Chapter Text
It had taken him one visit to form the opinion that Scanra was...not his favorite.
On this—the third—he realized how wrong he'd been.
Scanra was the fucking worst.
Mountain passes and frozen tundra and raiders and militia groups that were little better than bandits (he'd spent so much in bribes he was nearly out of coin) and snowstorms in April. Snowstorms that did things like separate you from companions, and obscure paths, and disguise entire lakes until you found one by falling right through the ice.
"Just up there," Daine said, barely understandable through the chattering of her teeth. She tugged at his sleeve and motioned ahead—just up a small hill—to a crevice in a rock face. "I'd left a pack here when we had to separate last month."
He just nodded. His body was shaking far beyond his control and he could feel the dull thrum of panic rising in his chest. Their mounts and, to his dismay, Kit were on the other side of the pass. The side they'd meant to be on, but with visibility so poor they'd pushed in the wrong direction. And then—with a dread-inducing crack of ice beneath them—plunged into icy water. The outer layer of his cloak had crusted over with frost by the time they'd dragged one another to the shore, but the underlayers were heavy and wet and kept him slow and stumbling and so cold.
When she turned to look at him—reached back to pull him, and he realized he'd slowed again—he saw that her hair and eyelashes were coated in ice. He blinked, feeling the heaviness of his own lashes.
The cave was larger than he expected. That would make it harder to heat but it was still shelter, which they were in desperate need of. Daine tossed him a bedroll and then set to building a fire. Her habit of scattering supplies across regions they were working in had come in handy before, but never quite like this. He'd complained before, about the additional time and resources it took for her to do so, but he could see that those days were behind him.
"You just have the one, yes?" He asked, fumbling with the fastenings. His fingers were too numb for anything dexterous.
"Unfortunately. It's thick, though." She responded without looking at him. The flint in her hand sparked, and she bent down—hands on the dirt—to blow on the kindling.
He'd managed to undo one buckle, and tugged at the rest of it until the heavy fabric unfurled. He eyed it, dubiously, and wondered if it was thick enough. It certainly wasn't big enough—not for two to fit comfortably—but they'd have to work with that they had.
Rubbing his hands together—and pushing his concern over how little he felt it away—he pulled his gift to him and called the spell work needed for a heating spell. What he'd meant to do was push it into the ground to create a radiant heating source from beneath them. Perhaps, if he could manage, work it up into the rocks around them. It would be veritably cozy with the right balance.
What happened was...nothing. The light of his gift sputtered like a candle in a draft, and slipped from his grasp. The only change he noted was the sinking of his left foot into dirt that had turned muddy. Whether it was the extent of his gift he'd depleted getting them out of the lake, or pervasive numbness in his extremities, or the shaking he couldn't be sure.
"No luck?" Daine turned to him. She was feeding more wood into the fire which was catching nicely, but still small. He didn't question that she'd known he'd tried to use his gift to find a solution—of course she'd assumed, and been right.
"No." He flexed his hands, hard, and tried again. Nothing. "I don't know—"
"We'll just have to use body heat. It will take a bit for this to build." She nodded, more to herself than anything, and added to more large logs to the fire. Then, in a voice that would have been very matter-of-fact had her voice not trembled with the cold, she said, "We need to undress."
"What?" He blinked. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, that sounded right. Like something he knew. It certainly felt right, because his clothes had been working against his attempts to warm since they'd entered the water.
"Wet clothes make it worse," she explained. "We need to dry them, and use body warmth to stop us from freezing while they do. Between that, the bedroll, and once the fire gets going we should be fine."
The bedroll. And body heat. He swallowed, feeling very foolish about how nervous he was. Yes, there were far more important things to be concerned over—but still. The bedroll. And body heat.
She'd already stripped off two layers—cloak and tunic draped over an outcropping of rock on the opposite side of the fire. Her hands trembled at the buttons of her shirt until, with a curse, she pulled it over her head from the hem. It snagged in her hair, earning another curse.
Numair looked away and cleared his throat. "I'm sure we can figure something out that will leave us less exposed. I'm not shivering much, anymore." He was a little surprised to find that it was true. Trembling, yes, but not the violent shakes that had wracked him before. A little shelter and a fledgling fire had done more good than he'd hoped.
But Daine saw it differently. She'd stepped around him to make him look her in the face, inspecting him with an alarmed expression. "That's not good."
The next thing he knew she'd unclasped his cloak and was pushing the hem of his tunic up over his stomach and chest.
"What—"
"You should be shivering. You're still freezing—and wet. If it's slowing, it means your body is too tired." There was a minor scuffle between them—he wasn't necessarily trying to stop her, but he wasn't helping, and he was too tall for her to get the tunic over his head. Finally, she shoved it as far as she could and pulled his shirt free of his waistband. "Off. Now."
He nodded, more than convinced by what was the clear beginning's of a panic on her part, and stripped off both tunic and shirt in one, peeling motion. To his horror, she'd started to unbuckle his belt instead of stepping back and he pushed her hands away.
"I've got it. Take care of yourself." He turned, grateful that he didn't have to ask her twice, and did what had to be done. He threw his clothes over a low rock—knowing he'd need to adjust them so they could dry properly, but that could come later—and dared to glance back at her. She looked back—meeting his eye and kicking off her breeches at the same time—and motioned to the bedroll.
"Don't wait for me. Get in."
It was obvious that she was a little exasperated with him—he was a little exasperated with himself—so he complied. A little more warmth, and perhaps he could manage a working to move the situation back to a less uncomfortable arrangement, but for now the options were limited.
He slid into the bedroll—soft and heavy and warm in a way that actually made him shiver more again. Shiver so hard that it hurt, but that was probably a good thing. He'd turned to his side, away from the fire, to give her as much privacy as possible. She was slight. Could slide in behind him, and do whatever made her most comfortable.
His teeth were very loud. Very distracting. Clicking and clacking in his mouth with each tremor, and the fire was picking up with a comforting crackling sound, so it was only with a vague perception that he noticed her unusually heavy breathing or the odd pattern of her footsteps.
He yelled when she laid down on top of him. Tried to yell. Started to, but lost momentum and lung capacity under the heft of a fully grown brown bear flopping down to press against the length of his body.
He gasped—in surprise as much as in an effort to inhale—and Daine shifted to balance her weight. He noticed, idly, that she was moving very slowly so as not to catch him with a claw.
"That's not what I was expecting," he said, after she'd settled. "Smart, though," He added as an afterthought.
And it was warm—for him anyway. He frowned, and tried to get a better look, but his vision was mostly fur. "Ah—" in all their experiences, it still surprised him how often he found himself struggling for a response with her "—will you be warm enough? You've no blanket."
Daine made a chuffing noise, the sound reverberating through her large body, and then yawned to expose a startling array of teeth before settling down to lay her head next to his.
"Alright then."