The Changeling

10

Cetlali stood there in the darkness for some time, glaring, listening, shaking, until she coiled back into control. Scowling at the bed next to the flimsy wall of her tent, shivers shot down her limbs before she shook out her hands. She felt like their tents got closer and closer every time they use them.

Her cot could fit on any of the walls. There was no logical reason for it to remain on that specific one. She walked over to the cot, resolved, and planted her booted feet hard.

Bending her knees to a squat, she formed a firm grip on the cot, and yanked. Distracting herself further, she decided she would have been fine with a bedroll instead of this monstrosity. She used them often enough before, but Ezren was not one to suffer inconveniences lightly. If she deigned to wake up feeling uncomfortable, especially with her testy hips, he was sure to find some way to make her feel terrible about it.

She was making decent progress with the heavy wooden base and thick straw mat. She got halfway across the floor with the unruly thing, feeling triumphant and smart. Until her sweaty, shaking hands lost their grip. As she flailed back to maintain balance, her heel caught on her cloak, sending her tumbling backwards. She rolled until she hit the side of her tent with a peep and smacked into something hard.

"Nine fucking cosmic hells..." She heard the hard, something rasp. Then the wall moved.

She sunk further against the sagging fabric with a soft whine. Footsteps in the woods outside preceded her tent flap being yanked open. Lovou peered in, underdressed like he was earlier and looking rumpled with the efforts to sleep.

"You're not allowed in here," Cetlali spat, insistent but soft. She remembered Ezren was sleeping just on the other side of her small accommodations. She wished she could hide her disarray.

"That wasn't your knocking?" He replied with a sweetness in dire need of practice. Then he frowned, seeming to just notice she was on the ground. Her bed was lying diagonally in the tent, dragged across the forest floor only part way. The mattress hung half off of it after she tried to claw herself to stability. "What in the nine hells are you doing?"

Her eyes widened. She fought to glance over at Ezren's side of her tent. "Uhhh, moving my cot," she attempted a vague confidence with her partial honesty for lack of anything else to try.

"Why?" Lovou rasped, taking a full step in, looking like a giant in a puppet's tent.

"I just... want to," she replied with a weakly forged indifference.

Lovou gave her a scowl. His tone was visceral but still childish with annoyance.

"You've made it all wonky." He walked towards her bed with a grumble. She scrambled to get her feet out of the way of his thundering steps.

He grabbed the cot like they made it of paper and began shifting it back towards Ezren's side.

"Wait!" she yelped. Her hand clamped over her mouth with instant regret.

Eyes wide, Lovou and Cetlali shared a startled look. Suspended in a common moment of their childhood laced with panic, they listened to Ezren shift and snort on the other side of the fabric. They waited a beat to listen for the steady breaths of sleep.

"I don't want it back where it was," she whispered it, begged, if she were being honest.

"That's not where it was. It was at the back of the tent," Lovou insisted, sounding so tired.

She shook her head with a frown. "No, no, when I came in, it was over there." She pointed towards Ezren's side. Standing up, she moved closer so she could talk to him easier.