Date Point: 15y5m7d AV
High Mountain Fortress, Gao
Sister Naydra, Life-Mate of the Great Father
Daar, like most Males, was a creature of wild moods. That was the thing that gave males their exciting, slightly dangerous edge and was, at least for Naydra, a big part of what made them attractive. Some breeds like Whitecrests or Straightshields earned attention with their well-tempered discipline. Others like the One-Fangs or Stonebacks let their passion burn brightly for all to see. Some Females preferred the former, others the latter. Still others like Naydra found attraction at either end, and that more than anything was probably why she had fallen in love with Daar; he was both extremes at the same time and to a degree she had never seen matched by anyone, of any species.
In public he was the living model of crude, honest dignity and had truly steel-strong self restraint. He of course enjoyed coarse language and found immense delight in the simpler entertainments of life, yet nobody could deny his keen mind or his sometimes shockingly subtle humor. There was refinement, there. It was sometimes hard to see, and he picked his Civilized proclivities with great care…but it was there. Whether it be with his flowers, a keen love of the Gao’s history, or the crude yet clever little fables he had at first started writing for his friends as an in-joke, the Great Father was a creature who could not be easily defined.
His fables in particular were an interesting example of that duality held in careful tension. They were often raunchy yet not quite scandalously so; he rode that fine line with clever prose, groan-worthy puns, confidently self-deprecating humor—rarely if ever heard from a Male, that—and a growing body of complex, self-referential memes. His fables had no schedule or theme to them. He wrote just-so stories about whatever tickled his fancy at the moment, often as a result of a meeting, a particularly well-accomplished Gaoian’s achievements, or maybe the antics of a cub on a playground. With her encouragement they had become one of his chief means of public communication, and the public responded in kind. His fables had seeded a rapidly growing word game the whole of the Gao played, and Daar spent a few spare moments every evening to read through and reply to some lucky thread, building on the poster’s story or slyly picking it apart.
He’d actually broken the datasphere a few times with the avalanche of replies to his posts.
His other side, the wild, unrestrained engine of optimism, giddiness, rage…and sometimes a deep and unabiding despair…was not something the public ever saw. Not even in his most fierce moments as the Great Father or his most ear-waggling smarmy come-ons as the Champion of Stoneback, had he ever allowed people to see him at his unrestrained maximum. That was something he shared only with his most trusted friends and confidants; First Fang, a few of the Champions, Regaari of course…
And now Naydra, the first life-mate the Females had permitted any male for a thousand years.
For the moment she was relaxing in private and catching up on her reading while he entertained his consorts for the evening. It would be quite late before he wore them out and she found herself oddly grateful for the rest; the day’s activities had been tiring, to say the least. It was Daar’s fiftieth birthday today and that was a significant one for males, especially for a labor-bred brownie like him. Fifty was generally the age where males would retire and switch to light duties at their Clan or workhouse. It was supposed to be a reward for a long productive life, where they could live out the rest of their time in relative comfort and, for many, the heavy attention of Females. Old males were successful males after all, and simply living that long in the first place was a serious accomplishment for most brownfurs.
Naydra was many years Daar’s junior, and his admirable venerability had been a bit of a concern amongst the Females while they were still debating the propriety of the situation. She countered that they were obligated to support the Great Father, having created him in the first place, and that the duty of the thing would slowly kill him if they didn’t give him what he needed. She was right, everyone knew she was right, and in the end she won the debate.
Yulna’s support hadn’t hurt her case, either.
Of course it also helped that the big lout was in radiantly good health. He did have some handsome and dignified silver creeping into his cheek ruffs and along the outside of his massive forearms these days, but despite that he had the body, health, and vigor of someone effectively thirty years younger. And that was at the peak of the war, when he had been running himself ragged. His duties had made him truly despondent most days. But with time, love, care, and the victory at hand, everything had improved greatly. Now he was the best version of himself he had ever been.
He knew it, too.
Lately he had been carrying himself with a lighter, more playful gait—if “light” was a reasonable term for a male larger than a naxas stud—and had done so more and more as the Gao shifted to rebuilding their world. It was the little things, really. As the Females slowly, carefully peeked their noses back into public life, he in turn had regained some of the unabashedly flirty banter for which he had previously been legendary. He did that with every Female he met and that might have made Naydra jealous…except he did it the best for her.
She didn’t know exactly why, but no other Female seemed to catch his interest the same way she did. With the others it was playful, with her…it was serious. He always looked at her with a singularly intense stare, as if he was captivated by what he saw. Then he’d snap out of it and find some ridiculous excuse to pose and preen for her, usually with a come-on line so awful that even his Champions rolled their eyes. It was cheesy, crude, stupid…and she adored it. He loved showing off for her with words and weights, kept his pelt perfectly trimmed and just short enough to show off the hard-earned lines of his unmatched body. The big Keeda knew exactly how to push a Female’s buttons and he took a special delight in pushing hers.
That renewed vigor had been the theme for the day’s celebration, and it had been one of the few but lately more frequent times she had seen Daar in an unreservedly, boisterously happy mood. He’d gone on one of his “walkabouts” with several workhouses and Clans that day, a thing he hadn’t been able to do for quite some time. Naydra had no idea how his security detail made it work but they did, and Daar spent the first part of the day rolling in the dirt with the hardest working, most flea-bitten, lowest, roughest…and genuinely kind, good-hearted brownies the laboring world had to offer. They had no shame speaking coarse and flattering things in her presence, and Daar was positively gleeful as he thrashed their hides in retaliation. It was absolutely no contest at all and yet somehow, no feelings were hurt.
In fact they seemed to love him for it. That maybe had more to do with their impressive new scars but the feeling was clearly genuine, and it was reciprocated. The working males of the Gao absolutely loved the Great Father and he loved them right back. She wouldn’t pretend she completely understood either the male or the brownfur mindset, being a female silverfur herself, but that didn’t stop her from being drawn to both. Their energy was magnetic. They shared their food, showed both of them their work, groaned when he tried his hand at the task and made them all look like amateurs. Then they drank Talamay together, sang Naydra’s praises in the crudest, raunchiest, most genuinely flattering terms she had ever heard…
There was even a friendly many-on-one brawl, with essentially all the Brothers of a Clan Ironclaw workhouse piling on the Great Father. Daar won of course, thoroughly but not quite instantly, and that small “victory” had cheered them greatly. Him too! He even gave them a crash course on how to handle large brawls, which they took very seriously, but Naydra noticed he had very cunningly kept some Stoneback secrets to himself. He told no lies, of course, but…why advantage his Clan rivals over his own?
She was reclining against her favorite floor cushion when she felt the gravity crank up. Daar must have been on his way back. He’d gone to so much effort building himself up to match the Deathworlders after all, it would have been both silly and wasteful to lose all that hard-earned strength and bone density to Gao’s weaker gravity. That meant h e spent as much of his day as he could in either an Earth or even Ten’Gewek-level field to maintain his body; keeping up with proper Deathworlders was an enormous commitment.
Naydra could tell he was feeling frisky tonight because the gravity was definitely Ten’Gewek level or maybe more; she’d ended up growing accustomed to the daily needs of his training and had taken to some of it herself. After all, the life-mate of the Great Father needed to be worthy of him…and everything he could do…
She first heard, then felt the weight of his enormous paws smashing against the steps as he thundered up the long staircase towards their private quarters. She sat up and put her reader down as Daar thumped to a stop, opened the door, ducked under the ancient frame, hunched his shoulders together and squeezed somewhat sideways through the opening. He was pumped up, extra musky, and thoroughly lathered from his evening activities. She wasn’t complaining about any of that, oh no. As his life-mate it was her duty to give him a meticulous rubdown…
“Naydi!” He barked cheerily, momentarily interrupting her sudden fantasy and using his pet name for her. “I thought you might be sleepin’ by now!” He closed the door, thumped heavily down to all fours and wagged his tail furiously. Uncivilized, but adorable.
“And miss your return? Happy fiftieth, Stud-Prime.” She meant it, as strongly as ever.
“Aww, don’t remind me!” He pranced over with a heavy, bouncing gait while preening the biggest preen. “You’ll make me feel all old and stuff!” His movements were as impressive as ever, the heavy gravity seemingly doing nothing to hinder him. Naydra felt leaden and graceless under any of it but Daar…he moved just like a dangerous beast, same as always.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t tease him. “That was the goal! How went your evening?”
“Fun!” Daar flowed over to his rough-hewn wooden desk to quickly scan his evening updates. “We lifted a whole bunch! And then we raced, and we wrassled too! I won,” he grumbled smugly, implying with absolute certainty that he was victorious in all the things. “Then we ate! They made my favorites too, ‘cuz their mess hall was really good!”
Simple pleasures and simple living, experienced deeply. That was the very definition of who Daar was. Never mind his actually quite formidable intellect, at heart he was a simple being.
“You sound like you enjoyed yourself! That would explain why you’re so lathered up…”
“Naw, I lifted again jus’ before I came up.”
“What about your engagements?”
“They tired out too quick,” he said with an unbearably smug look, “And I still had a lotta energy from the food!”
Naydra chittered, “You always were a big eater!”
“The most biggest! I think we managed to eat their entire pantry bare, too. But! Then we went t’go look at a big engineering project they’re workin’ on. They’re borrowing a crazy idea from the Humans, something called a ‘Hyperloop’ or whatever. Dunno if we can devote resources to it just yet an’ I kinda think it’s a better fit as a Stoneback project anyway, but…”
“…but you’re the Great Father,” she finished for him. “You can’t favor your Clan.”
“Yeah.” The lay of his ears suggested he wasn’t completely happy with the idea.
“Why do you think it’s a Stoneback project?”
“Gotta dig lots of tunnels! ♫♭♯ [Diggy diggy hole, diggy diggy hooooOOooOWLLEE!!] ♯♭♫
Naydra grimaced and flattened her ears protectively. Daar had many charms, but his singing voice was legendary for all the wrong reasons. It was powerfully loud, entirely out of tune, and practically weaponized against the very concept of Civilization, or any Civilized form of music.
“…Ow.”
“Oh come on!,” he whined. “Nothin’ as fun as singin’ can be that bad, can it?”
“Right next to my ear, though?”
“But I’m all the way over here!”
“It’s not a big room, and you’re…big.”
Daar gave one of his deep rumbling chitters. “The most biggest! You love it.”
“I do, but still. Ow.” She stood up and gave him a playful swat on the muzzle. “You most biggerestest oaf.”
Daar chittered, and Naydra congratulated herself. She’d been studying English hard and had stumbled over a subtle bilingual pun in ‘biggerestest’ that she’d thought Daar would enjoy. He hadn’t disappointed.
“Well, the most biggest Gaoian anyway.” he said. “Maybe biggerest?”
“It loses the pun, though.”
“Too bad, it’s better sorta. Warhorse and Yan Given-Man are really the most biggerestest!”
Naydra chittered to herself; sadly, the pun only made sense in Gaori, and only if one also spoke English. But still. “…Bigger than you? That’s hard to imagine.” Daar was already big enough to fill most indoor spaces and make floors groan under his paws. More of that seemed frightening!
“It’s true! I got a ways t’go if I’mma catch up to ‘em. But! Besides those two, Me an’ Righteous an’ Baseball are way better’n anybody else! Base is super tough and never runs outta gas, an’ Righteous is really hard t’beat in a fight. But I’m stronger’n both of ‘em now! And faster too!”
“Anyone who could compete directly with you is formidable indeed.”
“Yeah! And then there’s bestest friend Tiny, he’s super smart and tough, and Highland…”
Naydra had heard him gush fondly about his friends before but Daar seemed to need to talk about them just then, so she listened attentively while he extolled their many and varied virtues. It was clear he missed them deeply. Listening to their antics and the stories about their training, combat deployments, various adventures…she couldn’t blame him.
The stories about Yan and his people caught her interest the most. “It’s good both species are our allies, then.”
“We’ll see ‘bout the Tangy-Work. Ten-ge-wek.” Daar paused and growled in frustration. “Ten’Gewek! That one-click sound is hard to do. Anyway. We gotta see how they do when they go to Earth, ‘cuz neither us nor the Humans have the means to take on a protectorate nation jus’ now…” He furrowed his brow in thought, “Balls, maybe if we just—”
“Bumpkin,” Naydra interrupted him with her own pet name for him, “you promised you would relax today.”
Civilized Males were extremely deferential to Females and Daar was no exception. He cringed in on himself and managed to seem two head-heights shorter. “…I did, sarry.”
“Let Father Regaari and the Champions handle this. It’s their job. You are our leader, you are not our taskmaster.”
“I know, I know…I need a break and I ain’t takin’ advantage.” Daar flowed over to the long padded bench and poured himself onto it. Naydra saw her opportunity to give him his favorite back-scratches and gently ran her claws down the length of his spine, with the result that he shivered in pleasure, melted further into his puddle, and soon thereafter was almost purring in contentment.
“Oh, ‘yer so good at that…”
She worked her paws into it and gave him the rubdown he needed. It wasn’t really a massage since his muscles were far too big and hard for her paws to loosen, but he enjoyed her attentions anyway and stretched out to his full length with his arms, shoulders and footpaws draped over the edges. She worked her way down from his mighty neck to his massive footpaws and across everything in between, and worked her way back up again. By then he had finally started to relax, but despite all her efforts he was simply too densely built for her to loosen him up; she’d need to be much stronger to manage that.
Naydra didn’t mind at all, even if her paws were getting very tired. She worked on his shoulders for a long while, then leaned in and nipped his ear. “You like that?” she whispered.
He grumbled contentedly in reply.
“Roll over, then.”
That was a small tease between them, knowing that dogs from Earth were often trained to do that on command. He did it anyway and Naydra rewarded them both with a good, solid belly rub. Daar grumbled again, deeper this time. He was so wonderfully responsive to her touch…and so wonderfully good to feel. The Great Father was a creature of huge, perfect shapes, hard as stone and covered in the dense velvet of his pelt. He grumbled happily as she started at his feet, worked her way up the heavy shapes of his legs, rubbed the great hillocks of his abs for a long while, and eventually ended up at his broad, thick chest. She spent a long time on his arms and neck, too. He had no will to resist her and before long was quietly growling in deep pleasure.
“It’s amazing how you can be so hard at work as the stud-prime, the one against which all others are measured, and then every night you come back all tense…” She chittered eventually. “You would think some of your engagements could get you to loosen up!”
“Most females…they never learn…how to do this…oh, right there!” He had a magic itching spot just off his chest and along either flank. One little scratch and he was kicking his massive leg so hard that the bench started to scoot across the floor.
“You like that?”
His response was a deliriously happy whine. Naydra chittered to herself and scratched harder for a long moment. She stopped just as it became unbearable for him, which caused him to pant in relief with his huge tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.
“That’s a downright shame. I’ll just have to make up for their shortcomings…” She climbed on top and snuggled against him, snuffling deeply in the thick white ruff of his chest fur. The only thing better than feeling his body was smelling it, and he seemed to feel the same way; he pulled her up slightly, pressed his muzzle against the top of her head, and breathed deeply.
Contentment. For a long while they just lay together, holding each other and sharing warmth.
Naydra laid her ear against his chest and listened to his slow, powerful heartbeat for a long moment, but eventually her curiosity got the best of her. “Actually…how were they?” His duties as stud-prime were known to her, and she accepted it from the beginning…but that didn’t mean she wasn’t curious. Strictly out of concern for him, of course. She almost believed it, too.
He was carefully wary of the topic. “Naydra…” His paw came to the back of her neck and scritched just how she loved it. She melted into his grasp and he massaged a bit deeper. “…I love Females. Y’know that, it ain’t a secret. I love ‘em all.” He pulled back and looked her dead in the eye, “But I don’t love any of ‘em like I love you.”
She almost keened at that but she held her composure. “You didn’t really answer the question,” she pointed out, and gave his ear a gentle nibble. “How were they?”
“Nothin’ gets by you, huh?”
“Nope!”
Daar chittered somewhere near the infrasonic and flicked his ears resignedly. “Whaddya want me t’say? They were healthy, well-bred, beautiful an’ cheery. Exactly the kind of stock Stoneback wants their stud-prime to mate with.”
“…And?”
“And they’re young an’ stupid! I swear there ain’t a Keeda-damned working neuron to share between th’ three of ‘em.” Daar sighed, rolled off the bench and flomped onto the floor with Naydra in tow. They landed with a resounding crash and she yipped in surprise, but there was no escape as he wrapped his paws around her to pull her in close. She played at outrage and immediately found herself smashed crushingly tight against his body, his tail wagging furiously and a playful pant-grin on his face.
“I’ve got way better right here,” he said warmly. “I’m the luckiest male alive!”
“You big flirt! I bet you say that to all the pretty females.”
“Nope. Just you. Only ever you.”
The thing about Daar was that he was perfectly honest, always. It wasn’t just that it was his reputation. There was something in his earnestness and intensity that said it was so. When Daar complimented someone, he meant it, and that was special.
She didn’t have more than a moment to reflect on that before he rolled over the top of her and completely pinned her in place. Naydra nipped him on the nose affectionately, and in response he squeezed her just hard enough to ride the line between painful and exciting.
“Gently! I’m still recovering from the cub.” A shame, too. It was his birthday…
“I know.” He snuggled up a little closer and grumbled to himself. “I wish I could meet him.”
“Daar, we talked about this. It’s for his safety and his well-being. No cub should grow in the shadow of their sires, especially not a shadow like yours. You have enemies who would take advantage of the situation.”
“I know, I know.” He tried and completely failed to keep the sullen lay of his ears under control.
“It is cruel.” Naydra had decided that a while ago.
“Yeah…but at the same time, I can see now more’n ever why he needs to be his own Male.”
Something in the way he said it plucked at her instincts. She squirmed, he loosened up a little, and she pulled back from him a bit to try and figure out what was eating at him. He noticed, raised a paw to get his ears to stand up again, and cleared his throat.
“…Y’wanna eat somethin’?”
Naydra chittered in mild exasperation and shook her head. “Not now, you oaf! Something’s stuck in your fur. I can tell, you know.” She flicked the end of his nose affectionately.
Daar sighed hugely, cuddled her a little closer and looked off into the distance for a moment as he thought. “I been watchin’ some’a the news media from Earth,” he said.
“And?”
“Y’know how the Gao see me, right?”
Naydra considered that for a moment. “I’d say equal parts admiration, fear, and love.”
“Yeah! And that feels weird ‘cuz I was just this big sorta silly public figger all them years. I mean not really but I wasn’t gonna go outta my way and be all super serious alla time like Genshi or whoever. Weren’t who I was, y’know?”
“And now the world is a much darker place. You’re the Daar the Gao needs and we do love you for it. I love you.”
Daar keened very quietly and squeezed her warmly. “I know. An’ I love you like I ain’t ever loved anyone. But all that? I can get used to that. I gotta be like any Clan Father, but I gotta be the Father of everyone. With Humans though it’s different.”
“Different how?”
“They don’t like people like me. At all. In fact I think they’re fuckin’ scared o’me. I’m sorta like the villain in a lotta their news, and I guess they’re makin’ a digital ripoff version o’me inna comic book movie, now. I’m definitely the bad guy in it…they use words like ‘Tyrant’ and ‘Dictator’. An’ ‘Brutal,’ that one gets used a lot.”
There it was. He’d not quite reconciled the reality of who he was with the self-image he wanted to cling to. Time for some frank words, then.
“Daar, my love. You are all of those things. But you are much more. You are the Great Father. It’s not your fault the Humans don’t have a concept to match you.”
“They think my little stories are a ‘public relations’ ploy!”
Naydra considered him for a second and combed a rogue tuft of his fur back into place. “It’s not like you to be bothered by things like that…”
Daar wasn’t one to be at a loss for words, ever. He was too keen for that. Nevertheless it took him a moment to choose what he wanted to say, which he finally let out with an irritated growl. “It’s just so…cynical! They see the worst possible motive in literally everything!”
“They’re a cynical species.”
“I know, I guess…” Daar grumbled. “An’ it looks like I’ll be the butt o’ their jokes ‘till I die, too.”
“Surely that doesn’t bother you,” she teased.
“Depends on the joke, I guess. C’mon, ain’t nobody’s hide is infinitely thick.”
“Oh?”
“Eh. Better if I just ignore ‘em an’ forget ‘em…”
“Oh Bumpkin,” she nibbled gently at his neck, “It’s not all bad. Some of the caricatures are in friendly spirits! I liked the one where you tackled the President and slobbered all over him.”
“I never did either of those things! And also, my muscles aren’t quite that ridiculous.”
Naydra looked down at the enormous legs that were carefully wrapped just shy of crushingly tight around her waist. She felt them with her paws and admired their rippling brawn for a long moment, trying and utterly failing to squeeze his bulging muscles. They were practically bigger than she was, harder than rocks, and he was hardly flexing them at all.
Naydra flicked her ears in bemusement. “Yes they are, dear.”
That got a quiet chitter from him; Daar was easy to flatter. “Fine, fine.” He licked the top of her head affectionately right in-between her ears, and she shivered happily in his grasp. “I ‘spose it’ll get worse when this little workhouse drama moves into the next act, too.”
“Why, what comes next? I thought you were done with it?”
“Nah, there’s a lot to come yet.” Daar scratched the spot on her back between her shoulder blades where no Gaoian could ever scratch themselves, and made her melt with pleasure. She half-shut her eyes and felt her ears droop as he satisfied itches she hadn’t even noticed were there. He had a shockingly gentle touch with those huge paws of his, and it wasn’t long before those great legs of his squeezed harder and his scratches moved elsewhere…
Daar grumbled in smug self-satisfaction. “Too bad ‘yer still recoverin’ ‘cuz there’s a lot more hours left in the night!” He growled low against her ear, “I could think’a how to spend ‘em…”
…Blatant, and tempting. Maybe. But first: “Don’t you distract me with your promises,” she chided him with a chitter. “What comes next?”
“Eh, a dumb Keeda game.” He didn’t stop with his paws while he spoke. “It’s all so Sartori can maneuver his enemies into doin’ what he wants ‘em to do. It’s clever enough but I don’t like clever strategies when a simple one would do, there’s lots more to go wrong.”
She had to fight against his wickedly skilled touch but she did manage to slip in a subtle tease. “So you like things dumb and easy, then!”
“Balls yeah! You ain’t gotta think too hard ‘bout an easy plan. It’s just, sometimes you can’t come up with one in time.”
Naydra duck-nodded and snuggled into his fur. “He knows his people best, I’m sure.”
“I guess.” Daar ran his claws down her back again, gentler this time. He was more chaste, just brushing her fur and not scritching with any intent. “Y’know, I lived with ‘em for a long damn time but maybe I didn’t pay enough attention to their politics.”
“Maybe. Worry about the Humans tomorrow, I never did give you your birthday present.”
He tilted an ear sideways in bemusement. “Oh? I thought you wanted to rest?”
“I do…” What she really wanted to do couldn’t possibly be more obvious, but Daar was a challenging mate at his gentlest and quite frankly, gentle wasn’t what either of them wanted. No matter. Instead she snuffled against his neck and licked along a particularly huge cord of muscle, then moved her attentions over to his throat, down along his chest…
He never failed to reward her with delighted little growls and groans of pleasure. Or with his touch. One of his great paws landed in the small of her back while the other rested gently on her head, kneading and encouraging her.
“Oh…I love you so fucking much…”
She felt like could spend forever grooming his chest. It was broad, thick, and hugely strong, and almost no other part of him smelled so utterly male. But she had another goal. She worked her way lower and spent a pleasantly long time grooming the bricks of his abs…then lower…
And then lower.
His heat and strength, his smell and taste, the little whines and his encouraging paws…perfect. She knew what she was doing and prided herself on her work, so even with his legendary stamina he couldn’t hold out forever. She couldn’t hold out long herself, and the moment came for them both when he keened in warning, and those powerful legs of his squeezed down around her so hard she felt like her body might shatter. Another heartbeat later and his grip tightened hugely, he paused, snarled, bucked—
Panting from both of them, and eventually a long, slow climb-down from an incredible peak. Daar huffed in satisfaction and pulled her up along his body so they were nose-to-nose. Her ribs felt tender but that wasn’t important at the moment. The look in his eyes, the set of his ears, his very scent told her what words seemed inadequate to say.
“I love you.” He said it anyway.
“And I you, my love.” He keened like his heart was aching, and she keened with him. They held, no more words were needed. He groomed her in turn where his claws had pricked her…and almost immediately she felt his ardor rising, and strongly. She might regret it in the morning but right then, she knew what she needed. What they both needed.
“Please…” she keened desperately, “but be careful!”
Daar nodded seriously. “…I will.”
They didn’t even leave the floor. He pinned her utterly, wrapped her up in an absolutely crushing grasp, snarled from the bottom of his stomach right against her throat…and he was everything she needed and wanted until the early morning hours.
They must have dozed off at some point, because she woke sometime after sunrise, curled up and alone on the naxas pelt on the floor with another draped heavily on top of her. Daar had already risen for his duties. How exactly he managed that without waking her was a mystery for later. She got up, shook herself out and stretched; as predicted, the evening had taken its toll on her muscles. She winced and decided she would try some of that wonderful ‘Ibuprofen’ that Daar kept talking about, then headed for her morning ablutions. Right then she noticed a hastily-scribbled note on the bathroom door.
Naydi
Sarry I gotta get up too fuck damn early these days if I wanna want to get any kind o serious exercise in. I’ll be downstairs until eight ten-hour actually. You’re right, I can take time fer myself now that Gao ain’t isn’t on fire.
If you join me I’ll teach you some of what Myun knows! If you manage to land a swipe I’ll even cook for you!!
Bumpkin
He signed off with a ridiculous cartoon scrawl of himself gnawing viciously on a whole naxas, not yet expired and somehow only mildly displeased with the situation.
Well. Who could resist a challenge like that? Especially seeing as Naydra had already had a few lessons from Myun…and he enjoyed cooking anyway so it wasn’t like he’d be bitter about it. She rose and went to take a dust shower.
Maybe she could continue to surprise him.