Ravensblood Forest everybody’s gone in the cotton and the corn [m]

Lotte never shuts up! Sorry ♥

Cautiously Lotte lifted her head, watchful for signs of vertigo as she rearranged her limbs, her spine straight and her hindquarters sphinx-symmetrical. Better, she decided, arching and then stretching her thickly-furred neck. “‘Strong as a bear,’” she repeated thoughtfully, her moonbright argent eyes drifting with pleased appraisal over her mate’s long, svelte lines and tapered features. “You do not have Lærke’s build, but surely you are as fierce as he is,” she intoned, just in case he needed to be mollified, her mellifluous timbre having regained its steadiness. She preened at the fur at the base of one of his ears — they were of a taller and thinner construction than her own, and she was always very careful about them; certainly, she didn’t tug on them the way she tugged on Dagfinn’s — with a musing, meandering hum. “Muirin Dagny; Mallaidh Dagny; Eirlys Dagny…” Her humming took on a rhythm and a melody, and softly the nightingale sang for her gangster, her voice yet lacking its former richness.

“In Dublin’s fair city, where the girls are so pretty,
I first laid my eyes on sweet Molly Malone
as she wheeled her wheelbarrow through streets broad and narrow
crying, ‘Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!’

‘Alive, alive, oh!
Alive, alive, oh!’
Crying, ‘Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!’

She was a fishmonger, but sure ‘twas no wonder,
for so were her father and mother before,
and they wheeled their barrows through the streets broad and narrow,
crying, ‘Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!’

‘Alive, alive, oh!
Alive, alive, oh!’
Crying, ‘Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!’”

“Let one of them be Mallaidh,” she suggested, thinking of the fishmonger Szymon and his sprightly wife with a flash of sorrow, “and Eirlys — I have heard it said ‘ire-liss’ and ‘ayer-liss’ and never knew which way was the right way.” Lotte had the hard, rolling ‘r’ down pat, but the beginning vowel sound seemed to fall midway between /ī/ and /ā/ — despite her keen ability to pick up melodies and accents, “Will you humor me, rakas, and say it slowly?” entreated the songbird. “They are all such lovely names.”

Perhaps it was that ‘Roarke’ and ‘Lærke’ shared somewhat similar pronunciations, but Lotte found she liked the quick syllable and its hard consonant. “Roarke Fearghal,” she murmured, her lips tracing the curve of her lover’s ear as her blood began again to quicken. “Ceallach Fearghal.” It was so hard to choose between them! In the end, though, “Roarke Altaïr Fearghal?” she suggested, her inflection tipping upward. “You are a bear, but your son might be an eagle. Do you know the story of the herdsman and the weaver?” It wouldn’t be Lotte if she didn’t attach a ridiculous amount of lore and meaning to her children’s names, after all. “Someday we will have need for more names than we can readily think up,” she reassured herself, “so I will try not to be disappointed if we have only one.” Her chuckle was teasing, brushing tantalizingly against the sensitive fur that lined Arturo’s ear. “I would like it to be Roarke for a boy, Mallaidh for a girl, and Eirlys to be paired with Dagny — a snow child named after her winter-eyed uncle.” She sighed dreamily. “If he has to wait a year, Dag will understand.”

Lotte fell quiet — “finally, you blathering windbag,” her exhausted scribe exults — as Arturo prayerfully breathed her name and made his proposition. “Banríon,” she repeated sadly, sorrow being her first response for the lost, green-eyed girl. Furiosa’s memory came soon after: “Subordination doesn’t suit you. You know it’s the queens that bear the most worthy children, and you will be so well-suited for motherhood that a crown is just as well as yours. I mean, from those smart enough to see it — I’d give you one, if such a thing were up to me.” Remembering one was bad enough, but remembering both — the tears spilled over, lost in the black velvet of Lotte’s cheeks. “Of course I will,” she said fiercely, burying her face in the fur that covered his throat to blot away the moisture and breathe deeply of his scent, “and I have news for you, rakas.”

Rising to her restless paws, tracing a leisurely circle around her mate and deliberately trailing her tail along his jawline to entice him, Lotte willfully mixed business with pleasure. She told him of Skellige, Szymon, and Doe’s mysterious disappearance; of the stranded sheepdog and her three lambs, Isengrim, Julep, and Moorhen; and of the supposed disbandment or relocation of Silvertip Mountain. Too, she informed him of the existence of a pack about a day’s travel away from Teaghlaigh, nestled in a forest of evergreens, and a pack that made its home in a cave somewhere in the Sunspire Mountains. Finally she informed him of Duskvale’s disbandment and Dagfinn’s impending visit, finishing off with her kaksonen’s intention to stay for a prolonged time during Lotte’s pregnancy. By the time she’d finished, she felt as if she more than deserved her place at Arturo’s side — though perhaps that was the hormones talking — and casually set about initiating Round Two, nipping coyly at his hip and nibbling at the base of his tail.