Page 42 of The Orc’s Comfort

The purr has gone ragged. His hand at my ribs stills, not withdrawing, just holding, present and warm, and I understand that he’s stopping because he chooses to, not because he wants to.

“Soon,” he says. One word.

“Soon,” I agree.

He packs the picnic in thoughtful silence. When everything is put away, he lifts me into his arms again as though there had never been any other possibility.

“Is this comfortable?” he asks.

“Very,” I assure him, pressing a soft kiss to his jaw.

His arms tighten around me. Neither of us seems inclined to interrupt the quiet. By the time we reach his truck, the sun is setting, the sky ablaze in orange and pink.

As he drives us home, his hand finds mine across the console. Our fingers interlace. The simplicity of it undoes me.

The mountains catch the last of the light behind us.

I find I don’t mind not knowing what comes next. Not with his hand warm over mine and something quietly certain taking root between us.

Chapter Eighteen

Five Days Later

Rhazgar

I have been in this building since before ten o’clock. Four hours and twenty-three minutes, by my count.

The rushka reduction needed the first three stages completed at home and the final reduction done on site, which required arriving when the library's demonstration kitchen opened. The kitchen sits at the edge of the community events wing, a large multipurpose hall the library rents out for lectures, book fairs, and civic functions when it isn't hosting story hour. I negotiated access with a facilities coordinator named Charles, whose primary concern was the ventilation specifications for open-flame cooking. I had them prepared in advance.

The preparation is complete. Everything is where it should be. My notebook is in my pocket, checked three times. The antidote vial for the spice demonstration (Julia taught me that lesson thoroughly) is in my other pocket. Information cards are arranged in two neat rows. The stew is at temperature. The spice display is labeled in two languages.

I have checked everything twice.

Satisfied, I make my way to the small storage room Charles showed me, open the garment bag I brought, and take out the tunic.

I have worn it to clan gatherings, to ceremonies, to the occasions that required it among my own people. Never into a human institution. Never in a space built entirely by and for humans, fully, visibly, unapologetically myself.

My grandmother had it made during our second year on Earth. She paid an elder from StoneRiver Clan the only way she believed debts like that should be paid: with healing food prepared every week until the work was finished. She insisted on WarmHearth colors. WarmHearth herbs worked into the embroidery. “If we cannot wear home,” she told me, “we must weave it.”

The carved wooden belt buckle. Leather forearm wrappings, warm brown and worn soft with use. The ceremonial apron panel, the traditional mark of a WarmHearth keeper presenting food formally, of someone whose service to the community begins with feeding it.

The pieces are all here.

Eight years of dark slacks and button-downs whenever I entered a human space. Clothes chosen to soften first impressions. To make myself easier to accept before anyone had to decide whether to trust me.

Today I am going to walk into a public space and be exactly what I am.

I put on the tunic.

The exhibition space fills quickly after the doors open. I am at my station, the stew fragrant and ready, when I become aware of a change in the quality of the room’s attention. Not alarm: something more like recalibration, the way a room changes when something unexpected enters it.

I look toward the main doors.

Julia is standing at the entrance to the hall.

She is wearing amber.

Not green. She has worn green before, forest green that she chose to echo something about me without quite understanding what she was echoing. This is different. This is the color of WarmHearth hearth-fire, the color of my tunic, the color of the botanical embroidery along my collar. A warm gold dress that catches the light in a way that unsettles me with the sudden, unreasonable urge to reach for her. She did not wear this by accident. She knew what I would be wearing today and chose to coordinate with me for all to see.