As the Ash Settles

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Orin's Blade.

Citrine's belly was large, any day and the two would be there. Her friends had gone back to their lives with promises of being back before her children came into the world. The manor was almost fully finished, with little work left to be done on it. Citrine looked over Astarion asleep next to her, he was stunning, even as he meditated unaware of the world around him.

Citrine with a grunt lifted herself out of bed, she felt her children move within her as they readied themselves for the outside world. "Be sweet." She whispered to them.

"I always am." Astarion's sleepy voice replied. She turned around to him, she sat back down placing his hand on her stomach. He smiled as he felt his children moving around. "How soon?"

"Not soon enough, I get the pains of them coming but yet they cling on." a look of worry had spread across her face. "Do you think the others will make it in time?" Astarion moved to sit beside her holding her.

"They wouldn't miss it if they had to take on an entire army of mind flayers." He kissed her head. "You have never been more beautiful," Citrine grumbled at his words.

"You're sweet." a weak smile was on her face.

"You don't believe me?"

"I believe you think that but I can't even see my own swollen feet when I stand." Citrine stood from the bed as if to prove her point she went to a drawer to pull out her old skirt, she tried to pull it over her thighs when the ripping sound of fabric halted her. "No." her lip trembled.

Astarion softly approached her, "What did you think was going to happen?" He helped her out of the skirt, he moved her to the bed, and sat her down. He reached into his nightstand and pulled out a needle and thread. Astarion sat beside her fixing the tear. Citrine looked at his hands, she had never seen him sew before.

"I didn't know you knew how to do that." She watched his hands stitch the fabric carefully.

He looked up for a moment and continued sewing. "I only had so much with Cazador and I didn't want to live my life in rags, so I learned, taught myself to stitch and emborder, it was a secret only I knew, in a way sometimes in the stitches I felt like I wasn't a slave. I could get lost in the fabrics of my clothing and just wander off in my mind." He finished holding up the skirt. "They're like nothing happened."

Citrine grabbed the skirt looking over his work, it was done well. "Do you enjoy it still?"

"I haven't had to since I was there. But, yes I think I still do." She rested her head on his shoulder. A pain swept over her, cramping like she had been feeling for the past week, and as fast as it came it was gone again.

Astarion's eyes had widened with worry. "Not yet" Citrine assured him.

The day continued, Citrine had been adamant about keeping to her chores cooking, and taking care of the animals. She enjoyed the routine. The pain came back throughout the day closer and closer each time. She pushed away the pain as she continued with her day. Astarion would steal worried looks at her.

Citrine had slowly been chipping away at their trunk from their travels throughout the last months, as she unpacked a familiar blade caught her eye, Orin's her sister's dagger. Citrine shook her head as the pain came again. She decided she would go and bury it so she would never see it again, leave it to the ground dead and gone like her sister. She looked out the window at the setting sun. She grabbed the blade storing it in one of her deep side pockets.

She made her way out of the house she had to stop every few minutes due to the pain but Citrine had a goal to be done. She walked around the property Scratch and Robin at her heels, no matter how many times she told them to go play they stayed by her side. She found the spot beside a large oak.