camp nano 2018 drabbles 2

Eloise would be annoyed, he thought, and it would be entirely her fault.

Bodus sipped his tea and wrinkled his glasses back up his nose, flipping leisurely through the yellowed tome in front of him. He'd found it on a recent foray into one of the old libraries scattered here and there throughout this land--North America, the humans called it--and so far he was finding himself wondering if it had been worth the trip. It wasn't useless, certainly, there were a great many recipes to be found in it for all kinds of medicines and teas, even some food that he considered testing (on someone else, of course), but he felt perhaps risking life and limb was a little too much in return for too little.

He wasn't sure he would have gone, to be honest, had Eloise not pushed him to it. "Think of what we might find," she'd said, those huge eyes of hers glittering. "Treasure, weapons, maybe something to replace those rags you like so much. Just think about it!"

That had gotten her a flat glare.

"Books, then." She'd waved a hand by her head in a just-picture-it gesture. "Books, Bodus, imagine. You might find something in there to hide yourself a little better, maybe more charms or magic shields." She'd smiled at him crookedly. "Hoard up enough of these and maybe you won't need me one day, huh?"

He'd stared at her a moment longer, clutching his current book a little tighter before he looked away. Somehow the thought unsettled him. "Perhaps," he'd said. "A living shield is better than any charm, I must say."

Eloise didn't look put off at all; instead she'd laughed. "You know I am, honey." A human term of endearment. He scrunched his nose in distaste. "How 'bout it, then?"

---

And so Bodus found himself, a week later, with a bandaged burn stretching up one leg, which lay propped up on another chair set in front of his own. He felt quite calm about it now, which struck him as a little strange when he remembered the terror of fleeing from the temple with a swarm of Hellheeti on his heels, and the rather uncustomary swearing he'd done at top volume for Eloise to come and rescue him. It felt distant, now, dispelled by the wisps of steam from his tea like the inside of a clogged sinus.

He would've been angrier if Eloise hadn't looked so stricken.

Nettle brew. Nightshade mixed with river pebbles, poured in under moonlight. Strips of bark carved with ogham signs and brewed, he hadn't seen that in a while. It had given him a nice selection of healing for burns, he'd give it that; the tea he'd been drinking the last few days had been effective, as had the mud it had taught him to mix and smear over his leg. The charring and bubbled patches were already smoothing out and flaking off, returning to their own color and shape. It would have made him a little more charitable toward the book, if it hadn't been responsible for his needing the tea and mud in the first place.

Footsteps came down the hall, that odd high step of Eloise's. He could already hear that she was in her human form by the lack of claws clicking on the floor. "Hellooooo!" she sing-songed, bumping the door open with her rear as she carried a plate in with one hand and a teapot with the other. "Room service!"

Bodus squinted and flattened his ears at the obnoxious sugary tone he knew good and well she was faking to annoy him, but he couldn't help but eye the food. "The leg's fine, by the way," he said flatly. He was being rude and he knew it--she'd brought him tea and lunch, for Gorgus' sake--but he was feeling ill-disposed toward her all over again. He /hated/ the voice. "It feels nearly good as new. You can hardly tell it was almost burned right out of its socket."

She rolled her eyes at him and set the plate and teapot down on the table next to the chair. "Oh, please. I've seen people's limbs charred off and it's a whole lot less pretty than that." She cackled. "Especially considering what it's attached to."

Bodus' nose twitched and his eyebrows drew down. He looked away and flattened his ears, pride a little stung.

Eloise laughed again, a little less sharply this time, and bent over to bump her nose against the top of his head. It felt strange with that bony, pointed human snout. "Just teasing," she said. "No piece of charred flesh flaking off the bone is prettier than you, I promise." A wide, disconcerting smile. "Both nice to look at, though."

That smoothed him over a little. She moved away from the bunt to straighten up, and he couldn't help but feel a little disappointed despite still being annoyed with her. He never missed her bunts while they were happening, and later he would be irritated looking back on the memory, but for the brief moment after he felt the imprint of her forehead in his coarse hair, and wanted it back.

"Now," she said, holding her hand out. "Cup."

He did as she said, handing her the teacup. Those green eyes turned to the pot as she refilled the cup, careful not to burn herself, and he found himelf watching her. Those spots all over her face--freckles, he thought humans called them, he'd only seen them once or twice over his long life--drew his eye. He had been unable to help staring when he'd first met her, both fascinated and offput by her nauseating fleshbag skin; then he had grown used to them, and her, and paid them no mind.

Sometime in the last decade, though, he had started noticing them again. In little moments like this, with her cracking wise at him while steam swirls up from the teapot, with her red hair haloed in the light, with the ghost of her nose against his scalp, he noticed.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that, or about them, at all.

"Tea's up," she said, and sprinkled some more leaves in his tea before handing it back to him. "I'm leaving the pot here; don't think I don't have other things to do with my time than wait on you hand and hoof."

"I wonder sometimes," he replied, and lifted the teacup to his lips.

Before he could take a sip, he hesitated. I /am/ being a little rude, he thought. After all, she--

Eloise's shriek of rage and panic sounded in his ears again. The noise she'd made when she'd torn through the Hellheeti to reach him, bleeding out in the dirt.

It was only when she tapped his nose cautiously that he startled out of it. He realized the teacup was shaking in his hands.

"All right?" she asked. A lock of her hair had escaped her library bun to fall in her face, and she was staring at him.

After a long pause to find words again, he forced a little smile. "All right." And then, "Thank you for the tea."

Eloise grinned back at him, and his own smile felt a little more genuine. "About time you said as much. I'm your bodyguard, not your maid." She ruffled his hair, and he made an indignant noise. "You're welcome."

Maybe the book hadn't been worth it, he reflected.

He minded less than he'd thought.