Quite another, as in I would never in my infinite, blasted lifespan do it.
I reached the side of the high, smoothly carved river stone tub, then placed Suvi down at the bottom of it, white covering and all. She clutched the edges of it together in tight little fists, the grey and black points of her eyes darting around the room before settling on my arm as I reached for the tap.
Maybe she thought the tub was meant for something else, because when the water plummeted downwards into the tub she gasped and jerked her feet away from the liquid pooling in a rumbling froth at the bottom. I was about to turn it off to try to figure out where I’d gone wrong and what she really wanted when she sighed and slowly eased her feet back towards the water.
Only to yelp loudly and yank her feet away with much more energy this time. She crawled to the far end of the tub (it really was a rather massive thing for someone as small as her) and started flapping one hand at the water while using the other to hold her bedding around her like some sort of shield.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” I asked, turning the water off. It certainly couldn’t have burned her – I’d specifically made sure to keep the tap towards the cool water setting.
But therein lay my mistake. Her flat teeth chattered, and she held the bedding around herself not as a shield, I realized, but as its true intended purpose – a blanket to conserve heat.
“You only just recovered from your fever,” I grunted, fighting to keep the scowl from my brow. “I’d have you covered in filth before I let your temperature rise simply so you can bathe.”
Images from earlier days came back with haunting vengeance. Suvi burning up in bed, shaking and whimpering, screaming...
I jerked my snout and raked my claws through my hair as if I could dislodge those memories by simply tugging hard enough. But no. I was fairly certain that I could forget my mother’s name, forget my own, but that nothing would make me forget the torment of watching Suvi in that sickroom.
Suvi was speaking to me, but even if I’d known her language I doubted I would have caught any of it. Her teeth slamming against each other marred any words I might have gleaned.
My fingers fell from my hair and drummed along the side of the tub as my gaze swivelled between my shivering little star at the bath’s tap. Perhaps using heated water would not be too much of a problem. Letting her shiver and shake like she was certainly couldn’t be good for her. And I remembered how she always wanted me to heat her water even before drinking it. Maybe she was far more sensitive to cold water than I was.
“Alright,” I said, returning my claws rather hesitantly to the tap, “I’m going to turn this water back on. Warmer this time. But I am not going to let you overheat.”
I would keep the temperature well within what would be safe for her.
What that temperature range actually was for her kind, I had no idea. But I figured that by watching her closely I could hopefully figure it out. The second she looked unwell, the hot water would be drained and replaced with cooler stuff no matter how much she might argue.
So slowly my arm nearly shook with the effort, I turned the gleaming stone handle of the tap until the water warmed. Suvi reached her slender fingers towards the falling stream, her smooth pale brow creased at first, but slowly relaxing every moment the water grew warmer. When she sighed, and all remaining tension drained from her face, I stopped turning the tap.
She exhaled again. She began to draw her knees up to her chest, and then, as if that simple movement was too much effort for her, gave up and leaned sideways against the tub, resting her chin on the ledge. As the tub filled, her blanket bloomed around her like a river flower, the soaked white cotton floating, tremulous petals.
She watched the rippling movements of the fabric.
And I watched her.
It was hard not to. I hadn’t seen her this content since before she’d gotten ill. Even in sleep in her sickbed, she’d had a look of unhappiness, a look of pain. This was the first time in far too long her pretty face was unmarked by suffering.
Pretty...
It was a pretty face, I decided. She had always been beautiful to me, but in the way a celestial body could be beautiful. At the beginning, I’d barely registered her features in a solid, physical sense, focused solely on the light she emitted, the way she somehow beat back the darkness. And then, when she’d gotten sick, I’d been too busy combing over every crease in her features, searching for signs that she might be getting better, or skies forbid it, worse.
But now, as she adjusted herself, pressing the flesh of her cheek to the tub’s stone edge until the supple skin got slightly squashed, I just saw her. She was not a star right now, nor was she sick. She was simply Suvi.
And Suvi was pretty.
I hadn’t gotten a good look at any of the other people she’d been with on the other world.
I wondered if she was considered attractive among her own kind.
And I wondered, more foolishly than I’d imagined or hoped myself capable of being, if I could be considered attractive. Not necessarily among her kind in a general sense. But to her. Very specifically.
I grimaced at the memory of seeing my own face in the river days ago. One eye gouged out and replaced with knotted scar tissue. Hair in a tangled, matted disarray instead of oiled and braided the way I knew I’d once worn it, the way I knew was considered beautiful.
I tried not to think too much about it. If my face was not worth looking at, then I’d simply spend all my time and energy looking at Suvi’s. Vanity served no purpose here because the only purpose I sought to serve now was her.
But even so... Even so...
Even so, I could not stop my claws from rising to my hair in an instinctive movement meant to smooth the strands.
The lift of my hand caught Suvi’s shiny eyes. She started, gawking at me as if I’d just rather rudely appeared before her even though I’d been here the entire time. She huddled against the side of the tub, grabbed at the soaked, sinking fabric and pulled it back to her body the way a starving creature might snatch at scraps of food. Then she gestured with her chin, the way I might do with my snout, towards the door.
“Oh, no, little star. That is not happening,” I muttered, crossing my arms and frowning down at her. I was as rooted to the spot as a tree, unyielding as stone. She could set her flat mouth in that stubborn Suvi way of hers all she wanted, but I would not budge. “Do whatever you need to do, but I will remain beside you as you do it.”
Based on the flare in her eyes that looked a lot like anger (anger I welcomed, because anger meant strength and energy and recovery and thank you, little star, thank you for your anger, pour it over me like water) she appeared to get my meaning.
It poked at me, the way her blissfully relaxed expression had vanished now that she’d remembered I was there. Dug beneath my scales, made my tail and wings twitch.
She’d brought me more peace than I’d known in years. More peace than I’d known in entire mortal generations.
And all I’d done was carve away at hers.
The tips of my split tongue lashed against the roof of my mouth in irritation. I could not grant her the complete privacy she so obviously wanted.
But perhaps...
Perhaps I could take a few very small steps back.
Suvi watched me warily as I walked backwards away from her. I stopped when the backs of my legs hit a wooden chest against the wall. I sat upon its flat lid, then gestured roughly down at myself as if to say, See? See how much space I give you? I am not such a brute as you might think.
Never mind the fact that I’d been a brute to her before.
Never mind the fact that the moment the darkness came creeping back in, I’d become that brute again and crush the space and fledgeling sense of privacy between us like a flower in my fist.
