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Click here"So she is," Heoldax still shot Caeli a reproachful look, "Courtyard, in the saddle on your warhorses, within the hour."
I turned to Caeli and kissed the hand that still white-knuckled mine. "I love you and I'll be back as soon as I can."
"No," she insisted.
"Caeli, Tarvini is less than 100 miles from the border and only a few towns from this fortress. We must stop the horde in its tracks."
"We'd be safe in the fortress though?"
"You would have me cower behind walls while a horde ravages town and country?"
"You're one soldier. You can't stop a... a horde."
"My love," I hugged her to me, "Every one soldier must stand and fight or the tidal wave takes us all."
"No," she pounded her small fist on my chest, but the air was already out of her. "You're mine. Mine. My sisters, they can't have you."
"I'm a soldier, dear Caeli. They have me by oath."
"You swore an oath to me too."
"On my commission and on my honor, so it's broken if I have neither."
"Don't go. I don't care about honor. I care about you," her little fist still pressed against my chest, but she laid her head there too.
"I love you," I repeated.
"I love you, too, Tai," she looked up at me, resigned but crying. "So don't die."
"I'll do my best to get back to you alive, my love," I kissed her forehead, threw on soldier's garb, and left the room without letting myself look back. I stopped only in the side room to collect my armor, my tack and kit, and some bags of gold.
Walking out on her while listening to her crying bitterly was the hardest thing I'd ever forced myself to do.
Lucax stopped me at my door, her cavalry armor half on and holding the rest of her tack and kit.
"Ser Lucax," I held up my hand, "I assume your place remains here."
"It shouldn't," she disputed through gritted teeth and with shame in her eyes. It was an unwarranted shame, but also an undeniable shame. The same shame any fencible soldier would feel while watching another loyal soldier leave a shared relative safety to face an imminent threat that they'd both been trained to fight and both had sworn to fight.
"Nonetheless, it does." There was nothing comforting to be said about it and no time to say it, so I didn't stand and argue.
Leaving or not leaving, neither seems right to a soldier with her love at home.
- COMMENTS
FranziskaSissyover 2 years agoWhat an fabulous extraordinary tale already to this point ...... You having a beautiful talent writing such wonderful stories ...... And this precious time to let LOVE grow and slip from heart to heart from soul to soul is heartfilling to read ....... A dreamy lovely wonderful chapter ...... Master degree for it 💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝
lilshymynxabout 3 years agoI am absolutely loving this series and it has invaded my dreams. I was halfway through this chapter last night when I realized that it was 2am and I had to be up in 4 hours. Reluctantly I put my tablet down, but my dreams were filled with wild ideas about the story. It got to the point that I couldn't remember what had actually happened in the story and what I had dreamt, so I started over again this evening.
Not that I am complaining about that. You write beautifully and the world you have crafted is amazing. The gentle blossoming of Tai and Caeli's relationship reminds me so much of the early stages of my partner and I. Such wonderful memories!!
Sammantha_Rabbitover 3 years agoThis is another great chapter to a brilliantly woven story and your world building is always excellent. You always create such living breathing worlds inhabited by characters that I just want to get to know and live alongside of. You make them so rich and each with their own individual personalities and idiosyncrasies which makes it feel as if the world is populated by people, and you're just giving us a snapshot of their lives rather than them just being characters.
If you dont mind me making a suggestion, I read yours and Maonaigh comment on reproduction in your story and your thoughts on the awkwardness of spontaneous individual reproduction in a war camp and more generally.
I read your comment about the mental/emotional/hormonal state of the mother being crucial, and it made me think of a plant the ancient Greeks and Romans used called Silphium, which acted as a contraceptive. Perhaps this world might have something similar, but that could be used to induce a state receptive to pregnancy instead of preventing it.
Anyway thank you for another amazing chapter and I look forward to more.
Clouded_yellowover 3 years agoI thoroughly enjoyed this story and your imaginative yet very much believable little world. The story pulls you within and heightens anticipation of how it may unfold further. Can't wait to read the next chapter. Thanks once again for sharing this wonderful story with us. Great job!!
LesbianChickLitover 3 years agoAuthorThank you all.
Maonaigh, I've painted myself into a corner a bit on that one, huh? I have been lazily copping out on reproduction since it won't come up for a few chapters yet, but I will need to make a decision. (Thankfully, this is the only world where I've omitted men entirely.)
The traditional Amazon approach bothered me though as a dictionary feminist and wouldn't honestly be believable anyway, so it is certainly going to be parthenogenetic in the sense that there won't be sperm or physical genetic material from a second individual, but obviously can't use the modern scientific intentioned single individual approach.
I'm torn between having had the parthenogenesis be a natural evolutionary response to a global loss of males or viable sperm at some point in their prehistory (which would be about as effective for Taiglox to explain as Moses describing evolution itself) or to simply invent a magical solution instead (which would change the tone of the story in a way that would otherwise be unnecessary.)
Girly of me, but the only thing that I have decided is that the mental/emotional/hormonal state of the mother will be essential to becoming pregnant, that she has to be 'nesting' for lack of a better word. Mostly for character building and interaction, but also because uncontrollable single individual reproduction would be damned awkward in a warcamp.
On this score and many others, I am open to suggestion?
