Ravensblood Forest convalescence

A bitterly familiar pang of jealousy filled Lotte’s mouth with acid as she watched Olive, round with children, emerge from the shadows of her stonewalled den. Teaghlaigh’s second mother-to-be tried to stifle it, but her rich alto timbre was gruff and cool as she questioned in a perfunctory way, “How are you?”

She hadn’t said anything amiss, but her inability to cloak her emotions and smile gracefully at the woman was far more frustrating than a verbal blunder. Lotte lifted the marmot and brought it nearer to Olive, nudging it close with her broad muzzle. The fresh scrapes she’d sustained when chasing off the fox still stung, but she paid them little mind as she looked searchingly at the green-eyed woman and was forced anew to battle her own green-eyed demon. Olive wore her pregnancy beautifully, and even the healing wounds that littered her body seemed to possess a certain dignity that Lotte could not comprehend. “I do not feel close to you,” she said frankly. “I want to — I came here to bring you food and talk with you.” It wasn’t in the soot-stockinged rogue’s nature to beat around the bush unless subtlety and subterfuge were absolutely necessary, so she spoke quite plainly. “I am Banríon — but I am more than that. I am a wife and a twin and a mother, but I am jealous that your babes will be born before mine.” Now she did smile, though it crumbled at the corners, for poking fun at herself was one of the best ways Lotte had learned to cope with things she found particularly troublesome. A hefty sigh gusted from her lips.

If Olive was air, drifting loftily hither and thither, wholly immune to imprisonment by any corporeal demand, Lotte was earth — all blood and flesh and sensation. The two women were equal in their love for their husbands and their desire for children, but they differed in so many ways. More quietly, “Arturo is fond of you, if you doubted it,” Lotte intoned. “You are like a pikkusisko for him. A little sister.”

Swallowing, Lotte drew her tongue across her lips, still sweet with the marmot’s blood. “What I want for us — ” she said with uncharacteristic hesitation “ — there are packs with many mothers, and these mothers are all sisters in the way that Teaghlaigh is a Family. They labor together and weep together and laugh together. Some of them share the same man, and though neither of us wants that,” she barked a laugh, “I want that closeness. I just do not understand you. Will you talk to me, ihana kuu? Will you tell me what happened in your words, and spend some time with me?”

This early in the game, Lotte could not even say that she liked Olive — but she wanted to. She was willing to make the effort, no matter how uncomfortable it was, if it meant reaching a point of camaraderie.