10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
Julia
My mother left yesterday, two days after she arrived. Whatever she came looking for, she found it, and stopped asking questions before she left. My condo feels different now. Quieter in the way that means something has shifted, not gone back to how it was.
Now that the doctor has cleared me for limited weight-bearing, I’m hobbling around my condo in a flexible brace and still relying on the crutch. Between cautious laps around the condo, I keep returning to my computer to research orc healing traditions with growing fascination.
Friendship bond, the paper calls it. A formal declaration of care between preparer and recipient.
Of course. It isn’t just soup. It’s a cultural expression of friendship, prepared with all the seriousness WarmHearth traditions seem to require. I close the laptop feeling warm and just a little foolish for searching for mysteries where there weren’t any.
Just past noon, my phone chimes with a text from him: May I bring something different today? Requires your participation.
The message, formal yet somehow intimate, sends a flutter through my chest. I quickly reply: Absolutely. I’m getting stronger every day.
His response comes immediately: Good. The next stage of healing benefits from active engagement.
I smile at his typically exact phrasing. As I’ve learned over these weeks, Rhazgar expresses care through precision, not sentiment.
When he arrives an hour later, the focus in his eyes immediately tells me that today’s preparation holds special significance. He carries a small wooden box carved with intricate symbols alongside the usual containers.
“You’re moving better,” he says, and immediately I forget how to walk like a normal person.
“Your potions are working,” I tell him, sinking into the chair he pulls out. “At my last visit, the doctor was baffled.”
His lips quirk. “Good.”
As he unpacks his ingredients on my kitchen counter, I notice his movements seem more measured than usual, almost ceremonial. Whatever he’s preparing today holds deeper cultural significance than what he’s shared with me before.
After a few moments, he seems to feel my gaze on him.
“You’re staring,” he observes, not looking up.
“I’m documenting,” I say. “Professionally.”
The corner of his mouth almost lifts. He reaches into the wooden box and goes still for a moment with his hand inside it, as if steadying himself. Then he lifts out a small bundle of silvery-green leaves, whole and unprocessed, nothing like the dried fragments I’ve watched him crush before.
The scent reaches me first, sharp and unmistakable. “Silver thistle,” I say before he can, and his shoulders go taut.
“This is the plant itself,” he says. “Not dried, not ground.”
My eyes widen. “You actually have something from your world?”
“Several things. That the seeds came through was sheer luck.” His jaw tightens briefly, some old grief passing under the words. “It took three years to persuade it to thrive here. The soil is wrong, the light is wrong. But it adapted. It’s stubborn that way.”
The significance steals my breath. These leaves aren’t just ingredients; they’re artifacts of a lost world, precious beyond measure.
“Rhazgar, I can’t… this is too valuable to use on my minor injuries.”
His gaze meets mine with unexpected intensity. “This is precisely what it was meant for. Preservation without purpose has no meaning.”
As I struggle to find words, he continues, “Would you like to see where it grew? I have some pictures I drew.”
My heart jumps at this unexpected offering. “Absolutely!”
“I’ll be back in a moment. I know right where they are.”
When he’s gone, I smile at his willingness to share more of himself with me, then my thoughts turn to other things.
His shy, occasional smile. His personal scent that somehow always lingers under the smell of herbs and spices.
And especially the way his gaze follows me when he thinks I’m not looking.
When he returns, he sits beside me, and the couch, which has always felt perfectly adequate, suddenly seems to have very little space in it. He opens the portfolio without appearing to notice how close we are. I notice enough for both of us.
Some pictures are pen and ink, some charcoal, and a few seem to be his first attempts at watercolor, which are surprisingly good.
When he finds what he’s looking for and holds the watercolor up, it takes my breath away: a steep mountainside covered in silvery plants that seem to glow in the light of two visible moons. The alienness of the landscape makes it clear just how far Rhazgar is from his home.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper, my fingers hovering close to the paper.
“It grew only at high altitudes, where the air was thin and the soil rich with volcanic minerals,” he explains, his voice taking on the rhythmic quality I’ve come to recognize when he shares his culture.
“Harvesting required specialized climbing skills. WarmHearth warriors would scale the most treacherous peaks to gather it for healing ceremonies.”
I take my time looking through the pictures as he tells me about each landscape in language that is almost poetic.
The landscape pages give way to a stretch of blank ones, and I keep turning, expecting more.
I’m turning one of the last pages when he makes a sharp sound and tries to take the portfolio back.
But the damage is done. I’ve already turned the page. Instead of another landscape, I find myself looking at… me. I’m at what appears to be the condo community garden opening last spring, my head thrown back in laughter at something off the page.
“I’d prefer—”
Even though I want to stop looking, I’ve already turned another page, which is another picture of me. This time at the condo association meeting, my face serious as I present the cultural preservation initiative.
“Rhazgar?” I ask, not really needing an answer to my unspoken question.
“Go ahead.” His deep voice is resigned. “You’ve already seen too much. Might as well look through the rest. There’s nothing inappropriate.”
After turning another page, I see myself at the farmers’ market, examining a basket of peaches.
I look up at Rhazgar, whose green complexion has darkened considerably around his cheekbones. He’s blushing.
“I… these are—” he stammers.
“You’ve been drawing pictures of me.” Instead of feeling like he’s been perving on me, I have a funny, fluttery, swooping feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Cultural documentation?” he manages, but the excuse falls flat even to my eager ears. “Comparative social observations?”
“Right,” I say, unable to suppress a smile. “Very scientific.”
Our eyes meet, and something electric passes between us. The embarrassment fades. What replaces it makes me forget what we were talking about.
My thoughts about him have morphed over the last week from interest to intrigue to something sharper and more potent.
The urge to cross the scant distance between us is overwhelming.
My fingers actually twitch with the need to trace the line of his jaw, brush the pointed tips of his ears, discover if those lips are as soft as they look.
His breathing changes, deepens. The air between us feels thick, humming. He notices.
“Julia.” My name is rough in his throat.
I should ease to the far edge of the couch. Create distance. But my body has other ideas, swaying slightly toward him.
His hand lifts, hesitates in the air between us, then drops back to his side with visible effort. Whatever he sees in my face makes his pupils dilate, his eyes darkening.
He stands, slowly, as if he’s not entirely sure why, and the shift fills the room differently. From the couch I have to look up at him now, and I can no longer tell where his height ends and his nearness begins.
“We should…” he starts, then stops, his gaze dropping to my lips.
“Should what?” I whisper.
The moment stretches, taut as a drawn bowstring. Then he exhales sharply and steps back, breaking the spell.
“The silver thistle,” he says, his voice not quite steady. “I should explain what it does before we proceed.” He clears his throat, returning to safer territory. “It accelerates cellular regeneration when properly prepared. But its effectiveness requires direct transfer of…”
He hesitates, searching for words.
“Magic?” I suggest teasingly.
A hint of a smile touches his lips. “Energy would be the human term. The healing properties must be activated through proper handling.”
He motions me closer, and I push up from the couch to join him at the counter. Standing beside him is different from sitting beside him, close enough now that I can count the pulse at his throat, level with my eyes.
“Like this,” he demonstrates, crushing a tiny leaf between his thumb and forefinger. The scent released is unlike anything I’ve experienced, sharp and sweet at the same time, with an underlying note that makes my skin tingle pleasantly.
“Now you try,” he instructs, holding out another leaf.
As I reach for it, our fingers brush, sending that now-familiar jolt through my system. I mimic his motion, crushing the delicate leaf, but the scent seems less potent.
“You must apply precise pressure,” he says, moving behind me. “Like this.”
His massive hand engulfs mine, guiding my fingers with surprising gentleness. The heat of his palm against my skin makes it difficult to focus on the herb.
“Feel the resistance,” he murmurs, his breath warm against my hair. “Then release.”
Under his guidance, I crush the leaf properly. This time, the aroma explodes around us, intoxicating and otherworldly.
“I did it!” I exclaim, turning to face him without thinking.
Our faces are suddenly close, well, as close as they can be given that he’s over a foot taller than me. He’s bent forward, leaning down toward me, searching my face. For a heartbeat, neither of us moves. I’m acutely aware of the warmth of his scent and the gentle pattern of his breathing.
“There’s another method,” he says, his voice dropping to a rumble that I feel more than hear. “For a more potent release.”