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The beast's feathers were a shining grey colour, with an eerie green sheen to them in the light. The feathers around its face, and its deceptively small black beak—deceptive because the thing’s mouth transformed when hungry, unhinging and growing large enough to swallow a large man whole—were tipped with white.
The dark grey-green fur on its chest looked soft enough to pat, if you wanted a quick death that is, but the fur melded into those brilliant large feathers on its back and wings. The beast's twolegs, like absurdly large chicken legs with black feet and deadly black claws, scratched on the Woods floor while it observed me.
The nabras twitched its head from one side to the other and then warbled a pretty call to me. Another head twitch and a ruffle of feathers.
Safe.
I’d known the word came from the nabras. I hadn’t heard it so much as felt it. Like an impression in my brain. Intangible yet somehow very real.
Not wanting to spook the deadly creature, I nodded and smiled thanks like an idiot and kept on walking. But then it happened again. And again.
Not just with the nabras herd that were residents of the Falls—othercreatures had begun making themselves known to me, too. They weren’t talking to me—communication with creatures is a gift that was pretty much unheard of. Many had claimed it, but it was always universally debunked.
This was an awareness, a connection, an impression. And this was why I hadn’t told anyone, because howdoyou explain it? It felt easier to take each individual odd occurrence as a random blip, no matter how much they were starting to build into a rather damning collection that others began to notice.
But that is all very much neither here nor there, because the sun is very much past the halfway point in the sky, which means it's time to leave my little oasis and head back to the tavern to shower and get ready for another one of Caelan and Tor’s bonfires.
We’ve had two so far this summer, another one of those small but impossibly big changes in my life. Who ever thought Tor and I would be close enough to be having friendly bonfires together? On the cosy homestead he shares with his bearded bonded mate of all the places.
Edith had made it to the first but not the second—she’d been caught up doing Edith things. Probably randomly hiding wine throughout the Woods, considering they drank some on my rescue.
Should I give her some bottles to replace them as a thank you? Wine for risking her life does sound like a very Edith appropriate gift, so I make a mental note of it and start swimming back to the shore from where I’d drifted to the centre of the pool.
I don’t really bother to towel myself off—the humidity of the Woods on the walk home was just going to have me sweating anyway. I just want to get home and have a shower. Roan can actually make it tonight. Last time he had to work, and I caught a ride with Seff. I am trying to not get too excited about it; we’re still in that ambiguous friends with orgasms situation. And my brother will be there, obviously, because it’s his house.
Roan and I are the worst-kept secret. Everyone’s just agreed to not talk about it. And by everyone agreeing to not talk about it, I definitely do not mean my brother.
Tor cornered me when he was here helping me paint the downstairs hall last week. I don’t know why I keep inviting him to help because he isterribleat it, but it’s nice to have the brotherly bonding thing, I guess. Anyway, he cornered me and started asking if I was okay, asking if there was anything big happening in my life that maybe I need to discuss with him. Get someadvice.
My brother one hundred and ten-percent thinks I am, or was, a virgin. Not a giant stretch of the imagination butouch.
I distracted him by telling him I was going to therapy, and he’d been so happy, his purple cheeks flushing with pink, before he picked me up into a giant bear hug.
He’s a good brother, he really is. I just don’t want to discuss my sex life with him. Or see the pitying look on his face when hefigures out that I’ve fallen hopelessly in love with Roan, and he still sees me as the wounded bird he’s nursing back to life.
A small voice in the back of my head—it sounds remarkably like Doctor Brordieu—reminds me that it's unfair to put that on Roan, that it's my own insecurities, and his words and actions show me every day how much he valuesme.
But I’m a work in progress, and sometimes progress is slow. Pretty sure it was Roan that pointed that out to me in the first place.
With one foot in front of the other, I make it back to the tavern. Roan is waiting for me by my garden, leaning one elbow casually against the posts of the fence I’d repaired all by myself. He’s still in his white work shirt, sleeves rolled up his forearms in the way that is universally sexy, his tree trunk thighs stretching his tan pants with his legs crossed.
And that harness. I love that harness. His eyes light up when he spots me. He must be hot—the sun is beating down, and he’s fully clothed, always a shame.
I walk towards him, like a thread is tied between us, the knot pulling us closer. Absently, I am aware that if I were in one of those cartoons I used to sneak when I was a kid, my eyes would be shooting love hearts in his direction, so I try to tone it down, schooling my face into something more neutral.
I obviously fail because when I reach him, I let my eyes feast up on him, gobbling up every inch of him before pulling on one of the harness straps. It’s leather, so it doesn’t snap, but it does tip him off balance, tumbling him into me. He catches me, like he always does, righting us both, but he keeps us pressed together, from chest to toe. Just how I like it.
“I like this harness. You should wear it for me one night.” Heat floods his eyes, and they narrow on my lips. His head dips, and he steals a fierce kiss that burns my blood. But he pulls away before we can get too into it.
“Noted.” He nods over his shoulder to the garden. “Garden’s doing well.”
I pull out of his arms, delighting that I’ve left a me-shaped wet mark over his front, and dance away.
“Turns out I am anexceptionalgardener.” I preen like a goofball.
He isn’t buying it for a second, but I don’t have an answer for him, so I turn and walk towards the tavern, putting a little extra wiggle in my step. I hear his grunt behind me, before he calls out something about leaving in thirty minutes. I turn back to blow a kiss and make my way up to the tavern.
Roan
