She nodded and sighed as she looked back at the house. “Every Ironborn who died for us is wrapped up in that house right now, watching over her and those pups. They couldn’t have survived otherwise. We’ll get stronger. You’ll see.”
“They’re doing what we’re all doing. Surviving.”
Lea stepped up a little bit closer to him, though she didn’t touch him. “Go in there and see them. It’ll lift your spirits.”
“My spirits.” He repeated numbly, but then turned and looked away from her, walking back toward the monument without saying anything further.
She sighed as she watched him walk away, shaking her head. It would take a miracle to see him smile again, to see him actually find someone that made him happy and wasn’t using it against him. She saw him more closely than most. She knew he was broken beyond what most people could see. All she could do was hope that their gods, whichever ones had saved them, would help Nick find his miracle, or help his miracle find him.
* * * * *
The four pups were playing, as always, in the iron-lined playpen that Aura had made to hold them, like a childproof version of the steel sheet she had once shared with the man who had pretended to be their father. They seemed to know each other by touch and by smell, because the two black ones seemed to stay together, as did the two brown ones, though when they started playing with each other, there was no telling them apart in the midst of the tumble of brown and black fur. They had started to open their eyes, but only tentatively, and not for long enough that Aura could see which among them were the Ironborn she knew were there.
Aura only left the house at night after all of them went to sleep to hunt for herself so that she could feed them, and even then she didn’t go far from the house. Other than that, she almost never left, except for a few times when she went to take the puppies to Ziem, to introduce them, even though she knew it was fairly morbid to do so.
She reached down into the playpen in her human form, wrapped in a light sheet that she wore so that she could shift easily, since she did a lot of back and forth to keep herself strong and to keep them fed. Aura picked up her biggest puppy, the brown male, and she brought him up to her face so that she could kiss his little nose. None of them had names yet, and they wouldn’t until they opened their eyes, an event that she was more than a little impatient for.
“Okay, You. I know you’ve been opening your eyes. You can’t hide it from mommy.”
The boy licked her face a few times and whimpered a little, but resolutely just nuzzled her hand. A stubborn one. Though he could have gotten that trait from either one of the two men that might have been his father.
She sighed and then hugged him to her body for a moment before she kissed the top of his head. “Fine. You keep your secrets. Wish you hadn’t picked up that particular habit from your mommy. What about your sister? Think she’ll give up her secrets?” She picked up the other brown puppy who was all too excited about being picked up, and licked Aura’s hand several times but didn’t open her eyes. “Aw, come on, guys.”
When she looked down into the playpen again, though, the black male puppy was standing at a distance from her, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, and with his eyes wide open. Eyes that looked brown at first look. Then maybe green, maybe grey.
Aura squeaked in excitement like the young mother that she was, all too eager to see progress from her babies. She put the two pups in her hand back down in the playpen and then she picked up her black-furred little boy and brought him closer to her face as she ran her heavily-ringed fingers over his tiny body. “Well, just look at you.”
He licked her rings, not her fingers, seeming to enjoy the taste of the silver and gold like the little Ironborn he was, and gave a few whimpers whenever they were too far away for him to get to them.
She grinned as she watched him react to her rings, her heart swelling with pride. “How about…Gallium? Think that name will work for you, my little ironbiter?” She kissed him several times all over his little furry head and then she looked into his tiny, amazing hazel eyes. It was wolf custom to only name puppies after they had opened their eyes, since so many usually didn’t make it that long. Puppies of elements different from their parents had a more difficult task of survival. “But I won’t make you wear it all the time. That’s quite a name. Lium. How about it?”
He nipped at her hands a few times, just responding to her voice, and blinked his eyes open again to look up at her. They were dark, but they were hazel. So dark a brown and deep a green and grey that they looked like bronze and lead and burnished slate all mixed together. Surrounded by his short dark fur, his eyes looked almost black.
Her smile faltered a little as she stared into his eyes a little longer, but she kissed him again to reassure him that his mother was nothing but happy and that she loved him. Just the flash of the memory that made her pause made her look away from Lium in her hands to the playpen.
Two black. Two brown.
None like her.
That wasn’t possible. Right?
She shook her head as she put her adorable little pup back down into
