Chapter 52: Ch. 052 – (Then) Cover Story

They talked for almost a quarter of a watch that night. Then Anda had to leave before her father ‘released his hounds,’ as she lovingly referred to her brothers. In between playfully mocking what she described as his woefully inadequate stone tongue, they managed to to cover more topics than Jonathan would have thought. She asked lots of questions about whether the endless cavern really glowed, and after a few questions Jon eventually figured out that she meant stars. He tried to explain what a thousand thousand twinkling stars looked like, but it was impossible with his current vocabulary. So they switched topics to what food tasted like when it was fresh, and other more normal topics like the other cities he’d been to, and how much he missed his family. It was a pretty mundane that Kaspov probably wouldn’t even have disapproved of, at least until the topic of magic finally came up

It had been hard to try to explain stars to someone who’d never seen them, but trying to explain magic when Anda had never felt its existence, or even heard many stories about it was utterly impossible.  In the end she decided that she had to see it, but understood that a demonstration in the city was impossible, and after a brief discussion they decided to meet just inside the tunnel where line 10 left the city. It was the closest to the train station, so it would look the least suspicious for him to be loitering there after all. She left after that leaving Jonathan with nothing but a hundred whirling questions and a stupid grin on his face that he didn’t completely understand. 

They hadn’t done anything wrong of course, but the whole thing still felt illicit to Jonathan. He doubted anyone on his crew would have accepted the excuse that she’d been the one to visit him, not vice versa, which was fine. They’d already agreed that they should keep her visit a secret. Just to make things less complicated. Even her brief visit had already complicated things though, and he laid in bed for hours that night thinking about it before he finally fell asleep. 

The next day wasn’t any better. He was at work, but the only thing he was very good at was being the butt of jokes as he kept spacing out. He tried to act normal, but from the way Erkom glowered at him several times, Jonathan could tell it wasn’t working. If Erkom or Kaspov had only known about Jonathan’s planned rendezvous with the beautiful dwarf after work tonight, he knew he’d be lucky to get off with a stern talking to, but even that didn’t dissuade him somehow. Was it the forbidness that made Anda seem so interesting, or was it her that made chasing the forbidden worth it? He couldn’t say, and he didn’t care. All he cared about was acting as normal as possible until it was quitting time. 

Finally the bells rang that ended the watch, and Jonthan ducked back to his house only long enough to clean up before taking a circuitous route back to the railyard. It was impossible for him to hide in any crowd down here, so he didn’t try. Instead he just acted like he was still working, and the dwarves he passed gave him a wide berth. Soon enough he was sitting in the shadows, keeping one eye out in the darkness for goblins, and the other eye back towards the main cavern for any dwarves that might happen by. Neither of them appeared to spoil his evening though, and twenty minutes later Anda finally showed up. If anything Jonathan thought she looked prettier than she had the night before. 

“You came,” she smiled. 

“Very yes,” he agreed. It was the closest he could get to of course. “I would not miss you.”

“Awww, now that’s mean.” she pretended to pout between giggles at the words he used. “Not even a little? That’s disappointing.” 

It took Jonathan longer than it should have for him to figure out what she was laughing at but when he did he chuckled too. “No - I would miss you, I would miss you if I missed you, I…” Sadly his vocabulary was insufficient for the task, and the whole conversation developed into more fits of laughter. Anda’s voice was only a couple octaves higher than his, which would have been very deep for a human woman, but rather high pitched compared to the male dwarves. Her laugh though, was one of the sweetest sounds he’d heard in a long time. It tinkled like the small silver bells that the priests sometimes used at temple, and were entirely out of place in this underworld, where even the music often sounded angry and foreboding.

When they had both finally finished, he said, “You did not come here just to laugh at me though,” as he pulled a few pieces of coal out of a sack. 

“No, not just for that,” she agreed, “but it’s certainly a big part of the appeal.Ye know it’s…”

This time Jonathan didn’t take the bait. He ignored her as he focused on what was going to happen next. He held a chunk of coal in his left hand while he concentrated on teasing the fire out of it into his right. The result was a tiny flickering flame, no larger than a candle’s. It wasn’t a large demonstration, but it was enough to cause Anda to drift from mockery to silence within a few seconds as she watched. He still wasn’t feeling perfect, and channeling even a little bit of fire made him feel a little dizzy, but he ignored it. He wanted to show off for the pretty girl that was looking at him with a mix of awe and fear. 

Slowly that flickering flame began to dance from side to side. It was awkward and clumsy, but it still made the dwarf smile so hard she covered her mouth. Jonathan had done that much by himself plenty of times, but for her he wanted to try something he’d never done before. Slowly he concentrated harder, giving himself the slightest headache as he extended the flame. Instead of a single dot of fire it was now a line. Once it was long enough it slowly began to bend until the line became a circle, and just before it became to much, For Jonathan to hold in his mind all at once he bent the circle until it became a heart. Then just as quickly as he’d brought the fire into existence, it was gone in a faint puff of smoke. 

He couldn’t say why he’d done it. He hadn’t planned to draw a heart made of fire for his cute little audience. He knew that getting any more involved with her than he already was, was a bad idea, but for some reason he’d done it anyway. As luck would have it, apparently that symbol meant nothing to a dwarf with no exposure to Wenlish or to human culture, because even though Anda’s eyes danced with amazement as she watched Jonathan’s little show, she showed no reaction to the romantic symbol. Jonathan didn’t know whether he was happy or disappointed about that. 

“That was amazing,” she said finally, clapping with barely restrained glee. “And ye can do that whenever ye want? That’s so cool.”

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“Not any time.” Just said, slumping against the wall and pouring the fly ash out of his hand to show that he’d used up almost the entire piece of coal. “It is tiring, and the fire must come from somewhere.”

“Even so,” she smiled, getting uncomfortably close again now that he was sitting on the ground, “That’s how ye slew the troll right? You just cooked it alive?”

Jonathan nodded. 

“Does that mean ye can warm yourself up if you get cold? Or me?” she asked, blushing prettily for a second as some thought crossed her mind. “Could ye cook a meal with your fire?”

“I have,” he nodded again, leaving out all the incriminating details he wanted to say, because he knew they could come back to haunt him one day. Oh - I actually cook all the time. I do it almost every night in the city. At work when things are getting too hot I pull fire out of my body to cool off. All of those answers would be another visit to the Temple of Law if she ever repeated them, so he kept them to himself. “I can not use fire to heat you. Magic does not work on dwarves.” 

“Really?” she asked, “I thought that was just a story they told us girls to make us feel safer.” That surprised Jonathan, and the two of them spent half an hour after that just talking about the different fairy stories they were taught when they were children. Anda told him the story of Trinvo the honorable seamstress and her three lazy sons. It seemed to be a parable about how it was a woman’s job to make sure the men of the clan worked instead of drinking all day, and it was less of a story, than a series of events and lessons. There were no monsters, or pitfalls, or even happy endings. Jonathan responded by trying to tell her the story of Grundl the trader, but he didn’t think he did it justice with his primitive vocabulary. It had three terrible bargains instead of three sons, and it’s moral was never to trust dwarves, because they were sneaky and much too clever where gold was concerned, but he thought that Anda got the idea.

It was another cute insight into dwarven culture that he never would have gotten without her, but once it was over he finally said the thing he’d been dreading all afternoon. “My foreman does not think I should be seen with you.” 

“Oh? You think the other dwarves are going to get jealous if they see me spending time with a lowly human?”  she smiled. “I’ll bet they’d get really jealous then if they saw me do this.” Jon wondered what she was about to do, when she leaned forward and gave him a quick peck on the cheek without any warning. 

“I think that is what they worried about,” he said, even though he didn’t exactly want her to stop. 

“Well then we’ll need to come up with some kind of excuse. Some reason to spend time together, in case anyone asks.”

“That might work,” he agreed, unable to stop himself from staring at her lips. 

“Maybe we should work on your dwarvish then,” she laughed, “but if you talked properly I’m not sure if that would make you more or less fun. Maybe I’ll just leave your words alone, and stick to your letters. With a little work we could have you speaking and writing like a dwarfling in no time!”

Jonathan nodded. He’d do whatever she wanted to have an excuse to spend more time with her, and if he learned how to read dwarven in the process, then so much the better. 

After that, they talked for a few more minutes, and then left one at a time so no one would see them together. Once Anda left he waited there in the tunnel for a few minutes before he went home himself. There were lots of things he could regret about tonight, but the only thing that Jonathan actually did was that he hadn’t worked up the courage to kiss her back. 

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