Chapter 2: Questions
The pale, silvery light of an Alaskan dawn was just beginning to bleed across the sky when Matthias woke. He lay still on the couch, listening. The wind had died. The cabin held its breath.
A soft, metallic click came from the kitchen.
He sat up slowly, the blanket falling away. Tektah stood at the counter, her back to him, bathed in the cool blue glow of the stove’s digital clock. She was still wearing his oversized sweater, the hem brushing her mid-thigh. In her hands, she held his digital kitchen scale, turning it over with a look of intense, suspicious confusion.
She pressed a button. The display lit up with a cheerful ‘0.00g’. She jerked, nearly dropping it, then scowled at the device as if it had insulted her.
“It measures weight,” Matthias said, his voice sleep-rough.
She didn’t startle this time. She placed the scale down carefully, as if it might explode, and turned to face him. In the flat morning light, she looked less like a mythical creature and more like a very tired, very lost young woman. The sharp planes of her face were softened by sleep, her golden ponytail frayed. Only the vibrant, cat-slit green of her eyes betrayed her otherness.
“It… speaks? In numbers?” she asked, her accent curling around the words.
“In grams. Or ounces. It’s for cooking.” He swung his feet to the floor, the wood cold. “How are you feeling?”
She touched her bandaged side, a clinical assessment. “The flesh knits. Slowly. The weakness is… frustrating.” Her gaze swept over the cabin. “Your dwelling is full of inert magic. Crystals that glow with no source. Flat, dark mirrors that sleep. A box that roars with heat on command.” She nodded toward the microwave.
“It’s not magic. It’s just… electricity. Engineering.” He stood, padding to the kitchen. “You want some tea?”
“What is ‘tea’?”
“A drink. From leaves. It’s warm. Good for you.” He filled the kettle, the mundane action feeling absurd.
“You trap the essence of plants in hot water.” She watched his every move, her eyes missing nothing—the twist of the knob, the click of the igniter, the blue flare of the gas flame. “A simple, practical alchemy. We have similar arts.”
He leaned against the counter, crossing his arms. The space between them felt charged, but not with threat. With a profound, staggering curiosity. “Ask,” he said.
She didn’t hesitate. “The world. How large? What kingdoms rule it?”
“It’s… one world. But many countries. Governments. I’m in the United States. Alaska is a… a territory, kind of remote. We’re alone out here for maybe a hundred miles in any direction.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “A hundred miles of this?” She gestured to the window, to the endless expanse of snow and firs. “No settlements? No keeps?”
“A few scattered towns. Mostly wilderness.”
“And your family? Your clan? Do they reside in this… ‘United States’?”
“My parents are in Washington. That’s a state far to the south. My sister’s in Europe. That’s… another continent.” He saw the geopolitical map of Earth crumbling before her pre-industrial, factional understanding. “We’re not a clan. It’s just… family. And they don’t live here. I live here. Alone.”
She absorbed this, her brow furrowed. “You choose this isolation. To practice your… image capturing.” She said the words slowly, trying to fit them into a framework that made sense.
“Yeah. It’s my job. But it’s more than that.” He fetched two mugs, dropping tea bags into them. “It’s quiet. You can hear yourself think. You can see things.”
“What things?”
“The foxes that hunt at dusk. A moose and her calf breaking ice on a pond. The northern lights painting the sky.” He poured the hot water, the steam rising in a fragrant cloud. “It’s not for everyone.”
“No,” she agreed, her voice quiet. “It is a sentinel’s post. A lonely vigil.” She accepted the mug he offered, holding it with both hands, inhaling the scent. She took a cautious sip. Her pointed ears twitched, a minute, fascinating gesture. “It is… acceptable.”
He almost smiled. “High praise.”
For the next hour, he gave her a tour of the twenty-first century. He showed her the faucet, which she understood instantly—“A controlled, internal aqueduct. Efficient.”—but the television baffled her. He picked up the remote and turned it on. The screen flashed to life with a morning news program, a weatherman pointing at a map.
Tektah dropped into a defensive crouch, her mug clattering to the floor, tea splashing across the boards. A dagger she must have hidden somewhere—he’d missed it in his search—was suddenly in her hand, glinting in the LCD glow.
“Peace! Peace!” Matthias said, fumbling with the remote and muting the sound. “It’s a… a scrying mirror. But not really. It shows images from far away. Stories. News. It’s not alive.”
She rose slowly, her eyes locked on the silent, smiling weatherman. The dagger didn’t lower. “A communication crystal. For propaganda.”
“I… guess you could call it that.” He watched as she edged closer, her expression a mix of fury and fascination. She reached out a tentative finger and touched the screen. When the image didn’t react, she pressed harder.
“The images are flat,” she murmured. “No depth. An illusion of light.” She turned to him, the dagger finally lowering. “You use this for entertainment? To watch the affairs of others?”
“Sometimes. Mostly I use that one.” He pointed to his laptop on the desk.
Her suspicion was bottomless. He opened the laptop, waking it to a screensaver of his own photographs—a close-up of a grizzly’s face, its eyes intelligent and wild.
Tektah gasped, a sharp intake of breath. She leaned in, her nose almost touching the screen. “A captured spirit. You did lie. This is potent magic. The detail… it is more real than the talking scrying glass.”
“It’s a photograph. I took it. With that.” He pointed to his camera with its long lens.
She looked from the camera to the screen, the connection dawning. “You trapped the beast’s image with that device. Imprinted its likeness on this… light-slate.”
“Basically, yes.”
She was silent for a long moment, studying the grizzly’s pixelated eyes. “On Azeroth, such an act would require an enchanter of great skill, or a shadow-priest’s trick.” She looked at him, and for the first time, there was a flicker of something akin to respect. “Your world has no magic, but you have forged your own. You are a kind of artisan.”
His cheeks warmed. “I’m just a guy with a camera.”
“Do not diminish your craft,” she said sharply, the old edge returning. “My people revere artifice. To create a tool that performs such a consistent miracle… it has worth.” She turned back to the laptop. “Show me more.”
So he did. He showed her photos of sweeping glaciers, of eagles in flight, of the cabin itself buried under a fresh snowfall. She asked blunt, practical questions. How far could the ‘image-trap’ see? Did it work at night? Could it capture a moving target? Her mind was tactical, analytical, stripping the wonder away to understand the function.
Then he made a mistake. He clicked on a folder labeled ‘Family’.
The first image was of his parents, smiling on a sunny beach.
Tektah went very still. “Your progenitors?”
“My mom and dad, yeah.”
“They appear… hearty.”
He clicked to the next. His sister, laughing, arm flung around her wife.
“Your sister. She is a warrior?”
“She’s a lawyer. She… argues laws. And that’s her wife, Maya.”
Tektah’s head tilted. “Wife. They are bound? As in a mating contract?”
“Yeah. They’re married.”
She processed this. “So your people permit such unions. Between two females.”
“Yeah. Of course.”
A strange, complex emotion passed over her face—a mix of longing, bitterness, and hope, so raw it was painful to see. She looked away, out the window. “Azeroth is… less permitting. In many things.”
The silence that followed was heavy. Matthias didn’t know how to break it. He busied himself cleaning up the spilled tea, soaking the rag in the sink.
“Your silence is not oppressive here,” she said suddenly, still watching the trees. “It is a presence, but not a hungry one. On my world, the silence of the Dead Scar… it eats at you. It has a taste of ash and memory.” She turned back. “This silence is clean. It is merely an absence of noise.”
“I like it that way,” he said.
“I am beginning to understand why.”
The morning deepened. She watched him make oatmeal, her nose wrinkling at the ‘mush’ until he added brown sugar and dried berries. She ate with a startling efficiency, scraping the bowl clean. Strength seemed to seep back into her with the calories. She moved with less gingerness, her posture straightening, that innate regal bearing returning.
He needed to check her wounds. The request hung in the air, unspoken, a sudden, awkward chasm between them.
She sensed his hesitation. “The bindings need to be changed,” she stated, matter-of-fact.
“Yeah. They probably do.”
“I will permit it.”
She stood and, without ceremony, pulled the heavy sweater over her head.
Matthias’s breath caught. He’d seen her torso before, but in the crisis of the first night, it had been a clinical landscape of injury. Now, in the grey daylight, it was just… her. She was slim but powerfully built, muscles moving smoothly under sun-tanned skin crisscrossed with faint, silvery scars—the history of a violent world written on her flesh. The bandages across her ribs and shoulder were stark white against her skin.
He focused on the task, his hands steady but his mind racing. He fetched the medical kit, carefully peeled away the tape. The wounds were healing cleanly, no sign of infection. He worked in silence, applying fresh antiseptic, laying down new strips of sterile gauze. His fingers brushed the warm skin of her side, and she didn’t flinch. Her scent—something like crisp autumn leaves and sun-warmed stone—filled his senses.
He was intensely aware of her gaze on the top of his head, of his own shyness, of the sheer, improbable reality of her. He finished taping the last bandage. “Good. Looks good.”
“Your hands are gentle for a human,” she said quietly.
Before he could process that, she turned to pull the sweater back on. The movement was swift, but not swift enough.
As she turned, the loose sweatpants he’d loaned her, tied with a drawstring, sagged slightly at her hips. And he saw, for a fleeting, world-tilting second, what his decency and her unconscious state had hidden from him before.
The soft thatch of golden hair at the junction of her thighs was unmistakably male. Thick, full, and leading to a flaccid, heavy weight that was utterly, inarguably a cock, an enormous cock.
He jerked his eyes away, his face burning as if scalded. He fumbled the roll of tape, sending it clattering across the floor. His mind emptied, then flooded with a chaos of confused images—her face, her voice, her scars, the smooth skin of her stomach, and then that. A collision of realities that made no sense.
He bent to retrieve the tape, his movements stiff. When he straightened, she had the sweater on and was watching him with an unreadable expression. Her cheeks bore a faint, dusky flush of gold, but her eyes were hard, defensive.
“You see,” she stated, her voice flat, devoid of all the tentative curiosity from earlier. It was the voice of a soldier on a wall.
Matthias opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He just nodded, a short, tight jerk of his head.
The air in the cabin felt brittle, charged with a new and terrible tension. All the fragile progress of the morning, the shared tea, the stories of bears and sisters, it all crumbled into dust. He saw the wall slam down behind her eyes, saw her retreat into the fortress of her old hatred and shame. He had seen her. And now, nothing would be the same.
She took a step back, putting the kitchen island between them. Her chin lifted in defiance, but the faint tremor in her hands betrayed her.
“So,” she said, the single word hanging like a blade between them. “Now you know what I am.”
He finally found his voice, thin and raspy. “I don’t… I don’t know anything.”
A bitter, wounded smile touched her lips. “You know enough. On your world, are my kind… permitted?”
Matthias stared at her, this beautiful, fierce, impossible woman from another star, standing in his kitchen, her whole being braced for his rejection. He thought of his sister and Maya, laughing on his screen. He thought of the vast, silent wilderness outside, which asked no questions and imposed no rules.
“You’re not on your world,” he said finally, meeting her hardened gaze. “You’re in my house. And you’re my guest.”
It wasn’t acceptance. It wasn’t understanding. It was a line in the snow. A statement of fact.
She held his look for a long, challenging moment, searching for the lie, the revulsion, the fear. When she found only his own confusion and a stubborn, simmering kindness, some of the steel went out of her spine.
The silence returned, but it was no longer clean. It was filled with the echo of her question and the thunder of his own heartbeat. The wilderness outside felt very close, and the rules, for both of them, had just been rewritten.
The wilderness outside felt very close, and the rules, for both of them, had just been rewritten.
Tektah’s defiant posture held for three more heartbeats before fracturing. She looked away, her gaze shattering against the snowy window. “Your silence is loud,” she said, her voice stripped of its earlier force.
“I’m just… processing.” He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous habit. “You’re from a whole other universe. With magic. And wars. And I’m just a guy who takes pictures of moose.”
A sharp, humorless laugh escaped her. “And I am a woman who is also, in part, a man. In your eyes, which is the greater strangeness?”
“The magic portal was pretty weird,” he said, and the casual, lighthearted words felt absurd, but they worked.
Her eyes snapped back to him, wide with surprise. Then, a genuine snort of laughter—brief, unguarded—shook her shoulders. It sounded rusty, as if she hadn’t used it in years. “You are an idiot.”
“Probably.” He managed a shaky smile. “But I’m the idiot with the first aid kit and the oatmeal. So.”
She studied the floor, her arms crossing over the borrowed sweater. The defensive anger was melting, leaving behind something more vulnerable, more exhausted. “On Azeroth, they have many names for me. Abomination. Freak. A mistake of the Sunwell’s energy.” Her words were measured, each one a stone dropped into the quiet between them. “I have fought, killed, and bled to prove I am none of those things. To earn a place. It is a tiresome battle.”
Matthias didn’t know what to say. ‘I’m sorry’ felt pathetic. He just listened, the crackle of the dying fire filling the spaces between her confessions.
“I came here through violence and chaos,” she continued, her voice dropping. “I expected your world’s contempt to be simpler. More direct. Not this… quiet kitchen. Not this gentle-handed man who looks at me like a perplexing bird that landed on his feeder.”
“I’ve never seen a bird like you,” he admitted softly.
Their eyes met again. The air shifted, growing thicker, warmer. The initial shock was receding, replaced by a daunting and intimate curiosity. He saw not a monster, nor an angel, but a person—proud, scarred, lonely, and sitting in his kitchen wearing his clothes.
“You are not what I expected of a human, either,” she whispered.
He took a small step forward. Then another. The space between them, just a few feet of polished wood floor, felt like a canyon he was trying to bridge without a rope. She watched him come, still as a hunted thing, but she didn’t retreat.
“I don’t know what the rules are,” he said, his voice barely audible. “For this. For you.”
“There are no rules here,” she answered. “You said it yourself. This is your house.”
He was close enough now to see the finer details: the delicate arc of her pointed ear, the faint trace of an old scar along her jawline, the way her green irises seemed to hold fragments of shifting emerald light. He could smell that scent of autumn leaves and stone. His heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
She saw his uncertainty, his naive bravery. Something in her own expression softened, the hard edges dissolving into a look of shared confusion. Here they were, two people from different worlds, stranded in a silent, white void.
The weight of it all—the isolation, the absurdity, the raw, naked honesty of the moment—crushed the breath from both of them. It was too big. The tension broke not with a kiss, or a declaration, but with a mutual, shuddering gasp of overwhelmed laughter.
It wasn’t humorous. It was hysterical, a release of impossible pressure.
And then, they embraced.
It was awkward. Profoundly so. He moved in at the same moment she shifted, his arms going around her shoulders while hers came up around his waist. They collided, a clumsy tangle of limbs and borrowed wool. His nose bumped her temple. She stiffened initially, a lifetime of instincts screaming against vulnerability.
But then she melted into him, her face pressing into the soft fabric of his shirt. He felt the solid, muscular strength of her back under his palms, the surprising softness of her hair against his cheek. He felt the bandages, the evidence of her mortality. He held her carefully, as if she were both invincible and shattered.
They stood like that in the middle of the room, clinging to each other as the fire guttered. No words passed between them. The embrace said everything words couldn’t: I am here. You are not alone. This is strange. This is real.
He felt her breath warm on his collarbone, the slow uncoiling of her tension. Her hands, fisted at first in the back of his shirt, gradually relaxed, splaying against his spine. His own nervous system quieted, the frantic drumbeat in his chest slowing to a deep, resonant thrum.
Outside, the wind picked up, sending a ghostly whisper of snow against the glass. Inside, they created a pocket of shared warmth, a silent treaty written in the language of a clumsy, necessary hug. The momentum of the moment carried them, holding them together in the quiet center of the storm.
The momentum of the moment carried them, holding them together in the quiet center of the storm. Eventually, the simple need to breathe pulled them apart. They separated slowly, the space between them instantly cool.
Matthias rubbed the back of his neck, avoiding her eyes. “So.”
“So,” Tektah echoed, brushing a strand of gold from her face. The defensive wall was down, leaving something tentative and new.
“More tea?” he asked, already turning toward the kettle.
“If you are making it.”
He busied himself with the ritual, the familiar motions grounding. The silence now was companionable, filled with the domestic sounds of water heating and mugs clinking. He handed her a fresh cup and leaned against the counter, blowing on his own.
“You asked about unions,” he began, his voice cautious. “Between two women. Or two men.”
Her gaze sharpened, fixed on him. “I did.”
“It’s legal here. In this country. In a lot of places.” He chose his words carefully, watching her face. “People can marry who they love. It’s not… universal. Some people are hateful about it. There can be discrimination, even violence. But it’s accepted by more people every year.”
Tektah stared into her tea as if reading leaves. “And for someone like me? A woman who is… built as I am?”
“I don’t know the specific statistics,” he said, a small, wry smile touching his lips. “But I know there are people of all kinds, with all kinds of preferences. There are communities. Partners who wouldn’t see it as a flaw, but just… as part of you.”
She was silent for a long time, absorbing this alien concept. “On Azeroth, such a thing would be a scandal whispered in dark corners. A curse to be hidden. Here, it is simply a… preference?” She tested the word.
“For a lot of people, yeah. It’s just who you are.” He took a sip, gathering courage. “Look, Tektah. You’re from another planet. You have magic blood and pointed ears. You showed up in a snowbank. The fact that you’ve got… different hardware? It’s pretty far down my list of strange things today.”
A genuine laugh burst from her, bright and surprised. “Hardware. I am a construct to you?”
“You know what I mean.” He smiled back, feeling the tension dissolve. “You’re still Tektah. You’re fascinating. You’re…” He trailed off, the word ‘beautiful’ sticking in his throat.
She tilted her head, those green eyes seeing right through him. “I am what?”
“You’re you,” he finished, lamely. “And you’re in my cabin. And your ‘hardware’ doesn’t change that I think you’re… remarkable.”
The flush on her cheeks deepened, a warm gold. She looked away, but a soft, unguarded smile played on her lips. It transformed her face, erasing years of ingrained bitterness. For a moment, she looked just like a young woman hearing something kind.
“Remarkable,” she repeated quietly, as if storing the word in a vault. She took a deep, shuddering breath, and when she looked back, her eyes were slightly shiny. “No one has ever said such a thing to me without a weapon in their hand or a lie on their tongue.”
“Then they were idiots,” Matthias said, his voice firm.
She shook her head, a wonder-struck expression on her face. “You have a strange world, Matthias. A cruel one in many ways, you say. But you hold this… quiet acceptance in your silence. It is a different kind of magic.”
They finished their tea like that, standing in the kitchen, a new understanding humming between them. The storm of confusion and fear had passed, leaving a landscape of tentative peace.
He showed her how the shower worked. She retreated into the bathroom with fresh clothes—another pair of his soft sweatpants and a t-shirt—and he listened to the unfamiliar sound of the spray running for a long, long time. When she emerged, her golden hair damp and dark, her skin scrubbed pink, she looked more settled in her own skin than he’d yet seen her.
“The falling water is a profound luxury,” she announced, sinking onto the couch with a sigh. “We had enchanted basins. This is… relentless. Wonderful.”
“Glad you approve.” He sat in the armchair, giving her space. “We take it for granted.”
“You take much for granted.” She looked around, not with hostility, but with fresh assessment. “The constant warmth. The food that appears from cold boxes. The images in your light-slates. You live surrounded by miracles and call it ordinary.”
“I guess we do.”
The day unfolded in a series of small, shared tasks. He chopped vegetables for a stew. She watched, then insisted on taking the knife, demonstrating a blindingly fast, precise chopping technique that left him gaping. “Rogue training,” she said simply, a flicker of pride in her eyes. “Balancing a dagger is not so different.”
She ate two full bowls of stew, wiping the bowl clean with a piece of bread. Color was finally returning to her face, a healthy warmth beneath the tan. The profound exhaustion that had clung to her like a shroud was lifting, replaced by a alert, if still weary, vitality.
As twilight bled into the windows, she stood and stretched, a long, sinuous movement that made the t-shirt ride up. He saw the taut muscles of her stomach, the line of her hip, and quickly looked back at the fire.
“Your vigil,” she said. “For the night lights. You mentioned it.”
“The aurora? Yeah, sometimes I watch for them.”
“Show me.”
They bundled up. He loaned her his heaviest parka, which swallowed her frame, and they stepped out onto the deck. The cold was a slap, breathtaking and pure. The sky was a vast, black dome dusted with diamond-bright stars, just as wrong to her as ever.
They stood in silence, their breath pluming in the frozen air. He pointed out the familiar constellations again, and this time she listened, her head tilted back, her pointed ears pale in the starlight.
“There,” he whispered, a minute later.
A faint, green smear appeared near the northern horizon, like a distant painter testing a brush. It shimmered, then pulsed, growing stronger. Ribbons of emerald and faint violet began to curl and twist across the blackness, alive, breathing.
Tektah made a small, choked sound. Her hand flew to her mouth.
“It’s the aurora borealis,” he said softly. “Solar particles hitting the atmosphere.”
She shook her head, tears glittering on her cheeks, catching the ethereal light. “No.” Her voice was thick. “That is not just particles. That is the Arcane. It is… a whisper of it. A ghost.” She turned to him, her green eyes reflecting the dancing greens in the sky. “It is the only familiar thing I have seen in this void. It is beautiful.”
She was crying. This fierce, deadly woman from a world of war was crying at the sight of his northern lights. Matthias felt a lump form in his own throat. Without thinking, he reached out and took her hand.
Her fingers were cold, but they curled around his, holding tight. She didn’t pull away. She leaned into him, just slightly, her shoulder pressing against his arm, as they watched the silent, spectral dance tear across the infinity above them.
They stood there until the cold seeped through their layers and the show began to fade. When they finally went inside, cheeks numb and eyes wide, the warmth of the cabin felt like a embrace.
She shed the parka and stood by the fire, holding her hands to the flames. “Thank you,” she said, not looking at him.
“For what?”
“For the lights. For the stew. For not casting me out.” She finally met his gaze. The acceptance she’d found here, simple and unearned, rested upon her like a cloak she was afraid to believe was real. “For seeing me.”
“You’re hard to miss,” he said, his tone light, but his meaning clear.
A smile, true and unburdened, finally broke across her face. It was dazzling. In that moment, any remaining strangeness fell away. She was just Tektah, smiling in his living room, and he was just Matthias, happy to see it.
The momentum of the day, of shared confessions and celestial wonders, had banked into a deep, glowing ember of connection. It pulsed between them in the firelight, a new, uncharted energy waiting for tomorrow. The storm outside was quiet. The one inside had finally, blessedly, calmed.