Chapter 19: Reunion

Goren had been opposed to her just putting her face in the tent, since he didn't know what this rogue gnoll was going to do—maybe to his sisters, if she hadn't done something already. Kashira just shushed him. She was a dragon, after all, and she was not afraid of anything.

Then, there was an absolutely feral snarl-scream from inside, and Goren found himself falling. He whumped onto his back in the snow hard enough that he grunted. One second he had been on Kashira, and the next moment he was looking up at snow-covered tree branches and stars. A gnoll burst out of the tent, wielding a broken bottle like a blade. Goren squawked, backpedaled, and panicked. Where is Kashira?

The gnoll was looking around her feet, not at him, even though he had moved and made noise. He looked down also. A little dark shape was moving in the dim light reflecting off the snow from the open tent. His heart felt like it stopped: a small blue dragon, no bigger than his palm. Kashira?

He saw in his peripheral vision the gnoll making a sudden lunge; she had also seen the somehow tiny dragon. He threw himself forward, blocking her with his body. He was afraid of crushing Kashira, so he kept his body elevated with his feet and elbows, and he whimpered as he braced for the gnoll to do something to harm him. I am so stupid; I should have just grabbed Kashira. The gnoll gripped his shoulder near his neck.

"What the hell, another jayune?" The gnoll let go of him and stumbled backward and then yelped as a piece of broken glass in the snow bit into her foot through her thin boot. 

Goren scooped up Kashira, holding her to his chest as his heart raced wildly. "Stay back," he demanded as she hopped over to the side of the tent and sat in the snow. 

"Yeah, you got it," she said, wincing as she pulled out the long shard, and clenched her teeth as she held in a groan.

The ground shifted between them; Goren slid back suddenly through the snow. The earth itself scooted him from the spot, and then dirt burst out of the snow and wrapped around the gnoll's wrist. She dropped the bottle from that hand as it shackled her in place.

"What is the meaning of this? How dare you?" It was Kashira. 

Except the voice was small and almost comically unthreatening. 

The ground shifted again, and another band of earth latched around the gnoll's other wrist; she cried out as the earth dragged her over onto her back.

Kashira might not sound dangerous, but she clearly still is, Goren thought.

"Wait! I'm not trying to hurt you!" the gnoll said as she tried to sit up, pulling on her wrists and squirming. There was a sharp, muffled noise, and the gnoll went quite still.

"Then where are my sisters?" he asked, peering into the tent where he could clearly see no one else was there.

"Wait! Goren? Don't hurt her! She saved us!" Like Kashira, her voice was small; he could not even tell where he was hearing it from. 

"Ereza?" he asked, ears swiveling so he could attempt to find her. Kashira squirmed against his chest, and he realized he was clutching her protectively, so he moved one of his hands and gave her room but kept her still cradled to his chest.

"Yes. Tomy is with me. We're okay. She helped us. She's named Lukka. We're with her! Please don't hurt her."

Goren let out a ragged breath. 

Kashira huffed, "Lukka the gnoll, is it? I insist that you undo this immediately."

Lukka tugged on the solid earth shackles on her wrists, and she concluded she was completely stuck. Goren saw her sigh, and then she forced herself not just to be still but to relax. "Well, I'd love to, but I need to brew an antidote, basically, a counter potion. And I haven't got the supplies."

Kashira growled. "You used a potion on me that you can't undo right now?"

Lukka fidgeted. "Well, yeah. I mean, you're a dragon who just stuck your nose into my tent. I defended myself. You can make me sorry if you want to, but I would probably still do it to the next dragon, if we're honest with each other."

Kashira's tail lashed against his pinky finger. Goren hesitated and then leaned down and kissed the top of her head. "It's all right. I got you." He left off the part where he had recommended against her just sticking her nose in there, but he empathized with the dragon's disconcerted reaction. This is awkward, but I feel like it's actually a bit deserved. What else was Lukka the gnoll to do except defend herself as best as she could?

Kashira froze, and she looked up at him. She was smaller than even some of the wild lizards he had hunted when he was a child. He wondered how many doses she had been hit with. She didn't seem to be bleeding, as near as he could tell, so he was glad that the bottle that broke on her face hadn't hurt her. Kashira looked back at the gnoll and the earthen restraints melted away. 

Lukka slowly sat up. 

"Where are my sisters?" Goren asked. 

"Right here with me, safe as I can make them, but throwing me around isn't ideal; I'm sure it's rough on them. So, how about you two come into my tent out of the breeze, and I give you your sisters? Will the mighty dragon go along with that?"

Goren glanced at Kashira, unsurprised to see her sulking and seething. "All right, we'll come in, but you've already seen that she's still, um, able to handle things, even at this size. Don't do anything, um, unexpected."

Kashira was infuriated with the turn of events. How had a potion worked on her? This little gnoll woman must be quite the mage to make something so potent. When Goren said that he trusted her to still be able to deal with anything Lukka could come up with, she bristled and growled. 

And then regretted it. Even she could hardly take herself seriously like this. 

"No, I'm going to break this enchantment. You can put me down. It'll only take a few minutes. You stay where you are, Lukka, and don't move."

The gnoll woman sighed, but she nodded. Kashira was aware of Goren fidgeting near her as she moved over to the side in the snow. If I was not lucky enough to be an earth-attuned dragon with some experience breaking enchantments and spells, this could have been a huge issue. She was still annoyed about it as she closed her eyes and focused on her magic. Enchantments were often grounded in the domain of earth, so she just had to work her way into her magical focus. She found the traces of the potion's magic on her, and then she used her magic to scour them away. 

When she opened her eyes again and let go of the magic focus, everything looked right again: Goren was small, and the gnoll was looking up at her rather worriedly. She looked back at Goren, who seemed relieved. He tried to block her from reaching me with his body. She felt incredibly touched, and even if he had squeezed her with anxiety while he held her, it was obvious that things were changing between them. Two days ago, he had been refusing to cooperate with anything she wanted. The feeling of his big, reassuring kiss was still with her. 

Slowly, she calmed herself, leaned down, and nuzzled him. "I owe you," she said simply. 

Kashira was pleased when he blushed and seemed to cheer up. She then looked back at Lukka, who was watching her with an increasingly wary expression. Kashira smirked as she lay down, her left leg behind Goren. She twitched her nose, bringing the earth beneath Lukka closer to her. The gnoll yelped and put her hand to her chest, but she didn't flail around. "Now, where are Goren's sisters?"

Lukka gave her a side-eye look, and then she breathed out. "All right, we can do it this way." She looked at Goren. "Here, hold your hands out like this? I'll put your sisters into your hands. I used the potion on them also."

Goren held out his hands. Kashira watched as Lukka very gently reached out with her right hand, and she held Goren's hands steady with her thumb over his fingers and her fingers curled beneath his hands. She had almost a foot of height on her bunny, and her hands were a lot bigger than his as well.

She reached between her breasts carefully, drew out a silken handkerchief bundle, and held it delicately while supporting the bottom of it. The gnoll transferred it to his open palm, and he felt small things moving within, trying to pull the fabric aside; she helped to settle the fabric around them, so it wrapped them like a blanket.

Then she pulled her hands back, and it was easy to see the two brown and white spotted jayunes, one barely five inches tall and the other less than three.

Goren's eyes began to shine with unshed tears. "Ez, Tomy," he breathed out. 

Everything is worth it, Kashira thought as Goren hugged his sisters tenderly against his chest and just held them, visibly struggling to hold his emotions in. Kashira looked at the gnoll, who seemed very conflicted. 

"I am so glad you are all right," the older rabbit girl said. 

"Me too, Ez," Goren whispered. 

There was a long silence in which Lukka found the ground suddenly very interesting to look at. 

"We were lucky," Ereza said. "Lukka took us out of Buetarn. She wasn't prepared to, but they were forcing her to pick people for some sort of work, and she picked us, and then just walked out of Buetarn. We were heading to Feridan, but..."

Lukka took up the narrative, though she didn't look at any of them. "Supplies were a problem. I thought I would carry them to Feridan since I walk faster. That's why I had a whole potion ready to... er, inconvenience you," Lukka said without looking at anything in particular. There was some tense emotion in her voice.

Kashira softened slightly. "What were you planning to do once in Feridan?" She considered different potential options.

Lukka felt rather self-conscious and guilty for something she had not done, but she still felt associated with her fiancé, who had led the attack and atrocities that happened in Buetarn. The broken remains of this family were a direct result of that. The tightness in her chest was almost unbearable. "I was planning to brew what potions I could and sell them, get supplies with what we made in coin, and go from there until I could at least provide a point for a new start. I... can't say my plan was a good one. I can't even know if it would have worked." To give herself something to do, she picked up pieces of the potion bottle she had broken and stacked them carefully to one side, but they were almost impossible to find in the snow. Her foot ached, but she was confident that it was just a small cut. I was lucky I didn't cut up the dragon's face too, maybe. I dunno, maybe dragon scales are hard.

Goren held his sisters, and there was a short silence. It was Kashira who broke the silence. "Ereza, was it? Is there more of your family still left in Buetarn?"

The answer of no was so soft and upset all three of the bunnies so much that Kashira visibly regretted having to ask about it. 

Lukka closed her eyes. This is the worst. I didn't even fathom how bad this was going to start feeling the longer we went on. I feel so terrible for them. And there were probably hundreds of tragedies like this one.

"Have you ever been on your own, Lukka?" the dragon asked.

Lukka shook her head. "But... I couldn't stay there."

Goren held his sisters, who leaned against his chest. Tomy was crying, and Ereza was trying to console her. He watched Kashira's face. It was easy to see that she was considering something, particularly when she looked at him with an intense gaze.

He hated the gnolls. 

But Lukka... was hard for him to hate. She'd saved his sisters, at risk to herself of getting caught in the snow with no real shelter overnight. She'd let Kashira throw her down and had stopped fighting because it would have been risky for Ereza and Tomy against her body. 

Also, when she sat with that miserable, wilted-ear look... he couldn't help but feel she was different from the way a lot of gnolls looked at him in Buetarn. 

And he couldn't help but feel like she was like him, just walking off toward something that had hope instead of staying where she'd surely suffocate. It was exactly how he had not been home in the first place when all this happened. 

"Anyway, if you can break the enchantment on them from the potion, you don't need me," Lukka said, distancing herself from the situation. 

Kashira hummed.

Ereza sniffed. "She was running from the leader of the gnolls, I think." She rubbed at her eyes and leaned against the cloth on his chest. 

Kashira murmured. "Well, let's have you plan to still brew an antidote, yes? But later, when we've got the supplies..."

Goren recognized the look on her face and heard the emphasis as the dragon used her paw to grab onto Lukka, so he was mildly unsurprised when she opened her mouth near Lukka's head. He didn't know if he felt jealousy, or a pang of sympathy for the terrified noise she made, or maybe a hint of embarrassment... or all of it.