#urtha

They both knew how coupling went; the priestesses took mates of their own, from time to time, and didn't hesitate to do it in full view of the older whelps, who could learn from the watching. They fumbled together all the same, uncertain of their own bodies and therefore also of each other's. It could barely be called a joining, what they managed, and the boy outspent his stamina too soon, still struggling to bring Yelkha some pleasure. She was wound too tight, and too tense, and she tried to tell him so, but he was too impatient with himself and too frustrated with her and too humiliated by his failure to listen to anything she had to say.

It was no surprise that she didn't catch, after, and the priestesses said that it had as much to do with her breeding as with his inadequacy. But he kept sulking all the same, and that dampened Yelkha's own fire too thoroughly for her to take him to bed again, no matter how strongly he sang.

Sometimes she heard his voice raised around the fire, in the years after, and considered for a moment or two if she wanted him in her bedroll again now that they'd both learned the value of patience with a partner. But that fire was past; some people you could only light for once, and she'd long since gone cold for him.

***

Yelkha never quite understood why Urtha had befriended her. She was a huge woman (goliath blood somewhere back in the line, the part of Yelkha that would always be a failed priestess-candidate whispered; it gave strength and vigor, but it tended to make for reckless warriors), broad-shouldered and broad-hipped and thick-barreled and proudly battled-scarred. Her mount was the second-biggest bull in the tribe, lesser only to the great lead-bull that no one had ever been able to saddle, and she always rode near the head of a charge, she and her Agshru slamming through the ranks of defenders and scattering them like mice.

Yelkha knew that there were always going to be some among the cavalry who would doubt her inclusion, after starting her life under Luthic's symbol. It wasn't only Bahgtru's warriors who rode aurochs, though only the highest-ranking of Gruumsh and Ilneval's chosen, or those who won great acclaim in battle, had the privilege of mounts--but even the greatest of Luthic's devotees were never permitted such honor. Not unless they'd taken on a new symbol, like Yelkha had, and they would always be tainted by their earlier associations.

But whenever the proven warriors sneered "Bull Mother" at her like it was some kind of insult to have brought calves safe into the world, Urtha would stride up behind her and thump Yelkha on the back, or rest her elbow on her shoulder, or just step right in front of her and grin down at the offender, the scars on her face pulling her lips sideways so that it looked like bared teeth. "You can laugh at that when you have Agshru eating out of your hand," she always said, and either the other fighter would pale and give way, or Urtha and Yelkha would thrash him. Yelkha bristled, at first, at the thought she needed defending, but Urtha let her give challenge and wrestled her down and then told her, laughing, that no one dared pick a fight with the Wolf-Biter, not anymore, and she was just out looking for an excuse to keep her hand in.

She never lost to Yelkha, but sometimes she'd let Yelkha get the upper hand just for the fun of it, let her get Urtha down and straddle her hips and get her for a moment or so in a headlock. Then she'd grab Yelkha's wrists and hold her hands on either side of her head and tell her what she'd done wrong, before flipping them over and pinning Yelkha until she tapped out. Either way, she was so fierce that it always made Yelkha's blood race, left her hot and tingling and looking around for any spectators who might be willing to take her over Urtha for a tumble.

Urtha noticed, after the first couple times, and she'd laugh and let Yelkha up and pat her on the back, and then call out to any men watching, or drag her along to find some who might be interested. She touched people a lot, even when she wasn't looking to spar, and Yelkha wasn't sure how she felt about it; every friendly thump and nudging elbow made her flush, the unaccustomed contact setting her blood racing in anticipation of a fight that would only come if she actually asked for it.

At least when Urtha grabbed her shoulder and steered her along, it made sense, a champion casually manhandling a lesser warrior who wouldn't dare take offense to it. That had to be the cause behind all of it, Yelkha decided eventually--a show, a boast, that she could lay hands like she was starting a fight and no one would actually dare take her up on it. Yelkha wanted to be embarrassed that she took it so easily, that she was one of the many who didn't push back, but the impulse jumbled up and fell short in confusion every time Urtha said her name, fond and amused, or called her Bull Mother with respect in her voice.

When they went looking together for men, Yelkha never went wanting; Urtha might take the best of their comrades, because she had the right to it, but she'd make sure that she shoved the second-best into Yelkha's bedroll on the way to her own. Yelkha liked when their bedrolls were close together, and not just for that reason. She'd bring her man to attention, but her own focus always drifted, looking across the room to Urtha as she dragged a stud's performance out of her chosen mate, and gave a show of her own in return. Sometimes she'd look up at Yelkha, their eyes locking, and Yelkha's hips would stutter and slow until her bedmate had to remind her of his existence.

None of them were good enough to distract her entirely from Urtha, not when the other woman was so aggressively on display, bare breasts heaving, head thrown back, hair falling loose and sticking to her sweaty skin. She told Urtha as much, whenever Urtha asked if she'd liked the man she'd pushed Yelkha's way, and Urtha always laughed, smug in a way that would have made Yelkha want to lie even if it hadn't been true.

"Ah, mine wasn't any good either," she'd always say, slapping Yelkha on the back. "Men just get fumble-fingered when they're faced with a woman who's better than they are. Keep letting them know they could do better and maybe one of them will get good enough to impress us, hey?"

She left while Yelkha was pregnant, the first time around. They'd been raided by lowlanders, for once, not another tribe, and these were true barbarians; they'd cut Agshru down with magic, while Urtha was letting him roam and graze, and then they'd doubled the affront by feeding on his flesh. Urtha had killed most of them for it, but a few of them had run, cowards like lowlanders always were, and she meant to have vengeance on them all.

Yelkha would have gone, too, except for the child. Urtha put a hand on her wrist when she started to gather her things anyway, pinning it in the air, and shook her head. She'd lost a mount to cowards already, she said; she wouldn't risk her battle-comrade too, or deny the tribe the strength that Yelkha would surely bring forth into it.

"Some of us are made to fight wolves," she said, and grinned her sideways, wolf-bitten grin. "And other creatures that would prey on cattle. Some of us are made to whelp strong children. Do what the gods put you here to do, Yelkha, and I'll do my part. Pick out a calf for me and train it up for when I come back, hey?"

There weren't any calves that season half as large as Urtha would have needed, which was just as well, because Urtha never came back. Yelkha didn't look the next breeding season, because a year should have been enough. It wasn't until much later that she wondered if Urtha had actually died, as the tribe thought, or if she was as free and happy somewhere as Yelkha was, and had just been better--as she had been in all other things--at making a clean escape.

***

The herdmaster was more complicated than Yelkha realized when she met him. They tumbled together after a battle from time to time, just like all the others, the members of the close-knit cavalry always choosing each other after a fight. If her skin prickled when she touched him, if something in his gaze made the battle-heat burn hotter in her belly than it did for any of the other men she pulled down into her blankets, she put that down to his age and experience. He had more skill with a woman's body than any of the prideful young men she was used to, and no less virility than the proudest of them.

Later, after she'd proved herself to him as an aurochs-handler, and as a rider and a midwife to his cows, she realized how different from those young men he really was. Those, she took to bed after a battle, when fire was burning in everyone's veins; him, she could take to mate at any time, her blood just as hot from wrestling a bull into submission together or bringing a strong calf into the world as it might have been from a charge or a fight. Luthic's touch, maybe, making sure that he'd give at least one more child to the tribe before his time came to fall in battle.

If that was so, Yelkha was glad to be Luthic's agent. She shuddered and growled into his mouth when he slid his hands under her armor and started working it off; when he hoisted her up against the wall of a birthing-shed and slid into her, she wrapped her legs around his waist and dug her teeth into his bony shoulder and urged him on with her nails dug into his back until they were both breathless with pleasure. Sometimes when he told her to mount up and follow him to the edge of the herd, it was to show her a secret technique or have her help him round up a stray, but sometimes it was to dismount beyond scouting range and curl together behind a rock for a while, in secret, under the guise of duty.

"Maybe it's Baghtru trying to learn his mother's ways, if a good hard ride can make your blood burn this strong," he'd say, chuckling at his own cavalier blasphemy, as he kissed and bit his way down Yelkha's neck and sent sparks shivering straight through her gut. "It takes a bull to breed a calf, too, not just a cow in season. And I don't see why anyone else would mind, if we're both willing- are you?"

Which seemed like stupid question for him to ask, when Yelkha was already grinding down against him through their clothes, fighting with his breeches, but he always asked regardless. And with his mouth on her neck and her breasts, his hands on her hips and her buttocks, she always was willing, and eager besides.

Even with those private meetings, she didn't know for sure who had sired her second child--it had been a long winter, with many battles to be fought against raids and wolves, and it would have been foolishness for either of them to thrust away other partners in favor of each other when they didn't know what seed might best catch in what ground. But when her courses stopped and she felt her belly begin to round, she hoped, in secret, that it was his, that she would be the reason that his strength carried on into the next generation of the tribe.

They didn't stop then, even though they ought to have, even though there was no point in mating when she was already bred. The fire that still burned in her belly for him sometimes worried her, maybe a sign that something was wrong with the child, that she'd be fertile again sooner than she thought. But the whelp was hale and strong, and she held him close and nursed him for the first and last time and thought, with pride, that she saw the traces of the herdmaster's square temples in his soft round face.

When they did stop, later, it wasn't Yelkha's doing, or for any cooling of her blood. It was the herdmaster who took her aside, long-faced and serious like he so often was in public, and so rarely was in private, clasping her shoulder in an iron grip and pushing her back against the wall when she would have stepped in towards him, but then standing well back and failing to close the distance. Gurgiu had kicked him a month ago, and he was still limping, but he put all his weight on his good leg and none at all on her.

"We've been a distraction to each other," he said, clipped and blunt, his sunken eyes shadowed and his long jaw set. "I have more left to teach you than you even know you still need to learn, and we can't waste any more time on the fool's idea that I might sire the tribe another whelp. It's not some future child that the herd needs, it's a new herdmaster, and you listen, Yelkha, I won't be satisfied if it's anyone but you. And when you challenge me-" his hand tightened further when she opened her mouth "-when you challenge me for it, I don't want any other candidate to think I had reason to go easy on you. Or for you to think it either, hey?"

That wasn't something Yelkha could see anyone thinking, not unless she was pregnant again come the time for a challenge, and if she was then it could wait until she'd whelped. But there was wisdom in the herdmaster's eyes, a strange knowing that she was too young to have learned, and she trusted him to know his people as he knew his herd. He was right, besides, the part of her raised under Luthic's paw reluctantly whispered; at his age, it mattered more that his knowledge be handed down into the tribe than that he try to give it another child. His blood would have passed through the whelping pens by now or not at Luthic's will, but it would be irresponsible for Yelkha to let his wisdom die.

But she was glad, when she ran, that she'd never finished learning enough to challenge him. Glad of it because she would have wasted all his teaching, she thought then, taken something precious from him by taking his title and then trampling it under Gurgiu's hooves. By the time the tribe caught up with her, she knew better why she'd been so relieved to run from that inevitable fight, though it made her hope all the more that she could keep from too thoroughly stomping his heart into the dirt.

***

Bryn was a revelation.

She was different, because of course she was different; none of them had been the same, and Bryn was unique on a whole different level, wielding her own fire and blossoming in her own colors. There was a confidence to her, about her, with her, that Yelkha had never known before. Giving a name to what burned between them didn't lessen its power, but it did make it all the more precious to Yelkha that this time she knew what she held.

But sometimes she'd tilt her head back to bare her neck like she wasn't afraid of who might go for it, sweat gluing curls of hair to her skin, and Yelkha would feel the fire in her belly, and there would be a twinge of memory along with it as she looked for scars that had never twisted Bryn's face. Or Yelkha would push her up against a wall, and dig nails into her back until Bryn bit down and dug into her shoulder, and as Yelkha's breathing went ragged, she'd feel the world flip for a second as she recalled herself in Bryn's place. Or sometimes even when Bryn sang, standing on stage with her accordion, one foot tapping to keep the pace as the audience was lured into clapping along, Yelkha's blood would pulse with the music, and she'd think for just a moment of a different tempo and a different time.

And then the memory would fade, because Bryn was herself, and not anyone else, and right now she was all that Yelkha needed. Yelkha never had much in the way of regrets about anything, and this was no different. What was there to regret, when Bryn was right here in front of her? She wasn't going to fuss over what knowledge that she hadn't had at the time might have changed, back when there were other people around her. She knew what it was that she was feeling now, and that was enough. When it was Bryn's touch that made her skin tingle, and Bryn's laugh that made her heart swell, and Bryn charging into battle that made her stomach flip, and Bryn standing triumphant in victory that made her pulse race, that was more than enough to fill her up with the love she finally had a name for.

(That name was "Bryn," mostly, whether it was shouted across a busy marketplace or whispered into her hair, groaned into the darkness in a too-small bed or said with a grin after a long day apart. But Yelkha was learning some other important words while she was at it, and she didn't understand it the way a lowlander might, but she still felt it in her bones when Bryn, curled against her, whispered "I love you" into her ear.)

Fluff - 11. “I’m so proud of you.”

"Well?" Yelkha asks after the second day.

She's not nervous, not at this point, not now that Urtha has warned Bryn, and wrestled her, and grinned at her after. Or at least she's not nervous about Urtha's opinion of Bryn. But this is the first time they've been alone since they met up, Bryn off fetching water while the two of them get wood, and if there's anything Urtha might think it was better to say alone… now's the time to say it.

With her arms full of wood, Urtha can't thump her like she normally does, but she elbows Yelkha hard in the shoulder and grins down at her when Yelkha looks up. "Your own shaman! You did good, little Bull Mother."

"Bryn's great," Yelkha agrees, grinning back up at her. But then she hesitates, the true worry that's been preying on her continuing to stir. "No children with her, though, unless she finds some magic like her mothers did. And I'm not taking a man to bed for them while I'm with her," she adds fiercely, because she's determined on that point.

Urtha comes to a stop, and when Yelkha stops and turns towards her, shifts her load enough to lean in and elbow Yelkha again. This time she leaves her elbow resting there on Yelkha's shoulder and leans forward, bending down so that her long dark grey-streaked-hair falls around her face and brushes against Yelkha's cheek.

"Hey. Bull Mother, listen," she says, low and rumbling and serious, her eyes fixed on Yelkha's. "What Luthic's shamans told us? That was bullshit. Worse. At least you can light fires with what aurochs shit out. Agshru's why I left, but those priestesses are why I didn't come back. Real glad you figured it out in time to make good."

Yelkha sighs, feeling a weight lift off her chest. Then she nods at Urtha, shrugs her elbow off, and ducks out from under her, starting back towards the fireplace again. "I did make good, hey?"

"You did. I always knew you could, Bull Mother. And I'm real proud of you for it."

Her stride stutters at that, at the grin she catches a glimpse of on Urtha's tooth-scarred face when she glances back at it. Yelkha feels her cheeks heating, but she grins, too. She didn't need to know that. But it feels good to hear, all the same.

***

Fluff - 31. “I’m never going to leave you. I promise.”

Almost as soon as the sun has set, the desert grows cold. Saffron Kite is used to this, has been used to this for a very long time. That doesn't mean she likes it. Especially when she's out in it alone.

She'd thought about starting a fire, but then she'd thought about someone coming, strangers or bandits or the giant scorpions that roam the sand, and she hadn't been able to bring herself to do it. Not alone. Maybe once Faush comes. Faush is going to come, they said so. They just have to finish their business in town and then they'll be along.

Except that it's dark, and late, and getting later, and they're still not back. What if something happened to them? What if they were attacked, or hurt, or put in jail again? Or what if- they want a new pack, lots of people. What if they found people they like better than Kite? People they're going to stay with? What if they leave Kite alone out here and never come back?

Kite rises from where she'd been huddled under their blanket, peering out of their tent. She throws the blanket off and begins to pace, nervous energy running through her, making her lash her tail and flex her claws. She wants a tree to scratch against, or a wooden wall, or even a stone, something she can dig into like she can't with sand. She know Faush won't leave her like that, when she thinks about it rationally, but she's cold and she's alone and it's so hard to think with the jitters running through her until all she wants to do is dig her claws into something and-

She sniffs the air and catches a whiff of gnoll-smell, friend-smell. Tailtip twitching with delight, she turns and bounds over the dunes. There's Faush, trudging over the sand towards her, a bag slung over their shoulder that should have their new equipment inside. Kite flings herself at the gnoll with enough force to nearly topple them, purring as loud as her voicebox will allow. Faush yelps, then steadies themself and hugs back, laughing.

"Did you miss me?"

"I did. I got wound up," Kite confesses, shamefaced. "I started thinking maybe something had happened in town, or you were hurt somewhere, or- or you found people you liked better, and you were going to leave with them, without me, and I know you wouldn't, but- you know how I get when I get wound up."

"I know." Faush is patting her on the back, long gentle slow strokes down her spine, in line with the direction of her fur. The shivering anxiety drains out of Kite bit by bit at their touch. "I'd never leave you like that. I promise."

"I know," Kite echoes, rubbing the side of her face against Faush's shoulder, reinforcing her scent-marks from the night before. "Thank you for saying it anyway."

"Any time," Faush promises her.

They let Kite rub her face all over them, and then they push her gently away, and take her hand, and walk hand-in-hand with her back to the camp to light a fire.

***

Fluff - 50. “Stay.”

Yelkha awakens to the sound of rain on the roof. They're on the top floor of the inn, shoved into a tiny room just below the eaves, not by any unkindness on the part of the proprietor but because the inn is full to bursting. She and Bryn had been two of the last to straggle in last night out of the wet, and this is the only inn anywhere along this stretch of road. She's grateful that they had a room at all.

More grateful still that they had a run-in shed--the innkeeper had apologized for not having a stall free for Gurgiu, but he's never been fond of stalls, so it's just as well to have him out in the pasture instead of trapped inside where he might kick his way out. The shed will keep him out of the worst of the weather. And if he wants to frolic in the mud, as he sometimes does, that's a problem for tomorrow. The rain is due to last all through the day.

Somewhere far below Yelkha can hear the intermittent sounds of the staff and other visitors waking up and beginning to fill the taproom. Up here it's almost too far to smell breakfast cooking, but she catches a snatch of bacon and rolls, reluctantly, out of Bryn's arms. She'll collect up food from downstairs and bring it up for Bryn to eat in bed. Even Yelkha doesn't have the heart to bully her out of the sheets in this weather.

Before she can leave the bed entirely, though, Bryn grabs at her, hand settling on her hip, and whines a protest. "Nnnnno. It's too early to get up. Stay."

Yelkha chuckles at her and reaches down to pat her hand. "I'm just getting breakfast. You don't have to get up."

"Stay," Bryn says again, stubbornly, her grip tightening. She tries to pull Yelkha back into bed, but has absolutely no leverage at this angle, so it's just an impatient tug against Yelkha's hip that almost makes her fingers slip off. "It's too early for breakfast."

"Too early for breakfast?"

"If you have to get up for it."

Yelkha doesn't think there is such a thing, but Bryn is peering just far enough out of the nest of blankets for one yellow eye to gleam in the dark, and her pouting mouth to be visible. Looking at her pursed lips makes Yelkha's resolve slip as she imagines what else she might do with themm if Yelkha stays. Her stomach isn't growling, not yet, but perhaps….

"How about I stay a little while longer, then go down and get breakfast once you're more woken up?" Yelkha is already sliding back into the bed and under the covers, reaching out to wrap an arm around Bryn and tug her close.

"Good," Bryn says, sleepily, moving to nestle her head into Yelkha's shoulder.

Yelkha intercepts her, catching those lips with her own and pulling her into a kiss. Bryn makes a startled noise, but leans enthusiastically into it as soon as she's realized what's happening. Yelkha breaks away long enough to grin at her. "I only said I was going to stay, hey? I didn't say I was going to let you go back to sleep."

***

Angst - 15. “What gives you the right to just waltz back into my life after all the pain you’ve caused."

"What gives you the right?" Itherai demands, glaring up at the bugbear towering over her.

There's a broad grin on that shaggy, idiot face, spotted arm reaching down to offer Itherai a hand up. She ignores it, pushing herself slowly and laboriously off the ground, almost falling when she puts weight on her left knee and pain pierces through it. Gritting her teeth, she powers through and rises, swaying, to her feet. A touch against the silver star at her throat sends a belated pulse of power through her, soothing away the worst of the hurt, though there's not enough moonlight left gathered in it to restore her as fully as she needs. At least it's strength enough to glare up at Kolya again without toppling.

Seeing her touch the star, Kolya thumps her hand against her own chest, where the golden star that's twin to Itherai's own still hangs. "You are finally doing as the gods wish, and not what you wish, and so the gods wished me to save you. That makes me right."

"Do you not even understand the words I'm saying? After all the trouble you've caused, after everything you've done, what gives you the right to come back here? You ignited this spark, you reinvigorated the rebellion, you gave them a cause and a name and a champion to unite around, and then you just- just left! Do you know how much pain you've created? How much turmoil? How many have died, because you could neither let the ashes settle nor stay to support what you roused?"

"But I am back now," Kolya says. She doesn't even have the grace to sound wounded; she just grins even more broadly at Itherai, showing all those sharp shining teeth, like that should make up for everything. "We will work together, and my band will help, and the priests will find out what the gods really think of them."

Oh, no. She has more people with her. Just as undisciplined and stupid, Itherai is uncertain, and just as disasterous to the delicate work of shifting society without throwing it further into disarray. Itherai shakes her head and turns on her heel, ignoring how it makes her head spin. Kolya's fingers brush against her shoulder, but don't grip to catch her as she starts to walk away.

"No," she says coldly, not looking back. "You threw away that chance when you left the first time. I will not be working with you."

***

Angst - 29. “You deserve better.” (I, um, forgot that this one was supposed to be angst >>)

The forge is small, and dark, and dusty, and half the tools are broken. Finding it had taken far too long, even with directions, because Ryxtlin hadn't expected it to be tucked so far into the back of an alley in the artisan district, despite what Scrape had said. She stomps inside when she finds it at last, guided by the sound of hammering and a kenku's off-key whistle, and looks around with obstinate displeasure.

"Ugh," she says, and then, when that doesn't feel like expression enough, "Not worth two gold. Not worth two copper. Smith-friend deserves better."

Scrape, who had set her hammer aside when Ryxtlin came banging in, shrugs. "A forge is a forge. Scrape has tools and metal. There is an anvil, and light."

That sentence comes out all in one piece, the same voice all through, something mammalian--human, Ryxtlin thinks, or deep-voiced halfling--and far too condescending. Ryxtlin only bristles more. Especially when she looks at the anvil and sees that the horn is broken off on it. Scrape can fix it, probably. But she shouldn't have to.

"Who rented to Scrape?" she asks. "Ryxtlin is paying them visit."

***

General - 3. “I love you.” “You shouldn’t.” (and then I made this one angsty, so it balances out!)

There are words that Tulkar has been careful not to say. He's aware of the ephemeral nature of their relationship; he's aware, also, that it weighs on Sudryal on a way that it doesn't on him. Someday Tulkar will have to return to his forest and his duties there, and Sudryal will have to return to his own. For Tulkar, it will only be a pleasant interlude in what he very much hopes will be a long and fruitful life, but whether it's because he's an elf, or because of his hermitage's solitude, or because of his own inner nature, he can tell that it weighs on Sudryal far more.

So he tries not to make it worse by saying things that Sudryal will have to remember and regret. It's not easy, especially after a certain point. He's used to being open in his affections. But he keeps the words to himself and expresses his feelings through gesture, instead, which Sudryal seems to appreciate, even if he blushes and squirms and grumbles at him when Tulkar pulls him into a hug or leans down to kiss his forehead or his cheek.

But he forgets himself now and then in the morning, or more often if Sudryal stirs in the middle of the night, when he's still a bit sleep-blurred. Fortunately, he forgets himself in his native language. Sudryal, it seems, doesn't know Orcish. There's no reason why he should. And so if Tulkar murmurs to him, "Shhh, I love you, go back to sleep," it's just noise to him, a comforting sound to go with Tulkar's arm around his chest and a kiss against the tip of his ear or the back of his head. He still stiffens or squirms, because that's what Sudryal does, but it's simply grumpiness and not a more heartfelt complaint.

If Grai is awake, sometimes she'll looks over in recognition, but Tulkar never thinks anything of it. She won't give him away. He doesn't think about Gul, who is never awake for those quiet interludes, or that Tulkar talks to them now and then about things he wouldn't mention to anyone else. Not until the long, restless night when Sudryal wakes screaming into Tulkar's hand and tries to pull out of his arms and Tulkar, unwilling to let go, murmurs calming nonsense into his ear. "No, stay, go back to sleep, I love you and I'll keep you safe…."

Sudryal goes stiff in a way entirely different from the rigidness of embarrassment. He stops fighting, but doesn't relax into Tulkar's grip like usual. "You shouldn't," he mutters, so quietly that Tulkar might think that he wasn't supposed to hear, except that it was in Common, not Elvish.

Tulkar goes still too, holding him, though he doesn't risk letting go. He opens his mouth, then closes it again, churning through all the possible answers. Sudryal likely didn't mean that to sting like rejection, but it does, hurting the way the elf's self-loathing so often does whether he means it to or not. Tulkar wants to argue with that self-loathing, make the case, as always, for why Sudryal deserves his affection and he deserves to be allowed to give it. But he can never win that argument against the implacable black creep of self-hatred flowing through Sudryal, and he's even less likely to do so now, in the dark of night, with Sudryal still shaking from the memory of his dreams.

"Maybe," Tulkar says instead, as much as he hates making even that concession. "But I do, and you can't stop me."

When he tugs Sudryal a little closer, nestling him close to his chest, Sudryal lets him do it. He relaxes only slowly, but eventually the iron goes out of his spine and the tension out of his muscles, and he settles, however annoyed, back into Tulkar's embrace.

***

General - 7. “Is that blood?” “Yes but that doesn’t matter right now, what does matter is-” “You are literally bleeding.”

Isgrac stumbles forward towards the body of the one bandit who hadn't run. She feels absurdly tired for the amount of magic she'd used; she's practiced Mind Spike with Filgrun before, so she knows she has the spellpower for it, but she's weak and shaky nonetheless, an odd chill spreading upward from her fingertips and toes. The woman is dead, now, but her face swims in front of Isgrac's eyes still, white with terror, blood streaming from her nose and trickling from her ears.

Her chin and cheek are streaked with it when Isgrac reaches her body, already darkening as it dries. The flow has slowed to a bare dribble, if that. Right. Once the heart stops beating, blood stops spurting from wounds, it just drains slowly. Isgrac has read about that.

The blood had gotten to her collar before it slowed, though, and there's more blood on her shirt around the arrow-wound where Kanti had gotten her in the chest. Isgrac thinks that might have been the killing blow; it's around where the heart would be for a hobgoblin, and humans aren't built that differently. But she's not sure if it was. Maybe her spell was, instead. In the chaos of the battle, it's hard to be certain of anything. She's only grateful that the rest broke and ran when this one fell.

Doing her best not to touch the bloodied cloth, Isgrac fumbles for the pouches at the woman's belt. She'd seen one that looked like a scroll case. When she opens it up, it's not a magic scroll rolled up inside, but it's something almost as useful. Her hands are strangely shaky as she spreads out the map.

"Is that blood?" Kanti says from behind her, sounding alarmed. Maybe she's in shock. It was the first time Isgrac has killed someone, it's probably Kanti's first time, too, unless something happened at the circle that she hasn't told Isgrac about.

"Um, yes?" Isgrac says, not sure if she should be gentle with her or not. Probably she should. It's Kanti, after all. She tries to stand up with her prize and stumbles as she rises, but Kanti catches her arm from behind and hauls her the rest of the way up. Swaying a little, with her head spinning for some reason, Isgrac turns to show her the map. "That's not important right now. Look what I found, now we can-"

"Isgrac, you're bleeding," Kanti interrupts her. She puts a hand against Isgrac's chest and there's a sudden cool rush much more welcome than the numbing cold in her limbs, a feeling like an autumn breeze through the mountains. Isgrac can almost smell the pines. The world stops spinning quite so badly, and the chill in her limbs fades, replaced by the warmth of Kanti so close.

Then the faint sensation of nausea that Isgrac had been ignoring rolls through with sudden, surprising force. She shoves the map roughly into Kanti's hands and doubles over, emptying the morning's ration onto the dust of the road. Out of the corner of her eye she catches sight of the bandit woman's wide, staring empty eyes, and white face streaked with blood, and a second wrenching wave passes through her as she vomits up more bile. She closes her eyes and takes a few deep breaths, then rises again, shaky but less so.

"We can, um. Find the main road again. With the map," she proposes weakly, not quite looking at Kanti.

"Yeah," Kanti says, sounding a bit faint. She puts an arm around Isgrac's shoulders. "Let's sit down somewhere for a while first though. Off the road."