Crossroads, Part 3, Worth (Patreon)

Dirt sprayed the side of Anson's face as the sword whistled past him and planted itself in the earth.  He couldn't help but flinch despite how still he had been attempting to remain, so that the inevitable cut would be clean.  The wet earth clung to his skin and short stubbly beard.  Had his head been cut off?  No, clearly not.  He tentatively peeled his eyes open and stared, dumbfounded, at his own reflection in the gleaming metal of the sword barely an inch in front of his nose.

Slowly, barely able to believe it, he turned to look up at the Anthro woman beside him.  Her shoulders were hunched, both paws gripping the hilt of her large sword, back bowed from the blow still that had intentionally missed him.  Her hair hung over her muzzle, hiding her face from view.  Then...her paws loosened and the sword plopped down onto the ground with a slight bounce.  Her arms fell at her sides and she turned slowly away from him.

He sat up more fully, staring at her back as she simply stood there in silence.  He realized only now that she really wasn't like the Royals he had glimpsed before.  Those Draconic giants were indeed large, like she was, but they had distinct differences.  They had wings, which made him imagine that they could fly like one of the Avians.  Their feet and hands had five fingers, not four like Crym.  Most prevalent between the apparently two different species though was the sense of peace and command the True Royals exuded, or at least that had been the feeling he got when the imposing Anthro leader from before had handed him the all-important message.  It was not just a feeling; it was a real distortion of the air.   It had made him stare in awe up at the seemingly oversized humanoid, hear the words they spoke as if they echoed in his mind.

She had called herself a 'Lesser-Royal'.  He wondered if that meant anything or if it was an actual species name for those like her.  He knew little of Anthro military or social ranking but he was very confident that he'd never really noticed another like her in the brief glimpses of the few remaining Dragons left to rule and govern their people.  His people feared the leaders of the Anthros most for their size, strength, the ability of command, and most of all their appearances.  Humans had always told stories of Dragons but no one claimed to actually have ever seen one in the flesh.  It had thus been far too easy to hate the Royals

The moon peered through the clouds in the sky just then, casting a dim radiance over the scene before him and illuminating everything more clearly.  He saw her tail hanging limp in the dirt behind her, her shoulders trembling as if struggling to contain another furious storm of emotions.  Her fists clenched into tight balls.

For a moment, he worried she was about to explode again.  There was something about her rage; he hated it.  Not that he didn't agree with her emotions, didn't understand where she was coming from or that she had no right to be or act that way.  He hated her being angry because...she was so beautiful when she smiled, even when she was taunting or tormenting him while doing so.  He wished more than anything that someone like her had never had to endure the hardships and sorrows she had so far.

Eventually, her grating voice broke the drawn-out silence.  "Damn you..." she hissed.  His heart sank to hear such vehemence and barely restrained fury in her voice, rasping in her throat like bubbling magma.  Then she looked up at the sky, the stars glittering above like jewels.  "Damn you...Vexa..." she murmured.  All at once, the anger washed out of her stance.  She actually chuckled, her whole body relaxing.  Her tail shifted behind her.  "You aren't done 'vexing' me yet, I see."

Anson stayed silent, wondering if she was somehow talking to the Spirits rather than anyone else on the outside world.  He didn't know what this was, but he wasn't about to interrupt it.

She continued speaking to no one.  "I wish I had listened to my gut and gone with you... I wish that I could have seen what you did in those Humans.  My only concern was getting our own freed people back to the nearest Clan holding.  If you had just... If I had..."  She rubbed a big paw across her face.  There was a snorting, sniffling sound.  Her voice sounded close to breaking into either sobs or laughter.  "Damnit..." she half cried, half chuckled.  "Damn you for making me care..."

Crym turned slowly around and looked back and down at the still kneeling Anson.  Her single eye sparkled, her cheek glistened with a seeming stream of already spent tears.  "He's just like you..." she said, voice hushed and eye both fixed on him and yet somehow not.  "Just as stubborn and thickheaded...just as endlessly optimistic and naive...  He's going to get himself killed and he doesn't care."

Only then did her scaly brow furrow.  Anger came back to her.  Was it directed at him?

"Doesn't he see...can't he see how much life means, just to live it?" she snapped at nothing and no one.  "Why couldn't you see that?  This world...it isn't Ahn.  It's not our home.  But..."  She looked up at the sky again.  "But they're all still there...the same stars we used to look at as Cubs...  I even see the same constellations that we used to tell stories to each other about.  I miss those days laying on the plateaus above our Holding.  I miss hearing you laugh... I miss..."

She shook her head.  Fresh tears dripped down her cheeks even as she smiled.  "But you were never happy just living.  You always had to have some cause, some reason, some little thing to save or support or get behind.  You were always rescuing little animals that you had no business messing with, trying to help every single person around you even if they didn't want you to.  And seeing what this war was doing to you...it hurt more than any of the suffering we heard about, came across, or had to witness."

Her lips trembled, gritting her teeth behind them.  "You could never have just let those Humans try and find their way back home alone.  You looked at them like that little Granger we saved from the sinkhole.  Not like a pet...but as a living thing that deserved every chance at life.  Even when it bit and scratched you and you got sick.  You...never gave up on Humans even after everything... You never gave up on me..."

She sank to her knees and buried her muzzle in her paws.  Open, quiet sobs overtook Crym's whole body.  A scent like rain came from her, the kind of rain that made you miserable and cold and want nothing more than to just sleep through it and wake up to a bright sunny morning.  His cheeks felt damp just from seeing her so distraught.  She shuddered then and clawed at her own arms, as if trying to hold herself.

A sound came then, low, indistinct, and barely audible.  It sounded like...humming.  He wasn't sure if it was Crym, or some distant echo, or the gentle wind, rustling through the grass and leaves overhead, that had begun to gust about them, bringing the nightly chill into more prevalence of being.

That was when Anson saw it, his green eyes going wide in amazement and disbelief.  Something...hovered over Crym as she continued to kneel there, sobbing softly.  It was like a wisp of smoke or mist, shape indistinct save for brief seconds of lucidity and seeming form or substance.  In those tiny moments of clarity, the shape seemed to have wrapped itself around the bereft, grief-stricken warrior Anthro, almost like...arms.  He thought he saw a gentle, calm, patient face resting itself on top of her head.  One smoky tendril lifted and brushed across her hair, turning to wisps of mist once again.

The specter, vision, hallucination, or whatever it was, started to disperse, the humming fading along with it.  Crym shuddered more as if freezing.  "Don't go..." she pleaded in a broken voice.  "Don't go....please...I don't know what to do without you...Please..."  One paw reached out in vain as if to catch the ghostly shape of her sister before she again clung to herself all the tighter.

Anson moved without thinking.  He climbed to his feet, crossed the distance between them, and flung his arms around her in the exact placement that the spirit had just been.  She was solid and strong, and so very cold as if the warmth of life had drained out of her.  The rain smell was all the stronger now being this close to her.  Just as he had seen whatever that thing had done, he lifted a shaking hand and stroked down Crym's long, lustrous hair.  It was...so soft...the softest most wonderful texture he had ever experienced.

Her reaction was immediate.  Her arms lifted, clawed fingers spread wide, and for a second he was worried she was going to tear him apart for daring to touch her.  Instead they wrapped around him from behind and crushed him to her.  The breath was partially squeezed out of him, chest nearly compressed flat for a second before he continued to stroke her hair, resting his stubbly cheek against the top of her head, between her dark horns.  She calmed once more but did not relinquish her hold upon him.

As he rubbed, he hummed that same song he had been hearing.  The melody was easy to remember, almost like the lullabies his mother had sung for him and his brothers as children.  He didn't know words to put to it, but it was all he knew to do.  He wanted more than anything just...to be there for this woman.  She could kill him after if she really wanted to.  All he had wanted to do by offering to let her cut off his head was try and help her forgive herself.  It seemed even that wouldn't have helped her, but maybe...this was?

Crym's shuddering sobs slowly quieted, shivering down from their intensity to just occasional tremors.  Her arms remained around him and her muzzle was pressed firmly into his chest.  She did not slacken her grip at all as he kept stroking and humming, seemingly still lost in her own little world of misery.  Then, slowly, heat began to return to her.  It was a physical sensation of her scales against his body.  What had been river water cold was gradually heating back up.  From springtime sunshine to a glowing hearth, Crym's internal temperature kept increasing until she was practically glowing from the inside out with warmth.  Her scent had changed as well.  The morning sun had come, breaking through the twilight rain of her misery.

Anson beamed at being able to do...something, even as inappropriate as this was given everything else before, but did not stop.  He just kept rubbing her hair slowly, one long stroke at a time.  The tone of the lullaby shifted and he sang a song that he had always been fond of, low and soft, down against her frilled ear.

Though the road may be long
It's here you belong
Safe by my side, my dear

Though the winter is cold

You in my arms, I'll hold
And the wolves you never need fear

Whether far out at sea
Or wherever you may be

And no matter how far you may roam

This promise I'll keep
While I rock you to sleep
Whenever you're here, you're home.

Anson was no great singer and his tone was often off, but he kept his voice low and soft.  He remembered many restless nights, plagued by childhood dreams and terrors, being soothed away by that very same melody.  All he wanted was to share that with her, even if just for a second.  Not to heal the hurt done to her, no amount of singing could ever do that, but maybe just to help her through the emotions she had been bottling up for so long.

It seemed to have done the trick as Crym finally gave a long, gusting sigh as her tears abated at last.  He was sure his tunic must have had several damp spots but he didn't care.  They stayed where they were, awkwardly holding each other underneath the stars.  Eventually, she huffed.  Her face nuzzled against his belly one last time and her arms loosened.

Taking the queue, Anson let go of her as well and stopped petting her hair.  He stepped back as her arms fell away and he sheepishly looked down from her, scratching at the back of his head.  When he glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes, he saw she too was in the same boat: flummoxed seemingly for what to do after that.  He caught her glancing at him too and he looked away hurriedly.  His cheeks burned for some reason.

"Sorry," they said in unison and at the exact same time, obviously both about to say something else.  He clammed up, as did she, as they both waited for the other to speak first.    "It's not~" they began again, and again seemingly cutting each other off with the same wording.

Their gazes fixed upon one another again.  A slow smile spread across his cheeks and stretched across her muzzle at the same time.  They laughed, low and soft.  He opened his mouth to say something but she held up a paw, forestalling him.

Still grinning, albeit with a slightly embarrassed look to her features, a feeling he more than understood.  "Well...enough of that then," she stated with a firm tone.  She wiped at her salty scales and inhaled deeply through her nostrils.  "Sorry about that...outburst."  She didn't really seem like she was truly apologizing for it but he understood the meaning of it.  "Suppose I've..."

"Been holding that in for some time?" added Anson in the hopes of helping her reach the wording she was searching for.

She chuckled again and nodded.  "Yeah.  And...sorry for the whole..." she tapped her hand against her neck.

He rubbed at his own. "Y-yeah," he stated, wincing but smiling all the same.  "Glad that uhh...you didn't actually..."

"Yeah..." she grunted.  They looked away from one another.  "Not like it was my idea or anything," she said then as if trying to find some kind of way of putting a humorous spin on it.  He suspected that was her way of coping with everything.  "It just...didn't feel right.  Killing someone for just trying to do the right thing."

"The right thing can be...pretty subjective," argued Anson.  He blinked.  Was he trying to defend the side of a woman who had almost decapitated him?  Talk about identifying with your captor.  "That being said...thanks for not killing me."  A shiver went through him.

"The right thing is the right thing," she countered, getting a bit of her fire back.  "That doesn't mean it's easy to know when or what that is.  Killing you wouldn't have done the world any good.  And...I didn't want your death to be on my conscience."  She looked away, scratching sullenly at her cheek with a claw.  "You remind me too much of...her.  Killing you would have felt like giving in and being just like those Humans that took her away from me."  She glanced at him once more.

His stomach clenched for some reason and he shuffled his feet.  "I...don't know too much about that," he argued lamely.  "Humans have always believed that if you believe in something that much, you should be willing to put your life on the line for it.  Otherwise...it loses its meaning and value."

"That's like plucking a flower just because it's pretty, knowing that you've deprived the opportunity for others to see its beauty just for your own pleasure of owning that moment in time." she growled, getting his attention.  "You don't think about others when you're behaving that selfishly."

"Selfish?" he asked, blinking.  "How is my being willing to die for something I believe in selfish?"

"Because maybe your life has more value than you give it credit," she shot right back.  "If you died, everything you believe in is gone.  Sure, someone else could step up and take up that cause, but you'd be dead.  All your dreams, your life's ambitions, all the good, the bad, everything you could bring into the world is gone, forever.  Just like that flower, you'd be depriving the world of who you are: a good person.  Your family, they'd miss you.  So would many others."  Her eye gleamed once and then she quickly looked away.  "Or so I would assume..."

He opened his mouth to retort but stopped.  After several seconds of deep contemplation, he found an argument to that.  "It's what God asks of us," he stated.  "Our God says that for our efforts in life we will be rewarded in heaven, so long as we lived righteously, justly, and mercifully to those around us."

"What's heaven?" she asked.

He gaped.  "It's...heaven!" he stated, putting his hand up to the sky.  Her eye followed his gesture then returned to staring at him, unimpressed and nonplused.  "It's...paradise, tranquility.  You never have to worry about pain, or suffering, or anything ever again.  You're reunited in the kingdom of God with your loved ones."

She pondered that for a bit.  "I suppose if that's where you believe you go when you die, then good on you."

Her response, or perhaps the dismissive tone she used, rubbed him the wrong way.  He decided not to rise at it but instead just pursue a different route of questions.  "Well...what do Anthros believe in?  What happens when an Anthro dies?  Where do you go?" he asked, unable to keep a slightly heated edge from his voice.

"In the ground," she responded glibly.  "Our bodies are flesh, and just like everything return to the earth when our time comes.  We don't try and assign worth to aren't obsessed with death like Humans are."

"Humans are not obsessed with death," he growled.  This conversation was starting to make his head hurt.

"Then why are you constantly obsessing over details about it?" Crym challenged.  "You bicker and argue about what happens to you when you die.  You sacrifice yourself for abstract concepts that often make no sense or contradict themselves.  You spend your entire lives hoping that when you die that you get to go to someplace better.  But, what is better than life?"

His mouth opened to answer.  But the words stuck in his throat.

Crym saw his hesitation.  She even seemed to sense what he had been about to say.  "And I know..." she growled.  "That I took that choice away from you by putting you in seemingly an impossible situation.  I just couldn't understand how you'd seem to put a piece of parchment as being worth more than your own life.  You could have...found other options after I took it from you.  Instead, you just...gave up."

"Like you did..." he said quietly.  At her shocked silence, he warily kept going.  "You seem to act like it doesn't matter whether you live or die.  But...that's the difference between us, I suppose.  I don't...want to die."  He shuddered.  "It's true.  I'm not ready yet.  I've done so very little with my life.  I really wasn't ready for it all to end yet.  But...if I couldn't avoid or escape it, I was going to approach it with dignity, even if I was terrified."

He noticed that she flinched at that, tail twitching on the ground beside her.  He ignored it.  Killing was never an easy choice, and he had perhaps given her no options either for what to do in that situation.  So instead, he asked a different question, one that he had always yearned to finally learn more about.

"Can...you teach me more about the Spirits?"

Her big eyes blinked at him before she shrugged.  "If you want.  You certainly almost met them today, so if you're that interested..."  He nodded.  They took seats across from one another, his back against the big oak and her sitting, once again, cross-legged in front of him.

She began.  "Anthros venerate and worship the Spirits. But it isn't because we're obsessed with getting through life as efficiently as possible.  We want to live.  Living is the greatest gift that is possible for us.  Every breath taken, every meal eaten, every warm embrace cherished or sunrise watched; all of that means something, everything.  When our time comes, we only hope to have lived our lives to the fullest, in honor of those who are no longer with us.  We seek only to not let them down and never forget.  Our only tenants are that we do no unnecessary harm to others around us or take too much without giving back, and never place one's needs above the many.  We ask them for guidance, to give us courage, strength, and to show us how to be kind and in harmony with the world and our own people."

"Courage...strength...kindness...harmony," he murmured.  "So...those are what Anthros believe in are most important?"

She nodded.  "There is also loyalty, benevolence, honesty, and above all...love."  She seemed to flush.  "We are Loyal to our leaders, giving of ourselves in their service, who in turn give us Benevolence and protect us, serving us at the same time.  This creates Harmony, both in our Clans and with the world around us.  We prize physical Strength but never to misuse or abuse it.  We show Kindness to the greatest as equally as the least.  We believe the weight of Honesty is always a heavy one but always worth it to bear for the sake of the trust of another.  And above all, we prize Love.  That, at least, we have seen Humans seem to cherish as well."

Anson listened to her speak, keeping his mouth shut and just absorbing what she was saying.  He'd never seen anyone speak of something so passionately before.  With the sermons, blessings, or baptisms he had witnessed growing up from various priests who visited his village.   All of it seemed to center around lofty ideals, grand speeches, or pleading for forgiveness.  And he had seen truly horrible things done in the name of his own faith, taken at face value by others who wanted to wield it as a weapon for justification of the acts they performed.

By contrast, the Anthro Spiritism, by her words, seemed to revolve around basic concepts that any could embrace or adopt.  He wasn't sure what he had seen earlier with that shade or spirit, but it had seemed fully real and otherworldly.  Casting an eye up at the stars up above, he saw one in particular twinkle brighter than the others around it for a bare second.  Almost like a gentle, approving smile.

He abruptly felt very small, very weak, and very aware of how intensely Crym was looking at him.  Her eye softened somewhat and she sighed.  "Vexa; she said these things better than I do.  She understood our connection to them better than I ever did.  I was just a warrior, a member of the Legion in service of the Royals.  She saw Humans as...something more than just an enemy or an ally.  Her death..." she closed her eye and sighed, gritting her teeth.  "Her death was..."

"A tragedy," he said softly.

She nodded.  "Needless.  But...she wouldn't have chosen any other way even if she had known what was going to happen.  It was just how she was...how...you are.  It's just...it makes it so frustrating."

Clearing his throat, Anson spoke up then nervously.  "But...it was what mattered to her.  We can't always understand the actions or choices of others, but when they're willing to give everything for what they believe in, all we can do is try and live on, honor their sacrifice, and...never forget them."

Their eyes met once more, staring into one another's more deeply than ever.  A sense of understanding, more profound than he had ever felt with another person, seemed to pass between them.  He knew that they came from very different worlds, quite literally if the Anthro story of origin was to be believed.  Even so, maybe they really weren't that different from one another after all.  It gave him hope for the future.

Eventually, Crym growled to herself.  Lifting a paw, she clawed her fingers back through her hair and over her skull to her horns.  "She always told me to live...but ever since, without her, I've been lost.  The men who hired me...I didn't care so long as it kept the silver coming and kept me from thinking about...everything.  You're right.  I didn't care if I lived or died ever since it happened.  I didn't see life as worth living without her anymore."

Anson's heart ached to hear her speak of herself like that, even if he understood it only partially.  As one, their gazes fell onto the nearby letter next to where he had been kneeling earlier.  He warily reached for it but her tail got to it first.  He watched her warily as she plucked it up, depositing it into her big paw and looking at the broken wax seal.  For several, long, tense seconds, he waited, unsure what she was thinking or going to do.

Then...  "Thank you," she murmured softly.  At his silent, perplexed expression, a small smile spread across her lips again.  "And damn you.  For making me care again, even if only a little."

"Care?" he asked, perplexed, tone hopeful.  "About...what?"

Abruptly, Crym stood up.  "It's late," she announced.  She plucked up the satchel with a claw and shoved the letter inside of it.  She then draped the leather loop over one shoulder and stretched her back, doing lovely things to her curves, and then yawned, flashing her teeth.  "Too much activity and introspection in one day for too little satisfaction or payoff.  What I wouldn't give for a drink..."  She met his eyes again.  "I'm going to sleep.  Stay up if you want, but Humans need their rest too, from what I've noticed."

He nodded, only now noticing that he too was exhausted after everything they had done and talked about.  He curled up against the tree, watching as she stretched out in front of the embers of the fire.  Her sword remained in close reach after she had retrieved it, and she had tucked the satchel up against her belly, firmly lodged against her chest.  Noticing where his eyes were, she growled once.

"I need time to think about what I'm going to do," she told him.  "Try and take it from me during the night and I won't hesitate to...well..." she trailed off darkly, showing a row of teeth.  When he flinched a little, she actually grinned.  "Unless you're looking at something else, Anson?"  Her eye abruptly sparkled.

He flushed and rolled his eyes.  "Whatever fantasies you're imagining, I can assure you they aren't mine," he told her.  He rolled over against the roots of the tree with his back to her, pulling his cloak over him as he huddled there in a ball.  It was rapidly growing chillier.  He glanced back at her once as she huffed out a chuckle.  "Can I trust you'll still be there in the morning and won't just run off?"

"No," she admitted.  "At least not without my word."

"And...Can I ask for that?"

"On account of what?" she teased.  "Got something to trade for it, or some reason I should give it?"

"Well...you did almost kill me," he noted.  "Twice."

"But I didn't.  Both times," she countered.  "So honestly you're more beholden to me than I am to you."

"Let your guilty conscience tell you whatever it has to for you to sleep at night," he quipped cheekily.

She huffed.  "I'd much rather do several other things than just sleep to make peace with my conscience."

He sat up a bit, staring back at her.  Her single eye gleamed meaningfully and his face heated slowly.  Again, but very unlike before, strange feelings and a rush of a nearly imperceptible scent came to him.  "I'm...very sure I don't understand what you mean," he stated.  He knew that it didn't sound all that convincing.

"That bright red face says you probably do, and more than even I implied," came her chortling response.  "Be honest with me, Handsome Anson."  He sighed at her use again of the annoying moniker.  "You were staring pretty hard before when you found out who and what I was, and even more when you were tied up.  You didn't even seem off-put by it.  So that being said, I'd like to ask you a question."

Anson furrowed his brows.  "Only on one condition, and I'm only beholden to give an answer if I decide it's a worthy enough question."

"So serious," she clucked.  "What's the condition?"  Her claws trailed down her throat in a scratching manner, slowly descending across her collarbone.  His eyes watched the movement, unable to look away as she teased along the hemline of her tunic, claws scraping across her more heavily scaled collarbone.

"What's the question?"

"I thought you wanted the guarantee first," she teased.  "Or is something distracting you?"

"You know what the condition is, so you can decide if you're willing to give it first," he huffed.  "If you're going to bother asking, then I'll assume you can give me that one promise."

"Fine."  She rolled over to face him more directly, leaning on one elbow.  Raising a paw, she placed it against her chest.  "By the Spirits, I promise not to run off in the middle of the night."  He nodded and she leaned forward again toward him.  The light of the embers made her scales almost seem to glow a cherry red.  "Are you one of those Humans that...considers Anthros unnatural?"

"I thought I made my feelings very clear on that," he countered.  "You're just another person to me, no matter what you look like."

"Sweet talker," she teased before she continued.  "I more meant...What are your feelings when it comes to what we are, right here and now?"  At his arched eyebrow, she actually chuckled.  "You, a Male," she rasped, low and soft, once again using that sultry tone of voice, waving a claw in his direction.  "Me, a Female."  She gestured at herself.  "All alone on a country road, no other folk for miles around.  Wide-open space, clear skies, wind getting a little colder now...Plenty of ways to warm up, pass the time, ease tensions, letting things happen as they will..."  She trailed off, teeth gleaming, tongue pressed up against them noticeably.  Her tail tamped the ground beside her several times.

He sat up straighter, staring hard at her with intense eyes.  "You cannot seriously be implying what I think you're implying."

She chuckled.  "Whatever do you think I am implying, dear Anson?"

"You just were about to cut my head off," he objected

"But I didn't.  On top of everything else, it would have been a tragedy to kill someone like you."

"And just why is that?"

"I call you Handsome Anson for a reason and not just because it rolls off the tongue."

"Would you stop beating around the bush and just spit it out please?"

She rolled her eye again.  "Humans...so literal," she grunted.  "I'm talking about Mating, Human.  Does there really have to be some deeper meaning to it than that?"

"So...just because I'm a man, and you're a woman, and we're all alone," he surmised.  "We should...bed down together.  After everything we've gone through."

"You're the one who hugged me," she shot back with rising vehemence but also eagerness.  "Don't pretend you didn't enjoy it too."

He rose to sit upright again.  "You were distraught!  What else was I supposed to do?"

She snapped her mouth shut, lip curled slightly and her teeth gleamed in a sudden glower.  "If you aren't interested, you can just say it."

"I didn't say anything of the sort!" he declared before his rational brain could stop him.  Her eye sparkled again, seemingly satisfied, but he gave her no room to talk as he kept going.  "My objection comes from the fact that, one, I barely know you, two, this is kind of coming out of nowhere, and three, oh yeah, you were just about to kill me!" He realized that he was nearly shouting by this point.  His face had since turned completely red.  He wasn't entirely sure why at this point either.

"But I didn't!" she repeated with a snarl.  "I could have killed you before, and I didn't.  You're the one who gave me no other option.  You could have just given me the letter but you'd rather have died than try to find another way around it.  And you don't have to know me to admit that you find me as attractive as I find you."

He refused to become flustered by that last point.  "So what if I do?"  He challenged.  "How was I supposed to deal with those kinds of thoughts, on top of everything else?  Also, finding someone attractive and being willing to bed them are two entirely different things!"

"Maybe when you overthink it like you Humans tend to do," she grumbled.  "Actions only have the worth we give to them.  Learn to live a little."

He gritted his teeth, determined to try and ignore the connotations and mental images that were already slithering into his mind.  To distract himself from their...admittedly interesting possibilities, he went back to his original point.  "What other options did I have with your sword against my neck?" he demanded, continuing his tirade.  "Go back to your people and ask for another copy of the letter, knowing you'd almost certainly, by your own admission, sold the original out to someone else who might sabotage everything?  Try and steal it back from you somehow?  Fat chance of that!"

"Oh no, you'd definitely have gotten killed if you did that," she agreed.  "Not by me either.  The men who hired me wouldn't hesitate to kill someone that got in their way."

"Then what other choice did I have?  My back was literally up against a wall, a sword to my throat, and the most terrifying woman I've ever met giving me no time to think."

She sighed. "I'll concede the point, Anson.  The point is, I, Crym, didn't want to kill you.  Even after everything your people have done to mine, even after your people killed my sister."

"My people aren't me," he growled right back.  "Those Humans' actions have nothing to do with me.  Do you, Crym, Lesser-Royal, represent all other Anthros?"

"No, I don't," she admitted.  "I was trying to make a point that I don't hate you, specifically, just because every other piece of evidence about our combined history says that I should!  I could have killed you and felt nothing.  But I didn't.  I admired your spirit, your passion, your courage in the face of uncertainty.  I saw myself in you, as well as...her.  I doubt I could have killed you then, or now."

Anson closed his mouth.  He and Crym stared at each other.  He suspected that neither of them was truly ready to concede their sides of the argument, even if they had finally found some common ground.  It was futile to try and get her to understand, but he also knew that he was perhaps also being slightly obstinate in the defense of his own point.

If he was being honest, did it really bother him all that much?  Sure, he hadn't wanted to die, he still didn't, but he knew and had said before, that he understood her reasoning.  He hadn't given her any other option, and she hadn't been about to just surrender just because she didn't entirely feel like killing some random Human when she hated them as a collective.  All that being said... it still felt weird to imagine sharing a bedroll with someone so quickly after that.

Even if it also sounded incredibly interesting, intriguing...maybe even satisfying.  Hugging her earlier had been to comfort her, he was confident in that, but was it so wrong that it had felt...wonderful for her to hug him back?  Even with everything that had happened, no one had ever hugged him like that before.

He cleared his throat.  She perked up a bit, frilled ears twitching slightly and her tail again tamping the earth with just the tip.  "So."

"So?" she asked.  She reclined slowly back onto the ground, still leaning on an elbow facing him.

Closing his eyes, he sighed.  "Crym...I'd like to say what I need to without you getting angry at me."  She shrugged but nodded.  "It's not that...the idea of sharing a bed with you repels me or anything.  For whatever reason, it doesn't."  He looked uncomfortably down at his knuckles, rubbing them.  "Whether because you're an Anthro, or that you're not a Human, or that I'm not an Anthro...you get the idea.  Nothing about what you are or who you are bothers me when it comes to...that kind of idea.  I've enjoyed a nightly...companion or two in my day, even without having to know them from birth or super well.  It was fun, they were willing, and things just worked out that way."

She purred.  Actually purred.  "Thank the Spirits," she teased.  "Here I was beginning to worry that you had other...tastes.  Or that you just were inexperienced.  I couldn't have helped with the first but I certainly wasn't repelled by the latter.  I'd actually have been more than happy to...teach you a few things."

He blushed and actually chuckled.  "Of that, I have no doubt.  I just...I find it difficult to imagine sharing that kind of intimacy with someone who previously was about to kill me."  He held up a finger as she growled in annoyance and was about to interject.  "Even if you ended up not doing so."  He met her eye again.  "Please understand."

Crym stared hard at him for several long, tense moments before she finally sighed.  "I suppose that's fair," she finally conceded.  "I guess it would be a little awkward and I certainly wouldn't want someone laying with me that was also afraid of me.  A little fear can be fun, thrilling even, so long as my partner is aware I'd never actually..."  She rolled her paw illustratively then looked back at him again.  "Are you still afraid of me?" she asked earnestly.

"A little," he admitted.  "I don't believe you'll still hurt me, but, as lovely as you are, it's still hard to get the image of you about to..."  He tapped his neck again gingerly.  "Out of my head so soon."

She rubbed at the nape of her own throat too.  "Yeah...I agree that makes sense."  She huffed once, nostrils flaring.  "Well, if that's your answer, not much I can do about it.  Not like I'm about to force myself onto you."

Anson smiled at her which seemed to cheer her up.  "Thank you, Crym."  He pondered something.  "Crym...Crym..." he grunted in mock-annoyance.  "Maybe I'm just not as creative as you, but I can't think of a single rhyming alliterative that goes with your name."

She chuckled.  "Handsome Anson was kind of just my luck of the draw.  Fitting too."  She winked her blind eye at him again and he actually smiled a bit for once.  "At least you're not trying to rhyme using my full name."

"Well, what would that be?"

She opened her mouth and from it poured out a strange collection of vowels, growls, hisses, and rolling of her tongue.  "So I just go by Crym for short."

He stared at her.  "That...was a name?" he joked.  "It sounded to me like you had something in your throat."

Crym guffawed.  "Careful, Human, or I'll take your awfully familiar tone of jesting to be consent after all."  Her eye glittered but he sensed that she meant it mostly as a joke.

He raised his hands, pretending to be cowed.  "Oh no, please savage Anthro maiden, do not maul me with your nethers."

They both busted out laughing, the sound ringing around the open area around them.  She wiped at her eye with a claw.  "It really is a shame," she stated.  Her eye gleamed brighter than before.  "Something tells me you'd be quite fun in the sack."

He nonchalantly shrugged.  "I've never had any complaints from the maidens that agreed to share a bed with me."

"How convenient," she rasped.  "Neither have I."  He caught her eye again and she grinned wider.  "Shame.  Never know when we might run into one another again.  Might not be as peaceable then as we were today.  On the off-chance that the whole Dual-Species wedding doesn't work out."

He chuckled, perhaps a bit morosely, but she seemed to share the same emotion about the concept.  They lapsed into silence a moment or so more.  "Do you...really think it'll work?" he asked quietly.

She huffed.  "I'm not the best person to ask that of," she admitted.  "I'm not the super chipper, hopeful, optimistic sort like you are.  Like Vexa was.  I believe in reality, and reality hasn't been very encouraging as of late.  Still...if the Princess that I knew back in those days could somehow fall in love, and with a Human, after everything she went through...maybe there is hope after all.  Our species have a lot we can teach one another."  She looked at him meaningfully.

Nodding at her once, Anson then shivered. The wind was growing colder now without the fire, he realized.   He huddled the cloak up around his shoulders more tightly.  "Maybe it would be best if we did turn in for the evening," he said out loud.

"Agreed," Crym sighed.  "Both of us have a long way to walk in the morning, no matter what decisions the dawn may bring with it."

"You could...come with me..." he murmured softly.  He looked up, trying to look into her eyes again and implore her to consider the possibility.  "The road wouldn't be quite as...lonely walking with someone else."

Her single, fiery eye hardened a bit and she looked away.  "Get some rest," Crym said.  She turned over and faced away from him entirely.

Anson sighed and curled back up into the roots of the tree, balling his body up beneath the cloak to try and conserve warmth.  He knew he shouldn't have asked.  Sharing a bed was a much different notion than sharing the road, sharing a goal, with someone whose own had been in direct conflict with his just earlier that same day.  He shivered more.

He was about to close his eyes and focus on trying to get some sleep, when he heard Crym mutter from behind him.  "Oh for the Spirits sake..."  he glanced back at her to see her also looking over her shoulder at him.  She rolled her eye and then, to his shock, turned back over to face him.  She patted the bedroll beneath her.  "You're making me cold just looking at you shiver over there.  Get over here."

He arched an eyebrow.  "I thought we had agreed that sharing a bed wasn't..."

"You don't have to Mate with someone to share a bed," she snapped, almost sounding...embarrassed for having offered.  "If you want to argue semantics, think about it this way.  I have a bed.  You have a cloak.  We can both be uncomfortable, or we can share what we do have.  If you really want to look at it another way, this way you can make sure I don't actually run off in the middle of the night with your satchel."

Anson's eyebrow climbed even higher.  "I thought you'd given me your word you wouldn't?  Why shouldn't I trust you?"

"Just shut up and get over here!" she snapped, growling in the back of her throat.  "I think with peace finally being possible between our people, spooning is hardly the worst basic show of trust we can give each other.  You can search your soul for forgiveness later, I'm cold."

Seeing undeniably logic in her argument, despite his trepidation and surge of shy nervousness, Anson rose and walked slowly over.  She scooted over and made room for him at once, allowing him to settle down tentatively onto the thick bedroll.  He passed her his cloak and she spread it out over both of them, wrapping her large body in close around his smaller one so that neither was left out.  Soft, plush curves and hard muscular limbs draped around or pressed firmly against him, making his face flush.  He already felt warmer.  Or was that just his face?

A puff of hot air disturbed his curly hair and he felt her head leaned down against the top of his skull.  One arm reached around and over him, tugging him in against her scaly bulk even closer.  "There," she grunted.  "Is that so bad?"

He wanted to make a joke to dispel the awkwardness.  He wanted to lie and say that it was strictly because of necessity.  "No," he admitted, voice soft.  "This is...really nice."

He felt a tremor against his back and the arm around him actually tightened a bit more.  Her other arm wormed its way underneath his head, giving him the ability to use her solid bicep as a pillow.  "Well...I wouldn't say really nice," she teased.  He shifted against her and she again tugged him just that tiny bit closer and more firmly against her.  "But you do make a great pillow."

Anson yawned, shyly draping a hand up atop her scaly paw.  "Goodnight Crym," he murmured, his eyes drifting shut.  "Thanks for not...killing me."  He smiled and dropped off to sleep not a few seconds after.

Crym felt him drift away in her arms.  She waited until his breath evened out and his body settled into complete and total relaxation before she allowed herself a smile.  "Goodnight, Handsome Anson," she chuckled.  "Thank you...for not giving up.  On yourself.  Or..." she yawned as well.  "On me."

Her eyes closed as well and the two slept, side by side.  Tomorrow would bring its own challenges.  For tonight, however, they had done enough.  Both of them.

***TBC***