Miss. Understood

Protocol. Right? My own personal chain of command. Lei had known all along, I think he whispered it in her ear while she slept. I told Fonce next and pretended to ignore the dark flicker in his gaze. The next person who had a stake in my existence was the Ubar.

And the Ubar thinks I am a whore.

I found him at the stream, he stank of verr and sweat and frustration. I kept a sizable distance between us. I smiled as I told him. I expected, foolishly, for him to be happy. Or at least to fake it. Please, Ayguili, I willed him, fake it for me.

"Isn't it wonderful?"

"Wonderful?" He asked me, doubtfully. "Not exactly how I would phrase it. Is he going to do right by you?"

My heart broke. Like a glass balloon it shattered and spilled its pieces at my feet for me to walk on next. I am such a foolish woman. I assumed, at the moment, that he meant Trayu, though the edges of his words and mine did not line up.

I told Ayguili, at great and tearful length, that it was wonderful even if he did not think so and that he was a beastly man for faulting me for the death of Trayu. Who was I to tell the skies the timing was all wrong? Who was I at all?

"Fonce will take responsibility." My shoulders were trembling. I had forgotten Lei was with me, leaning against my thigh learning all the wrong lessons about who men and women worked together. How stupid he must have thought me, how much I did not understand about ..suspicions.

Ayguili grasped my shoulders, they were small in his hands and I felt the frailty of myself as he tightened his fingers and made me look up at him.

"Listen to what you just said, Asria."

One heartbeat, two.. "Oh!" Not a slow sound, it was quick and hot and I hit him. And then I hit him again. Him too! I was rocked to my core by the very idea. If Ayguili thought Fonce was the father of my child.. Who else thought the very same thing? If I had let people think that.. How long would I, or my child, have to live in that shadow?

The Ubar let go of me and I had stopped shaking. "Asria, you need to start giving some thought to your words before letting them spill past your tongue. I was not the only one that took it that way the other night. I didn't know who to be more angry with, him or you."

"Well you.. Should have asked me! Someone should have just asked." I would have asked, I thought. Cripes, I would have jumped up and asked out loud if I ever thought something so ugly. I had not even said I was pregnant that night.

"Why do you think Cana left so abruptly? He is probably her closest friend and she didn’t know what to think. "

And now.. I had guilt. I nodded, my gaze left his and never went back. I lowered down to the stream and cupped my hands in the running water, filling them, and then splashed the water on my face, washing away the salt that was drying there in little rivers of my own.

"It doesn't matter now, does it? What's done is done. I can only move forward." I was, at heart, still an optimist, even when I had to fake it.

"Good for you. And congratulations, you carry a special baby, a legacy to your fallen mate. Now, with that in mind, you walk to those fires with your head held high. But, make me one promise. Think before you speak."

Even Fonce did not speak to me that way, not even when I had made a false assumption about another man. He had snapped at me, pushed me down with his eyes but it was not like this. I felt inept and .. stupid. I wanted to tell him that I had not said anything wrong, everyone else had just made assumptions and rather wild ones at that! I said nothing though, you know why? There was more of them assuming then of me speaking and if 5 people think I said something.. I must have implied it.

"I will. Thank you, Ubar."

"Remember, head held high. Now, I need to go see to a chained woman."

He winked at Lei.

"Both of you come to the fires very soon."

I felt like Jezebel from hell.