Niala 28

We had a blithe relationship with sexuality when it came to bound individuals. Once you'd shared enough mana and sealed the mark… Sex stopped being a taboo. You didn't live in as close of quarters as we did at the barracks and have problems with bondmates chasing their fires… or, you know.

It no longer phased me to find couples off in remote corners of the camp doing things that would break furniture or walls. We just had unspoken rules about looking away and letting it be. They exercised discretion, but we just turned our heads and went on if we saw. We considered interrupting two lovers damn near a crime.

I saw the shadowplay being tossed up against the side of the tent, the hovering moth, the form of Dimal over Kiromir, the light glow of their fires.

It didn’t register with me at first; my brain happily tuned it out. But I couldn’t just ignore Kiromir. My brain always lit up, and a happy thought of ‘Ada!’ came across my mind. So my heart screamed ‘Ada!’ and my mind just… it just screamed.

My eyes slowly went wider and wider as my lips pursed into the smallest slit.

You think you're immune! You're totally ok; everything's golden. It's just a couple off somewhere chasing their fires to quell the fevers of lust. It's completely normal.

Completely normal.

Completely…

Normal…

Normal…

"Ni? You ok?" Gaffriel asked.

A shrill keening noise eked from my throat.

"Ni?" Gaff shook my shoulder.

He looked over at the shadow, as impassive about it as anyone.

"Let’s just go scruff,” I said, and my feet carried me instinctively as far away from their moment as possible.

We decided to go back to Kiromir’s camper. It wasn’t much, but we had space to work. I also kept my grooming kit in there. Gaff had offered to get his kit, but the prospect of rounding the tent to go into Thanus’s trailer seemed like a decidedly bad idea.

I rummaged through my belongings and tossed Gaff a little zippered pouch with a metal-toothed comb, a pair of hemostats, a very sharp short-bladed pair of scissors, and mine included a little bottle of oil, so that dry hands weren’t working over my wings.

Gaff washed his hands in our sink, oiled them, and I didn’t waste any time in sitting up on one of the camping stools we’d brought with us. I let my wings out without thinking and adjusted myself parallel to the trailer to give some space to spread them. They were ragged. I’d not properly groomed them in weeks, afraid to pull them out for being peeped on or bothered, and even when I could get stolen moments, people constantly interrupted me.

Just sliding my wings out had bits of down fluttering to the ground. Rough bent feathers stuck up every which way.

“How the hell do you fly like this?” Gaff said as I felt the comb make its first stroke down the back of one of my wings. Gaff always worked so methodically and gently.

Some of the women traded and took money in the barracks for grooming wings, and they were good at it, but they were heavy-handed compared to Gaff. His touch felt so gentle. I credited it to him being mesmerized by my wings, but I noticed his wings were always perfect. He spent time on them.

“Do you sleep with them out? There’s so many cowlicks,” He groused, not allowing me to respond.

“Yeah, on accident, when I’m stressed,” I admitted.

He went quiet as I heard the hemostats click open. I winced as I waited for stray feathers to start being plucked. But, he had a feather’s touch, made little tugs to the feather to see if it wriggled loose, then tucked it back into the hackle feathers as he found them. He’d gotten better at it. It always felt good, but every little tug and touch made me shiver.

“When was your last molt?” He asked casually.

“I can’t really remember. I didn’t molt last spring, or the spring before tha—" I mumbled to myself.

The wildlings molted in the fall, grew downy feathers and had weak fuzzy wings some winters. Me, on the other hand, I molted in the late spring. My stomach sank. I had started my first ‘season,’ my first fires, and my molt had come.

Fuck.

“Getting your fires and molt in the same week,” Gaff chuckled, and I liked the warmth of it. I could feel feathers sliding from their places as his comb made its way over my back. It felt soothing, and I kept glancing at the floor to see the feathers accumulating.

Molting never affected my flight all that much. It just made my wings look far too thin and sleeked down. They had this wicked look to them after a molt, angular, even more different than my peers. Gaff never cared.

“Ni,” He said, drawing the comb over my fronds again.

I knew what he wanted to ask.

When we were kids, our parents preened us, and then we preened ourselves. We had oils we’d blended and used to keep our wings sleek until our ault developed. He wanted to use his.

We each had our own smell, different to everyone. Kiromir smelled like sandy summers, though we never spent summers at the coast. Thanus smelled like ozone and fall leaves. If Gaff put his ault on my wings, they’d smell like sun and leather. I’d have his scent on me for days, and Kiromir would kick his ass again.

I thought about the Sentinels, their men, and their ways. They were stationary and cold people. I’d never met a boy or girl there that I particularly wanted to be friends with save for Prim, a girl about my own age. Everyone acted cold to me either because of how I looked, Kiromir, or some other reason I wasn’t sure of. Despite this, they heavily encouraged me to court their boys with my fires. They looked at me like a future baby factory.

“You know they have expectations of me this year,” I said quietly as Gaff waited with anticipation.

“I know,” he choked. He’d spread his fires last year and now was my turn, to everyone on the list they gave me. But, despite me having found a match with him, they’d want me to try others. If I went out smelling like him, the boys might not want to meld me.

“Are you doing this because you don’t want me to court their fires?” I asked.

He went quiet, and I expected a defensive ‘No,’ that held obvious hesitation. I thought he’d lie, but he didn’t.

“I’m trying Ni. I really am. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t cross my mind, but I just want to do it, is all,” He said quietly. I knew he spoke the truth, then. Seriously, the honesty meant so much.

“Tell you what,” I said as I lifted my hand over my shoulder, pinkie extended out.

“Don’t use your Ault; let me do what they are demanding I do at the Sentinels, and I’ll let you ault me the first night during the festivities,” I promised him. His pinkie slid into mine with ease, and we tugged to cement the bond.