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She had seemed so small and weak against me then. I’d been overcome with a protective instinct so sharp it almost felt like rage.
I’d never gotten that close to her again. Unless you could count the soft smack of her lips against mine at the New Year’s Eve party. But that had lasted a mere moment. So fast it ended before it had really begun. Not like the ride back to our territory after the zeelk attack, when I’d had her limp and panting against me the entire time.
“We cannot simply go and ask the new women what the pay-pur means,” I hissed.
“Why not?” asked Oxriel. “I like Vaxilkai’s idea.”
“Because!” I snapped. “Because then the new women will know we are too dense to understand their gift on our own!”
“This is new women writing,” scoffed Vaxilkai. “Written on new women pay-pur. How in the shifting sands are we supposed to understand it on our own? When they awaken, we will simply ask them.”
“No,” I growled again, my tail thumping the floor.
“I agree with Dalk,” said Zoren. “If we cannot understand the gift on our own then we are not worthy of it.”
Vaxilkai’s tail snapped with annoyance.
“I will not ascribe my worthiness to the flights of fancy of the new women. Everything they do confounds me, including this.” He shook his red pay-pur in the air.
“We have figured out some of it already,” Zoren replied testily.
“Yes,” I said, eagerly seizing on that fact. “The pay-pur bits are shaped like branata leaves. They are poisonous.”
“You are going to accept gifts signifying poison without even bothering to ask them what it’s supposed to mean?” Vaxilkai said, astonishment in his voice. “If anything, that requires even more thorough explanation!” He looked at his pay-pur with renewed suspicion.
“It’s not actually going to poison you,” I sneered at him. “Are you that afraid of the soft new women?”
Before I could react, Vaxilkai’s hand rose and snacked me across the ear, the way a disapproving parent might.
My pay-pur held fast in one hand, my other flew to my blade. Oxriel’s sight stars misted in wide eyes. Zoren, clever male that he was, moved swiftly out of my way. Bariok looked as if he might try to stop me, but then seemed to think better of it, stepping back as Zoren had.
“Touch me again,” I seethed, “and I’ll slice your fingers from your hand before you can even-”
“What is going on out here?!”
Five Sea Sand heads swivelled at the exact same time, turning towards the sound of the voice.
I knew that voice before I even saw who it was.
Fiona.
She stood just down the natural stone hall at the entrance to the cave she shared with Tilly and Nasrin.
“What are you doing up?” I asked gruffly, lowering my weapon. Sometimes Tilly got up around this time, not long after dawn, but Fiona never did. Her long brown hair was slightly mussed, and there was a delicious, sleepy softness to her scent when it reached me. It made me think of warmth and darkness and holding her in the night.
My loincloth felt suddenly tighter than before.
“Well, I couldn’t exactly sleep with you lot going on here the way you are!” she said.
Subdued by the irritation in her voice, I sheathed my weapon.
“We did not mean to wake you,” I replied, making sure to quiet my voice more than I had done before. Though that was probably pointless, since she was already awake now.
“We are merely trying to interpret this message!” Vaxilkai said, waving his pay-pur at her.
She blinked her white and brown eyes, then said, “Oh! They’re your Valentine’s Day cards.”
“What’s that?” asked Oxriel. “Zoren says you’ve made them in the shape of a poison leaf.”
