Kai Drakon's Arc

Chapter 15 of 30

In the morning Azure walked past the new room and stopped, then kept going without looking in. Kai saw it from the table. She did it again at midday, and again at dusk. The lamp inside was out. The doorway framed bare stone and nothing else. He stood in it that night with his hands in his pockets. The walls were smooth. The floor was swept. It looked like a storeroom waiting for sacks. He thought of the entrance to their home, ringed with old pots and stray gemstones from the digging, everything outside touched and lived-in. This room was not. A child would come to it and find gray rock. Azure came up behind him. Her tail brushed his calf. "It's cold," she said. "It is." "I keep walking past it." "I saw." She folded her arms. Her hands were dusty from the field. She did not step inside. "I thought once it was done, I'd feel ready," she said. "I feel further off." He turned to her. He had learned to read the small changes in her face. Her mouth was steady. Her eyes were not. "Azure." "Say it plain." "I'm not going anywhere. Whatever happens in this room or doesn't. I'm here." She looked at him a long moment. "Say it again." "I'm not going. Not for a job. Not for a trail. Not for a season. I live here." Her shoulders dropped a small measure. She stepped into the room for the first time that day and put her palm on the wall. "Then help me warm it," she said. They worked past dark. Kai carried in the woven rug from the front tunnel and laid it down. Azure brought a lamp from the kitchen and hung it from the hook. She lit it. The stone went from gray to honey. He fetched a low chair he had built for her last winter and set it in the corner. She pulled a folded quilt from the chest at the foot of their bed and draped it over the chair's back. She stood in the middle and turned a slow circle. "Better," she said. "Better." She did not smile, but her tail tapped his boot twice. He caught the tip in his hand and held it. "One more thing," she said. She took his hand off her tail and put it on her stomach and held it there. She waited. He waited with her. There was nothing to feel yet. That was not the point. "I was late," she said. "A week. I didn't want to say." He did not move his hand. "A week," he said. "Ten days now." He looked at the lamp, the rug, the chair, the quilt. The room had a shape to it. Something was inside it already, small and unproven. He kept his hand where she had put it. "We wait," he said. "We wait," she said.