>>5331896>>5331894Your heart is hammering, your mind seized. You’d almost think Glowie had bitten you, injected you with her venom, for the variety of unexpected physiological and psychological phenomena now besetting you.
“I… What?”
“I love you,” she repeats, softly. “When you come back, will be in cocoon… Or changed, grown. When I do not look like this… We may not be able to be like this.”
She squeezes you a little tighter, for emphasis, and hums.
“Your Glowie wants to enjoy every moment with her Dragonborn… To hold you, feel you. And… To let you know how I feel, before you go, just… Just in case you do not like me anymore when you come back.”
She nuzzles into your chest, taking deep wafts of you, rubbing her hands over you, and sighs happily… And then begins that soft, evocative hum.
“Recognize that smell, when you want to mate,” she murmurs. “I do not need any more sperm, but if you want to…. For you… Glowie is ready, to serve her king.”
She takes your hand, guiding it down her body, to feel that she is, indeed… ‘Ready’. You, in turn, panic, pulling away from her so swiftly that you both topple painfully out of the hammock and to the stone floor. Glowie looks at you questioningly as you pry yourself out of her coiling tail and stumble backwards.
“The… That is… I already… The journey tomorrow will be taxing and I… Rest is important in any military or diplomatic…”
You both just stare at each other in silence for a moment.
“I’m going to… Leave now.”
Glowie tilts her head slightly, but doesn’t say anything. Her body language, all wrong for a Reptilian is difficult to read. Her face, a purplish mirror of the Novice’s, is unreadable. You aren’t sure if she’s sad, or shocked, or angry. You don’t wait around to find out, but turn on heel and leave to recuperate where the rest of your forces are taking their own torpor.
The Novice is still awake when you return, writing still more notes on the discoveries and ongoing experiments of the expedition. She looks up as you approach, alerted by your almost jogging gate.
“I thought you were staying with the worm?” she asks.
You say nothing, simply laying down next to your pack and closing your eyes. The Novice does not press, either out of respect for your privacy or (more likely) being too deep in her own project even to mock you. It takes a while, but eventually, you find your rest, though it is troubled by certain frustrations. At least it is blissfully dreamless, as it should be.
