stones to aid with her pull into her lap, he settled in and twisted his shoulders as he worked his other hand across her chest and under the opposite arm, to steal the warmth under her pit, against her ribs. Snuggly as it was, his eyes flashed and his tone still alert and even a bit excited, since half of his attention was on the burbling of the pot, and the smell that was beginning to waft out of it. “Hah! You wouldn't be eating it then, unless you wanted to chip a tooth! I will have to blow on it and ladle it down your throat. But I might do the very same thing."

His fist squeezed a little around her finger. "I don't understand why they are so hard. I have eaten beans right from the garden when they are soft. And I have eaten cooked beans and they have been soft. But these are clicking around like little pebbles. Maybe they are meant to be ground into a flour, instead. Is there bean bread? I haven't heard of it. Why did I never learn these things before?! I like food even more than I like music, and I learned all about that.”

After a sigh, he shouldered into Hhaardha gently to add his own momentum to the rocking, however little difference it made. "There is a lot of work to do here," he said a bit more gravely. "Right now, just as it is, it is better than sleeping under the sky, or in a cave. No big beasts are going to get us here. There is a hearth, there is food. But to make it nice - to make it our own little stand, that will be a lot of work. I almost wish whoever lived here before was still here and alive - I don't wish they were dead, of course - was here to keep it up and we could be a guest and see how nice it must have been. But, maybe work is good. Lottie at Rrarringkh House would say that: I would feel much better about myself if I did something with my hands. She would laugh if she saw this work laid out for me now!"

He turned further to rest his chin on her chest, which would have made it easier to look up at her, except that his lids were mostly closed and his eyes locked to her fur and searched it. "I might be a little bit lazy, Hhaardha, but not entirely. I will work on making this a better place, I promise. I know the idea of being in just one place makes you itchy, but I think it will be nice. I think you'll like it." His hand slipped from under her arm to pat her chest, and he squeezed her finger once more.

"Okay, I am going to stir some more and then put it in a bowl for you. You can smell it, can't you? It smells so rich!" Pushing away, he slipped back down to his feet and over the pot.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Etim might've been more than capable of getting himself out of Hhaardha's lap, but that didn't stop her hands from following him – supporting him as he dropped to his feet, then lingering on his sides until he'd left the reach of her fingertips as she leaned forward and down. She sat upright again with a bittersweet tinge softening the golden gaze that first followed him, then dropped to the floor.

He still didn't understand. Maybe he never would. There was no point explaining again that it wasn't staying in one place that made her itchy – it was the isolation, the lack of other humans about that could supply her with blood when Etim's tiny body had no more offer. It was Hhaardha and her monstrous thirst that would only ever grow. She did not want to ever hurt her Precious.

Hhaardha's gaze dropped lower still, down to her own paws which sat atop her thighs. Her blunt fingertips raked slow furrows through her fur, then smoothed it down. If Hhaardha ever felt that she was no longer safe for Etim to be around, what would she do? The closest city was Lonely Stand. She could never trust a Danghem refuge to see to his safety! She wished –

For not the first time since their journey had begun, Hhaardha wished with all her heart that she had never taken Etim at all. He deserved to be loved. How she wanted to lavish him with love! But he deserved safety, too.

Despite the leaden ball forming in the pit of her belly, Hhaardha forced her head up and her tail to gently wag when Etim returned to her with a steaming bowl that truly smelled more wonderful than anything she could imagine. Her sleepy smile brightened the nearer he came, and when she lifted the large bowl from his hands their fingers brushed and the soft thwap of her tail against the floor was genuine.

“I can smell the fish. It's going to be delicious!”

It was. The brine made the stew saltier than she would have liked, but she could ignore that for the novelty of something different after weeks of eating the same beans and pemmican. Hhaardha ate until her belly hurt and then gathered Etim into her lap again, to tuck him up against her chest and sleepily rock them while they watched the fire crackle.

She must have fallen asleep in the chair. When Hhaardha awoke she was curled on her side on the nest of blankets. Splashes of quivering leaf-dappled sunlight painted the floor. It was almost noon – they had slept so long! As she lay waking up, memory trickled in – of waking up sometime in the night and carrying Etim to the floor, of wrapping his lower body up in a blanket and wrapping her arms tight around him. She remembered existing in her usual half-asleep state for a long time, surging up into semi-consciousness to feel at his body in the dark before going under again. She remembered petting him and murmuring to him. But it seemed that at some point she had slept truly, deeply, for she felt more alert than she had in weeks.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Days, maybe even weeks of cleaning awaited them. Fortunately, in the long light of mid-morning while Etim poked about in the loft and rafters and called back to Hhaardha in the shadows, he didn't find any kind of structural damage - no sagging beams or big cracks, nothing more than the sort of flaking plaster that must have been typical of buildings like this, especially when they were nestled into the roots of a big tree. Sweeping out the dust and webbing and insect parts was only a start; already the wood-ash from last night's fire was soaking to make a lye. From the broken-down door, the moisture, and the damp dark, so much mold and mildew had encroached that would have to be scrubbed away. Even after the work yesterday and opening the shutters to air the place out, the home still smelled a bit of a cave, but that, to Etim, was the smell of relative safety while they had been out trekking on the plains and through the crevasses.

He had promised to work, and he did, but Etim was quick to repeat, too that there wasn't any big rush to hurry. Yes, they would need to fill in that burrow-hole to the cellar, and properly rehang the door, and perhaps even cut wood from the tree to replace shutter slats, and that would all be better done before monsoon season - or worse, before the Long Year floods. Meanwhile, though, Etim set himself small goals - cleaning off the one table in the cooking area, or emptying and scrubbing out those three pots, or bringing a full bucket (at least when he started) from the waterside back into the house during full sun - which he then rewarded himself for by finding Hhaardha and wheedling his way into her arms, convincing her to stop, too, for a snack or a cuddle or a nap.

And then there was exploring. He had a map in his head of Rrarringkh Stand, of the way all the walkways and rooms and hanging bridges met and the shortest way to find food or Shayn or to fetch something for her. It wasn't a true map, a visual representation, but more a list of connections and which ones had steep stairs or doors that might not admit him, or people who might chide him for interrupting. This house existed in a dark cloud: There was the brilliantly clear path down to the water, of course, studded with the vine-covered pergola, and the plots that would be gardens and orchard once again, and from the water he could see well enough to the high grasses of other islands across the way. But this island - especially around the house - was a tangle of undergrowth, wild roots bigger around than he was tall, boulders they grew around, and flowering grasses that grew above his head. Circumnavigating the house was technically possible - Hhaardha had gone at least halfway around once - and there were paths leading off both from the guestroom door and behind the gardens that were not quite overgrown yet. Walking all the way around the island might be an all-day trip, or longer, but that was certainly on his mental agenda, too.

For now, though - especially since Hhaardha had already suffered so long under the sun on the way here, and he did not like the undergrowth at night when it could be hiding any kind of hunting beast waiting to pounce - Etim focused on exploring the inside of the house. It was not new. There had been generations of occupants, quite obviously, and when he discovered that many of them had scratched their names and year into the underside of a loose brick on the mantle, he insisted on doing the same. Now that he had the lantern, and discovered the lantern oil shortly thereafter (it had the familiar smell of the Haath leaf press, so this big tree would be good for more than just climbing and wood!) going through the stores in the pantry was definitely more exploration than work or cleaning.

There was plenty of the latter to do, too, especially as beetles seemed to have gotten into several of the rice sacks, but mostly it was a guessing game figuring out which jars held which preserves, matching fallen bark labels or cracking the seal on one to sniff and then taste inside. He didn't mean to be wasteful - if he didn't think the jar could be resealed with a little heat from the lantern on the wax, that jar would feature in their next meal, or at least that was his plan - but the pantry wasn't that large and he couldn't just leave these riddles of food to be solved one day at a time!

And then there was the cellar. Their very first day, Hhaardha had asked him not to go down there without her, and thus far that request and the weight of the trap door had held him at bay. But it really would be smart to see just how much work it would be to block off the burrow, and to know what was down there. And it wouldn't really be going down there if he just opened it up and went partway down the ladder, right? He could be careful.

.

Perhaps it was a bit insolent on his part, but Etim called out to Hhaardha, "I'm just going to peek into the cellar!" when he thought she was too far away, too busy to really hear him. Lack of a response would be her consent, and she would be happy when she got the report back from him, anyway.

A rough fiber rope pulled through a ring on the wall behind the door actually made opening the door - and propping it open so he didn’t get trapped - surprisingly easy. He had to lean into the rope and use his weight, but that was nothing new, and when he did so, freshly visible muscles tensed in his arms. The lantern - meant more for casting light out to the sides - did precious little to light the dark hole under the door, beside showing him the top of the ladder.

Etim of last month might have stopped there, reconsidered, and gone to find Hhaardha. But he was a bit braver now, or maybe had found some of the bravery of his youth, when he used to treat the Rrarringk canopy as his own kingdom. A few rungs down were enough for him to hold his lantern out and see a small square room, with shelves on three sides. Most of them were stocked with jars - more sparse than the pantry above, but several had been knocked down, contents presumably spilled. Hooks for drying meat were entirely bare. There were some crates or chests stacked, but those would have to be explored later. Turning, tilting the lantern a little toward the bottom of the wall, he looked for the burrow hole he'd entered through.

"Hhaardha!" It was a quick, sharp call, not quite panicked, but not far off, either.

The body wasn't any more desiccated than the one in the bed had been, but it looked awful - distended, wracked, like it had suffered and thrashed at the end. Surely it had been the cause of the shelves falling; it must have been. He would have been more disturbed by the fact that the wrists and ankles of the body appeared to be clasped to chains that ran through a loop in the floor, except for the fact that there was a second body, too, and that one had been human.

"Hhaardha!" Hurriedly, he began clambering back up the ladder.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Hhaardha's ears snapped upright. She barely could make out the sound of her own name over the thwock, thwock of the old hoe cutting through turf – it was the panic in Etim's voice that made the fur on her nape stand up and the scrunched expression of effort drain away from her features.

Her first order of business had been felling a small tree to split sheets of bark with which she repaired the worst parts of that roof. It was a temporary fix. All of the old bark was rotting and moldy and needed to be replaced, but at least now the roof would not leak so badly. The second most important thing, Hhaardha felt, was to get the garden in order again. She needed more cathum, and when the stores in the cellar ran out Etim would need vegetables. She'd picked one of the plots that looked most overgrown to till first. (And scything the grass before she turned the soil gave them more material to plug up smaller leaks in the roof, too.) Some of the other plots needed only a good weeding, and then waiting for the plants to produce seeds for her to harvest.

Now Hhaardha threw the hoe down and practically galloped to the house, throwing open the “front” door, the door that faced the orchards and the path to the water. She yanked off her veil as she stepped foot into the dim inside, leaving it to hang from her horns against one side of her face while wide eyes jumped about in panic, landing on the dark entrance to the pantry.

“Etim! What!?” she called shrilly, pacing quickly to meet him. She no longer thought him in serious danger – she could clearly hear the thump of his feet from within the pantry, and she couldn't hear a second person or animal in the house, nor smell one, but she simply could not relax until she saw Etim with her own eyes. Furthermore, her machete hung from her belt. If an animal had gotten into the house she'd make quick work of it.

She wore now the dingy white smock she'd found in the wardrobe so that her own clothes would take less wear while she worked around the house. The other female had been larger than Hhaardha – the collar was too wide so the smock fell down around one shoulder. Excess fabric pooled baggily over Hhaardha's own belt, and below the belt it came down to her knees. She wore her own trousers and boots under that. The smock was far from a pretty thing – moth eaten, currently stained both with grass and with dirt where Hhaardha had wiped her hands, but someone had taken pains to make it pretty, once – fabric scraps had been sewn down along both sides in diamond patterns, much like a patchwork quilt in which each patch was taken from a different source, but care had been taken to pair like colors with like. The bell-shaped sleeves that came to Hhaardha's elbows had been altered from the original plain hem with a sky blue frill taken from different cloth.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Etim, too, had been into the wardrobe. But where Hhaardha had found clothes for both male and female Rriigkhan and managed to make one fit, what Etim discovered were almost - almost - entirely for a human woman, and not only much too large for him, but in a style he didn't favor. The rough-woolen apron he happily wore from breakfast through dinner and for all the work between - unless he needed to climb, it didn't matter if it brushed his toes except when he had to climb; the practical pocket on the front that hung lower than his belly was an absolute delight and had been shown off more than once. But he could not bring himself to wear the servant-style, sleeveless longfrocks no matter the color or pattern, and the sandals the previous occupant seemed to favor were clumsily large on his feet. His coat and the nightshirt weren't suited for work around the house, so aside from the apron and his knee-length trousers, he usually wore nothing else but a handkerchief over his hair, since it was growing long and making sweat drip into his eyes when it was warm in the house.

Even now, on the ladder, the bottom of the nutty-brown apron was merely tucked up into the pocket with the leaf-shape button, rather than removed entirely.

As Hhaardha came bursting in through the open door, he was scrambling out of the pantry, looking back over his shoulder at the open trap door, clutching the handle of the lantern in both hands. An unnoticed wisp of webbing had caught in his beard, which now joined silvery stubble to cover more of his face, and caught in the hair over his ear. His eyes were wide, worried, but as he saw Hhaardha here in front of him, the near-panic suddenly melted away, like realizing he'd made a monster out of shadows, and round eyes and lifted brows gave way to a flush and a blank, guilty face.

"Nothing. Nothing. Sorry. I'm sorry - I didn’t mean to alarm you. It is nothing urgent. I--" He motioned back toward the pantry, and the hint of the trap door in the shadow. "I thought I should just see how big that burrow was. And if there was food that might go bad that we would waste by not using it soon!" That wasn't true - at least not ten minutes ago when he'd thought to go down, but it seemed an obvious and plausible excuse now.

"I, uhm." Closing the distance between her, he let go of the lantern with one hand to grab the hem of her smock and give it a tug, just to keep them together. "There are more bodies down there. Two. At least two. It's… It’s not urgent. But there were chains, too. Like it was a prison. Who has chains in their home? They must have come from further than Rrarringkh Stand, the chains. Maybe they could be used for something. Or sold!" Again, nothing like what he'd been thinking moments ago, but it was better that admitting he'd been startled by the bodies, and obviously in the wrong for going down there alone.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Hhaardha's expression softened into a mix of concern and relief. The black mask around her eyes distorted as brows climbed. Ears stood tall to remain trained on Etim as he spoke. Her arm circled his shoulders to draw him in close while the other paw picked at the cobweb in his hair, sending it floating to the floor after a graceful flick of her fingers. Her nose continued to twitch, short black whiskers curving in toward him with interest as she scented fear and guilt. Paired with his words, she assumed he'd been spooked by a shadow. The fact that she'd asked him to stay out of the cellar didn't even cross Hhaardha's mind.

And then –

“Etim.. bodies? Bodies, like people –?” She stared at him incredulously, but quickly cut herself off as resolve hardened her face. Ears swiveled back. She lifted the veil from her remaining horns, tossed it onto the nearby countertop, then smiled stiffly down at him while cupping his cheek to pet him, briefly, with her thumb. Her tail had been twitching low to the floor; now it lifted to flick slowly to and fro.

“It's okay, Etim. Whatever is down there, I'll take care of it,” she said firmly. Her paw trailed down his face until she held each of his shoulders in her paws to give him a quick squeeze, and then moved lower to take the lantern from his hands. “Stay here. I'm going to check it out.”

She couldn't resist another final, loving stroke to his head as she stepped past him toward the pantry, stomach roiling with the nastiest feeling. She had to stifle the urge to touch the hilt of her machete; dead bodies weren't going to jump up at her, obviously, and after sleeping a few nights in the house she already knew there wasn't any large animal actively living down there, at least not anymore. She'd heard plenty of mice scratching about in the walls, but nothing bigger than that.

She held the lantern down and a little behind herself so the light wouldn't harm her vision as she straightened up awkwardly, like a human, to keep her horns from smacking the edges of the entry when her head passed down through the trap door. She pinpointed the bodies immediately; the lingering scent of Etim's fear was her beacon. She winced in sympathy when her eyes first landed on the corpses, but a cold horror washed over her as she realized what she was looking at – a mouth with too many teeth, just like hers. She gasped; her arm jerked up as if she would cover her mouth, but she aborted the movement and brought that hand to clutch the collar of her smock instead.

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There wasn't a doubt in Etim's mind that Hhaardha would take care of it. She was, certainly, the most dangerous, the best protector Rriigkhan that he'd ever known. How many shingerin had she staved off, maybe even killed? And they were great beasts! Even had it been people, and not bodies down there, he wouldn't have hesitated to bring it to her, believing she could handle it. But he was only so gracious, and the self-confidence of the last couple of weeks had given him a slight propensity for minor backtalk. "No, I will stay with you. What if you need my help?" What if she saw something he wanted to see was more likely. He did, however, remain behind her leg, and hand over the lantern without question. And at the trap door, he gave no indication he would be following her down, instead kneeling by the edge.

"Be careful," he murmured, as though the bodies might overhear, and ran a finger along the groove of her nearest horn. "You have to be careful with the lantern on the steps." Not careful of the dead bodies or anything. As her head twisted to fit through the door, his fingers went back to the edge, gripping it tight as he leaned just enough for his eyes to peek past the thick wooden lip.

Likely because of the dark, open tunnel to the outdoors, the air in the cellar was dank and smelled of moldering; neither the shelves nor the chest down here would last much longer with this much moisture to encourage rot. And it was obvious why Etim had picked up a bit of webbing - it hung like curtain swag from the wood framing above, stretching in long drapes from crosspiece to crosspiece to shelf, with loose, dusty ends dangling. More than spiders left webbing behind here, but the spider were the ones with venom, and could get to nearly the size of Etim's hand.

Hunched and tipped partway over, the Rriigkhan in chains had that hollowed out, collapsed look that the illness imposed Danghem corpses, as though the hunger fed on them after they'd died. It pulled the skin away from their sunken eye-sockets, the gums away from already elongated, too-fresh teeth. They'd gotten so bad that the tongue inside its mouth had a ragged, frayed edge, like a pennant left too long in the wind. It had been a male, obviously - when he had been able to stretch upright, he wouldn't have stood even horns to Hhaardha's shoulders. He didn't wear a shred of clothes, though, so there were other ways to tell beside. The cuffs on his wrists and ankles seemed too loose now, as if his paws could just pull out of them, but when he had just a little more meat on his bones, they would have been infuriating close; he might even have freed himself, at the end, before he was reshackled. Certainly something had happened down here - but not like what had happened in the bedroom. The struggle here had all occurred within the stretch of his chains, scrabbling, scraping at things. The only blood was incidental - a bit smeared on the ladder rungs, and on the wall behind his head - not like he had struck it there, but leaned as he was oozing.

The human woman had been obviously exsanguinated, well beyond the point of her death. She was not broken, not mangled, but thorny bite marks littered her body, and the way some of them seemed to tear back the skin suggested the poor man had been trying to drink from her long after she was dead, maybe days.

It was a scene of desperation, of a Danghem who had died of his hunger, of a last meal snatched or stolen rather than given, and by best guess, probably the human who had lived here with her s'gath.

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Hhaardha was too distracted to argue the point with Etim; she only briefly cocked her head and leveled a “look” at him, an expression of mock-exasperation accompanied with a little blow of air from her nose. She'd realized throughout their time together that Etim had a stubborn streak that he hid, or made up for, with his good behavior otherwise. It was a dash of personality that she treasured too much to be annoyed. She couldn't imagine ever being stern with Etim, anyway – it hurt her heart even to think of it.

Now, staring wide-eyed at the corpses, her eyes jumping from grisly point to point, an immiscible mixture of emotions swelled up in Hhaardha until she felt dizzily sick with them – horror, hopelessness, shame, guilt. It was her own future she was looking at. A future she'd dragged Etim into, too.

She turned her muzzle sharply down and away. Her paw curled around the ridge of an eye socket, as if shading her eye from a glaring sun while she began to breathe in rapid, shallow pants. She couldn't believe what she was seeing – it was plain that the Danghem was one of the Lost, and yet that knowledge didn't seem to be penetrating; it was raindrops on an oiled cloak, sliding away.

It wasn't long before Hhaardha gripped hold of herself, forced her eyes to turn back to the corpses so she could examine them in more detail. She licked slowly at the roof of her mouth, jaw working while she forced her breath to smooth out. When she realized she had to do something she glanced stupidly about herself, hand clenching and unclenching on nothing like there must be some object in the room that she could grab that would fix all of this.

But there was nothing. She had only the work she knew she must do.

“There are –“ she began with an airless gasp, half-turning toward the stairs, the shadows in the cellar swinging with the lantern. She tried again to speak, hating how stiff and thin her voice sounded. She was trying not to acknowledge the obvious. Or was it obvious? Had Etim given the bodies more than a glance? Had his weak human eyes been able to discern any detail? “There are two more bodies I've got to bury. I'll... there's no reason to wait. I've got to start digging right away.”

As her paw settled on the first step, she glanced up to see if Etim was there, then guiltily averted her gaze as she came up. She couldn't bear to look at him, not when she knew that someday –

Someday –

Mounting the pantry floor and hastily snapping her tail up and out, as if she didn't want to leave her tail alone in that dank hole without the rest of her to protect it, her breath hitched as she passed Etim. She refused to look at his face. Her own was tense but otherwise unemotional.

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"I'll help." He known she was going to need his help, whether or not she'd ask for it. He'd known by reflex even the moment it had clicked in his mind to find her to deal with this, that she would put aside whatever she was doing to see to it, that it would become the most important thing. He'd known, too, though it took longer to process, that this would be a somber moment. Brows heavy, lips pressed into a tight line, he followed her out of the pantry far enough back to avoid her tail, but as the home opened he pattered ahead at a jog, grabbing the shoulder-width straw hat he'd made in the last couple of evenings (it didn't stay on at the slightest breeze and kept tipping back, but the fact that he'd remembered how to weave it had delighted him), and pushed out the door to run ahead and get the space and shovel both, and place them on big burlap tarp meant for food gathering.

He had an idea where she meant to dig, near the other pile of dirt with the stones heaped on top, and dragged it that way, meeting her at the end to rest his hands on his hips and press his lips tightly together again.

That one had been a Danghem, he didn't say, over and over, thought it kept circling through his thoughts. A dozen different scenarios played out in his head. The way Hhaardha talked, people thought Danghem were dangerous, and maybe this one had been. Maybe he'd slaughtered the woman and her human in this house. That made little sense to him, especially since he'd been in chains. Maybe someone else had slaughtered all of them, and left the house this way. Maybe it had been wild beasts who got the lot of them, but he liked that idea even less; what would stop it from happening again. All the ideas, the fact that one of them had been a Danghem, made the notion a burr in this thoughts that he kept returning too as he was grabbing the stones she encountered as she dug, setting them aside, take the hacked off bits of root, and the occasional other bone.

(Of course, naturally, they would dig a grave where others had been dug before. Everyone wanted to be buried in a garden, if they could. In a few years, after they'd returned to the soil and the garden was rotated, they'd be planted over. The old bones came out mostly as pieces; perhaps the Rriigkhan of generations ago had been the sort to believe in tree burial first.)

When the final stones were placed, Etim touched Hhaardha's thigh. "Go to the water, Lovely Spots. I will go check the beans and add the meal, and put your bushtail on the spit for a roast."

Etim had a kettle that was always hanging in the hearth now - even when there weren't more than the occasional flickering flame and coals in the fireplace, and the kettle was off to one side, it stayed warm and clean and was good for washing wounds as well as making a tea of the berry bushes. But a little bit on a rag also washed him nearly as well as the water down by the pier did Hhaardha, since his 'fur' was so thin.

She would find him later in only his apron, since the trousers needed a wash, toes clasping around the sandals too big for him, gold- and orange-lit by a larger fire as he leaned in to push the spit crank another quarter-rotation with a stick. The smell of dinner - of the sort of bean-porridge that had become their new meal base, of a bit of sizzling meat, mostly for Hhaardha - wouldn’t fill the whole home yet, but wafted over from his kitchen corner. Etim's longer hair was once again tied back into a little topknot behind his crown.

"Sit down, Lovely Spots." With his firestick, he motioned toward the Rriigkhan-sized rocking chair that had become a fixture of their evenings. "Let me take care of you. You can talk to me if you want to. But you don’t have to."

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When Hhaardha appeared in the doorway it was in her old navy tunic, the long sleeves pushed up to her elbows to allow her still-damp fur to continue drying. She'd sat on the pier for a time before dressing, her fur drying quickly in the waning post-afternoon heat, lost in her thoughts while she watched the paired glasswings zipping to and fro in their complicated mating dances. Etim had thoroughly scrubbed her top along with the rest of their clothes after that first night, and it still felt wonderfully clean because she'd avoided wearing it for any dirty work since. Her trousers had been caked with dirt from the digging so she'd left them by the rain barrels for Etim to wash later, turning the long tunic into a short dress that came down to the tops of her thighs. The back parted around her tail.

She carried her belt and machete in her hand instead of round her waist. Even though she felt quite secure inside the house, one or both of her blades was never far from reach. Old habit, one she'd be happy never to break. She was a few steps in, however, when she paused, twitched up straighter, brows climbing under the veil with the sudden realization that she'd done wrong, and backtracked over to the reed “mud rug” just outside the door to wipe her bare paws. She didn't think Etim would have complained about loose dirt on the floor, but Hhaardha figured she ought to make an effort to “domesticate” herself, anyway.

She could already feel her strength returning thanks to these regular, fairly hearty meals, but her arms still ached more than they should have. It felt obscene to Hhaardha to bury the human with her murderer so she'd dug two graves, one on either side of the Rriigkhan woman, presumably laying down her husband on one side and a treasured servant on the other. Whether Etim had realized the male was a Danghem in the cellar was moot once Hhaardha carried the corpses into the light of day. She'd burned with shame all throughout the burial, and even though she could see that Etim was doing everything in his power to ease Hhaardha's mind, she simply had not been able to look into his face most of that time.

Now, though, she couldn't help the smile that weakly animated her tail when Etim spoke to her, and she turned her gaze toward him as she removed the veil – even though she didn't want to. She wanted to leave it on, to hide her hideous teeth, but to do so indoors would betray her feelings to Etim and perhaps make him fuss over her even more. She carried her belt and the machete toward the chair to set on the floor beside it as it creaked under the weight she eased down into it.

“Oh, I'm not so fragile that I need to talk about that ugly business,” she said lightly but tiredly, forcing what she thought of as her Hhaardha-cheer into her tone. Her happy face was the only armor she had against the fate of a Danghem; she couldn't lose it now. She leaned back until her spine was flush with the chair back until the curvature of her neck carried her head away from it, then stretched out her legs to cross them at the ankles. Toes spread out and long claws popped up from their slits in her fur as she stretched and then relaxed again. She used a heel to subtly rock herself.

“Gosh, that smells good, Etim. My mouth's watering. You've turned out to be quite the little cook, you know!” She patted the arms of the chair and then let her paws curl around their rounded ends, trying to stifle the dread that wouldn't stop welling up inside her. She couldn't stop seeing those horrible marks on the dead human's back. Was she going to do that to Etim, someday? Her precious? The one thing she cared for most in this world?

Hhaardha's gaze dropped as her eyes moistened unexpectedly – they hadn't, all throughout the digging and then her contemplative bath – and her next slow outbreath came shuddering quietly from her jaws. There was no change to her posture, though her ears twitched before resuming their neutral, relaxed positions parallel to the floor. Gris-slicked howrfs peeped out from her spiraling horns to fill the air with a calm she didn't feel, on top of affection and pride to reward Etim's helpfulness. It was wonderful to be able to passively tell him you are good. Using her howrfs in this way was like stretching a muscle she'd let atrophy years ago. At first it was an effort to remember she could, but more and more it was coming naturally to her.

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Glancing back over his shoulder, Etim softened his face into a gentle smile, a stroke of the fur on her face from too far for him to reach. "You can talk about anything you'd like, though." He remained there, eyes wandering over her for a long moment, the rough spots on his own chin scratching against his bare shoulder beyond the apron strings, before turning back to nudge the bushtail another notch, and give it a brush with the bean oil that was suffused with dried pepper and salt and some of the crushed green herbs that had survived wild in the garden.

"When we open our first jug of wine - or liquor, or whatever it will be - from the fruits we pick of this garden and orchard, then we will remember the dead. But now we know what happened, a bit. And they are not us. We are alive, and we are here, and we should think about us and talk about us. Like you can talk about the blisters the shovel gave you and I will coo and treat them and tell you how much I hope you catch a big fish tomorrow that we can panfry right by the water and eat with our fingers from the pan."

Awfully pleased by Hhaardha's flattery, the corners of Etim's lips curled to a smirk, his eyes narrowed, and his shoulders wobbled in a little dance as he went back to giving the porridge a stir. "Oh, you are just saying things. Two courses aren't a real meal. If I was half the cook even at House Zaidathon, I would have fresh bread for you at dinner, and green things, and even more. Eggs! Fried tubers. Who knows. But I make do. I am learning. Someday you will be surprised by panbread without any warning. I have already found a bottle of vinegar that would be perfect to sprinkle on it. But it is nice, isn't it? The kitchen always smelled so good in the Stand. And now that we have our own Stand, having a kitchen that smells like food is such an important thing for me!" He turned back again facing her for a moment and rubbing at the trickle of sweat at the back of his neck before he reached for the rag to lift the beans away from the fire. The bushtail was nearly ready for the same; he would have the well-cooked meats around the inside, while she got the rare bits and the bones, but they would both want to pick at the crackly, roasted skin.

With brows raised and lips shut, eyes tracking carefully as though he were an expert (though he clearly was not), he spooned most of the bean porridge off into a water-chilled crockery pot for Hhaardha, breaking up a curd of crumbly white cheese (only the outside was bad when he found it!) for the top, for a bit of sharp flavor, and sticking a flat wooden spoon in it she could used to stir and cool it, to bring up enough for her to lap at, even if it wouldn't be easy to scoop into her mouth. "But don’t fill up completely," he half-chided, as if she even would - as he pushed it into her hands. "The meat is coming."

Whether or not he noticed the gris on the air immediately, Etim's response was obvious, visible. His smile became both looser and wider; he hugged himself and sighed with contentment, peering around their house once more before he pulled the spit free. "A silent sun for me, a glorious moon for thee-ee," he sang under his breath as he carefully (not carefully enough - he hissed and licked his fingers) slid the rodent onto a basket platter. Head removed, it was about as long as his forearm, and the main body the same thickness, but it had meaty hind-legs that still sizzled and popped with fats under the skin. The rest of the porridge went in a smaller bowl with a smaller spoon by the edge of the platter, which he carried over to the chair, before turning around so Hhaardha could lift him - and the tray - into her lap.

"You're perfuming the air." He didn't look directly at her, but smiled from the corner of his eyes. "I feel so happy right now. I am sorry for those people, but we have our own lives here now."

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Hhaardha lifted her gaze to Etim's face, the muscles of her own twitching weakly into a sad smile that only slightly shifted the corners of her lips. In her paws the bowl of porridge was cooling as her pads leeched away the pleasant heat. She hadn't been fibbing when she said the meal smelled good to her, and yet she found she had so little desire for it with her guts all twisted up in worry.

There were so many things she wished she could say to Etim. That will be our lives someday, Etim. Don't you understand that? How can you ever forgive me for this nightmare I've thrust you into? I can't forgive myself. But he was too happy for her to spoil his mood with such talk. He was trying. So instead she let her face slowly brighten with very real joy and sat the porridge down on the small square table they'd moved beside the rocker to make her lap available to him. She was not going to turn down any opportunity to hold him, to touch him.

“Up we go. Hup, hup,” she said as she lifted him, then laughed in a high twitter as she caught the edge of the tray when it looked like it was about to dip to one side. When he was settled on her lap a paw wormed in under the apron to cup the curve of his belly, ostensibly to steady him, while the other held lightly onto the edge of the tray – mostly because she was wary of it falling, less out of any actual need to do so.

“You're right. We have a lot to think about,” she agreed, releasing the tray just long enough to smooth her paw over the top of his head. When she was done she set her cheek against his scalp for a brief nuzzle, arm tightening into a squeeze around his middle, before sitting upright again. “Like fish traps, for example. I think I can make some. I noticed several coppiced okkerwoods on the other side of the brush behind the house. Those are good flexible stems, perfect for traps, and making new fences for the garden, too. Fish keep well – that's something we can smoke and store. I think the hunting round here will be pretty good, but we've got to plan for the days when it isn't. Oh! You mentioned bread. You know, I think I could build an earth oven someday. There's good clay under the banks not far from the dock. Not straight away, there's too many other things I've got to do first, but it's on my list. And another thing I was thinking –”

Hhaardha nattered on for a while about all the repairs she wanted to do to the house, about the vegetables they would grow and which medicinal herbs might be something they could sell at Lonely Stand. She picked at the bushtail with the claws of one hand, her tail becoming progressively more animated until it thumped on the floor. She even moved the cooled porridge back onto the tray and lapped from the spoon hunched over the bowl so that any spillage didn't have far to fall and she wouldn't make a mess of her shirt.

---

Both bedrooms had been cleaned and put to order, but so far Hhaardha had only been able to cut and dry enough grass to fill the mattress in her own room. Even that wasn't ideal; later they would be restuffed with barkwool, if enough could ever be gathered. (It took more material to fill a mattress than Hhaardha had ever realized. After the first night sleeping on it, the bag was totally flat and Hhaardha realized it needed triple the amount of stuffing.) Hhaardha's few belongings had emptied from her pack into the room to make it “hers.” Her rolled out medicine kit rested on the bedside table, since she often fed from Etim here. What little coin she had left was tucked discreetly into a carved box that she kept in the bottom of the wardrobe; her mortar and pestle stood on a shelf. What had been unfamiliar scents and strange shapes slowly became ordinary. Comfortable. It could be home.

“Time to sleep, my Precious Pet,” she said to him softly that night before cradling him against her chest to carry him into the bedroom. The sky outside their windows was still a navy blue, just light enough for Etim to see dark shapes in the house. “You'll keep me company, won't you?” It was a little ritual, a little joke – he didn't have his own bed to sleep in yet, so of course he had to share hers.

When they'd been traveling she'd gotten used to Etim sleeping on top of her belly, since it kept him off the ground. Hhaardha's favorite thing now was to spoon Etim with her thighs under his butt, almost like he was “sitting” on her lap. Even better were the moments when he faced her and nuzzled into her chest like a mewlet seeking warmth. She always fell asleep so rapidly when she was petting him. He was like the stuffed rronto she'd cuddled as a very small girl, a magic charm that eased every worry and put her straight to sleep.

This night, though, was different. She lay staring into the dark for a long time, slowly stroking the skin of Etim's arm while she spooned him from behind. His breathing had changed a while ago; she was certain he was asleep. No amount of scrubbing could ever remove the bloodstains from the mattress, but it had been washed so thoroughly that Hhaardha really couldn't smell it at all. She couldn't see it, either; they'd flipped the bag so the stain faced down and wrapped the whole thing in blankets. She could feel it though, burning through the grasses and the other side of the mattress bag, through her fur to brand her skin. Her guts churned with that nasty, heavy, sinful guilt. And, finally, she cried – in total silence, tears leaking slowly – because she knew that truly, the right thing to do was to give Etim up.

I love him, she realized, and in the dark she squeezed him tight to her chest. I was so selfish. I thought only of me. I love him. I love him! I'd rather starve to death and die all alone than ever hurt him! I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to make this right. I've got to get him home to Rrarringk Stand. Such a thing wouldn't happen soon, she knew. It could take months, even a year or more, to find out when trade caravans might be expected to pass through Lonely Stand. She'd learned her lesson – she wasn't going to travel alone with Etim ever again. It would have to be with a caravan.

Even now, even after having fed that day, Hhaardha craved him. When she touched Etim's belly the heat on her pads made her think of the heat of his blood that made his skin flush pink. She stifled the urge to let her claws out, to curl them into his soft flesh until dark red droplets welled up from the pricks. Her Precious, she wanted her Precious to bleed for her. The other Danghem's teeth had been so much like her own... how much longer did she have to be a person?

Hhaardha wasn't used to crying. Her tears dried up quickly, leaving behind a headache and another layer of the exhaustion she already felt. Her heart ached more than she'd thought a heart could ache. It took her a while longer to finally fall asleep, but when she did it was with the horrid certainty that the only right thing to do was the one thing that would hurt her most of all.

---

The morning mist had long receded and a bright noon was settling over the day. Jhorguun had been traveling in forest shade, but as she stepped out onto a high, grassy bank over the water her jaw dropped open so she could lightly pant. Looking down the bank where the ground leveled out her eyes fell upon a small dock. She quickly traced the dirt path up a rise to her right, and that was how her eyes fell on the cottage. Her ears perked with interest, swiveling in the direction of the cottage as she stood up a little straighter. She'd come this way seeking water, but perhaps the people in the house could give her something already boiled, or clean water from a well.

She started walking.

Jhorguun did worry that her appearance might be unnerving to the people there; she was a large person, even for a female, with a great untamed ruff thicker on the back of her neck than the front. That fur was a deep ginger red, unbrushed as of late and full of detritus from the forest. A short, square muzzle and small dark eyes did not make for an inviting face, although it usually took only a few minutes of conversation for other people to find her intelligent and amiable. Then also was the battered leather lamellar she wore, the mudcrusted boots and trousers, the sword sheathed at her hip and the strung bow she held in hand.

The trackers from Rrarringk Stand had set a grueling pace. They seldom had time to spare for cleaning clothes or bodies. They were wasting a day now while the others in the party recovered from food poisoning. Something had been off in that cider gifted to them by Warden Ghakarr of Lonely Stand; Jhorguun had been the only one not to drink it, and was the only one not to spend her day squatting over a hole.

She made no attempt to sneak up on the house, but strolled openly up the path that lead through an orchard, then a garden freshly turned and planted. Other areas of the sprawling yard were badly overgrown. Curious. Jhorguun had no bag with her, and the collection of canteens and waterskins strapped to her back and hanging from her baldric rubbed and knocked against one another, announcing her to Rriigkhan ears, at least.

Suddenly, the Rriigkhan paused. She tilted her head and lifted her muzzle very slightly, nostrils flaring with her rapid sniffing. Recognition transformed her expression from one of interest to one of paralyzing shock. She'd been given some of Etim's clothing with which to memorize his scent, but that had been over a month ago – she thought she'd forgotten it, but now the connection snapped into place in her mind and she knew.

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It would take more than a month's absence from Rrarringk Stand to wash all the softness from Etim, but this particular month had made a good start of it. The razor he'd found was too pitted, too far gone for a proper shave, but he'd made the best of a pair of fine shears: his beard was neatly trimmed from near where it enclosed his lips and chin up to his ears where it met his hair, and that was kept equally short up to where his longer hair could be gathered in his comfortable style. His cheeks were a bit sunken, the creases in his skin deeper, but especially the smile lines around his eyes and mouth. Some of the careless, cultured vapidity had left his eyes; they fixed sharply on his work, but often were merry when Hhaardha was about. Like a flower following the sun, his attention fixed on her when she was near. Getting his work done when she was gone gave him more time for that.

Tendons and muscles worked in his upper arms, and he chewed his lips as he worked. She had brought him clay the day before, wrapped in a wet blanket, and a bucket of grit from near the water; he could cut his own straw from the long grass. Apparently they weren't the first to think of using the clay from the waterside for bricks, because there was already a form for a dozen bricks and a clay blade in the shed. He crouched there, packing the seeded clay into the form, frustrated that it wasn't wet enough to settle easily (but too wet, and it would take forever to dry and maybe have pockets). Once they built the oven, though, they could use it to fire more bricks even faster, and make proper repairs, which was exciting. It was one thing to cook and clean all day, but making bricks, Etim felt that he was really helping, that he was putting his own mark on their new Stand. (His own mark literally - he scratched his initial into some of the bricks to test how dry they were before he removed them from the form.)

He'd already laid out two dozen bricks to dry in the sun beneath the lines where he'd dry their clothes. He'd bleached one of the human woman's shirts and rolled sleeves up; that, his ubiquitous apron, and his short trousers from the stand were covered in light gray, chalky clay dust, along with his cheeks, hand and feet. But aside from the now-familiar sounds of wildlife, only Etim's own humming and occasional singing kept him from noticing the visitor immediately, but when he did, his brows raised, and he stood up, startled, and grabbed the edge of the open shed door.

To instincts warred in him. He was certain Hhaardha would want him to be very careful, and possibly to hide in the house. He had mostly known good Rriigkhan, but he knew they came in just as many stripes as humans, and one this big could be more dangerous than a great beast. Much more dangerous. But at heart he was a host, and someday, at least, this Stand would receive guests again. After a moment of vacillation, hospitality won out and he raised a hand in greeting, stepping forward out of the shed.

"Hello! Are you a traveler? My n'Ghara will be home soon to greet you. I'm sorry to say our guest room is in disrepair, but I can draw you fresh water, and we have a few things for trade when she returns."

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Jhorguun's complete startlement was evident in her eyes and the stiffness of her posture as she turned her attention to the human. Belatedly, she reached up to grasp the strap of the baldric that crossed her chest. It was one way of showing the man that she had no intention of reaching for her weapon. Her tail lifted in a friendly gesture as the shock melted from her face.

“Yes,” she said, shrugging her shoulders and tugging on her baldric as if to draw more attention to the empty vessels she carried. Her gaze dropped to them before unhurriedly lifting to rest on the human in a serious, considering way. Her every movement carried weight and this was no different. “I was seeking water. The rest of my people are still camped less than a mile from here.” She inclined her head slightly so her horns would point back toward the rise she had first come over. “But, forgive me – Etim? Zaidathon Etim of Rrarringk Stand? It is you.” It was a bald announcement, not a question. Although Jhorguun turned from the man, her attention remained fixed on him as she moved rapidly toward the house.

Hhaardha. She smelled the other Rriigkhan almost immediately as she came nearer the door of the cottage, and here her paw moved from the strap to rest on the hilt of her sword. The individual notes that were each decaying pheromone sang of a harmonious life when Jhorguun played them together. No anxiety. No fear. Obviously she couldn't get a full picture of their lives merely from sniffing around outside the door, but everything from Etim's appearance to the way he spoke to what little she could already smell made her certain. Jhorguun's head swung toward Etim, though she did not turn fully away from the door. She was aware of it, aware of the emptiness she heard within and ready for that to change at any moment.

“She did not abduct you. You ran away together,” she said flatly.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

"Come with me then - it is just a bit further up the hill. It's channel water, rather than rain water; we haven't had a good enough rain shower to refill the cistern, but it's been strained through fine cloth." Etim beckoned, waving his arm through a half-circle, and began patting his hands off the apron (though it was a guess whether that would clean or dirty them), and using his shoulders to wipe his cheeks and temples, smearing the clay dust where it mingled with his sweat. By habit he was smiling and his eyes were bright, but it wasn't a false cheer; circumstances had trained him to actually feel as though any guest was a delight, especially when she was clearly signaling peace.

But the smile flickered off his face and out of his eyes when she called him by name. He stopped, still on the half-covered old bricks that spotted the path where it leveled out around the top of the hill. He turned back, brows wrinkling over his nose and his lips pressed tightly together, to search this traveler's face and see If he should recognize her. Maybe she'd been a guest of Rrarringk House, or was a client of the Sisters of Zaidathon.

"I am Etim," he admitted slowly, on the verge of flouting propriety and demanding the name of this Rriigkhan. "But not Zaidathon Etim. Zaidathon Astra did not really want me; she was just doing a favor for Srringkha." Some little part of Etim's thoughts complained that this wasn't true, but he shushed that voice; he had decided this must be the case, and there wasn't any other option, in the weeks they walked away from the Stand, and since then. "I did not wish to be a burden for them."

What the new Rriigkhan said afterward made Etim's lips press tighter, into a firmer grimace, but it was not enough to completely shake his sense of hospitality. "I am sorry - you should probably talk to my n'Ghara about this. It is not my place to say. Come and sit in the shade under the tree and I will refill your water while we wait."

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Jhorguun's lip wrinkled up very slightly, shoulders rising as her chest filled in with air. She set her jaw and nodded thoughtfully at his suggestion as she exhaled, letting her anger go with the breath.

“I can fill the water myself, later. I would prefer it if you did not leave my sight,” she said levelly as she followed beneath the great tree where the shade was thickest and a soft carpet of moss replaced the grasses growing wild over much of the yard. She understood now that the two of them had only recently moved into the cottage, although wondering how Hhaardha had gained such a property troubled her greatly. “You must realize that I have come to bring you back, Etim. I am Jhorguun... did Hhaardha tell you anything of me? I hired her as a caravan guard because, despite her status as a Danghem, I thought her an honorable person. I considered her my friend.” Though she felt some measure of bitterness speaking those words, Jhorguun's voice remained neutral.

Half-buried roots snaking through the uneven ground formed what could almost be called terraces or steps. Without grass to hold onto the earth the rains had washed the dirt smooth and flat on every “step,” which made for easy walking as long as one minded one's step over the roots. Jhorguun laid her bow against a root high and thick enough to sit on, but sat down beside her bow without removing her baldric and all of the waterskins tied to it. She looked about herself, and without fully letting her howrfs slip out of her horns she began to fill the air with <Authority.>

“Hhaardha is not your n'Ghara,” Jhorguun said plainly, setting one paw atop the other on her lap. She'd sat with both boots planted firmly on the ground in case she had to stand up quickly, and both ears stood tall, continually scanning. Her tail lay draped beside her legs over the root. While she had been speaking conversationally before, here Jhorgunn's tone hardened. “She is a thief. I know Hhaardha well enough – or I thought I did – to know that she would not commit so serious a crime if she were in her right mind. She cannot be fully sane anymore. Surely you know this. Surely, you must know that if Hhaardha comes back to find me here, there is going to be a fight, one which she may not survive. If you care for her at all you will come along before she returns. Ssringkha is mad with worry.”

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Though he bristled at was practically a demand of him, as though she were his n'ghara and not guest, Etim didn't have a good reason to deny her. If she grabbed at him, if she made a sign of not being peaceful, that would be another matter, but for the moment he went to the channel-filled rainbarrel and scooped a little off the top with the ladle, first to sip at, and then to pour over his hands, so he could properly scrub his face and arms and make himself more presentable. It was an act of rebellious dissatisfaction with Jhorguun that he didn't try to persuade her to get water now, after all.

"Hhaardha is an honorable person!" Color came to Etim's cheeks; those words had stung almost as if she'd outright insulted him. Perhaps, in a way, she had. "If she was your friend, you would know that." He could see her perfuming the air, and he knew that scent, or other versions of it; he knew she was acting as though she was the n'ghara here, as though her word were the law of the Stand for him to follow. It made him agitated, antsy, as though they were trying to have a conversation while she dangled a collar in front of him. But, no matter what he thought about it, it meant he couldn't just brush her off, scoff at anything she said as preposterous.

Worse, there was a threat in there - a threat that she might kill his Lovely Spots. Fear and anger flushed through him, but he clenched his jaw and tried to answer as politely and hospitably as he could, as he would be expected to.

"I do not know you, Jhorguun. I do know of you, but not what kind of person or what you want. I know Hhaardha very well, and I do not think she is a thief. If she were a thief - if she stole me, then why? To sell me? To profit by it? She could see that I was sad, and took me away because she could make me happy. And look! I am happy! And I know Rrarringk Ssringkha very, very well. She has whispered her mind into my ear perhaps more than her own sister! She gave me to Zaidathon Astra. She is not mad with worry. These things are a story to make it seem that you are right and Hhaardha is wrong, but they are not true, and I don't know who would tell them to you. Why-- Why come here?"

Etim had stopped mid-wash to speak to her, and now folded his wet hands together, taking a few steps closer, but not close enough that she might be able to lunge at him in a single step. "There is money? There is a bounty? I am a lost thing to be found?" It wasn't an accusation, but a realization, an honest request for her to confirm it. "Is it very much? If I… If I gave you my clothes, and there was some blood and they were torn a bit, like I had been taken by a great beast or a bird… if you had those, and you said you found them… maybe… Would you still be paid? And that would be enough.

"But if you kill Hhaardha," he added quickly, his voice going low and serious, "I will die, too. She is my n'ghara. This is my Stand. She chooses me. If I die, then what will you have to take back? What good will that be for anyone? You see, it wouldn't make any sense at all." It was a very easy, and even a romantic thing to say. Exactly how he would die, he couldn't say. Possibly climb the tree and throw himself from it? Going through with it was probably not something he could really countenance, but in the heat of the moment, it was the best card he had to play. He had to convince her now, before Hhaardha could come back.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Jhorguun listened to him speak without interruption, but she set her head to one side at the implied threat that he would kill himself, the muscles of her face tensing slightly in irritation at these human theatrics. Still... this was not the response she had expected. She had not really expected to find Etim in this healthy state, and she certainly hadn't expected him to resist rescue.

Her expression softened. “I came here because I brought a Danghem into Rrarringk Stand. A Danghem who stole one of the city's menfolk out from under their noses. This reflects very poorly on me. I felt... I felt responsible. There is a bounty for you, yes, but that is not the reason I joined Ssringkha's trackers. I would much rather be on my way to Molt as I had planned. I told myself –” For the first time, Jhorguun's gaze dropped away from Etim. She cast it instead toward the ground before the cottage, her eyelids drooping.

“I told myself that if Hhaardha was no longer Hhaardha, I would be the one to end her suffering.” She lifted her muzzle so she could look directly into Etim's eyes again. “You understand that this will happen, don't you? I don't know what this is to you, I suppose you're in love and thought running away together a very romantic thing to do.” She gestured dismissively with her paw before returning it to her lap, although her eyes never left his. “But it is incredibly dangerous for a man like yourself to live alone with a Danghem. Their thirst drives them insane. That is the end for every Danghem, and Hhaardha will be no different.”

She paused to allow that truth to sink in. She thought of explaining to Etim that he was wrong; Ssringkha did grieve for him. She was sure of it. But Etim did not seem to care very much what Ssringkha thought, and Jhorguun was not one to prolong an argument.

It was then that snatches of a voice raised in song caught Jhorguun's ear. Her head whipped aside and she stood abruptly, hand closing round the hilt of her sword. Hhaardha had not come from the path leading down to the water, but was approaching from the thicket behind the house and making no attempt to conceal the sounds of her movement. The song trailed off and she called out, “Etim! Etim! A big fat whacket for supper tonight!” Jhorguun saw her come around the far side of the cottage holding a pair of whackets by the feet, flightless birds smaller than their prodigious tawny fluff would suggest. The ticking on their feathers seemed black at a glance, but keener eyes would see a very dark olive that glittered with iridescence when light hit the strands just so.

In her other hand Hhaardha held the weapon that had killed the birds, a crude bow which had been her recent project. She was delighted at her own success and eager to share this with Etim, but when she saw the other Rriigkhan she froze, all joy draining from her veiled face – she'd worn it after hunting, when the daylight started to bother her eyes. Her ruff bristled; she appeared to swell like a sponge in the rain. She noted that Etim did not cower and the other Rriigkhan did not appear to be threatening him before she even processed that she knew this other female.

Jhorguun. Jhorguun. Someone has come to take my Precious from me at last.

The bow and the birds both dropped from Hhaardha's hands. She stepped past them toward Etim, and although she realized Jhorguun was touching her weapon, Hhaardha made no move to draw her own sword. She was armored, too, but Hhaardha did not want to fight. Jhorguun's arrival was the solution to her problem and yet, knowing what would happen next, a pain so great that it stole her breath throbbed in Hhaardha's chest.

“Etim,” she said simply, that pain evident in her voice and in her eyes behind the dark fabric. She held out a paw to him. She could smell Etim was upset, and already her howrfs responded with pheromones to soothe, to remind him that he was loved.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Etim kept wanting to interrupt, to cut off Jhorguun after every thought. Didn't she understand that there wasn't time for this; this had to be settled and she had to be on her way before Hhaardha ever got close enough to smell her. He would light a fire to flush out the smell and the gris, claim it was to dry the bricks, drag the ground where she had walked, anything! But if Hhaardha knew they had been followed here, she would demand they leave. They couldn’t stay, this wouldn't be their own One-Tree Stand. His mind ached with the need for them to stay, to make this work. He'd ignored so much, shut so much out of his thoughts, so it was all piled up like too many crates stacked behind a door, and if he let any of it in, it would all come spilling out and crush him.

Yes, yes, Hhaardha said things like that, too, about what happened with Danghems. They hadn't discussed the tangletooth she'd buried, and that's the way it should stay. It didn't need to be addressed.

"You don't understand--" He began, just as she stood. He hadn't heard Hhaardha yet, but he knew the direction she was likely to come from; who else could it be? When the other woman's hand went to her sword, the blood fled from Etim's face, his guts twisted inside his belly, and he rushed forward to put his hands on hers to stop this before it could turn to Hhaardha being hurt.

"You don't understand!" He said again, this time at a desperate hiss, pleading for her full attention with both his tone and his round eyes. "Can you tell them I am a bad man? Tell them I tricked Hhaardha into taking me away from the Stand. Tell them I am so bad they would not want me to come back at all. I am old. I am so old and nobody wants me but Hhaardha, and I want her. Please!"

No… no it was too late, and there was Hhaardha's voice and her footsteps finally reaching his old, unwanted ears. His blood-drained face was tight, his mouth a small line, his eyes wide and wet along the bottom lid, but he backed away, back to his spot away from her. It was too late. His breath was starting to get shallow; he couldn't feel his lungs the whole way so it felt like he would choke. His pulse pounded in his ears so hard it would give him a headache, and sweat seemed to appear in the most unlikely places. The yeasty smells on the air were like a blanket on top of a fire, smothering the flame, perhaps, but trapping all the heat beneath with it.

Etim. His head snapped fully to Hhaardha, and big eyes looked from her face to her paw. "No, no, no," He insisted, taking a step back from her now, too, and breaking eye contact as his were beginning to water and spill over the lid. "Don't Etim me. No, this is our home, our Stand. I won't go."

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

“Human, stop this,” Jhorguun snapped over his pleas, ears flattening and standing up again just as her eyes jumped back and forth between Etim and the side of the cottage she expected Hhaardha to round at any moment. She twisted her hips to the side to keep her sword away from Etim and tried to brush him away with the hand he'd grabbed. She could easily have shoved him back, of course, but he was no threat to her and Jhorguun was not about to rough handle a man, no matter what he was doing. She didn't have the attention to spare for his frantic babble, much less a response – as Hhaardha appeared Jhorguun's muzzle lifted and her full attention fixed on the other Rriigkhan.

---

I am so old and nobody wants me but Hhaardha, and I want her. Please!

She'd heard it all. The desperation in those words, the scent of panic, the look on his face – it hurt Hhaardha so deeply that it made her dizzy. She knew Jhorguun was there – and she knew that she would never win a fight against a larger, healthy Rriigkhan – but the world around her had lost some earthly, anchoring quality. She saw only Etim, knew only that she had to protect him from whatever pain had found him. She gasped for breath as she closed the distance between them rapidly, dropping to one knee as her arm reached out to grasp him behind the shoulder and draw him into her arms.

“Etim, my Precious,” she tried to say, but the words were an unintelligible gasp-sob. Her jaws hung open and worked as if sawing meat, while the corners of her mouth pulled back tight in an ugly grimace. The veil moved with the whining breath that squeezed out of Hhaardha's throat. Stinging tears welled up in her eyes.

Hhaardha had never in her wildest dreams expected to see Jhorguun again, but she had practiced in her mind what she would say to Etim when she came clean about her decision to return him to Rrarringk Stand. I'm sending you back because I care about you, because I want you to be safe, she would explain. You mean so much more to me than my own life, don't you see? She'd spent hours fretting over his possible rebuttals and responding to them (thought a part of her had been terrified that he would not resist so very much, and that would break her heart even if it was for the best.)

All of those carefully constructed arguments were now jumbled up, jammed up, floodwaters attempting to escape a crack in a dam. They wouldn't come out!

“Please don't take my Etim,” was all she could choke out when the words finally came, when hot tears spilled from her eyes to turn the veil into a wet clinging mess. She had to squeeze her eyes shut. With one knee and one boot on the ground and Etim between her thighs, she pulled him in against her body, one arm wrapped tight around him and the other cradling his head while she draped her own over his shoulder. She shook her head as the words spilled out of her. “I love him, I love him, please, please don't take my treasure, he's everything to me!”

Jhorguun had taken a step back from them, watching this uncomfortable display with ears flat and lips tight over her teeth, her entire body rigid.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

The moments stretched into minutes that Etim stood in Hhaardha's embrace, crying. The wash of tears turned to a few sobs, and he gripped the leather straps and belts scattered around her body, as though he expected Jhorguun to try to physically pull him away. He wasn't careful about the grabbing - his fingers had caught fur between them and behind the straps, too, but he didn’t try to fix it; he just pushed into her chest, letting her paw behind his head cover his face as much as burying himself in her had. His back obviously heaved, even after the sobs had become dying sniffles, but still he clung to Hhaardha. Even when he finally turned half around to fix his red eyes on their visitor again, he kept a hand wrapped in her clothes.

"You will not tell," he stated, almost as though he were trying to convince her or define reality by his wishes, except for the hint of hopeful question at the end. "I love Hhaardha! I love her truly, you see? You would not take me away from her. Say you won't! You could have anything else! As much water as you need, more than I promised! The whole barrel. You can have food! Please!"

Every convincing argument Etim could make had already been made. It was so obvious, obvious that this was the way it had to be. Maybe, somehow, he could still convince Hhaardha to stay in their little Stand, too, but that would have to come later.

Finally letting go of his grip on Hhaardha, he completed his rotation to face Jhorguun fully and went to the ground, kneeling and pressing his forearms to the dirt so he could rest his head against his hands, as he hadn't done since swearing himself to the Family Rrarringk so long ago. (And she had forsworn herself, not him!) "Please. I beg of you."

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Jhorguun turned her entire muzzle away from the pair, even closing her eyes in a slow blink. It was not a restful blink – it was evident in the tensing of her cheeks and brows, the flaring of her nostrils and the agitated twitching of her tail that she found the situation stressful, and was intently focused on some internal dialogue. She made no attempt to intrude in their moment, not even with her pheromones. Her emissions had stopped.

Hhaardha's arms slackened only a little around Etim when she felt him moving, but she didn't let go. Her fingers clutched desperately at him, and under the veil she was making the ugliest faces as the tears continued to pour out of her. She gasped quietly for breath because her nose was clogging up. Etim's every word opened fresh wounds in her soul. She petted his back in some thoughtless attempt to comfort them both, the movement of her paw frantic. It could be the last time she ever touched him! She almost howled when she realized. When he knelt she went down on both knees behind him, a stuttering sob escaping her jaws. Her hands followed him, stuck to his back, petting and clinging on his shirt.

“Etim, no,” she sobbed. The words came out so thin, compressed. Don't beg! she ached to cry out. Begging never got anyone anything. Even as the moment unfolded she felt such shame that she had let it all come to this, that she was letting Etim grovel. Jhorguun knew well what Hhaardha looked like under the veil, but she was so ashamed of her Danghem's teeth that rather than lift the veil away, she slipped her fingers beneath it to wipe at her soaked cheeks. She was blinded by her tears and the wet fabric clinging to her face.

“Stand up, human, stop this,” Jhorguun said brusquely, head snapping back around to Etim. Her own knees bent like she almost thought to haul him up, but she didn't – Jhorguun gestured for him to stand with quick, sharp movements before backing away, turning, hands flying to her hips and then pacing several steps away from them in obvious agitation.

“This, this is what I will say,”Jhorguun started, her speech fast and distracted, her gaze turned inward as she looked away from them. As she spoke she gestured with her paws in little bursts of activity before they returned to her hips. “You were attacked by some beast. The human, Etim, he was killed outright. Hhaardha was gravely injured, but survived long enough to find this cottage. She lingered a few days before succumbing to her wounds. The occupants of this cottage buried them both and told me the story when I inquired. I'll flesh out the details later. I have to think. But that's the gist of it. They'll believe you dead. No one will come looking for you ever again.” She half-turned to glance back at Etim, looking ill. “Nothing will be gained for anyone by dragging you away. You've obviously made your choice.”

A sob of relief bleated out of Hhaardha and she had to scrunch her eyes shut hard against a new flood of tears, a flood of overwhelming emotion. She grasped Etim's sides and hauled him up herself, wrapping her arms around him to hug him tightly to her body, his back to her belly, his legs over her thighs because she was sitting on her knees.

“Thank you, thank you Jhorguun, thank you!” she sobbed, feeling so inane, squeezing Etim as tightly in her arms as she possibly could without hurting him, hanging her head over his shoulder so they were pressed cheek to cheek. He was going to be hers, now and forever. She knew it now. She knew that nothing would ever make her give him up. It didn't matter what was best. She simply could not part with him. He was part of her own soul, and she his. She overflowed with gratitude, with grief, with a relief so strong it made her physically ill; her stomach clenched and she felt she could vomit. Words spilled out of her in a babble. “Please, please eat, rest here, there's so much I have to tell you Jhorguun, my friend, my truest friend!”

“No, no Hhaardha. The people I have come with, they are Ssringkha's people. I cannot be caught in a lie. The human already touched me, I have to wash myself. I can't linger here any longer. I – Good-bye, Hhaardha. I'm sorry. May you both find peace.” Jhorguun backed away as she spoke, and finally turned fully away. Hhaardha saw a blurry shape moving briskly down the path that cut through their gardens as Jhorguun left her life forever.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Etim was not so quick to get up from his knees; 'Whatever she wanted' had the very specific cost of swearing not to take him away.

In his thoughts, 'take him away' was partitioned off from 'take him back to Rrarringk Stand', where there would be people he would be delighted to see, and people who he would feel absolutely awful about being such a bad man as to run away, whether anyone loved him there or not. It was not a conscious self-manipulation, but just a now-well-practiced survival technique, that left Hhaardha and him basking in a pool of innocence. Similarly, he was not consciously manipulating Jhorguun by continuing to kneel, but some thoughts in the back of his head understood how uncomfortable it made her to see him beg, and had no intention of letting her be comfortable until she gave in.

So he raised himself on his palms, so he wasn't completely face down, but kept his hands clutched together while dead leaves and dirt clung to his forearms, and he very much remained on his knees.

But at Jhorguun's terrible words describing an unthinkable fate, the creases in his brows eased and a grateful smile spread across his face instead. He pushed himself back up - being so light meant he wasn't as creaky as an old woman would have been, but he was still no twenty-year-old - and backed into Hhaardha so she could wrap her arm around him once more, hold him to her and affirm that he wasn't going anywhere.

"I have. I have made my choice." 'Love conquers all' was a very male sentiment, overly romantic, but at the moment, with his heart swelling in his chest and making everything inside him feel golden, it seemed the truth. "Thank you," he said, in echo of Hhaardha, though quieter, happier, less desperate. He couldn't help but look up at her, craning his head to see just how badly this had affected her, how distraught she seemed to be, and turned to slide his arms up hers, the comfortable, familiar, 'pick me up' pose so he could kiss her cheeks and wipe the tears from the corners of his eyes.

"You are welcome back here, though!" Etim called as she left, though with just a moment of hindsight, he knew she would never come this way again.

But that was only half the problem. "Lovely Spots - we can stay here now, right? There's nothing to make us leave, now - say it's so! I will even color my hair and cut it another way if it means we will stay here forever, you and I."

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Hhaardha picked Etim up without hesitation, hoisting him up in one arm so he sat with his legs astride her belly and her forearm supporting his bottom. She knew that she would never deny any request of his for as long as she lived, much less that. With her other hand she yanked the veil off her face, still sniffling, her huffy breaths almost rising to laughter because she was so overwhelmed emotionally that she didn't know how to react. She used the veil like a handkerchief to dab her drippy nose, snorting back snot as she did so, then used the back of her wrist to swipe at her eyes again as she rapidly blinked to help clear her vision.

“Oh, my Precious, where else would we ever go?” she cried. Letting her balled-up soggy veil fall to the ground, she wrapped her arm tight around him, setting her cheek against his head and clutching his shoulder while she squeezed him. “I'm sorry,” she added, quickly releasing him from the tight hug, leaning back so she could look down her muzzle into his face while she petted his hair. “I was crushing you against my armor, I'm sorry. Etim, I don't know what's going to happen to us – ” Her lips suddenly twisted, and fresh tears welled in her eyes without falling. Her voice wavered. “But I'm never letting you go, and we're never leaving our One-Tree Stand. You're my sunlight, do you know it, Etim?”

They would die here, she knew. Perhaps unpleasantly. But was any death pleasant? All life had to end someday. That end would not come today, or tomorrow. Today she would hold her Precious, and she would be his Lovely Spots. The sun would shine on them both, and when they were gone it would shine down on the One-Tree Stand where they had loved one another, forever.

Slowly Hhaardha climbed to her feet, taking Etim with her in her arms, and carried him home.

The End.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0f4FjatswU