when Rayla was a baby was Runaan afraid of her or constantly doting on her?
I suspect 'twas a bit of both, love, the way he walked around with her in his arms all day but kept referring to her as "this wee one" or "our best assassin." He was trying to adapt to how precious she already was to him, which, for an elf of Runaan's feels, was an intimidating amount!
He said her name once, the day she was born, and then he didn't manage to say it again for a long time, until he'd come to terms with how much and how deeply he cared for her. Some things are so valuable it's scary! And to Runaan, scary must be conquered. But in Rayla's case, he conquered it by never setting her down. He carried her everywhere, napped with her, told her about everything under the Moon, from moonberries to moonstriders. I was tearing up left and right, my heart was so full.
Then one day, Rayla was laughing and watching Lain make shadow puppets on the wall with a mushroom lamp, and Runaan came in with a moon moth on his finger to show her, and he just called her name like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Rayla, look."
And she turned to see him, and her whole face lit up. Not at the moon moth, but at Runaan, her most constant and dedicated companion. He paused, looking entirely too soft for his own good, and the moon moth flitted away and landed on Rayla's nose! She started giggling, and Runaan quickly fetched it off so she could see it better, and taught her to be still so it could sit on her hand, too.
She looked at it with those wide purple eyes of hers for a long time, utterly entranced, and Runaan only had eyes for her. Then she looked up at him for approval and babbled at him, and he just smiled softly and said, "Well done, Rayla."
Can you tell us about the first time Rayla said your name? (or an approximation of your name)
you’re just here to make me soft aren’t you
Baby Rayla liked my side tails. She liked to hold them and bat at my hair cuffs, so I would sway them back and forth for her to test her hand-eye coordination. not because she was adorably determined to catch my hair, nope
One day, Tiadrin was carrying her through the house and Rayla spotted me and reached for me insistently, saying, “Oon, Oon!” I looked over and saw her beaming face, and Tiadrin’s wide turquoise eyes.
“I think she means you,” she told me. And she promptly and happily settled her daughter into my arms and cackled as she darted off.
I looked down at Rayla, and she beamed up at me with all eight of her first teeth.
“Oon!” she repeated.
“My name is Runaan, Rayla. Don’t worry. I’ll help you say it right,” I said softly.
“Oon,” she agreed, and she started batting at my side tails.
Fic anon again has crawled back into your inbox to say that it's so sweet that Runaan hates smiling, but he visibly does so in front of his entire team when he reassures and kisses Ethari. He loves his husband so much that he ignores his own dislike of showing emotion and speaking of his feelings and straight up does exactly those with people all around them within clear visibility/earshot. Let them have a reunion, Netflix, please, all you gotta do is smash that green light button and ring that-
YES RUNAAN IS ONLY SOFT FOR HIS HUSBAND CONFIRMED
I just love it when the stoic one is soft for the precious one and ONLY for the precious one:D
I would hope that Callisto would like me. I‘m a very short girl with reallly long blonde hair and blue eyes, and I love animals more than anything. I also take care of kids too!
You sound like a wonderfully adorable young woman and I am sure that he would not be against meeting you. Whether he takes a fancy to you would be up to him, but you say you take care of children as well?
He certainly does have a weak spot for young ones *cough* as do I *cough* Tell me, do you cook as well?
Runaan sings odes dedicated to you while he's on missions and you can't deny it.
I’d never deny something so soft!
My badass warrior husband, trekking about the human lands, intent on dark justice, all stab all the time, but secretly composing love songs in his mind because he passed a pretty flower three hours ago and can’t stop thinking about how its blooms would bring a smile to my face?
Inspired by this post because this is how I feel about everything Rayla says and does. Thank you for the morning warm-up, @ladyandherbooks!
Characters: Runaan, Rayla, ft. Lain, Tiadrin, Ethari
Rating: Gen
Length: 1300
The Secret of Stealth
or, How Runaan Broke the Rules for Moonberry Surprise
“Runaan?”
The assassin opened his eyes at the sound of his tiny protégé’s voice and found her wide violet eyes peering up at him from just over the edge of his meditation rock. A tiny frown of concentration marked her forehead. “Yes, Rayla?” he asked softly.
Her fingers rubbed against the rock’s edge. “You’re gonna turn invisible tonight, right?”
“It is part of the ritual, yes.”
Her little shoulders slumped. “I can’t wait until I’m old enough. I wanna do all the things you do!”
He smiled. “In time, you will. Stealth is a vital part of your training. But there is more to stealth than turning invisible.”
Rayla stood taller, and her horn nubs nearly reached his knee. “Really?” she asked brightly. “Can you teach me some stealth right now?”
Runaan unfolded his legs and rested his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. Rayla bounced eagerly on her toes, clasping her arms behind her. “I will teach you,” he said. “But you must do the learning.”
“I will!”
He held out his hand, and she clasped it. Together they walked through the woods. Rayla bounced off tree roots and little rocks while Runaan read the forest around them like an open book. Finally he pointed to a honeycup bush. Its bright golden blooms tipped up toward the sun, and several hummerbirds flitted around them, sipping at the tasty nectar inside.
“The secret of stealth, Rayla, is that you don’t have to be invisible. You just have to be invisible to your enemy’s senses.”
He gestured for Rayla to watch from where she stood. Slowly, over several minutes, the assassin crept up on the feasting birds, freezing in place whenever one of them changed flowers. He never made a sound, approached from downwind, and eased forward in a patient crouch. Once he was close enough, he raised an eyebrow at Rayla to make sure he had her attention. With her violet eyes fixed eagerly on him, he lifted a soft finger and delicately brushed it along a hummerbird’s back.
The bird didn’t so much as twitch, but Rayla gasped loudly in amazement, startling all the birds into flight. Runaan looked askance at the suddenly empty bush, and Rayla covered her mouth in dismay.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare them away.”
Runaan rose and joined her again. By the time he reached her, the hummerbirds had returned to their flowers. “Don’t worry. They’re still hungry, so they’re very forgiving.”
Tiadrin’s voice filtered through the trees, calling for Rayla. She smartened up and gave Runaan a cute little bow. “Thank you for the lesson, Runaan. I’ll practice it as soon as I can!”
He smiled. “I know you will.”
Rayla darted off, and Runaan returned to his meditation. But something didn’t seem quite right, and he couldn’t relax. After a few minutes, it occurred to him what Rayla meant by “as soon as I can.” His eyes popped open, and he levered himself off the rock with a fondly exasperated sigh.
A few minutes later, he approached his friends’ house and spotted Lain setting a piping hot moonberry surprise in the windowsill to cool. He covered it with a gauzy domed frame to keep the hungry moon moths at bay and retreated into the house’s interior.
Rayla stalked up toward the window just as slowly as Runaan had approached the hummerbirds. With slow, deliberate care, she climbed the outer wall and eased out onto a lacy wooden shutter outside the kitchen window. Her little boots braced on the wooden lip, and her hands clung to the swirly curlicues as she plastered herself against the shutter and inched closer to her target.
Wide-eyed with curiosity, and a little impressed, Runaan slipped behind a tree to observe.
Rayla shifted her feet, hung on with just one hand, and pulled an oven mitt from inside her vest. But just as she reached for the dome that protected the moonberry surprise, she and Runaan both heard Tiadrin calling for Rayla again.
“Rayla! Where is that elfling?”
Runaan was in motion in a heartbeat, darting around the house to the front door. “Tiadrin,” he greeted warmly. “Rayla is out at the moment. Training. Is there something I can do for you in her stead?” Through the kitchen, he could just make out an oven mitt waving in the window.
Tiadrin glanced around him suspiciously. “‘Out’? ‘Training’? She’s four, Runaan. How ‘out training’ can she be?”
He nodded in appreciation for Tiadrin’s incisive observation. “She’s not far. We had a quick lesson just now, and she was eager to practice it. If she’s missed any duties at home because of it, then I’m to blame.”
The gauze dome over the moonberry surprise wobbled and fell out of sight, taking its prize with it. Runaan’s eyes widened momentarily, but he focused on Tiadrin as she replied, “I’m not asking you to put away Rayla’s laundry, Runaan. That’s her task.”
The dome returned to the empty window sill, and Runaan felt his shoulders relax. “Perhaps it’s mine as well, since I’m usually to blame for her getting dirty.”
Lain walked past and clapped a hand on Runaan’s shoulder. “He’s got you there, sweet. Anyone seen my other mitt? It’s got to be around here somewhere…”
Tiadrin and Runaan both glanced after him fondly. Then she told Runaan, “Alright, it’s a fair exchange, then.” She picked up a small stack of folded clothes and handed them to him.
Runaan put Rayla’s clothes away, bade his friends farewell, and went in search of Rayla. She was waiting for him on his meditation rock with a pan of warm moonberry surprise in front of her. The smears on her cheeks told him that she’d already taken several bites. She offered Runaan a second spoon.
He took it and sat on the other side of the pan. “Tell me your plan, Rayla.”
“I sneaked up on the moonberry surprise really quietly, just like you did, so no one inside would hear me!” She took another big bite.
“And when they realize it’s not there?”
“That’ll be a long time from now.”
Her certainty intrigued him. “Why do you say that?”
“I left a big scoop of moonberry surprise on a leaf in the window sill. You said that the secret of stealth is to be invisible to my enemy’s senses. Well, smell is a sense. If my parents can still smell the moonberry surprise, they’ll think it’s all there!”
Runaan blinked and smiled. Rayla had been paying close attention, after all.
“But you had to distract everyone,” Rayla added, looking downcast. “I couldn’t do it on my own. They’d have caught me if you hadn’t helped me. So I guess I failed.” Her shoulders slumped, and she looked at her spoon sadly.
Runaan frowned, perplexed. “Your prize is right here, Rayla. You haven’t failed. I have many more secrets of stealth to teach you, and this is one of them: it’s much easier to be stealthy with a partner than it is to go alone.” He dug his spoon into Rayla’s pilfered prize, and so did she. They clinked their spoons together in a moonberry toast and ate up.
Late that night, after sharing a moonlight ritual together, Runaan, Ethari, Lain, and Tiadrin came to Rayla’s house for a late meal. When Lain lifted the gauze dome to present dessert, everyone looked worriedly at Runaan, whose favorite treat had gone missing. Even Rayla.
The assassin did his best to keep the guilty flush off his cheeks as he said calmly, “Well, that’s definitely a surprise, isn’t it?”
“The hungry are very forgiving,” Rayla quoted wisely.
Ethari started laughing right away. Tiadrin glanced between Rayla and Runaan before joining him. Lain kept staring at the empty window sill and bemoaning his lost baking, which made the others laugh harder. Runaan shook his head with a smile, and he couldn’t help giving Rayla a fond but stealthy wink.
Somewhere nearby, in the light of the full moon, an empty moonberry surprise pan lay upturned on a nice flat rock, bearing a pair of crossed spoons.
