Chapter 12
URSAK
TAP. TAP-TAP.
The sound echoes through the university archives like water dripping in a cave. I look up from the medieval manuscript spread across my desk, expecting to see Professor Williams checking on the late-night researchers again.
Instead, Maya's face appears at the glass partition separating the restricted section from the main reading room. She waves a takeout bag and points to her watch.
Eight-thirty. I've been here since noon, lost in thirteenth-century Germanic dialects and the comforting routine of academic work. Anything to keep my mind off immigration forms and countdown calendars.
She mouths something I can't quite catch through the glass, then holds up a visitor's badge clipped to her jacket. The security guard must have let her in. I gesture toward the side entrance, where she can access the restricted area if she signs the log book.
Five minutes later, she's sliding into the chair across from my desk, setting down containers that smell like heaven. "Thai food. The good kind, not the tourist stuff."
"How did you find me?"
"Your office hours sheet said you'd be here until nine. Plus, you mentioned this place before." She opens one container, steam rising. "Figured you might need sustenance. And company."
The kindness in her voice makes something tight in me eases. I've been avoiding everyone since yesterday's laundry room conversation, too afraid to hope that Maya's offer of help might actually mean something. Too afraid of making another mistake.
"I ordered extra spring rolls," she continues, unpacking chopsticks. "They travel well, and I know you like things that don't fall apart when you handle them."
A laugh escapes before I can stop it. "Is that your subtle way of commenting on my motor coordination?"
"Nothing subtle about it. I've seen you with coffee cups." She grins, nudging a container toward me. "Eat. You look like you haven't had a real meal today."
She's right. I've been subsisting on vending machine coffee and the sandwich I brought from home twelve hours ago. The pad thai tastes like actual food, complex and satisfying in a way that makes me realize how hollow I've felt.
"What are you working on?" Maya peers at the open manuscript, careful not to lean over the delicate pages.
"Middle High German poetry. Specifically, translations of courtly love verses into various dialects." I flip to a page marked with several bookmarks. "This particular collection includes some remarkable examples of cross-cultural romantic expression."
"Romantic expression?" Her eyebrows rise. "As in love poems?"
Heat creeps up my neck. "Academic interest only. The linguistic patterns reveal fascinating cultural exchange between—"
"Ursak." She sets down her chopsticks. "Are you blushing?"
"Orcs don't blush. We experience temporary circulatory adjustments."
"Right. Temporary circulatory adjustments." Her smile is soft, teasing without malice. "Show me one."
"Show you what?"
"A love poem. Read me one of these fascinating examples of cross-cultural romantic expression."
My hands still on the manuscript. "Maya, these are academic texts. Dry translations of historical documents—"
"Humor me."
Something in her tone makes me look up. She's leaning forward slightly, chin resting on her hand, eyes bright with genuine curiosity. Not the polite interest people show when they're trying to be supportive, but real engagement.
Stone warms slow, I remind myself. But some stones are worth the wait.
I flip through several pages until I find the piece I've been working with all afternoon. A twelfth-century verse originally written in Old High German, later translated into Latin, then into Middle English, and finally rendered into modern English by three different scholars.
"This one," I say, clearing my throat. "It's attributed to a minnesinger, a German courtly poet, but the original shows influences from orcish verse structure. Probably picked up during trade contacts along the Rhine."
"Just read it."
The words hover on my tongue, familiar from hours of analysis but suddenly weighted with new meaning. In the quiet of the archives, with Maya watching me across the desk, they transform from academic exercise into something much more dangerous.
"When first I saw thee walking, light-footed through the hall," I begin, my voice dropping naturally into the rhythmic cadence the verse demands.
"My heart became a drum that beats against my ribs.
The bards sing of love's arrows, swift and silver-bright, but love came to me heavy as a stone, slow as mountain streams in spring, deep as roots that crack foundations. "
Maya's expression shifts, softening around the edges. She leans closer.
"Thy voice echoes in chambers I had thought were sealed. Thy laughter breaks the silence I had built for protection. In thy presence, I am fortress and siege both, crumbling walls I spent years raising, stone by careful stone."
The words resonate in the quiet space, seeming to hang in the air between us. Maya is very still, her gaze fixed on my face rather than the manuscript.
"I would learn thy language, every word and gesture, would speak thy name in all the tongues I know, would write it in the margin of every text, would carve it into bark and stone until the world itself remembers—"
"Ursak."
I stop, suddenly aware that my voice has grown lower, more intimate. That Maya has shifted her chair closer to the desk. That her hand rests near mine on the wooden surface, close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating from her skin.
"That's beautiful," she says quietly. "Is there more?"
I nod, throat tight. "Several more stanzas. But perhaps—"
"Keep going."
The command is soft but unmistakable. I turn the page, finding the section I've translated most recently, the words still rough around the edges.
"In dreams, thou walkest through my thoughts like sunlight through a forest, touching everything, transforming shadow into gold. I wake with thy phantom warmth still pressed against my palm, thy voice still echoing in the chambers of my skull."
Maya's hand moves, fingers brushing mine where they rest against the manuscript's edge. The touch is light, tentative, but it sends electricity shooting up my arm.
"Love is not a song, though bards would have us think so. Love is architecture—foundation poured deep, walls raised with patience, roof shaped to weather storms. Love is the work of years, the slow accumulation of trust like stones fitted careful into place."
Her fingers intertwine with mine properly now, and I nearly lose my place in the text.
"But some walls are meant for climbing, some foundations meant for dancing. And in thy presence, I am not architect but earthquake, trembling the careful structures I have built."
"Ursak." Her voice is barely a whisper.
I look up from the manuscript, and Maya is close enough that I can see the gold flecks in her brown eyes, can feel her breath against my cheek. Her free hand reaches up, fingers tracing the line of my jaw with wondering gentleness.
"You're not just reading that, are you?" she murmurs. "You're... translating it. Into something else."
"Maya—"
"Into something that matters."
The words break something open. All the careful walls I've built, all the professional distance I've maintained, all the fears about timing and immigration status and cultural differences. They crumble in one heartbeat and the next.
I cup her face in my palm, thumb brushing across her cheekbone. "I've been wanting to tell you. For weeks. But with everything uncertain—"
"Tell me now."
So I do. Not in English or German or any of the six human dialects I've mastered, but in the language of touch. My lips find hers, soft and hesitant at first, then with growing certainty as she melts against me.
She tastes like spring rolls and possibility. Her hands fist in my shirt, pulling me closer across the narrow desk. The manuscript crinkles beneath our joined hands, but neither of us pulls away.
When we finally break apart, both breathing hard, Maya's forehead rests against mine. "Was that in the original text?"
"Loosely translated."
She laughs, soft and breathy. "I like your interpretation."
I'm about to respond when a beam of light sweeps across the far wall. We freeze, listening to the security guard's footsteps echoing through the main reading room.
"Shit," Maya whispers. "What time is it?"
I check my watch. "Nine-fifteen. We're past closing."
The footsteps grow closer. Maya scrambles to pack up the takeout containers while I quickly close the manuscript and gather my notes. We can hear the guard checking the other study carrels, flashlight beam dancing across the walls.
"This way," I whisper, leading Maya toward the emergency exit at the back of the restricted section. It's technically for fire evacuation only, but the alarm is disabled during evening hours to accommodate researchers who sometimes work late.
We slip through the door just as the guard's flashlight illuminates our abandoned table. Maya presses her hand over her mouth to muffle a giggle as we creep down the emergency stairs, trying to keep our footsteps quiet on the metal steps.
The exit dumps us into the alley behind the library. Maya bursts into full laughter the moment the door closes behind us, and the sound is so infectious that I can't help joining her.
"We're like teenagers sneaking out after curfew," she gasps between giggles.
"I haven't broken this many rules since graduate school."
"Good." She reaches for my hand, lacing our fingers together. "You needed some rule-breaking in your life."
We walk slowly through the campus, taking the long route back to the apartment building. The night air is cool against our faces, and Maya swings our joined hands between us like we have all the time in the world.
"That poem," she says after a while. "The one about walls and foundations. Did you really translate it, or...?"
"The framework was there. A twelfth-century verse about the architecture of love." I squeeze her hand. "I may have taken some creative liberties with the contemporary application."
"Creative liberties." She grins up at me. "I like that. Makes you sound dangerous."
"I am dangerous. I've been known to return library books a full day late."
"Scandalous."
We've reached the edge of campus now, the familiar streets of our neighborhood stretching ahead. Maya tugs me toward a bench beneath a streetlight, clearly in no hurry to end the evening.
"Ursak." She turns to face me properly, still holding my hand. "What happens now? With us, I mean. With the immigration stuff hanging over everything."
The question I've been dreading and hoping for in equal measure. "I don't know. Twelve days until my hearing. After that..." I shrug, trying to appear more casual than I feel.
"After that, we figure it out."
"Maya, if they deny my appeal—"
"Then we figure that out too." She shifts closer on the bench. "I meant what I said in the laundry room. About making it work whatever happens."
"Long-distance relationships are difficult. Especially when one person might be on a different continent."
"So are short-distance relationships where one person is too scared to try."
The truth of it hits me like a physical blow. How long have I been using the immigration situation as an excuse to keep my distance? How many opportunities have I missed because I was too afraid of the potential endings to risk the beginning?
"Stone warms slow," I say finally.
"But it does warm. Eventually." Maya's smile is soft in the streetlight. "Besides, I happen to like the slow warming kind. More reliable than things that heat up fast and burn out."
I lean down to kiss her again, longer this time, tasting the promise of whatever comes next. When we break apart, Maya rests her head against my shoulder, and we sit watching the occasional car pass.
"Thirteen days," she murmurs against my shirt.
"Twelve now. It's past midnight."
"Twelve days to build the strongest case possible. No more hiding."
"No more hiding," I agree, and for the first time in weeks, the countdown doesn't feel like a death sentence.
It feels like a beginning.