A Dragon’s Tale

Alana helped Rachel to lie down on the deck as the mage clutched her side. The wound didn't look life-threatening, but it looked extremely painful judging from the way she was moving.

"Hey, stay with me." The wood elf said softly.

Rachel glanced down at her side and grimaced. "Yeah, I'm not going anywhere."

Once Rachel was lying down, Alana gently moved her hand to see the wound better. There was a gnarled piece of metal stuck in her abdomen, mostly on the right side just above her right hip.

"I need to pull this out before I can try healing the wound." The wood elf said.

"I'll heal it, you just pull the damn thing out." Rachel groaned. "And please get some whiskey for disinfectant."

"I'll get the whiskey." Ethan said as he arrived and then left just as quickly to fetch it.

"You're going to be okay." Alana said. The wound didn't look life-threatening, but it was still hard to watch her friend be in so much pain.

"Here." Ethan said as he returned clutching a bottle. "Alana; if you pull, I'll pour. Rachel, can you manage the healing or should one of us do it."

"I got it." She coughed, then winced in pain as the movement jarred the gnarled bit of metal. She looked around the deck, then at Alana. "Let me have one of your arrows." She asked, and then clamped her teeth around the wooden shaft when she was given one.

She nodded at the wood elf.

Alana took hold of the gnarled bit of metal and pulled.

Rachel clenched her fists and groaned loudly. Her arms were shaking and her agony was obvious.

"It won't come." Alana said after a moment. "I think it's caught on your clothes."

"Here, use this." Serif said at Alana's shoulder.

She jumped as she hadn't heard him approach. He held out a straight, single-edged razor, which she took. Ten seconds of careful slicing later, all of the fabric around the wound was gone. She folded the razor and put it in the small pocket on the side of her dress in case she needed it again because Serif had left to check the damage to the Argo.

"Ready?" She asked the groaning redhead, who nodded and bit down harder on the arrow shaft.

Alana grabbed the gnarled bit of metal again and gently pulled. Rachel nearly screamed and the wood elf was surprised she didn't bite the arrow in half. The gnarled bit of metal came free and the wound started bleeding even more. Rachel nodded at Ethan, who poured some whiskey into the wound.

Rachel sucked in her breath and her eyes rolled back into their sockets a little.

Her head lolled for a moment, then she put her hands over the wound and the bleeding started to slow. The bleeding had nearly stopped a minute later, but the wound wasn't fully healed and Rachel's eyes kept closing. Finally, she seemed to pass out from the pain and lay still.

Alana put her hands over the wound and started trying to heal it herself. It took much of her mana because she wasn't good at healing other people, but she managed. Once it looked like all the skin had closed properly, she took some of the bottle of whisky and poured it over the wound, just to make sure.

"I'll get some water." Ethan said, and returned a few moments later with some water from the ship's supply.

Alana poured this over the wound too, completely clearing any blood that was left. The wound was closed. Rachel was healed. Her face seemed to relax and any traces of pain disappeared and she went from the edge of consciousness to what appeared to be a restful sleep. She looked a bit pale, but really hadn't bled very much at all. Certainly not enough to be dangerous.

Alana breathed a sigh of relief.

She would be okay.

As she looked at the place the wound had been, she couldn't help but notice the curve of Rachel's hip, which had been exposed when the wood elf had cut away the fabric around the wound. She just stared at it for a moment before realizing she was staring.

Her hip was beautiful.

Never in her life had Alana found a part of another woman's body to be attractive. Of course, she wasn't blind and noticed when a woman was attractive, but had never before been attracted.

Except this morning...

Her cheeks got very warm as she thought about how Rachel had kissed her in the dream and how much she loved how it felt. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. She was married to Ethan now; she needed to lock up these feelings. She was very grateful that she'd changed her mental defenses that morning so these feelings wouldn't leak to Ethan over their bond, and that he could only see her feelings if he looked.

"Hey, she'll be fine." He said, wrapping his arms around her to give her a comforting hug.

"I know." She replied, realizing he took her response as concern. "We should probably get her below decks to her hammock so she can sleep. Could you carry her?"

"Yeah." He nodded, then reached down, slipped his arms under her knees and back, and picked her up.

She wiggled in her sleep as he picked her up, but then mumbled "Hmm, Ethan" as her head settled against his chest. Moments later, she completely relaxed in his arms. The flame-haired teen looked peaceful being carried by him, as if she was in the most comfortable place in the world.

Alana couldn't help but think they looked wonderful together. Her strong man carrying another beautiful woman just felt so right to her. She gave up trying to understand why and just enjoyed a feeling of contentment as her husband carried another beautiful woman in his arms.

Despite herself, she felt a tiny smile creep onto her face.

She followed her husband as he carried Rachel below decks. They walked past Serif and Raklan's hammocks to the blanket Anthiel had hung to give the ladies some privacy.

"Which one is hers?" he asked quietly after Alana had pulled it back for him.

"That one." She said while pointing to the port hammock closest to the bow of the ship.

He walked over to it, then looked at Rachel and frowned. "Her clothes are wet, which definitely won't make for good sleeping. Do you think you could get her changed into something else?"

"Me?"

He nodded and smirked. "Well, it's not like she'd be comfortable with me changing her clothes."

Alana bit her lip and tried to think about it objectively.

It wasn't easy.

On the one hand, he was entirely right and she probably should be changed out of her wet clothes before sleeping. She was the obvious choice because neither Anthiel nor Hailey were particularly close to the redhead while she was.

On the other hand, the last thing Alana wanted right now was to see Rachel naked. She was entirely sure her body would respond -- it was starting to already just at the thought -- and she wanted to keep those thoughts as far away as possible. She was especially grateful that she'd thought to alter her mental defenses this morning so these emotions weren't leaking to Ethan over her bond.

"Is that a problem?" Ethan asked, clearly confused why she was giving it so much thought.

"Well, I'd probably wake her up." She said thinking fast.

"Good point." He looked at the beautiful teen in his arms. "The pants don't look too wet, but the shirt is ruined with all the blood and that large tear. Maybe you could just cut the wet part of the shirt out?"

She nodded.

He set her down in the hammock. Her hair fell onto her face and Ethan gently brushed it off. There was nothing romantic in the gesture; he was just trying to make her comfortable. Still, he was quite tender with her.

Alana felt herself smile.

He was so kind and tender with her best friend. For some reason -- and she didn't know why -- but it did her heart good to see him interacting with Rachel that way. In the back of her mind, she secretly hoped there was a little mutual attraction. Her behavior toward him while she was asleep and his behavior just now gave her hope. He was a good man and deserved a wonderful woman like Rachel. She likewise deserved a great man like him.

"I'll be over here." Ethan said as he stepped on the other side of the curtain to give them some privacy.

Alana pulled Serif's razor out of her pocket, making a mental note to give it back to him later. She opened it and carefully sliced the wettest parts of the shirt away, dropping them in a nearby bucket.

She glanced at her handiwork and tried very hard not to stare at the redhead's toned stomach. The wetness hadn't reached up to her breasts, and so they were still covered.

She tried not to be too disappointed about that.

That job done, the wood elf looked at her pants. They weren't nearly as wet, being a soft wool material that repelled the water quite well. She decided to leave them on. Not only for the difficulty of getting them off but also because she would probably wake the redhead if she tried.

Also, she wasn't sure she would be able to resist the temptation to peek.

She found a blanket and draped it over her friend. As she stood there looking, she was struck by just how incredible Rachel was. She was kind and tender-hearted, yet an absolute beast in combat with her magic. She was not only physically beautiful, but she also had a beautiful spirit too.

On an impulse, Alana leaned over, gave Rachel a tender kiss on the cheek, and whispered softly. "Sleep well my friend."

Feeling rather embarrassed at her boldness, she turned and ducked through the curtain separating the girl's section from the rest of the lower deck. Ethan was leaning against the wall, looking at the curtain.

"She saved our lives and probably the whole ship." Ethan said as he looked toward where Rachel was sleeping.

"Yeah, she's pretty amazing." Alana agreed. "What hurt her though?"

"Let's go look."

They returned to the weather deck and found the bit of gnarled metal that the elf had pulled from Rachel.

"It's part of the grenade body." Ethan said after looking at it for a few moments.

On closer inspection, she recognized it too. It appeared to be nearly half of the grenade, but it was all warped and twisted.

"Hmm, I was worried about shrapnel, but this is..." He shook his head. "I thought making the casing thin would help, but we can't use the grenades, not if they're going to do this."

"What if we made the grenades from something else? Something that wouldn't do this?" Alana asked.

"I don't think there is anything else." He replied. "Certainly nothing as strong as steel that could hold the pressure long enough to get a good explosion, and then vaporize afterward."

She smiled broadly. "Wood. We could make them from enchanted wood."

He looked at her like she was crazy.

"I'm serious. I can enchant it to be incredibly strong; stronger than steel. And then make an enchantment to pull heat from nearby that will trigger when it's broken. It looked like that explosion was incredibly hot, so the wooden body should turn to ash within a few feet."

"But if you can make wood that strong, why don't they make armor out of it?" he asked.

"Because the enchantment I would use is different from most strengthening enchantments. It does drastically increase the strength, but it also makes the enchanted material somewhat brittle. Any armor enchanted that way would shatter like glass with a single strong hit from something pointy."

"Wait, so this enchantment not only makes things super strong, but super hard too?"

She nodded.

A massive smile appeared on his face. "You mean, we get superheated disintegrating shrapnel that's only effective out to a few feet, then completely disappears? And this shrapnel will be stronger than steel and hard like glass?"

She cocked her head to one side. "What's shrapnel?"

He explained.

"That's horrible." She shuddered. "Should we even use weapons like that?"

"Consider who we're fighting." He pointed out. "Lord Delmar, his seemingly infinite army and at least one dragon; maybe two now including Havorleth. We need powerful weapons if we're going to win. These wooden grenades are a powerful weapon that won't put any of us at risk, which will prevent what just happened to Rachel from happening again."

Alana bit her lip. It had been horrible to see her friend hurt and they did need powerful weapons. If she could make such a weapon which wouldn't pose a danger to her friends...

"Are you sure?" She asked looking at the gnarled piece of metal. "Using weapons like that seems kind of... I don't know, barbaric?"

"War is often barbaric by nature." He replied. "I'm willing to use whatever ethical weapons I have at my disposal to win because if I lose, everyone on this ship will probably die." He looked at her, then glanced at her womb too. "I can't let that happen."

She put her hands protectively around her belly, knowing that he was right but hating it all the same. "I wish it didn't have to be this way."

"Me too." He nodded fervently. "I'd rather settle in a nice village somewhere to raise our kids."

"Kids?" She felt a smile creeping onto her face. "As in plural?"

"Absolutely, unless you wanted to stop at only one."

A sly smile spread across her face. "Not on your life."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him tenderly on the lips. The bit of gnarled metal fell from his hand as he wrapped his arms around her.

When their kiss broke, she stayed close. "You can put as many of your children inside of me as you like; I'll happily bear as many as you want."

He stroked her face tenderly, then said firmly. "Our children. Yes they're mine, but they're also yours."

She frowned. "I've been doing that lately, haven't I?"

"Referring to our baby as if it's only mine?" He said. "Yes, you have."

"That's so strange. I'd die to keep her safe and can't wait to be her mother and hold her in my arms."

The noise Ethan made in response was a mix between and cat purring and an aroused growl. "I can't wait to see that."

She nodded. "Yeah."

Ethan yawned, then glanced at the captain's cabin. "I'm beat, we should go to bed."

"Fine by me." She gave him a sly grin and subtly altered her body language to accentuate her figure.

"I meant to sleep; we can do the other thing tomorrow."

She stuck out her lower lip in a mock pout, but nodded. "Okay."

They went into the captain's cabin. She slipped out of her dress, joined him in bed, and they snuggled together. He put his arms around her and they lay like that for a few minutes.

"What about Taloni?" Alana asked on the edge of sleep.

"Hmm, what about her?" He replied, similarly near sleep.

"Do you want to see her holding your baby?"

He made an appreciative grunt. Strangely, she found she wasn't too concerned by that. It was fine with her. If he wanted to impregnate his other wife, she didn't mind. Besides, the Fey teen would look really good holding a baby.

Of that, she was sure.

Just before sleep took her, her mind drifted to Rachel and the kiss they'd shared in her dream that morning. The memory faded slowly into dream as she imagined kissing her again, and what the redhead would look like carrying one of Ethan's children.