This is my first fan-fic. Hope you enjoy.

-Wynn

Raoul sat at his desk, going over some paperwork for the Own. Supplies needed for the next trip, armor repairs they had to pay for, new recruits, ect. Today, he had absolutely no interest in anything written on paper.

He should be letting Kel do this, but she was not here to save him. She would be taking over the Own in a couple of years. She should get used to it while she can. Then he could spend more time with Buri and the baby. His son had been born a year ago, but he barely saw the little tike. He spent whatever time he could, but the opportunity was seldom there. He feared that the same thing would happen to his next child. Buri was due to give birth in about six months.

He put his pen down and sat back in his chair. He felt a headache coming on.

Suddenly, he heard a profanity from the next room over. He knew Buri was sat in there, doing something, and he instantly worried. In the three seconds it took him to enter the room, worst case scenarios ran through his head.

Buri was sat on a couch, with a frustrated look on her face. He was about to ask what was wrong when he saw the large amount of yarn around her, tangled and strewn about helter-skelter. He opened his mouth to speak but she beat him to it.

"Shut up and come help me." He smiled. She was a bossy little thing, it came from being a commander, he knew, but it became a prominent trait when she was pregnant. Same thing happened last time.

"Yes, ma'am," was all he could say.

He sat down on an ottoman she must have been using to prop her feet up on. She handed him a large knot and told him to work on it. After teasing and toying with it for a little while, he asked, "What happened?"

Her black eyes glared at him. "I was trying to take up knitting again." She found the end of the very long piece of yarn and began to pull it through a knot.

"Hmm," Raoul said. "I didn't know you knitted."

"I don't," his wife replied. "I used to. I was trying to remember how when this mess postponed my progress. I had to undo it, but it just kept getting worse."

"Hence the cussing."

She smiled. "Hence the cussing."

He undid a rather simple knot and moved on to the next one on the string. "Where did you learn it," he asked, desperate to keep a conversation going. He hated paperwork, but, at that moment, he would have rather been back in his office, signed something.

"Thayet's mother taught us." Her eyes glaze over, though her nimble fingers still worked on the knots. "She would sit Thayet down and teach her embroidery or sewing or something like that and I would watch. Kalasin was a very patient woman. It took forever for Thayet to even understand. One day, my mother asked Kalasin to teach me. She did. I enjoyed it actually. It was calming and it took my mind off of whatever was happening." She looked up from her work and smiled. "Mithros, me and Thayet would just sit there for hours and knit. Of course, she got board eventually and moved onto something else, so I was left to my own accord, but it was still enjoyable. I used to be able to make scarves and hats and gloves. I even made a horse blanket once."

"How?" Raoul asked.

"I knit many smaller squares and my mother crocheted them together. Anyway, when we ran away from Saren, I left it all behind and forgot. I just suddenly had the urge to pick it up again, so I did."

She bit her bottom lip as she came across on that was very tight. "The little strands coming off seem to keep getting knotted." The only way one could tell there was a knot was by the fact that there was a loop attached to a seemingly straight piece of string.

"Yeah, the problem over here is that the string threaded through itself over and over again. We'll have to undo this one before we do that one." Though he would never say so, Raoul was enjoying the challenge of the knots. You had to look very closely at it before you saw what was wrong. It provided a new way to test his intelligence.

Buri guessed as much and smiled. "Okay. Hold it up for me." She found the end of the tread and began pulling. The yarn was very long, and it took a while for it to finally make its way through the knot. She repeated this over again, many times, until the knot was gone.

Raoul grabbed the other knot and tried to undo it. It was so tight that his finger couldn't pull it apart. He was considering just cutting it when Buri gently took it from his hands. "You have to be gentle with it," she said, as if she were talking about a small child.

"Gentle?"

"Yes." She was smiling.

"Well, the way I see it-"

She stopped him with a look. "What do know about knitting?"

"Nothing," he said.

"Exactly, so shut up." She held up in triumph, a very tangled knot. But at least it was loosened. "See? Gentle."

He shook his head. Women, he thought. Why must they always have to be right?

He held the knot the same way he did last time and she pulled the string through once again. It took much longer this time, for the knot was much more intricate.

"For such a small knot, this is very complicated," he told Buri.

She looked at him and shook her head. She pulled the last bit through.

"Finally!" he sighed.

"No sir, we're not done yet." She told him. He grunted. He took one end of the string and wound it onto his hand, stopping occasionally to allow Buri a chance to undo a new knot or pick something out of the wool. Eventually, they ended up with a big ball of yarn, one that was completely untangled.

Raoul got off of the ottoman and laid down on the sofa. Buri sat with her back against his chest and started knitting. "This is nice," he said. "You should knit more often."

After a while, she heard snoring come from behind her. "Raoul?" But it was no use. He was out cold. She smiled and put her knitting on a nearby coffee table. She blew out the lamp that had illuminated the room, and grabbed the blanket of the back of the back of the sofa. She draped it over them and laid down. "I love you," she whispered softly. Raoul unconsciously wrapped his arms around her, his hand settling over her stomach. She grinned once more and closed her, drifting into sleep.

I hope you enjoyed it. Please, click on the wonderful green button, or whatever color it is, below and allow your opinions to flow, though please don't be too harsh. :-D

With Love,

Wynn Hygeorht