Patchwork Road
By Rey

Author's notes: I hope that we all safe and the pandemic quickly dies down. Keep safe, folks. And if you've got spare good thoughts and prayers for me, regardless of your religion or if you have a religion to follow at all, please send them forth for me? It's unnerving, to suffer from my reoccurring stomach ulcer and a flu when the sympthoms, combined like this, are rather similar to the source of this pandemic… - Rey

Chapter summary: Denying one's race and nature only goes so far when comfort and safety are in the line, sometimes.

15. Lush

The forest is a green patch in the snow-covered landscape.

"You sure you'd like to live here? With those babies?" Pepper is highly sceptical and concerned, looking between the verdant foliage and the man standing nearby, holding a – thankfully well-covered – wicker basket containing two sleeping babies. "This place is cold for most of the year, you know, and it's pretty far from even the nearest civilisation."

But, as if emphasising a point she should have caught on, the green-eyed new father just nods again at the expanse of evergreen.

Well, she must admit, the place at least looks pretty and alive.