Welcome to Gaia! ::

Six years since shooting an arrow at her feet. Four since beginning to interact with her more personally, moving in with her, and flirting with the concept of much more than that. And two years of sharing her bed and her body alongside her heart.

Detraeus woke before dawn as per habit, Araceli tucked against him, fast asleep, and he slipped carefully out from his entanglement with her. He dressed, ran through his morning exercises, washed, and saw to it that his things were in order. Sometime before high noon, he had an arrangement to meet for assignment with a local textile merchant seeking protection for transport south to the middle of Eowyn’s east coast and across, after a drop there, to Ayr. The portion he was paid for oughtn’t last more than two weeks to a month at most, but he was anxious to have it over with just the same.

Though his traveling brought in good coin, he was loathe to leave Ara now for extended durations of any sort, and over the two years they had spent officially as ‘lovers’ as opposed to ‘passionate house partners’ or whatever label might have been appropriate formerly, he had grown ever more anxious to find an alternative means of supplying coin for the two of them. As of late, in particular, he was especially on edge. Their living together had never been precisely acceptable, but on Eowyn with the wide spread mix of races, comings, and goings, no one had taken immediate notice of their affairs.

After nearly four passings of the four seasons, however, they were beginning to attract their fair share of negative focus, and it was only getting worse. He had begun dropping none-too-subtle suggestions to her that he would prefer to retreat — find someplace more secluded, easily defended: private. But until now, Araceli had resisted, largely thanks to her now fully bloomed baking business. He wasn’t of a mood — yet — to pressure her any more severely. But he worried.

After concluding his morning warm-up, the sun only just edging up the far lip of the horizon, Detraeus returned to the house, set away his weapons for the time being, toed off his boots, and climbed back into bed beside Araceli. Shutting his eyes, he tucked an arm over her waist and pressed a kiss to her shoulder.

Immediately upon Ara’s sudden jerk and withdrawal, Detraeus blinked, startled. When she scrambled off the side of the bed, though, and sounds of her ailment reached his ears, he tensed and moved over. His arms circled her — defensive — as soon as she sat down, and he frowned as he eyed her.

“You’re sick,” he said. Suddenly, the prospect of leaving her — not briefly, but potentially two weeks or more — made him stiff with concern. “You should speak with Lithian. And I will cancel arrangement. Do you need help up? I can contact Lithian myself, and you can remain in bed…”

Detraeus frowned, wary and uncertain, but Araceli seemed sure of herself, and it was ridiculously short notice. If he pulled out now, it could easily damage his reputation so far as reliability was concerned and make it more difficult to land similar jobs in the future. Thus, after a long pause, he grunted, pressing her kiss to the curve of her throat and then moving to help her clean up. He kept careful watch on her all morning, sticking close by her side until the time to leave inevitably encroached on him. There, satisfied at least that she didn’t seem dangerously ill, he conceded to saying his goodbyes, making her promise once more that she would see a healer if she continued to feel ill, and departing with assurances that he would return within the span of a month, hopefully far less.

She remained on his mind long after the caravan had departed and there was nothing but desert in all directions of his line of sight. It would be a long passage, and one hard to wait through. He resolved himself to the task ahead, and did his best to push concerns out of his mind, however futilely.

Lithian rubbed at the bridge of his nose. After allowing his eyes to shut for an extended pause, he shook his head, sat back, and closed up the hefty tome before him. One of his current clients — a trader who often took a route to and from Soudul — had a sick child who, so far as Lithian could tell, picked up one of the diseases brought in from overseas, which reacted oddly, and quickly, in the child’s unprepared immune system. He had combated it successfully so far, but without knowing where or how precisely to focus his energy and drive it back efficiently, his magic expenditure had been wasteful and exhaustive over the past several days, nearing on a week.

It didn’t help, he supposed, that he had been dedicating significant hours to reading and research on the topic, remaining at shop far longer than his usual hours. Enough, though, was enough — at least for now — and Lithian needed rest, and company. As he shelved his book and tucked away his notes, he reminded himself to stop by Ara’s residence on his way back to shore. Before leaving, as he always did when he intended to take on mercenary jobs these days, Detraeus had asked both him and Casseth to make daily visits at minimum to see to it that Araceli was well and unharmed. He alleged that the amount of attention they had been receiving for their ‘cross-bred’ relationship had gone up dramatically recently, and Lithian was of a mind to believe it.

He worried for Ara — particularly so with Detraeus gone, but as a general rule anyway — and would have made a point to check in on her with or without her lover’s specific request. It was late evening, edging in on early night when he locked the shop up behind him and started down the street onto a detour that would lead him past Araceli’s house. Overhead, the first few stars shone white, scattered across the pale, dusky sky, and Lithian reminded himself to breathe deep, and relax. Breathe. And relax.

Upon arriving at Ara’s door, he knocked lightly and called out, identifying himself as much as anything else. “Ara? Are you home?”

Lithian relaxed upon seeing Ara, but frowned immediately after at her hasty interruption, retreat, and episode of sickness. He stepped in, though, shutting the door behind him and approaching her, his expression pinched with concern.

“Ara…what’s—?” Midway into that question, he spotted the shattered in window, and his posture tensed, wariness spiking upwards. “Ara. What happened? Are you alright? Did someone hurt you? Attack you? Are you sick?” Setting the tea aside, he moved in, healer’s instinct kicking in to play as he moved to sit beside her and reached for her, fingers touching her throat gently and then running down her back. “You look exhausted…and dehydrated. Have you not been keeping much down all day? When did this start? And the window. If someone’s been threatening you, you should come home with me…it isn’t safe here alone. Not now…”

“Mm…I see no reason for them not to. They did it once, and if you could barely put up a fight before…” Lithian shook his head, standing and glancing back towards her room. “What do you need with you? A nightgown, a change of clothes, shoes…tell me, and I’ll fetch them for you. You can walk with me on my way home. It’ll be no extra trouble, and there’s plenty of room at Casseth and my house. Worrying about you would cause far more burden than having you there besides, and we can keep you company…”

He glanced back to her, debating. In all honesty, he worried about her home alone even under normal circumstances. The fact that she had now borne the brunt of outright violence in her direction only made him that much more resolute on the matter of wanting her somewhere else. Somewhere she would have backup, and protection.

“I can look over you, too, when we get there,” he said, choosing an approach that didn’t undermine his confidence in her ability to take care of herself. Whatever she might have taken away from such a suggestion, it wasn’t that he didn’t consider her capable; she was simply one dovaa, clearly sick, alone, in a house much of the town now knew she shared with a man of a different race. It was dangerous. Lithian was not about to leave her home alone, and if she insisted on staying, he would stay with her, but for Cas’ peace of mind, he hoped she didn’t.

Lithian flushed, relaxing as soon as Ara made her assent apparent, and he shook his head when she thanked him. “Anything less, and I’d be a very poor friend,” he said.

Together, they moved out, Ara locking the house up behind her, and the two of them starting on down the path towards the beach. Lithian kept a careful watch on Ara as they made their way over the rocks, but overall, the trip was uneventful, and they made it to his and Casseth’s residence with the stars in full bloom overhead and the moon bright, its reflection rippling white over the water. After explaining Ara’s condition to Casseth — and giving a brief overview of what she’d told him of the attackers on her house — the two of them set her up inside, Casseth helping her to put up her things and prepare a bed space, and Lithian fetching her a glass of water and spare pail just in case.

Once largely settled, he approached her, glancing her over again with a more critical eye in an effort to determine what she might have come down with. He set the pail beside her and the water atop a small dresser near the bedding they had set up.

“You said that you have been feeling unwell for several days,” Lithian said. “But that you only just began having trouble keeping food down today, yes? How do you feel right now?” he asked, moving in to sit beside her. “Do you think you could keep anything down? I can probably abate your nausea if you’re still feeling it…and it will be good for you to get some water going through your system at the very least. Whatever you have, though, food in addition would be optimal to keep your strength up if you can manage it…lay back a moment?”

Lithian smiled a bit. “Then you’re very healthy overall, and fortunate. Everyone gets sick eventually, though for some lucky ones it’s rare…I used to get sick all but constantly as a child,” he said, reaching out and touching his fingers first to her forehead. “Luckily, I seem to have grown out of that.”

His own eyes shut as he gave a pulse of magic — a scouting mission, more than anything, where his energy rippled outwards into her body and searched for irregularities or, in particular, a condensed focus of her own energy within the body. Generally, whenever a person was sick — even more so when one was injured — their body knew well that it was in peril and was already actively at work fighting it, making it easier on the healer to pin down the source and track to the source of action.

In this case, though, Lithian found nothing immediately obvious. Some dehydration, yes. Lack of energy from loss of food. Over exertion and fatigue overall. But no typical signs of illness, disease, or injury. No infection. No obvious signs of food poisoning. Since she was experiencing mostly nausea, though, Lithian moved down, placing his hands over her stomach to give a more refined search of what might be upsetting her there. He gave another push of magic, letting it seep into her, blue-white like a gentle pulse, seeking out the source of pain to winnow back at the edges.

What he found was something else entirely. At first, Lithian had no concept of how to process it. Part of it was normal; Araceli’s life energy registered as a single source: powerful, bright, and thickly intertwined with her inherent ayrala magic. What Lithian came across in addition to that, however, was nothing quite like he’d ever seen before. Not disease — not some foreign particle invading her body to its detriment — and not injury. Instead, he found what at first he thought to be one, but then identified as in fact two additional, far more miniscule sources of separate, individual energy frequencies, self-contained with separate magical signatures.

And two additional heart beats.

As it dawned on him what, exactly, he was observing, a wave of heat rushed to Lithian’s face, warmth blooming in his gut, and he released a held breath. He gave a quick, painstakingly gentle push of magic to ease away the worst of Araceli’s nausea without tampering with the two infants’ energy, and then sat back, withdrawing his hands and rubbing abashedly at one of his horns, as though he had unwittingly invaded on something inherently private, and precious.

“I, ah…well,” he murmured, glancing to Ara. “I have good news…and other news. And the good news is that you are very healthy, and you have nothing at all to worry about. Or certainly not for now…”