camp nano 2018 drabbles 7

"I don't know if they like me, is all."

Heimdrel glances sideways at her. "What?"

The Soldier stares miserably out at the sparring field, where four trolls tumble and roughhouse. The brick-red shape of Stennet goes down under their huge Krubera-cousin bond, both of them laughing like whelps. There's none of the onfidence with which she strides through the settlement every day, head held high and nodding to villagers between cheerful greetings in passing. She looks worried, and sad. "I mean... it's always been just the two of you, hasn't it? I wouldn't blame them if they don't like me coming along and... well, changing all that. Changing things."

Heimdrel considers this a second. He has seen her look many things, but he has never seen her look dejected. "It has never been just the two of us," he says slowly. "It has been me, and Tinker, and Stennet themself, and all of us."

She looks down at her hands and huffs quietly through her nose, brow furrowed. "I don't think you've ever been /bonded/ with Tinker or the whole village," she says, a little despairingly. There's no anger in her voice, only plaintive frustration. "I don't think the village has ever thought about..."

Heimdrel waits for her to speak, perplexed. "About what?"

She gives her head a quick shake, glancing away from him with her ears back. "Nothing." He knows her well enough by now to see that she's embarrassed, so he doesn't push it. "It's just that I've been with people before, you know? And it changes things. If it's worth anything, it does." The claws of one hand worry at the palm of the other. She doesn't seem to notice. "Not always for the better, for everyone."

There's a pause.

"Is this for the better?" he asks, carefully.

"It is," she rushes to explain, "of course it is. It is for me if it is for you. But..." She looks out at the field again. "...I don't know if it will be for them. I wonder, is all."

Heimdrel blinks. "Soldier," he says. "Stennet admires you greatly."

She looks up at him. Her claws stop worrying. "What?"

"They have stars in their eyes whenever you talk to them. They look like they are getting away with staying up late to watch fireworks when they see us together." His face, which is impassive by default, tugs into a faint smile. "They're very conscientious about making sure we are assigned on missions and patrols together."

The Soldier laughs, a little disbelievingly.

"It's true. They talk about you all the time." He tilts his head to get a better look at her face; her eyes follow his. "Have you not noticed?"

The Soldier shakes her head, letting out another little laugh. "I... I guess I hadn't." She glances out at the field again, where the four-legged one bowls Stennet over with a staff. "Huh."

Heimdrel pauses. "I suppose it would make sense to worry," he says, at length. Another smile. "There is an awful lot to worry about when you're a mother."

She lets out a noise, smaller and more choked than a laugh, and reaches for his hand without looking. He squeezes, and she squeezes back nearly hard enough to hurt. Her eyes are shiny, but she's smiling now. "I wouldn't know."

Heimdrel looks out over the field with her. "You will."

They watch the sparring match until the young ones finally call it done, groaning and exhausted and clearly more than a little sore, and start gathering their things to head back toward the village. The two of them stay awhile after, watching the wind whisper across the dust and through the trees around the field, and return when the sky starts to lighten.

----

She isn't sure that she's ever felt more warm or safe than right here, right now, with her nest built high and warm and soft around her, and the warm, dark, heavy closeness of the small cave she chose pressing down around her like a security blanket, and her mate's head resting on her belly.

That said, she can't help but laugh when something kicks the side of his head, startling his eyes open and his ears twitching. Heimdrel blinks up at her with bleary eyes, and she strokes one of his lower horns--his handle horns, she jokes, when she's feeling raunchy--with a tug of a smile. "It wasn't anything," she soothes. "Just the whelp."

Heimdrel stares up at her for a second before his eyes slide shut again, and he turns his face back into her stomach. The long sigh he lets out through his nose is weird and hot and ticklish against her skin, enough to make her squirm and shift under him, but after a moment they're settled again.

She listens to his breathing for a while, his and her own and the whelp's borrowed pulse, and pets his horn as she does. She's far enough along that she's moved into the cave she chose early on, and Heimdrel has spent more and more time in it with her. It's made the space a little crowded, but that's fine by her; her instincts like close and small and warm, and the two of them together generate enough heat to burn a fleshbag's foot. The Soldier has never carried before, so the time leading up to now from the panic-filled moment she realized (and the one plain to see on Heimdrel's face when he did, which made her laugh in spite of herself) has had plenty of nerves and what-ifs; but now that she's close, she's overcome by the quiet glowing certainty that everything will be alright.

She shifts again in the pile of nesting material, trying to move the hip that's fallen asleep under Heimdrel's shoulder. Things do get a little awkward in here sometimes, but it's worth it. The hand on his horn slips down behind it to scratch at the base of his ear, and she can't help but giggle silently at the way it flutters against her fingers without waking him. It's only fair, she thinks, considering how many times she's drifted half out of sleep, snuffling and snorting, to see his shit-eating grin and the blurred shape of a fingertip pressed to her nose. The last month or so has brought a new level of intimacy to their relationship: what stupid things can I make my bond do by poking?

Finally she finds a more comfortable position, with her knees drawn up over his head. One rests on the groove of his upper horns, and the other splays lazily out to one side with her hoof in the air. She sighs, long and content, and turns her head to rest her cheek on the soft wall of the nest. Rocks lay under it, of course, give it structure; the material itself is a hodgepodge of old tradition and new, pillows and wool and leaves and grasses.

She likes the feathers best, though. She runs a claw along one next to her head. He'd built the nest with care; he'd woven these with reverence.

A rumble starts up in Heimdrel's chest, filling the small space. She answers it with one of her own, and before long she can feel the noise vibrating in her bones. The whelp's cranky, intermittent kicks calm down and slow to a stop. They will know they are loved, she thinks, long before they ever see our faces. They already do.

Yes, everything will be alright.