"Hot Chocolate"- Gurjin/Seladon
Balancing two steaming bowls, Seladon makes her way to the pile of braids and blankets seated at the edge of their camp. The bite of the mountain air feels like home, the way her clouded breath floats in front of her comfortingly familiar, but many of the gelfling from other clans are visibly struggling in the cold. Most of them are asleep now, but someone has to keep watch.
Gurjin turns when she sits down beside him and gratefully accepts the bowl, taking a sip before he says anything. He pulls a face for a moment- from the sweetness, she realizes, as the Vapra are perhaps alone in their enjoyment of excessive sugar- but still takes another sip.
“Aren’t you freezing?” he asks. He really does look like a heap of swamp-moss so bundled up compared with her light, fur-lined coat, and she laughs softly.
“No. I’ve lived my entire life here. Vaprans are used to the cold.” She raises her own bowl to her lips- the warmth is welcome despite her claim. “Don’t worry, I’m sure I would feel just as out of place in your home.”
He glances over at her, raising a brow. “You were once, when your mother came down to meet with mine. Don’t you remember?”
It takes her a moment, but she does. She had been so small then, and her sisters even smaller- Brea had still been a baby strapped to her mother’s back while she worked. She remembers stomping around in the knee-deep swampy muck, crying when she had lost her shoe in the mud. Splashing around with the other children, until her mother had called her inside and admonished her and Tavra for making messes of themselves.
“Y-yes, I remember. It was certainly...different.”
Gurjin laughs. “You know, we Drenchen value straight talk over what you’d call diplomacy.” His smile is soft, unbothered. “You can say that you hated it.”
Her cheeks are burning now, but she may as well be honest. “Alright, maybe a little.” She appraises his features for a silent moment- so different from her own, yet still fundamentally gelfling. Not as different as she had been told for so long. And not unappealing either, though she immediately shoves that thought away. “I envied you and your sisters, though, whenever we met. You were still the children of a maudra, but your lives seemed very different. Like you had more freedom to...well, to be children.”
Gurjin looks taken aback. “Is that so? I always just thought that you thought you were better than us.”
He certainly wasn’t kidding about straight talk, but after so many lies, she finds it oddly refreshing. “I...maybe I did.” It was all so complicated, and so ultimately pointless to try to unravel now. Her eyes are fixed on the steam rising from her drink, but she forces them to meet his instead. “I was wrong about so many things,” she whispers, swallowing down the shame. There is no use for it now. “I hope you can forgive me.”
He chuckles again, and the motion brushes his shoulder against hers. “You came around. Don’t worry, I’m not the type to hold a grudge.”
They fall into silence then, watching the sky for the first sign of the great sun peeking up over the horizon. The cold still doesn’t bother her, but when she feels his arm come to rest around her shoulders, she leans into it, just a bit. She wouldn’t want him to freeze.