Disclaimer- I own nothing you recognise. Please don't sue me I'm just a kid.
A/N- Twig is beautiful. Maugin is amazing. It seems the most nautral thing to me that they fall for each other. Rated M for later chapters.
Summary- After the battle with Screed and the Professor of Loght's death, Twig and Maugin are left alone to cope with growing feelings and newfound lust. Can it possibly end well or is this fragile relationship doomed?
It was the end of the second day since he and Maugin had been forced to call the gruesomely decorated wreck of the Windcutter home and, though he put on a brave face so as not to alarm or depress Maugin, Twig couldn't help but feel utterly helpless as he lay staring at the rotting wood above where he had lain down to sleep.
The sails were worse than he'd thought and, though they were in much better condition than the ropes, they left a lot of work to be done. Twig sighed and rolled onto his side, staring aimlessly at the curving wooden wall in front of him. Thinking about the previous day's events didn't help. Seeing almost his entire crew loose their minds in the Twilight Woods…losing Hubble to horrific internal injuries so suddenly…the terrible battle with Screed….then a tiny uplift.
Maugin.
He permitted himself a small smile as he turned onto his back again, kicking off his tilder leather boots as he stretched indulgently. He'd been petrified when the Stone Pilot had first began twiddling with the heavy bolts that held the large hood in place and possibly even more so when he saw the long, pale fingers that were doing the twiddling. He'd expected some kind of semi-human slavering monster.
A poor creature with some horrendous disfigurement.
How wrong he had been.
When the long, swanlike neck had been exposed, his breath had caught in the back of his throat, half in wonder, half in anticipation.
Then the long swathes of fiery hair that tumbled way past the hidden waist of the Stone Pilot. And finally, the delicate-featured face, oval and porcelain skinned, so pale she was almost hidden in the gloom if the wreck.
The Stone Pilot was a girl!
Twig's lungs failed to work properly. Neither inhaling nor exhaling, he swayed slightly, still reeling from the shock.
Struggling to take it in, he stared at her, she was speaking but he heard nothing, her voice was soft and melodious but merely background noise. How soft and shiny her hair looked, how beautiful would it be to touch? The skin of her cheekbones, so pale and barely tinged with a pale rose hue it appeared like white velvet and surely felt better thought Twig. But it was her eyes he was most taken with. Large and round, they seemed almost too big for her face, silvery grey when glances of light managed to sneak their way into the wreck and a heart stopping glacial blue through the dark. Long dark lashes stood out impossibly long against the tops of her cheekbones and the underneath arch of her slim eyebrows. Twig blinked twice and managed to blurt out,
"You're….you're…"
"A girl," she replied calmly, "Are you surprised?"
"Of course I am!" Twig said, "I had no idea, I thought you were going to be some kind of…monster…"
Her pretty face lined itself up into a scowl and she turned away,
"Perhaps it would be better if I were; even the most deformed and hideously scarred creature in the Deepwoods cannot be as lost and alone as I, now that I have lost Cloud Wolf- and the Stormchaser. It was the only place I felt safe and even there I needed this."
She picked up the heavy hood now resting on the floor beside her and hugged it to her chest looking thoroughly miserable.
How Twig had wished he could have done something to help her, to cheer her up, to make her perfect face light up into a smile. There was only one thing they could do. Repair the Windcutter and fly back to Sanctaphrax.
He knew that today was only the start of the gruelling hard work that would follow before the Windcutter was even halfway skyworthy again.
He put his work-coarsened hands to his face and sighed loudly.
At least there was one thing keeping him going.
He rested his head against the creaking wall behind him and listened hard- just hard enough to hear that "one thing" breathing softly as she slept on, blissfully ignorant of the young man next door and his thoughts.
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