The longhouse feels unnaturally quiet when I enter, thick timber walls muffling the festival sounds that provide constant background noise throughout the settlement. Kai must still be dealing with patrol reports or clan business, leaving me alone with thoughts that feel too large for comfortable containment.
I move through the main room restlessly, noting details that have become familiar over the past week. The weapon racks where Kai maintains his equipment with methodical precision. The carved wooden figurines arranged on shelves—animals and warriors and abstract shapes that suggest artistic sensibilities beneath practical exterior.
Evidence of a person rather than just a political obligation. Someone with interests and preferences and the kind of careful attention to beauty that survives even harsh circumstances.
The gift corner has grown throughout the day, new additions appearing whenever I leave the longhouse for social obligations or training sessions. Tokens of acceptance from clan members who've decided I'm worth investing in despite my foreign origins and uncertain future.
Carved birds. Preserved foods. Small weapons and tools crafted with obvious care. Each item representing hours of work given freely by people who have little time to spare and no guarantee their efforts will be appreciated.
Generosity that makes the weight of my position here feel less like imprisonment and more like... something else. Something that involves choice and reciprocity rather than just endurance.
I pick up one of the carved birds—a hawk with wings spread in permanent flight, polished smooth by skilled hands and careful attention to detail. The craftsmanship speaks of someonewho understands birds well enough to capture their essence in static wood.
Someone who cares enough to spend days creating something beautiful for a stranger.
The valentine gifts have meaning beyond simple tribute to Cupid's supposed blessing. They represent acceptance, investment, the kind of community inclusion I've never really experienced before. People making space for me in their lives not because they have to, but because they want to.
Which means I owe them something in return. Effort, at minimum. The attempt to contribute rather than just consume their resources and goodwill.
I should make something for Kai. Not because the clan expects romantic gestures, but because giving gifts seems to be an important part of festival tradition, and because he's been?—
He's been kind. Patient with my questions and fears, protective without being controlling, careful to respect boundaries I've established while still offering genuine support.
The problem is my complete lack of traditional crafting skills. I can't carve wood or work metal or create the kind of practical items that demonstrate competence in orcish culture. My talents run toward survival necessities—tracking, scavenging, basic trap construction. Nothing that translates into appropriate gift-giving.
But I do know how to fold paper. It's an old human skill, something my mother taught me during the long winter evenings when there was nothing to do except conserve fuel and wait for better weather. She'd salvage paper from abandoned buildings and show me how to transform flat sheets into birds and flowers and geometric shapes that caught candlelight in interesting patterns.
Paper valentines. The ritual information Shae shared mentioned them as traditional elements of Cupid worship,though I suspect the Frostfang interpretation differs significantly from whatever human customs originally inspired the practice.
I search through the stored supplies in the back room until I find writing materials—parchment and ink that Kai uses for official correspondence, much higher quality than anything I would have had access to in human settlements. My hands shake slightly as I smooth the first sheet flat on the main table, muscle memory competing with nervous energy.
It's been years since I've attempted paper folding. The specific techniques my mother taught require precision and patience, qualities that seemed less important than basic survival during the scramble to stay alive after our enclave collapsed.
But my fingers remember the basic movements. Careful creases that divide space into manageable sections. Folds that build on each other to create something more complex than the sum of individual parts.
A heart shape seems appropriate for valentine tradition, though the execution proves more challenging than memory suggested. Several attempts end up crumpled in frustration before I achieve something resembling the intended form.
The finished piece sits small and simple on the wooden table, pale against dark grain. Nothing impressive compared to the carved figurines and forged tools other clan members have created, but honest effort nonetheless.
Evidence of caring, even if I can't name exactly what type of caring or where it might lead.
I'm smoothing the final creases when footsteps approach the longhouse door—Kai's familiar heavy tread, recognizable after days of sharing space. Quickly, I tuck the folded paper away, not ready to give it to him yet.
My pulse quickens with nervousness that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the vulnerable feeling that comes from offering something personal to someone whose reaction matters more than it should.
The door opens, letting in cold air and the sound of Kai's quiet greeting as he enters his own home where I'm now a permanent fixture, another piece of furniture he has to navigate around.
Except maybe that's not how he sees it. Maybe Ursik was right about changed dynamics and the possibility that my presence here means something beyond political obligation.
Maybe we're both protecting ourselves from possibilities that feel too dangerous to examine directly.
The paper valentine waits among more practical gifts, fragile and obviously foreign but honest in ways that carved wood and forged metal can't quite achieve.
A small gesture toward something that might grow into friendship, if we're both brave enough to let it.
10
SAELA
