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Whine.
Fire, everywhere, looming above her ten, twenty feet high, now a hammer, now a shield, now a tidal wave bearing down on—
Whine.
—screams, a cool blue river cutting through the scene, fire turning to rough rock scraping against her—
Oh. That was just Nugget, licking her face.
She opened her eyes, and sure enough her overgrown puppy stood over her, anxiously wagging his tail and whining. “Nugget,” she whispered, “I told you, you don’t have to wake me up when you need to go, you can just go.”
He whined again, and, okay, so the very first day they’d been traveling he pooped in the cart while she was off helping Yasha pick some buttercups they’d seen on the side of the road and someone had fussed at him and now he was afraid to poop without permission, but ugh, it was the middle of the night and she was exhausted. Physically she was fine, but that didn’t help the phantom feeling of a giant-sized hammer in the back that had been haunting her since seeing Nott—
Nugget whined again, and she rubbed her face and whispered, “Okay, okay,” and blearily stumbled to her feet, careful not to bump Nott as she did so. There was kind of sort of room for everyone to have their own space in the bubble, especially if they curled up, but tonight everyone was huddled together towards the part tucked in the rock, back to back and foot to foot. She was in the middle of a goblin-monk sandwich that Nugget was mostly not disturbing, although his wagging tail came perilously close to the tip of Nott’s ear. She blinked again, looking for the best way out—Caduceus was up where her head had been, and Yasha had her back to Beau—but the other side of Nott was clear, so she stepped over the sleeping goblin and clucked her tongue at her dog, who Blinked out of the pack to the edge of the bubble.
She joined him at the edge and gave him a little shove, and moments later he Blinked down the tunnel behind them and squatted down. She crossed her arms and raised one hand to cover her yawn, still blinking, though it wasn’t like there was much light to be messing with her vision.
Of course, there shouldn’t have been any light—
She looked over her shoulder and there, just a few feet to her right, far away from the rest of the group, sat Caleb, spell book in his lap, dancing light under a rag on his right shoulder where Frumpkin should have been.
She sighed, and at that moment Nugget Blinked back into her, nearly knocking her off balance, but she used it as an excuse to stumble to the side and drop to the ground next to Caleb.
“Silly puppy,” she said quietly to Nugget, scratching at his ears and smushing his face as he licked her nose. “Oh, hi Caleb, didn’t see you here.”
“That seems very unlikely,” he said without looking up.
She patted Nugget on the rump and he curled up on her other side, resting his head on her lap. The dancing light barely illuminated the grey skin of the bubble before her nose, and five feet beyond that was the other side of the tunnel, so she thought it made perfect sense for her to turn her head and look at Caleb, instead.
He looked as though he’d recovered somewhat from the stupefying shock of Nott’s near-demise, though he still had signs of an anxiety that came, she suspected, from still feeling helpless, one she knew all too well. His hair had that slicked-back look that came from him running his hands through it over and over again, though his expression, in profile, was merely studious. His right hand rested on the spellbook, fingers aimlessly—or maybe not, what did she know—running along runes or notes or other bits of writing. His left hand rested on his knee, but as she watched. it drifted up to his shoulder, went through the light, and abruptly dropped back to his knee, where his fingers drummed restlessly.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she asked, stroking Nugget’s head.
He didn’t quite shrug. “Had a thought.”
They sat in companionable silence, she stroking her dog, he reaching for the place where his cat should have been, for what she felt was an appropriately long time but was probably only about thirty seconds, and then she started feeling antsy, so she used her tail to tap him on the right shoulder.
His fingers paused their roving, and then he turned his head to the right and said wearily, “Well, hello,” to the tip of her tail as it twitched in the light.
She giggled, and as he turned his head to look at her she caught his wry smile before he smoothed out his expression and said, “Ah, Jester. I didn’t see you there.”
“Surprise,” she said, and the corners of his eyes crinkled, and she smiled at him, and then she said, “Are you missing your cat?”
“Oh,” he said, blinking twice in surprise, “I—”
“It was really sweet of you to give him to the kobolds so that…thing could be free,” she said, barreling on as he kept blinking at her and oh, yes, thanks to the dim light of the globe on his shoulder she could see the red rising in his cheeks. “Thank you.”
“Oh,” he said again, eyes now roving a bit, head tilting this way and that as though he couldn’t quite decide where he wanted to look in his quest to avoid her gaze. “It was…nothing.”
She dropped her chin and tried to catch his gaze to call his bluff. “Caleb,” she said. “It was not nothing.”
His eyes met hers for a moment, just enough to have the guilty look of a boy who’s been caught, and then they dropped away again and he shrugged and said, “I am sorry Caduceus let the thing go before you could see what it was.”
“Oh, well, you know,” she said. “I mean probably we don’t need another pet and it’s probably doing fine now you know the most important thing is that it’s free,” but something in the way his shoulders went a little hunched told her that wasn’t the right track, so she added, “but, I mean, it would have been nice to at least see what it was.”
He nodded a bit at that, then cocked his head and said, “It probably would have tried to bite you.”
“Probably,” she said, “but then I could have just let Nugget eat it.”
He snorted at that, and she grinned. “But seriously,” she said, “you know if you are missing Frumpkin—”
“Oh,” he said, and then he winced and said, “he will be all right, I’ll call him back in the morning—”
“—you know you are always welcome to pet Nugget,” she said, and at his name the dog’s ears perked up.
“Oh,” he said, “that is very kind of you but—oh—” he said again as Nugget turned his head to the side and scooted along Jester’s lap until most of his body was on her lap and his head was resting on Caleb’s knee. The wizard immediately snapped his spellbook shut and shoved it to the side. “Oh this is very unnecessary.”
“Nugget,” she said, her voice pinched, “you are so cute but so heavy.”
“I really don’t like dogs,” Caleb said, looking down into Nugget’s soulful brown eyes. “You really don’t have to do this.”
Nugget opened his mouth in a dog smile, his tongue lolling onto Caleb’s knee.
“He likes you!” Jester said, scratching his neck again. “How can you resist that face?”
“Very easily, I assure you,” he said, and as she looked at him she caught a tension in his shoulder, a tight line of—something, and she suddenly thought it might be terror, but even as she opened her mouth, went to shove Nugget away, something, Caleb hesitantly lifted his right hand, held it hovering over Nugget’s forehead. The dog’s eyes watched him but otherwise he was perfectly still, aside from one lick of the chops before closing his mouth.
“You,” she said, and then Caleb ever so carefully rested his fingers right above Nugget’s brow. The tension in his arm held, but as the dog’s eyes closed he very carefully gave one, two, three little scratches, and Nugget thumped his tail.
Caleb’s hand withdrew immediately. “It is not the same,” he said, “but thank you.”
“No,” she said, and she found herself looking at his hand, looking at the torn and blackened cloth wrapped around it, and she forced herself to say, as if it were no big deal, “Nugget’s not nearly as fluffy as Frumpkin.”
“He is a very fluffy cat,” Caleb agreed. “And it is all right do not worry I will have him back tomorrow. But thank you,” he said, and suddenly he was looking at her again, serious and earnest, “Jester.”
Something odd happened when he said her name, some kind of strange twist in her stomach. “Thank you,” she said, and then she said, “Nugget, you’re so heavy,” and shoved him off her lap, which conveniently removed his head from Caleb’s knee, and she felt him relax at her side. “Back on this side, come on, there’s a good boy.”
Nugget grumbled deep in his chest and Blinked to the other side of her, this time curling up with his back against her knee. She patted him again and then ran her hands along his not-fluffy-but-still-nice-and-smooth fur, and she finally had enough courage to look back at Caleb.
He had gone back to his spell book, one hand on it, the other resting on his knee. She tapped him on the shoulder with her tail again, and he raised his left eyebrow but said nothing. She brought her tail to rest on the ground behind her, and after another moment scooted a little closer to him, and after another moment a little closer, and by the fourth scoot she was able to rest her chin on his shoulder, though she was careful not to touch him anywhere else. “What spell are you looking at?”
“Polymorph,” he answered. “You see, this glyph here, this is what signals that it is transmutation, you remember, and then this bit over here that connects to that one, that’s the concentration, and when you join them together with this, that’s what keeps it contained, keeps the original creature from breaking free, and this part—”
She hadn’t asked, and she half-closed her eyes and let his voice wash over her. She knew it well enough by now to hear the eagerness, and the authoritarian sternness—now a teacher’s, now a know-it-all’s—but also the satisfaction of a puzzle understood, the faster-than-normal pace that sometimes meant excitement but here, combined with a bit of a catch in his throat, meant he was nervous, and for now there wasn’t any sadness or guilt, and she liked the sound of that.
Eventually he slowed, and she said, without opening her eyes, “That is way more complicated than how I do it.”
“Well,” he said, “I confess I don’t know how the Traveler gives you your spells—”
“I just pray,” she said, a little sleepy, “you know, like, ‘oh hey, Traveler, it’d be really cool if I could do this in the morning,’ and he’s like ‘that’s cool, that’s great, here you go,’ and I just wake up…” She shrugged, bumping his arm with her shoulder. “Able to do it.”
“—right, but I assure you the magic is the same,” he said. “Just differently fueled.”
She opened her eyes and squinted at the page, digging her chin harder into his shoulder. “My spell looks like that?”
“If you were to draw it out, yes,” he said, running his hand over it, sounding pleased.
She found herself staring at the wrappings around his hand again, and she was tired, or else she wouldn’t have said what came out next. “You know,” she said, “I could probably ask the Traveler and he would let me heal those for you.”
His hand paused on the page, fingers splayed, nails too short and dirt in the creases of his knuckles, and said, “Heal what?”
His tone of voice told her that he already knew, sounded a bit like Toll the Dead, and she would have kicked herself had her legs not been tucked underneath her. As it was, she shrugged again and said, “Um, you know. Your uh. Scars.”
She just couldn’t find a way to make it sound not—awful, and close to him as she was she felt the depths of his inhale, his chest expanding to its skinny limits before the breath left him in a long sigh. She braced herself, but he only sighed again, not quite as deeply, and said, “They are a reminder.”
She blinked. “I mean—” and he tensed beneath her, and she winced and said, “I can’t imagine you’d…for…get.” She found herself screwing up her face, crumpling in on a point of shut up shut up shut up as instead she said, “You don’t…forget…any…thing.”
“No,” he said simply.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and he did something—strange, then, his body like a tightrope that had just snapped, the tension still in the air even as the pieces were falling away, and she suddenly felt an urge to throw her arms around him and pull him back together. “I’m sorry,” she said again, “ugh, I’ll just stop talking.”
“No,” he said, “don’t do—that,” as if he realized what he was saying and wanted to stop himself but couldn’t quite catch the words in time. “Besides,” he said, in what sounded like an attempted recovery, and this close she could almost feel the heat off his cheeks, “I do not think you could do it for very long.”
“I,” she said, indignant, “am very sneaky.”
“Of course,” he said, and she felt the life return to him, a little, and decided to pursue the point.
“And part of being very sneaky is being very quiet,” she said. “And besides you know I had a lot of practice, you know, with my mom and her clients and everything.”
He got that funny sort of trying not to look skeptical or concerned look that he often had when she talked about her childhood. “I mean, were you in the room…?”
“God no,” she said, “Mom would have killed me. But, you know, my room was right next to hers, and nobody wants to think about someone being right next to them when they’re,” she waggled her eyebrows and wiggled her fingers and he just kept looking at her with raised eyebrows of not-concern, “you know, doing it.”
“I imagine not,” he said, and for the briefest of moments she thought about asking him—but no, better stick to safer topics.
“So yeah, I can be very quiet,” she said, and then, because his hand was still splayed on the page, because she wanted him to know she could be sincere, too, she said, “I am…sorry.”
She watched as he slowly closed his hand into a fist, turned it over, opened it again; swallowed hard; didn’t say anything. Now she could see the shiny scars on his fingertips, and she found herself wondering what the wraps hid on his palms. She probably didn’t want to know, but then again she did, if it would help him to tell her. “You know you can talk to me,” she said, “right, Caleb?”
“Of course,” he said, at once easy and impossibly tense, and she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and saw his furrowed brow, the rapid blink of his eyes, and then he said, “Your chin is very bony.”
She wasn’t convinced that was true, but she still lifted her chin and shifted so she was simply sitting next to him again, bracing herself on her right hand. He rolled his shoulders and shook his head as if to clear it, and then he ran a hand through his hair to push it back from his face again. She admired his face for a moment—he really was handsome, that was just an objective truth—and then brought her free hand to her chin and pushed on it. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s not that bony.”
“Maybe not to you,” he said.
“I think you’re just trying to change the subject,” she said.
“Away from what?” he asked, which was a good question, because they had technically not really been talking and the last thing she said had been about—which, well, if he wanted to change the subject, that was fine, she understood—but he was definitely avoiding something, and not just whatever had driven him to be awake in the middle of the night, reading his spellbook.
“I don’t know,” she said, and then she laid a dramatic hand to her forehead and said, “You won’t talk to me.”
“I am trying to read,” he pointed out.
“So that you can avoid talking to me,” she said.
“That is not—”
She saw an opportunity to tie him up in knots and picked her threads carefully. “I mean, would you rather just be reading?”
“It is what I am trying to do, ja,” he said, but his eyes narrowed as if something in her tone gave her away.
She pouted, just a little, and said, “Would you rather read than talk to me?”
His mouth opened and then closed and his brow furrowed over his narrowed eyes and ha, she had him; but what most impressed her was that he seemed unable to answer the question, even for himself. His eyes slid to the side and his jaw shifted and he opened his mouth a little, not quite biting his lip when he closed it again, and as he raised his right hand to tap his chin she noticed his left one drifted up to rub at his arm—at his scars, and he didn’t even seem to realize it. How many years, she wondered, and then he spoke again.
“I…enjoy…our conversations,” he said, not quite begrudgingly, “but I also…enjoy…reading.” She nodded in time with his words, mouthing the last few along with him. “And as I am trying to do the latter—”
“You must not be trying very hard,” she said, “you’re not doing a very good job of it.”
He shot her a look out of the corner of his eye, resentful and exasperated and also, she thought, amused. “I wonder why that is,” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said, perfectly innocent and totally concerned. “Maybe you really want to talk to me but, like, you don’t want to either, so you’re trying to avoid it, but you can’t help yourself, so you’re like hey, maybe I’ll try reading this book—”
“Mm,” he said.
“—but, like, I don’t know why you’d be trying to avoid talking to me, right? Like it’s the middle of the night and you’ve already looked at your spells, so they can’t still be that interesting, so you must—Caleb,” she said, dragging out his name, trying hard not to giggle as he finally turned his head and looked at her, exasperated and amused and tired, gosh, so tired, and resigned and a little impatient for her to get to the point already, and she was pretty tired too, come to think of it, because she couldn’t keep from giggling as she finished, with a knowing look, “are you secretly in love with me?”
It was a joke, same as it had been the last time she’d asked, trying anything that might for a moment ease the heartbreak on his face, the anguish wracking his body; but then she’d only managed to drive him further into himself, incapable of forming any response, let alone a coherent one. But now, in the middle of the perpetual night that was the middle of a godsforsaken (Traveler excluded, of course) tunnel on their way to the godsforsaken land of Xhorhas to rescue a halfling-turned-goblin woman’s husband from the grips of terrible evil in the heart of an impenetrable fortress, she looked at him and he looked back at her and it suddenly—wasn’t funny at all.
He didn’t laugh. He didn’t smile; nor did he frown, or shake his head. He sighed, deep and long, his shoulders curving as though his breath took the fight with it, and then he turned his head back to his spellbook and for a moment she, her heart hammering in her chest without her quite knowing why, thought that might be that.
And then he shifted his weight, just enough to close the careful distance she’d left between them, and then—slowly, ever so slowly, not in a hesitant or cautious way but—deliberately—he tilted his head until it came to rest against the top of hers, just shy of her horn.
She went very still, stiller than she’d possibly ever been in her life, though her eyes were looking this way and that but she wasn’t really seeing—anything—not that there was anything to see—and then he shifted a little bit, came a little closer, resettled his head just—just against the top of her head, just Caleb, voluntarily leaning against her, and she didn’t—he reached over with his right hand and touched the tip of her horn, went, “Hm,” and then turned his head a little so that he could presumably still see his spellbook. While resting his head atop hers.
After a moment, not really sure what else to do, she leaned her head against his shoulder, careful not to poke him with her horn, and he had to resettle his head again but he made another sort of humming sound that sounded—content, comfortable, maybe, and something about him felt—relaxed, as if for a moment he was allowing himself to lean against her—believe in us, a little?—and take comfort in it, and that was…good. Good. Friends should lean on each other, after all, and she’d seen him lean on Beau, seen him hang onto her for dear life, for strength, and while this particular silent moment in a silent bubble in a silent tunnel of neverending darkness didn’t seem like it called for it, maybe he was just seeking similar…reassurance. Or something.
But it was a good thing, a good thing, and so she wasn’t sure why she was still so paralyzed, why her heart was pounding and her stomach was squirming and she was desperately, astonishingly aware of how warm he was against her cheek, her side; of how he’d mussed her hair; of the rise and fall of his chest, of his breath on her forehead, of how their knees were almost touching—could have been touching, and did she want their knees to be touching? Did it matter?
And then he lifted his left hand from his knee to turn the page; she watched its trajectory, watched the familiarity with which he plucked the corner of the page and turned it over, watched him smooth it down with unconscious care; and then she watched as instead of returning it to his knee, he dropped his hand between them and, just beyond the edge of her vision, covered her hand with his.
She’d been struck by lightning, once, stared down a dragon as it opened its jaws and unleashed an unimaginable pain that seared through her and left a heart-stopping terror in its wake, and this wasn’t—like that, wasn’t like that at all, but a dim part of her understood why people made the comparison. Sheer shock replaced the panic that had left her equally paralyzed, and her every nerve was on fire and her mouth was ajar and her breathing was fast and—and his was too, she noticed, not so deep and even as it had been, but he wasn’t tense, either, almost too casual as he gently slid his fingers between hers oh God was he holding her hand? She was leaning on it too much to turn it over and hold hands properly but this—this felt like what she imagined holding hands felt like, even if his palm was wrapped and she could only feel the skin of his fingers melting against hers, his knuckles not as knobbly as she might have expected. He was—he was almost certainly holding her hand. Caleb was holding her hand. Caleb wanted to hold her hand, wanted to lean against her, wanted—
Oh.
Oh, she felt a sudden rush in her veins that made her dizzy and tingly and a little hysterical, if she was being honest, which she had to be because he was being devastatingly honest with her and he—he wanted to snuggle her, to be snuggled by her, was for whatever reason allowing himself a moment and just—doing it. And it was…it was nice. It was really nice. He was really warm and the sound of his breathing, a little hard, a little nervous—well, that was comforting, that he was nervous too. Of course he was nervous. And if he was nervous it was okay that she was nervous, because they could both be nervous, but nervous wasn’t bad, this was just—new. And a bit alarming, if only because she hadn’t ever really considered—
He loved someone else, after all, or maybe he just had loved her, and if she was from—before—then she must be—
She wasn’t here, though, and he almost certainly wasn’t thinking about her, given that he was currently brushing the back of her hand with his thumb, each brush feeling as if he’d left a little trail of fire in his wake, making her knees a little weak and her arm a little shaky. Her stomach twisted in on itself and she took a deep, hopefully steadying breath. She hadn’t considered it and now she—was…definitely…considering…something, something warm and relaxing and right and also insane and wonderful and ridiculous and silly and she thought her heart might explode from the possibilities, and so she brushed his pinky with her thumb.
His thumb paused in response, and so she did it again, and this time his breathing stuttered and she held a giggle in her chest for as long as she could, leaning harder against him until she managed to allow it to escape as little more than a breath of laughter. His cheek shifted against her hair, perhaps in a smile, and so she did it again, and this time for a moment his fingers clenched against hers, painfully tight, and her stomach dropped out from under her. She pressed her thumb against his hand and leaned hard, digging the point of her horn into his arm a little—making a point, ha—until his grip loosened and his shoulders relaxed, and then she sort of…nuzzled him, maybe, just a little reassuring shake of her head against his shoulder that, after a moment’s hesitation, he returned against her head.
Well.
She didn’t know what this meant, exactly, had…a lot to think about, like, a lot, but the longer she leaned against him, idly brushing her thumb against his skin and shivering a little as he did the same in return, the more she felt that the best thing to do now would be to close her eyes and just…breathe.
Her pillow shifted—that was odd, pillows weren’t supposed to move—she wasn’t home, she was—and then she felt a thumb brush against her cheekbone before a hand settled atop her hand and she sat up and blinked and Caleb said, “You were correct.”
“Huh?” she said, blinking at him and then staring at him—Caleb, who had been her pillow, like, Caleb—
“You do know how to stop talking,” he said, his expression neutral, cast in the dim shadow from his one light, but his eyes sparked as she met his gaze, amused and nervous and sad, and why oh why was he sad, why now?
“I…told you…so,” she said, and her tail was starting to rise up behind her and twitch nervously and she grabbed at it with her free hand and pulled it into her lap, never breaking his gaze.
His lips twitched. “Unfortunately, you just started snoring instead.”
“Oh,” she said, babbling from years of practice, staring him down, trying to get back to the heart of him, “well, you know, pretend you’re asleep and then nobody’s worried about you listening in, you know.”
“Ah,” he said, “you are excellent at pretending.”
He said it in a way that—knew her, that had seen through her pretenses time and again, and a faint, rueful half-smile crossed his face. She inclined her head in acknowledgment and in so doing caught a glimpse of his hand atop her hand; she saw him follow her gaze, felt his hand tense, and before he could move she deliberately turned her hand over and captured his fingers in hers.
Now they really were holding hands, and it was—easy, as natural as the breath in her lungs, and for a moment they both sat staring at their hands and not saying anything, not moving, and she didn’t dare look at his face as she said, “Well, you know,” and his fingers twitched and sent sparks shooting up her arm and down her spine and she was alive, oh, she’d only guessed that it might feel like this, “only sometimes.”
“Ja,” he said, his voice hoarse, and she finally gave in and glanced up at him, at his gaze transfixed upon their hands but also—faraway and gone, and maybe one day he’d take her there with him.
Nugget yipped in his sleep, and their hands released of their own accord, instantly and a little guiltily, as if afraid of—being caught? She drew her hand against her chest—she already missed him, missed the wrap and the fingers alike, missed the warmth and the comfort and the surety as doubt and confusion tried to pour in their place—and looked back up at him; his hand dropped to the ground, open and empty and lost, and she wanted to reach for it, wanted—
“I really,” he said, narrowed eyes gazing at the floor, “don’t like dogs.”
She laughed, quietly, and said, “Well, he really likes you, so I guess you’d better get used to him, ‘cause he’s not going anywhere.”
She almost added and neither am I, though that almost felt like—too much, and she definitely need to sleep on him—on this, though his shoulder had been surprisingly comfortable although she did have a bit of a crick in her neck now that she thought about it—but his gaze caught hers and amidst the faraway sadness and hesitation, and a doubt and confusion she recognized as her own, she saw understanding, and to her delight he blushed.
She was tired and reckless and feeling too much and so she leaned forward and kissed his reddened cheek. “Good night, Caleb,” she said into his ear, and as she withdrew she noticed that his ear was red too and that in fact he had frozen in place. She grinned and pushed to her feet, stretching up and back as she did so—
“Good night,” he said, “Jester,” and she’d never known her name could sound so—rich, his voice rough and low and full of feeling, and her skin was on fire and her knees were weak all over again and, well, she had her answer.
It really only felt like so many more questions, though, some of which would require talking and some of which would definitely not, though who knew how they’d feel in the light of—well, in the sad darkness that passed for morning around here. But for now her hands were empty and her heart was full, and so she stepped back across the hut and over Nott and lay down again. She curled up tight enough to leave room for Nugget at her feet, although from the sounds of it he stepped on Fjord on his way in—oh, Fjord; and who knew what the world would look like when she woke up?
(Endless dark stone, probably, a few steps closer to madness—
but laughter too, and dancing lights.)