Noctisardor Bypass noseim

it was different.
it was good.
her nausea had begun to strengthen; heda couldn't think if she was late or adjacent to druid, and panicked every time she wasn't sure how their due dates might align. this had the effect of making her far more ill.
having thrown up breakfast down her own front, heda was hunched at the edge of brookblind, scrubbing slime from her chest even as she reeled again and threw up a second time into the water.
fantastic, she sighed sarcastically inside her own head, a paw hovering protectively over the belly not yet beginning to thicken.

While patrolling the lagoon deep within the territory, Glaukos had come across a beaver dragging freshly felled trees towards the waterway. He'd cut it off from its path towards the adjacent creek, where it had most likely spotted the perfect place to dam the flow, and now walked through the heart of Rivenwood with his hefty prize. As strong as he was the weighty rodent, made more hefty because it was soaking wet, strained his shoulders and slowed Glaukos' gait.

He heard something sluice in to the water — and thinking it might be a second beaver or the rest of this one's family, he stopped and dropped the prize so that he could get a better view. He saw the silhouette of one of the sisters instead, and thought he caught a whiff of sickness in the air — which might've been just his imagination. Weighing his options, he chose to grab the beaver and carry it to where Heda lurked.

Thrusting the body of the beaver down in to the grass beside her, it made a sickening thwump and came to rest. He looked to her instead of the dead animal, trying to ascertain if she was ill or if she was hungry, or maybe she wanted to be alone, but Glaukos didn't ask.

her eyelids had just fluttered shut when glaukos arrived. for such a bearish man, he approached with an almost preternatural silence, and heda had hardly registered his arrival before the beaver smacked upon the ground.
swearing she could hear its organs leaping in liquid, the thin woman was sick once more, lurching away from glaukos just in time to collapse weakly in the shallows, nothing left in her belly to give despite the grind of her sides.
when she could straighten again, heda tried not to look at him, instead scrubbing frantically at arms and mouth with a self-deprecating, weakened laugh; "it's definitely not glamorous to be with child."

She turned and was sick again. It bothered him on a fundamental level that their new home was now plagued by not one ill woman but two, and Glaukos for all his sticks and stones for brains caught himself hoping it wasn't contagious; but he knew he couldn't be pregnant, he wasn't that thick-skulled. It was a concern that remained at the forefront of his mind though.

The sight of her in disarray didn't bother him at all. As she began to scrub at her forearms and chest, he moved close enough to help and tidied her face with a surprising level of apparent care, and then moved away to grab a drink for himself. Except when he moved to the water he saw a slick diaphanous layer of stomach juices where he was about to take a lick, and stopped himself, and decided to drink later.

The fur of his chest was sopping wet now, and he shook some of that away, and cast Heda a look.

Is that why you are sick? He had seen the way Druid had been picking at food, or she'd be ravenous, and in the morning she would sometimes sneak away and come back with a similar illness clinging to her. Glaukos had only ever done half his job when it came to being a father — he'd done the man's part, and then not been required to do more — so this was his first encounter with the entire experience.

for all her understanding, heda simply could not stop thinking of glaukos as 'druid's man' or druid's husband.' there was absolutely no such bond between them, but heda's previous emphasis  on monogamous marriage for love played a large role in how she interacted with glaukos. rather than directly address him, she might hint to druid; she did not stare at the tall great man, but rather observed him with furtive, near-submissive glances.
their coupling had been warm, even pleasant for the sole reason that he was not anselm and so had treated heda with a good deal more gentleness. his arms had been more practiced, she remembered with a burn, golden eyes now alighting on him with surprise as he moved away, his touch upon her face leaving her skin rushing with a tingle.
"yes," she said, realizing she had perhaps never looked quite at him. glaukos was imposing, both by height and breadth, with earthstone eyes and scarred ears, one harshly cropped. another old tracery from wolfstooth trailed down his cheek. only one man had held many scars for heda, and she pushed his name from her mind, noting how the somber set of his jaw against the darkness of his pelt was appealing, how his shoulders proclaimed a raw physical strength that she had not seen in another, perhaps never at such a level.
realizing she had been staring, heda quickly glanced away, still feeling as if she should not, as if she should not bring to mind a pleasant memory of herself with him. "the nausea goes away after a while, but it can be pretty rough in the first stages," she went on, wondering if he'd not seen druid barf before.

It wasn't that he didn't notice the way she looked at him, it was that he couldn't translate what it might mean and didn't try to understand it. For as long as he could remember Glaukos has had eyes on him. Watched by those thinking he wasn't supposed to be there, or by those who expect things of him, or those that are afraid on the basis of his size and presence; but always there were eyes on him, and while it used to make him paranoid and uncomfortable, he had found himself caring less and less as time rolled on.

He knew he was imposing. He had once enjoyed throwing his weight around and being a pissant, and that had been tempered out of him by his time served within Mereo; but the bulk was still there and wasn't going anywhere. If it were a man looking at him in this way he would be incited to a fight, perhaps — but this was Heda. He didn't know what to make of Heda, yet, despite what they'd shared of one-another.

The man looked to the beaver he'd thrown to the dirt.

You probably don't want this then. It was a fresh kill, and would need butchering which Heda probably could not stomach right now. That was fair, given it was a giant semi-aquatic rat. He moved to grab for it again and dragged it a few lurching steps away from her and then adjusted his course for the wind, so the smell wouldn't strike at her again. The muscles of his neck and shoulders strained in pulses with each pull until he was finished.

Then he shook the tension from his body.

I'll take it to a cache. Or your -- sister, if she might want it. But he frowned, realizing in that moment what Heda had already thought: Druid was probably also very sick by now. Well, shit.

"no — not how it is," heda said, turning her eyes right away from the limp body before she was sick a third time. "maybe after i'm — maybe after it's been butchered and i've settled my stomach," she suggested, trying to infuse her words with a cheeriness that was hard to muster.
from time to time she caught small tinges of metallic scent, and focused herself upon the gentle movement of the water, how it carried off her mess and would certainly clean his paws — "ah, offer it to druid first," heda suggested softly, forcing her eyes to meet his own as she glanced over one narrow shoulder at glaukos. "as sick as this makes you, i bet she's starving all the time. i know i am."
not for the first time, she wondered what had attracted he and druid to one another. had it only been the season? they were both pragmatic, even thinkers, the sister mused, and both worked hard. she felt positively lackadaisical by comparision, though she supposed a good deal of her time went into ava. 
"if she doesn't take it now, maybe i'll join her for dinner." the woman unwound herself from the bank and turned now to face the man and the — well, she didn't look down.
what was she supposed to say now? he'd — well — how could they have nothing to talk about? "i'm — interested in denning with her, if that's all right with druid. and that means — you too, i think," she murmured, unable to ask outright if he had any misgivings about heda essentially moving into whatever personal space he'd cultivated for himself.

After such a long time without orders, Glaukos found that having work and duties again was a fulfilling change, and one he had missed. He did not mind that it was two women giving him orders either, which was a far cry from how he'd have reacted years ago; that they were not the General or warriors of any kind did not bother him. He was desperate for this sort of structure when Druid had come across him, and now Glaukos could not see himself living any other way.

Heda did not want the beaver. That was fine — he would take it aside and clean it later and present it to Druid with some invitation hanging between them for Heda to join in, as requested, and maybe by then he'd have hunted other things to satiate all of their appetites.

The woman mentioned denning together; as Glaukos often slept alongside her or nearby, after his patrols, he saw nothing wrong with adding another body. That way Druid would be warm through the nights when Glaukos was on his longer patrols, or if he were distracted by the work. He gave a small shrug and followed up with a deeper nod, unbothered.

I am fine with that. He didn't really have an opinion one way or another. It made tactical sense to the soldier that the women would stay together, and it would make them easier to protect and to feed, and then in turn make the children easier to handle as well. They'd have two mothers, and be consolidated in to one place.

Odd, he found himself thinking — odd that he was not bothered in the slightest about this concept of being a father, suddenly. Except he did not think of himself as such; he was like the General now, and he had seen how Germanicus had raised his own children to be soldiers, and would model himself in a similar manner.

Is there anything you need? He offered next, seeing as how she would not be taking a meal, and was looking unsettled. Glaukos needed to be of use or else, what was the point of him?

in a way, glaukos' studied and silent nature provided its own sort of structure to heda. the short time her small family had spent near anselm had been riddled with unsurety, tension, and anger. she had come to dread the sound of the man's step or the cut of his voice, the touch of his eyes or even the brush of his scent around the hollow. in this moment her reaction to the very thought of him gave her stomach a sickening lurch.
and then humiliation; he had rejected her; she had lain with him anyway; he had rejected her again. there was no self-worth in heda. at least now she did not have to worry about running into anselm. druid loved her. glaukos protected them. ava healed. dinah explored. john was their spiritual guardian.
rivenwood was good.
she had learned to set herself by the reactions of others. the steadiness of glaukos had become predictable and therefore comforting. 
a glance upward toward his rugged jaw set her belly to warming in another way. it would be nice to be near him, she decided, nice to sit next to her sister and watch glaukos move to and fro. she looked forward to relieving any demands upon druid's body the children might make, feeling rather older and protective as this was her second pregnancy and her sister's first.
on a whim, she reached out to brush her pale paw against the brawn of his nearest ankle. "no. i'm going to look for any herbs that were left." heda drew aside now, trying to gather herself. "will you tell druid i'll be by later?"

He was like a stone when she touched him; before he might have been comparable to a gargoyle, or some homunculus, and when he wasn't in motion he was like a mountain, and so when she touched him he gave no indication if he was bothered or delighted, because he did not know. It did not matter. She had done it by mistake as she'd moved to gather herself.

She did not need anything except the message conveyed, and Glaukos would do as he was asked. Then when he moved he became this mechanical thing, moving to the dead beaver to gather it and in his silent, brooding way he would begin to work of dragging it again across the territory to where Druid waited - or a cache, or whichever came first.