Strongjaw & The Dish

16

"So." She said as she began to walk and he stepped quickly up to keep pace. She had long legs as he well recalled and he barely had to adjust his own casual meandering. "I suppose the base question is 'what the fuck', which covers it but then again really doesn't." She exhaled sharply and stopped up short. "What was all that 'mine' shit, Grog?"

He was just letting her talk, thinking about how much he'd missed hearing her voice except he wasn't, as it happened, actually listening to her. When she stopped, he found himself, as had happened lots of times before, with someone looking at him, having obviously asked a question he didn't hear. "Huh?"

She looked at him from under her eyebrows, chin down. Oh yeah, he'd missed something important. "Back in the Parchwood.. in the mansion..."

"Oh! Yes." He nodded. They'd done a lot in the mansion though. It didn't really clear up the problem. "What about it?"

She crossed her arms and shifted her head to tip the other way. "You said ..." and she lifted her hands to make little scratches in the air with her index and second fingers. "'Mine'. Why?"

"Oh that?" He scoffed. "Well, it just... came out. Why, was that wrong?" Was that why she'd been so quiet? Not writing back as much? Had he said something stupid? Chances were good honestly.

"So, it meant nothing? Oh, thank the Gods." She exhaled softly with a chuckle. "All this time I've been..." She laughed and rubbed her forehead. "Oh, I'm such an asshole." Her smile was back and he was glad to see it, but he was SO confused.

Still chuckling she patted his arm. "I had heard somewhere that goliaths claimed their mates and I ..." she laughed softly. "I thought that was what you were doing."

He opened his mouth to clear things up but had to close it. She was talking again and they were moving, but he wasn't listening, he was thinking. He had done that. He'd not seen that many claimings in his life before he was cast out, but he'd seen enough to know that was how it was done.

In a herd, you could fuck anyone who couldn't fight you off or didn't want to. If you wanted to ensure your line though, you took a mate. There was no fancy wedding like he'd just come from. You just said 'mine' and everyone understood that it was 'hands off' until a baby came so no one could argue the bloodline.

Of course, you had to do it in front of enough of the herd that it couldn't be contested and he'd been alone with her when it happened so maybe it didn't count. Looking over at her as she talked, he pushed his brain to make his ears pick up the conversation.

"... So here he comes, and they're literally rolling in the hay, and I think 'oh, he's going to just do his head bob of acknowledgement and keep on walking' but ohhhhh no. He decides right then is the time he wants to have an in-depth, twenty minute talk about whether or not..."

Nope. He shook his head. It counted. He had meant it then, and as the word echoed in his brain he meant it now.

"Really?" He said with a nod, as if he had been paying attention the whole time. "What did you do?"

"I just nodded and thankfully he remembered some part for his clock tower he'd been working on and how it should be cooled off by now and off he just... strolls away."

"Well, that's good." He still didn't have any idea what was going on. Best way to fix that? Change the subject. "So, that was a nice wedding."

"Oh, yeah." She grinned to herself, her arms wrapped around her ribs as she looked up at the sky then around themselves as they skirted the Bramblewood. "Should we go back?"

"No, not just yet." He shook his head and looked down at her. "Unless you're getting cold."

"I'm fine." She said with a wry smile. "This is nothing. This past winter in Whitestone was the worst. Three ice storms. Three!" She held up the right number of fingers. "Fell on my ass more times than I can count." Her smirk of self-deprecation flashed up at him as they strolled.