Strange Bedfellows
He had long imagined he had outgrown his chance at Recognition. At nearly three thousand years old he felt his age with every step. If he studied his reflection in a pool of water, he would see a face still relatively handsome – a little gaunter than in his youth, perhaps, a little more deeply lined around his eyes and mouth. His hair was still thick, though steadily graying. His facefur had grown wilder of late, an unkempt mask of silver-shot whiskers. His skin had weathered the years better than many.
But his bones ached with the dampness, and he wearied easily. He who had once led the hunters and chased the bloodsong in his lifemate’s arms: now he found little appealed to him now quite like a good day’s sleep.
But he couldn’t sleep now. The long dormant stirrings of desire had his aging body strung taut as an arrow-whip. It wasn’t the skyfire in the blood he remembered from his younger days – more like a sharp burning deep in his heart. It was an itch than grew into a need, then into a torment with each passing moment it was not satisfied.
She would come to him soon. Recognition would compel her.
There would be a child. He offered up a plea to the spirits of his ancestors: Please, please let me live long enough to see my cub grow up.
Kimo sat guard outside the hollowed-out tree stump. Now the old wolf lifted his head and gave a soft huff at her approach. Dart wondered how much his lifemate understood of what was to come. Old age had exacted its toll on his mind, crippling the elfin part to the point where he could not remember how to change back from his wolf-form. He could only communicate in wolf-sendings now, the insubstantial language of feelings and images. He lived in the Now as no elf could, and some days Dart suspected Kimo had completely forgotten that he had once walked on two legs.
To some tribemates it was a slow tragedy, a death drawn out over decades. But Dart counted his lifemate blessed. All those who had chosen to keep Timmorn’s blood had made their peace with mortality, but still, Dart sometimes found himself seized with sudden terror as he fell asleep, afraid that when he awoke his husk would be gone. Kimo knew no such fear. He lived as each wolf had lived before him – taking each moment at a time, ignoring the past, heedless of the future. The Now was its own kind of immortality.
Tonight Dart would learn another kind of immortality. He would make a new life to take his place in the eternal circle.
She came to him at sundown, as he heard the howls of the wolves preparing for the evening hunt. She hesitated in the doorway of his den, her eyes shining with equal parts dread and hunger.
**Dyrr…?**
His old heart leapt at the sound of his soulname echoing in his mind. He replied with hers, giving life to the name that had been slowly taking shape in his heart.
**Serrin.**
“I didn’t understand why I had to come back to the Great Holt,” she whispered. “I felt something… drawing me here: a presence, a name… but I didn’t know it was you until–”
“Yes.”
He appraised her with eyes opened wide by Recognition. He was ashamed to realize he had never truly seen her before. To him she had always been a stripling hunter, playing at being chief on the Plainswaste. Now he understood the strength of her will, the scope of her dreams. She had the gift of far-seeing, just like her distant cousin Swift, but she also had a wildness in her that could never be tamed by tribe or time. For one who was born with only the faintest drop of Timmorn’s blood, she heard the wolfsong clearer than most.
She was not so much younger than he; yet her body was still lithe and fresh as a sapling’s. Her bones would never ache with damp; her hair would never lose its vibrant color, all the shades of the sunset. The span of her given years was so great as to be uncountable. He was glad of it; such fire deserved to burn forever. Still, faced with her vitality, he felt suddenly very old indeed.
He held out his hand, bidding her to join him on the furs, but still she hung back.
“Teir’s gone hunting. I… I haven’t told him,” she confessed.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want him to worry. I don’t – I don’t want him knowing until it’s too late to change it.”
“It’s already too late,” Dart pointed out, not unkindly.
“I’m already Recognized!” she protested, suddenly sounding very young. “My grandmother made it so I could choose – and I chose Teir! I don’t want a child with anyone else.”
She did not need to tell him so. He knew her – all of her. He knew she wanted nothing to do with him, as he knew she knew his desire for a child to go on after him. Still, he nodded gravely, so she would know he honored her feelings. Recognition might not care for the pettiness of personal desires, but he did. He would do all he could to spare her pain.
“I will not be around to trouble you long. You and Teir can make the child your own.”
“I know,” Ember said, rather too quickly. It occurred to him then that she was already anticipating his death, perhaps eager for it. Perhaps she hoped his heart would give out in the very act of joining.
He supposed he couldn’t blame her for that. He could see, even without the insight of Recognition, what the struggle was doing to her. Fine beads of perspiration gathered on her forehead. Her breath came in rapid snatches. She was torn between disgust and arousal.
“I’m frightened,” she admitted.
“Don’t be.”
He watched her battle the conflicting urges. He waited on the furs. In the end, she was the one who made the first move.
He hadn’t known joining in centuries. Dart could not remember exactly the last time he and Kimo had shared furs, before the wolf-thought had stolen his lifemate away. Nor could he recall the last time he had felt a true need for coupling.
But he felt it now. It seemed oddly appropriate: one last joining of bodies – and souls – one last agony of bliss in the service of creation. She held nothing back, not her caresses, not her tears. He sent comforting whispers to her, but he could not ease her anguish. He could do nothing but share it, until he too wept at the cruel symmetry of Recognition – that a new life who would surely bring them such happiness was conceived in such grief.
**Look to our cub, Serrin,** he sent to her as she sobbed in his arms afterwards, spent and filled with self-loathing. **Look to the joy, and forget the sorrow.**
She dressed in silence, but as she turned to go she spoke at last, her voice hoarse from crying. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For… being Dyrr. If I had to Recognize someone else… I’m glad it was you, and not another.”
He nodded. He watched her walk out of his life.
She would go back to Teir; they would quarrel and weep, and assign blame and forgiveness in turn. In a hundred – a thousand years – they would scarcely remember the pain this night caused them.
Dart didn’t have a hundred years. He doubted he had even had ten. But for as long as he had left on this world, he would hear her name on every breeze. Serrin would be forever etched on his heart alongside Kimo.
II.
The Lady Mura came home after a month at sea. The pips scampered on board to see the trade goods brought back from the Southern Coves. The pirates descended the gangplank to hearty welcomes from their friends and family.
Mimic’s eyes scanned the crowd, searching for her lovemate. She spotted Fisher hovering at near the edge of the welcoming party, as if ill-at-ease around so many people. His brow was knit fretfully; he looked, as his forest kin like to say, like a wolf with a bone to chew. She waved to him, grinning. He waved back eagerly enough, yet the smile he returned seemed rather wan.
It felt strange, walking on solid land again. She was so used to swaying gently with the rocking deck. She felt like a limping drunkard as she made her way to Fisher’s arms.
“Oh, it’s good to be home,” she said as she hugged him. His arms locked about her and held tight. He nuzzled her tousled brown locks and murmured back: “I missed you so much.”
Such earnestness was out of place for him. Fisher was like his parents, the wolf-riding Yun and the fin-wrist Wavecatcher. He always kept things light. She had fallen in love with his easy manner, his carefree ways. He was always ready for a laugh, a drink at the tavern or a tumble in furs. He wasn’t a brooder, and he wasn’t a limpet.
“Fisher?” she asked, concerned. She pulled back, to look him in the eyes. Soft blue gray eyes, like the sea just before a storm. They seemed darker, somehow, deeper. Haunted.
“We need to talk,” he said, and he took her head to lead her from the docks.
Her stomach curdled at his grave tone. She turned over the possibilities in her mind. Her first thought was for her old ratting hound. “Is it Termite?” she whispered urgently. “Is he–”
“No, no, he’s fine,” Fisher said, with a fleeting smile. “Fast asleep out on the porch, like every afternoon.”
He offered nothing more, and she did not press him. If she were a Wolfrider, she supposed she’d wrest the answer of his mind – the wolf-elves were always sending to each other, trading thoughts when words would suffice. She supposed it suited their primitive lifestyle – one had to learn silence in a forest full of dangers. Still, it still struck her as strange – and more than a little rude – for a pair of elves to hold a private conversation in sending even as they mingled in a crowd.
So she did not try to touch minds. She settled for holding his hand tightly as he led her down towards Pip’s Beach. By the time they reached the sand her palm was slick with sweat.
“Fisher… what is it? What’s happened?” Her mind struggled to sort and rank all the possibilities by likelihood. A loss, clearly, but how serious? Had he wagered and lost her best conch in a drinking game? Or had someone died up at his Holt?
He smiled bashfully. “I don’t really know to say it, so I’ll just say it.”
By Mura… he was ending it. He had already packed his things and he was moving back to his Holt. She knew that look, that tone of voice; she had given and received that apologetic smile many times. Mimic had lived some four thousand turns of the world, and in that time she’d caught and released her fair share of lovemates. Some had remained close friends. Others had cursed her – or given her cause to curse them. Sometimes the separation had proved as inevitable as the tides, and other times it had come like a bolt of skyrise out of the blue.
The first thought to strike her was: But who’ll look after Termite when I’m at sea?
Fisher swallowed and took a deep breath. “The truth is… while you were gone, I – I Recognized–”
The words pierced her like a spear to the belly It was worse than she thought. So much worse. Some changes could be unmade; not Recognition. When that skyfire struck, there was nothing to be done. Like his parents – like his grandparents – like his great-grandparents: the moment eyes-met-eyes he had ceased to be her Fisher.
It seemed to her that she hadn’t realized how much he meant to her until she had lost him.
He had probably already moved in with the wench, whoever she was. He had probably already started work weaving a cradle out of rushes. He was probably itching to abandon her on the beach, so he could run back to his new lifemate and wrestle her down to bed, the simpering limpet–
“ –Gypsy Moth,” Fisher finished.
Mimic’s jaw dropped.
Gypsy Moth: the Wolf Who Learned to Swim. The spitfire daughter of Swift the Seeker, who had traded the rainforest Holt for a little schooner and a cabin at Green Moon Bay. Gypsy Moth: Fisher’s oldest childhood friend – and the most avowed lass-lover on the World of Two Moons.
“Oh thank Mura!” Mimic blurted out. “I was really worried there for a moment.”
Fisher chuckled awkwardly. “You were? How do you think I felt when it happened?”
“So… did you?”
He shrugged. “Of course. What else could we do?”
“And… did Recognition… alter her tastes at all?”
Fisher gave her a quizzical look and an impish smirk that said: Are you pulling my tail?
Mimic burst out laughing. “Oh, poor Gypsy.”
“Poor me! You just try getting frisky when you know in your soul just how much the other elf wishes you were someone else! Recognition – it’s supposed to the be-all and end-all of joinings, and we were… just sort of thrashing around like a pair of spawning trout!” But he was laughing too. The tension dissolved.
“Oh… just try looking Sandpiper in the eye after that,” he said.
“How is Sandpiper taking it?”
“Oh, she’s nesting like a turtle – the pair of them are! Already chattering about names and baby beds and whether to get a puppy for the little squirt. Stars, I’ll be lucky if I ever see that pip for half an evening twice a month!”
“I’m sure you will. You’ll make a wonderful father.” Mimic hugged him. “But how does it feel now? Recognizing - knowing her soul? Has it changed everything?”
“Just about,” he admitted. Then he lowered his voice and his eyes took on that familiar sparkle. “But not quite everything,” he purred, as his mouth descended to claim hers.
III.
She didn’t understand what her mother had found so pleasant about pregnancy. Meerkat’s Recognition was just over a year old, and it seemed her belly had decided to swell overnight. What she wouldn’t give for a touch of her father’s floating powers now, to ease the weight that made her wobble like a drunken zwoot. She was used to scaling the cliffs like a klipspringer – now she was lucky if she could walk up and down the stairs with any modicum of grace.
Fennec kept telling her she looked as beautiful as the day he’d Recognized her, but she couldn’t help but notice how he told her instead of sending the thought. She wanted to tell him that he was a terrible liar no matter how he went about it. But something held her back. Shyness, perhaps – though she had never been much troubled by that emotion. Kindness, then. Despite baring his soul to her in the moment eyes met eyes, Fennec still cherished the delusion that he could keep some secrets from her. There was something so sweet about such naïveté in one she had always thought so world-wise.
Not that she had thought much about him before their Recognition. He had always struck her as much too serious, and much too devoted to his lovemate Eyrie. And there had been more than enough pretty boys – and girls – to keep her from speculating too much on Fennec’s potential as a lovemate. They had been as near as strangers as any two elves in Oasis could be, until his soulname had suddenly screamed itself in her mind.
“From now on, my eyes see no other,” Fennec had vowed, the night they joined.
Truly, he had such a sweet heart. Even if he couldn’t lie to save his own skin.
Her hand on the small of her back to ease her pain, Meerkat shuffled down the corridor to Eyrie’s quarters, just one floor beneath her own inside the Tallest Spire. She kept meaning to return her friend’s gold anklets, and now that her own ankles were too swollen for jewelry, she no longer had an excuse to hold onto them.
The door to Eyrie’s chambers was unlocked; Meerkat took that as invitation to enter without knocking. It was the hour of daysleep, and she meant to simply leave the anklets on the nearest tabletop. But as she stepped inside, she heard the distinctive sounds of loveplay – a catch of breath, a press of lips, the hiss of skin against skin. A familiar male voice gasped Eyrie’s name, and the Glider’s own alto replied with a moan of pleasure.
Politeness dictated she withdraw. But Meerkat had too much of her mother’s impishness in her. Her large belly preceded her around the corner to the bedchamber, where she found Fennec and Eyrie locked in an intimate embrace, floating a handspan above the bed.
“Well now,” Meerkat drawled with amusement. “Someone’s having fun!”
Eyrie lost her concentration and they tumbled back onto the mattress in a tangle of limbs. Fennec struggled to sit up. Perversely, he clutched Eyrie even closer, as if to use her body as a shield.
“Lifemate!” he gasped. “I can explain.”
Meerkat lifted an eyebrow. “You hardly need to. I have eyes.”
“I – we – I thought you were going to spend the afternoon in your garden!”
“I just wanted to return these.” She held up the jewelled anklets. Eyrie brushed her many braids out of her face and turned a sympathetic smile towards her old friend.
“Thanks. You… you can just leave them over there.” She indicated a side table with a wave of her hand. Fennec slapped it down with an angry hiss.
“Sorry,” Eyrie added. “We didn’t want you to find out this way.”
“Judging by my lifemate’s face, he didn’t want me to find out at all.”
“I told him we should have come to you from the start.”
“Why? You hardly need my permission – you two have been lovemates since long before I was ever born.”
**The day we Recognized I swore I would be yours alone,** Fennec began in locksending. **Truly, I meant to honor that vow–**
Meerkat let out an impatient huff. **And did I ever ask you to? We’re each others’ lifemates – not each others’ prisoners.**
“You… don’t mind?” Fennec asked, red-faced.
“Well, I am a little jealous – that floating part looks quite fun.”
“Oh, you’re welcome to join us,” Eyrie offered. Fennec looked horrified at the thought.
“That’s sweet. But until I can lay this egg,” she gazed down at her pregnant belly ruefully, “I’m afraid I just can’t get into the mood anymore.” She smirked at Fennec’s evident discomfort. “You enjoy yourselves. Just remember, I do want him back eventually.”
“We can work out a schedule,” Eyrie said cheerfully.
Meerkat’s laughter followed her out the door. Eyrie turned a knowing gaze back at her lovemate. “There, you ol’ growler – I told you she’d be fine with it!”
IV.
He had always known the day would come; he knew it was only a matter of time before his body would demand a chance to procreate. Recognition was the keenest of all evolution’s instruments – it ensured the creation of only the fittest specimens; certainly his bloodline was more than deserving of perpetuation. Through all his many ancestors he was descended from Lord Haken himself twenty times over. And his many physical and mental achievements recommended his blood highly. He was doing his people a great service, and with such little effort, when all was said and done. This… temporary conjunction – unpalatable as it was – was simply another of the many small chores he had to perform as a pillar of the community.
He just wished Sust would stop laughing.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” his lifemate fought for control. “It’s just – you two! – meeting eyes as you’re fighting over the last rib!”
“You can well laugh. You don’t have to poke her.”
“I’d poke her – in a heartbeat. She’s choice! She’s… like you with girl-bits.” He grinned, and his gaze grew distant. “High Ones – what sort of cub are you going to make? Hair softer than moth-fabric and a stomach like a bottomless pit! And if looks could kill… it’ll probably learn how make folks’ heads explode with one arch of the eyebrow,” he added with relish.
“Please stop sounding so… aroused at the thought of my offspring.”
A knock at the door. Coppersky opened it with great reluctance. He was half-afraid the gossip had already reached his mother – he was dreading her tearful congratulations. But no, it was the wench herself, bearing a peace offering in the form of bottled honeywine.
“Thought this might help,” Tass said.
“Change of plans – Sust’s offered to take my place,” Coppersky remarked wryly.
“Can I?” Sust asked hopefully.
“No!”
Tass’s lips quirked in an appraising smile. “Well, he’s welcome to join in, if he likes. If it would make you feel more comfortable,” she added, in an innocent voice. “He can get you started – I don’t mind.”
Sust smothered a snort of laughter with his hand.
“You’re enjoying this,” he accused.
“Of course I am! It’s not every day I get to be a mother – and watch you squirm like you’ve got fireants in your breeches. All my floods-and-flowers have come at once.”
“If you want a child, go Recognize someone who would enjoy making them.”
“You know it doesn’t work that way. There’s nothing to be done now, except, try to find the humor in it.”
“There’s too much humor being found, if you ask me!”
“Oh come now, Saen, it’s not so bad,” Tass took his hand in her, and held it fast when he tried to twist free. “We’ll get good and muzzy-headed off the wine… maybe light a little wackroot…” she led him over to Sust. “You and Sust will have a grand old time. You’ll barely know I’m there.”
“You’re here,” Coppersky said sulkly, tapping his forehead. “Believe me, I know.”
“And there’s only sure way of getting me out,” Tass retorted smugly. With her free hand, she reached for Sust’s. He extended one hand to Tass, the other to Coppersky, until they were bound in a circle.
“I suppose you’ll want to keep the child,” Coppersky grumbled.
“Oh, there’s no reason why I can’t live here in Oasis – at least until the cub’s grown. Cricket would probably come too. But we can sort all that out later; there’s plenty of time.”
He heaved a great sigh, to make sure she understood the sacrifice he was making. “All right, let’s get this over with.”
“Who knows, you might even enjoy yourself.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
* * *
The act was mercifully brief – or at least according to his memory of it. To celebrate a successful conclusion, he had consumed a heroic amount of honeywine. Enduring the praise and knowing giggles of his neighbors proved far more tiresome. But as Tass began to grow heavy with child, he had to admit a certain satisfaction in a job well done. Be it in killing a bull or siring a child, he always excelled.
After two floods-and-flowers, the child was born – a girl with dark brown skin and eyes darker still. They would name her Isra – a Glider’s name from Blue Mountain – to honor Lord Haken. Coppersky looked down at his infant daughter and felt a deep, heartwarming pride. It had been worth it: all the petty humilations he had suffered to create this new life. He would raise her to be an ornament to Oasis, as beautiful and refined as Lady Chani. She would outshine all other maidens in grace, and the howlkeepers of every tribe would have a song praising her virtues…
Sust’s loud snicker interrupted his reverie. “Look at that hair!” Sust plucked at a whorl of black hair, standing straight up on the infant’s damp scalp. “We oughta call her Tufts.”
Tass’s eyes lit up in delight. “Tufts – oh, that’s adorable!”
Coppersky groaned softly. It seemed there was no end to the indignities of Recognition.
Elfquest copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2014 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts.