Bel, Erskin, and Jethro: Be celebrities.

You desperately want to argue and deny, but-- she hurt him, your moirail. In this, she betrayed you and his blood is welling up against your palm in irrefutable proof. And still you love her, need her, every part of you still aches for the wanting of her touch.

"We'll see," you say, weakly. "But let's patch you up first."

You get the bag down, resettle Jethro between your legs, stoke the base of his horn as reassuringly as you can.

"Just let me know if you need a breather, what?"

 

"Okay. Keep doin' that with the horn. It helps." You don't have especially sensitive horns, not like he does, but feeling his slow seadweller pulse, his cool skin, the soft ripples of his magnetic field, all help you keep anchored in the here and now. You need that, because otherwise every touch to the wound wants to take you back to there and then. Wants to convince you this is you now: a thing to be bitten. Jethro Makwaa, trollish juicebox.

You close your eyes and try to relax. "I trust you," you say. Then, a moment later, in a different tone, "I trust you." The first was just a go-ahead; the second is a revelation. You already knew you trusted him to care about you, and not attack you if he could possibly help it, though you know sometimes he's not really the one driving the prowler, so to speak. But this is different. You trust him with this fear and this pain and this deep-down uneasy change in how you view your own skin. There's no one else who would really understand.

 

"Alright. Steady on, then, soldier."

You scarcely recall working on him, last time, but now you can appreciate how strange it is to be treating someone else, clearing away dark green-brown blood stains, suturing flesh that bruises vivid ochre. You'd set the stitches in too tightly, in your unthinking rush, held the edges of punctures too firmly, and he's in rougher shape than he might have been had you thought to compensate.

Landwellers are so ridiculously brave. If you were this fragile you would climb into a small box somewhere and refuse to get out.

You stroke his horns and face and hair every time you can spare a hand, and it doesn't take so long to patch everything back together. You lean your forehead to his.

"After I got my leg off the first time," you say, hesitantly, "I thought, everything would just be alright once I got a new one, you know? I could just pop the missing bit back on. But it took... I wasn't just missing the meat, and all. It took more than that, it tore me up on the inside, just this one stupid little accident. I flinched, or, or I ran, or I froze up... And I kept trying to go along like my nerve would come back, or grow back, but it never has, and it's been a sweep, and I'm still so...

"Well. Anyway. I meant to say. My Lady made all that... being torn open, being bled out... Surrendering. It was alright, what I was, now, because I was for her now and she loved me and I could give myself up. Let go. It wasn't the feeling of... being prey. It wasn't that horror. Something eating you up that never even cared. And she made it feel so good..."

You touch the edge of the fresh bandage. "It wasn't right that this happened to you. It shouldn't have ever."

 

"She made me feel like prey," you admit. "Like I'm still prey. I just want it to stop." You hide your face against his shoulder. Once again, take his hand and put it over the wound. "That helps. Cover it. I can feel it's you, that helps."

And then you give up trying not to cry like a wiggler, and you just blubber until his shirt is soaked through.

 

You rest your chin on his head and rub his back with your free hand. You're starting to get the hang of riding out Jethro's various crying jags, though you'd certainly like to know how to head them off or make them stop sooner. Maybe you can ask Bel about it, he hardly ever cries... but then, even if he stayed on the island while you left, he still went here and there for his war games, and Jethro, well, you haven't heard him, really, tell many stories about his own adventures, have you. Or have you? Did you forget...?

"Is this all.... is this, er, sort of, well, sort of new for you?" you ask. "I mean. Er. Being out in the world? Being... hurt by people?"

 

You think about that as you wind down. You've been less isolated than your remote hive would indicate, so you want to say no; you've long been in the habit of sticking around the outpost for a few extra nights when you make your supply runs, getting to know the trolls who live nearby, playing pickup games at the athletic center, haggling over baskets of fresh crab at the docks. You've gotten into your share of fights, as well as some flirtations and makeouts. Had some crushes and some cute pupa heartbreaks. Listened to gossip. Socialized.

But then you got back in your prowler and drove almost three hundred miles away from all of that, and not come back for perigees.

"It's new stayin' out in the world," you explain at last. "It's new havin' shit stick with me."

 

You gather him up closer and get to your feet, then amble off with him to the couch and curl up around him. It feels safer with your back against something, even just a few pillows.

"I think Bel's had the most experience, of us," you say thoughtfully. "Commanding people, and so on, though I don't have the faintest idea of how he's managed so well. Then again, that goldblood of his is older than all of us, so who knows how that works out. I... was always passing through, you know? It wasn't ever safe to know anyone. So I suppose I'm new to all this, as well. I've never stayed around anywhere with people for any longer than I had to."

You brush your fingers across Jethro's stiff hair. "I suppose that's what's happening now," you say thoughtfully. "I have to."

 

"Yeah. We was just gonna have a road trip, just the two of us, maybe do some fishin', an' then... there was this whole thing." You sigh. "You still wanna do that? Or you wanna head back home an' wait til another time? It's around when we was gonna be gettin' back to your hive. Your scalebeasts oughtta meet my Paw." You manage about a quarter of a grin at the thought.

 

"I'm packing it in and going back to my hive, yes. I don't think I could have done the whole road-trip without something else going wrong, anyway, if I'd stuck around I would have fucked everything up at some point, anyway. I think it's better if I just stay home and finish my schoolfeeds and, and figure out what I'm good for, anymore. There's got to be something."

The last bit comes out embarrassingly plaintive, and you busy yourself with rearranging cushions.

"What are you thinking of doing, as an adult?" you ask. "Er. I mean. You're, er, you're sort of involved with some, some very dangerous company. I mean, while we're talking about, about lasting damage that, that, er, that whole, renegade anti-authoritarian sort of lifestyle, er, might not be the best long-term career choice, I shouldn't think..."

 

"Bro, I'mma let that bullshit pessimism pass without comment, but only cuz I feel like shit an' I'm tired. One a these nights we're gonna dig into that, I promise you." You poke his chest with a stiff finger (not very hard) before resuming hugging. "Ain't like toeing the line's any guarantee of a long life, right? Least if you're Bel's color on down. It's all war alla time up there. I just wanna write my romcoms, but I'm olive, bro, I don't get to pick."

 

"Yes, well, it isn't like the empire's got any use for a sea lord that doesn't want to do much lording," you grumble. "I didn't just drop all my feeds and run off because I was tired of math. Though, I was pretty bloody tired of math... Anyway. I mean to say, we've all got to serve one another as best we can, what? We've got to grow up and do whatever it is that we're hatched for, even if it isn't what we'd like. I don't think it would be a good idea if half of everyone just, just, I don't know, sat around eating cake, instead of being captains or cavalreapers or whatever."

You rub one of his horns and add, "You're a brilliant writer, though. Maybe that is what you're for."

 

You smile at the compliment and let the rest of it go. There are good times to debate politics, and this is just about the opposite of one of those.

"I could tutor you," you offer. "I actually aced most a my schoolfeeds, believe it or not. Prolly on account of studyin's a nice mellow way to pass a long cold night."

 

"Oh! Well, thank you, I might just take you up on that. It'd be nice if you came and visited, my hive is, er, is pretty large. I don't really know what to do with it."

You peer at him shyly. "You could stay the dark season? Its neither cozy nor well-appointed, but we could fix that."

 

His shy face is absolutely adorable. You kiss your finger and transfer the kiss to his nose: boop! "I'd love that."

It occurs to you that despite that seriously unpleasant interlude with your neckbite, you are where you wanted to be: on the couch with your moirail, snuggling. "Can we design you a sweater? For me to knit? It'll be one of a kind, won't nobody else have one quite like it. Plus the math is kinda soothing," you add a bit sheepishly.

 

"Well, yes, of course, if you like, but I think I have rather plain tastes, compared to what you usually make... will you be bored if you're not working in a lot of colors?"

 

"Naw, doin' plain stockinette just keeps my hands busy while we're talkin'. Sides, we can do sumpin cool with texture maybe, like a real subtle lattice or herringbone..."

You have to sit upright to get your writing-materials trunk out -- "Dang attic modus." -- but as soon as you've got your graph paper book and colored pencils out you snuggle back against his side and use his knee as a desk. "How bout I make it your color 'steada black? It's such a purty color, Erskin, you oughtta wear more of it."

 

You chew on your lip for a minute, thinking about it. For all that you intend to live a quieter life from here on out, the idea of wearing clothes you can't go to ground in just makes your skin crawl.

"Maybe a thin stripe," you hedge. "On the hems...? It's only that too much color asks for trouble. I wish you wouldn't wear so many bright things, yourself."

((i like when it shows that jethro grew up with a gigantic ice bear for a guardian, and erskin grew up with a valiant but very small smewcat. erskin's used to thinking like something just as likely to be prey as predator... i bet jethro's body language and postures take up way more space, too.))

 

"Mosta what I'm hunting can't see color that good," you begin, and then process what he said and do a doubletake. He's not thinking about hunting, he's thinking about being hunted. A seadweller, the most dangerous creature on the planet aside from the Empress's lusus, is afraid to wear his color because someone might see him.

You have to hug him real tight until the stab of pity you get from realizing that dies down to something bearable.

Then you open your pencil box and start picking out wilderness colors, trying to match what you remember of the island's flora. "I gotcha, darlin'. Imma make you two sweaters. One in your color for keepin' cozy by the fire an' workin' on your schoolfeeds, an' one that matches the landscape so you can be invisible when you're out roamin'."

 

"Oh! Oh, I say, that's clever!" you lean forward, genuinely interested now. "Here, the foliage blues are more—" you sort through the box of colors, then hand over a selection of grey-blues, muddy teals, and a pleasant burnt-orange that's spot on for the local plate fungus.

"You could probably work a few stripes of violet in to all this," you remark. "There's a fair number of brambles with bright stems and so on... I was traveling through some fens, once, you know, at just the right season for everything to be in flower and the predominant bloom of the area was a tremendously stunning imperial fuchsia. Also, carnivorous. You could cut a blossom off and just eat whatever you found down in the bell, as long as it didn't have horns on. It was a lovely little jaunt. Boring as anything, but lovely."

 

"Ooh, that's gonna look amazing..." You bend over the notepad, tongue sticking out the corner of your mouth, and intently sketch a few motifs for his approval. Curved shapes are hard in knitting, since you're basically working with rectangular pixels, but you've got a lot of small leaf borders memorized, and you can scale some of them up nicely if you give the leaves veins, the flowers stamens, to interrupt the wide areas of one color...

Erskin helps you pick out colors, points out what he likes and what he doesn't, sometimes takes up a pencil to add a few squares to a pattern block. After a while of this, you're purring a little without noticing. You've never teamed up on a creative venture like this before. You didn't know how utterly happy it would make you.