Book 4

Siha: Rise of Rakhana

Part II

Closing her eyes, she can't tell if the second one is okay, though Casnar's laughter might signal otherwise, "…Casnar…" She whispers, feeling someone move towards her and start to lower her shift, "…is the baby—"

"It's a boy, Braith," she hears Casnar distantly, "…Keep your eyes open, baby."

"Is the second, is the second," she feels herself being lifted, her hand collected into her lap by a hot grip, the smell of caramel and blood and forest bog pungent in their mix, "…is he okay?" Despite the heat of the forest bogs, she feels cold, and sighs a little as whoever is holding her begins to move.

"We'll check them and see what their conditions are once we reach the ship," Casnar's voice. "Stay awake, Braith." Having trouble with this small task, she tries to open her eyes…It feels impossible.

"Casnar," she whispers, moving along on the sea, held in Tetonbaum's arms as he climbs swiftly with Casnar holding the twins behind them, perilously navigating and balancing over the steep hilly wood to the top, "…Tell them…Tell them I'm so proud—" She issues a little sob.

"You can tell your little ones yourself." Tetonbaum glances at her before she closes her eyes. She can smell blood and venom. She relaxes into his scent, letting it remind her of Ylyssus and Casnar, the sweet venom of Tyrannus drells.

She sighs, "…I feel like I'm going."

She hears Tetonbaum, just barely, "…Nefen Shepard, keep yourself awake."

"Don't worry, Tetonbaum," she smiles. "Kasumi will be so happy," she whispers, and before they can reach the ship at the top of the hill, waiting with Ylyssus and a crew, Braith passes.

The squalls of the children wake Casnar upright in his bed, his eyes heavy with sleeplessness. He looks at the set of hands on the edge of the covers next to him, slowly drawing down the covers as a voice grumbles out, "…Is it your turn, my turn, or Ylyssus's—"

"Braith." Casnar watches as she sits up, Ylyssus's arm sliding off their wife and the mother of two twin boy-drells awake in the next room of the cottus, and rolling out of bed, Ylyssus lets her stand. Braith's hair falls to her middle back as she turns and kisses Ylyssus for inconveniencing him the most, and he kisses her before he falls back on the bed. Casnar watches her lithe form move off towards the other room, the pang of his dream aching him sorely to get up and hold her, never let her go…The squalling continues, two shrill pairs of lungs in need of motherly attention. "Bad dreams again, Sered?"

"I keep having dreams about Braith and the kids, Tetonbaum, you, Kasumi, Thane, the Al'Kin," Casnar sighs and winces his eyes closed, all four lids, and rubbing his lids with his fingers, "…Jaspin and Jenner aren't helping…I keep thinking, dreaming something's going to happen…Braith died in the last one, you were separated from us, someone was threatening the kids."

"Have you been looking into the shards lately, Sered."

"Yes," he nods tiredly and pauses, "…The paths are all screwed-up." They look and see Braith passing the doorview of the cotovatre ( nursery ) room, and in her arms she balances two quiet bundles.

"Do we need to be worried that Konis or Cartira will send someone to harm us, all this way to Kahje?" Casnar does not answer for a long time, long enough for Braith to pass into their view again.

"I think we will be okay, what with the children officially under the citizenship of both Council and Rakhïk governance," Casnar says of the first children born of tri-hybridization—drell, human, morthwyl.

"And as for Braith?"

"She's impossible to kill."

"That doesn't mean they won't send someone to try." Casnar looks back at Ylyssus.

"I don't know, Ylyssus," Casnar flops back onto the pillows and opens his arms to Braith's form as she returns to bed, having settled the twins in the nursery, asleep now, "…We'll talk about it more in the morning," he kisses her hands as she straddles his waist and passes over him, curling herself into his stomach and chest as he rolls to spoon with their wife, "…I'm too tired to think clearly."

Ylyssus sits up in bed to watch over the pair as they fall asleep, his unease of Casnar's premonitions unsettling. She looks radiant to him as he looks down at her profile, and Casnar's face only relaxes when she is in his arms, his patak now partially obscured by her thick black hair. She cannot die, he thinks, wondering of his own mortality in time, …How could Casnar see her dying?

He slides out of the bed and quietly walks into the cotovatre, leaning his crests around the frame of the doorway to see the hutches with both children cuddled in their soft blankets.

The one on the left, the first-born twin Jaspin, clutches his blanket tightly in golden-copper little fingers, as if dreading someone taking it. The one on the right, Jenner with the golden crests, sleeps with his little arms loose at his sides on the blankets. "I'll name him after my brother's middle name."

She only began speaking of her former family members after they'd recovered her from the Kir…Lifting a chair quietly from the wall, Ylyssus set it so that his back would be to Casnar, Braith, his bedroom, Ylyssus's angled view of the twins asleep and the doorway to the rest of the cottus rooms.

Braith shifts in her sleep, and Casnar's arm naturally winds about her tighter.