Chapter 8 Nasrin #2
One of the women jutted her tail at a set of trays at the far end of the hall and the sisters hustled over. I followed, looking with interest at the creamy, white fudge-like substance in the trays.
“They make it with the brolka milk,” Vanda explained, “and add valikir gel and sometimes felkora egg yolk. It gets cooked in the big pots then cools in the trays. Mother can slice it up.” She gently touched the edges of the trays, looking for one that presumably wasn’t too hot to hold.
Once she’d decided on one, she whisked it up into her arms, balancing it with practised ease.
Wanda looked put out, so she instead got busy collecting what looked to be some dried, salted strips of meat and boiled felkora eggs into her arms. I was about to ask if she needed help when one of the women stirring the pots behind us said, “Welcome back, Gahn!”
I froze, feeling hot, then cold, all over.
Wanda and Vanda didn’t experience any of the hesitation I did.
They both raised their tails then moved as fast as their full arms would let them to greet their Gahn.
Slowly, I turned to face him. Gahn Thaleo had entered the hall alone.
For once, his eyes weren’t on me, but rather resting with a patient, weighty sort of attention on the two small girls before him.
“We are fetching Zaria and our mother a meal! They are in the sewing cave with Tilly!” Vanda explained, raising the tray as if for his inspection.
“Very good,” Gahn Thaleo rumbled. “You’d better get to it, then.”
Clearly glowing with the judicious praise and attention their Gahn had just bestowed upon them, the two girls forgot all about me and went on their merry way.
Gahn Thaleo exchanged a few words with the women at the pots. Then, he approached me.
“I was supposed to help them!” I stammered, nearly nonsensically. I felt strangely cornered and frankly indignant about that fact. As if I had some right to ask, how dare you enter your own damn hall?
“They are competent cubs,” he replied.
I noticed that he didn’t say they seemed competent. He said they are competent. He knew them. Because he paid attention. To everyone and everything.
I wondered if any other Gahn would be able to comment upon the specific attributes of any of the children in his tribe.
“Well, even if they don’t drop a tray, I’d still better go back with them,” I said, stepping to the side so that I could go around him. “I’ll probably lose my way back if I don’t follow them.”
This wasn’t true. Now that I’d gone to and from that bright sewing cave, I knew I’d be able to find it again. But throwing that excuse out there seemed like the easiest way to disentangle myself from Gahn Thaleo.
“I will escort you.”
Well. Shit. That clearly hadn’t worked out how I’d planned. Now, if I told him I knew the way, I’d be outed as a liar. And wasn’t that one of the things I disliked most about Gahn Thaleo?
That he was a liar?
“Alright,” I said at length. Then, stiffly, I added, “Thank you. Very generous of you.”
I wondered if the entire trip back to the other cave would be silent as we began to walk side-by-side. But then, unexpectedly, Gahn Thaleo broke the silence.
“Is that what passes for generosity?” he asked. “Among the males of your world?”
“Pardon?” I said, startled by the question. For long seconds, I couldn’t make myself understand what he was asking.
“Escorting you back to the other cave,” he reminded me. “You said it was very generous.”
“Oh. Yes. I did.” I listened to our footsteps echo on the stone. Well, my footsteps, I supposed. His were eerily silent. “I just meant…Like I said last night. I know you’re the Gahn. And that you’re very busy.”
“I am,” he acknowledged. But, like usual with him, I couldn’t detect any boasting in the reply.
“So, like, you don’t have to take the time to do this kind of stuff. I know you don’t want to be my friend.”
Christ. Why had I bothered adding that last part? I sounded like a fucking child.
When I was finished internally berating myself, I became slowly aware of a shift in Gahn Thaleo at my side. But when I glanced at him, he appeared as he always did. His shoulders set, his face a stern blank as I regarded his profile.
“And you know this, how?”
I stopped walking. He stopped at the exact same instant. Almost like he’d anticipated me. He’d done it too quickly for it to solely have been a reaction to me.
“Because…Because you don’t have friends!
Because of what you said last night!” I burst out, confused by his reply.
His sight stars gave me nothing to go on as he faced me.
This section of hall wasn’t exposed to any sunlight, just the lanterns Gahn Thaleo had positioned throughout his mountain to help us see. Shadows hooded his eyes.
“I do not recall ever telling you,” he said, his voice like smoke, but somehow cold, not warm, “that I did not want such a thing.”
“Uh, alright,” I said, rattled. “You’re telling me that you do want to be my friend after all, then?”
“I did not say that, either.”
Jesus fucking Christ. I was going to have a stroke at this rate, trying to work out this man’s riddles.
“Then what the hell do you want, Thaleo?” I snapped. Then I sucked in a sharp breath, realizing I’d forgotten the honorific of his title, Gahn. He seemed to bend incrementally towards me. He overwhelmed me, became the only thing I saw. My heartrate increased rapidly, becoming more buzz than beat.
“Nazreen.” He said my name like it was a crushing stone he didn’t know how to move off of his chest. “I try very hard not to want anything at all.”
Silence thickened, seeming to conduct electricity between us.
Some odd, unnameable charge that might have been anything from distrust to desire.
Maybe both. I couldn’t tell. Couldn’t even think about that right now.
All I could think about were the dozens of questions I had for this scarred wall of a man.
How old were you when you got that scar? How did it happen and why didn’t they heal you? What is it that you try not to want? How does a man try not to want in the first place? Does it even work?
Maybe it didn’t work. Because – and it was so fucking subtle in the lamplight – I swore I saw his sight stars give a tiny tremor, tightening inwards before dropping to my lips.
And that sent alarm bells ringing in my head.
“I made some new clothes today,” I said, grasping at anything to change the subject. To create some distance between us. Tamp down this simmering strangeness that had my breath catching in my throat, my treacherous nipples growing hard.
“Clothes,” he echoed thickly, thoughtlessly. Like his brain was just as scattered as mine. Which simply could not be true. This was Gahn Thaleo we were talking about.
And yet, there was no denying the way he suddenly roused himself, like someone pulling his body back from the warm and tempting edge of sleep.
His sight stars pinged up to my eyes. Then, they were gone as he faced forward in the hall once more.
Not knowing what else to do, I started walking, and just like before when we’d stopped, he took a step at the precise moment I did.
It unnerved me to be so in sync with him.
“Clothes,” he said again, sounding much more like the usual, cool-toned Thaleo I was used to. “Good. I would not have you unsuitably dressed during your time here.”
“Yeah,” I said, relieved to have some neutral topic of conversation to prattle on about. This surprised me, because I’d never been a prattler in my entire fucking life. But there I was, rambling away about Wanda and Vanda and wool and fur and silk.
“The girls seemed awfully disappointed not to be able to see the spinners yet,” I told him. “But I understand that they might be a bit too excitable for that right now.”
“And what about you?”
“Er…” Was I excitable? What a weird question.
But apparently, I was. My nipples still tingled at Gahn Thaleo’s proximity.
He seemed very careful that no matter how narrow a stretch of the hall got, no matter how close he walked to me, he didn’t touch me.
His big arm didn’t even brush the sleeve of my jacket, which in some of the tighter turns seemed like it should have been physically impossible.
“I don’t know?” I finally croaked.
“If you decide you do, I will take you to see them.”
Of course. That’s what he’d meant. He’d been asking if I’d wanted to see the spinners. Not if I was excitable. Dear fucking God.
“I would like that,” I said, speaking solely about the chance to see the spinners and realizing too late I’d agreed to let him escort me there. “But you don’t have to go with me. I’m sure someone else would be happy to show me,” I said hastily.
“I am aware.” A pause, then, “I will take you to see them. But I cannot do it now. Events today have made other things necessary first.”
“Zaria told us about the borog thing. Is that what you mean?”
“It is not something you need to concern yourself with,” he said. “But yes, that is what I mean. I’d only just returned with Warrek from its burrow when I came across you in the hall. I must meet with my other warriors now, and inform the rest of the tribe about what has occurred.”
“What about Valeria and Grim?” I asked. “Are they going to be in any danger when they come back?”
“No. The borog is a burrowing creature. It cannot jump and does not climb well or quickly. If they were to encounter it, they could outfly it in the shuttle easily. But I do not anticipate they will encounter it if they fly straight to this mountain, as I expect they will upon their return. The evidence of the burrow was far from here, closer to the Vrika’s peak in the neutral territory.
When Valeria returns, I will inform her of what we have found and let her know that the area is off-limits for the time being. ”
“For the time being. Then what? We just wait for it to move on? Or…”
“Wait until it forces us to kill it,” he said grimly.
That was how his uncle died.
I was just working up the nerve to ask him about Gahn Seerak when he stopped. Voices drifted over to us – Tilly’s and Oxriel’s, then a younger voice, either Vanda or Wanda. We’d reached the last stretch of hallway that led to the sunny cave with the sewing supplies.
Though before I’d wanted nothing more than to end another strange interaction with this even stranger Gahn, I found myself asking him if he wanted to join us to eat.
“No,” he said, brusque as ever.
Probably a good thing, to be honest. If he came in, he might ask to see what I’d been working on this morning.
And then I’d have to hold up the silky purple undies I’d made and tell him what they were for.
Then again, I likely wouldn’t need to tell him.
He would obviously be able to ascertain by the shape that they were like a tight, form-fitting sort of loincloth.
That the silky centre bit would fit flush against my pussy.
Would he stare at them in that impassive, silent way of his?
Or would I see it again?
That tiny, blink-and-you’d-miss-it pulse of his sight stars.
It didn’t matter, and it was fucked up I even cared to find out.
Gahn Thaleo remained in place, watching me, and it occurred to me that he was waiting for me to go ahead and enter the cave before he departed.
It felt absurdly like a man making sure his date got safe inside her door, locking it for the night, before he drove away.
That, or he didn’t want me slipping away and wandering through his mountain without him.
Without another word, I turned and left him there.