Savages

23: Bad Blood

A/N: well, I accidentally stayed up till 4.30 am writing this 😱 and it has three warnings on it: 1) it's the longest chapter I've ever written (so sorry) 2) it's kinda gross, and 3) it's a leeetle but mature. Continue at your own risk! 😱😱😱

Judit pushed the byre door shut firmly behind them, her nerves sizzling like a lit fuse.

Apart from when he found her in the cave that time, around Hollymas, this was the first time she and Brock had been alone since the night of the blood.

That night.

She remembered it all.

She remembered the build up. He'd grown and the world had shrunk to meet him in the weeks before the blood, and by then he was everything she breathed, everything she touched, everything she saw. He was the sun hitting her back, the rough cold of rock on her fingertips, the shadows of flying birds on sand.

You should leave him alone.

She didn't. Every time he smiled at her it felt like a parade of elephants marching through her heart.

You should forget him.

She couldn't. That day, the day of the blood, she didn't know if she was more nervous about what they had to do to that poor sheep, or about spending all day with him.

But she woke up already wired when the world was still heavy with sleep, Sannah's breathing deep and even.

Judit unfolded from the blackhouse, the air thick with potential all around her, the birds orchestrating their rambunctious dawn song.

The air was still fresh with night, but the coming heat of the day was lurking in the soil and the trees. She felt powerful, like the only person alive. Then the door of their neighbouring blackhouse opened, and he came out.

"You're up early." He smiled and came over to meet her.

"Yeah. Couldn't sleep."

"Me neither."

It was so intimate, talking to him in the close magic of the waking day, everyone else unconscious. He stopped a few paces away, put his hands in his pockets and lifted his shoulders, smiled at her shyly.

They'd never touched.

How can you be so full of someone you've never touched?

But in that moment, they were the only people alive, and her heart was bursting.

"How do you feel? About it?" He said it to the floor, then looked up and smiled, not quite catching her eye.

"Okay." She couldn't help smiling back. "Nervous, I think. But it's nature, isn't it?  I mean, if I eat meat, I should be prepared to do this. I am prepared. I think." She shivered, plunged her hands in her pockets.

"Yeah," he said, closing one eye as he looked at her. "I'm dagging it." They both laughed. "No, seriously though, I've never killed anything this big before. I keep personifying her. Her. Thinking, oh, she's worried, or oh, she looks pensive." He dipped his head, mock-serious. "I kept saying, don't give her a name, don't give her a name, but I couldn't skitting help it."

"You named her?" Judit pretended to be horrified, but she was smiling. There was a lightness to their conversation that was magical, totally unrelated to the words being spoken. "What's she called then?"