Snippet Self-Indulgent Sunday/Wip Whenever
Whew. Been a while since I wipped xD I'm sorry guys for being so inconsistent, it's definitely not going to get better now that I am working full time again ^^
Thank you so much to everyone who tagged me in the past month, please accept a uno reverse tag, @litsenn, @optimisticgrey, @scoldingdarjeeling, @riddlerosehearts, @missfortunetherogue, @wild-surge, @lucretiouswept, @bladesingerlily 🫶 Also tagging @burnt-by-marigolds, @lilhumanoid, @coincoin-zinzin, @heartcrystal2000 and @the-starflower if and whenever you want to share something :3
Here's some more Storm and Natavriel bonding, three days into the journey, because I've been working on the epilogue to A Name is a Powerful Thing. As always with early game, Storm isn't talking much ^^ He's trying, alright? Being brain-damaged Durge is not easy x)
A peek through half open flaps let them know that Storm was resting, but still awake. They tapped two fingers against the fabric to announce their arrival.
"Hey," they greeted him softly when he sat up. "Can I sit with you?"
He nodded slowly, and they joined him on the floor of the entrance, sitting cross-legged by his side on the old rug they'd found abandoned somewhere in the Grove, and claimed for him to use.
"I have a gift for you. Well, two gifts, really."
The first one of these gifts had been loosely hanging on their thumb, and they took it off to present it to him flat on their palm. A ring, made from the one he had picked from their stash, that first night.
Rather than removing the stone from the original ring and having to embed it in a new one, Tav had simply cut out part of the gold before resizing the ring with silver —matching Storm's existing jewellery. The barest hint of gold still surrounded the inlaid blue stone, before melting away in the silver, the mingling of the two metal forming elegant swirls along the smooth surface.
Between the dimness of his resting space, and the beard still obscuring half his face, Storm's half-smile was barely visible. Tav still answered it with one of their own when he picked up their gift.
He tried it on each of his jewellery-free fingers, flexing his hands with a frown that grew a little deeper each time. The ring escaped his clumsy fingers on three separate occasions, and Tav caught it just before it rolled out of the tent, handing it back to him silently. His balance had seemed to improve slightly over the past few days, but most of the finer motions still proved difficult. As long as he didn't ask for help or wasn't at risk of hurting himself, though, Tav was intent on letting him do most things on his own.
"I can resize it again if it doesn't fit anywhere."
A subtle shaking of his head answered their offer. Clearly, this was not the problem.
Storm then removed one of his own already present rings before replacing it with the one Tav had just given him back for the third time. He flexed his hand once more, nodded, ran his thumb over the stone, and looked back at Tav with a hint of a smile back on his face. They couldn't help but glance at his own ring, now abandoned on the floor of his tent.
"You don't have to wear this one if you'd prefer to keep your own, you know."
Another shaking of head, and Storm held their gaze intently, the way he sometimes did when he wanted to say something and struggled to do so.
"I keep… that one." He ran his thumb over the smooth stone again. "Thank you."
So often these past three days, he had battled with his words for no other reasons than to offer thanks and appreciation, when most of the people having no trouble speaking voiced demands and expectations instead. On the first night, when the first complete sentence to cross his lips had been a sassy retort to their teasing observation that he didn't speak much, Tav had thought —very reasonably— that they might very well be willing to die for this man.
Anyone putting this much energy into humour, when the day had offered nothing but pain and fear before that point, was someone they wanted to protect at all cost.
I will make no promises as to when I'll publish that chapter ^^ "Eventually" is my ETA xD
