By My Side ... (A Valentine's Day Story) by Christine Blackthorn

for.

 
     
     
     
    Control
    She woke in a warm, soft bed,
rested and clearer in her mind than she had been for days. She also
woke to an orc's eyes fixed on her face, flames reflected in their
yellow depth, their expression pensive and intent. He sat on a
chair beside the bed, close enough to touch, had she stretched out
her hand. The firelight played over the plains of his still bare
torso, though she noticed he had exchanged the black leather of his
trousers and boots for more comfortable dark green wool. His feet
were bare, the sharp claws scraping against the cold stone slabs of
the floor. Elbows resting on his knees, leaning towards her without
any sign of impatience. He gave all indication of having sat there,
watching her, studying her, for hours.
    Elena did not move. There was
nothing to move for. The light told her it was evening, if not
night. She must have slept through the day, her exhaustion keeping
her under far longer than was usual. Her mind thought back to their
arrival here.
    They had reached the castle in
the early hours of the day, exhausted, frozen to the bone, with a
blizzard at their heels. Even Reschkar had come close to his limits
on the last ascent, stumbling repeatedly and still denying her
request to let her walk on her own. By the time they had reached
the gates, they could barely see three metres ahead, so thickly had
the snow fallen. The icy fingers of the wind seemed to penetrate
even her skin and Reschkar had stopped asking her to tell him about
her life hours ago. It might have been out of recognition of her
exhaustion or in face of the volume of the rising wind, she did not
know, but they had not exchanged a word for most of the night.
Entering the castle gates, the sudden cessation of the constant
pull of the wind on hair and clothes, had been a relief, at first.
Then the relative quiet intruded on her awareness and it was louder
than the clap of thunder.
    A grating sound, the tortured
scream of wood and metal, chains straining under the weight of the
heavy gate, replaced the muted sound of the wind. Reschkar had let
her slip from his shoulders with a sigh of relief, barely
controlling her descent, letting her stumble where he would have
caught her otherwise. Elena only realised the toll the last hours,
days, had had on him as she watched him then, bent over, sides
heaving. It left her speechless. He had seemed so indestructible, a
being outside reality, full of unlimited strength and power. All
the orcs had appeared to her like beings without weakness, at least
physical weakness.
    Every story of her childhood
contained an orc, more often than not as the monster. They were
near mythical in their invulnerability. It was the combination of
frightening looks, coupled with the legend of their strength, which
made it easy to ignore any common sense when judging their powers.
She stood besides Reschkar, almost viscerally aware how those
stereotypes in her mind were cracking. Suddenly unsure what to do
in the face of this new realisation of his humanity. How do you
react when a stone, all of a sudden, gets up and turns out to be a
living, breathing being?
    Some of her emotion must have
been evident on her face, for when he caught her gaze she saw the
gentle mockery, the amusement in their yellow depth. He
straightened and the play of muscles over a chest still bare chased
away any fleeting perception of vulnerability.
    "What do you say to your new
home?"
    His words made her aware of her
surroundings -- and the sudden, unnatural stillness. They had come
to halt in what appeared to be a courtyard, surrounded on three
sides by high buildings. On every window, every walkway, along the
wall across the gate, crowding the parapet, there stood orcs,
silent and unmoving. And all of them stared at her. Orcs of every
possible shape and persuasion -- women, children, men. So many. Old
and young, healthy and maimed. They stood frozen in whatever they
had been doing, their faces turned to her. Wherever Elena