And so am I. Vulnerable to her charms. I hope to the gods that I can comfort her and remain fully professional.
She says between sniffles. “I-I-can’t stop shaking.”
“Erm, I may have to… hug you. Nothing personal, it’s just that deep touch may help your nervous system to calm down.”
“That feels like it c-could work.”
Tentatively, I put my arms around her and gently pull her closer.
“You okay with me holding you like this, Clem?”
“Yes,” she murmurs. She feels like a frightened little bird in my arms, and all my protective urges come to the fore. She’s curled into herself so tightly that I’m hugging a tiny ball of human. I know instinctively that she needs my heartbeat to synch with hers. Orcs’ heartbeats are known to be calming for other species. Slow and steady.
“Put your arms around my neck,” I request calmly.
“I-I want to, but they won’t move.”
Clearly, her fight-flight-freeze response has gone into overdrive. She’s in freeze mode now.
“Okay.” I prise one of her arms away from where it’s wrapped around herself, then the other, and wind them around my neck, then I scoop her against me and stand up, gathering her to my chest. I do my best to ignore how her legs have wound around my waist, her skirt riding up her thighs. Tentatively I scoop my hands under her buttocks to hold her steady and refuse to let my libido get a look in.
Soon I feel her heart slowing.
Instinctively, I rock from one foot to the other. She continues to weep and shake, but after a few minutes her crying slows, then stops, and she’s slumped heavy in my arms—as heavy as a lightweight little human can be, clinging on tight like a bushbaby.
I croon a few words in orcish, a lullaby to help our younglings sleep, an ancient song from when our species lived above ground and the stars shone on us at night.
Stargana, stargana, mi lita, mi lita.
Starshine, starshine, guide me, guide me.
I have a decent voice; we orcs love to sing. In the early days of our incarceration when we were forced to work in the mines,singing was what got us through. Our deep, rumbling baritones would ring out through the rock walls, cheering on the other workers. Some said that orc song led the miners to find seams of silver and gold. Diamonds, even.
I walk up and down the kitchen, rocking her, singing.
“Arken ma dio, eg da mada… mada…”
“Settle my darling, all is quiet… quiet.”
And finally, I realize she’s calm. She raises her head and is looking up at me out of swollen eyes, like river stones washed clean, her lashes clumped together by her tears.
“That was beautiful, thank you. I-I feel a little better now.”
We stare at each other for long, entranced moments. Her lips part softly and she lets out a full body sigh. Her face is so close to mine I can see her delicate pores, a small beauty mark on her right cheek.
And then she reaches up and strokes one of my tusks.
I’m captivated, as her hands slide up and down its length.
“It’s so smooth,” she murmurs.
Then she yawns and her eyes glaze over.
This is the fatigue that hits after the body and mind have been racked with an episode of overwhelm. When a human finds out about the Labyrinth, and the glamor falls from their eyes, they have no inner resources to handle it. It very rarely happens, but such episodes have been recorded in our history books.
It doesn’t happen with peripherals. They have no freedom to question their bonds.
But Clem is different, a human with free will and the desire to know more. But she was over confident about her ability to hear about the past.
