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| Details |
| Author: | Alli |
| Summary: | Shine comes back to Lena at the end of a day at the yak wash, and they discuss how work is going on both sides. ~2200 words. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Chain: Shena
It is near sunset when Shine enters the inn room. He comes in as quietly as ever, sets his pack just inside the door in the place he always sets it, and pauses to unbuckle his bracers, tuck them against his side beneath an elbow, and strip off his gloves.
Bun squashes himself around Shine's leg and into the room, and trundles immediately over to inspect Lena in case she has gotten up to any funny business while he was away. Like having snacks without him.
There is a vaguely… pine?-scented sharpness in the air.
Lena is sitting at the desk, writing in her notebook, as the two enter. There's an empty teacup by her hand, but no other evidence of snack-having. She turns on her chair, a little stiffly still with the bound knee, and leans over to pat Bun and she smiles over at Shine. Then she sniffs, and her smile freezes for a moment.
"Were there forests to trek through today?" She asks, shaking off the moment.
Shine glances up from his gloves and shakes his head. "That's luck," he explains dryly.
Bun leans contentedly against Lena's shin to accept more pats and spread the smell of luck to Lena's skirt.
"Not just my imagination then," Lena says, proving willing to give more pats. "Feels like my mind's been in every which place, past week, while I'm trying to keep off my leg. Caught me off guard. So what is this? Luck from a… pine tree?"
"Wood sprite needles," Shine says, and arranges gloves and bracers neatly atop his pack before stepping the rest of the way into the room and closing the door. "The pandaren who run the yak wash use wood sprite needles to keep the yaks smelling fresh, so the grummles will pay better for the luck. I helped collect the needles, and Bun rode a yak. So. Now we both smell lucky. And at least one of us will want a bath." He smiles crookedly at her and crosses to stand behind her chair.
He slides his fingers into her hair and with his thumbs gently massages the back of her neck. "Sorry if it's unpleasant. The grummles are… something else. They've a whole thing about luck and how it smells. What've ye been up to?"
"Not unpleasant," Lena says, abandoning Bun's pets to lean her head back into his fingers with a faint, contented hum. "Just reminds me of old times, which it wouldn't normally, if I hadn't already been thinking — well, I've been up to a number of things. My new warlock apprentice arrived, and we had tea together. And before that… I've made some progress on the handbook. Then, I've got a lead on what I ought to be doing up here for the fleet, maybe, based on Taylor's news for Westwind Rest. Not sure how I'll manage with the knee injury."
She tilts her head further back, trusting him to keep her balance, and looks up him with gently parted lips. "Also, been wishing my husband was here, for a number of reasons. Pick your topic."
Shine smiles down at her. "I could ask you to elaborate on the reasons ye wished your husband here, but that seems like it could come later." He bends to kiss her upside-down, playfully. "So tell me what Taylor's said? If it's not navy-confidential."
Lena reaches one hand back, halfway to drawing him down to her for more kisses, but then she just rests it on his shoulder. "Yes, maybe time enough later… and if now, we'd never get to the rest of it. Nothing navy confidential, no. He's mostly concerned with the position of the Alliance, here in the mountains, as we're a bit cut off from… well, everyone."
She idly massages his shoulder and continues, "Cobalt's helping with that, obviously. But there's one thing I noticed in the report, from that day you and I were finding a secret aerie. The squad found another mogu soul-binder. Isolated again, like the fellow in Jade Forest. But that in itself is odd, isn't it? Isolated soul-binders in multiple places, all apparently working toward the same thing."
"We've been cut off since we got here," Shine observes. "In the broader sense. But I take the man's point. The soul-binder…." He trails off, frowning. "So it begins to look like… well, I won't go so far as to say a coordinated effort, since we can't know that, but the fact they're all working toward a similar aim… a concerted effort, at least."
"Exactly," Lena nods. "And each working in some out of the way place that we only came across by chance. Which says to me they might be preparing a… a strategy? An army? A technique? Something they don't want us to see yet, that isn't ready. Which…" Lena sighs. "I'd like to get out and look at the place myself. But with my knee, it's not reasonable for me to hobble out on my own with crutches."
"Why should ye go on your own?" Shine asks, and takes a step around her side to crouch down by her chair and gaze up at her. "I'll go with ye, you know that. If ye want me to."
"But you're likely busy with…" Lena starts, and then stops herself. She leans forward, her hands on his shoulders. "If you'll come, I'll be glad of it. I expect it'll mostly be studying whatever sigils and things this fellow used. I might not find anything useful at all. But then again… that's how you find things, by looking."
"I'm no use with sigil-study, but I'd be glad to be there to watch your back. And we've already established that even with you down to one leg, you and I can get around fine together." He smiles at her. "But I wouldn't mind if Penny and Khamsin wanted to come along this time, either."
"Mm, probably a good plan, unless we could get those kite masters to give us a free-wheeling kite," Lena says with a laugh. "I think maybe I'll ride side? It's not quite as secure as the usual way, but I've done it before. It'd put less pressure on my knee anyway. And we'd most like need to keep to a walk."
Shine nods. "You tell me when ye'd like to go and I'm ready. Lorewalker Cho may be wanting my team back for something in a bit, but he's not a man in a hurry so I imagine I've got days free."
"Yes, he does seem more the 'slow down' sort," Lena says with a smile. "I might drop in on Onekeg later on this week, if my knee's healing up alright, see if he's any stories of this place to share. Maybe we could head out… tomorrow? My new apprentice is settling in now, and I don't know if she'll expect a lesson first thing."
Shine nods and rises to his feet again. He moves to the other chair at the table and settles into it comfortably, resting one hand on the tabletop. "And how is she? The apprentice?"
"She's…" Lena pauses, thinking through her words. "She's a noblewoman. Polite and respectful and absolutely used to getting her own way. It comes across as strong-willed, which is a good sign, I'd say. I just can't tell yet how much it'll hold up to wear. I've known folk who seemed strong and sure, and then when things went wrong they fell to pieces."
One corner of Shine's mouth tilts downward. "She is respectful though?"
"Aye, she's clear on who's teacher and who's student," Lena says firmly, glancing to the teacup. "She'll be a very assertive student, but I can handle assertive. Very excited to be a warlock, if you can imagine. And… she brought me vegetables from her mother's garden."
"… vegetables?" Shine wonders. Is this a warlock euphemism?
"Yes, literal vegetables. Sprouts and kale. I've took them down to the kitchen to store, and… do you like them?" Lena asks, meeting Shine's gaze. "They can cook up nicely, I know how."
"I do," he says with an equable shrug. "I can't say I'd go out looking for either, but I like 'em both well enough. I expect ye do cook them better than most could, though."
"I know you've not had so much of my cooking," Lena says with a smile. "No need for it at Fallon House, and oftentimes I'm traveling, or you are, or us both. But maybe if we're set here in the mountains for a while, I could get back in the habit."
"You made cookies out of beets," he points out. "I have a great deal of faith in your cooking. And if you'd enjoy doing more of it, then I'll enjoy it as well."
"I think I would," Lena smiles, leaning over to kiss his forehead. "Could try out those massive vegetables down from the Valley too, see if they taste any sweeter with whatever they do to them. Whatever's in the water. Seems to be an abundance of health, at least, and not the opposite."
Lena sniffs again, the pine scent strong this close to him, and adds, "One other thought — how are the yaks, for riding? They look wide-backed, the ones I see outside of town. Think they'd be easier on my leg than Penny?"
Shine raises his eyebrow. "Oh, aye, that's a thought. Their gait is a little — it takes some getting used to, after a horse, but they are broader. Sturdy in the mountains and all, too. Fair docile, unless you're a yaungol." He looks Lena up and down. "Which you are not. You want me to arrange one for ye? I know they have 'em for hire at the grummle outposts."
"Let's try that," Lena nods. "I can get from camp to camp easy enough with the kites, so it'd be just for the ride out to the mogu site. If it doesn't work out — it's not like we'd be trying to trek across the whole mountain range. I could manage anything for a short ride, I'd imagine."
"Think we ought to get a yak-wash wood-sprite-lucky-smell yak," Lena asks with a smile. "Or are there other exciting and lucky fragrances? I don't mind this one, just a lot of pine forests when I was growing up. Real pine, though, not the sprites."
"I can inquire with the grummles about available lucky yak fragrances," says Shine gravely. He tilts his head. "The pine gave you a start when we came in?"
Bun, having concluded that no welcome-home-hero snacks are in the offing, has slumped grumpily over to his stained-shirt nest and curled up there in a pointed sulk, his back to the Shines.
Lena, for the moment, is entirely focused on Shine and does not mind Bun's sulking. Or maybe she's just used to it. There'll be snacks eventually, little one.
"Yes, something of scent-memory I suppose," Lena says with an apologetic smile. "Being down in the caves like I was, before you found me… I guess it put my mind in the spot of remembering other times hiding in the dark. I didn't have the same tools back then, though, and I didn't have you."
Shine rests a hand on her knee — not her injured knee, the good one — and squeezes gently. "You have me," he agrees. "And better tricks up your sleeve besides. But I'm sorry to give you a turn."
"Can't always predict what will," Lena says, resting her hand on his. "But I'll tell you, when something does. What's been stuck in my head is… around when I got that scar." Lena traces the location on her body over her dress, down her side. "It was, like I said, just a squabble, and we fled after. Hid in this barn, hurting in the dark, trying not to make a sound. For a moment, back in the caves, felt almost like I was there."
But not fully, it was not a magical Celestial cave.
"The feeling faded, but I guess memory lingered a little close to the surface," Lena says, smiling apologetically. "Traveling through pine forests."
"That's all right," he says. "I know about memories." He squeezes her knee again and says very solemnly, "But maybe we do enough work up here and the smell of pine will start to make ye think of lucky yaks instead."
"The luckiest smell, I take it," Lena says with a light laugh, and then she leans towards him to say in a lower voice, "Speaking of lucky, it occurs to me that my leg could be nice and easily cushioned, if you and I were abed."
"I think that's the medically advisable course, then," Shine says, a gleam in his eye. He rises courteously to his feet. "Let me help you over there, Mrs. Shine."
Lena raises her hands towards his, her prim expression undercut by the playful light in her own eyes. "Please do, Mr. Shine. I expect I shall not want to leave its comfort for quite some time."