"This is, without a doubt, the darkest timeline that has ever, will ever, and could ever exist," Fitzroy announced as he burst out of the tent (much larger on the inside, courtesy of some highly experimental magic) where the rest of the Red Company were taking their ease after a filling lunch.
"Yes, because Pali ate the last of your gingersnaps and laughed at me for being too slow to claim it," Fitzroy said, and flung himself down on the grass to rest his head in Jullanar's lap like an oversized cat -- or perhaps like a younger brother asking for comfort without yet knowing how to vocalize his needs.
Jullanar wondered if he would ever tell them the truth about his childhood, and what he had been doing before he fell out of the sky and into that rowboat between her and Damian. She was fairly sure it couldn't have been anything pleasant, not with the way he sometimes treated normal human interaction like a vast, intricate puzzle constructed by intelligences as foreign as, say, termites.
She was equally certain that mentioning her concerns wouldn't help anything.
"I'll bake some more gingersnaps after I finish my chapter," she said, "if, and only if, you hold very still and let me use you as a bookrest. I think that's a reasonable bargain."
"Deal," Fitzroy said instantly, and closed his eyes. Soon thereafter he drifted off to sleep, and Jullanar allowed herself the small pleasure of combing her fingers gently through the wild curls and squiggles of his hair.
She read three chapters rather than disturb him before he woke on his own.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines (Nine Worlds)
Jullanar counted to ten, then uncricked her neck and glanced up from the ethnographic and cartographic study of southern Colhélhé that she had bargained fiercely for in a small market stall just that morning. Fitzroy looked slightly put-out at her delay in giving him her full attention, but neither calm enough nor wild enough for this to truly be serious, and so she merely raised one eyebrow and said, leadingly, "Oh?"
"Yes, because Pali ate the last of your gingersnaps and laughed at me for being too slow to claim it," Fitzroy said, and flung himself down on the grass to rest his head in Jullanar's lap like an oversized cat -- or perhaps like a younger brother asking for comfort without yet knowing how to vocalize his needs.
Jullanar wondered if he would ever tell them the truth about his childhood, and what he had been doing before he fell out of the sky and into that rowboat between her and Damian. She was fairly sure it couldn't have been anything pleasant, not with the way he sometimes treated normal human interaction like a vast, intricate puzzle constructed by intelligences as foreign as, say, termites.
She was equally certain that mentioning her concerns wouldn't help anything.
"I'll bake some more gingersnaps after I finish my chapter," she said, "if, and only if, you hold very still and let me use you as a bookrest. I think that's a reasonable bargain."
"Deal," Fitzroy said instantly, and closed his eyes. Soon thereafter he drifted off to sleep, and Jullanar allowed herself the small pleasure of combing her fingers gently through the wild curls and squiggles of his hair.
She read three chapters rather than disturb him before he woke on his own.