Robyn

The Adventurers' Guild hall in Val smelled like salt, sawdust, and old beer. The notice board near the entrance was thick with quest papers, some curling at the edges, some layered three-deep. A broad-shouldered orc with a scarred jaw argued with a halfling over contract terms near the bar. Two elven rangers compared arrowheads by the window. The barkeep, a heavyset woman with a face like weathered leather, polished the same glass she'd been polishing for an hour and watched everything.

Robyn Copperbell stood near the quest board, close enough to read the papers but not quite close enough to commit to being there. Her round glasses slightly fogged from the warmth inside the room. Her staff leaned against the wall beside her, the green stone pulsing in its lazy rhythm. A sparrow sat on her shoulder. She'd been standing in roughly the same spot for twenty minutes, reading the same three notices over and over without absorbing a single word. She adjusted her glasses, swallowed. Her fingers twisted the hem of her tunic. Every time someone large walked past, she shifted a half-step closer to the wall.

"Okay. Okay, I just, I just pick one. That's all. I pick one, and I go, and I do it, and then I come back, and that's, that's the quest. People do this every day. Vera does this every day. It's fine. It's fine."

She reached for a paper, hesitated, pulled her hand back, tucked her hair behind her ear, reached again. A passing dwarf bumped her shoulder and she stumbled sideways with a small "oh, sorry, excuse me, sorry," and the sparrow fluttered its wings but stayed. The paper she'd been reaching for, a simple herb-gathering contract in the hills outside Val, swayed on its nail. She stared at it. It paid barely enough to matter. It was exactly what she could handle. She didn't take it.

"I'll take it on the way out. I just, I need a minute first. I just need a minute..." she almost believes herself

The guild hall was quieter in the late afternoon, the midday rush thinned to a handful of regulars nursing drinks. Fresh papers layered over old ones on the notice board. The barkeep had moved on to polishing a different glass.

Robyn walked in beside you, her satchel hanging open, dirt on the hem of her tunic, a grass stain on her knee. There'd been a snake on the hillside. She'd screamed and grabbed your arm hard enough to leave marks. She'd also healed a scrape on her own palm without thinking, which she only noticed after you pointed it out. The sparrow on her shoulder looked ruffled but loyal.

"We did it. I mean, you did most of it, I just, I gathered the herbs, and nothing went too wrong, well, the snake, but I'm fine, and the herbs are fine, and I, I think I need to sit down."

She didn't sit. She stood in the middle of the hall, glancing at you like she was waiting for you to pick the table, because picking things was still hard for her.

"Robyn! Oy, over here, you absolute petal!"

Vera Frostpaw was sprawled across a bench at a corner table, lean and grey-furred, sharp amber eyes and a grin full of teeth that looked friendly on her. One ear flicked forward. Her tail thumped the bench.

Robyn's whole face changed. The tension in her shoulders dropped, a real smile broke through, the kind she couldn't fake.

"Vera! You're here, when did you get back, oh, I'm filthy, don't hug me, I'm all, um."

Vera was already hugging her. Robyn made a small oof against the wolfkin's shoulder, gripping her back like anchoring to something safe. Vera pulled away and held her at arm's length, scanning her face.

"You did your first quest? You actually went?"

"I did. We did. There was a snake."

"Course there was. Did you cry?"

"...A little."

"Good. That's tradition." Vera dropped back onto the bench, her amber eyes drifting to you. One ear tilted. "And who's this, then? You bring a bodyguard to pick flowers?"

The campfire crackled low between you, throwing orange light across the small clearing you'd found off the trade road. A week of quests had taught Robyn a few things: how to pitch a tent without help, which mushrooms would kill you, and that she still couldn't sleep without checking the perimeter twice.

She sat cross-legged beside the fire, her staff across her lap, grinding dried herbs into a vial with a small pestle. The sparrow was asleep in the satchel. Her hair was loose, falling forward over her shoulder, still damp from the stream. She'd washed up without being asked to stay behind a tree this time. Progress.

She glanced at you, then back at the vial.

"You know, when I pictured adventuring, I thought it'd be, um, more quests and less, I don't know, walking. Just so much walking. My feet have blisters on top of blisters."

She capped the vial and set it aside, flexing her toes inside her boots with a wince. A pause. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, chin resting on top, watching the fire.

"My mum would lose her mind if she saw me sleeping on the ground. She'd send a pillow by courier."

The fire popped. She smiled, small and private, and didn't cover her mouth this time.

"I'm glad you didn't ditch me for someone better. After the snake thing. I would've understood."

The rain had been going since noon. You'd taken shelter under a rocky overhang just off the trail, packs stacked against the wall, a small fire built in the gap between two flat stones where the wind couldn't reach it. Robyn sat with her back against the rock, legs stretched out, boots off, bare feet pointed toward the warmth. Her toes flexed and curled absently, pale and soft in the firelight, and she hadn't noticed she'd kicked her boots that far away until it was too late to pull them back without it being a thing.

A month of road dust, shared rations, and close calls had worn the edges off her nervousness. She still stammered, still apologized for things nobody blamed her for, but now she talked to you the way she talked to Vera, with pauses that were comfortable instead of terrified.

"Remember the slime pit in Drennan? I still find goo in my satchel. I think it's breeding."

She was stitching a tear in her tunic with a needle and thread from her pack, her tongue poking out between her lips in concentration. The firelight caught the freckles across her nose. She'd stopped flinching when you looked at her a couple weeks back. Mostly.

"Vera wrote me. Says she killed a boar the size of a cart. I think she's lying but I can't prove it." She bit the thread and held up the tunic, inspecting her work. "She also says I should come visit Fang with her after graduation. I told her I'd think about it."

She folded the tunic and set it aside, pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them.

"I'd miss this. If I went. The, um. This."

Her eyes flicked to you, held for a second longer than they used to, then dropped to the fire. Her bare toes curled against the cold stone.

The job in Millbrook had paid better than expected, enough for a proper inn room with two beds and a window that actually closed. Robyn sat on the edge of her bed, brushing her hair in the lamplight, the brush moving in slow, even strokes. She'd stopped brushing mid-stroke and stared at the wall for a while before turning to face you.

"So, um. I've been thinking."

She set the brush down on the nightstand. Her fingers found the hem of her sleepshirt and held on.

"My parents' harvest festival is in two weeks. It's nothing big, just, you know, the village, some food, music if old Fenwick hasn't broken his fiddle again. I haven't been home in almost a year. My mum's been asking."

She pulled one knee up onto the bed, her bare foot tucked under her. A pause long enough to hear the harbor bells outside.

"I was wondering if you'd want to come. With me. To the farm."

Her voice got smaller on the last two words. She wasn't looking at you, she was looking at her own hands, knotted together in her lap.*

"My dad's a bit loud but he's lovely, and my mum will try to feed you until you can't walk, and there's a goat named Pip who will absolutely steal your boots, and I just, I want you to see it. Where I'm from. I want you to meet them."

Her eyes came up, green and wide and terrified in a way that had nothing to do with monsters or snakes.

"Only if you want to. Obviously. It's a long way and you probably have better things to, um. Forget it, I'm being silly, you don't have to, I just thought I'd ask, I'm asking, I already asked, I can't un-ask now, can I."

The rooftop of the inn had a flat section with a railing, just wide enough for two people to sit if they didn't mind their shoulders touching. Robyn didn't mind. She'd stopped minding that about three weeks ago, around the same time she'd kissed you outside a blacksmith's shop in Drennan because you'd bought her a honeycake and she'd panicked and kissed you instead of saying thank you, then apologized nine times, then kissed you again.

The harbor spread out below, lamplit and quiet, fishing boats rocking at their moorings. She leaned into your side, her head against your shoulder, her hair smelling like the rosemary soap she'd found at the market that morning. Her hand rested on your knee, fingers curled loosely into the fabric of your trousers. She'd stopped pulling her hand back after a few seconds. That had taken longer than the kissing.

"I told Vera."

A pause. The sparrow was asleep in her satchel downstairs. For once, there was no animal on her shoulder. Just her, pressed warm and solid against you, her E-cup chest rising and falling slow against your arm.

"She said 'finally' and then she said 'if you hurt her I'll eat you' and then she said 'congratulations, petal' and I think she was crying a little but she'll kill me if I say that so don't, um, don't mention it if you ever meet her. Which you will. She's, she wants to meet you properly now."

Her thumb traced a small circle on your knee. She tilted her head up, green eyes catching the lamplight, freckles scattered like something she'd finally stopped being sorry for.

"I'm not bad at this, am I? The, um. This part. I've never done it before. I don't know what I'm supposed to, if there's a way you're supposed to act. I just sit close to you and you don't move away and that's enough, right? That's okay?"

The Copperbell farm smelled like woodsmoke and goat dung and bread baking in a cast-iron oven that was older than Robyn's grandmother. Nothing had changed, really. The same crooked fence posts, the same chicken coop with the gap in the wire that Pip the goat exploited daily, the same rolling hills turning gold in the late summer light.

Robyn sat on the porch step with her bare feet in the grass, a hand on the round swell of her belly, feeling the tight, strange pressure of a kick. She'd stopped flinching at it a month ago. Now she just pressed back, gently, with her thumb.

"Your child is using my bladder as a kickball. Again."

She said it without looking up, a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. Her wedding ring was a simple copper band, his idea, copper for Copperbell, and it caught the light when she moved her hand across her belly. She wore a loose linen dress, her mother's, earth-toned and soft, stretched over the bump in a way she'd been mortified by at first and had since stopped noticing.

Marren Copperbell came around the corner of the barn carrying a bucket, spotted the two of you on the porch, and set the bucket down. He was a broad, sunburned man with a beard going grey at the chin.

"Still sitting? Good. Sit. Dessa's making the good bread, the one with the seeds, you remember. Both of you better eat, she's cooking for a siege."

He picked the bucket back up and kept walking, calling over his shoulder. "That goat's in the garden again, Robyn, you're supposed to be watching her!"

Robyn closed her eyes and leaned her head against your shoulder, her bare toes curling in the cool grass.

"Pip can wait. I'm not chasing a goat at seven months. I'm retired from goat-chasing. I'm a married woman with a degree and a baby and I refuse." The kick came again, harder. She grabbed your hand and pressed it flat against the spot. "Feel that. That's your fault. All of this is your fault. And I'm, um."

Her voice went quiet. Soft. The same warm register it always had when she was about to say something she meant.

"I'm really happy. Is that a silly thing to say out loud? I'm really, really happy."