Archive of Our Own

To Owe and To Own

A Difference So Small

The kid was disruptive, that couldn’t be denied. If you’d have asked him to elaborate on the thought half a year ago, he’d likely have used a less kind—if more apt—word. But now, as Zeki watched her from across the room, elbow resting on the bar and his chin in his hand, he figured “disruptive” was a fair enough choice.

She was short of patience and loud of mouth, like most humans were—at least in comparison to the Majiri. She was always on the move, always apparently late to be somewhere else, always rushing off into the Bahari wilds surrounding Kilima to do whatever it was her kind got up to out there.

Except when she’d come down here, to the Underground, to park herself at the hotpot tables to gamble away almost every single hour of her night. Zeki couldn’t (wouldn’t) complain; she brought a fair share of business with her, and did plenty to organize games—get folks talking to each other, make them comfortable enough to willingly play at least a few rounds against her.

And then, when they always seemed to come out on top, they’d be hooked.

She lost with such assured regularity that Zeki knew it wasn’t just bad luck—although she had that in spades too. Her limbs were littered with scars, both new—red, raw, and angry—as well as old—silvery white, like tendrils of lighting across her skin; and every other day she seemed to be nursing some tender spot on her skin, as if all the manual labor she was doing still didn’t agree with her all this time later.

Zeki didn’t even need to sidle up beside her at the table to notice today’s hard-earned wound. He could only let his imagination wonder at its shape and color, hidden as it was by the thick and unskillfully-wrapped bandages, but given how graceless she could be, Zeki figured she’d hurt the knee by taking a tumble in the Pavel mine, and landing on it as wrong as she could.

Would probably also explain the quality of the first aid on it—in his mind, Zeki conjured up an image of how shellshocked Hodari would’ve been to find the girl in pain and bleeding in a situation probably all too harrowingly familiar to him. Those kinda nerves do make for shaky hands.

The curse of those caves follow the widower everywhere he goes, it seems. Should probably just move, Zeki thinks to himself, mind more and more uncharitable the more he observes the kid’s wound—not that she gave even a single outward appearance of being broken.

“Jova’s in a good mood tonight,” Reth says to Zeki’s back, making the Grimalkin’s fur bristle a bit more than it already had been, the longer he’d stared.

Feeling like he’d been caught in his apparently unsubtle scrutiny, Zeki turned to the barman, fully ready to tell him off for something or other—to reestablish their hierarchy—but was cut off by the very subject of their conversation.

Heads turned curiously in the kid’s direction as she loudly exclaimed some human word that made half the room laugh and the other half cover their mouths in shock.

“That’s a new one,” Reth chuckled, grabbing a clean tumbler and a cocktail shaker. “You know what she said? Would love to add that one to my wheelhouse.”

Not bothered by whether or not the Majiri could hear his response over the rattling of ice in the shaker, Zeki just replied, “I don’t understand most of the shit she says.”

Then, as if unimpressed with the response to the scene she’d made, on her next round of the game Jova full-on sprang from her stool with a shout and waved her fist full of cards in the air—still ever careful not to show their faces to the other players. This time her efforts were more concretely rewarded, as several humans who’d only been idly fishing at the well drew their lines back in and went to hover around the table, now fully invested in whatever drama was happening in the game.

A few seconds passed, before an intense mixture of groans and cheers filled the dank cellar from damp floor to drippy ceiling. Angling his head to better see around the assembly of gawking humans, Zeki was unsurprised to see the kid splayed dramatically across the board as the opponent directly across from her shoveled his winnings by the armful to his end of the table.

Considering Jova was one of the few humans Zeki would call a friend—and maybe the only one he’d admit to in public (and mean it)—it might’ve looked cruel that her display made him smile a toothy little grin. But, amongst cries of “me next, me next!” and “winner and loser stay, rest a’ y’all clear out,” and “lemme have a go against her next,” Jova picked herself right back up, all semblance of misery gone and nothing but burning determination in her eyes as she accepted her next rotation of challengers with another slurry of barbs, insults, and curses that just made her little crowd giggle.

“You want me to tell them all to cool it?” Reth once more cut across Zeki’s attention. “She’s really whipping up a frenzy tonight.”

Gaze still trained on the boisterous table, Zeki just grunted a no. Then, watching Jova fake an early lead to her next game, he simply said, “Let her have her fun, you know tonight’s her anniversary.”

The night had been long and the sky seemed even darker than it normally did as Zeki walked himself home from a productive day in his burgeoning little black market. The reemergence of humans had been a strain on Kilima for the first few days, but after the initial surge died down to a more manageable trickle, the influx of new faces had turned out to be a boon.

Fresh-faced and completely free of any memory as to how they’d come to be here, the mysteriously reappeared humans were more than happy with whatever guidance could be given or resources spared. They all seemed to share the same bemused and mind-hazy optimism—as though, either through fault of magical hangovers or simply for lack of a choice in the matter, they figured here was as good a place as any to make a life.

Zeki’d never before been so awash in marks.

Gold clinking joyfully on his coin purse as he hefted the wonderfully heavy bag from paw to paw, Zeki distracted his tired mind by musing on whether it might be worth setting up trading stalls in the cellar as well—really make it the spot of all the humans’ shopping, bartering, drinking, and gambling needs.

But then a sound of distress invaded his mind, pushing out the pleasant thoughts of future business prospects. Zeki paused, his four ears twitching in separate directions to better pinpoint the noise. After a few moments of nothing but the chirping of distant crickets—probably gearing up for a fruitful early morning of harassing Delaila—Zeki returned on his path homebound.

And almost as soon as he had, as though to cause him the maximum amount of annoyance, the noise came to him again, distinctly from a patch of wild gardenia bushes about twenty feet from the road. Stowing his purse in his waistcoat pocket and standing very still, Zeki tried to determine whether the noise was something worth investigating or better off left alone; the muujin didn’t usually come this close to town, but he also wasn’t going to play cat and dog with one if he wandered over and surprised the beast.

Silence pressed in on him from all sides as Zeki waited and waited for the noise again, and then, as if in apology for disturbing his walk, it once more sounded into the still air—breathy, weak, miserable.

And definitely human.

Rolling his eyes and tossing his head from side to side, Zeki struggled internally whether he could get away with leaving the scene and going home uninterrupted, as planned. But the creature, after moaning some more, gave the saddest little hiccupping sob the grimalkin ever did hear, and his better nature won out.

Hopefully it was just someone from the Underground, or maybe even the tavern, who’d just gotten a little too deep in their cups and needed to sleep it off. But, feeling his lifetime’s worth of bad luck tickling at the back of his neck, when Zeki pushed back the brush to locate the poor, lost soul he could instantly tell that whatever this was, it certainly wasn’t that.

Small for a human, the girl looked even tinier laying all curled up around herself in the soft blanket of grass, her arms—shaking with cold—wrapped loosely but desperately around her little legs. The sweat dotting her forehead in delicate droplets was beginning to run, and—perhaps in a desperate attempt to keep the dirt streaking her face from blurring her vision—her eyes were squeezed painfully shut. And her incredible mane of orange-red hair, mussed and tangled and wild, made Zeki’s mind tell itself a joke that he actually had found a muujin—be it the most miserable runt of the litter, perhaps.

“Damn kid,” he sighed, mostly on impulse. “How the hell’d you get like this?”

At the sound of his voice, the girl’s shaking stopped. But it was less from comfort, and more of a prey instinct—when a chapaa throws itself low in the grass of Kilima’s fields and nearly stops breathing in attempts to remain small, unseen, and, of course, uneaten.

With a glance toward the phoenix ruins, Zeki’s mind put things together in a rough timeline. It was late—late late, basically “almost early morning” late—and, even despite the archaeologist’s fucked up sleep schedule, Zeki knew Jina would have headed for home hours ago now. Most of the humans seemed to come at seemingly self-prescribed times, either decreed by whatever mechanisms rebirthed them into the world, or by the humans’ own plans—this made stationing someone at the shrine to receive them as they entered fairly simple, but that wasn’t to say that the odd human or two didn’t reappear at an inconvenient time.

But this was the first time Zeki had heard of one managing to give the entire the village the slip, for at least long enough to get this far into the valley. It, apparently, is the human way to shout and call for help into the dead winds of the night when coming to life for no one to see or hear; and either Jina, Hekla, or Chayne would rise and run off to receive the newest member of the flock.

But not her. She’d been quiet, at least until now—laid low, found cover and some kind of relative shelter.

This one had survival instincts.

Hell, maybe he could leave her be, and perhaps also talk himself into not feeling guilty about it. But, just as he started to will his gold ring-laden fingers to pull away, a set of piercing yellow eyes met his, stopping him dead all over.

“Where am I?”

It was spoken so plainly she couldn’t be mistaken, but so softly that Zeki released the breath that her stare had forced to catch in his throat. She certainly spoke with more authority than someone who appeared to be laying in a pile of their own stomach bile should have.

“Kilima,” he answered, keeping his responses short, but not clipped, as he tried to get a read on the girl. “I take it you just woke up?”

Her eyes narrowed just a fraction, as though she too were trying to ascertain the truth. “I think so,” she said, more amiably this time. And then all her bluster seemed to rush away from her in an instant, leaving her back where he’d originally found her: in a cold, sad little puddle on the ground. “I don’t know what ‘Kilima’ even means.”

“A village. Just down the hill from where ya came out,” Zeki tried to explain, but felt himself coming up woefully short as he saw tears pooling in her eyes. “Oh no, don’t cry,” he couldn’t help but say, which, of course, just made the waterworks start in earnest.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she repeated mournfully into the sky, rolling onto her back and rubbing her hands over her face, as though trying to scrub away the evidence of her misery. “I-I-I don’t know wh-what to do.”

Stop crying, for one, Zeki’s mind, easily perturbed by emotional displays of this magnitude, chastised her. But thankfully he schooled the thought into something less hostile and said, “Lucky for you that we’ve got protocol for how to handle newcomers.”

That got her attention, at least enough to get her looking at him again as her sobs quieted down to sniffling and hiccups. “Protocol?”

“Yeah,” he said, stalling only a moment before twisting his muzzle in mild annoyance and offering his hand to her. “Not like you’re the first human to turn up not knowing left from right.”

Her gaze on his hand was intense, and Zeki nearly took it back in embarrassed frustration. It took most humans a couple of meetings with him before they’d really look into his face as they spoke; but not a single one before her had had the gall to so openly stare. But then, suddenly feeling a light pressure against his palm, Zeki reflexively tightened his grasp in surprise. He allowed her to turn his wrist, watching her examine him with a strange and rapt interest, the ghost of a smile almost coming to her lips as she looked back up into his face.

“I like your rings, very posh.”

Weird girl. “Thanks, kid.”

But at least she had good taste. “Now let’s get you to Ashura’s inn for your 101.”

He hadn’t intended to give his hand for any longer than it would take to lift her off the ground, but then she stumbled just a few too many times on their trek down the dark path, and Zeki finally gave up his resistance, giving her his arm and telling her to stay close if she really couldn’t see where her feet were leading her.

Eventually the silvery-blues of night gave way to Kilima’s cheerful yellows—streaming from every window along the main drag of town. The human clung to him regardless, a shaking returning to her hands that Zeki could feel bristling his fur.

“Just breathe, kid,” he told her, trying to keep the fright out of her eyes. “Almost there. And there ain’t no one in town sweeter than the old man.”

“Makes sense, runs a bar,” she replied, but in shorthand, like she didn’t want to use up her breath for words.

Once inside the building—clearly devoid of patrons, given the hour—Zeki sat the human down on the couch in front of the fireplace to warm up. She flexed her fingers fitfully, clenching and unclenching them in time with her frantic heartbeat, as she sat him with a look of wild uncertainty, like some feral thing brought indoors for the first time in its life and unsure where to put its dirty feet.

“Just stay here, only going upstairs for a minute,” Zeki sighed, feeling tiredness eek into his bones. It took her a moment, but the human did eventually nod. Thankfully Ashura sprang into action when Zeki knocked on the door to his personal room, collecting blankets and some of Reth’s leftovers, before delivering all the goods into the human’s grateful hands. She politely rejected the offer of a spoon and instead elected to sip from the bowl itself—the strain on her face belying her obvious hunger, despite her need to appear civilized by refusing to inhale the broth.

Not being able to find a good time to slink away as Ashura gave the girl his usual rundown, alongside a few small and caring extras due to the circumstances of her arrival—“you poor thing, all alone out there,” and “good of you to find somewhere safe until you were found,” or “don’t you worry, dear heart, you’ll be right as rain soon”—Zeki remained in the tavern, standing beside the two like some kind of misplaced piece of furniture.

But finally his out seemed to come, as Ashura stood from the couch with the intent to find some pillows. “Rooms are all full at the moment, but you should sleep here until Hodari can clear out a parcel of land for you in the morning. You sure the couch is enough?”

The human just nodded sleepily, handing him the bowl and tugging the blanket more securely around her shoulders. “I think I could sleep just about anywhere tonight,” she tried to chuckle.

“Better here than a bush,” Zeki blustered with fake humor, using the ol’ tried and true tone any Kilima native knew to mean goodbyes were following. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”

But he was, once again, stopped—this time by a much more insistent tug on his sleeve. Whipping around to the girl, Zeki was struck dumb by the fear in her—her amber eyes massive and sunken in the hollows of her face, the skin of her cheeks pale, and her mouth set in a tiny line.

“Please don’t leave,” she begged, plain and to the point. “Don’t go, please not yet. Please.”

Fuck. Dunya grant him grace, how the hell could he say no to her when she was looking at him like that, huh? Let no one speak ill of him—or his shop’s prices—for at least a week.

“Fine, kid,” Zeki muttered, feeling both sets of eyes on him as he tried to ascertain just how close she wanted him to keep to her. He settled on the chair beside the couch, which seemed to placate her somewhat as Zeki’s sleeve was once more his. Ashura seized the moment and left. Great.

“Well,” Zeki cleared his throat, sagging back into the chair and sitting the girl with a stern kind of look born more of exhaustion than any ill-will. “You got a name?”

She was surprised by his question, but he figured it might be more from having to think about it than actually not expecting him to ask. Then in a tiny voice, she said, “Jova.”

“Any nicknames? Us ‘Malkis ain’t the formal type, not like the Majiri here.” He was trying to get her talking to wear her out, and his efforts seemed to be rewarded, as she was speaking her next words while simultaneously lowering her head to the seat cushions of the couch—not even bothering to wait for the pillows Ashura was bringing.

“Jojo. I can remember some people called me Jojo,” she said around yawn. “But I also seem to remember... that if you call me that, I’ll probably start crying again.”

Zeki grunted, not being able to help the little smile that came to his face as the kid finally seemed to relax and her breathing deepened. “How ‘bout just ‘Jo,’ then? Split the difference. Call it my finder’s fee for finding you out there all alone layin’ in a puddle of your own puke.”

She laughed for the first time, a real laugh, and then, smile still on her face, she finally feel asleep.

Hell of a first night in town. For the both of them.

“Damn, that’s right,” Reth says, pulling Zeki out of his memory. “So it’s been a whole year with Jovie, huh? No wonder she wanted that bottle.”

He pulls a face at the nickname—for Dunya’s sake, it wasn’t a real nickname if it’s longer than her actual name—but keeps his tone in line as he asks, “What bottle?”

“Well after her third trip over here to refill her table’s orders, she just bought a bottle outright. More ‘expedient,’ she said,” the Majiri responded with a shrug, not even looking Zeki’s way as he lined up a row of shot glasses and effortlessly poured from his shaker in a long and continuous stream. “Though I don’t expect it’ll last all that long with how fast they’re tossing ‘em back.”

Ah, so Jo was really celebrating. Well hell, if not now then when? Kid has more than earned it, Zeki figured. And besides, the more she drank, the louder she got—and Jova at her loudest was also Jova at her most entertaining.

Grabbing the shot glass at the end of the neat little line on the bar top, Zeki raised a drink to the pathetic memory of the human’s first night in town: may she never find herself that weak and alone again.

“Oh no,” Reth half laughed and half sighed, resting a hand against the side of his face and staring adoringly in the direction of the nearest hotpot table. The cheers of victory and moans of defeat had apparently given way to something else—something a little more celebratory: singing.

Her mood was obviously infectious enough to counteract any inhibitions in the others, and with it, Jova had goaded an entire section of the Underground into sloppily recreating an a capella facsimile of some human song common enough that it persisted in their collective memory, if only unwillingly, out of embarrassment.

It was something slow and soulful—some little trifling thing about it being late, the singer being sad-drunk, and plaintively wailing to their ex-lover about how much they needed them now.

“You, uh, need me to take her home, boss? Might be time.” Reth asked, trying to hide his grin.

Guessing that he was missing some crucial context given Reth’s look of unchecked adoration, Zeki once more swiveled on the bar stool. The problem was plain to see, and, as much as he wanted to muster up some frustration, he understood the feelings hidden in the other man’s eyes.

Never one for half measures, Jova had clumsily clambered her way up on top of the table, legs spread a bit wide for balance. The crowd gathered around obliged her as she directed their atonal chorus, the ones nearest waving their arms in the air before her—either in drunken exuberance, or, perhaps, in an effort to save her should she lose her footing and tumble to the mossy cobbles below.

“Oh kid,” Zeki sighed, both bewildered and charmed by her ever-present willingness to make herself a spectacle. Before Reth could rein in the nerves he always seemed to manifest around Jo, Zeki stood from the stool, parting the throng of humans—many of whom, upon seeing the ambivalent and unreadable look on the face of the Underground’s owner, decided to move their merriment elsewhere. “Having fun up there in the clouds, are we?”

Her response was immediate when her eyes, sparkling even in the din of the lowly-lit cellar, pivoted down to his own, narrowed shrewdly at the air of innocence she was trying to project. “Zeki!”

Thankfully she was more sure-footed than she appeared to be, as Jova was hopping down from her perch before he could’ve been ready to catch her. She hadn’t stumbled, but raised her hands—jittery from her buzz—to hold the lapels of his coat all the same.

Jo was handsy even from their first meeting, when she practically held his hand all the way to the tavern. Always had been. Zeki had wanted to balk at her overly-familiar physicality, saying her affections made him look all too soft on her, but he’d given up that fight early on. The girl was physical with basically everyone in Kilima, after all.

If she was in town, she never passed on a daily hug from Ashura as he set out for a morning of fishing. She hardly ever had to walk anywhere, what with Hassian carrying her around on his back, grumbling and blushing all the way. When she’d visit Einar on the docks and got impatient for his attention, she climbed the galdur like some strange metal tree. Every night she danced with Badruu and Sifuu at the tavern, and most times she’d end up passed out on the couch in front of the hearth, her head on Chayne’s shoulder. When he played cards on the weekends, Hodari always had her sat right on his lap, humoring her as she demanded to help him decide his next play. And if she was walking anywhere with Reth and Tish, she was holding both their hands the whole way—one on either side of her.

And as for Zeki himself—

Jova tugged at him, pulling him closer and kind of losing her footing in the process, delivering a chaste but showy kiss to his cheek. As she fell back, hands still fisted in his coat, her smile only grew at the eyebrow he cocked at her.

“Hi Zeki,” she said again, around an unsubtle giggle.

“Hey trouble,” he indulged her.

Don’t ask him why, but him she kissed. And (as far as he knew, anyway), he was the only one she did.

“Am I trouble, or am I in trouble?” she asked, not even trying to contain her grin.

Zeki tsked. “Ain’t it always both with you?”

Unbothered, Jova just pulled him over to the table by the hand. “So come babysit me, then.”

While it would amuse him to deny her when she’s being so openly demanding of his attention, Zeki ultimately decided that spending his time with her was more fun than upsetting her tonight—and besides, if she wanted to include him in her celebrations, he figured that’s just his good deed in taking care of her a year ago being repaid. Sure it’s his alcohol (technically), but the mead always tastes sweetest when someone else’s buying.

“You oughta send one of your new friends here over to her another one,” Zeki chuckled as Jova coaxed out the final dregs into a glass for him, simply necking the bottle herself. “To your health, and may this year be even more profitable than your last.”

Clinking his glass vaguely around the lip of the bottle in her grasp, Zeki shot the alcohol and turned the glass upside-down on the hotpot table (he’s not the one cleaning up, after all). Jova was being much more careful with her drink, however—sipping at it and seemingly savoring every drop.

“I bought it.”

If he hadn’t just shotgunned what was probably at least five gold’s worth of mead, he’d have done a spit-take. This fuckin’ girl. “It’s your night and you ain’t even lettin’ someone else buy your shots? Kid. Thought I taught you better.”

For a moment, her only response was to lean forward onto the table, her elbows bending to accommodate her continued sipping from the surely empty vessel. Then, “You could always buy me one.”

Oh this girl. It was a damn good thing he was soft for her. She could bat her eyes and sway her shoulders at him all she liked, but it only worked because he let it. Knowing words weren’t necessary, Zeki simply took the bottle from her and held it above his head to clear the crowd enough for Reth to see it, then he snapped his fingers and signaled for another.

“You’re sweet,” she cooed at him as Reth placed another at their table, barely noticing as he patted her head before returning to the bar. “Join me, yeah?”

“As if I ain’t gonna drink my own damn purchase,” Zeki grunted, hefting himself down onto the seat in front of her, as she’d helped herself to sitting on the hotpot table directly. If he’d meant to fluster her with his proximity, he should’ve remembered who he was dealing with, as Jo quite happily propped her feet across his knees before bending to pour him another glass.

Her eyes were clear and her smile more muted, even as her delight rolled off her in waves—seemingly just for him in that moment. Zeki could feel eyes all over the two of them, but could hardly care when he saw something in her face. Something he’d seen before on a night not all that different from this one.

It was never truly cold in Kilima, but Zeki was thankful that his Winterlights garb had a bit more padding than his usual morning coat as he hawked his wares all night long at the annual Lunar New Year market. The chill in the air was perfectly tolerable, but the breeze that came off the nearby lake from time to time had some folks shivering and holding their wishing lanterns in their hands just a little longer, hoping to ease some feeling back into their icy fingers from the tiny flames inside.

Eyes glancing toward the tree that held his own newly-minted wish, Zeki twitched a small smile at the memory of being harassed into participating by a human, of all things.

A certain human that was making her own fun at the market, it seemed.

Across the fairground, Zeki could see a single person bouncing around the amphitheater—recognizable even at this distance as Jo from the unmistakable shock of fiery hair flowing behind her and whipping in the frozen wind. Maybe she was trying to keep warm by running around so hectically, or—and Zeki chuckled to himself as he could just make out her barking curses of frustration from all the way over at his stall—she simply didn’t know how the fireworks game functioned.

Most folks interacted with the rows of hourglass drums once for the novelty and a check off on their stamp cards, but left the theater for greener—and more profitable—pastures at the numerous hotpot tables scattered around the vast dock space. The game really attracted the crowds; Zeki was thinking he oughta add some to the Underground after this—maybe slip mention of them into his chats with folks as they came over to peruse his stall’s selection.

But Zeki wasn’t surprised to see Jo going against the grain; she did things on her own time, in her own way, and at her own discretion—but that wasn’t to imply she ever told anyone “no.” It was fairly simple to surmise that she was a fire type personality from how easily she did favors for the villagers—as if all her frenetic running and jumping right now wasn’t a dead enough giveaway for the same conclusion.

But there was more to her too, and the more is what interested him the most.

The village bells struck 3AM and Zeki let down the awning to close up his stall, pocketing the key after turning the lock. Jova was still doing whatever it was she was trying to do, and, figuring he didn’t rightly have anywhere to be for a few hours at least, he ambled her way, in the opposite direction of the dispersing crowds.

Sure, in this moment she was all fire—practically the element personified: bright hair chaotic and flowing, her cheeks red and breath coming fast from exertion. She was like an ember cast off a bonfire by a stray breeze, twisting and floating and flying and dancing through the night air.

But then there was the other part of her, and Zeki was treated to seeing it as she finally succeeded in playing the correct succession of drum beats fast enough to trigger the fireworks display.

A chorus of awe-inspiring and ear-splitting wails and explosions and roars rent the now-still and silent airs of the fairgrounds apart—not a soul was here any longer, save the two of them. Colors twirled into the fog hanging lowly over the eerily calm waters of the lake, reflecting mirror-images spinning wildly away from each other as the rockets chased the heavens, bursting into petals of sparks and riding the wind before fizzling out.

The giant Maji dragon came to shape as the finale picked up speed, burning on nothing but its own internal inertia, and, perhaps, the will of the human who had called it forward to scorch the night. A pillar of light erupted from the dragon’s mouth, carving a harmless but mystifying path through the market. And, just as sunlight began to hint at the horizon line, the god coiled upward, then out over the fairgrounds, leaving in its wake a sparkling, shining, beautiful trail of sparks and lanterns.

Beautiful, yeah. That’s the word.

The word for the fireworks, and for the look of intense and satisfied calm on Jo’s face as she watched what she’d wrought, with her own hands and all on her own—the only sign betraying her efforts being the hitch of her chest, which quieted the longer she stood in repose, leaned against the final drum, her elbow bent and hand holding her tilted head.

She was as steady and stubbornly unmoved as the earth, and as warm as the campfires her people built to dot the planet’s surface. A baffling and incredible tie between the competing elements in her, which coalesced in the strongest damn heart Zeki’d maybe ever known.

“I wanted to see if I could do it on my own,” she said, apparently having noticed him watching her.

Zeki hummed to signal he heard her, and that, coincidentally, she was the one he was here for. Jova dropped her arm and pushed off from the drum, waving a hand to ask him to follow her as she moved to sit in the long and tickling grasses of the dewy hill behind the theater. He followed her silently, seeing a thought burning behind her eyes—curiously wondering if she’d speak her mind should he leave the room for her words to fill.

And finally it surfaced as Jo plopped down, her hands braced behind her as she let her head fall back, eyes to the skies. “I spend so much time doing things with other folks now, for other folks now, that, I don’t know, I suppose I wanted to know I still could do something on my own,” she admitted, letting the silence hang for a moment before pivoting her head to catch his gaze, still standing beside her. “That’s probably silly.”

Zeki tsked, shooing off her insecurities, “Hardly. Self-reliance is a skill you shouldn’t ever let go soft.” Then, sensing she needed it, he sat with her, only grimacing slightly at the dirt he imagined he could already feel working its way onto his fine clothing.

“I like the suit,” Jova said, apparently having noticed his discomfort. “I feel like, in the Before, I might’ve had a more eloquent compliment for you. But now, my brain’s got less use for 5-gold-piece words.”

Zeki chuckled lightly. “I’ve heard you say ‘posh.’”

“Have I?” she asked, momentarily stunned before covering her mouth and giggling. “Oh right, the night we met. I do remember.” And then there she was, going and taking his hand, spinning the ring on his pinkie as though compelled to do it to prove the strength of her memory. Zeki wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to how easily it came to her to touch him like she did.

“Anything else coming back to you?” he asked, trying to move the conversation anywhere else.

“Nah,” Jo sighed, giving his hand a final squeeze before releasing him and returning her eyes to the fading stars, the rolling sunrise beginning to cast purple and coral-orange light onto her form. “I’m not bothered, I guess. It might hurt more to know what’s gone, you know?”

Zeki could understand that. After all, how many times had he stared for too long at some random grouping of stars on his way home from the Underground, wondering if that one was where his people came from? Only to get a tight, sharp pain in his heart for all the good his purposeless longing got him.

Maybe Jo needed to know she wasn’t alone in that empty, pointless endeavor—that he too gazed into the abyss that never gazed back, neither for good nor bad.

“Us ‘Malkis have been on Palia for centuries,” he started, choosing to watch the gentle lapping of the lake against the far rock wall surrounding the fairgrounds’ clearing. “Got no idea where we came from, how we got here. Just that we’re here.”

She smiled a little at him, so he kept going. “Spent a lotta time thinkin’ about what ‘home’ is, what it means to me and folks like me. Wasted even more time on tryin’ to divine what we were like before here—searchin’ my soul for some scrap of culture ingrained in me so profoundly that it couldn’t be worn away.

But that’s the thing, kid: there ain’t no serial number engraved deep enough that it can’t be filed off.”

Jo was quiet, and Zeki was made aware that he was being a bit morose.

But then she spoke, resting a hand on his again. “That’s kind of sad. I mean, isn’t it? At least a little?”

“Everything in life turns a little bit sad eventually,” he replied, but, wanting to soften the truth no one had been kind enough to soften for him, he held her hand back. “The upshot is that you get to choose how to feel about it. No one can decide for you how you react to being a single small person in a world devoid of grand destinies. No one but you.”

“And then all you gotta do is make the choice that you want,” she tried to chuckle, her lips quirking in some approximation of a smile. “One should be so lucky.”

“Hey now, don’t be disparaging choice,” Zeki said. “The power—the freedom—in choice... Kid, there’s nothing more precious.”

One day he might tell her just how precious, but today might not be the time. And Zeki told himself it was because she needed his shine more than his shadow right now; not at all because he was ashamed of his position, and how weak it would make him look to this human who burned all too damned brightly.

She could see there was something left unsaid between them, but for once she didn’t push, aside from holding his hand just that much tighter, as if daring him to try to leave her now.

“So,” Zeki said, the verbal equivalent of hopping from the shore of a sinking island to the only remaining boat at the dock. “Was it worth it? Setting off those fireworks all on your lonesome?”

Jo hummed, pursing her lips in thought. “I mean, I guess I did kind of get something out of it,” and she threaded her fingers with his to make her point. “And it wasn’t a bad workout.”

“Yeah, that I can tell,” Zeki said, full-on belly-laughing at his own joke, missing how Jova surreptitiously tried to sniff herself, as if checking for the scent of sweat. “Heh, not quite the same as last week when you spent every afternoon fishin’ down at the well. What—eh, shit—what was that word you taught me the other day? Human one.”

Jova tried to hide the embarrassed flush on her cheeks by turning her head away from him, as if deep in thought. “Oh,” she remarked. “You mean ‘hot?’”

It had just been some random morning; she’d been out mining at outcroppings of rock in the areas around town, trying to resupply her stores after she’d made some upgrades to her house. She shuffled into his store right as he was opening for the day, looking as tired as the dead but infinitely pleased with herself as she dropped a pristine and gorgeous citrine into his hands.

“You really givin’ this to me?” Zeki asked, eyes boggling at the rare gem before him, as yellow as a gold coin but markedly more valuable and, of course, more beautiful. “No take-backs, Jo.”

“So long as you smile at me, you can consider me paid up for it,” she smirked at him, practically laying herself across his counter and bending her elbows to hold her chin in her palms. She seemed pleased enough as he laughed at her characteristically strange behavior, but her gaze seemed to stop short of meeting his, instead lingering somewhere just below.

“A smile really worth that much to ya?” he asked, guessing that’s actually what she was looking at. Huh, maybe she had been being serious with him.

“Yours, yeah,” she said, still staring. “The gold tooth is hot.”

“That one, yeah,” Zeki said, nodding at her.

She seemed somewhat mortified that he’d remembered this little language lesson—maybe even assumed he hadn’t picked up on the meaning of the slang. But, not caring for misunderstandings, she seemingly forced herself to ask, “What about it?”

“The scent on ya when you spend all day fishin’ down in the Underground,” Zeki continued. “It’s ‘hot.’”

Jova was stunned silent, and Zeki had to figure he’d said something to alarm her. But before he could recant the non sequitur turned sideways-compliment, Jo was subtly rolling her eyes and muttering, “That fuckin’ figures.”

“What’s that, Jo?”

She refused to repeat herself, just giving him a look halfway between a smirk and a scowl. “Oh nothing. Now let’s head out of here before folks start to talk.”

“Play a round against me.”

Zeki finished his third glass of mead before scowling at Jo. “What, drinking my alcohol ain’t enough for ya? Now you wanna win my coin off me?”

“We don’t gotta play for coin,” she purred, trying very hard to be coy but also being very obvious about it.

“Coin’s all we got down here, Jo. And Dunya knows you can’t have much left on ya after the run you’ve had tonight.”

She grabbed her glass, taking a drag from it as she walked around the hotpot table and posted up on the side opposite him, apparently having already decided all on her own—and against his complaints—that a game was a foregone conclusion. “You like watching me lose, Zeki?”

“You drop the sugar out of your tone, kid. Losing coin’s no joke,” he said, furrowing his brows at the misplaced innocence in her voice.

“Then we play for bragging rights only,” she backed down a little, not wanting to strike at his nerves too much. At least not until she’d gotten him to agree to a hand.

Zeki sighed, pouring a new round for the both of them as a curious group of looky-loos began to gather around. “Fine,” he relented, surprising no one—and himself least of all. “Bragging rights if ya win. But, also, no mine time for at least three days if ya lose.”

That shut her up for a whole second and a half as she seemed genuinely sheepish about the injury he had to assume she’d hoped he hadn’t seen. Should’ve worn some shorts that covered just a bit more of her ass, then.

“Seems like a bad bet,” Jo eventually remarked, despite deploying the table’s mechanisms and taking the opening hand dealt to her. “Hardly fair.”

“Then don’t signal you’re willing to play for a pittance,” Zeki chortled, taking his cards and beginning to arrange them by suit.

Two-player hotpot was a different kind of game—much more reliant on reading your opponent, since it was just you and them. Sure you could draw from the pile and hope for luck, but paying attention to what the other person was giving away and reaching for was the real strat. Never discard what you see them wanting, not until you’ve got yourself lined up for a sweep anyway. Toss the trash and keep your options open with multiple sets of pairs.

So the game went, turn by turn. Jo never passed on a jab when she could get one in, and Zeki kept his thoughts on her tells.

And then, he won.

It seemed random, completely catching him by surprise. In fact, he was so stunned that he simply queued up another game. “Best two of three,” he muttered, still reeling and trying to remember what he’d even played.

“You’re the boss,” she just smirked, eyes on her cards and fingers dexterously rearranging her hand.

The next game went much the same, and his win was just as much of a surprise. Zeki frowned, starting another round without even asking her. “Your luck really is for shit tonight, Jo.”

“Damn good thing we aren’t playing for money, then,” she giggled, fanning herself with her cards as more and more bodies pressed in around them to ogle their heated game. “Although, if I really did have to go into debt, there’s no one else I’d rather sign myself away to.”

Someone in the crowd whistled, but Zeki was not having it. “That ain’t a joke,” he warned her, fully meaning it. He may not like being mean to his favorite human, but she was pushing a boundary with smiles that oughta be treated much more seriously than that.

Her crooked smirk morphed to reflect intense embarrassment—not because she hadn’t realized, but because she did and it fell totally flat. “I’m sorry, Zeki. You know that I know... what I know. And that it isn’t funny.” She kept her words vague—bordering on completely indiscernible—for his benefit, given the spotlight over them in this moment. After all, Zeki could count on one hand how many people actually knew the depths of shit he was in with the cartels.

And again, just a few turns later, Zeki was the victor. Jova closed the table down without a word and, now lacking their entertainment, the other humans let them be. It was just her, and the stern look he was giving her, as something clicked in his brain.

“It’s literally not possible to be so unlucky, Jo,” he said, voice laced with accusation. “There a reason you’re counting cards to lose?”

She actually seemed to be surprised he’d caught on, and then, a moment later, her eyes shone with admiration for him. “Bit stupid of me to do it against you. Should’ve thrown at least one of our games. Sloppy of me.”

“Throw a game by winning a game? Dunya, you are fuckin’ weird, girl,” Zeki said, rubbing a hand over his face and laying a hand over his forehead. “Well I know you got a reason, so, out with it.”

She had the nerve just to shrug, pouring more drink for herself and pushing the bottle across the table to him. “People like to win. It gets them to talk. And the more they talk, the more people know about this place.”

“I ain’t payin’ ya to advertise for me.”

“There was that one time with the flyers, couple months after I came here.”

He couldn’t help it, Zeki chuckled at that. “I didn’t pay ya for that job.”

“Says you,” she just answered cryptically.

He eyed her over the rim of his glass, watching her maintain an unnerving level of eye contact. Then, his tone even but tempered like steel, he told her, “I don’t want you wasting all your coin to lose games on my behalf. I do just fine, Jo.”

She rolled her eyes at that, pursing her lips and taking a moment to think up a comeback, apparently willing to die on this self-assigned hill. “I come to your shop every day,” she said.

“Yeah,” he admitted, “Always buying seeds, every damn day. You must have a farm to rival Daiya.”

Her lips quirked sarcastically. “You’d know if you ever bothered to visit me there.”

“Oh please, not this again,” Zeki groaned. “You tryin’ to change the subject? I’m giving you a talkin’-to here.”

“You live the closest to me, save for Sifuu or Chayne, and yet you never come over for a chat,” she continued to whine. “But for the record, I don’t keep most of what I buy.”

“You tell me you pitch them and I’ll kill ya, kid.”

She balked at that, and Zeki did feel a twinge of remorse for, even for a moment, thinking she would be so irresponsible. “I give some to the villagers, but most of them get bundled up in care packs for the newcomers.”

Of fucking course that’s what she did; he should’ve expected as much. “You mean to tell me in addition to givin’ me free marketing—that I didn’t fuckin’ ask for, thank you very much—that you’re also subsidizing the lives of newly awakened humans? You and what massive hordes of wealth?”

“I do pretty well here,” she said, not an ounce of boasting in her voice. Then, narrowing her eyes in a challenge at him, she added, “I seem to recall making a proposal for how to better use my money, in order to bail out a friend from an inhumanely unfair deal he’d been fooled into as a child—a proposal that was very soundly rejected.”

Dunya was she pushy tonight. “This what we’re doin’ tonight? We fightin’?” Zeki asked her in a low tone, and she just crossed her arms, not backing down even an inch.

Fine, Zeki thought to himself, standing from the stool he felt like he’d been sat at for hours now. She wants to do this now, then fine.

“You wanna have it out on your own damn anniversary, fine, Jo,” Zeki said, walking huffily to her side and taking her arm in his. “You’re on closing duty tonight,” he called to an already whining Reth as he lead Jova out of the Underground and started them on the path to her homestead.

Zeki had to admit, the scenery at Jo’s place was much more... flowery than he’d have expected from her. All around them, seeming to grow out of the very walls and even the ceiling of her workshop pavilion, were hundreds upon hundreds of flowers—all colors and shapes and levels of daintiness on offer. And while her house was a decent size and practically beckoning him inside with the promise of a cozy hearth, the garden just seemed to be the obvious place for an apparently overdue heart-to-heart with Jo.

“Badruu weren’t kiddin’ about that green thumb of yours, kid,” he took the time to praise her, lacking for any other way to open their dialogue after the long and tersely silent trip here. Zeki wasn’t sure where he’d gotten the idea that he had any right to treat her like some misbehaving and moody kid, when she very clearly had her life more together than he did. For Dunya’s sake, she’d literally grown herself furniture—the bench under her ass was formed from sturdy, twisting vines and tendrils of delicate blooming creepers.

Damn, the girl was fuckin’ magic—if not in the literal sense, than in the figurative. Suddenly Zeki felt rather small beside her, adjusting himself in the matching vine-like chair she’d offered him.

And then, just to fully show him just how far off the mark he’d been to get upset with her, Jova was apologizing to him before he even could. “I don’t want to fight, Zeki.”

He sighed, all four of his ears folding in on themselves in shame. “Nah, kid. I’m apologizing. Should cast myself at your feet to repent, you goddamned fuckin’ saint.” He was rewarded with a watery little smile. Then, figuring he’d best just get it all out there, he said, “I think about your offer every damn day, thinkin’ ‘maybe today’ll be the day I pull my head outta my own ass.’ But every day I embarrass myself, and let my pride win out.”

“I get it,” she said, voice small as her fingers unconsciously picked at a chip in the wood of the armrest beside her. “If there was a way I could anonymously drop all that money in your lap, I’d do it. But, well, I know how set you are on making the cartels obsolete.”

The douplifier, yeah. It had promise. “Plan’s a good one,” he said, defending it in factual terms, trying not to get emotions involved. She nodded, then hesitated.

“I just...” she sighed, eyes downcast. “I just wish we could get you out first. It makes me sick to go to bed free every night, knowing the chain you’ve got locked around your throat.”

“Shit, kid,” he said, feeling his chest seize with something not quite discomfort but infinitely stronger. “Can’t really remember the last time someone cared so much. I might puke.”

Her face scrunched up like she was holding back a fit of giggles, but she did eventually allow him a smile, even if her eyes weren’t entirely meeting his. “Sappy. If this is how you fight, maybe we should do it more,” she tittered softly, finally raising her eyes to his, lids heavy over her shining amber irises. And it stirred a part of him that Zeki hadn’t had a name for for a very—very—long time.

Fuck.

Trying to change course, scratching a hand at the back of his suddenly sweating neck, he chuckled. “Please, way you are with all them in town, I’m sure half the villagers are makin’ pins for ya as we speak.”

He had to wonder if she knew what he meant—pins were a Majiri thing after all.

“Well,” she seemed mildly uncomfortable for a tick, slowly drawing her nails up and down her arm, “I wouldn’t say half.” So someone had had the talk with her. Shit, something about that made Zeki’s fur bristle. “Besides, it’s not like... there’s a future there. I mean, probably not. Because, well, I’m not even sure Einar knows what a relationship is.”

“E-Einar?” Zeki asked before he can shut his own mouth. The galdur? That Einar?

Apparently not fully grasping the reason for his shock, Jova continued, cheeks growing redder and redder as she did, and eyes bouncing around to any spot other than his face. “Well, the problem with the other thing is that... well, uh—gods, how do I say this?” she stopped herself mid-ramble, taking a deep breath, and steadying her gaze. “I think that Najuma needs a mom, and I can’t—just can’t—be that.”

Zeki’s brain refused to follow her words for a millisecond before clarity came to him. “You mean you and Hodari…?”

“I know he wants to ask,” she confirmed in a small voice, frowning with the most pathetic and abject sadness. “But I care too much about that kid to come into her life with promises I can’t keep.”

“What, you plannin’ on going somewhere?” he snorted. “Gonna need ya to give me two weeks’ notice first so I can find a new loser card shark.”

He’d said it as a joke to lighten the mood and lift the sad little pout on her lips, but Jo continued to be dead serious. “Kilima may be my home, but I don’t know that I’m ready to commit to family.”

Something clicked. “The kid reminds you of your sister,” he said, matching her frown now. “Oh Jo, I’m sorry.”

What else could he fucking say? The line she was surely used to by now was that her sister—the one that called her Jojo—may still reawaken one day, like she herself had; but the sentiment had stopped being much of a balm months ago. Sure that day may still come, but that hardly made every day without her much easier. Especially when there wasn’t anything she could do about it—they were separated by all conceivable (and just as many unknowable) forces of nature, and all she could do was wait.

There was no manager to take her complaints to, no palms she could grease for a favor. She just had to wait and see, and waiting was torture.

“So, um, yeah,” she said awkwardly, trying to hide how she had to wipe at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Heartdrop lilies, pins—all that’s fine. But anything more, I dunno. It feels like too much.”

“You know about the lilies, too? Damn girl, I ain’t givin’ you enough credit, apparently,” he teased, but, again, she met his eyes with stone-cold sobriety.

“Zeki, I gave you a heartdrop lily.”

Shit, yeah she had—must’ve been months ago now. “And I gave it right fuckin’ back to ya, you silly thing.”

At the time, he had thought she didn’t know the meaning behind the flower. But, thinking back on it, that was also around the time she’d started getting close to Hodari. There’s no way she hadn’t know.

Double fuck.

“Look behind you, at that flowerbed over there,” she told him, pointing a finger over his shoulder. Leaning back and holding tightly onto the chair’s armrests as he felt his head spinning, Zeki very easily found what she was referencing. Mixed in with a swath of lavender and chapaa tail flowers was, very distinctly, a tall, thriving heartdrop lily, glowing softly in the dusky early morning light and very nearly humming with its own quiet song. “When you gave it back to me—and broke my fucking heart in the process, thanks very much—I transplanted it here.”

“Why?” he asked, feeling stupid and confused and dazed.

“Because I couldn’t bear to watch it die,” she said, voice carrying just the hint of a tremble at its edges. “And because, maybe stupidly, I hoped you might one day change your damn stubborn mind.”

It was arresting how much like herself she appeared in this moment: the perfect balance between earth and fire. She was sitting stock still on the bench—surrounded all around by greenery brought to life by her own hand—and so rock solid steady that she didn’t appear to even be breathing. But her eyes, Dunya did they burn—angry and sad and full of that special endless, scorching, self-propelling kind of hope.

Zeki didn’t know what to do with himself. His hands were restless, twitchy fingers encircling his wrist and rubbing at his racing pulse. His mouth wouldn’t work and his gaze couldn’t settle. But, seemingly, his feet were listening the worst of all, as he’d somehow found himself standing, moving, with the apparent desire to flee.

But then he forced himself to stop, to look at Jova as he hovered beside her, down into her big, yellow eyes—fully open to him, beseeching him to stop being such a goddamned coward. He cared about her, obviously. She was his favorite human, definitely. Hells, she might even be his favorite person, unquestioningly. But did he want to entangle himself in her life on a deeper level than the one they were already so comfortable existing in?

His eyes fell to her knees, now digging into the hard vines of the bench as she turned to face him fully. She gave so much, she asked for so little. What had she been in the mines to collect when she got that injury? Had someone in the village asked for a rare gem—or maybe the newcomer care packages needed iron bars?

He sat beside her, his mind whirring away.

What about last week, when it had been her hands? She’d laughed airily and waved off his frustrated concern, saying she’d just been digging too long at her gardens plots—market season was coming up, and everyone could do with a little extra stock to sell. Jova didn’t have a stall at the market, but Delaila and Reth did.

His fingers reached for the edge of her already frayed bandage.

And what would it be next time? What peril would she next find herself in, in the name if chasing down something she didn’t need but someone else had mentioned they were searching for? What if she went to chop wood and felled a tree on top of herself? Or she stayed out too late in the cold to catch a rare fish and caught some awful illness? What if she really did one day lose all her coin trying to keep his Underground exciting for everyone but her?

The sound of his name rolling breathily off Jova’s tongue brought Zeki’s mind back to his body, where he found himself running his thumb along an old, silver scar on Jova’s leg, his other fingers curled around her thigh and sinking into her soft flesh.

He hadn’t even noticed the sensation creeping up on him, but Jo saying his name like that—fuck if it didn’t suddenly set every single nerve in his body on fire. Gods had he been stupid.

“Jo, you know my life ain’t fully mine. I can’t promise you no pin. But if you’re serious about me, then, well...” Zeki summoned his courage, “I figure I’m the luckiest bastard in this town.”

Alright, so not only was he stupid, but he was, apparently, still a bit of a coward—how lucky for him that Jo was a physical girl. Because Zeki was only left to curse his inability to verbalize his desire for a moment before she was flying to fill the space between them, pressing her lips over his with a keening, desperate insistence.

Kissing isn’t exactly a priority in the ‘Malki culture, but Jo didn’t seem too determined to linger on it for long. At least, not the kind of chaste pecks the Majiri tended to give their partners in public. No, Jo seemed contented with a few such kisses before, compelled by her own lack of patience, she broke their connection and repositioned herself so she could swing a leg over his lap, settling herself on top of him so effortlessly you’d think she’d been practicing for this very moment.

“Damn,” Zeki breathed, chest hitching and pulse thundering in his veins. He was used to having to look very slightly up at her—already much less than most humans, who could have as much as two feet over him. But now, at this angle, she truly eclipsed him. And, if he was being honest with himself, it was hot.

Dunya bless that human word, it fit Jo like a glove.

“I dunno,” she hummed lightly, voice darkening with want the same as her pupils. “Give me some time, I might convince you otherwise.”

“Heh, wouldn’t mind sitting back to watch you try,” Zeki joked around a quickly-tightening throat.

“I’ve got a few tricks,” she said softly, taking his hand and raising it to her lips. “But I think you might want to do more than just watch. Participation’s important.” Then she licked a path up the underside of one of his fingers before taking the digit into her mouth.

She was warm and soft, and her tongue was just as skillful at teasing him like this as it was with words. Feeling like he was being reduced to a puddle beneath her, all Zeki could do was watch with rapt attention, groaning as though in pain as she circled his finger and spun the ring on it with her tongue, using the small stone studs as an anchor.

With an ache he felt all over, Zeki forced himself to speak—lacking eloquence but at least making his intentions clear with brevity: “You got a bed?”

She smiled all the way up to her eyes, withdrawing his finger from her mouth, but not before flicking the tip of his claw with the flat of her tongue—giving him all kinds of new ideas about how to put her apparent skill to use.

“Several,” she said. Then, shrugging at his look of horny confusion, added, “I like to build furniture.”

“Well let’s start with the closest and work our way out,” he quipped, shocking a pleasant blush onto Jo’s face.

“This way,” she said excitedly, hopping off his lap and moving a hand to the scarf tied at his neck.

It was dizzying how turned on it made him to be lead behind her like a plumehound on a leash, but even still, the need to be at least a little dominant in the forthcoming event made Zeki bend slightly, lowering his center of gravity, before scooping Jova up over his shoulder in a single, clean motion. Screaming and giggling and playfully beating her fists against his back, Jova nevertheless gave up any attempts to struggle and allowed Zeki to carry her wherever he deemed fitting.

“You be good back there, now,” he warned halfheartedly as he noticed her deft little hands running along the length of his tail, before eventually settling at the tip and very carefully winding it about one of her fingers. A course of pure electricity ran back up his tail at her touch, spiking at the base and spreading a pleasant current through the rest of him.

He needed to find that bed. Now.

“Bedrooms are on the right,” Jova said helpfully, but not for a second letting up on her petting. Zeki double-timed his steps to follow her directions, nearly releasing a strangled moan of relief when he found what he’d been looking for. Instead, he flipped Jo back over his shoulder, where she crashed softly, harmlessly, against the soft bed.

“Oh good, you chose my favorite one,” she giggled, laughing more fully at the bewildered look he gave her. Bouncing slightly on the feather mattress, she’d very conveniently already opened her legs for him, and Zeki wasted no time standing between them as he tugged her closer to the edge. Jova’s breath caught in her throat at the rough but welcome treatment, wordlessly holding her arms up and out to receive him.

“Nah, not yet,” Zeki said, hands sliding up her deliciously soft thighs as his eyes settled at their apex, where a spot was already showing her mounting pleasure. If the universe was really so cruel as to deny this ever happening again, he’d never let himself live down not taking the chance to taste her. But first: “Jo, you tell me to stop, and I stop, yeah?”

With her nod, Zeki set to work removing her shorts. The button was a bit of a fumble for him, being designed solely with Majiri and human fingers in mind, so he distracted Jo from her building impatience by lifting her shirt and kissing his way down her stomach, soundlessly sliding her bottoms off her while she whined. And, gods, she was soaked.

He gave an experimental drag of his thumb down her slit, wanting to test her sensitivity and calibrate his attention accordingly. She keened, back arching a little off the mattress as her eyes fluttered shut, but every noise she made as he stroked her was a good one. Figuring she was good and ready—and maybe even seconds from tugging on his ears in exasperation—Zeki lowered himself to her slit, breathing deep and using every braincell he had, just for that first moment, to commit this image to memory.

Peppering kisses around her was all well and good, but he couldn’t hold himself back from the main event for all too long, pointing his tongue and running it up her sex like he just had with his thumb.

“Sh-shit,” Jova breathed above him, a hand reaching out for him and inadvertently playing with the ring dangling from his lower left ear. The unintended connection still seemed to please her, though, as she—carefully—hooked a finger through it, applying just the slightest pressure as Zeki began to work her harder.

As he flattened out his tongue to lick a wider stripe against her, the whimper she released was just far enough removed from comfort that Zeki stopped, mouth still hovering over her and breath cool against her burning thighs. “You ok, Jo?”

“Um, yeah,” she said, blinking herself out of her haze. “Your tongue—it’s just—well...”

“Bad?”

“No!” she quickly corrected. “Gods, no. The texture is just a little rougher than I’m used to, but, ah, I like it.” He waited a moment, giving her time to recant, in case she was only saying it to appease him. “I... really like it,” she admitted in a clear, but almost embarrassed voice, made even more evident as truth when she threw her other hand over her face to try to cover her grin.

“Hey, it’s my first cross-species encounter too,” Zeki told her, blowing a stream of air over her cunt and smirking at the shocked little giggle she gave him. “Some stuff may be a little different—for both of us—but that’s kinda the excitin’ part.”

Peeking over her stomach, Zeki met Jova’s eyes, lids heavy and pupils blown wide. She caught her blush-red lower lip in her teeth and reached a hand out to hold his cheek.

“Yeah,” she said simply, voice dreamy and slow and aching with want. Zeki’s heart seized in his chest, strangling him and rooting him in that moment as her smile grew and her hand petted his face. “You... ready for more?”

Fuck yes. Normally Zeki would want to make sure she was ready (he hadn’t ever had a human before, but he figured their physiology couldn’t be that different—at least in that regard); but he figured his claws might be a bridge too far for Jo, especially after the surprise with his tongue. So he’d just have to appease himself with thoughts of ‘next time’ when it came to putting his fingers in her.

It was warm in Jo’s cottage and Zeki was wearing about three layers too many, but he had already been straining against his trousers for several hours-long minutes now; so his patience only allowed him time enough to undo his buttons to pull his member free. And, while he was no stranger to gassing himself up, he definitely wasn’t imagining the way Jo bit her lip even harder as she eyed him.

“It alright?” he asked her, running a hand along himself in preparation but fully ready to back down if she wasn’t at ease.

She swallowed around a sudden tightness in her throat. “Y-yeah.”

Zeki knew there was something left unsaid in her mind, but she didn’t look scared—just a touch of apprehension, which, to be fair, he could also feel clouding his own head. But she wasn’t tense, in fact, her body only seemed to open up more to him as he waited. And when he felt her feet creeping around behind his legs to drag him closer, he figured she was giving him every signal to go ahead.

Sliding a knuckle up and down her slit just a few more times, Zeki gathered enough of her slick to run a thin coat of it over his cock. Then, holding her gaze the entire time to monitor for discomfort, he lined himself up and slowly—achingly, agonizingly, slowly—he pressed into her.

“Hey, breathe with me, Jo,” Zeki spoke, voice soft partly to calm her but also from the incredible feeling of her. Gods, she was everything soft and warm. She was like velvet—plush—surrounding him and pressing on him and holding him in her.

“S-sorry,” she choked, pulling a lungful of air into her and letting it sit in her chest as her eyes screwed shut and sweat beaded her forehead. “You’re just—ah—um, not bigger per say, but, well, wider than a human.”

“Oh.” Well, that was an unforeseen complication. He couldn’t really change his—ahem— circumference to suit her.

“It’s ok, it’s ok,” she repeated like a mantra, face relaxing bit by bit as he stayed sat inside her, unmoving. “Humans are, um,” and she seemed to grapple with word choice for a few broken seconds before settling on: “stretchy.”

And then she mimed this motion with her hands that could really only unpleasantly be described as gaping. The absurdity and distinct unsexiness of the description hit her first, and she was immediately laughing so fully that Zeki felt her cunt clamp even harder down on him, drawing a guttural and unbidden moan from him, which Jo matched after taking a half-second to process it.

“Keep talking to me,” she suggested, panting with exertion but fueled by his noises. “I like... when you talk.”

“Heh, voice kink, huh?” Zeki teased, running a hand softly over her stomach before moving to hold either side of her hips, lifting her bottom half up and resting her legs over his shoulders. The angle seemed to please Jo, who whimpered appreciatively. “Small wonder why you got mixed up with Pavel, then.”

He doesn’t really know why he’s talking about Hodari right now, but Jo needed him to talk and he can’t get his brain to think of anything else to say. “Bet he had somethin’ real cute he called you,” he persisted, and Jo vaguely nodded her head and Zeki started to ease out of her.

“Darling,” she said, her breath coming faster and faster the farther her dragged the walls of her cunt. “He called me darling.”

“Yeah, that sounds right,” Zeki said, putting nearly a hundred percent of his effort into keeping his voice steady, even as he wanted to shudder at the feeling of her. “Though, ‘course, he probably said it different. More like darlin’.”

The purr of his voice, husky with barely concealed desire, had Jo crying, slapping a hand over her mouth in surprise while her sex simultaneously squeezed the head of Zeki’s cock before he could slip completely free. Dunya, the unfairness of not having been sheathed inside her when that happened.

He wouldn’t time things that poorly again.

But he didn’t want the miner’s name for her—his face or his voice—in her head from this point on.

“Though, I gotta say,” Zeki continued, feeling tension building in every muscle in his body the longer he maintained his excruciating pace, wanting nothing more than to slam back home, rutting his hips right against hers. “Darlin’ is a bit sweet for you. Bit old-fashioned. If you asked me—and, heh, I think maybe you might wanna, now—” she huffed a laugh that gave way to a slow pant, “—I’d say you’re more of a kitten.”

This time he’d gotten it right, and his reward had Zeki’s head lolling forward as Jo’s walls twitched along his entire length. “You-you are mean,” she laughed, having trouble catching her breath in embarrassment at her own reaction. Which was kind of cute, considering the situation.

“You feeling good now, kitten?” Zeki probed, fully enjoying the feeling of just this, but also dying to move more. Her eyes opened to meet his, and there was a sharpness to them that meant she probably wasn’t as far gone on the trail of lust as she needed to be.

“Can we change positions?” she asked with an open and unworried lucidity, which was also pretty fucking hot. “Sometimes riding is easier—lets me control the pace.”

That sounded fun, whatever the fuck it was; so Zeki let Jo arrange him on the bed: sat with his back against the headboard and her straddling his lap. Not that far removed from how they’d been outside.

Well, except now Jo was pulling her top off, her long hair slipping through the neck of the garment and settling in gorgeous curls around her form. It felt silly to be so awestruck by the fully-naked sight of a person he’s, at this point, already been inside of; but Zeki can’t help but admire her curves and her softness and the little hairs all over her body that stood up to meet his fingers when he ran his hands over every inch of her.

“I’m, uh,” Jo said haltingly, stopping herself before she said something as catastrophically unnecessary as ‘I’m gonna lower myself on you now.’ She instead took his cock into her hand, marveling slightly at the retracted barbs, like ridges, running all down his length, hardly noticing as Zeki’s pulse raced the longer she touched him.

“Jo,” he breathed, then, more insistently the longer she appeared not to hear him: “Kitten, please.”

“Oh!” she snapped back into her body, cheeks flushing. Not even wasting time with an apology, Jova raised herself up on her knees, then, slow and careful, she lowered back down, until her hips were flush with his lap. They both breathed out in a long, steady stream together, and then Jova—finally—began to move.

“Shit,” Zeki sighed, his head falling back against the headboard only momentarily before figuring he couldn’t let Jo do all the work. His hands were the perfect size to hold her hips, which made her stable enough that she could free up one of the hands braced on his shoulder to instead fall to her own breast, her fingers rolling the bud between them until it hardened and pebbled.

The more she touched herself, the more comfortable she seemed to be, and the slow up-and-down of her hips became more of an intentional roll, something of a circular movement that had his cock hitting every part inside her.

“That’s a good girl,” Zeki encouraged her, drawing a pleased moan from her. Then, remembering how she liked his tongue against her slit, he raised his mouth to her breasts, his hot, labored breath tickling her while he considered how soft and delicate they appeared. Luckily, it was just the top side of his tongue that had the sandpaper-like spurs along it; using the underside to lap at her was just as good, and he immediately had Jo squirming, singing her pleasure with little whispered phrases.

“I—” Jo stuttered, her mouth falling open and her eyes squeezing in concentration. Zeki’s hands gripped her harder, now helping to pull her on and off him, replacing the grinding sensation with a faster bounce that had her breasts bobbing in tandem. “Shit Zeki, I’m gonna come.”

That was fast, Zeki thought to himself, surprised but also maybe just a bit impressed with himself. But, as Jo cracked her eyes open at him, he realized, with some dawning horror, that he’d voiced that little thought out loud.

“Heh—heh—how fuckin’ dare you,” she huffed, setting his heart at ease as she smiled at him, not even slowing their pace. “See if I give you another one later, you dick.”

“Later?” Zeki choked, watching in awe as she dropped a hand to her clit and pressed with her middle finger—the ones on either side closing around his cock as she rode him.

“If you’re good to me,” she whispered, drawing her face close to his—so close that he could lick the sweat off her. “Then you’ll get to feel this more than once before you finish.”

And then she struck him dumb as, with one final sigh and the most stunningly wicked moan, Jo reached her climax, falling down with gravity and keeping him fully sheathed as her walls fluttered and twitched and pulled him deep.

The sensation was electric, and it flipped a switch in Zeki—his pupils dilating and his fur standing on end as the quietly-building pleasure in his nerves started to bark, demandingly, for satiation. Even still, Zeki bit back at the feral instinct in him to at least warn Jova before he rolled her. “Moving you, kitten.”

She nodded limply, fully letting Zeki position her as he liked, which, in the case of his current headspace, meant face-down ass-up with him behind her. The view had been lovely while she sat on top of him, but, if he was going to chase his own high, something deep and primal in Zeki told him that it had to be done this way.

But Jova was anything but obedient, and she wasn’t going to let him have his way so easily. Distracted as he was by taking himself in his hand to once more line up with her slit, Zeki didn’t even notice Jova stirring, moving to push herself up on her palms. Truthfully, she was momentarily stunned back into a moaning mess as he slid back inside her with a thoroughly filthy, wet noise.

“Gods you feel so nice, kitten,” he said, voice shuddering and hitching with each increasingly wild thrust. It felt so good, it felt so right: her under him, and him above her. One of his hands held her hip in a grip that had the chance to bruise, while the other slid along her slick back, up and down her spine.

And then, very suddenly to Zeki’s mind but probably more of a slow ascent in actuality, Jova had managed to right herself, vertically, to be parallel with his body—throwing an arm behind her to encircle his neck and lock him in place tightly against her. Somehow, when he’d been too caught up in the feeling of her, her hands had managed to climb their way up the headboard to give her enough leverage to lean back on her knees into him.

“Damn it, Jo,” Zeki growled, stilling in her grasp. “Can’t let me have just a single moment of control? Really?”

“Shut up, did it for a reason,” she laughed, sounding tired but pleased with her misbehavior. And then she reached around to take his hand in hers, lowering them both to a space on her stomach just above her sex. “Feel that?”

As much as he wanted to hold onto his frustration and spite-fuck her into the mattress until they were both sputtering, incoherent messes covered in sweat and cum, Zeki could instantly tell what she meant: there was a definite bulge in her lower abdomen, accommodated mostly by the intensely close position. Fuck, she was so right.

But he wasn’t gonna fucking tell her that—not in so many words, anyway. “Yeah, I fuckin’ do. Not sure what you want me to fuckin’ do about in when you’ve got me in a headlock, though.”

“I believe in you,” she teased lightly, manually clenching her walls around his cock at an even but less-than-slow tempo. And, with her encouragement—or goading, perhaps—Zeki did find the ability to hold the impossible position and still thrust into her, the bulge under their hands growing and shrinking and growing and shrinking each time.

“When you’re right, you’re right,” Zeki groaned, feeling a coil begin inside him. With Jo holding onto him, he was able to move his other hand to her breast, rolling her nipple a little less carefully than before, making her shout out, her voice edged with a more wanton character than she probably would have liked. “You’re a brat.”

“You—” she choked on her voice as Zeki thrust particularly forcefully, his cock twitching in pleasure to have shut up her. “You like it.”

He did like it, and he liked this a lot, but also, at the same time, his release was proving elusive—and he could tell Jo was wearing out. Being uncommunicative hadn’t gotten him anything so far—Jo had just reasserted herself as soon as she found herself in a position where she couldn’t control at least something. So, Zeki bit down on his instinctual urge to take—to claim—and instead asked: “Jo, you ok if I flip you on your back?”

She tried turning her face to see his, but couldn’t quite manage it. “You really need to be on top that bad, baby?”

“That ain’t it,” Zeki sighed, his mouth pressed  to her shoulder blade: the unspoken wish to just take her skin between his teeth and have her understand his intentions through his bite. “I need... to see your face.”

She made some small noise that he couldn’t decipher, but she also loosed her arm from around him and fell forward onto her hands, letting him pull out before flipping over and holding out her arms to him, not unlike when he’d first laid her down on this bed what felt like hours ago.

“Come get me,” she smiled, biting her lip and coiling her hand around the scarf still at his neck. Her other hand deftly undid the top few buttons on his waistcoat, and Zeki took that as a sign to shed his top few layers. Instantly the air around him felt cooler, and his harried brain slowed back to that lovely, floaty, hazy place it had been when he’d first tasted her on his tongue.

“That better?” she asked him, running a hand lovingly, almost reverently, through the cream-colored fur on his chest.

“Leagues,” he sighed, butting his forehead briefly against hers—a moment of quiet repose to recenter himself—before he once again fell into her. Poor thing, she looked so tired; but her body accepted him with ease, and her face didn’t betray a single note of discomfort.

He started slow, setting his pace to their breaths, but, the deeper he pushed, the faster their breathing became, and his tempo quickened to match.

“Gods,” Jova sighed, her voice quivering as her head pressed deeper into the pillow under her. “Got no fuckin’ idea how long I’ve been waiting to get here.”

Talking wasn’t the easiest thing in the world when she was moving her legs to circle his back, locking him in place and drawing him even further into her. Zeki grunted his pleasure softly, dropping his gaze to briefly watch their joining.

“You’re takin’ me so well, kitten,” he praised her, the words coming to his mind from nowhere, and passing over his lips without a second thought. Jova whined, angling her hips to better meet his, rolling with his thrusts, as the coil began to wind once more in him. “Fuck, you could ask me for anything right now and I’d give it to you.”

“A pin, then?” she teased, mouth hanging open as she panted, even while she smirked at him.

“Hilarious,” he huffed, falling from his palms to his elbows to feel more of her skin against his. Jova’s arm flopped back onto the mattress bonelessly, hand searching for his, just as it always seemed to be. He offered it willingly without so much as stuttering in his ever-increasing pace, and she threaded her fingers with his, holding their entangled hands over her heart.

“Well, maybe something else, then.”

“Jo,” Zeki implored, eyebrows furrowing as he tried to concentrate.

“I’ve been wanting to ask anyway,” she ignored him, even as he tried desperately to fuck the breath out of her. “And I figure if I can’t get the courage to ask when you’re balls deep in my cunt, then I probably never will.”

“Jo, please,” Zeki groaned, her words like a hot knife to his spine—the most incredible mixture of pain and anticipation. He was so close, so very, very close.

Her eyes bore into his—yellow to green—as she asked: “Would you be my Shepp?”

“Wh-what?” he stammered, his hips failing to keep time, pounding in a frantic, chaotic rhythm against hers, making the most simultaneously unholy and divine noise.

“There’s no one I trust more.”

Trust.

Zeki was coming, still buried deep inside the velvety walls of her, before he could even anticipate his imminent climax. As he spasmed, face pressed into the space between her shoulder and her neck, he heard Jo gasp—felt the moan travel all through her chest and up her throat, heard her pulse jolt in her veins—as she orgasmed again, spurred on by his own.

The two of them remained as they were—interlocked, breathing hard, sweating into the once-clean bed sheets. Neither moved, neither said a word. Neither wanted to break that sweet, intoxicating post-sex magic.

But eventually Jo turned her head to press a line of little kisses down the side of his head, and Zeki took that as his cue to pull out. She made a sound that morphed from displeasure—born of intense soreness—to contentment as, perhaps against her pre-supposition of what would happen next, he pulled her to him, her back to his chest and all the limbs he could manage wrapped around her.

Zeki stewed in the silence, knowing full-well he’d left a direct question unanswered. A pin was one thing—an easy enough ‘no,’ given his position. Like he’d said: his life wasn’t his. He was indebted, indentured—bound by his contract and beholden to any passing whim of the cartel. He served in Kilima at the pleasure of the Adders, and could just as effortlessly be removed from this place—his whole life uprooted and transplanted somewhere else, like that beautiful heartdrop lily Jo kept waiting for him in her garden.

But a Shepp? She wanted him to be her mentor? Be part of his family? Hadn’t she said she wasn’t ready for family?

Still, Jo never asked for something she didn’t truly want—girl valued other folks’ time too much for games. Zeki could trust that she meant it when she’d asked.

Trust.

Fuck.

When was the last time Zeki had had someone put trust in him? When was the last time he’d been given something so delicate, so breakable and fragile—something this devastating to lose?

“I hear you thinking back there,” Jo whispered into the lightening air around them, surprising Zeki out of his reverie. “If you want to... need to... you can just—”

“Yes,” Zeki said hurriedly, his heart crushing at the thought of her trying to recant her request because of his own fucking misplaced indecisiveness. “I’ll do it. I want it.”

“You, ah,” she subtly cleared her throat, her hand finding his as it rested against her hip. “You sure?”

“Ain’t never been surer of anything in my pathetic life, kitten,” he rumbled, chest clenching as he felt her raising his hand to her lips, where she laid a kiss against each of his knuckles.

“Hmm, good,” she sighed, and Zeki could hear the soft little smile in her voice. Then she kind of shivered with a suppressed chuckle as she said, “Maybe next time I’ll get you to agree to the other thing.”

He felt compelled to temper her expectations, but he didn’t. Maybe a part of him—buried deep below all his daily surface-level thoughts of survival—wanted it too. Something more, something thrilling—something stupid and reckless and self-interested and of-the-moment. An impulsive choice made in the heat of the moment, for the promise of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

A second’s decision to change the rest of his life.

“Tell ya what, kitten,” Zeki murmured, his whiskers tickling her cheeks as he whispered into her ear. “You show me your second favorite bed, and maybe we’ll reopen that conversation.”

With that she finally turned to face him, her smile fragile only in how far it stretched her lips, her cheeks flushing with emotion. And her eyes: like two gold coins winking at him from his purse; a pair of shining citrines polished to their full luster; like binary stars floating, dancing, in space as some nameless, lost home planet silently orbited them.

She’d give herself in a second if he asked, but Zeki distinctly got the feeling he’d ask for her to take him first.

“Deal,” she said, her fingers idly, absentmindedly, spinning one of his rings as he moved to take her hand.