Chapter Text
In the dream, she’s back in one of the worst moments of her life. The panic is bubbling in the pit of her throat like bile, while her hands ghost over tiny pieces of charred bone that simultaneously look just and nothing like the diagrams in her books at school. As she touches one of those tiny pieces—a knuckle, perhaps, or a toe bone—it threatens to chip and crumble further in her feather-light grip. Her stomach churns. She isn’t ready. There is no more time. Palms slick with sweat, she starts to arrange pieces into place, already aware that another part of her, the part that takes over when she gets lightheaded, is clinically assessing percentages and measurements and where the lines will need to be drawn. The tips of her fingers trail over a leg bone with the intimacy of a lover, but she reads nothing into it. Panic has gripped her so hard that there is no room for anything but action. Laios sorts wordlessly next to her. When their handiwork is finished, and everyone is done awkwardly complimenting Falin's beautiful skeleton, it’s her turn, and this time no one else can help.
Performing ancient magic should be more difficult, she thinks dully, but in her current haze it’s easy. Too easy. Or at least, all the steps unfurl before her without delay: the circle, the smell of blood, the connection established to the dragon carcass. The cords and fat deposits of the dragon meat are at her fingertips in seconds. Then they are in the circle around Falin’s skeleton, and she, Marcille, is the one lovingly sculpting them back into shape, the thick swell of fat at each calf, the hard bundle of muscle around her spine, then the padding of capillaries and tissues forming around the rapidly growing core of her organs, her stomach, soft and sure, and the rope of intestine, both sections, the glands, the gums to cosset each of those awfully naked teeth, the soft structure of her nose, each step coming faster and easier than the last. By the time the final layers of skin are forming over Falin’s body like a crust, Marcille feels weightless. She is more inside of Falin than she is outside of it. She is pumping her heart and she swims in the blood moving through it. She is pumping air through her lungs in the hope of dislodging the clot of blood in her throat. She feels so comfortable in the act of keeping Falin alive that she almost forgets that she has a self beyond Falin that needs to wake up and finish the process.
She isn’t the first to hug Falin on waking. When she finally gets to tumble after Laios and hold her the tears come twice as fast. Thank goodness, she says, thank goodness, thank goodness. But goodness didn’t save Falin on its own, now, did it?
Marcille woke up in a bad mood to start. The mood only worsened when she noticed the time, and that she was running late, and that she had to meet Rinsha in less than an hour. She hadn’t even fixed her hair yet. But leaving it in the state she woke up in wasn’t polite, so she had to rush to brush it and throw it into a ponytail, and by the time she was out of the palace guest room it was nearly eleven, and she had to bat off the serving staff who were determined to make sure she ate something before leaving, no matter how many times she repeated “all-you-can-eat meat course” in a slow and pointed voice.
At least the weather was good, the walk was scenic, and the idea of getting some of her agonies out in the open put a spring in her step. Marcille was almost feeling on top of things again when she stepped through the tavern door and had the gnome bartender guide her to the reserved seat near the window.
It was decently full but not crowded, primarily by adventurer parties and solo dwarf and half-foot drinkers at the bar counter. She sipped her water and waited.
And waited.
Bluebirds sang beyond the window glass. The gentle hiss of roasting meat only amplified the sweet, savoring smell. Marcille tapped her foot. Had she booked the wrong tavern? No, this had to be it: two blocks from the cemetery, The Kelpie’s Saddle, it was called. She didn’t fault Kabru for getting it wrong. It had a stupid name.
Right as she was about to give up and go talk to the barmaid again, a girl sat bodily down in front of her. It wasn’t Rinsha. This girl wasn’t a tallman at all. She was a short, squat dwarf with a bushel of corn-colored hair and a beautiful dark blue dress that seemed an ill fit for their surroundings.
“You didn’t order anything?” the dwarf asked.
Marcille stared at her.
“I’m guessing not. Elves! No sense of urgency,” said the dwarf, in a way that Marcille found both unpleasant and unnecessarily presumptive. “Barkeep? Two beef shins, please and thank you. And two beers. What do you want? Kabru said you were fussy about your food, but everything here is really good.”
Kabru!
Marcille thought about the conversation they’d had. A girl he knew, that’s who he wanted her to meet. This dwarf was a girl. But he’d implied Rinsha, hadn’t he? Who was this?
“Excuse me,” Marcille said, very politely, “but have we met before?”
The dwarf across the table co*cked her head in askance. The barmaid brought over the beers and refilled Marcille’s glass of water before beating a hasty retreat. “I mean, here and there. I was usually dead. I think. You took our millet.”
Marcille felt a small twinge of guilt at that.
“’Anyway, I’m Daya. You’re Marcille, everyone knows about you.”
Her reputation had preceded her! Maybe Marcille had jumped to conclusions too soon. Everyone knew? Maybe for her experimental albeit unorthodox magical study reports, or her contributions, however slight, to Kabru’s policy drafts—
“Yeah, you went crazy and nearly ruined everything. I remember you bringing all the levels up to the surface? That was nuts.”
A headache throbbed at her temples.
Marcille sat and stewed on how to respond and was saved by the arrival of Daya’s beef shins. Any illusion that they were to share was shattered when Daya took both onto her own plate at once. She made an incision through the charcoal crust and grinned. The once-tough meat sloughed away from the bone in tender slices, dripping with vivid sauce. Marcille remembered her dream and lost her appetite in an instant.
“I, er,” she stammered, moved to honesty, “thought Rin was coming.”
“Rinsha?” Daya dipped her head to the side again. She looked a bit like Laios when she did that; it was almost cute. “Why would you want advice from her? I don’t think she’s ever dated anyone.”
What? But she’s so pretty!
No, hang on. Marcille traced the path backwards once more, well beyond the misunderstanding, and reconstructed Kabru’s conversation as best as she could. He didn’t think she’d see anything wrong with the lifespan differences—well, of course Daya wouldn’t! She was a dwarf! They weren’t on the same page—elves and dwarves rarely were—but they were at least in the same proverbial library. And she’d been with women? Marcille narrowed her eyes as Daya took another hearty bite of beef. Her skin was rosy and clean, and her hair was very well-kept...
“Kabru suggested me because I’m married, I bet,” Daya said.
“Oh! C-congratulations.”
“Don’t bother. That jerk spends more time playing poker with Kabru these days. I’m lucky if I can pencil in a weekend with him.”
Marcille squinted and caught the gentle smile. Daya was joking. What a relief.
“But he did court me properly and all that, so, I guess I have some experience.”
“And Kabru said you’ve been with girls,” Marcille prompted.
Daya nearly choked on her side of potatoes. After a healthy glug of beer and a far too-loud coughing fit, she seemed to regain control over herself enough to sit quietly seething. A better outcome than the outburst of rage that had almost caused her own asphyxiation, Marcille thought. “You know, when I told him that, I didn’t think he’d hold on to it all this time just to dump it on the first elf that asked!”
“I think it’s because I like a girl,” Marcille reassured her.
“Oh?”
Agh! Blood rushed to Marcille’s face, the tips of her ears, everywhere. “U-uh-huh. That’s why we’re here, I guess. He noticed. And I tried to argue with him, but he was right.”
“I hate it when he’s right about me.” Daya scowled. “He sucks like that.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Barkeep!” Daya bellowed, almost causing Marcille’s heart to leap out of her throat. “Get the elf a beer. A good one. Tallman-brewed.”
This was a peace offering, Marcille realized. Even a few years ago she might not have picked up on that much. Dwarves were serious about their drink, even unusually proper dwarves like Daya, and her invitation was more of an open hand across the table than a simple pleasantry. Even the bartender seemed warmer by contrast when she passed by to put a tankard in front of Marcille’s empty plate.
But did she have to order me a beer? This tavern has liqueurs... I could have had something lemony, maybe with a few drops of vanilla...
She took the beer timidly and took a sip from it. The bubbles immediately rushed up her nose. She hiccupped and then blushed when Daya chortled at her.
“Maybe he should have asked Rinsha,” Daya said. “You remind me of her, in a weird way.”
“Not...if she’s never dated anyone,” Marcille said. She was surprised to realize she was telling the truth. “I think you’ll help me more.”
They fell into a silence, although not an uncomfortable one. Marcille wondered if Daya was thinking about the girl...or girls?...she had romanced in the past. Ah. This embarrassment felt entirely different to the one from earlier. Marcille was rapidly learning that she was incredibly out of her depth. She wasn’t ready to talk about romance with girls. She had resolved to do something about the Falin situation, but that wasn’t a matter of life or death. She could put it off for a bit longer.
“This is kinda embarrassing for me to talk about,” Daya said in a much quieter voice, “but I didn’t date at all until I left home. So if you’re expecting lots of lurid details and good advice, you’d better ask someone else. I have no clue why Kabru picked me over anyone else in the party.”
“No, no, that’s great, actually! I’ve...” Marcille’s cheeks burned. “I’ve never dated anyone.”
“No one? Weird.” Daya took another gulp of beer. “You’re pretty for an elf.”
A dwarf would think that.
“Anyway, yeah. First girl I dated was a gnome. Nice enough girl, but we weren’t all that serious... More of a hook-up out of convenience more than anything. We were traveling, one thing led to another... I’m guessing that won’t happen with your girl?”
Marcille remembered the last time she had gone on a significant trip with Falin and how it had ended with Falin dead and their party half-disintegrated. She shook her head vigorously. “We know each other too well for that by now.”
“Figured.”
Daya leant back and stretched her arms. Again, Marcille was struck by the firm muscles in her arms and the glossy, thick sheen of her hair. She wasn’t really into dwarves in general, but Daya was one of the more attractive ones she’d met. Not the point, she scolded herself. As for her advice... The perilous journey idea seemed unlikely to pan out, but she filed it away in the back of her mind regardless.
“The other girl I dated was kind of a bitch. She kept stringing me along, promising me a spot in the party, and I liked her so much that I kept believing she meant it. She even let me stay in her lodgings when she wasn’t around to use them, which was a big help for me back then.” Daya rested her chin on her palm. Marcille wished she could see her eyes for a second, then figured it was better this way—whatever Daya was reminiscing about, it was probably very personal. “She never confessed or anything. She just implied a bunch of things and I was young and stupid enough to think that meant something. It’s a bad way to start any relationship.”
Marcille’s hands twisted in her lap. No, that wouldn’t work either. The concept of being anything but absolutely honest with Falin made her feel sick. True, she hadn’t been honest with her yet, but when she did bring up this sticky situation she was determined to explain it in full. Falin would understand everything once Marcille was done with her. That would be hard, she acknowledged, if she didn’t have a complete understanding of it for herself.
Right on cue: “Your turn,” Daya was saying. “What’s your girl like? Why do you like her?”
Marcille’s brain drew a huge blank. She sipped at the beer again, for want of stalling a few more precious seconds. Why were dwarves so crazy over this stuff? Heck, why were tallmen? It was so bitter! It sat angrily on her tongue and then fizzled all the way down, buzzing the walls of her esophagus and skidding to a stop in her guts, where it grouched and kvetched until it finally dissolved into her bloodstream. Alcohol was meant to take the edge off of telling the truth, according to the many fictional epics Marcille had read, but this beer wasn’t even managing that fast enough.
“She’s nice to me,” she managed after leaving Daya waiting for far too long. Daya said nothing. Instead, she smiled in a way that wasn’t unlike Kabru, which Marcille found unbearable. “B-but that’s not the only reason! See, she’s beautiful as well, although I don’t think she has a clue about that. She never wears anything cut for her body type, and she hates make-up, but somehow her skin is always clear... More than that, it’s creamy and rich and smooth, like fresh milk, you know? Even when she flushes red, which is a lot. And she has this way of bringing people together in unexpected ways, even when everyone in the room might have different goals. The way she draws people in and forces them to make sense as a group is just riveting, and...and I wish she would let me dress her up more! She has a fantastic figure, but I can’t convince her that it’s worth feeling uncomfortable, although she does look really cute when she’s flustered too—”
“Jeez, sorry I asked,” Daya said right as Marcille was getting to the crux of things. “Calm down, elf. I get it. So you’re into the king’s little sister, right?”
“Kabru told you?!” Clanging bells echoed furiously in Marcille’s head. She didn’t know how to turn people into toads, but she had a newfound motivation to learn.
“Uh, you’re constantly spotted out in public with her? People talk. He didn’t tell me anything.”
The bells stopped clanging. She took another embarrassed gulp of beer. “Oh.”
“It’s not like I know her,” Daya said, “but you can’t drop all of that on her at once. You’ll terrify her.”
That was good advice, the sensible part of Marcille’s brain acknowledged. The petulant part still wanted to turn someone into a toad about it, so she just gave a terse nod.
“But if you like being around her, and she’s always hanging out with you—it sounds like you even get on with her brother? If you ask me, you should just ask her out. Don’t you think?”
Dwarves didn’t get this stuff at all, Marcille thought sadly. They thought everyone else in the world could get by with that same blunt, instrumental logic. They were wrong to think that. It didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t work that way for her.
“My ex was an elf,” Daya said thoughtfully.
“Wait, the bad one?!”
“No, the one I already told you was a gnome—yes, the other one. And she wasn’t bad, just kind of a jerk. When I got over her, I realized some things... Your lot isn’t much into commitment in general, right? About love and stuff, not land ownership and politics.”
Marcille was so furious she forgot how to talk.
“And thinking on it some more, it made sense she could never get me into her party. It wasn’t like she had much sway there, and neither of us were super attractive options. Adventurers don’t think elves make good brawlers, and that was her whole deal. And dwarves...” Daya’s smile soured. “I can’t say I blame people for thinking whatever they do. So maybe she was doing her best in her own weird way. We were both really young, so it was never gonna work out. But if you ask me what the worst thing was about not-really-dating her, it was that she never told me what she was thinking. Never made anything official. It made it hard to meet her on the level.”
Hadn’t Falin broken Daya’s neck, back in the day? Marcille didn’t like thinking about that time for obvious reasons, but the image floated up unbidden in her mind now.
The rest of the meeting devolved into a blur. The pointed sips of alcohol added up eventually, and although Marcille never got drunk enough to lose her temper—it would take more than a single flagon of tallman beer to manage that—she did hit a point where the room felt loose and unsteady on its axes. At that point she politely excused herself. Daya seemed concerned that she hadn’t eaten anything. Marcille explained that she was fine. Daya asked if she needed help getting back to her lodgings. Marcille laughed. She had traversed an entire dangerous dungeon. Getting home was a piece of cake in comparison! Daya seemed reluctant to believe her, but Marcille had long since sailed out of the tavern door and into the outside dusk.
It was amazing how time flew when you were having heavy conversations over almost-as-heavy drinks. The moon above hung pale and huge as a fat turnip, so bright that the roofs of the buildings ahead winked and glittered silver. Stars sparkled in impossible colors. In spite of herself, the buzz of alcohol felt warm and pleasant in Marcille’s stomach, and talking about her feelings about Falin—ignorant and hopeless as her conversation had been—had lightened her body somehow, made it easy to float from street to street with her hair rippling in a stream behind her. She turned one corner, danced around another. The streets were sparse at this later hour, and the comforting beer haze made it hard to care even if anyone had stopped to stare.
Another corner turned, and then Marcille stopped. She glanced ahead. The gas lamps were unfamiliar on this street and there were no signs for shops, but that didn’t feel right. Wasn’t there a bakery around here? The closest building to her was decorated with a custom sign with a built-in gas lamp offering tutelage in Common, but she didn’t recognize that either.
She paused and tried to force her bearings back beneath her. The street spun. And then Marcille realized she was no longer alone in the unfamiliar road, because a tall figure was standing in the awning across from her.
The booze froze in her veins. Slow as her reflexes were, she automatically went to reach for—ugh, her staff! She didn’t bring it! Taking weapons into residential taverns was gauche, especially when you were meeting someone for non-adventurer purposes. That was okay, because she still had incantations on her side. If only she could get a good glimpse of who—
“Marcille?”
The figure stepped out of the gloom. A soft, full face. A good figure, disguised as it was in basic leather armor. Golden eyes. And a soft, kind smile that lit up not only the face beyond it, but the flagstones on the pathway, the darkened windows, the dark velvet sky above. Wait, was it embarrassing to think all of that? Marcille’s brain struggled for something approaching normalcy, floundered, and then decided she had better lean on something for support.
She chose poorly. The lamp-illuminated sign next to her careened away when she put her hand on it, she lost her balance, and then both she and the gas lamp went crashing to the floor.
“Marcille!”
No, don’t, you’ll get burned, Marcille tried to say. Instead she made a noise like a sheep being tackled and rolled to the side. The gas lamp shattered on its side and caught a light as she feared, but then a wave of cooling air flowed over her. Familiar air. Falin’s magic.
It wrapped her in its sobering, fresh clime for a few seconds before receding. The gas lamp on the floor was still broken, but no longer on fire. Falin’s spell had even fixed the glass on the broken side. Marcille hadn’t known that spell could even do that.
“Are you okay?”
Falin’s hands gripped her shoulders. Coarser now even than when she’d been a kid picking lines in the dirt, with calluses from sleeping and fighting rough. Marcille’s heart broke a little, but she was too drunk to find the words for why. Instead she clung to Falin’s sensibly cut sleeves and let the taller girl hoist her up. She never thought she’d be this grateful for an ugly leather torso piece; it flattened all the inviting curves of Falin’s body into a solid wall and soaked up her body heat. In the state she was in right now, Marcille wasn’t sure what she might do with skin-to-skin contact. Die, probably. Or worse.
“Are you walking home?” Falin turned to look over her shoulder with a frown. “Your lodgings are that way, aren’t they?”
Did her own stupid face do anything other than blush? It was harder to tamp it down with the slight inebriation. Marcille looked away. “Y-yeah, they are, I just…um…wanted to , y’know, sketch my eggs. My legs? Stretch…my legs.”
Falin’s face was suddenly huge and taking up far too much of her vision. “Marcille, are you drunk?”
“No! Not on purpose, I mean, I meant to get breakfast but then I was meeting someone, and I wasn’t hungry. But she was! And then she ordered beer, not even Limoncello or at least a rosé, but I couldn’t turn it down, not from a dwarf I barely know, right?”
Falin didn’t answer. She just put one of her warm, plump arms underneath Marcille’s armpit and hauled her upright, level with her shoulder. Marcille felt giddy. When had Falin gotten so strong?
Okay, she knew the answer to that much, at least. Going out on expeditions and keeping monsters at bay while she did so had set up a new, sturdy layer of muscle that sat snugly on Falin’s frame but didn’t do much to change her silhouette. She was still soft underneath, though. Where it counted.
“Want to walk home together?” Falin asked, even though they were walking back to the castle as she spoke. The bakery Marcille had lost track of passed by in the right. She’d only been one street over from the right way home.
“Yeah…”
The weather was perfect. The moon was so full and beautiful. The stars shone. Marcille remembered Kabru saying it’s her, isn’t it and Daya’s query of why don’t you just ask her out. She still had some of that liquid courage cooling in her veins. Why didn’t she just ask Falin out?
“Are you here to advise Kabru on elf stuff?”
There went the mood. Marcille cleared her throat.
“Well, that, and I wanted to see you! I was so glad I caught you before you went off on another adventure.”
Falin’s eyes twinkled, clearly pleased with the idea that she had “adventures.” With her body tucked flush at Falin’s side, Marcille could sneak a look at all the tell-tale places where her feathers tended to peek through: no, her gloves were up to the elbow, and she wore a cloak when outside that masked the ruff encircling her throat. She wondered how much she kept those parts hidden on her trips out of Melini. Did people ask questions about her high collars and long sleeves? Probably not, now that she was basically royalty…
“…going away for most of next year, if not longer, so the timing was perfect.”
Whuh?
“Sorry, could you say that again?”
Falin smiled so wide that her eyes became little golden crescents, just like how she used to look all the time. “There’s a bigger mission in the East, some scouting mission for rare deposits where they’re willing to cut us in if we send the numbers and equipment. And I volunteered. But obviously, with it being so far away, it’ll take a while to get there…so I think I’ll make the most of it and travel while I’m there. So it’s great that you’re here now. I’m leaving next month.”
“You didn’t bring it up until now?!” Marcille’s recently restored composure was in tatters. She thought about the East, its distance and unfamiliar scenery. And she thought about how they both knew someone who lived there. Someone Falin had turned down so, so gently, claiming she wanted to learn more about herself now. And now Falin was so strong and self-assured, enough to volunteer for a trip halfway around the world.
Falin blinked at her, then looked at the floor. “I forgot.”
As they crested over the hill, the castle—still fairly modest in its décor, as Laios hadn’t held the throne long enough to establish any unifying updated aesthetic — Marcille sighed and burrowed in closer.
Tell her now, said Kabru’s voice inside Marcille’s head.
Yeah, what are you waiting for, urged Daya’s voice.
And then:
Don’t dump all of that on her at once.
You run at a faster pace than others.
I’ve asked Falin to marry me.
I’m leaving next month.
“I’m going to miss you,” Marcille said. She was glad it was dark. Falin wouldn’t be able to see the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.
The arm propping her up gripped tighter around her torso.
“I’m going to miss you, too.”
