The expression on my face must have given away my disappointment at seeing them rather than Bannack because they all narrowed their eyes slightly and looked concerned.
"Is everything alright?" the one I remembered as Zuri asked.
I nodded, trying to muster a smile that would assure them that I was fine.
"Are you sure?" the lovely, rather heavily pregnant one asked.
If it was possible, her belly looked slightly more swollen than when I had first seen her and I could feel that she was tired and somewhat anxious. I could only imagine that carrying a child at all would be stressful, but I had also noticed that there didn’t seem to be any other pregnant women, babies, or children at all throughout the compound. The youngest people I had seen were some of the warriors who looked only a few years younger than me.
"Is there something wrong with the house? Are the lights not turning on?" Zuri asked.
All of the attention coming from them was becoming overwhelming and I felt bombarded even though I knew that they had come to me out of concern and genuine desire to welcome me to the compound. I stepped back and held out a hand to invite them to come inside.
"Everything is fine," I told them, "I haven't turned on any of the lights yet."
The faint light emanating from my skin and the blue glow coming from a luminescent plant across the room filled the space with just enough illumination that I was able to see the women clearly as they came into the room. I crossed to one of the lamps sitting on a low table that was similar to the types of lights that I had down in the mirrored realm and touched its base, hoping that it would turn on, which it did. The new light in the room seemed to put the women slightly more at ease and they all came further into the room.
They didn't want to say it, and they tried very much to be as subtle as they could, but they were all scrutinizing me closely as they approached. Though they were happy to welcome me into the compound and do whatever they could to help me assimilate, they were also somewhat wary of me, an emotion that each carried in a slightly different way.
I could feel that Zuri focused heavily on the way that I looked, identifying the differences between us and feeling at once uncomfortable and guilty about that feeling. The image of Ero, a man I assumed to be her mate, flickered through her mind and the discomfort eased. Leia, the smallest of the women, was fascinated by my differences, but also carried a sense of defensiveness and distance that came from dark memories of the first time she encountered a species that was not her own, dark memories that she shielded closely within her.
The pregnant woman was the most difficult. She was at the same moment the one who seemed most willing to welcome me and the most nurturing, but also the most hesitant. Carrying the child within her had heightened both her natural sense of curiosity and desire to learn about the world around her, but also of fear and suspicion. I could sense that as much as she wanted to think of me as just another woman who had found her way into the Denynso compound, she was also nervous about encountering another species that she didn't understand and that she had had no time to learn to trust.
This was perhaps the most difficult part of being around other creatures again. When I was alone I had no one's emotions to contend with but my own. I could feel and experience only what was impacting me at that moment and work through them in the way that was right for me. When I was with others, I could feel and experience what they did, forcing me to acknowledge their true impressions of me and of the world around them. While it was possible for me to control it and block myself from reflecting the thoughts and feelings of others, I had never built that skill when I was younger and now it was an incredible challenge for me to not tune in to others when I was struggling with my own emotions. This meant that right when I was at my most vulnerable, my mind betrayed me and allowed even more emotion in, often putting me in painful, difficult moments when I was at my least capable of tolerating them.
"I'm Eden," the pregnant woman said, stepping toward me cautiously, "I don't think that I've introduced myself yet."
"Hello," I said, "I'm Loralia."
"I know. We just wanted to come see you and let you know that we're excited that you decided to stay with us. There aren't enough ladies around here."
The three women laughed and I felt myself smile. Despite their hesitance, it was nice to hear that they were happy that I was there.
"Thank you."
"We know what it's like to leave the home you've always known and suddenly become a part of the Denynso," Eden continued, "and we want you to know that we're here for you and we're looking forward to spending time with you while Bannack is gone."
She gave me a soft hint of a knowing smile, but I couldn't even force one back at her.
"What do you mean while Bannack is gone?" I asked, barely able to push the words through the hard lump forming in my throat.
Eden, Zuri, and Leia looked struck and exchanged glances.
"He didn't tell you?" Leia asked.
"No."
"He is leaving with the warriors."
Chapter Four
Bannack walked into the meeting hall with a sense of relief, but at the same time, a feeling of longing and emptiness that made him wish that he could simply turn off his emotions and face the world completely blank and cold. It was that way that the warriors marched into their battles, emotionless, aggressive, and without feeling or compassion. He wished that he could maintain that throughout the rest of his life as well so that he didn't have to deal with feeling like this anymore.
It made him feel better to know that Eden, Zuri, and Leia had gone to see Loralia and welcome her to the compound, but he knew that them going to see her meant that she would soon know that he was leaving and abandoning his guard and protector responsibilities. He knew that this was going to hurt her, and as much as he was conflicted about how he was feeling about her, he hated the idea that he was causing this creature that had already gone through so much even more pain. He didn't want to be her impression of life above the ground, but he didn't have a choice. He had made a single impulsive decision by walking out across the sky and toward the pearlescent glow that had seemed to call to him, and in that decision he felt like he had given over control of himself.
He no longer felt like he could think clearly or make the types of rational decisions that he once did. Though volatile and unpredictable, Bannack had always been one to understand his own motivations and compulsions, even if none of the other warriors, men, women, or even rulers of the Denynso understood them. He didn't like the feeling that these were things he couldn’t think his way through and that for the first time his heart seemed to be making decisions that his mind didn't understand or condone.
Some of the other warriors were milling around in the meeting hall talking about the upcoming trip. A few of them were still questioning the decision to leave the compound and go on the quest, and others were trying to convince them that it was the right thing for the entirety of the clan. Bannack had no interest in trying to build up their ranks or muster more support for the trip, especially if that meant delaying their departure more than the three days that they already had planned. He simply wanted to get their plans in place, prepare, and leave.
Bannack felt a hard pat on his back and spun around defensively, taking an aggressive step forward even before he saw who was standing behind him. Ty, a gentle giant in every meaning of the phrase, stepped back, a startled look in his deep orange eyes. The shade of his eyes was a recent development, a color that had formed only in the couple of weeks since the massive baker had discovered his mate in the beautiful, brilliant, and very young Samira.
"I'm sorry," Bannack said, shaking slightly to try to release the tension that had built in his body.
He felt like he had been wound up, the pressure inside him building almost unbearably and just waiting for its release. It was similar to the feeling that he got when they were marching toward battle, but deeper and more intense in a way th
at he couldn’t quite understand and hadn't ever experienced.
"Are you doing OK, Bannack?" Ty asked, "You haven't really seemed like yourself since the funeral."
Bannack wanted to brush off the comment and just try to pass it off as being devastated over Jem's death like the rest of the tribe, but he knew that that wouldn't work. Ty, like the others, had known Bannack their entire lives and it would take much more than a flimsy excuse to get them off of his back if they really wanted to know what was going on with him. He let Ty guide him over to one of the long tables where no one else was sitting and slumped down onto the bench.
"I can't think straight," Bannack admitted, "I feel like my mind is going in a thousand different directions and all I want to do is get on our way so that I don't have to think anymore. Why do we have to wait three days?"
"Because it's going to take that long to get all of the supplies together that we need. Besides, we want a little bit of time to say goodbye to our mates properly. It might be a while before we see them again and we'd like to make sure that we have plenty to think about while we're gone."
The young man gave a laugh, but Bannack couldn't muster the same reaction. He glanced down at his hands, suddenly feeling even more uncomfortable at the mention of the other men's mates.
"What are you thinking about so hard over here, Bannack?"
Pyra and Ero came up and settled onto the benches, Ero beside Bannack and Pyra across the table from him beside Ty. All three of the men were staring at him, and Bannack felt the same desperate need to get away that he had when he was standing at the funeral. He knew that that was not really an option now, however. He looked into the faces of each of the men and thought that perhaps talking to them might be a good thing. It could help him to sort through whatever was running through his mind and gain some clarity so that he knew how to move forward.
"I just can't seem to get a hold of my brain recently."
"Why not? Is something going on?" Ero asked.
"I just have all these thoughts and I've been feeling particularly aggressive and angry lately. Ever since the battle, I just feel like I can't keep control of myself."
Out of the corner of his eye Bannack saw the other men exchange glances.
"Are you feeling like you want to kick the living hell out of just about every guy that gets near you, including us?"
"Well, I did just almost punch Ty in the face because he came up and patted me on the back."
"And are you having any other interesting changes? Physical changes, perhaps?"
Bannack squirmed on the bench. He was rethinking how good of an idea it actually was to get the other men involved in this conversation. Ero glanced down at Bannack's lap and Bannack saw him grin and look back at Ty and Pyra.
"I can definitely confirm that he is."
Pyra gave a short, knowing laugh and shook his head at Bannack.
"So who is she?"
Bannack felt his stomach turn. It was exactly what he had been dreading hearing from any of the men. He shook his head, refusing to make eye contact with any of them.
"Come on, tell us," Ty said.
Ty had always been the kindest and most romantic-minded of the Denynso men, a nurturer rather than a warrior though he had recently embraced his incredible inherited power and joined in the final fight against the Klimnu, and looked far more excited about the situation than Bannack felt.
"It has to be one of the Denynso women," Ero speculated, "There haven't been any other girls who have come around here recently."
There was a pause and then Bannack saw Pyra staring at him.
"Except Loralia."
Bannack shook his head again, but there was no use, they had figured it out and now he had nowhere to hide.
"Oh, shit," Ero said, "It is her. You have a thing for the weird little mirror creature."
Bannack knew that he meant it teasingly, but his anger at that statement nearly overwhelmed him. He stood sharply, slamming his hands down in the middle of the table and glaring down at Ero.
"I do not have a 'thing' for her," he snarled.
"Your reactions to her seem to beg to differ," Ty pointed out.
"Have you slept with her? Your eyes aren't orange."
"No, and they wouldn't be even if I had. There's no way that my intended mate is some freakish creature from underground. I am meant to bond with a Denynso woman, like I’m supposed to. I'm not going to fall for some other species, especially one that I know absolutely nothing about."
As soon as the words came out of his mouth, Bannack saw the other men tense. A stiff moment of silence fell over the table as each of them stood slowly from their benches. He met their gazes in turn, seeing a darkness in each of them that he hadn't anticipated.
"Another species?" Pyra snarled, his hand clenching into a fist beside him, "You mean like humans?"
Chapter Five
I could hear the women still talking around me, but it was as if their voices were lost in some kind of fog that was closing in on me. I was trying desperately to process what they had just told me, but no matter how hard I tried to work through it in my mind, I couldn't force myself to let it sink all the way in.
"Bannack is leaving?"
I repeated my question, hoping that somehow I had mistaken what they had said, but deep down knowing that I had heard them exactly right.
Leia came up beside me and rested a hand on my arm. So small and fragile looking, she had a presence that was strong because it had to be, like a delicate flower that had been forged out of pure steel. It was the fire and chisel that created her as she was.
I felt them guiding me towards the furniture in the middle of the main room of the house, and I allowed them to. I had no reason to distrust these women and in that moment they were my only source of information about Bannack and what was happening around me.
"The warriors have decided to leave the compound and explore the rest of Uoria," Leia explained.
"After the battle with the Klimnu down in the mirrored realm they all realized that none of them, not even the king, knows what the rest of the planet holds, or what types of threats there might be out there. They're unwilling to just sit around and wait to find out if there is another species out there like the Klimnu that might want to destroy the Denynso and take over the compound. It seems that discovering your existence made them even more insistent," Eden said softly.
"Why me?" I asked, looking into each of the women's faces in turn.
"You have lived under the ground that they walked on every single day and they had no idea," Zuri said, "It upsets them that they are known for being the best and most fearsome warriors in all the galaxy, yet they were unable to protect their compound from invasion, and didn't even realize that there was an entire other species living just beneath their feet for as long as they have been around."
"My mate, Pyra," Eden continued, "is especially worried about our child. He or she is the very first child born of this generation of the Denynso, and Pyra doesn't like that he doesn't know what could be out there that might pose a threat to his baby."
"He or she?" I asked.
I had never heard that particular phrase used before, and it struck me as strange that she would use it to refer to her unborn child.
"We don’t know what the baby is," Eden explained, "We have no way of knowing. If I were going through my pregnancy back on Earth there would have been ways for me to know long ago if I am having a son or a daughter. The Denynso don't have those ways, though."
There was only a hint of stress in her voice. With the words she had said I would have expected to feel bitterness, or even anger, coming off of her. Instead, I just felt nervousness and the sweeping love that came over her as she mentioned her mate, just like the love that Zuri had felt when she thought of Ero.
"Do you wish that you were back on Earth rather than here with the Denynso?" I asked.
Eden looked at me and shook her head emphatically.
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"Absolutely not. Uoria, this compound, is my home, much more so than Earth ever was even though that's where I was born and raised. I didn't know it until I came to this planet as a scientist sent to do a project for work and met Pyra, but this is where I was always meant to be."
I envied the confidence and absolute security that radiated off of her. She had total conviction in what she said, and her heart fully believed every word of it. This really was where she belonged and she couldn't imagine leaving.
"There are other ways than the Earth ways to tell what child you are carrying, you know."
Eden tilted her head quizzically at me and rubbed her belly tenderly.
"The midwives told me that they don't have any kind of technology that can show the baby like they do on Earth, that they take care of it through their own forms of medicine. None of them have ever been able to tell what a woman was having until it was born."
"Ah, but that's the Denynso," I said, smiling for the first time since Bannack had left, "and I'm not a Denynso. My kind has always been able to tell. I could find out for you now if you'd like to know."
Eden nodded and I could feel the hesitance she had felt toward me disappearing. She was learning to trust me, and as she did, the other women did as well. It was a nice feeling, something soothing and comforting in a time when I needed those feelings more than I had in my entire life.
I gestured for Eden to lie down on the couch and I sat beside her, perching just on the edge so that I was close enough to rest my hands on the sides of her swollen belly. It took me a moment to orient myself to the positioning of the baby. Once I did, I reached up to my neck to take my compact, but realized that it wasn't there. I looked around frantically, terrified that I had lost it somewhere between climbing up from out of the ground and removing my dress for Bannack.
Leia dipped down and scooped something up off of the floor.
"Is this what you're looking for?" she asked.
Loved by a Bear (Legends of Black Salmon Falls Book 1) Page 52