Brovish
CHAPTER TWELVE
My chest hurt from running, but I couldn’t slow down. Sofia darted ahead of me, her glow lighting the way. Laina was alone in that cave with newborns, and I’d promised to come back.
I kept thinking about our kisses, which was useless. The feeling refused to stay down, slipping between thoughts of Abagail’s vital signs and whether we had enough emergency blankets in the supply room.
I ran faster.
Laina had looked up at me after I kissed her, and I’d thought, I could stay in this cave with you forever.
Instead I’d said, “I’ll be back.”
A compromise with honor.
Sofia banked hard left at a split pine, and I ducked under the branch. She knew these woods the way she did my shoulder.
Finally, the facility lights cut through the rain ahead. I shouldered through the front door and wished the others had returned from their trip. But Laina and I could handle this.
Sofia flew down the hallway and scratched on the supply room door.
“I’m coming,” I said.
Inside, I grabbed a sack and started filling it.
Emergency blankets. A heavy ground cover.
Camp stove, fuel, two tin cups. A pan wide enough for Abagail to drink from.
Wrapped food we kept in the supply closet.
More of the loose-leaf tea I’d bought for Laina went in last. I’d bought out all they had and put it here for when she needed it. Now counted as need.
Moss mash for Abagail. A nursing snugglethorn would starve herself before letting her young go hungry. I packed enough for days, though I fully intended to bring her back in the morning.
Sofia tugged at the small pouch of dried ember berries. Her contribution. Abagail would love them.
She carried it to the open pack and dropped it in.
“Good thinking,” I told her.
She peeped and returned to the door.
It took two trips to load everything in the cart. Sofia supervised from the roof and made her opinion of the rain known in sharp peeps.
I climbed into the off-road vehicle and drove out through the equipment gate, the cart bouncing behind me, supplies shifting each time I hit a rut. I kept the headlamps low and the speed down. A newly-delivered animal didn’t need the approach of something loud and bright.
What Abagail needed was Laina.
I thought about her for the length of the drive back, which was not long enough and also too long. She’d said I’ll be here, and I knew she’d be waiting.
She worried that she was too small for this wild place, but she didn’t see what I did. Her hands are the only things in this world strong enough to hold my heart without crushing it and gentle enough to make an orc want to be soft.
The rocky outcropping appeared in the headlamp’s sweep. I cut the engine and coasted the last stretch, coming to a halt outside the cave.
Sofia darted ahead, her glow shining through the rain from inside.
I grabbed an armload of bags and crouched at the entrance, scooting inside.
Laina sat cross-legged on the emergency blanket, both twins tucked in her lap.
The larger one had its face turned up toward her chin.
The smaller one had both front paws locked around her wrist and wasn’t letting go.
Abagail lay against Laina’s side, sleeping, though her eyes opened when I appeared.
The smaller twin blatted and Laina looked up.
“You made good time,” she said.
“Sofia helped.” I laid the bags on the ground. “How are they?”
“Nursing well. Abagail had a small bleed after the second birth, but it stopped on its own. Thankfully, she passed both placentas and they were intact. I’ll check her again now that you’ve brought light, but I think she’ll be okay.
” She unwound her wrist from the smaller twin’s grip.
It immediately squawked. “This little one is quite determined.”
“She takes after her mother.”
Laina’s mouth curved.
I handed her a pan, and she filled it from the flask I handed her and set it in front of Abagail, who lifted her head and drank.
“Let’s put the ground cover on the left side of the cave,” Laina said. “We can move her and her snugglers there, then take the right for ourselves.”
That’s right. We’d be sleeping here tonight. Together. More or less. With Abagail and Sofia watching. Still…together.
My heart leaped in my chest.
By the time the tarp was secured over the entrance and the camp stove was lit, the space had shifted from cold and damp to a space a person might choose to be in.
Sofia made three circuits of the interior, approved everything, and perched on a flat rock above Abagail’s head. She peeped once. I’d been in enough caves to recognize a territorial claim when I heard one.
I sat beside Laina.
She passed me the larger twin, and it headbutted my palm.
“This one is going to run the place.” Laina watched Abagail drink.
Once the stove had heated water, I filled both mugs, added tea leaves in sachets, and handed her one.
“Thank you. This is wonderful.” She wrapped both hands around the mug and sniffed the aroma before drinking.
We ate the food I’d brought, sharing bites with Sofia. Abagail gobbled down the moss mash and dried berries.
Sofia descended from her rock and begged for another piece of dried meat, carrying it back up to her rock. She ate it, overlooking her new territory.
“She’s holding court,” Laina said.
“We call this throne-sitting. When a creature claims territory and enforces it with their presence alone. She does this often. When she was small, she would arrange objects on my windowsill in a specific order and peep at me until I acknowledged them.” I turned the cup between my palms. “I never learned what I was acknowledging, but the peeping stopped when I nodded.”
“What objects?”
“Pebbles, mostly. A very large dead beetle once. She was very proud of the beetle.”
Laina pressed her lips together, her eyes sparkling.
“It was an excellent beetle,” I said. “I told her so. It had very impressive…leg situations. And it was shiny. Sofia has standards for her treasures.”
Laina laughed into her cup.
After we’d eaten and finished our tea, Laina examined the twins again, murmuring under her breath. I spread out the bedding. It wasn’t a wide bed, but there wasn’t a lot of room inside the cave.
“I assume you’ll want the entrance side,” Laina said.
“Yes.”
She glanced at me sideways. “So you can watch out for us all night.”
“The tarp may need adjusting.”
“Guarding me.”
“Always. You, Sofia, Abagail, and the snugglers.”
She stroked my hand before turning away.
We brushed our teeth and stepped back inside the cave, settling beneath the blankets.
Laina drew the top layer over us both.
Sofia flew over and snuggled between us.
Laina lay on her side, facing Abagail and the twins. I lay on my back, keeping a handsbreadth of distance between us.
Outside, the rain had slowed.
“In the kingdom,” I said, “there’s a hierarchy over who gets to attend a birth. Since I was the youngest of eight brothers and one sister, I was only allowed to view late-season births.”
“You have eight brothers and a sister? Family dinners must’ve been…loud.”
“My mother says the orc word for chaos is my family’s last name.”
Laina’s shoulders quivered with her laugh.
“My eldest brother, Gravuk, once chased a grumbletoad through three enclosures and directly into a full feast hall before catching it. The feast guests were not pleased. The toad was not pleased. Our mother especially was not pleased.” I paused. “Gravuk was extremely pleased.”
She buried her face in the bedroll. It didn’t muffle much.
“My sister Marra kept broken things. Smooth rocks with crystal insides, creatures, and people if they would hold still.” One of the twins bleated before settling. “She said the things that had been broken and mended were stronger at the seam.”
“My father had a cracked rifle case he kept for years,” Laina said, her voice soft. “He could’ve replaced it, but he said he wouldn’t, that he knew exactly where all the give was. I bet he and Marra would’ve agreed on many things.”
“He sounds like someone I would’ve liked.”
“He would’ve enjoyed meeting you.” She paused. “He brought me on my first birth call when I was sixteen. A mare on the neighboring farm with a foal coming early. It was two in the morning, but the whole barn was lamplit and smelled of fresh-dried hay.”
“Was the birth complicated?”
“No. He came out fine. All legs, like he’d borrowed them from a stallion twice his size and hadn’t read the instructions first.” The smaller twin shifted, and Laina went quiet until it stilled.
“He stood there looking down at them. These are mine? But he toddled around on them and was soon running. My dad cried. He didn’t think I saw him, but I did. ”
“Did you cry?”
“Obviously.”
Abagail’s breathing had deepened. Both twins were asleep, tucked against her side. The embers in the small stove had almost gone dark.
“Abagail chose us both,” I said. “Snugglethorns don’t choose two birth attendants unless—”
“Unless what?”
I tried to find the right words. “Where I come from, when a snugglethorn chooses two, it means those two are bonded to her care through the choosing itself. It’s…” What was the right comparison? “She’s decided we belong to each other because we both belong to her.”
Laina stilled against me.
“I don’t have a surface word for it,” I said.
“I don’t think there is one for something that wonderful.” Her voice had gone soft. “But I understand what you mean.”
She laced her fingers through mine under the blanket.
I opened my notebook, and I wrote down my thoughts quickly, before the light went out.
“What are you writing?” Laina asked.
My hand stilled. “Observations. The twins’ positioning. Abagail’s recovery.”
“And?”
The notebook felt heavy. I turned it so she could see.
Laina held both snugglers while I was gone. When I returned, the smaller twin had both paws wrapped around her wrist. Laina didn’t once look like she had somewhere else she’d rather be.
She read while my pulse climbed into my throat.
When she’d finished, I turned it back and kept writing because my hands needed something to do. She watched the pen move.