The Lady Lies

If there's anything that's become a constant on their little journey, all too short but sometimes still painfully, tediously long, it's that Lora shivers. Her teeth chatter lightly, just once or twice, when she turns to greet you, and you'll find that she's quite prone to sitting on her hands, and then forgetting they're there on the off occasion that she wants to gesture with them. Her shoulders are covered, but her elbows always have that telltale viscious prick.

One would think that having Jin, the frosty Paragon of Torna with ice whiter than sin, as her guardian for seventeen years would have eased her up to slight chilly bouts, in desert and in dusk, but one would be proven wrong.

If one were Brighid, the Jewel of Mor Ardain, and one had taken vested interest in the many peculiar charms and qualms and witticisms and all those lacking from the newly knighted Lady Lora, one would be paying rapt attention to this fact. And one would...

Sit delicately down next to the woman, descending like condensation from a plump, warm cloud.

So welcome. So gentle. So elegant. That's the way.

Brighid fusses with twigs between their feet and the base of the fire, flicking impatiently (not even only gracefully) at insect carcasses, or maybe exoskeletons shed, that litter the ground.

Lora's toes are jumping with a freeform nervousness. She's so sweet.

"Turning in soon, Lora?"

The toes stop moving, heels of boots turning out to facilitate a point inwards. Brighid notices.

"Oh, probably."

The golden gaze is hollow.

"And do you have enough blankets?"

Just smart, team-oriented conversation.

"Oh, plenty - Haze is sharing with Mythra tonight, I think."

Oh, is she now? Indeed.

"Well then, I see no reason for you to sleep alone." No reason. None at all. "Why, you're shivering already."

(Already, as if she isn't constantly. Brighid knows how to work her craft.)

Lora blinks rapidly. Stutters. "O-oh, would you really-?"

It's different than cuddling up to Haze. Very, very different. Lora practically feels as if she's been slotted, encased, into another body which is smoother, calmer, more confident than she herself ever has been. It's very real, adult, mature.

And she finds, as she always should have expected, shouldn't have doubted for a single moment, that Brighid is very, very warm indeed.

In the morning, she's quite surprised to learn that Brighid is a meticulously early riser - that's not quite luxury, then, is it? It's very military.

Lora dismisses it as a misheard murmur, but Brighid seems to say something about appreciating a woman in uniform, and not only does she fastidiously set about de-tousling both heads of unruly hair, she makes sure to straighten Lora's medal, prim up the ribbons hanging around it, make sure her lady is more than fit to take on the new day in style.

But Lora is still cold, and she gestures weakly for Brighid's hands, which are still warm. More than, considering they've just wandered over a fair few places Lora knows - knows! - Brighid would never have dared to case so thoroughly if anyone else had been awake.

Jin'll be up soon, then Addam and Hugo and Aegaeon, then Haze, then Minoth, then the boys, then Mythra last of all.

The Jewel picks her advantages well, apparently. Blue fingers cup the rounded tips of Lora's ears, and in each wander there is a question. Not anything quite conciliatory, no, there's a brusqueness about her that makes Lora simultaneously shiver and sulter anew, down in the pit of her belly, to think that maybe one day it'll have become bottomed out, burnished off.

Terrifying, but also absolutely lovely.

Lora has her now. Really, she does, once she's gotten done being flustered. And what happens over the next few centuries...

Brighid's lips are on hers before she can bite them, and then her rounded, ration-ground teeth are nipping at something colorless that flashes blue and purple; they're mauvey but faded back to barely apparent by the time Lora has breathlessly pulled away.

It's not her problem. It is, but it also isn't. Brighid's in charge of her own appearance. Lora's in charge of being respectful to her, and vice versa.

There's an implicit thrill in not having to take responsibility, and thus Lora isn't the one to determine that they should duck behind a tree afield of the campsite to neck some more.

She keeps mind of it for next time, though.