Her of the Wood by Veronica Watts

Author:Veronica Watts [Watts, Veronica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Lesbian, Fantasy, Romance
Publisher: Less Than Three Press, LLC
Published: 2018-09-18T16:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

Euodia's wrapping up her last dual watcher duty. She's done a week's worth of them on her own now, but there were a few left shared in the schedule to address any questions that may have come up. This shift is with Auston. They've just had some dinner when she starts thinking about the schedule change and what it means for the others as well as her. "Will you get to have fewer shifts now that there's another scout?"

"It's all stays pretty even. Jobe was a scout until recently."

It takes her a minute to place the name, but then she remembers one of the older men and speaks without thinking. "He seems a little..."

Auston waits for her to finish, and when she doesn't, he wraps it up. "Old."

She responds slowly. "Yeah."

"You can say it. That's not a bad thing here. I know how it is in the city. Lots of old people get sent here." He stopped for a minute and corrected himself. "Well, they end up here if they're lucky anyway." He gets back to the topic at hand. "Jobe was already starting to cut back on shifts before you showed up. He'd stopped hunting entirely. At the time, I assumed that was why Lorna assigned you to us."

Euodia notices the word choice and turns to him with a smile. "What, you think something different now?"

He pushes a few of the logs around with a stick, waiting for her to speak, but as hard as it is for her to let the silence ride, she does, and he breaks first. "Let's just say that Lorna reads people well, and you and Ailie didn't take long to hit it off."

She can feel the blush rise like a fever and hopes that the firelight obscures it. When she's returned to a normal temperature, if still a little pink, she resumes the conversation. "You seem to know more about Dracon than Hana and Ailie. Are you from there, you and Ilford?"

Auston looks into the fire, picks up a leaf and tosses it in. "Yeah, my parents were caught stealing in mid-city."

Euodia feels herself take a deep breath. People steal on the edges, and it's between individuals. You get caught stealing in mid-city or city center, and you're out. "Have I met your parents?"

He tosses the stick in his hand onto the fire to follow the leaf. "They passed away a few years after we came to Solace."

"I'm sorry." She doesn't know what he's comfortable discussing, so she leaves it up to him to progress the conversation.

"It is what it is." He seems so calm and collected when they're out here, at peace, but when they're inside the community, especially if they're with his brother, he's energetic, wired.

"How is Ilford?" Euodia hasn't seen much of the younger brother recently, since he and Hana have become more connected. Rumor has it they're scoping out a spot for a tent.

Auston shakes his head. "He's a crazy kid, thinks he's in love." There's something more behind Auston's words, Euodia can tell, but she doesn't know how to ask him about it.

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