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theargument.doc
Keywords male 1301730, female 1184149, squirrel 33215, dragoness 13848, story progression 2264, story series 2229, furred dragon 2039, relationship 1458, implied sex 1327, cub clean 283, arguing 265, iskret 14
The Argument

A Silvania Story — SY 4531, Late Summer

~ I ~
The Kiswi expedition preparations had made the household busier than it had been since the portal discovery. Correspondence arrived daily. Vethran had taken over the study table for a second week. Tane's message had confirmed his arrival date and the names of two council representatives who would be travelling with him.
Jukrit had written back to confirm they could stay at the house.
He had not mentioned this to Noraxia before sending the reply.
He had also, over the past three months, been corresponding with a Guild contact about Lev. Lev was seven and showing a specific interest in the healer-shaman work that Jukrit had begun to take seriously. The Guild contact had a program — not formal training, too early for that, but a structured introduction to the discipline that could begin at eight. Jukrit had been gathering information. He had not yet decided anything. He had not yet told Noraxia he was gathering information.
He told himself he was waiting until there was something concrete to tell.
He was also, on some level he had not examined carefully, aware that he had been treating these as his decisions to make.
Lev found out about the Guild correspondence from Wena, who had seen a letter on the study table. Lev told Tassa. Tassa told Noraxia.
Noraxia found Jukrit in the herb garden on a Tuesday morning.

~ II ~
She waited until he looked up.
"The Guild program," she said. "For Lev."
He set down what he was holding. "I was going to tell you."
"When?"
"When I had something decided. Right now it's only information gathering."
"You have been gathering information about my son's future for three months," she said, "without telling me."
"He's my son," Jukrit said.
The words came out before he had thought about them. He heard them land.
Noraxia was very still.
"Yes," she said. "He is."
"I didn't mean—"
"I know what you meant," she said. "You meant that the decision is yours to make. Because he is biologically yours. Because I am not his mother."
"I meant that I was handling something that concerned my son and I hadn't reached a decision point yet."
"You have been in this household for two years with Lev in it," she said. "I have fed him and read to him and sat with him when he had nightmares about Orro and answered his questions about what I am and how I work. I have done all of that. And you have been making plans about his future in correspondence I was not told about."
Jukrit looked at her. He knew she was right. He also felt, underneath that knowledge, a resistance he was not proud of and could not entirely suppress.
"There's also the matter of the house guests," he said.
This was not the right moment to raise it. He knew this as he said it.
"What house guests," Noraxia said.

~ III ~
He told her about Tane's companions. Two council representatives, two to three weeks, the reply already sent.
She listened. Her expression changed in a way he recognized. It wasn’t the controlled shift of managing a response but the involuntary shift of receiving one too many things at once.
"You agreed to host three people in this house," she said. "For three weeks. Without asking me."
"It's for the expedition," he said. "It's important."
"Everything you decide unilaterally is important," she said. "That appears to be the criterion."
"I am trying to manage a significant logistical situation—"
"You are managing it," she said. "That is the problem. You are managing it as though this house and this household and the cubs in it belong to you to manage. Lev is your son. The house is yours. The expedition is yours to coordinate. And I am—" She stopped.
"Noraxia—"
"What am I, Jukrit?" she said. "In the arithmetic of your decision-making. What am I."
"You know what you are."
"I know what I am to you," she said. "I am not always certain it is the same as what I am in your planning."
He said something then that he should not have said. He said it because he was feeling defensive and because some part of him was still holding onto the position that these were his decisions to make, and because he was not handling the conversation carefully.
Noraxia shifted.

~ IV ~
It was not a controlled shift. He had seen her shift hundreds of times — the deliberate drop to feral form, the considered choice. This was not that. This was something that happened before the decision was made, the body expressing what the mind was still trying to contain.
She was in feral form in the time it took him to register what was happening. She was large. He knew how large she was since he had been living with her for nearly seven years and he knew her dimensions precisely. He also knew, in the moment she roared, that knowing her dimensions precisely was not the same as being ready for it.
The roar came from somewhere deep and involuntary and it was not directed at him as a threat. He understood this. His body did not care what he understood. He backed against the garden wall and his heart was doing something he would have categorized clinically as acute stress response and he was, simply and completely, afraid.
The silence after it was its own kind of sound.
Noraxia was still in feral form. She was looking at him. Her teal eyes read the wall behind him, his posture, his face.
She shifted back.
She was in anthro form in the same instant and the garden was just the garden again. Her expression was something he did not have a name for. Not remorse exactly. Something older and more private than remorse.
"I'm sorry," she said.
He was still against the wall. His heart was still doing what it was doing.
"It's all right," he said.
"It isn't," she said.
They looked at each other across the herb garden.
"I need to walk," she said. Not a request. A statement of what she was going to do.
"Yes," he said.
She went.

~ V ~
He sat on the porch for an hour.
Tassa came out at some point and looked at him. She had been in the house. She had heard the roar. He could see that she had heard it in how carefully she was moving.
"Is Mama all right?" Tassa said.
"Yes," he said.
"Are you?"
He looked at his daughter. She was three and a half and she had asked the right question.
"I will be," he said. "Go inside, Tassa. This is something your mother and I need to work out."
She went. He sat with it.
He sat with the fear first, which had faded to its residue — a shakiness in his hands that a healer could identify and a person could simply feel. He sat with the argument, which had been about two things but was really about one thing: whether he thought of this household as his. Whether when he said our house he meant it in a way that included her as an equal or whether he meant it in a way that assumed his own primacy.
He thought about the past three months of Guild correspondence. He thought about the reply he had sent to Tane without asking her.
He thought about what she had said. What am I in your planning.
He did not yet know how to answer that well enough. He knew he had not been answering it correctly.

~ VI ~
Raskon appeared at the gate in the mid-afternoon. He had not been summoned. He had, apparently, either seen Noraxia walking or heard something below the catwalk or simply had the instincts of a former space pirate who knew when a neighbor's household needed a quiet presence.
He sat on the porch step without being invited and without saying anything for a few minutes.
Then he said: "Nesori and I argue."
"I know," Jukrit said.
"Iskret are argumentative by nature," Raskon said. "It is not a flaw in Nesori specifically. It is a species characteristic. We argue about things that matter and things that don't matter. Sometimes things that we think don't matter and turn out to. We have been arguing since the first week."
"How do you manage it?" Jukrit said.
"We make up," Raskon said. "Thoroughly." He said this with plain delivery, the implication being consummation of his and Nesori’s love. "And then we talk about something else after, well, you know."
"The actual thing," Jukrit said.
"The thing underneath," Raskon said. "With Nesori it is usually something about being far from home and whether this household on this planet is enough to build a life on. With me it is usually something about whether I am still the person I was before I settled here." He looked at the garden. "What is it with you?"
Jukrit was quiet for a moment.
"Whether I actually share this," he said. "Or whether I think of it as mine."
"Ah," Raskon said.
"She was right," Jukrit said.
"Yes," Raskon said. "That is usually how it works."
He stayed for another half-hour, saying very little. Then he went back over the catwalk to Nesori and Tarvek.

~ VII ~
Noraxia came back as the sun was going down.
She came through the garden gate and found him on the porch and sat beside him. Not close. Present.
"I frightened you," she said.
"Yes."
"I didn't mean to."
"I know. It doesn't change that it happened."
She was quiet.
"I've been treating this as mine to manage," he said. "The household. The decisions. Lev's future. I haven't been thinking of you as an equal in the planning. I have been thinking of you as—" He stopped.
"As what?"
"As the person I love most," he said. "And also, underneath that, as someone whose role here I define. Which is not the same thing as a partner."
Noraxia looked at him.
"You roared at me," he said. "And it was the most frightened I have been in seven years. And I am telling you this because I want you to know it mattered, not because I'm holding it against you."
"I know the difference," she said.
"I know you do," he said.
They sat for a while.
"The Guild program," she said. "Tell me about it."
He told her. All of it. The contact, the letters, what the program involved, what his thinking had been, what he hadn't decided yet. She listened without interrupting.
When he finished she was quiet for a moment.
"He's too young to start at eight," she said. "Ten is the right age for something that structured. He needs two more years of just being curious first."
"You might be right," he said.
"I am right," she said. Not unkindly.
"The house guests," he said.
"Two weeks," she said. "Not three. And I want to know in advance when we are hosting people from other worlds in our home."
"Yes," he said. "That's fair."
"It's not fair," she said. "It's necessary. Fair would have been you asking me first."
He accepted this.
The sun finished going down. The garden was quiet. Inside, Tassa was in the kitchen with Lev, both of them pretending to do something other than listen.

~ VIII ~
Later, after the cubs were settled and the house was quiet, they talked about it properly. Not the argument, but what was underneath it. She told him what it had felt like to hear him say he's his son. He told her what it had felt like to be against the wall.
Neither of them was comfortable with what they heard. That was the point.
"I forget sometimes," she said, "that you are afraid of things. You are very competent. It is easy to forget."
"I forget sometimes," he said, "that you have a feral form that is large enough to be dangerous. You are very controlled. It is easy to forget."
"We are both easy to misread," she said.
"Yes," he said. "We are."
She shifted to feral then, deliberately, slowly, giving him time. She lay down on the floor of the bedroom and he leaned on her and put his hand on the warm fur of her neck and she was still for him, which mattered.
He was not afraid. He had not been afraid of her in the barn, in the dark, in the years of her feral form alongside him. He was not afraid of her now. He had been afraid of the roar. Those were different things.
She knew the difference too.
By morning they were past the argument, having been satisfied by their usual love-making last night.
The correspondence with the Guild would continue with Noraxia involved. The house guests would come for two weeks. Lev would have two more years of simply being curious.
These were not his decisions. They were theirs.
The summer morning came through the window and Tassa and Lev were already in the kitchen making noise, and the household was intact, and that was what mattered.

— End of Episode —
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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First Crossings
Ready
**Careful**

Jukrit has been corresponding with a Guild contact about a structured introduction to healer-shaman training for Lev, beginning at age eight. He has not told Noraxia. He has also agreed to host two Bakiswi council representatives for three weeks when Tane arrives for the expedition, without asking her first. Noraxia finds out about the Guild correspondence through Tassa, who heard it from Lev, who heard it from Wena. The conversation in the herb garden starts badly and gets worse. Jukrit says he's my son before he has thought about it and hears it land. Noraxia asks what she is in his planning and does not get a good answer. When the second issue comes up the argument tips past what either of them can hold and Noraxia shifts to feral involuntarily and roars. Jukrit finds himself against the garden wall with his heart doing what a healer would call acute stress response. She shifts back immediately. They separate. Tassa comes out and asks if he is all right, which is the right question. Raskon appears and sits on the porch step and says that Nesori and he argue constantly, that Iskret are argumentative by nature, and that they make up for it thoroughly. That evening Jukrit and Noraxia go through the actual thing underneath the argument. She tells him Lev needs two more years before formal training. He accepts this. The house guests get two weeks instead of three. But with two people who are both easy to misread now knowing something about each other they did not know before, does the household come out of this stronger or simply more careful?
Keywords
male 1,301,730, female 1,184,149, squirrel 33,215, dragoness 13,848, story progression 2,264, story series 2,229, furred dragon 2,039, relationship 1,458, implied sex 1,327, cub clean 283, arguing 265, iskret 14
Details
Type: Writing - Document
Published: 4 weeks, 1 day ago
Rating: Mature
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