Chapter 5

Tally

N orgren was most certainly not happy to see me.

Not that I can really blame him, I guess. I did run away from his house yelling last time I was here, and never came back. I know that I hurt his feelings by not accepting his offer to stay with him.

But that’s just not how the world works. Surely he has to understand that. Treating me to a nice dinner and asking me to move in are two very different stages of a relationship. Not that I’m even considering the idea of a relationship with an ogre.

At the very least, their culture appears to be quite different than mine. When Norgren offers me the bed, I feel rude using it, but I also really don’t want to sleep on the floor. Yet again I’m taking advantage of him, first by coming here when I needed help, and now sleeping in his bed while he uses the floor.

I need to find another solution. Sure, it is rather cozy here between the layers of soft fur, piled up underneath me who knows how many layers deep, with this soft goose-down pillow and the intricately-carved headboard with berry details that travel all around the edge, making the perfect thing to count while trying to fall asleep.

But that doesn’t mean I should stay.

Norgren is quiet when I wake up, and doesn’t greet me when I leave the bedroom. The fire is already started in the hearth, and something is cooking over it while Norgren busies himself with kneading dough. I didn’t know ogres made anything all that sophisticated—or trollkin in general. I figured they ate raw meat and whatever else they could get their hands on.

“Norgren?” I say to his turned back. He tenses up at the sound of my voice.

“What?” he growls, not turning around.

“Thank you. For letting me sleep in your bed.” I don’t know how much he can understand. He seems to grasp quite a few Freysian words, but I wonder if it’s enough for him to catch my meaning.

In response, Norgren just shrugs, and continues with what he’s doing. I peer into the pan cooking over the fire, and there’s some fatty meat with eggs frying rather quickly.

“Norgren?” I ask again. “The food will burn.”

He just grunts, probably not understanding me, and so I reach into the pan with my bare hands to try to flip some of the meat over. I cry out when it burns me.

Why did I think that would work?

At the sound of my pained yelp, Norgren turns around and rushes over to my side. He sees what I’ve done, that my fingers are bright red, and snarls at me. I wince and try to pull back, but he has a firm grip on my wrist as he examines my wound .

Then he tosses my hand to the side and grabs a thick leather mitt, which he uses to take the pan off the fire. He gives me a significant look as he does it, the way you might chastise a child for doing something foolish. Wetting a cloth in some cold water, he grabs my burned hand and presses the cloth to it.

“Ouch!” I try to yank my arm back, but again, he holds firm, and even rolls his eyes at me.

“Baby,” he says, shaking his head.

I wonder how he knows so many words. Did a human teach him? Is that why he was trying to convince me to stay here in the first place?

I don’t fight anymore as he holds the cold cloth to my burns. We stare at each other over the table, like a battle of wills to see who will look away first. Norgren’s eyes are dark yellow, nearly orange, but despite their color they’re as deep and human as my own.

Finally, I can’t take it anymore. I don’t like him being angry at me—it makes my stomach feel like I’m about to be sick. Especially not when he’s here holding my hand, soothing my burn, and making me fresh breakfast.

“Norgren,” I begin, trying to be courageous. His eyebrow tilts, but he gives no other signs of caring for what I have to say. “What do I have to do?” I ask.

“Do?” he repeats.

“For you to forgive me. I don’t want you to hate me anymore.” My voice breaks at the end.

He tries to make sense of the words I’m saying, but too much vocabulary is missing. I sigh and give up. But it seems I have his attention now, and perhaps he’s even softened towards me.

When he deems that we’ve soaked my burns for long enough, he dishes up the food. I devour the eggs.

“Where did you get these?” I ask. “You don’t have any chickens. ”

“Chicken?” Norgren repeats.

I jiggle my elbows and squawk. “Chicken. The bird?”

He laughs. Right in my face. Then he imitates my gesture and squawk, and laughs even harder.

“No,” he says, shaking his head, still chuckling. “Big bird.” He points at the ground. Perhaps some kind of wild turkey, or a pheasant. Not an easy thing to find.

I nod and tell him “thank you,” again, but he doesn’t seem to care.

When we’re done eating, Norgren sets about to his chores, and I go along wondering if I can help. But he just waves me off as he fixes up one of the front steps, and then leaves into the woods with an axe to chop down some lumber.

I wonder what he’s building.

There’s a nice pen erected in the back of the house with nothing in it. There’s also tilled earth, as if he’s about to start a garden. He’s creating a whole homestead out here, I realize, also noting what looks like the foundation of some smaller building, perhaps a coop.

It’s all very... human.

While he’s gone, I try to think of what I can do to keep myself busy, and maybe be useful. That will help me not to think about what’s happening back in my city, how many people have been slain by trollkin, how my home is now gone. Surely Kell is dead.

Instead, I think about what he doesn’t have out here. I catch sight of a big honeybee buzzing around some clover, and follow it as it gathers up pollen. After a while, once the bee’s little legs are covered in it, it takes off at super speed into the woods.

“Wait!” I follow along behind, running as quick as I can to keep up. It isn’t long before the bee disappears inside a tree along with dozens of other bees. They’re all coming and going, serving their queen .

I pump a fist. Perfect.

Norgren

“Come,” the human says when I return to the house carrying a rather big felled tree. It will take me some time to hack it up into usable pieces, and I need to restore my energy after chopping it down.

I sigh. “Come? Why?”

She crosses her arms and gives me a petulant look. A few words spill out in Freysian that I don’t understand, so I just shrug and gesture for her to walk on. Fine, I’ll follow.

Clapping her hands, Tally leads me off into the woods. We don’t walk for very long before she stops in front of a big old tree, where bees are zipping in and out of a rotted knot in the middle.

“Want,” she says, gesturing into the hole.

I can only stare at her in confusion. Want? Want what? There are plenty of other trees.

She sighs at me and gestures into the hole. “Want. Please?” She mimes eating something, and that’s when I realize what she’s asking.

She wants the honey.

What a right mess that would be. I’d get stung all over and so would she. But I do remember once upon a time that my uncle told me how to quiet bees so you could take what belonged to them, and decide that I’ll do this small thing for her.

I walk back to the house and grab an old pair of iron tongs that I found inside the hearth when I first adopted this place. I pick up one of the logs still smoldering in the fire, and gesture for her to follow me as we return to her hive out in the woods. The log is still smoking when we reach it, and almost immediately, the bees respond. Tally’s curious eyes widen with wonder as they start to fall out of the air. I hold the smoking log in front of the opening for a good long time, and then hand it off to her. I reach in with one big fist, secure a handful of the beehive, and yank. More bees fall out as I withdraw the honeycomb, all of it dripping with honey.

Tally lets out a squeal, nearly startling me out of my skin. She jogs back to the house and I follow close behind, and I have to admit I’m curious about what she has planned for the honey.

Once we’re inside, she has me drop the hive into the pot, and we set it over the fire. We wait as the honey and wax separate, and she strains them out. But it’s not long before I’m bored of watching whatever witchcraft she’s doing. Besides, I don’t like being so close to her for so long. It makes me feel all sorts of sharp feelings that I very much don’t need to be nursing for a human who doesn’t want me.

I spend the rest of the day chopping wood while she works. That evening, she’s made some sort of concoction that requires storing. We eat dinner in silence again, and I wonder how much longer I’ll have to put up with her staying here.

No, I have to remember that she just lost everything. I try to be a little softer after that when I take her dinner tray away. Still she scuttles off to bed quietly, as if endeavoring not to disturb me, and again I lie down on the floor to sleep, trying to keep my mind closed off to the pulsing ache of how much I want her.

We settle into something that could look like a routine. Often Tally tries to help with things, but much like when she burned her hand on the pan, she tends to do more harm than good. When I’m being honest with myself, which I rarely am anymore, I have to admit I find it cute. She is anything but delicate, which is relatable. She likes to talk, even though most of the time I can’t understand her. But as days pass, I pick up new words here and there that help me put together the picture of who she is better and better.

I’ve improved immeasurably at controlling my urges around her, and yet my need for her grows deeper and stronger. She only has the one pair of clothes, and so from time to time she goes down to the river with soap, and I can only imagine her when she removes her dress, what her full breasts must look like without anything holding them in, how the soft curves of her belly would hug her sweet hips.

I take those rare opportunities when she’s away to take my cock in hand and relieve the pressure, and it’s almost painful when I do. It’s like my body is desperately pushing me towards her when that’s the opposite of everything I want. Everything she wants.

I won’t be humiliated again.

Tally

I thought Norgren might warm up to me after a time, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be forgiven, or if this is just how he is naturally—kind of sour and a little angry. I must have hurt him immensely, which tells me he has a tender, sensitive soul underneath the gruff exterior that he doesn’t want to show to me.

My plan had been to return to the city soon and find out what became of everything, and if my house still remains. But I’m afraid of going, too, in case trollkin have decided to occupy it. I don’t think that Norgren will accompany me if I were to go.

The longer I’m here, though, with this grumpy ogre who doesn’t want me around, the more I’m drawn back. There’s not a life for me in this place. And if I can’t go back home, then I’ll go somewhere new, another town where I can start fresh. I have marketable skills. Everyone wants an apothecary in town. Maybe I could have my own shop this time, instead of working for someone like Kell.

I need to at least go back and look, to see what’s left, if anything.

One morning, after we eat a breakfast of fruit and dried meat from Norgren’s seemingly endless store, I get up and head to the door.

“Tally?” he asks, in a rare moment when he’s not frowning.

“I’m going,” I tell him. “Heading back to the city.”

He quirks an eyebrow at me, clearly not understanding what I’m trying to say. Our communication has improved a lot, but I still have to break things down into smaller thoughts for the words to get across. “Home,” I say, gesturing over my shoulder in the direction of the city. “I want to go look.”

At this, Norgren furrows a brow. I thought he’d be happy to get me out of his hair for a while, but he does not seem pleased. He gets out of his chair and picks up the rough sword that’s been sitting against the hearth.

“All right,” he says with a nod. “We go.”

“We?” I ask. He shoots me an annoyed look.

“Yes, we. We go.”

I sigh deeply, wishing not everything involving me had to be a chore for him. But at least he’s going to go with me, and that’s better than I’d hoped for. So we head off into the forest in the direction of town.

When we reach the hill overlooking the city, though, Norgren stops me with one big arm held out. With a stern look he says, “Wait.” Then he gestures at my feet. “Stay. I return.”

“What?” I ask. “You’re going without me?”

He nods. “Stay. Safe.”

Oh. He doesn’t know what’s out there, and he doesn’t want to have to watch his back and mine. I sigh and sit down right where I’ve been standing, and gesture for him to go.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll stay here while you check it out.”

With a grunt of approval, Norgren pulls out his sword and heads off toward town.