Aithne had been married to two orcs for two weeks but she still was not used to the idea. There was something so foreign about it all. She lay in the furs of their large bed in their very large ngot – nearly three times the size of Nyatt’s previous home - next to her snoring husband while her snoring wife lay on his other side.

 

Seven times, she had had sex with her husband while Chyehye was in the vicinity, and seven times the reverse had been true. Aithne had, of course, had sex (or had been fucked, anyway) in front of others hundreds of times, but this felt different. There was just something about being naked and splayed out, on hands and knees or on her back or straddling Nyatt’s massive form while his cock slammed into her, with both of them grunting and moaning and sweating, all while Chyehye moved about the room doing mundane housekeeping chores as if they weren’t there. It was so intensely personal that it circled around to being simultaneously impersonal. Somehow.

 

It wasn’t just the sex, either. Aithne had grown used to having a lover with Urag; used to those little moments of quiet intimacy, of the little looks and smiles and gestures that came from learning to exist in the same space, the small tweaks to accommodate another’s life with one’s own. The same was burgeoning now, except not with her husband – Nyatt was more than eager to receive his husbandly daily quota of sex but was otherwise a brick wall when it came to intimacy – but with her wife. Bound as they were by their shared duties, multiplied by time spent together for Aithne’s lessons on how to be a proper Orcish wife (she had been doing a LOT of things wrong with Urag, it turned out), the two were beginning to bond in ways Aithne had never felt before.

 

In short, these hours spent off the road, after she had teleported them back to their ngot, were already beginning to feel like home.

 

It filled her with a sense of comfort but conflicted with a sense of guilt; she had married this second time out of necessity in order to join the meyge but surely she should not be enjoying it. It felt like a betrayal to Urag and Chtonji; like the years spent with them weighed the same as a mere seventeen days with her new family.

 

And, to add to the confusion, her conversation with Sloan had knocked loose memories of Aithne’s parents. Last time, by the time she had the ability to make her own choices, she had already been dead in her parents’ eyes for years. Though she had ached to see them, she had chosen not to for fear of tearing open wounds best left healed.

 

Okay, if she was being honest, it was really because she had been ashamed of what she had become. She had not wanted them to see her with a missing eye and scars all over her body. She had been broken more than once and had not felt she had the right to impose the shell of their former daughter on them.

 

But now…now was different.

 

Aithne shifted and pushed herself up, then dressed as quietly as she could, wrapped her belt with her purse around her, then knelt to pull on her boots.

 

“Going somewhere?”

 

Aithne jumped as Cheyhye knelt beside her. The orc woman was completely naked; something else Aithne had not quite got used to was the casual regard for clothing orcs had while in their own ngots. Another thing Urag had been decidedly un-orc about.

 

“Um. I’m going to see my parents. I won’t be long.”

 

“Your parents? Where are they?”

 

“Rihad.”

 

“Rihad…in Hammerfell?”

 

Aithne blinked. “Um. Yes. Is there another one?”

 

“I…suppose not. That is a very long way away.”

 

“It is a long distance, but not a long time. I’ll be back in time for my morning chores.”

 

“So why are you sneaking out? You really should not go anywhere without your husband’s approval.”

 

Aithne bit her lip as she thought, then decided honesty was the best way to go. “I was afraid he would want to come with me. And I promised him I would not gainsay him anything that is his husbandly right.”

 

“Ah.”

 

Aithne hastened to add, “It’s not that I am embarrassed to be married to him! Or you! It’s just…that would be a lot to bring to…there. I mean, for me, it has been almost seven years since I’ve seen them.”

 

“I understand. Just know, if you leave without asking, he will have no choice but to punish you when you get back.”

 

“I…punish? What…”

 

And then a picture formed in Chyehye’s mind that was so vibrant that Aithne, despite her best efforts to stay out of her wife’s head, could not help but see it. She blanched even as Chyehye said it out loud:

 

“A public spanking.”

 

Aithne found herself flushing red as her mind scrambled to gather the multitude of disparate emotions that were conjured in an instant but then scattered like fevered chipmunks in all directions. After a moment, her panicking brain settled on one action it could take and jumped on the opportunity before the rest of her had a chance to think about it. Her hands moved as if of their own volition while her mouth spoke familiar words and, a handful of staccato heartbeats later, she found herself kneeling on the floor of her bedroom in her parents’ house.

 

In retrospect, such as she was unable to consider until much later, her room was, perhaps, the worst choice she could have made as her destination. Her mind, already attempting to shovel her myriad of unchecked emotions back into a pile so it could sort them properly to figure out just what, exactly, she was feeling, completely gave up when confronted with the familiar smells, sights, and sounds of home. For some period of time she could not begin to measure, she did nothing but sob while curled on the floor in the tightest ball she could squeeze herself into.

 

She heard their minds before the footsteps, and the touch of their thoughts brought Aithne back to herself enough to concentrate hard to block them out. She did not want to hear her parents’ thoughts – she wanted them to be themselves, for her to be herself, for everything to have been just a horrible dream.

 

The door creaked open and she heard a gasp, then her mother’s voice.

 

“Honey?!”

 

“Honey?” Her father’s voice from behind the wall sounded incredulous. “Who is it?”

 

“It’s Aithne, dear, who do you think? Are you all right? What happened?”

 

Aithne’s mother stepped through the doorway and moved toward Aithne. Her still-pure-black hair was disheveled and she wore only a nightgown, the one with the blue flowers; such a familiar sight, Aithne was almost able to believe the lie of it all.

 

“It can’t be. Her ship would have just made…”

 

“It sank.” Aithne whispered the words as her mother knelt beside her, and Aithne wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck and clung like the child she wished she still was.

 

“…port in…what?”

 

Aithne cleared her throat and, after a few deep breaths, managed to get her voice to emit more than a whisper. “It sank in the Sea of Ghosts.”

 

“Sank?” Her father, who had clearly grabbed the first clothes-like thing he could find, was wrapped in a robe two sizes too small for him. He stood in the doorway and frowned with a troubled expression. “How could that be? Terrick is not the best captain, but he is more than capable of handling the Sea of Ghosts in summer.”

 

Aithne sighed and lifted her head from her mother’s bosom. “One of the prisoners broke out and murdered…everyone. Then the ship ran into an iceberg. I was in the nest, so he didn’t…didn’t find me.”

 

She clamped down as hard as she could on the black wave of emotions that wanted to swarm her at that moment. Years had passed since the moment she first met Borkul, but that moment was etched in her deeper than any world refresh or dominating catharsis could ever fully heal.

 

“But…” Her mother pulled back just enough to peer into Aithne’s tear-streaked face. “…then how did you get back? And so soon?”

 

Aithne sighed and pitched a wobbly smile. “It’s a long story. Could you make me some sweetrolls?”

 

****************

This is just a divider, there is more below

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Aithne hadn’t meant to tell them everything, but the tea and sweetrolls brought with them a level of comfort she had nearly forgotten existed and, once she began to tell her tale, it all spilled out – the wreck, Borkul, the slavery (although she did not go into detail on all that entailed), the eventual transition to the College, her family there, her magic, the dragons; then the world reset and her current state. By the time she was done, her parents sat in tongue-tied silence while Aithne sipped tea from her favorite childhood mug with shaking hands and concentrated very hard on not reading their minds.

 

“I know it is unbelievable, but it is the truth. Here.” Aithne produced a small flame on the palm of her hand and made it dance, then turned it into a crystalline shard of ice.

 

“I…” her mother finally said. She cleared her throat. “Honey, we believe you.”

 

“Most of it, anyway,” her father added. “That stuff about the world ending seems a little far-fetched.”

 

Her mother shot him a frown, then turned back to Aithne and smiled. “We have always known you had a greater destiny. We just didn’t know how it would…come about.”

 

Aithne frowned, looking from one to the other. “What?”

 

Her mother sighed but it was her father who took up the story.

 

“We…” he glanced at Aithne’s mother and then took her hand before continuing, “…we could not get pregnant. The doctors saw no reason for it, but no matter how much we…you know…” he cleared his throat, “…tried, it just did not happen. Finally we went to the temple…”

 

“The Temple of Mara,” her mother interjected.

 

“…the Temple of Mara and talked to the priestess.”

 

Her mother frowned. “She was not helpful. She just kept saying it was Mara’s will and there was nothing that could be done.”

 

Aithne blinked. “What? But then…”

 

Her father cleared his throat again and shifted uncomfortably. “As we were leaving the temple, heartbroken, a man came up to us. He…he said he could help us in exchange for…” He trailed off as his face reddened.

 

“For a bottle of my breast milk,” her mother supplied. “Which we didn’t understand because, of course, I had not had children, so I could not make milk. But then…” A pause, then she shook her head. “…suddenly I could. My breasts grew right there on the spot…”

 

“I liked that part!”

 

Her mother gave her father a sharp elbow, but both laughed.

 

“…and…well, we took that as a sign that the man was telling the truth. So we agreed.”

 

Her father added, “I thought he was just a pervert at first, but he didn’t want to watch, or anything. He just handed us a bottle and a lid, we filled it at home while he waited outside, then, after we gave it to him, he told us we would have you in exactly nine months.”

 

Her mother smiled. “And he was right! To the exact time of day.”

 

It was Aithne’s turn to sit in flummoxed silence while she tried to wrap her head around this revelation. Finally she asked the only question she could think of.

 

“Who was he?”

 

Her parents exchanged a glance, then both shrugged as one.

 

“He never told us his name,” her father replied.

 

Her mother nodded. “I don’t even remember what he looked like. The only thing I remember was that he smelled faintly of roses.”

 

Aithne frowned as that triggered a fuzzy partial memory that was gone before she could get a chance to examine it. She shook her head.

 

“I guess we all have our unbelievable but true stories.” She sighed and forced herself to her feet. “I…need to get going. Nyatt and Chyehye will be getting up soon and I promised I would be back in time for the morning chores.”

 

Her parents rose with her and they said tearful goodbyes and Aithne promised to visit regularly (“Oh, and bring your family next time. We want to meet them.”) and, with a final deep breath, she went home.

 

 

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