Welcome to Gaia! ::

The long, wavering notes of a wooden flute wound their way through the night air, and Lithian reached up, tucking his fingers through his hair and glancing to the upraised platform where a small band was cloistered. Winter was edging back into a warm, desert spring and the breezes that teased restlessly through the town square were warm and dry. Lithian shifted the cloak about his shoulders — it wouldn’t be necessary, soon — and he glanced to his side, smiling at his company.

After discussions that morning, he and Casseth had settled on going out into the town to dance. Enjoy themselves, and each other, and relax in each other’s company. It felt good to follow up on the thought. He liked to have the space and the time dedicated entirely to the two of them. It was something slightly rarer, as of late, and it brought to mind thoughts of what Casseth had said previously: his initial proposal to have a mating ceremony between the two of them, now years in the past though they had yet to follow through on it, as well as his stated willingness to one day raise a family together. Warmth bubbled in Lithian’s chest at the thought, and he dipped his lashes, reaching out with his fingers and wordlessly finding Cas’ hand and twining their hands together.

“Thank you for…” He hesitated, flushing and squeezing lightly before glancing down in Casseth’s direction. “I love you.”

Lithian blinked, startled at Casseth’s initial tug but cooperative anyway: leaning down, and allowing their lips to catch despite the heat that crawled up his neck in the process. They would attract stares here — or worse — given that they made enough of a strange contrast simply standing side by side as they did, but then, this was a messy town, after all. Filled to the brim with its renegades, outcasts, sailors and vagabonds. Soldiers. Merchants. Explorers. In the end, all sorts gathered here, and on occasion, on a brisk new-spring night like this — particularly on an evening scene set for dancing and festivities — it meant that sometimes they could be simply passed off as two strange hybrid lovers and ignored while the masses continued on around them.

Lithian smiled, tucking in after the kiss broke and pressing a more chaste one to Cas’ temple as he nodded. “I’d love to,” he said, and he twined their fingers, guiding Casseth to what served as the ‘dance floor.’

Unfortunately, the fates did not seem to see fit to leave their night ‘simple’ on this occasion. Halfway into the second song, a body toppled against Lithian’s.

“H—aaah!”

Lithian yipped, startled at least as much by the sound of the unintended extra company as the weight of her body, but a moment later he was moving on instinct, twisting just enough away from Cas to catch at the other — now staggering — person at his side.

“Who—do you even…think—?” The woman narrowed her eyes, her stare faintly blurry as it attempted to pinpoint on Lith’s face — with some clear difficulty — before recognition set in, and she blinked, her hip shifting to rest full weight on him. “Lithian?” She glanced sidelong, and then grinned — a toothy, proud and equally mischevous look that Lith was now entirely familiar with after his time knowing the woman, through— “Casseth! Oh, I should have known, shouldn’t I have? You’re both conjoined at the hip now, mm? He’s stolen you away and I never see—” She punctuated the word with a lopsided punch to Cas’ shoulder, “—you anymore. How are you two mush-birds? You look positively domestic…”

“Tshhhh, boy, have I taught you nothing?” Takhi scoffed, waving Cas’ latter question off — though she left a hand on him for apparent balance purposes — and sweeping her spare hand out to gesture vaguely towards the general space about them as though referencing some grand philosphical concept. “Trouble is my life, and here may the gods betray me if I betray Her, my guiding prophet: miss behaving. Shoot me flat if you hear I’m getting a reputation of a respectable anything. But good is good! You and your pretty blue—” She batted her fist out again, this time to Lithian’s shoulder, entirely unphased by his muted yip, “—have you two tied some kina knot yet? Mating bells. A grand trip to some soulful island…I know you built a house and I assume you picked curtains and everything, to be honest I’m sort of waiting on him to…” She tapped Casseth’s stomach, “…knock you full of something that screams when it comes out.”

Lithian’s face heated, and he cleared his throat. “I am working on it. Gradually.”

“Fight the good fight, brother!” Takhi concurred, leaving Lithian only a moment to attempt to process what she actually meant by the statement before she cut in again with: “Oh! Where are my manners, I ought t’ introduce you to my newest pretty—DRANNATH!” She twisted at the waist, calling out more or less blindily into the crowd before narrowing her eyes. “Dran—Dran, oh, where in the…that man I swear is the size of an orphanage and he could hide in a pinhole by some miracle…” She held up a finger. “One moment. I’m…I’ll be right back. Best I find the kargoth before he shoves something up the wrong spout…”

And with that and not another word in elaboration, she sank into the crowd, lost from view in a moment. Lithian blinked, staring after the space she’d vacated.

“I ah…well,” he said, smiling a fraction. “At least she hasn’t changed…”

Lithian blinked, stilling at the commentary, but shaking his head soon after. “Of course not…she’s your friend. And my friend on some level. And even if not, I wouldn’t mind you watching precisely, it was just…watching you and knowing you were taking the risk every time — that was what always bothered me.” Brow furrowing, he shut his eyes and leaned down, resting his head lightly, briefly, to Casseth’s. “I am ever grateful that you stopped, Casseth…but so long as you do not sign yourself up for another fight, I have no complaints. I’d encourage you, even, to see her…” He smiled a fraction, lashes lifting just enough to eye his lover. “You could use a little energy from someone besides me in your life on occasion. Now that Detraeus has his hands busy with infants, and Ara also, I imagine you’ll be a little short on ways of escaping me withou—”

“Hoy! And she, the gallivanting gladiator returns with her fair maiden…” Takhi gestured openly, bowing with her opening statement and vaguely tilting her palms towards a man directly behind her who — if he was not a full foot over her head — loomed at least close to a full foot taller than her, and surely weighed in close to twice her body mass. Though that, put in perspective, was not necessarily difficult to accomplish, her own muscle mass aside.

The man, dark as wet ash, eyeless, and sporting of a long, scaled tail, looked passively amused as much as anything else. “Drannath,” he said. “My pebble assures me you are friends of her—nnh.” He grunted, only barely cut off — and no less amused — by the knuckles to the side he earned at his choice of terminology.

“Behave yourself—” she started, almost immediately in time with Lithian’s repetition of:

“Pebble?”

Which earned him a Look in his own right from Takhi. The man, ‘Drannath,’ was unphased, and nodded.

“I tell her that she has the spirit of the proudest pebble at the height of the greatest peak. On top of the world and entitled to her position there, no matter her size or what others might say of her coarse exterior.”

“Oi, ah? You don’t got to get all philosophical on them in the first five passes of breath,” Takhi said, but she didn’t seem bothered overall, her smile edging back up into a grin before she glanced to the two of them. “So, eh, this is Drannath.” She gestured. “And these are Casseth, and Lithian, naturally. Drannath is my newest, ahm…”

“Adventuring companion,” Drannath provided.

“Currently, he’s keepin’ me entertained enough in bed that I’m haven’t shoved him off yet.”

Lithian’s face bloomed with heat, and he cleared his throat as he nodded. “It was—is—lovely,” he said, “to make your acquaintance.”

Drannath shook back, glancing to Casseth and then chuckling at the question — a deep, rumbling sound that reminded Lithian of bass percussion. “Aye,” he said. “She tried to kill me.”

“Graciously spared you, I think is what you mean,” Takhi cut in, and the corner of Drannath’s lips split, edging up in a lopsided half-grin.

“I dun’ know about that now. Here I’d been fairly convinced you were impressed that you couldn’t manage to finish the job.”

“Htchh—impressed?” she countered, but followed when he notched his head, suggesting that the group of them shift off of the dance floor and out of people’s ways. As they made it, Cas and Lith following, Takhi reached out, prodding a finger to Drannath’s chest. “I might have felt a touch of something somewhere in my gut, but I’m pretty sure the odds are it was at least as likely to be an odd case of some leklur root I ate that morning than any grand accomplishment of—”

He lowered a hand, holding his palm flat and curling his fingers. She snorted, rolled her shoulders, and then grinned, stomping to give a touch of a thrust up from the earth before hop-landing in his palm and climbing up his arm to his shoulders in a motion so fluid, it took Lithian a moment to remind himself she had just climbed him and that wasn’t something that two persons normally did. Except that now she was perched easily over his shoulders, propping her arms atop his head and flashing a toothy smile down at them.

“In any case,” she said, “I will admit we met on the field, and I was kind enough not to hurt him too sorely. We arranged to practice together, a few nights after, and that was fun.” She winked. “And you? I am invited to the mating ceremony, am I not? When is it?”

“Oi — that or I can just tell you,” Takhi answered. “Though you should do both, obviously.” And so, she outlined her current living arrangement, giving Casseth — and Lith, who listened as closely — enough information to contact her regardless.

The four of them conversed for some time after, catching up on the events of late, including the delivery of the twins and Detraeus’ move to the mountains with his own mate. At their discussion’s conclusion, Takhi and Drannath went their own way, leaving Casseth and Lithian to spend the remainder of their night on several more dances of their own before making their way back through the night to the beach and home again.

“Soon?” Lithian murmured, repeating Casseth’s assertion on the dance floor as they arrived on the front steps of their own residence, his fingers shifting to trail up the front of Cas’ tunic. “I’d like that a lot, you know…”

Lithian shivered, shutting his eyes as Cas’ fingers worked and savoring each brush of the familiar touch: calloused from sand and work, but gentle and warm.

‘Now,’ was the first response to come to mind, and it lingered — only half in jest — for some time on the tip of his tongue before Lith swallowed it back. He did want a ceremony. A proper ceremony, with friends and as much of his family as would come. An evening by the shore, dressed in simple but long-standing traditional robes with Casseth at his side. To make the man before him now his mate — not only in heart, but by way of a rite of passage passed down through the ages of his people, and those in the bloodlines of Casseth’s ancestors.

But here, now…

He leaned into the kiss, letting himself sink into it and shutting his eyes as he did.

“Six months,” he said. “Long enough to prepare anything we might need, plan, inform people…and give my family plenty of time to decide whether or not they can bear to see me mated with the man I fell in love with.” Lashes lifting just enough to eye said man from beneath the fan of them, he raised a hand, thumbing lightly over his lover’s cheek and then leaning in to touch their foreheads together. “Take me to bed, Casseth,” he said, quieter. “I concede. I want you on this night…” He tilted his head and dipped forward, lips brushing Cas’ cheek, temple, and throat, “…and every night until our ceremony, and every night after, until the moon sets on our last night on this earth…”