Welcome to Gaia! ::

“Mm.” He stood, moving without comment to the double doors and pulling them closed. “No,” he answered as he latched them, but instead of returning immediately to his his bedding, when he walked back, he lingered at the edge of Araceli’s bedside. With perfect night vision, he did not need the moonlight spilling in from the window above the headboard to see her — make out every minute detail in the darkness, if he wished — but the effect did produce an interesting contrast of light and shadow, sharp on the angles of her smooth features and curved shape. His tail flicked idly as he eyed her, and he had to willfully keep it from moving to the bed itself. “Better, now?”

Detraeus blinked, and then frowned — curious, and more relaxed than before, but still wary. After an extended pause, he glanced away, cheeks warm with a flush as he asked, “…you’re clothed…?”

Detraeus’ blush spread, hot and irritating, but after only a limited period of additional hesitation, he complied and sat, perched on the lip of the mattress, posture stiff. “I thought…earlier, that I heard you…remove…things…” He plucked and rubbed at his right ear, shifting his weight uneasily. “Do you…want more coverings…?”

Detraeus tensed, relaxed, and tensed again through the course of Ara’s responses. He sent her a subtle, uncertain frown as she made her closing statement. “There are happier things to speak of,” he murmured. After an extended pause, though, he sighed. “Farmers mark their sheron, leklan, and kargoths for identification. Ranchers brand hastar. The writings are in the script of the second tongue of Magesc, the old language, passed from Seren to her…” Detraeus curbed the urge to spit, “…offspring…” He rolled his shoulders, tail shifting against the edge of the mattress. “They were put upon me with motives akin to herders branding property. Does it please you to know?”

Detraeus frowned. While, in a way, he appreciated having her hand withdrawn from its previous location, a part of him missed some degree of comfort in the touch. A strange realization for him, given that in the past, touch had been anything but. He eyed her, debating long before dropping his gaze again and shrugging. Much as it curdled his gut to think of, he found the words strangely easier to come by than he had ever imagined.

“Ago?” he asked. “Some nineteen turns, now. I was too small to remember the beginning. They kept me for six passings of the four seasons before I made it to Eowyn’s shore.”

Detraeus startled, glancing down at the unexpected contact. He returned the grip, a strange knot of tension easing back out, but the dampness in her eyes was unanticipated. Part of him wanted to inquire further. ‘You aren’t disgusted?’ ‘Do you understand now, what they are?’ ‘You think no less of me…?’

Instead, however, he pushed the questions aside, wanting nothing more on the subject anyway, and reached around, touching his fingers to her chin. “Ara.” He shook his head and brushed his thumb up towards the dampness on her cheek. “Don’t.”

Detraeus watched her.

The concept still unnerved him, to an extent. He was fully aware of the intimacy of the situation — a bed, at night, in a locked room with nothing but a couple layers of cloth between them — but, reassured that she was at least covered to an extent, and that she did not seem of an intention to be even so ‘adventurous’ as they had been on past occasions, he found he no longer panicked outright at the idea. This, he reminded himself, was something she clearly wanted, and something he was capable of giving her.

So, after a relatively brief pause, he grunted, and moved, settling in — relatively stiffly — onto the mattress. He kept mostly to himself, leaving space between them, but when Ara shifted in, closing the space, tucking against his chest and drawing his hand over to lay it on her waist, he did not object. It came easier than he anticipated, and soon, despite his racing pulse, he was shutting his eyes to the gentle rise and fall of Ara’s breath, and falling asleep to the muted whistle of Ayr’s winds through the harbor.

It was the first time in his living memory that he had fallen asleep in another’s arms.