Respites

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At some point during the night a fine rain began falling, and it showed no sign of stopping well into mid-morning. Vayrsila was highly pleased: the freshly dug and seeded fields would be soaked, but not flooded, which was a good start for any kind of plant. Tay wasn't quite so happy.

For all his reprimanding of Kelper and the twins, Vaysila teased quite a lot himself.

He did manage to prepare his tea without being questioned, though, which could be attributed to the fact that his mentor was so busy smirking knowingly that he wasn't paying any attention to what Tay was doing. So life wasn't all bad. Even so, Tay had been hoping to see Cour again as soon as possible, and if the rain continued as it was he might not get a chance to. He felt an immense need to see whether or not things had lasted overnight. His surface mind accepted by default that Cour would not turn back on his word so quickly, but that deepset piece inside him that trusted nothing said otherwise. Cour had no reason to give this-relationship?-any more depth than that of a first crush. He hadn't said he wanted to build anything, simply that he loved Tay and that he would accept his devotion to his tribe.

It was going to be much more difficult to get rid of that piece than he had anticipated.

Gods above, he was actually having serious thoughts about Cour. He blushed harder under his fosterfather's smug gaze and tried not to wish horrible things down upon whoever had started the demonic line known as the Cūrtalans. It was hard enough analyzing himself without people grinning at him out of every corner.

"Did you want something?" he asked finally, sounding rather stiff even to his own ears, and to his own confusion and horror he actually managed to restrain the urge to apologise profusely for being snippy to an elder. He suddenly had the strange image of himself locked away in a tower inside his head with some evil imposter speaking through his mouth. He really had been around the twins too long, their fairy tales were getting to him. Luckily, Vayrsila neither noticed nor cared about his impudence.

"Oh, I'm just happy," the older Kindred returned blithely with a smile so sweet it surpassed even the best examples of the twins' work. "It's not every day your best foster gets engaged, you know."

"I'm your only foster," Tay heard himself retort dryly. "And I'm not engaged."

The Tay in the tower clapped a hand over his imaginary mouth.

"Oh, you are in a good mood! See, I told you it would feel good to let your opinions out."

"I'm not," Evil Tay insisted, annoyed. "It's true, we just talked."

Normal Tay passed out on the tower floor with a flourish, then scrambled up to lose his breakfast out the window with utter mortification. This could not be happening to him...

"Relax, Taydren," Vayrsila relented finally. His smile softened out to a repentant little curve. "I won't tease anymore, promise. It's just good that you're happy."

Evil Tay melted and turned into Mushy Tay, who seemed equally bad. "I'm sorry, I just don't feel so good this morning," Mushy Tay admitted sadly.

"Stomach?" Vayrsila asked, his smile disappearing into a look of concentrated worry. From inside the tower, Normal Tay could be heard screaming in panic. He had to do something! They were giving secrets away! Closing tiny eyes, he threw himself headlong out of the tower window, landed running, and took back possession of himself just in time to avoid any shocking revelations. It felt good to be in control again.

"I'm just a little queasy," he amended. "It's nothing. Probably just nervous," he offered grudgingly, setting his mug of tea down on the tabletop. "I'm not very good with... this sort of thing."

"Oh, you'll be just fine," Vayrsila reassured him, seriously for once. "I'm sure Cour is just as nervous as you are, if that helps you any."

It doesn't, Evil Tay started to say. Tay squashed him and sat down quietly for breakfast instead.

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Luckily, or unluckily depending on how Tay looked at things, the rain did indeed taper off and stop somewhere around midafternoon. Even more luckily, Kelper's da, tired of washing dirty cubs, had confined his six youngest to the house until the mud dried out and had threatened them with a loss of dinner if they tried to escape. Not that Kelper's littermates had ever tried to escape-all of the mischief quota for their bunch seemed to have been sucked into Kelper somehow at birth, so his three littermates, Rinč, Kayte, and Ranon, were surprisingly quiet. The three of them were cuddling silently under the table when Tay stopped to make his inquiry; Kelper and the twins were in the back room playing.

Tay had often thought that Kelper and the twins should have been born together. Rinč, Kayte and Ranon were quite content to leave their youngest littermate to his own devices, and it had gone that way ever since the four of them were born. Kelper hadn't ever seemed to mind, but he had been a loner until the twins arrived.

With the coming of the twins, everything had changed. Kelper had become the leader of a tiny pirate pack of his own, and Tay had become an unofficial member soon after, namely when Kelper realised that his parents wouldn't let him take his accomplices on field expeditions without an older escort. Tay still wasn't sure why he had been chosen. But Kelper's decisions had always been hard to rationalize.

The visit to Cour's house brought a little more luck. Although Cour wasn't off work, he had been assigned to pick the new herbs that were just beginning to unfurl along the edges of the creeks and down in the small meadows and glades. So Tay, happy to at last have found something useful to do instead of just taking up Cour's time, grabbed a pair of baskets and tagged along.

"So where do we look?" Tay wanted to know as soon as they had cleared the house.

"Well, we're looking for spring stuff. Things that are better tender, like the rabbit's-head moss down by the creek," Cour explained cheerfully. "We should get some of the birchbark out of the Horn too. Bark's best when the sap is moving, you know."

Taydren's eyebrows drew together. "But I thought you dried it?"

"We do, but it's better for you if the sap dries in it. When it dries in the wild, the sap tends to get washed out of it by rain, wind, animals eating it... But when we dry it inside, the sap crystalizes and stays there in it. Most times it's the sap that's good for you."

"Okay," Tay agreed blankly, almost sure that he understood. "So... how long should this take?"

"You have something else to do?" Cour asked, throwing him a look sidewise over a grey-clothed shoulder. Heat rushed into Tay's face, making him shake his head quickly.

"No, I don't. I didn't mean..." He trailed off, uncertain.

Cour giggled at him. Giggled. "You don't have to make conversation if there's nothing to talk about," he reproached mirthfully. "I don't stick around you for the great conversation."

Even the rustle in the tree leaves above seemed to be laughing. Tay flushed hotter. "I'm not very good at talking," he admitted, caught between pain at the light insult and embarrassed humor at the truth of it. "But everybody wants me to talk, so I guess... I just though you'd want to talk too."

"There are times when it's nice to just be together quietly," Cour stated firmly, swinging his baskets energetically. "Time enough for talking later. Hey, you want to see if the apple trees are budding yet?"

"Do they, this early?" Tay asked shyly, half afraid of being laughed at again. Damp earth squelched under his bare feet as they set off across the flat brown clearing that marked the place where the tribe's many cubs played the most. All around them the trees spread their pale yellow-budded canopy, and the forest bushes put new leaves out over the older ones' dark glistening green and dead brown. They had long ago left behind the bare, grassy meadows that ringed and carpeted the small village.

"Sometimes," Cour answered honestly. "It really depends on how the spring goes. If it's too like winter, they won't bud till late. But the weather's been pretty good this spring." He paused. "You know, you work too much."

"I do?" Tay asked, caught off guard by the abrupt change in subjects. "What makes you think that?"

"I've never seen you out and about in springtime, or any other time for that matter. That and the fact that Vayrsila's house has been in a lot better order since you came," he added wryly, directing their footsteps toward the aforementioned apple trees. "You keep everything in place, but you never take time off to stand back and look at things. Don't you get tired?"

"No," Tay began tentatively after debating whether Cour had wanted an answer or not and deciding that he did. "I s'pose there's so much to be done that I just never thought about it very much."

"Well, you can't do that forever," Cour said seriously, but his face broke back into his customary smile almost at once. "So I'll just have to teach you how to have fun, won't I?"

Tay shifted his baskets, flustered, but didn't answer. The apple trees fell into sight; bare-branched and gnarled, they looked like they might never bud again, much less soon, but Cour didn't look at all phased by this.

"So, not yet!" he observed cheerfully. "But pretty soon!"

"What next?"

Cour shook his head. "Let's rest a minute. It's nice and quiet here."

The cub-bearer had to smile at that. "Why do you talk so much if you like quiet places?" he joked hesitantly, and was received with a smile so beautiful that he was sorry he hadn't tried humor before.

"Well, I can't talk properly if other people are talking, can I?" the other Kindred shot back playfully, the look in his eyes softening. "Hey, come here a minute."

Shooting his companion a questioning look, Tay obeyed, leaving his baskets in the grass behind him. Cour only answered it by pulling him closer still and placing a hovering arm around his waist. His smile became a little strained with worry.

"Can I..."

Tay knew what he wanted, and choked out a little giggle at the shy puppy eyes he was being given. Leaning forward and up, he gave it-just a light, chaste press, but Cour looked satisfied.

"Thank you."

"No, I... I'm glad," Tay blurted. "I wasn't sure - that you hadn't changed your mind."

"Of course not," Cour told him softly, and his grip tightened a little. His other arm came up to encircle Tay's back. "I'll never change my mind. But..."

Tay swallowed hard. "But?"

"What about your cub's father?" Cour asked. His tongue seemed to drag over the words, as if each one had been bound to something heavy inside his throat. "Shouldn't you be thinking about him? Doesn't your cub need to know who his sire is?"

White blankness filled Tay's head just trying to think about it. He couldn't. His throat felt suddenly dry; Cour's words only repeated those that had been swimming in his head since he had found out about his cub.

The father. He didn't even know he was a father, and Tay wanted more than anything to keep it that way, though every part of him knew that such secrecy couldn't last. Taydren hadn't picked a stupid male, and he would know as soon as he found out Tay was pregnant that the cub was his. And then he would want both of them.

Could... couldn't he just be yours?" he asked in a near whisper, hiding his face in the crook of his companion's shoulder. "Do you want him to be?"

"He's not," Cour pointed out heavily, wishing more than anything that he could have just said yes and let it rest. "Shouldn't you give the real father some claim? It is his cub."

"No," Tay whispered almost harshly and quivered all over, tightening long fingers over the inner curve of Cour's elbow. "I didn't want... He didn't..." Then he subsided with a defeated sigh, and his voice when he spoke again was simple, remorseful certainty.

"You wouldn't have done it."

"You don't know that," Cour told him. "I don't know that."

But Tay was too heartbroken, too - Tay-like - for him to go on. So he let it go again, and it did feel a little better in spite of the bad ending. They had gotten somewhere. He hugged the cub-bearer in his arms snugly.

"Trust me a little next time you have a question," he murmured into a small ear. "I do love you. I'll try not to hurt you."

"I'll try," Tay murmured back painfully, muffled by the side of Cour's neck. "I didn't know. You aren't... you're not mad?"

"No, I'm not mad at you or anyone," Cour assured him. "I wasn't trying to upset you. I just wanted you to talk about it. Things like that can get you if you don't think them out."

"No," Tay told him, shaking tendrils of hair out of his face. Overhead, the tree followed suit in a thin gust of wind. "It - I don't like talking about it. But it always feels better. After." He tipped his head back and grinned halfheartedly. "You talk well, I guess."

"I don't talk that much," Cour teased, brushing a kiss over the top of Tay's head. He blushed when he realised what he had done.

"Sorry."

"I don't mind," Tay told him demurely. "You can do it anytime. Vayrsila knows already anyway."

Cour laughed. "And you're not insane from his teasing?"

"I'm used to it."

"I see," Cour agreed seriously, but his eyes sparkled. "Well! Enough deep talk for today! Are we going to pick those herbs or not?"

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