Gen crossed the wet sand and squatted down in front of Haegun.
“So,” he said.
“You’re pregnant.”
She made a low sound, something between a whine and a sigh, and then she licked the back of his fingers where her teeth had left their mark.
She licked it twice, careful and deliberate, and then she licked his wrist, and then she pressed her forehead into his palm.
“Okay,” Gen said, and he ran his hand up the side of her head, over the ear, down her neck.
“It’s okay. I get it. You’re not mad at me. You were just doing what made sense to you at the time.”
Haegun leaned her whole weight into his hand, and Gen sat down in the mud with his knees up and let her push her head against his chest while Baegun padded over and lay down beside them both, close enough that his flank pressed along Gen’s back.
Behind him, Vyxia cleared her throat.
“Pfft. Yes, obviously. I can see the babies too.” She had her arms crossed and her chin up and was nodding slowly at nothing in particular.
“Mmhm. Lots of souls. Loads of them. It is not a difficult thing to see, for someone like me.”
Nøx reached over and flicked her on the side of the head.
“No, you can’t.”
“Yes, I can!”
“Vyxia, dragons cannot see souls until they are 1000 years old.” Nøx did not bother hiding his grin.
“You are 985. You have 15 years to go and you know it.”
“I am an early bloomer!” Vyxia’s voice jumped a full octave.
“Like Mother! Mother could see souls at 900! Everyone says so!”
“Mother says a lot of things.” Nøx shrugged.
“My own soul detection is not even that good. I can feel a reserve if it is close and it is loud. That is it. I cannot count anything. And you cannot either, so stop pretending.”
Vyxia opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again with nothing to put in it, and finally settled for glaring at the side of his head with enough force to strip paint.
Gen looked over at Groova, who had been standing at the edge of the bank the whole time with her head tilted and her eyes narrowed, staring at Haegun.
Her lips were moving slightly.
He watched her lift one hand and start counting on her fingers, muttering under her breath with the intense focus of a woman doing long division, and then she looked at her raised fingers for a moment and raised another one.
“This many,” she announced, holding up her hand.
Gen counted them.
8.
“8?” His voice came out high.
“Holy shit, 8? That’s amazing!” He scrambled up out of the mud and turned around to face the group, one hand still resting on Haegun’s shoulder.
“That’s a whole litter. That’s, what, that’s an entire wolf pack in one go. That’s incredible.”
Baegun’s tail started going so hard it hit Gen’s leg.
“That’s enough excitement for one night. She needs to rest, and honestly so do I. We’re going back.”
Nobody argued.
Nyobin was already half asleep on his feet.
Ozin kept glancing back at the treeline and did not say anything.
Asp had drifted off to the side and was standing motionless with her face turned up at the moon again.
The walk back took longer than the run out.
Gen kept the pace slow, and Haegun walked pressed against his left leg the whole way with Baegun on his right, and by the time the clearing opened up in front of them his shirt was damp with wolf and he had stopped noticing.
The clearing looked wrong.
Gen stopped at the edge of the yard and stood there, taking it in.
The flattened plant was still lying where it had fallen, the trunk split across it, the green pulp gone dark and sticky in the grass.
The flowers at the boundary were still standing, but the air had changed.
It was thinner, and emptier, and it hit him all at once that the reason the forest had felt so quiet on the way back was that there was nothing pushing it quiet anymore.
He walked over and crouched by the ruin.
The stem was broken clean through at the base.
The roots underneath were still intact, still alive, and he sat there for a minute turning that over in his head and then looked up at Nøx.
“Do I actually need it?”
Nøx had already walked up beside him.
He considered the question longer than Gen expected, and then he let out a long breath.
“Probably not.” He gestured with his chin at the two dryads.
One of them was currently trying to lick mud off her own arm.
The other was standing 10 feet away in complete silence, staring at a tree.
“Dryads are among the greater apex predators in this region. Two dryads living in your yard means you are safe from most of what walks through this forest. The plant was a convenience, not a necessity.”
Gen looked at Groova.
Groova had found the mud and was working on it with real dedication, her tongue out, entirely oblivious to the fact she was being discussed.
“Yeah,” Gen said.
“Okay. I guess I should’nt worry about it too much then. It will probably grow back anyway, and if it does not, I have other options.”
He stood up, stretched both arms over his head until his spine popped, and rolled his shoulders.
Then he turned to Nøx.
“You know you can stay, right? We have 5 guest rooms. They are not fancy, they are mostly just rooms with a bed and a door, but they are yours if you want them. Same offer if you ever get tired of the mountain.”
Vyxia’s head came up.
“Sleeping in a lowly human den is beneath me,” she said, and the words came out fast and practiced, like she had been holding them in her mouth the entire walk back just to be ready.
“We do not have livestock,” Gen said.
“I saw the wolves.”
“The wolves have their own stable.”
“Then I will be bedding down in a structure adjacent to livestock, which is worse.” Vyxia sniffed, turned on her heel, and before anyone could say another word her back split open with a sound like canvas tearing and 2 enormous white wings unfolded into the air.
She beat them once, twice, and she was up, climbing over the treetops and banking hard to the north, gone in the time it took Gen to blink.
Nøx watched her go and shook his head.
“She will be back tomorrow,” He turned to Gen.
“I will be in my mountain if you need me. It’s close. ”
He walked 20 feet away from the group, and then there was a sound like a rockslide and a shape coming up out of the dark, 4 legs and a long neck and a body the size of a barn.
The dragon stretched its wings wide and looked back at them once with one enormous golden eye, and then it was gone, up into the night, the wind of it flattening the grass across the whole yard.
Gen stood there watching the empty sky for a moment.
“Alright,” he said, and he turned back toward the workshed.
“Now is a better time than any to check on the kil-”
Groova’s hand closed around his entire torso.
“Gen is resting now.”
The floor left his feet.
She had him up under her arm like a rolled blanket before he could get a single word of protest out, and she was already walking toward the cabin with long, unhurried strides.
“Groova, the kiln has been sitting out all night, I want to check the clay for cracks before the temperature shifts too much, it takes like 2 minutes”
“Gen is resting now,” Groova repeated, and her voice had gone flat and firm in a way that left absolutely no room in it.
“That is not how it works, you cannot just decide another person is done”
She shouldered the door open, ducked to clear the frame Gen had built tall enough for her specifically, and crossed the room.
Asp had followed them as far as the yard and stopped there.
Gen caught sight of her just before the door swung shut, standing with her pale hands folded and her face turned toward the treeline, and she did not come inside.
She walked off into the dark between the trunks instead, unhurried, off to spend the night in whatever way a dryad spent nights.
Inside, Groova dropped Gen onto the bed.
He bounced once and lay there staring at the ceiling, and by the time he had thought of a good argument she had already stretched out across the doorway end of the room, filling the whole width of it, with one arm thrown over him and her chin on her other forearm.
“Groova,” Gen said.
“Gen is resting.”
“Groova, I am not even tired.”
Groova looked at him.
“Fine…”