Well, I slid a little backwards into my writing slump, but I wrote this before the event started so I figured that I might as well put it out there anyway!
I’ve had this silly little scene of my wife and I’s d&d girls kicking around my brain for years now, honestly. The concept got a little tainted not so very long ago, but I decided the best way to overthrow that was to just. Go ahead and write the damn thing. So I did!
Have my Val and @colonelcupquake‘s Rona being cozy. ~1100 words
----
The hammock had taken twice as long to set up as the rest of camp, but Val was nothing if she was not stubborn.
Her argument had been thus: if she had spent years slinging canvas and rope between beams on a ship, then by all rights, she should have no problem doing so between the trunks of trees. The reality was that trees lacked all the convenient little nooks and crannies of crossbeams, and that sailcloth was hard to find further inland, and even harder to lug around. That left only the simple weaves she could find at local trade stops, the sort that she looped around her shifty knotwork while praying to whatever god or powerful, otherworldly mage that was still listening that the whole thing didn't collapse underneath her.
It hadn't, yet, but the groaning of the ropes threatened.
She had just finished adding a second line to the ends of the hammock and had stepped back to examine her work when Rona appeared beside her, head cocked to one side.
"So this is what you've been up to," she said. Somehow, the words came out all curiosity, without the slightest hint of teasing. Val appreciated that; even her wounded pride wouldn't let her deny how haphazardly she had fumbled her makeshift hammock into existence.
"More or less," she said, shrugging. "Doesn't look pretty, but it didn't break when I tested it. That's something."
"Definitely something," Rona hummed. She picked her way over to the hammock and flattened her hands into the curve of it, pressing her entire weight straight down. The ropes creaked gently, but the hammock mercifully didn't fall.
"You can give it a try," Val offered, stepping up beside her. "It held me. I doubt you'll give it much of a problem."
"Knowing your work, I'm pretty sure we could pile all of us in here and not give it much of a problem," said Rona with a sidelong grin. Val huffed, but denying the little blossom of warmth in her chest at the faintest scratch of praise from Rona was like denying gravity, or coming rain. She offered her hand instead, which Rona took obligingly before stepping back and flinging herself bodily into the hammock.
“Not bad,” she said when it stopped pitching sideways, wiggling to arrange herself inside. “A nice change of pace from the ground, for sure. Probably too hard to set up often, though. And it needs a pillow.”
She glanced pointedly up to Val, who snickered and swept into a low, theatrical bow.
“Your will, Your Grace,” she said, with as much dour resonance as she could manage while laughing. Then she turned and started towards the piles of fabric that Sarula had arranged at the edge of their meager camp, only to stagger as her captive hand was yanked backwards.
When she turned, blinking, towards the hammock, Rona was staring up at her with one eyebrow raised and gesturing pointedly to the space beside her.
Fondness welled up through the hollows of Val’s chest, the deep, thought-numbing, flooding sort that only Rona had ever seemed to wake in her. She turned back, feeling her mouth curl into the stupid, love-sick grin that she knew meant she was about to do whatever was asked of her. She let her good sense have one last go at winning her over anyway.
“I don’t think it’ll hold both of us.”
“It will,” said Rona immediately, with a wave of her free hand. “Or it won’t, and it’ll be funny. But it will. C’mon, Val.”
She tugged again, gentler now, but Val had already been done in by her name in pleading tones. Sighing the long-suffering sigh of the thoroughly defeated, Val gestured Rona to one side of the narrow stretch of fabric, double checked her knots, and then gingerly clambered her way in.
It took no small amount of figuring - and a few giggling shoves at offending limbs in decidedly offended stomachs - but very soon they were laying side by side, Rona curled heavily in the crux of Val’s arm, breathing ticklish sighs of content across her collarbone. Their arrangement had left Val with both legs dangling uncomfortably over both sides of the hammock, and with her tail squashed to pins and needles beneath her, but Val had never once fretted about her own discomfort over someone else’s, and she didn’t intend to start now. With monumental effort, she extracted her arm from where it was pinned against the hammock’s side and slid it onto Rona’s back, rubbing lazy circles into the tight bands of muscle there. Another hum of satisfaction washed against the skin of her neck. If Rona could purr, it sounded very much like she would have started.
“Told you,” the halfling muttered, more sigh than word. “Now you can do this all the time.”
“Oh, I can do this all the time, can I?” Val shifted her hand to squeeze at the little peak of Rona’s hip, and grinned as a foot jolted against her thigh. Rona reached back and swatted lazily at her.
“Fine," she conceded with a wave of her hand, "I'll make the trees for you. Nice fat ones with branches you can tie the ends to. And bigger ones, for shade. A whole army of them. Oaks.”
“You’re getting mighty commanding there, for someone who isn’t royalty,” Val said with a hazy smile. “What if the trees revolt?”
“I’ll give them to Amon.”
They dissolved into a fit of conspiratorial snickering, delirious with their own stupidity and the giddy exhaustion of near-sleep. Their monk’s predisposition for making nature his own personal sparring partner was matched only by his predisposition for setting things on fire. That Rona would retain him for a personal crusade against disobedient trees was too ridiculous - and too likely - not to giggle about.
Eventually, though, their weariness got the better of them, and their laughter lapsed into a warm, glowing silence that Val felt like the last creeping rays of sunlight over the horizon. Something shifted beside her, and then Rona’s hand groped across her chest, finding her free hand and twining it with her own. Warmth bubbled up through Val’s innards again, pooling high in her belly. She clasped their fingers tighter.
“We ought to be finishing camp, you know,” she muttered, with effort. Rona grumbled into the fabric of her shirt.
“I finished making my camp,” she said petulantly, and buried her face closer. “Bed. Pillow.”
“Mm. Technically I made the bed.”
“Shh.”
Grinning, Val curled her arm tighter around Rona’s shoulders and allowed her last little touch of good sense to slip away. A rest wouldn’t kill them. There were still hours till sundown, even more till first watch. Amon could make a fire; Dot could cook. Val was thick-headed, but she had spent too long not dying in the company of her friends to think they needed her help in any great capacity. They could afford to let her sleep.
Tagged by @rufinagertrude and @staches-and-sabres to get right back on my bullshit!
So I figure I’ll double down and do my other two main OTPs. I’m not tagging anyone in particular this go around, so if you see this, consider it my invite to do it!
Valtish Ankara & Rona Greenbottle
height difference | mutual pining | first kiss | first love | wedding | in-jokes | lgbt+ | family disapproves | friend disapproves | would die for each other | fake relationship | arranged wedding | cuddlers | pda friendly | and they were roommates | holding hands | secret relationship | opposing worldviews | opposing personalities | opposing goals | getting a pet | have kids | want kids | grow old together (HOPEFULLY) | relationship failures | rests head on shoulder | share a bed | token dummies | relationship doubts | they have a song | first date (at least on Val’s end) | share a jacket | sharing a blanket | mutual interests | study buddies | bathing together | crash into hello | accidental nudity | laundry | same hobbies | cooking for each other | big fancy gala | sibling rivalry | hair stroking | dancing | laying in the grass | watching stars together | watching the other sleep | shared values | friends to lovers | enemies to lovers | lovers to enemies | childhood friends | slow burn | love triangle | toxic relationship | sitting on each other’s laps | can’t be together | hugs | forehead touches | neck kisses | car/motorbike rides | compliments | nicknames | falling asleep together | late night talks | gifts
Tahir & Myrine
height difference | mutual pining | first kiss | first love | wedding | in-jokes | lgbt+ | family disapproves | friend disapproves (it’s Ade, and only mostly jokingly) | would die for each other | fake relationship | arranged wedding | cuddlers | pda friendly | and they were roommates | holding hands | secret relationship | opposing worldviews | opposing personalities | opposing goals | getting a pet | have kids | want kids | grow old together | relationship failures | rests head on shoulder | share a bed | token dummies | relationship doubts | they have a song | first date | share a jacket | sharing a blanket | mutual interests | study buddies | bathing together | crash into hello | accidental nudity | laundry | same hobbies | cooking for each other | big fancy gala | sibling rivalry | hair stroking | dancing | laying in the grass | watching stars together | watching the other sleep | shared values | friends to lovers | enemies to lovers | lovers to enemies | childhood friends | slow burn | love triangle | toxic relationship | sitting on each other’s laps | can’t be together | hugs | forehead touches | neck kisses | car/motorbike rides | compliments | nicknames | falling asleep together | late night talks | gifts
The ship has officially sailed! In today’s session, Val took Rona out into the bay during our night carnival escapades, and finally revealed the thing she’s been working on for several weeks now; a song that Val had written for her, performed to an audience of one. It went rather well, as you’ll see.
I actually wrote this a year and a half ago, and have been sitting on it for the day when something like this happened. I’m actually really excited to share it because it’s just….. ungodly fluffy, which I never get to write. I’m already sorry for your teeth.
1,669 words, (nice) set the morning after.
———–
Val awoke with a pleasant warmth curled against her side, and a dull, prickling numbness in her arm.
Confusion crept in through her sleepy morning haze as she slowly shook herself awake: she slept alone nowadays, or only in the same room, or with an arm’s breadth between her and whoever had wandered into the inn room with her to find only a single bed at their disposal. There should not be such a heavy warmth turning her arm to pins and needles beneath it, or the soft squeak of a yawn near her ear, or a morning chill that she was suddenly, alarmingly aware of across her very bare chest, or -
Her confusion disappeared the moment that the thought crossed her mind, replaced by a surge of pleasant memories as the warmth on her arm shifted.
“Well, well,” she murmured around a little smile, cracking an eye open to glance down at the tousled mess of blond curls brushing against her shoulder. “Morning, sweetness.”
Rona tipped her head back and squinted up at her through the splinters of sun leaking in.
“Mornin’,” she mumbled. Val watched as she pushed herself unsteadily onto an elbow and glanced around the empty room. “What time is it?”
“No idea. Mid-morning, maybe? No one’s come to rouse us though, so probably not too late.”
“No,” Rona huffed, flopping back down against her side, “no, it’s definitely too early.”
Val stifled her grin. “What’s this, now? Did I really wear you out so terribly last night?”
“You did.” Rona managed a sleepy smile and a returning shove that was decidedly less gentle. “Not that the enthusiasm isn’t flattering or anything, but gods….”
Val recoiled from the blow like it had moved her at all, laughing softly. “Sorry, love. Two years have, ah, not been terribly kind on my patience, I guess.”
“Well, I suppose we’ll just have to make time for more practice then, won’t we? Lots and lots of it.”
And Val laughed, of course, because that was what the scene and Rona’s wiggling eyebrows demanded; but she would swear that the entire inn should have felt the sudden, electric thrill coursing through her too for all the strength of it. Their conversation about the state of their budding relationship the night before had seemed honest enough when they were warmed by moonlight and a little drink, but Val had weathered that storm many times. The stark light of morning usually painted her trysts as they properly were; a business transaction, a passing infatuation, a novelty.
But this, with Rona threading fingers into hers and snuggling closer? This felt as far from those detached affairs as she had ever been before.
They lay in comfortable silence for a long while, listening to the sounds of the inn waking up around them. Floorboards creaked gently down the hallway as late risers like themselves shuffled down to the tavern below; beneath that, the low rabble of conversation pressed up, borne by the heavy scent of cooking meat. Somewhere far away, Val heard Amon’s voice, and a scattering of familiar laughter.
She was just about to suggest they set about removing themselves from the comforts of the bed when Rona suddenly shifted beside her.
“You have a lot more of these than I thought,” she murmured, propping up on an elbow again and frowning down at the place where their fingers entwined. Val glanced down as Rona’s hand slid out from under hers and began ghosting over the raised lines of scar tissue that crisscrossed her stomach, her chest, her arms. She chuckled.
“What, you think I stand in front of people swinging pointy bits of metal and don’t get a few scars out of the deal?” The grazing fingers suddenly became a jab at her side, and Val twitched away, laughing.
“I knew you had some,” said Rona, fighting off a smile. “I’ve just never noticed this many before.”
“Well, yes. You see, unlike this very moment, there are times where I display some mastery of the art of modesty.”
Rona rolled her eyes, but didn’t fight her smile this time. Her fingers continued their trail across the lines of healed pink as she sank back down again, moving from the tops of Val’s shoulders down across the curve of her bicep, across to her chest, over her stomach, carefully retracing the paths they had taken the night before with newer, gentler consideration. Val just barely suppressed the pleasant shiver building across her spine. What a rare and wondrous thing, she thought, for her to be considered in need of such a delicate touch. So few people ever thought so.
Finally, Rona’s hands stopped on a mottled web of scar tissue nestled against the curve of her stomach.
“What’s this one from?” she asked, her breath soft and warm against the skin. Val craned her neck to see, then grimaced.
“That,” she said dryly, “was my parting gift from Hakir. You remember him, yeah? Big angry cultist, with the tiger?”
Rona’s expression soured. “How could I forget?”
“Well, he made certain I didn’t.” Val let her head fall back against the pillow with a heavy sigh. “Asshole. Nearly killed me, and didn’t even have the decency to leave a clean scar for me to impress with.”
“Oh, certainly you don’t need the help?”
Val picked her head up again to find Rona staring back at her, eyes too wide to be properly innocent. She snorted.
“I think I certainly do. Two years, love.”
“Well, okay, yes,” Rona conceded. “But you’ve got plenty of other scars. You could make up any story you wanted! Look.”
She pushed herself up onto her knees and leaned forward, pouring over the canvas of dusty red skin like a scribe over a freshly printed vellum. Val cleared her throat and shifted, suddenly painfully aware of how little she was wearing. A night together and a full conversation unclothed didn’t quite compare to this level of scrutiny, to watching Rona’s eyes glide across her skin, narrowing and widening with some unknown metric that Val quietly hoped that she was meeting.
Eventually, her fingers found their way to a little slash of pink across Val’s bicep and stopped.
“This,” Rona said matter-of-factly, “is from when you fought off an Aulairen assassin who had been sent on a contract for your head.”
“Ah, yes,” said Val, chuckling. “From all of those years I spent off continent, tangling with elven nobility.”
Rona ignored her, turning to prod at a thick line drawn over Val’s ribs that made her flinch away with a startled laugh.
“This one is from when you jumped into the water to save a drowning shipmate and had to wrestle down a shark.”
“A shark armed with a knife, apparently. Wait, Rona, stop - ”
Another series of soft jabs suddenly dug into her sides, coaxing little bursts of breathless laughter out of her before she could twist away. She swatted at Rona’s hands, but the halfling ducked around every half hearted gesture with a grin, and then swooped in for another attack.
“These are from a fight with a whole family of bugbears! A company of undead! A rallied Feywild army! A dragon!”
Before she even realized it, Val had retreated against the headboard and drawn the blankets up around her chest like flimsy armor, laughing hard at the ridiculous explanations for her scars and harder at the little halfling fingers spidering up and down her sides. At some point, Rona abandoned her stories altogether, and Val found herself with a tenuous grip on her usual awareness of size and strength as she was systematically reduced to a squirming, giggling mess.
“Mercy!” she cried at last, when she found her breath for it. “Mercy, please! I yield!”
The little fingers stopped their ticklish crawl almost immediately. Rona leaned across Val’s stomach as she flopped breathlessly onto her back, propping her chin in her hands and peering down with a wide, satisfied grin.
“Well, well,” she teased. “Who would have thought that our mighty fighter could be bested so easily?”
Val, still giggling, shot her a limp gesture that she usually reserved for starting bar brawls. Rona gasped and pressed her hands to her heart, flopping down onto the bed like she had taken the full insult of the motion and snickering when Val swatted playfully at her.
Slowly, their mutual laughter subsided, and Val glanced down at the halfling in her arms with a wry smile.
“This is, uh, starting to feel awfully familiar, isn’t it?” she asked, gesturing down to the tangle of their limbs. Rona giggled.
“It is. Which means we should probably get up before the others get any more ideas, huh?”
“Please,” said Val with a roll of her eyes. “If I manage to make it through the morning without wanting to punch anyone’s teeth in, it’ll be a miracle.”
But she gathered herself up anyway, forcing Rona to slip aside with a resigned sigh. She shed the last of the blankets in one long stretch, then stooped down and began casting around for her clothes. Behind her, something shifted with a faint groan of wood, and a very quiet voice that said, “Hey, Val?”
She turned to find Rona scant inches away and reaching up to take her hand. A shiver crawled up her arm as little fingers closed around it and grazed the thin pink line across her palm.
“One day,” Rona said, her voice soft and warm, “you should tell me the real stories behind these.”
Val’s stomach flipped full on top of itself. She grinned, and tried to pretend she didn’t feel it sliding sideways. “Shouldn’t I be telling you all those ridiculous ones? You know, woo you proper?”
She expected the laugh, bright and clear and so brilliant that it made her stomach do a few more pleasant flips for good measure; but the reassuring squeeze on her hand and Rona’s upturned smile very nearly took her to her knees.
Last Sunday was a hell of a session for Val. She’s been simultaneously trying to understand and avoid the implications of being chosen to take on the title of paladin, which finally came to a head when she met with Arlow, the paladin Champion of the fighting pit we’ve been engaged with the last few sessions. They had several very long conversations about worthiness that definitely did NOT make me cry, and on TOP of that, Rona startled Val stupid with a kiss that NEITHER OF US WERE EXPECTING after THEY had a heart-to-heart.
Needless to say, I’ve got some feelings.
1300 words.
--------------------
Val didn't bother with lying to herself this time.
When they had drawn their keys for rooms at the inn, and she had walked into a room sized for one, with a single bed, she had not complained. She found making excuses easier; found questions that only Sarula could answer, found a sudden need for the Bag of Holding, found that she could not remember a particular word in Infernal, and had a sudden, desperate need of it. One thing always led to another. She could always find another topic, another reason to stay.
But this time, Arlow’s words echoed too loudly in her mind, the compass hung too heavily on her hip, and when she heard the crack of gunfire that said that Amon was still very much occupied, she pushed her way into his shared room without pretending that she needed a thing.
Rona was alone inside, reclined across the length of the open window and staring out across the low roofs of Hewn’s small residential district. The slant of the afternoon sun had spun itself deep into the tangle her hair, crowning her in a soft halo of gold that made Val’s breath catch in her throat. The anxious voice in her head and the weight on her hip suddenly seemed years and leagues away.
Rona turned as the door fell shut, with a smile that made her liquid-fire curls seem dull in comparison.
"Hey," she said. "You're back."
"I'm back," Val echoed dumbly. Her wit and will had apparently abandoned her altogether now, snatched away by the sight of Rona perched in the window, bright and brilliant with sun. She could feel good sense trying desperately to push its way in - to make her speak, instead of standing there like some stupid, lovesick fool - but it had hardly begun its fight before Rona’s smile twisted into something mischievous.
“Ohhh, no,” she said slyly, pushing herself off of the edge of the windowsill. She crossed the room in the span of a heartbeat - impressive, Val thought, since her heart felt like it was making a frantic attempt at escape via sledgehammer - and gently tugged Val down to her height, making a big show of squinting and turning her from side to side. “Magic training is one thing, but you look even more nervous than before. What did she do to you, huh?”
It took a full minute for Val to remember Arlow. “Oh,” she said, with a bewildered laugh. “Oh, no. No, this isn’t her fault, love. You ought to know that now.”
Smiling, she slid a hand over the one latched into her shirt collar and moved it to the still-frantic pounding of her heart, until the halfling’s fingers trembled too. Rona’s face flushed a sudden, delightful shade pink.
“You can’t use that again,” she muttered, yanking her hand out of Val’s grip and tucking into the fold of her arms over her chest with an indignant huff. “That’s cheating.”
“Is it?” Val asked, grinning, feeling suddenly bold. “Funny. I recall that it got me a kiss last time.”
She leaned forward, wiggling her brows, and watched with a spur of glee as Rona immediately lost the fight that she was having with her pride. Her half-hearted scowl fell to pieces scant inches away from Val’s nose, and then there were suddenly two hands cupped around her chin, and lips pressed softly, easily, to her own. The rest of the world faded around her, inching into a pleasant static scented faintly with lilies. She let it go, happily.
“That’s only going to work once, you know,” Rona warned when she eventually broke the kiss, trying for a second go at her scowl as she did. “You’re gonna have to be at least a little more creative next time, understand?”
Val just hummed, unable to stop the stupid grin that she could feel tugging at her lips. “We’ll see,” she said, then swept forward and stole one final kiss before Rona could pull away. The halfling made an indignant sound as Val staggered, laughing, back out of her reach, but the swing she took was still timed deliberately to miss.
“Amon and Bren are still out making a ruckus, then?” Val asked, when Rona had waved her off with a rude gesture and turned to rummage through her pack. She perched herself on the edge of one of the room’s two small beds and folded her legs beneath her. “Or is that some other danger that we should be taking care of?”
“They decided to go find a better range outside the city, where they wouldn’t harm any more innocent trees,” Rona said without looking up. “I, uh, told them your errand might take a while.”
She did turn then, with a pointed look that brought every memory of the last few hours in Arlow’s company suddenly crashing back. The weight on Val’s hip suddenly felt heavy again.
“Ah.”
Rona frowned, but said nothing. She appeared at Val’s side a moment later instead, clutching a very worn, very familiar bottle sloshing with amber in one hand. In the other, she held two very dented mugs that had clearly been taken from the tavern downstairs.
“Don’t look,” Rona said as she crawled up onto the bed beside her and tugged the bottle’s cork out with her teeth. Val rolled her eyes, but obediently looked away. She knew what was in the bottle, of course. The scorpion and the whiskey that it magically refilled were no strangers to freedom from the Bag of Holding, and she was certainly no stranger to indulging them, deep dislike of the little crawling bastard aside. The fact that the scorpion was confined to its little bottle actually meant that Val liked it somewhat more than its free-roaming brethren, but… well, she wouldn’t say that the consideration wasn’t nice.
A hand on her arm reminded her that her consideration was still sitting right beside her, now offering a very full mug her way. The bottle had conveniently vanished.
“A bit early for heavy drinking, isn’t it?” she said as she took it, trying to sound more cheerful than she felt. Rona’s smile picked up her slack.
“Cider’s not heavy,” she said, as Val took a tentative sip. Cider, indeed. “The whiskey’s just for fun.”
“Fun,” Val echoed dryly, but felt a little smile touch the corner of her mouth anyway. They nursed their drinks in comfortable silence for a long while, listening to the intermittent crack of gunfire from somewhere well beyond the open window. Eventually, Val felt the bed shift, and Rona's head sank down onto the curve of her shoulder.
"Do you feel better, though?" Rona asked quietly, glancing up through the fall of her hair. Val sighed and took a deep draw off of her mug. Did she feel any better? ‘No’ was the easy answer; she still felt wildly out of her depth, still wildly underprepared, stormed and swamped by the thousands of things that she had learned in Arlow’s hurried tutelage. Parts of her felt rather certain that she would never understand it at all, not really.
The harder answer lingered in the periphery, patient as a priest.
“I could feel better,” she said finally, weakly, with a little shrug that bounced against Rona’s curls. “It’s….it’s still a lot. More than a lot. I don’t understand most of this magic god bullshit, and what I do understand still feels… foreign. Not mine.”
Not yet, her mind added automatically, and she felt a tiny glow of pride warm to life in her chest when nothing stirred to challenge it. She couldn’t say the words out loud yet - didn’t dare speak that thought into the world for fate to bare itself against - but there was change enough in it, for now. There was something.
The thought must have shown on her face too, because when she glanced down, Rona’s mouth was brushed lightly with a smile.
“There’s time,” was all she said, but she curled an arm into the crook of Val’s and dropped her head back onto her shoulder, and for all of the fight in her, Val thought she believed it.
A few days ago, doing our weekly trip to Disney, @colonelcupquake and I discussed a few things about our d&d kids, and about all the ways in which their growing relationship is...growing. This is what spawned from me thinking too much about what that meant.
Set in current game time, while the idiots are helping our resident monk through house arrest. 2,200 words.
If asked, Val wouldn’t have been able to count high enough to number all of the moments that made her miss her parents most.
There had been plenty in the early years - after selling the wagon, and then the horses, every time she had made her own coffee, Gavaar’s heavy silence on a long travel road - but the newer ones didn’t seem to dig any less deeply. Dandelions still made her sigh; the sight of Amon bent over his alchemist’s kit still made her heart clench just a little too hard.
And she knew, so bitterly that it hurt, that at least her father would have known exactly what to do with Rona Greenbottle.
He had left her some notion of it, of course. His telling - and frequent retellings, at a younger Val’s incessent requests - of how he had met her mother carried the notes of romance so thickly that even she couldn’t have missed them. But Cairon Hillcrest had also been one of the lucky sort who hadn’t made himself the company of his lady love for the better part of a year, who didn’t spend a harrowingly frequent amount of that time dragging her into danger, and who had at least had the fucking decency to know more about her than her name, and her strength, and the bright, sunshine sweetness that had captured his attention in the first place.
Val glaced up over the top of the book she was not reading to where Rona was settled on the floor of their collective room, pawing through the pile of satchels around her with the keen slowness of someone who knew exactly what she was looking for. She pulled a tough looking stalk as thick as two fingers from one, and Val watched, enthralled, as she deftly slashed it open and stuffed a coffee bean inside.
Her staring must have been the weighty sort, because after a moment, Rona’s mouth curled into a smile.
“Yes?” she said without looking up. Val instinctively tucked back into her book, feeling a rush of heat up her neck.
“Nothing,” she said automatically. She stole a glance around her book’s edge and found Rona looking back out of the corner of her eye, grinning. The heat on her neck grew warmer. “I just, ah...I was just wondering what you were doing.”
“Just that?” Rona asked, with a pointed raise of an eyebrow. Val huffed.
“Well, I won’t say that I terribly mind the view either.”
Rona hummed in acknowledgment and turned back to her work, but Val noticed with a tiny thrill of delight that her cheeks had a much rosier tinge.
“They’re for spells,” Rona said at least. Her fingers worked carefully, now winding a thin piece of twine studded with apple seeds around a length of thorny vine. “You’ve seen me using them before, haven’t you?”
“Here and again,” said Val, as she set her book aside. No use hiding behind it now; and besides, she had only caught as much of Rona’s casting as the corner of her eye allowed. With her own recent foray into magic, it seemed of dire importance that she actually try to listen.
Not to mention that Rona seemed rather pleased at the attention; she straightened as Val leaned forward, and shifted to face her.
“I decided that I should start prepping some of my components early,” she said, nodding towards the vine clipping that she was turning over in her hands. “I used to do most of these on the fly, but I figure now that I’ve got to try to keep up with you, and Tara, and Amon…”
“Mostly him, I'm sure,” Val said with a wry smile. “I’ve just taken to making sure the red blur is still moving instead of trying to keep track of him.”
“Well, I'd still rather be fast enough that I don’t catch him in this.”
With one swift motion, Rona suddenly wrenched a hand sideways and tugged the vine taught around her palm, so tightly that Val could see the thorns digging little dents into the meat of it. A soft green glow began to pulse from between her fingers, coiling down the length of the vine, and before she could blink, Val suddenly found herself in the center of a mass of woody tendrils creeping over the edge of the bed towards her.
“Don't worry,” said Rona when Val instinctively scrambled back. She waved a hand, and the vines suddenly curled away like a receding wave, and then crumbled to dust. “I don't use those on people I like if I can help it. You know, unless they want me to.”
She winked at that, and grinned, and the heat that had started to fade on Val’s neck suddenly came roaring back to life. She managed to keep her face carefully neutral as she tucked that particular thought away for later perusal.
“So, that’s, uh, that’s how your magic works, is it?” she said after a moment, coughing delicately to disguise the hitch in her voice. “You just sort of stick things together and - ”
“Not quite.” The little laugh in Rona's voice staggered as she cut Val off, just a touch too sharply to be casual. “It’s a little more involved than that, actually.”
Frowning, Val stole a glance down, and the peculiar tightness at the corners of Rona’s smile suddenly brought the memory of the conversation in the mine - with Sarula’s arms still wrapped around Rona’s weary shoulders and a too-casual shrug from Ianry - screaming back like a train car.
“Oh, Rona,” she said softly. Rona didn’t look up, just pursed her lips and stared fixedly at the floor. “Rona, love, you know I don’t think that’s all you do, right? Look, I might be an idiot, but even I know it takes work to pull miracles out of your ass on a regular basis. I just don’t understand the shape of it, hey? And I...” She hesitated. “And I would like to, if you can stand a few more stupid questions.”
Rona said nothing for a long moment, turning the vine absently in one hand. Then she sighed, and wilted like a breath suddenly exhaled.
“I know,” she said softly. “Sorry. Here, come sit with me.”
Val thanked Fharlanghn later for the distinct lack of witnesses to the way she nearly fell over herself getting off of the bed, and Rona, for her part, kindly avoided snickering.
“It’s not miracles so much as knowing what you’re trying to do,” she said once Val had settled across from her, hands folded in her lap like an attentive school child. She twirled the vine in her hand so it arched over her knuckles and held it out, gesturing to the tiny auburn seeds still tangled in twine around its surface. “Seeds are a plant’s life: they’re the first thing it needs to grow. So if I want vines to suddenly start growing out of the ground, and to wrap themselves around someone...”
She slowly threaded the vine back around her palm and made a big show of pulling it taught. Val hummed.
“It’s like a tether, then,” she said, with tentative understanding. “It sort of...makes a path from you to what you’re trying to control, yeah?”
“Exactly,” said Rona, and Val warmed at the brightness in her smile. “The components of a spell are just the vessel that you pour your intent into. That’s what makes magic happen. Not just ‘sticking things together.’”
She shot Val a pointed look, and nudged her playfully with a toe when she winced.
“Well, how was I supposed to know?” Val grumbled, making a big show of huffing and folding her arms. “I don’t even know what I’m doing, much less anyone else. I wasn’t born with magic.”
“I wasn’t either,” said Rona. Val raised an eyebrow. “What? Most people aren’t. Some of us give up everything just to learn.”
The current of heat burning under the last few words was difficult to miss, as was the way Rona’s eyes strayed to the door that Ianry had left through barely ten minutes prior. Val said nothing for a long moment, then slowly shifted closer.
“Everything, huh?” she asked. Rona’s shoulders sagged.
“My family didn’t exactly approve of the whole ‘running off to go play with magic plants’ business,” she said quietly. “And once I decided to go after my mentor…”
She trailed off, shrugging, and Val found that she could only nod. The few words of comfort she had suddenly felt achingly hollow in her ears; how could she even pretend that she understood losing a family that way, which left behind a looming shadow of unknowns that only grew with distance? She thought of her father, and all of the moments she had spent missing him, and she held them tighter still.
Eventually though, after a long muster of silence, Val rolled onto her knees, pushed some of the satchels aside, and shuffled over to where Rona was leaned against the wall. She only hesitated a moment before pressing an arm against hers.
“I don’t think Ianry meant any harm by what he said,” she said finally, “but it wasn’t fair anyway. You’re...you’re amazing Rona, in a hundred more ways than just what you can do with some thread and vines, but because of that, too. You’ve clearly worked your ass off to be as good as you are. You know, occasional misdirected ice knives aside.”
That earned her a chuckle, small but genuine, and Val felt her heart quicken as Rona slid sideways along the wall and rested a shoulder back against hers.
“That probably won’t happen again,” she said, with a thin smile. Val grinned.
“Wouldn’t matter even if it did, love. Accidents happen to all of us. But that doesn’t change the fact that you could set the ground around me on fire, and I’d trust that you’d put it out before anyone got hurt. You’re a damn fine druid Rona, but I admire your dedication to doing right even more.”
“Me?” Rona sat forward with the reddening cheeks and sudden, righteous indignation of someone whose only response to a compliment was to return it. “What about you? I've spent the last few months watching you fling yourself between us and every kind of monster that Cinderfells can dream up. I expect that I’ll spend the next few months doing the same thing. You want to talk to me about dedication? Protecting people is so natural to you, a god came down to help you do it!” She huffed and folded her arms over her chest. “No one has ever thought to ask why I like you, Val. You know why? It's because they haven’t needed to. Knowing you makes the reason plain enough.”
This time, the heat surging upwards bypassed Val’s neck completely and shot straight to her ears, which felt suddenly like they matched Amon’s in their shade.
“Well,” she said, when sense and her full grasp of Common finally returned, “now that’s hardly fair. See, I was under the distinct impression that I was complimenting you.”
Rona’s lips curled into a wry smile, her cheeks their own delightful shade of rose. “Funny how a conversation works, huh?”
They both buckled into a laugh, and whatever coy hesitation had been putting distance between them suddenly vanished like a mist in morning sun. Rona sank further against Val’s arm once she had collected herself, and leaned her head onto her shoulder.
“I should clean all of this up,” she said after a moment, gesturing to the piled satchels around them. “With any luck, we’re not going to be needing to burn a bunch of spells in the next few days anyway.”
“Don’t be so sure,” said Val, grinning. “We have a rather permanent history of getting ourselves into all manner of trouble. In fact, you might even need a whole other bag of…” She paused and grabbed the nearest satchel. “Acorns?”
Rona giggled. “I use those more for making friends with squirrels than for magic, if I’m honest.”
“Of course,” said Val, with a good-natured roll of her eyes as she let the satchel fall. “What I mean is, I still have plenty more stupid questions about magic, and I’m not so terrible at finding useful things in the woods. Mostly Sendran woods, to be fair, and mostly in the south, but I haven’t almost eaten poisonous berries since I was eight, which isn’t horrible when you think about it -”
“I was actually planning on gathering some things to bring Rosie back today,” Rona cut in, pulling away to grin up at her. “If you wanted to come along…?”
Val practically jumped to her feet, snatching her shield from where it was leaned against the bedside and slinging it onto her back. “Please. I’m already sick of this room, this inn and this whole bloody city. Let’s let it fend for itself for a little while, hey?”
“A date, then,” Rona agreed, grinning as she stood and then leaning forward to nudge Val with an elbow. “And maybe I’ll even let you hold the basket.”
After posting that last writing thing, @colonelcupquake and I started talking about how stubborn both Val and Rona are, and about how Rona would always win their arguments because Val is a smitten, soft-hearted mess, and then....this happened.
About 800 words.
“We are not lost.”
Rona refrained from rolling her eyes a fifth time as Val fumbled with the unfurling of their map. Her compass dangled from a chain she had clenched between her teeth, and she was making a big show of grumbling about some navigational term or another around the width of it.
“It’s okay if you got turned around, you know,” said Rona after a moment, barely trying for patience now and letting her tone fall straight into smug. “It’s a big forest, and we’ve been walking for a while -”
“Turned around?” Val let the compass drop from her mouth into her hand, and turned with an indignant huff. “Rona, I tested my mettle on the ocean, with hundreds of miles of nothing but salt sea on all sides. No landmarks, no guides, and having to account for tacks changing every few hours. A forest is child’s play.”
Rona hummed. “And yet, there’s that rock that Rosie marked again. For the second time.”
Val’s head snapped around as she pointed towards the little stone, on which a spot of bright green moss curled unnaturally from the center. Val squinted down at it like it was somehow harder to see all of a sudden, her brow a furious bundle of knots.
“That’s…I mean, that could be any rock…”
Rona put every ounce of willpower she had into wrenching her laughter down into a very wide, very enthusiastic little grin, then held out a hand for the map. Val glanced down, pride warring with reason warring with a spark of wild affection behind her eyes. Then she sighed.
“Fine,” she grumbled, folding the map down again, “fine! You win. Get us out of here before we have to resort to hardtack. Or whatever might possibly be worse.”
Rona plucked the map delicately from Val’s outstretched hand, then dropped into a low bow as she backed away. Val just rolled her eyes, muttering something scathing under her breath in Infernal.
“Ohhh, don’t be like that,” Rona chuckled, nudging Val’s thigh. “You know I’m just teasing. I knew you’d figure it out eventually, but I can’t help that you’re weak.”
Val paused halfway through tucking her compass back into a pocket, cocking her head to one side like she’d just heard something very far away. “I’m what, now?”
“Weak,” Rona repeated, leaning into the word with a wry grin. “As in, you always give up first when -”
The last half of her sentence was swallowed in a tiny squeak of alarm, as two arms suddenly swarmed around her and lifted her clear off of her feet. She landed heavily on her stomach, slung over a wide, curved strip of metal that she recognized instantly as Val’s pauldron. She pushed, trying to scramble backwards, and only succeeded in tightening the hold of the arm around the small of her back.
“Val!” she shouted, kicking fruitlessly at the air. “Val!”
“Yes?”
Gods, she sounded so pleased with herself. Even her tail, which Rona could see from her place dangling down the back of her shoulder, twitched back and forth in a perfect imitation of a proud cat’s. She squirmed harder.
“Val, you put me down this instant! I am a lady!”
“Very true,” said Val, a grin plain in her voice. “And now, you are also upside down.”
She gave Rona’s back two firm pats, then tightened her hold further as the halfling kicked blindly outward again.
“Brute!” she cried, trying very hard not to laugh. “Fiend!”
“That was my grandfather, actually.”
Summoning as much of a growl as she could manage while giggling, Rona shrugged the quarterstaff strapped to her back down into her hands and began swinging haphazardly at the armored plating over Val’s ass. It connected once, then twice, each time with a satisfying thud and a sudden jump in the shoulder beneath her.
“Ow,” Val hissed, laughing, “ow! You little shit, that hurt!”
“Good!”
“Ahem.”
A third voice suddenly cut through their exchange, loud and heart-stoppingly familiar. They both froze mid-tussle, and turned slowly in unison to where Ianry was leaned up against a tree barely ten feet away, arms folded on his chest in a valiant imitation of annoyance. Peeking over his shoulders were the half-hidden forms of Tara, Amon and Sarula, all trying very hard not to laugh.
“Shit,” Rona heard Val mutter under her breath. Apparently, she had also forgotten about their gathered party waiting in the clearing a few paces away.
Ianry pushed off of the tree and stepped forward, somehow managing to keep a straight face as he held out a hand towards them.
“If you guys can’t go two seconds without flirting,” he said slyly, “maybe someone else should hold the map.”
This piece is a bit dated now, but a few months ago, our lovely d&d group managed to blow up a train while defending it from some wyvern-riding bandits. The whole thing derailed with half of the party being flung from it, and half being trapped inside. There was a lot to suss out after the fact, but I like to imagine this little scene happened at some point between the explosion and Val being well enough to think clearly.
1887 words.
Val came to with smoke in her nose and a high, keening wail in her ear.
Familiarity with this nightmare did her little good in it. Although she could feel the lash of cold and smell the smoke, although she could practically see the burning ship spitting fire as it was overtaken by the sea, she couldn’t quite will herself to do more than squeeze the two bodies closer to her side, and pray that sense returned quickly.
And it did, at some terrible length. The vague images of a burning ship sinking into an equally burning ocean were whisked away as she blinked the last of the stars from her eyes, replaced instead by a bloody wreckage of luggage and glass and twisted, groaning metal. A shattered window opened up to the sky above her, summer-blue, against which a plume of thick black smoke was rising.
She slowly tested each limb – legs first, then both arms – and nearly leapt out of her skin when the wailing got suddenly louder. Wincing, she lifted the shield off of her chest to reveal two sets of watery eyes staring up at her, from two very bruised little human faces. The one crying suddenly sucked in a breath and clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide as dinner plates.
“Easy,” Val managed to croak out, then buckled into a ragged cough. Wrenching pain tore across her side as she did, so ferociously that she nearly cried out herself. But there were still eyes watching, glassy with tears, and she grit her teeth together just hard enough to keep it behind them.
Bracing against the wall beneath her, she pushed up onto her elbows and nudged both girls upright. They scrambled up to their feet with matching squeaks, but did not run.
The world came back faster as she pushed herself further up, arriving in bigger, more nauseating waves. The gash in her side protested even very simple movements, and bile pressed hard on the back of her throat in constant reminder of exactly how nasty of a hit she had taken before the world had flipped itself sideways. She got to her knees as the next dizzying rush hit her, this time with a gasp and chorus of voices all shouting at once.
One was Ianry’s, unintelligible and calling from a window somewhere overhead. Then came Rona’s, crying out in surprise as a dark blur suddenly staggered past Val and swept itself around the two girls clinging to each other a few inches away. The human woman was bleeding heavily from her head, and staggered along with a limp, but her open sobbing meant that she was still, at least, very much alive.
Small miracles, Val thought, then wrenched around and promptly vomited into a nearby heap of rubble.
She had just started to think that she had gotten both the poison and most of the last two days of free meals out of her when two small hands reached into her peripheral and swept the thick tangle of her hair aside. She glanced sideways to find Rona peering down at her through dirt-covered curls, her brow wrinkled with worry.
She opened her mouth to speak, but Val held up a hand.
“’m fine,” she rasped, trying from the very depths of her memory to coax up a smile. “Used to this. Sailor, y’know?”
She pushed herself fully onto her feet with Rona’s hand steadying her, doing her marked best to ignore the pull of agony in her side. Above her, she could just make out Ianry shouting for a rope, and curled her lip in disgust. Climbing was right out, in her state – likely, in the state of most of the people that their healers had pulled from the brink. She turned slowly, squinting through the haze of dust and slowly shambling bodies, and spotted the hatch in an instant.
It gave easily under the flat of her boot, thundering against the roof of the train so loudly that she could practically hear the attention turning towards her.
“Out,” she croaked, and gestured weakly at the hatch. There was a long beat of silence; then the bodies of the living pressed forward in one panicked rush, and the survivors all began the long, steady crawl out towards the open air.
Val managed to keep it together long enough to herd the last of the survivors into the field, and get a few feet away from the smoldering train car before everything gave out at once.
She clattered to the ground in a noisy heap as the world pitched sideways again, and for a brief, terrible moment, she felt like she might wake up and find herself in the steaming wreckage of yet another crash. Instead, her vision tilted violently back, sending her into another spiral of nausea that made her heave.
Two small hands appeared on her shoulder in an instant, and carefully eased her back.
“No, no talking your way out of this one,” Rona said before she could protest, and then began circling, hands working through the ties and belts that held her armor in place. Val grumbled, but let her go, eventually sitting forward and trying to wedge her own hands in to help. Her fingers felt thick and slow though, and by the time she had made it through a single gauntlet, Rona was already unlatching the belts of her breastplate. Val felt her tug them apart too late to stop her, and winced when she stepped back with a strangled gasp of alarm.
“Val,” she whispered, and Val didn’t have to look to know what she had found. Instead, she shifted, trying to set the side of her breast plate back over the wound like that would somehow erase the sight of it. All that did was send another agonizing pain lancing up her side, and pull a tiny noise of indignation out of Rona as she yanked the plate back out of the way.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she snapped, hands flaring to life with sudden burst of white light that, even in periphery, was nearly blinding. Val grimaced and eased herself around as carefully as she could manage before snatching at the halfling’s glowing fingers.
“Because I knew you’d do this,” she wheezed, tightening her grip, “and because I knew other people would need your help first. Like you, for instance. What about you?” She held on just long enough to watch the light dim beneath her fingers, then slid her hand up to Rona’s cheek, carefully brushing a strand of matted hair out of the way. “I saw you go tumbling around that train car, Rona. I...I tried to get to you, but…” The image of the human girls curled against her side, tucked safely away behind her shield, came too quickly to stop, and Val felt her stomach suddenly pang with guilt.
Rona’s frown softened, and then disappeared altogether.
“Bumps and bruises,” she said, reaching up and carefully pulling Val’s hand away. “They’ll heal in a few days. Other people’s injuries won’t. That won’t.” Her eyes flickered down to Val’s side and then back up again, wide with sudden earnest. “Please?”
Fuck, Val thought as she sighed and carefully moved her arm out of the way. She's got me already.
Resignation aside, her aching body welcomed the soft pulse of healing energy as it arched down from Rona’s hands. It rolled over her in a wave, then retracted and pooled at her side with a strange and familiar tugging at the wound that sent a shiver up her spine. She sank back onto her hands, suddenly grateful for the armor still locked around her chest that kept her from seeing anything when she instinctively glanced down; healing magic didn’t quite seem so terribly unnatural when she couldn't actually see it at work.
Eventually the light dimmed, and the numbness faded into a still-deep ache that told Val that Rona had only poured enough energy in to stitch up the worst of the wound. Good, she thought, even when pushing upright made her wince.
Rona looked up, somewhere between satisfied and exasperated. “Feel better?”
“Much,” said Val, and felt mostly like she was telling the truth. “Now, as for you...”
Rona gave her an odd look that slowly became a frown as Val unclipped a little red vial from her hip. She folded her arms over her chest when Val held it out towards her, and shook her head so hard that her curls bounced.
“I’m not taking that.”
Val made a big show of huffing, and propped her elbows against her knees. “So I’m just supposed to ignore all of those bumps and bruises too, huh? Just watch you hobble around after you shamed me into playing patient?”
A smile touched very faintly at the corner of Rona’s mouth. “Yep.”
“Rona.”
“That is expensive!” Rona protested, thrusting her hands forward and wiggling her fingers. “This will work again in a few hours. I’m not going to let you waste a perfectly good potion on me -”
“It’s not a waste,” Val snapped, sharper than she intended. Rona didn’t flinch at the steel in her tone, but her eyes narrowed, and Val felt another run of ice suddenly begin to creep up her spine. She coughed, glancing away like it would help her save what little face she had left.
“For you,” she clarified weakly. “I mean that it’s not a waste if it’s for you, understand? Any good this could do me isn’t worth watching you stagger around the next few hours and pretend you’re okay. Don’t make me beg, Rona. You know I’ll do it, and I’ll make it real embarrassing.”
“I have no doubt,” said Rona, letting her grim look soften back into a faint smile. She tugged her pack forward, and began rummaging around with one hand.
“I can’t let you use that on me,” she began, and held up a hand when Val started to protest, “but I wouldn't mind a little help patching up.”
A roll of bandages and a tub of odd-smelling ointment suddenly appeared from the depths of her pack, and found their way into Val's already waiting hands. She stared down at them for a long moment, then sighed her resignation and gestured for Rona to sit.
“I can't believe you're going to make me sit here and wrap wounds like some field surgeon, when I've got a potion right here...” she muttered, unwinding a fair course of the bandages. Rona rolled back a sleeve and offered one scraped and grime-covered arm with a thin chuckle.
“Surprisingly, most people don't get their medical attention out of a vial.”
“Absolutely ridiculous,” said Val with a dramatic huff. “What kind of moron doesn't spend fifty gold every couple of days just to keep themselves alive?”
This time, Rona's laugh sounded a bit lighter, a touch more genuine, and the soft place nestled against Val’s ribs that only Rona seemed to be able to touch suddenly warmed to life. She settled back into her work, allowing herself the faintest turn of a smile. Familiarity with her nightmares did her little good in reliving them, it was true; but at least she had some say in how they ended.
952 words, set just before the end of the last session, where Val deals with the events of the last few hours.
Val watched Rona scurry up the stairs towards their rented floor, her mind a bright, giddy buzz of static. She could still feel the soft press of lips on her cheek, could still catch the faint smell of lilies that always seemed to cling to Rona’s hair. Part of her - an admittedly wild, admittedly large part of her - wanted to storm up the stairs right after the other woman and pull her down into another, longer kiss, foregoing chastity and caution and all manner of good sense to sear that feeling into her memory for good.
But this was a new thing, a fragile thing, and they both stood precariously at the edge of it as surely as they had stood on the edge of that rooftop hours before. So she let surprise and warmth and a deep, rolling affection turn her feet to lead beneath her, and just watched as Rona disappeared up the stairwell, and then fully out of sight.
She didn't realize that she was staring, entranced and daydreaming, until something nudged sharply at her arm.
“You, ah, going to be alright, there?” the innkeep asked as she looked down, her eyes glittering. Val felt heat rush straight up the back of her neck, and silently prayed to whatever gods were still watching that her skin could not physically get any more red.
“Fine,” she replied, in a voice too tight and too chipper by far, “just fine. Thanks.”
She turned and fled up the stairs with as much dignity as she could muster before the words were even fully out, her face burning with a sudden, unseasonable warmth.
On the second floor, the world was quiet again. That same large, wild part of her almost hoped to catch Rona lingering at her door, deciding whether or not to go in: but the hallway was empty, save for the faint rustling of pages that told her that Ianry had not, in fact, gone to bed yet. Val rapped a knuckle on his door as she passed it.
“Thought I told you to go to bed.”
Inside, she heard a short intake of breath, then a huff; then, “Fuck off, Val,” in an echoic approximation of Ianry’s voice that rippled through her mind. She chuckled quietly herself, ignoring the little shiver the sensation sent down her spine, and continued past.
Her own room lay at the end of the hall, and opened to the same state of harried disarray that she had left it to. She kicked a gauntlet aside as she shouldered her way in, grimacing. Her armor needed her attention, and badly; splashes of red cut across the silvery surface, already dark and flaking, and her arming layers had a few new holes that were in desperate need of a patch. If they were to be going off to some inexplicable darkness rolling in from the edges of the map, off to the Cinderfells, off to war, she was going to need something better than some fraying wool and a suit of rusty plate.
The thought settled over her as she picked her way across the room to a candle, muted and heavy as a quilt. War. The first war that Sendra had seen in nearly three centuries, started at the behest of some shadowy fey lunatic with delusions of grandeur, who seemed determined to drag them into the middle of it. She had no illusions that spiriting themselves away to the Cinderfells would get them out of the conflict for good; world-saving seemed to follow them wherever they went, and it certainly seemed like no one else could be trusted to do it. When the time came for a fight, well, they would simply need to be ready.
The candle on her desk flared to life with a flick of her fingers, and Val felt a smile creep into the corners of her mouth as the room warmed with its light. It still surprised her, the ease with which her mind conjured its conviction nowadays. A year ago, the prospect of squaring off against some formless, nameless evil would have made her sicker than the sea in a storm ever had. But the better part of a year and a dozen deadly fights had stoked her full of Amon’s furious optimism in the face of danger, had built her faith in Sarula to levels usually reserved for worshippers of gods. Ianry's passion had dragged them over every obstacle the world had thrown at them, Tara’s strength had made them a bulwark both on the field and off, and Rona….
The image came again, soft and framed with low candlelight, of Rona with a hand closed around hers, so close that Val could smell the lilies in her hair. Warmth bloomed in her chest like a hearth fire; she sank back onto the bed, feeling the edges of her mouth curl into a stupid, uncontrollable grin as she replayed the scene over a third time, a fourth. Rona had thanked her, somewhere in the middle of all of that. “For the nice night,” she had said. Val suddenly regretted not being able to say it back.
She could face any war, she thought, knowing there was something so lovely waiting at the end of it.
Still grinning like a fool, Val hoisted her pack up into her lap and began digging for her sewing kit. Armor first, then. Lovesick bravado aside, she would prefer to step out of her next fight with all of her pieces in place.
And she would be damned before she let some world-ending evil cheat her out of a second date.
