Work Text:
They don’t call it a “book club” at the beginning, or really, ever. In the beginning there’s only two books, one each for the two of them. They’ve always been their own club, an unlikely pair of friends, and the fact that Pike can read makes her the de facto president in Grog’s eyes.
No matter what they do throughout the day, at night they come back to Wilhand’s house, to the two books Pike keeps wrapped in an old shawl under her bed. Grog loves it, all of it - the old shawl that was given to them by Daven’s wife from next door, the sense of mystery from pulling the carefully-wrapped package out from beneath the tiny bed, the way Pike crawls into his lap to read, the scent of her hair as she turns the pages, the bright colors flicking up from the pages to mesh with her light little voice. It’s like magic, except Grog knows it’s not magic.
It’s better.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
The first book they get on accident. Someone leaves it out behind the apple orchard near Taubben’s farm, and Grog finds it while playing hide and seek with Pike. It’s a hard game for him, since she’s tiny and can hide anywhere. He gets a little bored and slumps down under the biggest apple tree. Something rustles as he flops onto his rear end. “Oh, Pike,” he singsongs, “I found something really, really cool …”
Of course he has no idea what it is, but he’s decided he’s done playing hide and seek. He fishes around in the grass and pulls out a thin book with brightly-colored pages. As he flips through them, Pike swings down from a branch above and lands squarely in a pile of waving grasses next to him with a loud oof.
“You okay?” Grog asks mildly, hauling her up from the ground without breaking his gaze from the book’s pages.
“I’m good!” she says, and crawls over to inspect his prize. “Ooh! Can we read it?”
"You can,” Grog says softly.
Pike looks up at him and pats his face. “That’s not what I meant, Grog. I meant, do you want to read it now or should we keep playing?”
This cheers Grog a bit. “No, we can read it now.”
“Good.” Pike slings herself into Grog’s lap and he turns the book back to the first page. “This book is called The Very Hungry Caterpillar.”
He turns the page.
“In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf…”
As Pike reads, Grog falls in love with the little caterpillar. He’s just a little guy, inching his way across leaves and branches, eating whatever he can find. All kinds of stuff, things that make Grog a bit hungry. It is almost supper time, and he wants the kinds of the things the caterpillar’s got - strawberries and plums, pears and oranges and sausage and pie and cheese and -
“... but now he wasn’t hungry anymore,” Pike reads. “And he wasn’t a little caterpillar anymore. He was a big… fat… caterpillar.
Grog grins. He’d be big and fat too. This caterpillar sounds awesome.
“He built a small house around himself, called a cocoon, and he stayed inside for more than two weeks.”
“Pike?”
“Huh?”
“Are we gonna build a house someday?”
Pike looks up, little wisps of her hair framing her face. “Do you want to build a house someday?”
“Fer you ‘n me? Yeah!”
“Okay, then we’ll build a house.”
“Pike?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you know how t’ build a house?”
“Nope. But we can learn.” She grins at him. “We can learn anything we want.”
This makes Grog even happier than the idea of being pals with the caterpillar and eating food. If Pike’s on his side, he’ll be happy no matter what. “Read me the rest,” he says, and Pike does.
Twelve Dancing Princesses
On Pike’s birthday she gets a book, bought from a trader from way to the south. It has a leather cover embroidered with fancy gold-and-silver stitching and the pages are the most beautiful things Pike’s ever seen. The book is so big that she has to kneel on her kitchen chair and prop her head in her hands, up on her elbows, to see it all. She thinks it must have cost a hundred gold or more, but Pawpaw Wilhand won’t tell her.
“It’s a gift, my dumpling, and gifts have no prices. Now, come and help me make this cake!”
Pike tries. She really, really tries. But she can’t keep her attention on birthday cake, not with the book calling her name from the table. Eventually Wilhand just gives up, fondly watching his white-haired granddaughter on her knees and elbows, staring open-mouthed at the pictures.
Grog tramps in some time later in the day, dirty and sweaty from an afternoon of playing corner-ball with some of the more adventurous city boys. He’s tried to explain the rules to Wilhand and Pike hundreds of times, but there’s something about the fast-paced, no-holds-barred excitement of the game that he can’t quite convey in words. Wilhand always smiles and says he’s glad Grog’s found friends. Pike isn’t interested; she’s too small to play corner-ball anyway, so Grog doesn’t much care.
“Somethin’ smells good!” he declares.
“It’s birthday cake,” Wilhand tells him. “Go wash up.”
As Grog passes through the kitchen he sees Pike, still kneeling at the kitchen table, fingers tracing the pictures in the book. “Yer still lookin’ at that?” he asks.
Pike doesn’t respond or even bring her head up, her attention totally captivated.
Grog tries not to take it personally, but some part of him does.
Wilhand’s the only one to see the expression of disappointment on Grog’s face as the goliath goes out into the back courtyard to scrub off the afternoon.
After a birthday supper and big slices of birthday cake, after presents and the traditional visits from neighbors and friends, Pike and Grog are expected to go upstairs to bed while Wilhand stays downstairs and chats with their visitors (and perhaps enjoys a little elderberry wine). Pike acquiesces immediately, kissing Wilhand’s cheek and practically skipping upstairs. “Good night, Pawpaw. I love you.”
“And I love you, my dumpling.”
Grog’s a little less interested in going to bed - it’s such a lovely summer night, after all - but he resigns himself to heading upstairs as well, comforting himself with the thought that if he can’t fall asleep, it’ll be all too easy to sneak out and go roaming the streets. “G’night, Wilhand.”
“A very good night to you, Grog.”
Grog stays awake much longer than he thought he would. For awhile he tosses a rubber ball at the ceiling, letting it thwap down into his palm. After he hears Wilhand come upstairs he stops and merely stares out into the darkness. He’s almost ready to let sleep take him when he hears light footsteps on the landing.
He gets to his feet and peeks out the partially-opened door, watching in utter surprise as Pike disappears down the stairs, white hair flowing out behind her like a ghost trailing her actions. For a moment he wonders if he actually did fall asleep and he’s now dreaming - Pike never gets out of bed, or, really, does anything she’s not supposed to. It’s a mystery that must be investigated.
As quietly as possible, Grog follows her downstairs. He stops at the bottom of the steps, craning his neck to look around the corner into the kitchen. If Pike’s going to eat the rest of the birthday cake without him, they’re going to have words.
But no, she just boosts herself up onto her chair, rocks forward onto her knees and elbows, and opens the cover of her birthday book. With one dreamy movement she tucks hair behind her ear, leaning over the pages as though she’s got the answers to all the world’s problems there in front of her.
Something mean and nasty twists in Grog’s belly. No longer trying to be quiet he stomps into the kitchen.
Pike looks up at him, innocence and happiness in her eyes. “Hi, Grog.”
“Hi, Grog,” he mocks her. “Now you’re good enough t’ talk t’ me?”
“What are you talking about?”
“All afternoon you’ve had your head stuck in that stupid book.”
It’s like he slapped her, and he knows he should feel terrible, but all he feels is that roiling knot of nastiness in his stomach. Almost without his permission his hand snakes out and grabs the book from her.
“Grog!” Pike stands up on her chair and then jumps up onto the kitchen table. “Give it back!”
He’s somewhere outside his body now, consumed with hatred and rage for the object in his possession. It’s so simple, so stupid, just parchment and leather held together with thread, but it has Pike’s attention and it is something he’s never going to be able to understand. If it can captivate Pike, who’s to say she won’t just forget about him altogether? There must be hundreds and hundreds of books in the world; there’s only one Grog and he’s too stupid to understand any of them.
He holds it over her head. The pages wave in the night air.
“Grog, please!” Pike begs.
Before he can stop himself Grog grabs a chunk of the pages and rips them from the binding. Stunned by his own actions he holds them aloft, staring blankly at them in his fist. Absolutely paralyzed by what he’s done, he barely hears Pike as she screams at him.
He definitely feels it, though, when Pike launches herself off the kitchen table and grabs him around the neck, pummeling him in the face with her fists. “Give! It! Back!” she yells at him.
Grog’s horrified. He wants to drop the book, to bolt out of the house, to go back five minutes ago when he hadn’t even touched the book. He barely feels Pike’s tiny hands as she punches him; the real pain is somewhere in his chest. In his heart.
There’s a flash of light and Pike’s weight is gone from his neck in an instant. Grog turns around to see Wilhand standing at the foot of the stairs, holding one hand out towards Pike, who’s ended up on the floor.
“Get up,” Wilhand snaps at Pike.
Sobbing, sniveling, she gets to her feet. “He took -”
Wilhand holds his hand up, indicating she should stop speaking. Slowly, the elderly gnome crosses the room to where Grog’s standing.
Immediately Grog hands him the book. “I didn’t mean to…”
Again Wilhand brings his hand up. Grog falls silent.
“How long have you been together?” Wilhand asks.
Pike bows her head.
Grog clenches his hand into a fist and releases it. “A long time,” he mutters.
“A long time,” Pike whispers.
“And you’re really going to throw it away over a book?”
Pike twists in the spot where she stands, head down. “It was my birthday present,” she mutters.
“How many times did you read it today?” Wilhand asks.
“A lot.” Pike keeps her head down.
“Do you think you have the story memorized?”
She nods.
Wilhand puts the book on the table. “Sit down and tell it to him.”
“What?”
“Sit down, and tell it to him.”
“But there aren’t any pictures.”
“I thought you had it memorized.”
“I do, but -”
“Then you won’t need pictures.” Wilhand stoops down and picks up the torn pages from the book. He takes the book and the ripped pages and goes back upstairs.
Pike doesn’t look up at Grog, but she shuffles a bit closer to him. He sighs and picks her up, settling her in his lap.
“A long, long time ago, there was this guy who lived in a village and he worked in the fields. And… this is stupid, I’m never going to get it like the book had it.”
“And I’m never gonna know any different, so I don’t care.”
Pike sighs. She scrubs her hands against her face. “Fine. There was a guy who lived in a village and he worked in the fields. He was really, really good at his job. Everything he touched grew tall and strong. Maybe he was a druid or something, I don’t know. His name was Peter.
“Now, he’d always worked in the fields and everyone he knew always had boring village jobs, but Peter had a dream that one day he could marry a princess. He wasn’t bad-looking or anything, actually he was pretty cute for a human guy. Curly blond hair, strong shoulders… and he was nice to everyone. But everyone laughed at him when he said he was going to marry a princess.”
She settles back against him unconsciously. Grog smiles and brings one hand up to rub her head fondly. “One day Peter fell asleep in the hay field. He had a dream where a beautiful sorceress came to speak with him. She told him that he should leave his job in the village and go to the castle. There he would find his destiny.”
“What’s ‘destiny’?”
“It’s… it’s like something you’re always moving towards whether you know it or not. Like something that’s always coming, no matter what you do.”
“Sounds stupid.”
“Most people think it’s going to be something good.”
“How come people don’t just do what they want?”
Pike shrugs.
“And anyway, who said this guy’s destiny was t’ marry a princess? Maybe he was s’posed t’ stay in his village and become a grain baron or somethin’.”
“I haven’t even told you the rest of the story yet.”
“Well, get goin’.”
Again she snuggles up to him. “So Peter got up and packed everything he owned and he walked many days to the castle. When he got there he realized he was poor and nobody would take him seriously if he went through the front door and just demanded to marry a princess. Instead he went and talked to the castle gardener, and he got hired to tend the flower gardens.
“This castle was special because there were twelve princesses who lived there, and it would be Peter’s job to make them each a special bouquet every morning.”
“Twelve princesses? Like the Rustons down at the end of town ‘cept they could prob’ly afford ‘em all?”
“Yeah. Just like that. Well, and they were all princesses, and half of them weren’t asshole boys who tried to drown me in the well.”
“Yeah.”
“Like I said before, Peter was really good at his job, so in no time there were all kinds of special flowers growing in the castle’s gardens. Carnations, lilies, roses, daffodils, daisies, petunias, pansies, lilacs, dewdrops, lavender - and those are just the flowers I know. There were even more - some of them were magical flowers and they could do special things. But it didn’t matter. All of the princesses ignored Peter and his magic flowers, except for one.”
“I thought you said none of ‘em were assholes.”
“They were just snobby. They didn't know any better about meeting people who weren't like them.”
“How d’ you do that?”
“Do what?”
“See the best in ever’body.”
Pike smiles and looks up at him. “‘Cause most people are good, Grog.”
She reaches up and pats his face.
“I’m sorry I ripped yer book.”
“I’m sorry I punched you.”
“‘S okay. I kinda deserved it.”
“Yeah, you kinda did.”
“Will you tell me th’ rest of th’ story?”
Pike nods. “Of course I will.”
“Happy Birthday, Pikey.”
“Oh, Grog.”
They keep the first two books for a very long time, wrapped in that shawl from old Daven’s wife. Neither book is as clean or as perfect as it was when it was printed, but it’s what inside that counts. For years they end every day the same way - sitting outside if it’s nice, inside by the fire if it’s raining or snowing, with mugs of hot chocolate or tall glasses of lemonade and plates of cookies, Pike in Grog’s lap, book in Pike’s lap, a world of stories woven around them. Those two stories grow as familiar as breathing, to the point where Grog can tell them forwards and backwards if Pike’s sick or tired.
Somehow they become more than book-readers. They become storytellers, and what’s more, story lovers.
Yansi Strood: Girl Sleuth
Their lust for stories grows both worse and better when they go away as adventurers. Grog knows Pike loves books but he’s never quite sure what kind of books she wants, so he’s given to just buying anything. One year for her birthday he brings her two slim novels recommended by a young woman in garish robes manning the general store of the closest town to Vox Machina’s latest campsite.
“She said they were all th’ rage,” he explains. “Um, so, what are they?”
Pike grins. “I’ve heard about these! They are all the rage… for teenagers.”
“Oh.” Grog’s face falls.
“It doesn’t mean we can’t read them, though,” Pike says. “Actually, I’ve been trying to figure out why they’re so popular.”
“Sorcery, prob’ly.”
Pike settles into his lap and opens the first book. “This one’s called Yansi Strood: Girl Sleuth and the Case of the Stolen Amulet.”
As she reads about Yansi Strood, a young, daring halfling smarter than all of the adults in her general vicinity who takes on thieves and bandits and pirates without blinking and somehow has time to visit the elderly and read to the blind, Pike realizes she and Grog haven’t read a mystery before. They’ve read a lot of terrible books and a lot of good books, everything from holy texts to a passing minstrel’s unpublished (and honestly, not that terrible) poetry, but not a mystery. Twenty pages in, Pike realizes why.
She hates them. She hates Yansi Strood. Somehow the girl sleuth is supposed to be smarter than everyone in her city, yet she can't see that the amulet thief is clearly the vicar - which Pike clearly realizes from the second chapter. And Yansi misses clues like nobody’s business. The candle wax? Clue. The red ribbon? Clue. The scrawled missive left on the tavern door? Not a clue, but Yansi certainly seems to think so.
Over the course of the next four days she reads about the stolen amulet, somehow maintaining an attitude of casual interest. The rest of Vox Machina falls in love with Yansi Strood, including Grog. None of them catch onto the vicar’s guilt.
After a long day of travel, which included accidentally rousting a nest of goblins and rescuing three party members who fell into a cavern during said battle and then healing all of the party, all Pike wants to do is sleep, which is exactly what she does. That is, until she feels a finger poke into her shoulder.
“Pi-ike,” Grog whispers in a low sing-song. “Wake up. We gotta read Yansi Strood.”
“Grog, no,” Pike mumbles. “Wanna sleep.”
“But I gotta know what happens!”
Pike groans. Without opening her eyes she reaches into her pack and takes out Yansi Strood. “Go take it to Scanlan. He’ll read it to you.”
“But I wanna read it with you.”
“Ugh! Grog!” Pike thrusts the book in his direction. “The vicar stole the damn amulet!”
The chatter around the campfire goes absolutely silent. Pike hears Grog gasp. At that she opens her eyes and looks up into Grog’s horrified face. “What? I thought it was the alderman!”
“I thought it was the traveling magician!” Keyleth puts in from the other side of the fire.
“You mean it wasn’t the surgeon?” Percy laments.
Grog actually looks like he’s going to cry. “You… you ruined it for me.”
“Oh, no, Grog, I’m so sorry!” Pike sits up and tries to figure out how she can make this situation better.
“I was gonna find out who it was an’ now I can’t! What am I supposed to do now?”
Pike pushes off her blanket and reaches up for Grog. Miserably he picks her up. She pats his face. “I’m so sorry, Grog. We’ll read the other Yansi Strood book.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I promise.”
“An’ we can start right now?”
Pike inwardly groans. All she wants to do is pass out. But she ruined Grog’s book. She kind of owes him one. “Yeah. We can start right now.”
Six months later, during a particularly slow night’s watch, Pike picks up the first Yansi Strood novel, the one she ruined for Grog. She idly flips through it, coming to the place where they’d left off. Since the night is quiet around her, she digs back into the story.
An hour and six chapters later, she looks up, horrified.
It wasn’t the vicar. Grog was right. It was the alderman.
She turns her head to where Grog is snorting and snuffling in his sleep, and firmly resolves never, ever to tell him of this.
The Kraken’s Wife
She goes to sea on a Moon’s Day afternoon.
She finds the book in her rucksack a full two days later. It’s wrapped in the shawl of old Daven’s wife, and it immediately makes Pike start crying. The shawl smells like home, like Wilhand and Grog and Grayskull Keep, and she sits in her tiny cabin aboard the Broken Howl and just sobs.
Her palms are raw, her face sunburned, and the hot tears streaming down her face match the pain still searing from her abdomen upwards, strange horrible memories of life and death mingling with seawater; she clings to the fabric of the shawl and the cover of the book and rocks back and forth with the motion of the boat.
There’s a note in the front cover of the book, which makes her cry again as she recognizes Percy’s handwriting. The tears increase once she realizes it’s Percy’s handwriting but not Percy’s words. “Dear Pike. This is a book for you. Shari at Gilmore’s store says it’s about some woman who goes to sea and fights a kraken. She gave it to me because it was the only book they had about people going away to sea. I think the girl in the book is just as brave as you are. Maybe you are even more brave. You are even more brave. I miss you so much. Maybe when you get back we can read this one together, okay? Have some good adventures without me. You are my favorite buddy. I love you so much. Grog.”
The days don’t get easier. The pain doesn’t decrease - at least, not at first. Her sleep is filled with nightmares that cling to her with sticky-fingered insistence. But somewhere in the up-and-down hours aboard the ship, she finds a few spare moments each day to read the book Grog sent.
And every day she reads over the first few lines of the book, lines Grog couldn’t have read so he couldn’t have known how much they’d mean, and thanks Sarenrae for her friend.
Call me Istriel. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having been taken out of the world by grievous injury and brought back by forces I myself cannot claim to understand, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is the way, I hoped, I could rediscover myself and bring meaning back to my existence. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly winter’s month in my soul… I remember how the waves saved me.
The cure for any ailment, after all, is saltwater: sweat, tears, or the sea.
A Thousand and One Marquetian Nights
“Pike,” Grog whispers. “I brought you something. You don’t have to wake up for it now, but you can, if you want. And if you’re not awake, I’m sorry.”
Pike doesn’t move. Grog takes her tiny hand in his and looks up at Gilmore.
The glorious man seems distinctly unruffled. “It is all right, Grog. We want her to sleep.”
“She’s been asleep fer days.”
“She was very grievously injured,” Gilmore reminds him. “It is a lot for a body to withstand, especially a body as small as Pike’s.”
“We were gonna read a book,” Grog says, pointing to the book in Gilmore’s hand.
“Do you know the story behind this book, my friend?” Gilmore asks.
“No,” Grog says. He’s never known the story behind any book, at least not until Pike reads it to him.
“Ah. I see. Well, it is a much-beloved book in my homeland,” Gilmore says. “It tells the story of a young woman and her sister sold to an angry pirate captain. He married the sister, but was going to kill the young woman. Before he could, the sister yelled out, ‘Stop! Captain, she is the finest storyteller in all of the Seven Isles. If you save her, she will tell you the best tale you have ever heard.’ So the captain decided to save the young woman - just for one night. ‘Tell your tale,’ he said, ‘and if it is not the best story I’ve ever heard, you will walk the plank this night.’
“The young woman began to spin a yarn, the likes of which had never been told before. The captain and his mates and all of those onboard were entranced. She spoke all throughout the night, and as she saw the sun rise, she said, ‘I apologize, gentlemen, but a lady needs her rest. I guess I will have to tell you the rest of the tale tomorrow night.’
“The captain, wanting to be thought of as a fair leader, and not wanting to outright kill his wife’s sister without provocation, agreed. And the next night this young woman picked up where she’d left off, and told another part of the story. Again she was still telling the story when the sun came up, and again she asked for another day.
“This went on for a thousand and one days - that’s what’s in this book, every part of this young woman’s tale. When at last the story ended, the captain was besieged by his men, begging for him not to kill the young woman. ‘We have to hear her next story!’ they told him. ‘If you kill her, we will never again hear a story so wonderful!’
“The young woman’s life was spared by her storytelling,” Gilmore adds. “In my homeland it speaks to the power of words, of love, and of the magic created by something as simple as tale-spinning.”
Grog just stares at him.
“I am merely suggesting that if you are going to sit here at Pike’s bedside, as you’ve done every day since she was found, you could… tell her a story.”
“I don’t tell the stories. Pike does that.”
“Pike reads the stories,” Gilmore points out. “But you can tell her a story. Just think on it, my friend.”
Grog nods as Gilmore claps him on the shoulder and moves away. “Hi, Pike,” he murmurs, squeezing her little hand. “It’s Grog. Today is the… seventh day since we found you in th’ forest outside Whitestone. I know I tell y’ this every day I’m here, but you’d been missing fer a couple’a days before we got back from our mission fer the Slayers’ Take. Nobody knew where ya went to, an’ we went out an’ looked fer ya. We found ya in th’ forest, an’ y’ were…”
Much as it does every time he tells this, his voice catches in his throat. “Y’ were… not in a good way, and ya hadn’t been in a good way fer awhile. Y’ were… burned, an’ lots’a yer bones were broken, an’ y’ weren’t breathin’ too well…”
He bows his head, thinking of the emotions that flooded through him when Vox Machina had at last stumbled upon Pike in the forest glade where she’d fallen. There were no signs of any attack, no signs of an enemy, which makes her grievous injuries much harder to understand. All he remembers is panic, and rage, and the wind whipping past his face as he bolted back to Whitestone with Pike in his arms, yelling out for Gilmore or Kima or Kashaw or anyone who could help. Everything else was a blur; everything else he knows is what the rest of Vox Machina told him afterwards. “Anyway, that’s all over now. Yer here, and we’re takin’ care of ya. An’ today… today I’m gonna tell ya a story.”
Grog settles back in his chair. “‘Cause, y’know, it’s not good fer you t’ always haveta be tellin’ the stories.”
The first story he tells is about how he once defeated the Shined Shoes Gang in Westruun, a group of “snot-nosed assholes” who tried to take over the corner-ball pitch. Most of it’s not true, and if Pike were awake she’d realize that, but Grog enjoys telling it all the same. He throws in an angry town alderman and a pair of foxes just for flavor.
When Vax comes in to relieve him for the night, Grog’s already thinking of his next story. For the first time since they found Pike, he goes to sleep with ideas running through his head rather than constantly replaying the moment he picked up her broken body in the woods.
The next day Grog tells Pike a story of a kraken who attacks a ship only to discover it’s occupied by just one person - a gnome cleric. They become best friends and have long talks about the ocean and life in general. Grog, as the kraken, asks a lot of questions he wants the answers to, like “Why can’t ocean creatures drown?” and “Why do people even want to go to the ocean in the first place?” and “How can I be helpful when someone I love is hurt?” and “When will people I love stop gettin’ hurt?” Since Pike isn’t there to fill in the spaces where the answers should go, Grog repeats the same thing every time: “The cleric smiled at the kraken and gave him an answer that at first seemed real complicated… but which actually wasn’t. And he felt better.”
The day after that Grog asks Keyleth about legends from her people over breakfast. When she hears about what he’s doing, she comes with him to Pike’s room. As Gilmore and Allura change Pike’s bandages and perform whatever healing is necessary for the day, Keyleth spins a yarn about a little air sprite who wanted to be powerful. As it turns out, the sprite had enough power to do the kinds of things it needed to do - and that was what made it powerful. Grog doesn’t really understand that one, but he lets Keyleth tell it anyway.
For the following two days Grog tells stories Wilhand used to tell when they were back in Westruun. The first one is about a noble thief who takes from the rich and gives to the poor, and who eventually ends up marrying a princess; the second is about two brothers who fight for the love of the same woman - who ends up falling in love with neither of them.
“A kick in that balls, that” is how Grog ends that tale, and he swears he sees a small smile on Pike’s lips.
On the morning of the twelfth day Grog is alone in Pike’s room with her, since Allura and Gilmore are still at breakfast. He’s about to sit down and start thinking of another story when he sees a bit of cloth poking out of a bureau drawer. It’s a familiar pattern, and he moves over to it, opening the drawer. Sure enough, it’s old Daven’s wife’s shawl, the one she gave Pike to wrap around their books. And just as Grog remembers, there are two books wrapped inside.
He takes out the caterpillar book and sits down next to Pike’s bed. “Well, today we’re gonna try somethin’ new,” he says. “I’m gonna read a book.”
Of course Grog knows he isn’t reading it, but that doesn’t matter to him, and he’s pretty sure it wouldn’t matter to Pike. Besides, he’s got these two almost memorized.
“In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf…”
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
“Pike! My lovely autumn flower!”
Pike looks up as Scanlan leaps down the steps of the castle. It’s enough hesitation for Grog to slam against her shield, knocking her backwards. She lets out a grunt as she slams into the ground. “This had better be good, Scanlan.”
Grog peers down at her. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she gets out. “I did say ‘no holds barred.’”
He helps her up and they turned to Scanlan. “I found you guys a new book you need to read.”
“You got me knocked out of sparring practice for a book?” Pike tries hard not to sound irritated, though she is.
“You’re going to love it,” Scanlan says. He holds it out to her with a flourish.
Pike looks down at it, one gauntleted hand holding her mace and the other supporting her shield. “What am I supposed to do with it, Scanlan?”
“I’ll take it,” Grog says. “Let’s take a break, buddy. We can start it right now.”
He grabs the book from Scanlan. “What’s it called?”
Scanlan’s already waved and headed back up to the castle, so Pike reads him the title: “‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.’”
She dumps her weaponry and yanks off her armor and gauntlets. Sweaty and exhausted, she waits for Grog to flop down under a tree before she crawls into his lap.
“I won’t tell anybody if y’ just decide t’ take a nap instead,” Grog tells her.
Pike smiles. “Let’s at least get a chapter or two into it. Maybe it’ll be terrible.”
She opens it. “‘In the sun-baked heat of the Marquetian desert, there was an out-of-the-way trading post run by a kind elderly man and his extremely lovely daughter. Her name was Sylva Le Torre, but those who came from miles around to trade with her father knew her as the Jewel of the Desert. She had long, flowing dark hair, as ebony as the Marquetian night, and she wore bracelets and rings in silver and gems that shone as bright as the stars overhead in those nights. Her lips were plump and full and as red as the berries crushed for the sweetest wine, and her bosom…’”
She stops. “Grog?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you… like this kind of book?”
“How’m I s’posed t’ know? We haven’t even gotten inta it yet.”
“I just mean… where they talk about women like that.”
Grog tilts his head and looks down at her. “Does it bother… you?”
Pike sighs, rubbing her fingers over some of the words. “No, not exactly.”
“Well, then tell yer face, ‘cause it’s seemin’ t’ say y’ do have a problem with it.”
“I just… why do they have to start out talking about this woman like she’s an object? Why can’t they say she’s smart, or that she makes beautiful jewelry they sell in their trading post?”
“Maybe she doesn’t make jewelry.”
“Grog. That’s not the point.” Pike leans back against him and sighs. A breeze ripples through the trees and for the first time that afternoon, she feels very, very tired. “Maybe I’m just tired of women only being pretty objects in books. That’s not how they are…”
She yawns. “... in real life.”
“No, yer right” is the last thing she hears Grog say before she drifts off to sleep.
When she wakes it’s hours later; her room is cool and dark around her. She reaches over and turns up the lantern. It flickers into light, illuminating a small package on her night stand.
Pike picks it up and undoes the string holding the brown paper together. Inside is a small sketchbook. She recognizes it as one of Keyleth’s. The first page is a message from Grog, given in Keyleth’s untidy scrawl: “Dear Pike, I was thinking about what you said about the girl who is beautiful and an object. I talked to Percy about it and Vax and Scanlan and they laughed at first but then they agreed it was wrong for a book to only talk about women like that. So I wrote a book I hope you’ll like. Well, Keyleth wrote it. I did the pictures and told her what to write. Scanlan helped too.”
She turns the page. A somewhat-untidy drawing of a giant man flexing his arm muscles next to several smaller stunned-looking people takes up most of the space. Underneath Keyleth’s written: “There was once a great big man called Jawbone the Gigantic. He was gigantic. He was tall and broad in his shoulders and he ate a lot of raw meat and he drank a lot of ale.”
On the second page, Jawbone the Gigantic makes another appearance, though instead of flexing, he’s now bench-pressing a tiger. For some strange reason, the tiger is wearing a crown. “Women loved Jawbone. His hair was dark and black and his eyes were shiny blue. He went home with all these women and showed them a good time. No one was unsatisfied. He also knew how to sing many songs. He knew things about plants and animals and weapons.”
The third page contains a drawing of Jawbone sitting under a tree with a tiny sprite-like creature who looks awfully familiar. Pike traces the bright white hair of the little person sitting on Jawbone’s knee. The text under the picture makes her smile. “But even though Jawbone took so many women home there was only one woman in his life who mattered a whole lot. Her name was Pickle the Monstah. She loved Jawbone so much. They went on adventures together. She took the time with him to read books and tell him about the world and make him a better person. There were things in Jawbone’s life that he’d never understood, or he’d never thought about, and she made him think about them and she helped him to understand them.”
Pike turns the page and sees a drawing of Jawbone hugging Pickle. Underneath: “Pickle was so brave and so bright that sometimes it hurt Jawbone to look at her, because he remembered when she was a little bitty thing and it was just them against the world. Sometimes he felt like Pickle knew too much stuff and she was too smart for him. But she was always so kind to everybody, and she wanted everyone to be happy, and Jawbone knew that was better than being smart, so he tried to be that way too. He wanted Pickle to be happy.
“Sometimes he didn’t know how to show Pickle he was listening. But one day he heard her say she wanted a book about a woman who wasn’t just pretty. And even though Jawbone thought Pickle was the most beautiful woman in the whole world, and even though he couldn’t even write, he wanted to make that book for her.”
The rest of the book is pictures of Pickle. In some of them she’s fighting horrible creatures - Pike recognizes a dragon and a group of goblins among them - while in others she’s doing works of charity: reading to a group of children, tending to injured people, sweeping a temple, preparing a meal. On the very last page Pickle and a group of familiar-looking people stand around a table. The table is occupied with a glowing body, a few inches above the tabletop.
Underneath that, the caption reads, “Pickle did things nobody else could do. Jawbone was so proud of her every single day. He tried to be the kind of person she could be proud of too.”
Pike pushes back her blanket and gets to her feet. She pushes open the door and finds Grog sitting across the hall, back against the wall, head down, snoring. She smiles and tiptoes over to him, climbing up in his lap without any hesitation.
A few minutes later Grog snuffles, snorts, and comes to awareness. “Oh, hi, buddy,” he says sleepily.
“Hi.”
“Didja… have a good nap?”
“I did.” Pike tilts her head and looks up at him. “And I got your present.”
“Yeah?”
Pike stands up and kisses him on the cheek. “Pickle is always proud of Jawbone.”
“Yeah, but how’s Pike feel about Grog?”
She hesitates for a moment until she sees him grin. “Oh, Grog.”
“I just wanted t’ tell ya we don’t have to read that book. We’ve always read whatever, we can still read whatever. Doesn’t haveta be that book.” Grog looks away, only a little shiftily. “But I still have that book, just in case ya change yer mind.”
“You know what, Grog? I did change my mind,” Pike says.
Grog looks relieved. “Oh, good. ‘Cause I didn’t want to go back to Scanlan and admit we didn’t read his book.”
Then he stops. “Wait. How come ya wanna read it now?”
“Well, because people aren’t just one thing. People are all sorts of things. Maybe this extraordinarily beautiful woman is also a badass warrior, too,” Pike says.
“I know some women like that.” Grog reaches into the bag of holding and pulls out the book. He hands it to Pike. “I follow yer lead, Monstah.”
They read until the wee hours of the morning. Pike is pleasantly surprised to discover, halfway through the book, that Sylva has actually spent most of her life being trained in an obscure branch of martial arts by her shopkeeper father - hence the dragon tattoo on her upper back, an emblem of said martial arts order. Sylva’s the one who’s brave enough to leave the trading post to go after the caravan that murdered her father. She’s brave enough to rally the people in the town that takes her in after she nearly dies in the desert - it turns out they’ve been victimized by the caravan’s raiders too. She’s the one who defeats the caravan’s leader, the salty rogue MacTavish, and brings his compatriots to justice. And she’s the one who approaches the co-leader of the revolution, an exceedingly handsome (and very well-described) man called Bronson Brailsmoor, taking him to more private quarters; for what the book does not describe but leaves entirely up to the reader’s imagination.
“She’s pretty wunnerful,” Grog murmurs. “Pike, you should write a book.”
“Maybe someday,” Pike agrees. “For right now, I’m pretty happy doing what I’m doing. And I’m always happy to be reading with you.”
“Hey, ‘member our first book?”
“The caterpillar book? Of course.”
“He built his own house,” Grog reminds her.
“And you asked me if we’d build a house for us,” Pike says. “Sorry that we never got to do that.”
Grog shrugs. “There’s time. An’ if y’ ask me…”
He looks around at the castle, seemingly indicating the rooms where the rest of their found family sleeps. “... we kinda build a house.”
Pike grins, though she feels tears come to her eyes. “Yeah, buddy. We did.”
Grog leans down and kisses her on the forehead.
“So,” Pike says, clearing her throat. “What should we read next?”