Chapter Text
It wasn’t often that Sheo abstained from joining him in the morning, but the Nailsmith did not dare interrupt the artist from slumber this morning. Sheo’s night had been long, as he had feverishly worked on a singular painting for hours, long after the Nailsmith had gone to sleep. The Nailsmith understood that hunger; that which kept one awake for days, fueled by the fervor of creation itself.
Still, the two had to eat, and the larder was nearly empty, and the air was cool—it changed more often these days—and the Nailsmith knew that there were young succulent shoots to be harvested underneath of the moss covering the ground. He occasionally pulled a clump of the undergrowth up to reveal the morsels underneath, humming to himself as he collected them in a basket. He was not as delicate as Sheo when it came to the harvest—when it came to most things, really—but food was food.
The Nailsmith wandered, though he knew more or less where he was—toward the gates of the Queen’s Gardens, past the abandoned mound of leaves that made his shell prickle, there grew succulent mushrooms and flowers. After such a long night, Sheo deserved something good to wake up to, the Nailsmith decided.
He heard something. The Nailsmith was jerked out of his stupor, and he glanced all about. If he wasn’t mistaken, the sound was almost like—
A voice. A very young, very helpless voice.
He hesitated; the Nailsmith knew, mostly from Sheo’s recounting, that there were many creatures plaguing Hallownest that could take the form or voice of another to lure prey in. There wasn’t anything definitive that said those creatures had made their way to Greenpath, but—
The Nailsmith mustered his resolve. He stepped gingerly over moss and thorn alike and crept cautiously toward the voice. As he walked, the sound grew in its clarity. It didn’t form words, specifically, but deep in his carapace the Nailsmith felt a stirring.
Pushing aside a cluster of branches, he stopped in place. A bug, pale-pink and yellow and winged, lay pinned against a wall of thorns, their delicate wings impaled and tattered. They squirmed in a panic, hemolymph oozing from their wounds. Their eyes darted this way and that, searching frantically for something—and their gaze landed directly on him. One desperate foreleg reached out, and before the Nailsmith knew it he had put down the basket and was making a beeline for the little one.
Hesitantly, the Nailsmith put one foreleg on the bug’s fuzzy thorax. He could see the constellation of thorns sticking through their wings, the points only digging further into the delicate tissue as the young one struggled. He pursed his mandibles.
“Hold still,” he said as steadily as he could; he had never seen a bug bleed up close before, “I will free you.”
The bug stared at the Nailsmith with big eyes—he was almost certain that they couldn’t understand his words, but they seemed to calm down nonetheless. The Nailsmith took a breath, and began the process of slowly freeing the bug from their prison. They quivered with each movement, but only whimpered quietly as the Nailsmith continued his work. He couldn’t help the slight shake of his forelegs, though whether that was from his nerves or his age he could not quite say.
Eventually, the bug was completely unstuck from the thorns, and practically collapsed in the Nailsmith’s arms before they could make any attempt to stand up. The fur around their neck was yellow, their antennae long. The Nailsmith vaguely remembered seeing bugs like them back in the prime of Hallownest, but at the same time he could not name their species, nor the reasoning for why this bug was so far into Greenpath in the first place.
That aside, the bug was still bleeding, and shivering, though it wasn’t too cold. The Nailsmith gathered them in his arms—they were rather light, in comparison to the hammers and nails he had wielded in his time—and, assuring himself that he would come back for the basket, picked his way back through the green to Sheo’s hut.
When the Nailsmith pushed his way through the door, Sheo was already up, scanning the painting he had worked on the previous night with a keen eye. Hearing him come in with a clatter, Sheo turned around, the starts of an amused look on his face. “You don’t have to do this every time I—“ he blinked once, twice at the pastel, bleeding bundle in the Nailsmith’s arms.
“They were trapped in the thorns,” the Nailsmith said, gently setting the bug down on one of the (very few) clear tables scattered about the cottage. He turned his concerned gaze toward Sheo, who shared it.
“This almost looks deliberate,” Sheo pondered out loud, glancing the now unconscious bug up and down, “like someone had strung them up there on purpose.”
“I hope you have experience in patching up wounds?” the Nailsmith said tentatively, a lilt of hope at the end of his statement. He felt an almost shameful wash of relief as Sheo nodded, immediately making a beeline for one of the cupboards. In turn, the Nailsmith turned toward the young bug and put a foreleg on their shoulder, hoping that somehow in their unconsciousness they could feel some form of comfort.
The Nailsmith wondered if living with Sheo had turned him soft. He wondered if that was a bad thing.
Sheo returned with strips of cloth and an unlabeled glass bottle. With a look, the Nailsmith stepped aside and allowed Sheo to do his work, daubing the holes in the bug’s shell and wings with a cloth and wrapping the parts up tightly that could be.
“I’m afraid they won’t be able to fly again,” Sheo said, “but I doubt they had much time to do so in the first place.”
“They look young,” the Nailsmith agreed, peering at the vibrancy of the young one’s colors, the almost wrinkled texture of their wings. “But, at my age, everyone does.”
Sheo chuckled, and sobered almost in the same swoop. “Indeed. But this little one—they’re of moth stock; at the very least related to that tribe. I thought them extinct, however…”
“Well, whoever did this wanted to ensure that,” the Nailsmith inclined his head slightly toward the moth’s tattered wings. “If I hadn’t come around, something would have eaten them.”
“Indeed.” Sheo’s shoulders slumped a little as he put away the bottle. The Nailsmith watched him soundlessly as he stepped back toward his easel, setting his canvas aside and putting a blank one on the stand. When the Nailsmith glanced at him questioningly, Sheo shrugged. “A new subject, while they rest,” he said.
The day passed by quietly, as days in Sheo’s cottage often did. The Nailsmith spent the day witling, and Sheo painting; both pieces were in the form of the stranger they had found, so young and so helpless and such an interruption in the fairly new rhythm and beat of their lives together. Before going to sleep that night, the Nailsmith found himself wide awake as he lay next to Sheo, trying to take comfort in the warmth of the other’s shell against his own as he stared at the ceiling and worried.
Rustling, only a few steps away. The Nailsmith shot bolt-upright in the bed as he squinted through the darkness, trying to catch movement. It wasn’t an intruder—the door would have creaked if that were the case. Sheo stirred in his sleep, disturbed by the Nailsmith’s sudden movements; the Nailsmith kissed his shell briefly more to soothe his own nerves than Sheo’s and slid out of bed. He crept toward their tiny guest, toward the door. The floorboards creaked under his weight, the sound all the more loud in the stillness around him.
The Nailsmith stopped in place, gazing at the now-empty table on which their guest once lay. His brow furrowed as he looked all about—the little one couldn’t have gone far, and shouldn’t have, not with their injuries—
Happening to glance toward one of the windows, the Nailsmith spotted the pink-yellow fuzz of the young moth. He felt a brief moment of relief, and then a flash of panic when he noticed the curtain being fed through their mandibles. Rushing toward them, he yanked the curtain away from the little bug in one fell swoop.
“No…” the moth whined softly, making the Nailsmith stiffen a little in surprise—he hadn’t been sure if the bug could talk. The moth stretched their forelegs toward the cloth. “Give.”
“This… isn’t food,” the Nailsmith said weakly, trying to keep his voice down.
“Give!” the moth’s volume rose as they stared indignantly at the Nailsmith; their wings were folded clumsily behind them, painting an almost pathetic picture.
Hearing Sheo shift in the bed behind him, the Nailsmith felt a brief moment of panic; when he turned to look, his husband had risen, dark eyes peering curiously at the two through the dark. “What are you… they’re awake?” Sheo shuffled over.
“Yes, and attempting to eat a curtain,” the Nailsmith said dryly.
“As I can recall, that’s a normal trait of the moth tribe,” Sheo chuckled, turning his attention toward the indignant youngling. “It’s stress relief, or something of that sort. You’re meant to eat nectar, though, aren’t you?” he addressed the moth with a soft tone.
The moth lunged forward, their injured wing brushing against a forgotten sculpture. They let out a cry of pain and stumbled in place. The Nailsmith caught them before they could hit the ground; they started nibbling on the curtain again after recovering. The Nailsmith glanced at Sheo helplessly, at a loss—he had hardly ever interacted with a bug so young through his lifetime, after all, and metal did not devour fabric like the sweetest of morsels.
Sheo reached over and gently tugged the curtain from the moth’s mandibles. “You don’t want to eat too much of that,” he chided in a tone that the Nailsmith had never in his life heard him use, “you’ll get a bellyache. Here—“ Sheo held out a foreleg, offering it to the moth, who stared at him suspiciously. “We’ll get you some real food.”
The moth, eyes suspicious, took Sheo’s foreleg and followed him across the cottage. They stumbled occasionally, nearly knocking into one of the easels—the Nailsmith was privately surprised that they made it all the way to the curtain in the first place.
From the larder, Sheo pulled out a small bundle of flowers, collected about one day ago. He handed a blossom, bell-shaped and pale yellow to the youngling, who grabbed it eagerly; they unfurled a proboscis and greedily drank the nectar from within the flower in no time. Sheo handed them another flower once they finished, and exchanged a glance with the Nailsmith.
The little thing went through five flowers in only a few minutes, and let out the tiniest of burps. They looked back at the Nailsmith with big eyes. They hiccupped softly.
The Nailsmith found that his insides seemed to be turning to useless mush; when he glanced at Sheo, he judged that his husband was feeling precisely the same.
“You need to lay back down,” Sheo bent down to the height of the moth and held out his foreleg once more, “now that you’ve eaten. It’s sleep time, don’t you think?”
The moth tilted their head slightly, seeming hesitant. After awhile, though, they let themself be led back to the table—albeit with a couple more pillows and the now-useless curtain as a blanket. When he and Sheo lay back in bed themselves, the Nailsmith could almost see the child’s eyes shining through the dark.
The moth, the couple discovered, preferred “she”.
It was an odd thing—the Nailsmith himself never thought about the concept too much. He supposed that he had been isolated for too long—Sheo said that it mattered to many a bug, even ones as young as the moth.
They had “she”, but not a name.
The moth was picking up on words already, little by little. She could disagree (and by the Wyrm did she disagree), she could beg, she could express her happiness. She squealed Sheo’s name whenever the latter came home from foraging. The Nailsmith had long become uncomfortable with his own name, and had never even given the child one to use—but, being an enterprising young bug, the moth simply greeted him with “Ba-ba!”.
The Nailsmith had not the faintest idea as to what that meant. Sheo seemed to know, but wouldn’t tell him, refusing with an amused look in his eyes.
The moth hopped about outside now, just outside of the cottage. She skipped over pebbles and grass as though it were nothing; one would never know how injured she had been only a month before. Despite her recovery, her wings were still tattered and ruined. She would never fly like her kin.
The Nailsmith said as much to Sheo, who painted with his easel propped near the window, in order to better watch the moth play. He nodded solemnly, never taking his eyes off the canvas.
“Even if she could,” Sheo said, keeping his voice soft, “I haven’t heard any word of other moths surviving the Infection. I’m not even sure how she survived it, but…” He trailed off, looking thoughtful, “But. There isn’t any of her tribe that can raise her, no one that I know of that we can give her to.”
The Nailsmith stiffened briefly, almost jerking forward in his chair as he noticed the moth stumble and almost trip in the grass. He relaxed, though, when she recovered, turning her gaze proudly to the cottage and waving. He waved back, though tentatively. “Are you implying that we keep her here?”
Sheo ducked his head slightly, seeming bashful. “Well. It would be cruel to simply let her die in the wild, don’t you think?” The foreleg holding the paintbrush hesitated for a moment. “And besides—we could teach her about the arts, couldn’t we? Leave our crafts to another?”
The Nailsmith pondered for a moment. The couple had their pale-faced visitor, who came by on occasion, but no steady pupil to teach. The Nailsmith had long been slowing down, but he often awoke with aching joints these days. Sheo, too, couldn’t make sudden movements without his shell creaking, though he would deny it.
“This is your cottage, Sheo,” the Nailsmith said finally. “I wouldn’t mind having another live here, but this is your home.”
“It’s yours too,” Sheo replied immediately, fixing the Nailsmith with an expression soft and heavy. “We made a commitment, remember? Regardless of who built this place, who owned it before—it’s home to both of us. And this is a decision both of us should make.”
The Nailsmith smiled softly, laying a foreleg on Sheo’s shoulder. He felt like his shell would melt, like his insides would simply spill away as he looked at his partner, at the bug who had so changed his world-view and purpose.
He looked from the shelves of tiny figurines to the paintings to the buckets and pots of paint. He looked at the tiny moth outside, who danced to a tune only she could hear as her wings fluttered, beautifully vibrant despite their tattered appearance. The Nailsmith had to admit to himself that he wouldn’t mind, sharing this happiness with a young bug.
“Well,” he said, “let’s make this place her home too.”