Chapter 223: Jane’s return
Then Jane moved, crossing the courtyard at a speed that communicated nothing had mattered in the past two weeks more than this moment, and she did what she had done the first time she had come through the domain gate, she threw herself at him before he had finished processing that she was coming.
He caught her.
She held on with the force of someone who had been worried for fourteen days and was expressing everything about those fourteen days in the physical fact of having her arms around him.
He held her back and said nothing and let her have the moment.
Magnar, with the unconcerned ease of a familiar who did not feel left out by this exchange, pushed his large head against Neil’s leg from the side.
Neil reached down without releasing Jane and put his hand on Magnar’s head briefly.
After a moment Jane stepped back, aware of the full courtyard around her and the several people in it who had observed the exchange with varying degrees of discretion.
She looked at Neil’s face with the gold eyes that were bright from the emotion she was still managing.
"You’re back." She said.
"So are you." He said, and his voice had the quality it sometimes had with her, the one that was not warm exactly but was not the careful neutral he used when he was being deliberate about distance either.
Something in her expression moved at that.
Then she looked at him properly and before he could say anything else she leaned forward and kissed him.
It was not aggressive or urgent, just direct, the kind of kiss that had been waiting long enough that when it finally arrived it did not need to be anything other than what it was.
He did not pull back.
He kissed her back, and it was brief and warm and honest, and when they parted there was a silence that lasted approximately two seconds in which neither of them said anything.
The smile that appeared on Jane’s face in that silence was not the small and careful version she usually deployed in group settings but the full version, the one that took over her face completely and had nothing managed about it, and she looked so genuinely and unreservedly happy in that moment that even the people nearby who had observed it found it difficult to look away.
Then Magnar headbutted her leg from the side with approximately twenty percent of his available force, which from Magnar at 4th Origin was enough to move her sideways, and the moment broke into something more ordinary.
She looked down at him with the exasperated and genuine affection she had clearly developed for the familiar over however many days they had been hunting together.
"You have terrible timing." She told him.
Magnar made a sound that was the familiar equivalent of responding with dignity.
Neil looked at the minor injuries still visible on her and the exhaustion that was real but underneath both of those was something steadier than what had been in her before she left, something that sat in her like the quality that came from having done difficult things and come through them.
"Healing hut." He said, looking at her arm.
"It is fine." She said, with the specific quality she had when something was manageable and she did not want it made into more than that.
He looked at her for a moment with the expression he had when he had made a decision and was communicating it without debate.
She went to the healing hut.
They had dinner late, waiting for Jane to be looked over and for her to eat something that was not whatever field provisions she had been surviving on, and by the time the table had its full population the night was properly dark outside and the domain’s lighting had come on in the warm configuration it always ran at in the evenings.
Fay had made more than usual, clearly having been expecting the returns.
Magnar had grown enough in the 4th Origin that his usual position near the table required the compressed version of himself or he took up too much of the courtyard, and he had chosen the compressed version with the grumbling commentary that compression always produced from him.
Jane sat beside Neil and Ileana was on his other side as usual, and the table carried the particular texture of an evening where several things had changed and were still settling.
Neil told them about the Wood Snakes.
He kept it relatively brief, the way he kept most things brief when the full account would have taken much longer than the evening warranted, but he gave them enough of it, the way the territory had worked and how the Bronze and Silver classes had operated and what the Gold class had added with the mental venom component and the designed territory, and what the Diamond class had been.
Jane was listening with the particular attention she gave to things about him specifically, her food mostly ignored in front of her.
"The Diamond class." She said, when he reached that part. "How strong."
He thought about the best way to describe it.
"Displacement." He said. "Instantaneous, no transition. And the regeneration was in a different category from the Gold class, not faster in degree but faster in kind." He paused. "Each one required the full version of everything I had."
Jane was quiet for a moment, absorbing this.
"How many did you kill." She said.
"Five." He said.
She looked at him with the gold eyes that were doing something complicated and not entirely manageable.
"You are impossible." She said, and her voice had the quality of someone saying something they found genuinely exasperating and genuinely impressive in the same breath.
Then she picked up her food and started actually eating it, which was her way of concluding that response.
He asked about their hunting.
Jane’s account was detailed and honest and carried the quality of someone who had taken it seriously, the 3rd Origin creatures she and Magnar had worked through and the 4th Origin Bronze and Silver class ones they had pushed into toward the end, the specific things about Magnar’s 4th Origin form that had surprised her and the way they had developed their coordination in the field.
Magnar made several sounds from his position near the table throughout her account, some of which appeared to be corrections.
"He kept going for the wrong approach on the Silver class ones for the first three encounters." Jane said, looking at Magnar with the expression of a hunting partner who has had to have the same tactical discussion more than once.
Magnar made a sound that was clearly a disagreement with this characterisation.
"The approach worked once." Jane said. "Once. That is not a pattern."
Magnar made another sound.
"That is absolutely not what happened." Jane said.
The table had the sound of people watching an argument whose participants were evenly matched and neither was going to concede anything.
Ileana looked at Neil with the amused quality she had when something was genuinely funny and she was not going to be quiet about it.
At the far end of the table Rin was in her habitual seat and Leon had arrived for the late dinner rotation and was in his, and the arrangement that had been developing between the two of them was in its usual configuration, Rin occasionally directing a comment toward Leon that he responded to in the brief and precise way he responded to things, neither of them making more of it than it was but neither of them pretending it was nothing either.
Mob was eating with the steady efficiency of someone who had a full day behind them.
Rob was discussing the structural specifications of the new workshop section with Bob at the other end of the table, Rob’s precision and Bob’s enthusiasm in their familiar parallel conversation.
Later, after the meal had concluded and the population had moved into its evening dispersal, the three of them went for a walk in the open area not far from the domain, through the settlement streets in the warm night air, Ileana on one side of Neil and Jane on the other.
Jane was still carrying the tiredness of the hunting trip but she was not letting it make her quiet, and the conversation between the three of them moved through things that were neither heavy nor insignificant.
At one point Jane said something about Magnar’s behaviour in a Silver class encounter that made Ileana laugh, the real and unguarded version, and Jane’s expression when she heard it was something that had not been in her face much in the time since she had come back, open and genuinely pleased, the careful management of herself not present for that moment.
They walked back through the settlement streets and through the domain gate and the night was quiet around them.
At the gate Ileana touched Neil’s arm briefly and gave him the look that meant she was going ahead, and she went toward the main building with Jane beside her in the low conversation of the late evening, and Neil stood near the gate for a moment before sitting on the outer wall section.
He took out the communication device.
Cynthia’s call connected and her face appeared in the display with the settled quality of someone who had been expecting the contact.
"You are back." She said.
"Fourteen days." He said. "The four cores are colleced."
There was a brief pause.
"Oh so to the diamond class." She said, now as a part of his domain, she can also see the rank of his domain.
"Yes." He said.
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