Page 30 of Taken to Lemora
“I’ll see you soon,” he answers.
His response makes me giddy but, before I can answer, he’s out of the door running through the crowd of people like a kit storming through a flock of birds. They scatter with screams and squeals of delight, often laughter.
“You really know how to make pants for other species?”
I jolt. Lyla’s about a dozen paces closer than she was, staring at me with her head tilted in that funny way. “Yeffa. I actually had some ideas for Hypha garments more tailored to their shape. I think if I added two darts from either shoulder to the waist, it would fit nicely around the thinner torso of the…” I trail off. “Are you…Apologies, I didn’t mean to overstep.”
She’s just staring at me with a huge grin on her broad, brown face. “Timor,” she calls over her shoulder, “Forget about finding me some help. I think it just walked through our front door.”
He grumbles something that I can’t make out, but I can tell that Lyla’s words were more for my benefit than for his.
“Would you like to come back on the coming solar and the one after that and then every solar — except for the resting solars, of course — and work here? Help us make clothes for Lemora’s strange and eclectic population?”
“A job? Are you…are you offering me a job?” My heart patters beneath my breast. My chest lurches, my stomach turns for a whole new set of reasons than the ones brought about by Raingar, his heat and his presence.
“Yeffa. I’m actually begging you to take this job.” I blink quickly, so many times she starts to laugh. “Is that a yeffa?”
“Yeffa!” I blurt. But then I bite my bottom lip. “I told the other clan chiefs that I’d be touring their grounds on these coming solars.”
“Pagh. Ohr that,” she says, sounding decidedly like Raingar when she quips. “Forget the other clans. We’re the best one, anyway. And besides, miriga, you’re allowed to do whatever you want to do now. So tell me, do you want to come here and help us or do you want to tour the other keeps? We’ve got no problem if you need a few solars to decide. We’ll be here, waiting and ready whenever you are.”
I beam, insides shuddering with so many foreign sensations. Hope, maybe? Nob, it isn’t hope. It isn’t pride either. It’s something else, something more tender. It makes me want to cry.
She takes my hand and rubs it firmly in hers as she meets my gaze. “You can do whatever you want here, miriga. Just tell me. If you don’t like Timor over there, you won’t break my heart. Though you might break his.”
He grunts in the background and I laugh and shake my head. “I’m in. I’d love to help you here.”
“Really?” She says, eyes light with surprise, with a hope that makes me feel like I’m someone special.
I nod, saliva thick in my mouth. I struggle to swallow it down. “Really.”
“Excellent news, miriga. Now, let’s find you some material for Raingar’s extra,extralarge pants.”
6
Essmira
“It was so, so lovely on her that three other Asgid came in later that solar and asked for dresses of the same cut. Can you believe that?”
“Of course I can believe that…”
I speak straight over him. It’s already been nine solars here and I feel the female that I was before already unraveling into spools of knotted threads at my feet. Not totally undone, but unbecoming. And it feels ohring fantastic.
“And that was only the second solar I was working in the shop. I know I told Bebette, Tana and Reyna that I’d come see their villages, but I haven’t the time. I haven’t even had occasion to fit your new pants yet. And you still insist on wearing the old ones,” I mutter, taking pains not to hide my irritation.
“Sometimes the big pants are…good,” he says lamely, though he doesn’t sound like he means it. He’s grumbling again, looking everywhere but at me directly.
I frown. “You’re acting strange. Is something wrong?”
“Would you stop asking me that. Just…finish the pants, you insufferable wench!”
I grin. He knows that I like when he teases me. He teases everyone for whom he has affection, which, in his halliseveryone. I snort. “You’re an insufferable brute, yourself. I don’t think you were even listening to my story.”
“What! Of course I’m listening,” he stammers. “You’ve been busy and I don’t like it. It’s been nine solars and I’ve only seen you five of them.”
“I’ve seen you more than any other single being,” I say, but it feelswrongto say it, even if it is true. Because the truth I wished I was courageous enough to voice is that I’ve missed him, too.
I’d like to ask him if he’d house me, but I’m too worried about offending Merquin or shaming him if he does not wish to have me. It sounds like he does, but…I don’t know for sure.
