>>5350761This last exertion is enough to push you over the edge into exhaustion, but torpor must wait, just a little while longer. You know you cannot rest until you answer one more mystery.
“Herbalissst,” you say, calling the other dwarf to you now, “to me.”
You say this more quietly, and you beckon her to follow you to a private grotto on the edge of this particular cavern. This is to be a more personal conversation. She follows haltingly, clearly hesitant to be alone with you.
“You fear me,” you say.
“You just sliced a scar in the earth herself,” she points out, “and, uh, you’re still half-naked, sir.”
You are if only because your pants are still drying before the fire. You don’t really see the relevance—you’re no female, after all, to have to preserve modesty. Perhaps things are different among dwarves, with their males ever-visible mammalian genitalia. You shrug off the cultural misunderstanding, but seek to assuage the slight tremor in her voice—her fear is righteous, and good, but misplace din this instance.
“You are not being punished,” you say. “You sssaved my life. It would be… Odd, to punish ssuch an act of loyalty.”
“I wouldn’t say… I mean, um, yes, sir. Th-thank you.”
“Not loyalty, then?” you ask. “I thought it ssstrange, yess. Why would you be loyal? Why attempt to sssave me at all? The Throat-ssinger ccertainly would have let me drown, and I underssstand hisss resssentment… But not your mercccy, nor the way you looked at me, before that.”
Davora the Herbalist’s reddens in the face again at that comment, eyes widening.
“I didn’t… I didn’t mean to, uh, offend or anything.”
“I am not offended. I am confusssed. Exxxplain yoursself, dwarf.”
Davora hesitates again, but a low rumble of irritation pushes her through this delay and she answers yo:
“Because you were beautiful.”
You stare for a moment, confounded. Is this mammal… CAttempting to seduce you? I mean, her form is supple enough, and she DOES have that rear, but…
“Wait!” Davora blurts out. “I didn’t mean… Not like…”
Davora pauses, looking at you with that same bizarre, ambivalent expression.
“It isn’t that I don’t hate you, for what you did. I wasn’t… I didn’t lose parents, or siblings, or children. Plenty did, like Karz. I wasn’t close with my husband, but he didn’t deserve to… To DIE like that. I was never really at home in these mountains, never had close friends, but there were dwarves who were good and kind to me. You… You smashed and stabbed them, too. I hate you for that. I DO.”
Another pause this time to take a deep breath. Her fear has returned, and she is clearly afraid of what your reply will be to her next words.
