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The village Abban looked, from a distance, like a stack of toy blocks. Its buildings sat in a precarious balance, piled haphazardly atop one another in a misshapen pyramid as though arranged by a child and then afterwards separated into two separate mounds for later play. Each of the piles — one slightly larger than the other — waited on either side of two parallel cliff faces with a yawning gorge between them that cut into the body of Ayr sharply as though carved by a god’s blade.

Detraeus could not have asked for a more beautiful sight in that moment. He stumbled off of the ship’s gangplank and onto the dock with all the grace of a dying leklan, but thanked his goddess for the privilege to feel land beneath his feet again regardless. Unfortunately for his sensibilities, much of the initial part of the village was constructed on docks — floating structures tied one into the next like house-rafts. He insisted on progressing inwards. After nearly two days at sea, he had no intention of sleeping in any structure that was not firmly affixed to something immovable, preferably rock, and indicated as much in fewer words.

Together with Ara, he made it back to the rear of the village where its buildings met the cliff face, and did — thank the dark goddess — manage to locate a hostel with a solid, earthen foundation. Unfortunately…

“What?” Detraeus repeated, disbelief — and a strong desire not to hear what he was just fairly certain he’d heard repeated back to him — evident in his expression, tone, and posture. The hostel’s keeper either failed to notice, or did not care, his smile far too warm and cheeks far too round for Detraeus’ tastes.

“We have only one room available for rent, currently,” the man chirruped. “Very nice. Lovely, really, if you like views and don’t mind a spot of extra wind, but you’re here, on the continent of breezes! So one has to assume you don’t mind that terribly much…” He twirled his quill between his fingers as he spoke, drawing the overly large feathery tip back and forth beneath his chin as he hummed and inciting in Detraeus the bitter, impulsive desire to snatch it up and snap it. “One bed. As I mentioned. Plenty large enough for two, though…” His eyes flit to Araceli, and Detraeus narrowed his gaze. When the man’s stare returned to Detraeus, his head was tilted. “Unless you aren’t…?”

Detraeus grit his teeth. Tail lashing behind him, he opened his mouth.

“Oh, my apologies,” the man said before Detraeus could slip a word in. “I had only assumed—well, you see…” He chuckled. “In these parts, on the ‘outskirts of the world’ you might say, it is not nearly so uncommon as in others for adventurous young folk to come sneaking away to seek exotic and explorative, ‘forbidden’ roman—”

“Two beds,” Detraeus grit out.

The man frowned — though, with his lip as fat as it was, it came out looking more like a doleful pout — and he almost manage to appear genuinely regretful. “One with one bed is all we have…” He glanced to Ara again, and Detraeus’ tail gave another stiff, irritated flick, willing the man’s eyes off of her. “If your companion would be willing to seek other sleeping arrangements, I can certainly refer her to a separate—”

“No.”

The man reached up, sighing and thumbing over a fat, stubby horn as he looked back to Ara. “So, shall I…put you down for a room…? Or you both somewhere else…” He directed his question at her. Seeking refuge, perhaps, from Detraeus’ stiff glare. Or simply looking for a voice of reason amidst it all.

Detraeus flushed, tail sweeping stiffly back and forth as he followed beside Ara and after the hostel clerk. On every sweep towards Ara, his tail curled, looping possessively close to her legs before flicking out of the way again. He hadn’t liked the man’s eyes on Ara, didn’t want him walking anywhere near her, and had no concept of how he was going to manage sharing one bed with Araceli himself, except perhaps, inevitably, taking the floor for himself. But he said nothing. He liked the idea of her sleeping alone, unprotected, in some room far from him with other strangers surrounding her far worse, and he could cope with sleeping on floorboards to avoid that.

It would be different, though.

Despite sharing a house for over a year’s time total, now, they had yet to pass into either of the other’s sleeping spaces. He had never been in her room, nor she in his, for any purpose, let alone one so intimate as sleeping. He shook his head to dismiss the thought. Be that as it may, the circumstances ahead were what they were, and there seemed to be no changing them now.

The hostel clerk lead them up a creaky flight of wooden steps to a second floor platform and down a narrow passage to a large door. After fiddling with a ring of thick bronze keys, he selected one, slotted it into the keyhole with a resounding clack and creak, and then smiled at them as the room came into view, giving a small, theatrical bow and presenting sweep of his hand. The room far outshined the atmosphere of the rest of the hostel.

Spacious, airy, and pristine, it sported a single, large bed — more than broad enough to sleep two people comfortably — a decorative, patterned rug across the otherwise smooth and well-varnished, paneled floor, and a careful selection of wall adornments meant, presumably, to give the room character. A window above the bed let in a warm spill of light onto the mattress, and at the far right of the room, two expansive double doors, currently open, lead out onto a railed balcony overlooking the harbor. Lightweight, translucent curtains flanked the double doors and caught the incoming sea breezes like lazy sails with every inward gust.

Detraeus flushed and grunted as he stepped in, pointedly ignoring the bed. After securing his limited burden of luggage in the room, he paid the man and took the offered key.

“If you’ve just come off the boat, we do welcome guests to come eat in the main hall downstairs after sundown, but portions are limited each evening. I encourage you to go out onto the docks and explore the area before it gets dark. Locals here will tend to be much more accepting, I think you’ll find, of a great variety of faces, and there are several establishments which you can predict will be serving fresh to the hungry customer whatever came off the boats this morning and afternoon. If you are looking for directions, recommendations, or information on the many mysteries of our windy continent—”

Detraeus opened his mouth.

“—Filic Ylris,” the man finished up, the pace of his words quickening. “Large red house two steps from the stair up the cliff with a dock and sturdy little skiff out front, moored to it, which can take you in a quick trip in to the coast proper. Very friendly man, if you don’t mind talkative sorts.”

Detraeus narrowed his eyes, and with another quick flourish, the other was gone, bidding them a fond night and disappearing down the hall. Rolling his stiff shoulders and thumbing over the hilt of one of his blades in idle consideration, he glanced to Ara.

“Hungry?”

“Mm…” He eyed her, backlit by the light of evening spilling in from the balcony, and wondered how he had gotten to this moment. On a foreign continent. In a strange hostel. Accompanied by a beautiful dovaa woman who had no discernible reason to want his company, but stayed by him anyway. He dipped his gaze and glanced to the door. After a period of time, he shrugged and said, “Out.”

They had come all this way, Detraeus figured it only natural that they give themselves an opportunity to explore the surrounding area. In addition, as hungry as he was, he still wanted more open selection than whatever was offered at the hostel in whatever limited quantity it was made available. So, they headed out.

Wind rippled in the gullies between buildings as they walked, and the sound of seabirds and the gentle lap of waves against the docks provided a backdrop to the echo of the town itself: merchants, fisherman, travelers, and natives bustling about their evening business. A large population of dovaa, Detraeus noted, though the population as a whole wasn’t large and there was a clear mix of all three in differing quantities as well as the occasional khehora. Those, however, he assumed were bonded.

They were eventually drawn in by the rich scent of complex spices, cooked meat, and the sound of sizzling. The establishment — a largely open-air structure, tented in with a draped overhang — did, as the hostel clerk promised, advertise a wide range of dishes fresh from the daily catch including everything from thick chowders to raw, seasoned samples to wraps. Detraeus wound up selecting a wrap sporting deep-reef crab meat, bound in freshly fried bread, still hot, and accented with a healthy scattering of nuts and a sweet, tangy sauce, the origin of which he couldn’t pin down.

Being the first proper meal he had kept down in the better part of two days, nothing could have tasted better.

Detraeus moved all but before Ara spoke, steadying her immediately after her stumble and then taking to the air with a stiff beat of his wings the following moment. He landed a half second after in a low crouch, his weight shaking the dock as his tail looped around the waist of an immediately tense and objecting child; he held fast.

“L-let go—get off!” The child shoved at Detraeus’ tail, and Detraeus frowned as it — gender undeterminable by age or appearance, given the grimy state of its face and clothes — writhed in his grip. “I’m sorry, you can have it back — I don’t even want it anymore, just let go! I’ll never touch your dragon girl again!” Oblivionite. Ten or so summers in age. All bony limbs draped in too-thin, foul-smelling fabric. When the child began to shake, Detraeus’ frown deepened. “I swear I wasn’ gonna hurt her or nobody, I swear, I swear — please don’t hurt me, I’ll—”

“Stop,” Detraeus grunted, and the child’s mouth snapped shut. Eyeing it, he retook Ara’s coin purse and tucked it away before returning his full attention to the child. “Pick your targets. Crowded spaces. Distracted patrons. Never isolated and in the open. And—” With a twitch and flick of his wrist, he had a blade drawn in the span of a moment, tip to the child’s chin, “—never someone armed. Yes?”

The child swallowed, limbs quivering, but it nodded rapidly, leaning away from the blade’s edge as though allergic.

Satisfied, Detraeus grunted and slipped the weapon back away before withdrawing five silver pieces and one gold from his own coin supply. On seeing them, the child’s shoulders squared off, lips pursing.

“I don’t need your pit—”

“Quiet,” Detraeus growled, and the child’s empty sockets widened, lips clapping back shut. “Take, take, take until you can afford not to,” he clipped. “Accept every favor fate grants you, for they will be few. Exercise your pride only after you can care for yourself without nicking from the pockets of others, and until that moment, refuse nothing which benefits you. My pity included.”

Gripping the child’s hand, he pressed the coins in and closed their fingers around them. He narrowed his lids, watching, and waiting, before letting his hands drop to his sides.

“Yes?”

The child hesitated, wary, but nodded, and made no further move to refuse the tender.

Detraeus snorted and uncoiled his tail as he stood. After a brief pause, he grimaced and bared his teeth, tapping at the child’s hip with his tail and stretching his wings as he snapped, “Go.”

Immediately, the thief complied, darting off down the dock and nearly tripping over their own feet in an effort to make an escape as quickly as possible. Detraeus’ gaze followed for longer than he intended before he pursed his lips, rolling his shoulders, and moving back over towards Araceli. Pulling her coin purse back out, he returned it to her.

“Stupid, careless child.”

Detraeus opened his mouth with every intention to speak — say something to the effect that there were likely far more children in similar situations than Ara realized, and that they needed learn self-sufficiency above all else, because no one else could give it to them. Then, though, her fingers grazed his cheek, and when she kissed him, his heart stuttered against his chest, heat crawling up his ears. By the time she pulled back, even if it was only a moment later, his train of thought was long gone, and he simply nodded, willfully plucking his tail away from where it had curled around her instinctively at the kiss.

The child had reminded him far too much of himself — of the children that had surrounded him in his younger years — and he preferred the warm distraction of Ara’s company, the four walls of the hostel, and any other train of thought over lingering too long on that one. When they arrived back in their bedroom, Detraeus bolting the door shut behind them and then turning to face the sole bed, he was certainly provided with ‘distraction’ enough.

His tail flicked as he eyed it.

After a moment, he moved for his things, unrolling a thin ‘bedroll’ — which was, in practice, little more than a single ream of stitched furs — and crouched to begin removal of his boots. The bed, he left to Ara.

At the soft slide and rustle of cloth against skin, Detraeus froze. He heard the drop, shift of weight, and movement. In a moment, there, with his back turned and his fingers locked in place, immovable at the buckles of his boots, he knew — at least for a small window — that Araceli was naked. He forgot how to breathe.

Breath congealed into a solid substance in his throat and panic danced through his veins like a shock. His fingers shook, so he pinched them tighter, mentally forcing them out of twig-like stiffness to move, move, move one simple step at a time. First: remove boots.

Remove the boots.

Remove—

“You’re sure you won’t join me in the bed? It’s plenty big enough.”

Detraeus sputtered, and then cleared his throat. “Ah—nn. Hh…” He plucked at the leather buckles beneath his fingers, working them loose one at a time. After, he shook his head. “You…have it,” he said.

The floor beneath his bedcovering was hard, and — not yet knowing (and entirely unwilling to check) whether or not Araceli had put anything on to replace her previous attire — Detraeus found himself unwilling to remove much of anything. Deciding, though, that remaining armed in bed could potentially be problematic, he began unlacing, unbuckling, and untucking the various blades fastened to his person: legs, waist, chest, wrists. Narrow, puncturing blades in more concealed locations. Heftier daggers at his waist. Throwing knives at the chest, and easy-access last-resort weapons nearer to where his boots had been. Each clinked and clacked as he set them aside, forming a sizeable pile by the time he was done. He plucked off his gloves, too, and added them to the pile.

Everything else — leggings, shirt, belt, vest — remained on. While he no longer obsessively covered himself and, in the case of hunts in the desert, did occasionally minimize his extra attire, his extensive time back on Eowyn since the growth of his wings and tail had provided him plenty of opportunity to re-stock himself in clothes that cooperated with his new anatomy, and he had done so. Particularly for the chillier climate of Ayr, he found heavier clothing apt.

Detraeus laid back on his furs, and shut his eyes, pointedly shoving fleeting musings of what Araceli might look like nude as roughly from his mind as possible. With limited success. Highly limited. Face burning, he swore beneath his breath and rolled onto his stomach.

Detraeus did not sleep.

Even with the padding of furs beneath him, the floor was hard. The room dropped in temperature significantly through the progression of the night, and the wind made an eerie medley of sounds outside, enough to keep a more finicky sleeper up long into the night. These things, though, had no bearing on his difficulties. He had slept under far worse conditions, so far as harshness of circumstances was concerned.

The woman in the bed some five paces from him, however, was more than enough to keep his mind and body wildly awake. Thus, when she spoke, he registered it immediately. His gaze, previously affixed to the ceiling — as he had turned back onto his back after physical evidence of the direction of his thought processes had subsided — flicked over to her.

“Mm,” he grunted the affirmative. “Something’s wrong?”

Detraeus blinked, and then grunted, sitting up and stretching his wings as the tip of his tail twitched curiously. The previous, faint quiver to her voice clicked into place as a supporting fact, and he eyed her as he tilted his head. “You’re cold?”