DC20: I suppose the distinction between "sailor" and "f---ing sailor" is pretty important, eh? :p Back on topic, I'll start bumping up the age level of the story, but do tell me if it raises the eyebrow a little too high/seems overly contrived.
After such an awkward situation, what are our protagonists going to do with each other? The answer is probably one that most have done before…
******************************************************************************
Four days.
That was her first thought when she woke from her sleep. Laying on the cot, she smiled to herself. She hadn't counted the days to something since she'd been a little girl. It was a nice feeling, she decided as she grabbed the covers, planning on throwing them off like the adolescent she felt like.
The feeling she got when she tried to pull up the blankets was anything but nice.
Wincing, she felt her right hand instinctively snap open and recoil away from the cloth. A soft weight was around it – a bandage. For a moment, she regarded her own hand, unable to comprehend the reason for the medical treatment.
The weight of the previous night's events hit her like a freight train.
With a groan, she let her hand fall back onto her chest, and simply stared upwards into morning shadows of the rafters. She indulged in a moment of angst, acknowledging her pains, both physical and emotional.
A mere minute later, though, she decided such actions really weren't worth her time, and got up to start her morning routine.
"Celes?" she asked, absent-mindedly. Silence answered her, and she let out a breath – almost a miniature sigh – of irritation. She'd gotten used to him struggling awake in the mornings, though, so she began the next step, walking the four or so paces needed to get to his own cot –
It was empty and already made. Isara blinked in consternation.
Seconds later, she burst through the door, frantically searching outside for Celes; there was nobody outside, which sent her scurrying back inside. Up, down, left, right –
She took a deep breath. "Stop," she told herself. "What are you doing?"
Looking for Celes.
"Nothing's happened to him."
Yeah, just like that time in the first and last Imperial town, where "nothing" had been detainment by the Gestapo of the Darcsen ghetto they'd hidden in. That had been quite the scare.
"He probably left a note."
Go back inside, then, and find it.
"Why is the sun so high?"
It's afternoon already, you dolt.
With a puff of annoyance, she realized that Celes had let her sleep in. Forget the injury, that forge had to be completed in four days!
The cold wind blew into the open door, chilling her through the loose shirt and shorts she wore, and she reminded herself that she couldn't get anything done without eating or changing first. Turning on her heel, she made good on that thought.
As she changed into a working coverall, she looked around in the normal locations that Celes left notes in. She'd already looked at his cot and the door, but there was neither one on the hook where he left his bag and coat, nor on the table they dined on. It was unlike him to leave without notice, ever since the ghetto incident.
Sighing as she buttered a slice of bread, warmed on the latent heat of the furnace, she forced herself to relax. It had been so calm and tranquil for their stay, it might just be that he decided that there was no need.
Unless of course, something had happened.
With a sigh, she forced that thought out of her mind, and stuffed the bread into her mouth. If something had happened, one of the villagers would have informed her. That was the advantage of having made friends here.
After she finished her meal – eventually adding some of the remaining ham and soup from last night to round it out – she took a good look at the state of their workshop. Celes had obviously taken the time to extract the drop forge ballast from the furnace, without her help, in the morning before she'd awoken; the crucible, now filled with a single mass of metal, slept quietly on the earthen floor a few yards away from the furnace door.
"You're a chivalrous fool," she grumbled to an imaginary image of him, although she said it with a smile. With her hand in its current state, it wasn't as if she'd be much of a help anyways. She shook the burnt hand again. It didn't even throb, as long as she avoided pressing it against anything, and that much was obvious.
With yet another sigh – something about the morning inspired them in bulk – she walked over to the workshop half of the building, and got to work.
The first thing she'd tackle was that faulty mitt. Although ostensibly one-size-fits-all, Celes had had to have her trim a set to fit his smaller hands. That his hands had been smaller than hers had been a source of great embarrassment for him, but she had let it slide. "You need small hands to get into all those small places of the body, anyways," she'd joked.
"As if your own machines don't have small places either," he'd insisted on grumbling.
Of course, the mitt she hadn't worked on had turned out to be the faulty one, but Isara smiled at the memory regardless. Celes really was –
A fortunate sneeze cut off that train of thought. Shaking her head to clear her mind, she snatched up the damaged glove on the workbench, and was pleasantly surprised to find a piece of paper underneath it: Celes's note!
Eagerly, she flipped aside the mitt and examined the messy handwriting. Without lines and an ink pen – Celes hated ink, but with nothing to sharpen a pencil with during travel, it was a given – the thing looked more like a work of abstract art than writing. Did all doctors have messy handwriting?
Still, she'd come to be able to interpret the chicken scratch, and, with a final squint of her eyes, she read:
You think I'm a chivalrous fool.
She smiled. He knew her well enough.
Also, you went for the gloves first. I agree, fix them immediately, then keep working on the drop forge.
Also correct.
More importantly, though, I know you're angry at me for letting you rest.
Not so much angry as irritated. That was one thing Celes still hadn't realized – that she was nicer than he made her out to be. With a sigh, she continued tracing along the page:
You'll sigh when I say this, but you need it. She did. You heal pretty fast, though – by my estimation, you should be using that hand right now. Maybe it doesn't even hurt any more, but don't be surprised if it does. Smiling to herself, she shook her head. He'd been right. Regardless, it's still an injury, and I still don't know if the tendons were damaged. Try to be careful, after all, I –
The statement ended in several scratched out words. If the medium had been pencil instead of ink, maybe she could have read what had been underneath, but the paper soaked through, rendering
The note suddenly cut off, his words running to the edge of the piece of paper. Perturbed, she looked around for the next page, but even after several fruitless minutes, still couldn't find the thing.
"I – what?" she read aloud, thinking. I have plans? I don't want to see you get hurt?
I like you?
With another mind-clearing shake of the head, she went ahead and picked up the mitt, digging into her tool pouch for a needle and thread. She was satisfied that he'd left a note – she was not going to start imagining nonsensical endings to an unfinished sentence.
The needle went into the leather with perhaps a little too much venom.
******************************************************************************
Celes wanted to scream at Naru, but this time for an entirely different reason than frustration. This time, it was embarrassment.
"Really, Celestyn," the old medicine woman crooned – at least it sounded like crooning, but her intention was really a scolding – "it's a festival. And you know what all the young boys and girls are going to be doing during the night, after they break open the kegs of wine –"
"I, am, a, doctor," he enunciated through clenched teeth. "I know what happens. And I was in the Imperial army. I know what most of my squadmates did on leave."
Which was go into town and pick up the finest looking piece of man-bait they could find. That, or return to their wives. The end result was the same, however. Celes abstained, not out of any sense of modesty, but that he had no wife to return to – and really, at his age, it would have made little sense – and that, as a medical student, he knew just what grew in half of the bodies of those who used them in such a free way. Nothing he wanted.
He'd treated the results more than once on the front, when the symptoms had begun to show. One person had nearly died of the resulting blood infection, but fortunately they hadn't been so far up the front to not have access to a field hospital.
And that had been in "civilization", which all the amenities that allowed such free contact without the normal biological results of such couplings. Here, they didn't even have those.
At least, that was the problem that Naru had faced him with.
"I want you – " a brown wrinkled finger, permanently curved into a hook, somehow managed to point at him – "to take these herbs and make some pills out of them for me. That should secure you a position once this event is done and over with."
Said herbs were handed to him in a small wooden box that might have once held a dozen bars of soap. The fact that it said "Soap – One Dozen" on the top helped.
Carefully, he took the box and made a show of turning it over. "Just how big is a pill?" he asked.
Her clouded green eyes blinked blankly at him. "Pills," she said blankly.
Celes sighed. "Show me one."
Almost too eagerly, she dug into her belt pouch, and suddenly came out with a green orb. This time, it was Celes who blinked. The "pill" was the size of an egg.
"That's no pill. That's a death sentence."
Naru leered at him. "The herbs are quite weak, and you have to eat them a day in advance."
That's not a pill, then.
"Don't worry, though, we make sure all the girls take them." Isara's face came to his mind, inspired by the way she said "all"; flushing, he wondered just how she would take the news. "We can't have children out of wedlock, can we –"
Celes spluttered. "Those plants can do that?" Such an efficient method of contraception would be –
Wait; she'd said the day before. Knowing how most situations occurred, such a medicine wouldn't find too many customers.
More calmly this time, he asked, "Exactly what do these do?"
Naru let a grin of superiority cross her face – for once, he was asking the questions. "They make it so that seed cannot last in the field, dying before they ever take root."
Celes had been asking for the science behind it; clearly, she couldn't give it him. "And where do these things grow, anyways?" he continued, still trying to figure the herbs out.
"That's a secret," she smirked, "known only to the medicine women of Fhirald."
He narrowed his eyebrows. "How do I know you're not lying about these things?"
She could only maintain her look of superiority. "For the same reason that I haven't been murdered by an angry mother yet."
Throwing up his hands, he ceded the point. "I'll get to work then. Don't want to disappoint the ladies, after all."
As he picked up his crutches to leave, she called at him. "Oh, Celes?"
"Hmm?"
"You haven't been plowing your lover lately, have you?"
He coughed, ears flaming. "Of course not, she's not –"
"You seemed so frustrated; it's obvious you've been abstaining recently," she prattled on, oblivious.
"Excuse me, but –"
"Just because I gave you these," she snapped, suddenly vicious, "doesn't mean you go back to rutting your evenings away." Mouth agape, Celes could only stand in shock as she added, "I don't want you to distract her from that forge of hers, we haven't had a metalworker since –"
The door slammed shut to the accompaniment of her croaking laughter.
The sun was still high in the sky, but for once he could make it back early. He practically flew into his chair and whipped on the protective gloves in seconds, wheels spinning furiously as he pumped himself up the hillside back to his – their, he corrected himself – home.
Home. It truly was that now.
He reflected on the note he'd left earlier, although "note" was a misnomer; it was more of a long winded rant attempting to explain how exactly how he felt about her, about how he didn't want her to think that he was taking advantage of their relationship, about how it was mainly business and familiarity, anyways.
Heart racing, he checked himself internally. No matter how much he denied wanting her on the outside, he'd stupidly made sure to leave the possibility of a more intimate relationship open using some very careful language –
Celes shook his head. There were too many obstacles. They were too young, they'd been on enemy sides, and he was an Imperial, a name synonymous with "Darcsen hater".
His gloved hands dug into the rubber with perhaps a little too much venom.
******************************************************************************
Hilarity ensues in the next chapter. That is all I'm going to say about it, although it will not be X-rated hilarity, fortunately.
Obviously, I'm touching on those risqué subjects, but now for the second question. What is the going opinion on X-rated things? Do people want them to be written out, or left with a humongous implication? I just don't want to offend anyone's sensibilities. I'm personally leaning towards implication with several details, but that could easily change. :p
