Killed Killers (NaNoWriMo 2015)

Chapter Forty Four

Gem and Ere broke from their hug and looked at each other. Gem was the first to speak.

    "Are you okay?" He tilted his head and wrinkled his brow.

    "I think so." Ere responded. She hadn't really had time to take inventory on how she was feeling.

    "I-" Gem started and then stopped again, thinking to himself. "We should probably head upstairs and start moving down here.

    "Wait, we're moving down here?" Ere asked.

    "All the igétes live down here. Our work means that we need to have a separate living space because we pull some late nights. We don't really want to wake everyone up as we do our thing, and we don't live on the same schedule as everyone else so we also need a quiet place that we can sleep without getting woken up. Plus it's just easier if we have a separate area right by where we work." Gem explained.

    "I-" Ere began to protest, before thinking better of it. If it was really tradition here, who was she to argue with it? She should be glad for a lasting place in the Koinonía, considering that it wasn't certain that she would make it through another couple of months. "Never mind."

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    As it turned out, what Gem meant when he said "moving things down" was supervising as other people moved their stuff. Ere had changed out of her torn dress into a fitted top and jeans. Gem was in his usual black t-shirt and dark jeans. They stood together by the doorway to the cave, Gem's arm wrapped around her shoulder as a steady flow of people carrying various items from their old rooms walked by them.

    When they had first started, Ere had started to help, before she noticed that all of the people Gem had assigned to help them were giving her weird looks. She was half way through carrying a large armful of clothes down to her new space when Gem stopped her and told her to hand off her armful.

    "They carry it for us. It's a sign of respect for them. Some of our past leaders have made a point of collecting everyone in the Koinonía and making it almost a ceremonial thing. A way to accept their new leaders and to show that they didn't have any objections to the new choice of leaders. I don't much care for that kind of thing so I gathered some of the staff that wasn't working on cleaning up the castle or taking care of the wounded to help." Gem had explained, and since then, they had moved from the doorway to their new home to the doorway of their old rooms and back again, watching as the old rooms emptied out and their things entered their new space.

    By the time that the final things were being brought down, Ere and Gem had stopped pacing back and forth and had taken up a more permanent post by the door to the cave. It was mostly Gem's stuff coming down now, Ere hadn't had time to collect any true personal belongings since she had come to the Koinonía. Gem, on the other hand, had been born in the Koinonía. Ere had learned that the piano she had seen in his room was one that he had found at a second hand store, and he had polished it back to perfection. She also learned that hiltzaile weren't all always stuck in the castle. There were vacations allowed, and outings to town were frequent.

    "We don't always work. We are allowed to leave our home for reasons other than hunting or gathering information or killing. Besides, someone has to do the grocery shopping." Gem joked, poking her in the ribs gently. Ever since they had been linked, he had been touching her in some form almost constantly. An arm around her shoulders, hand on her back, arm around her waist, intertwining their little fingers. Some form of physical connection at all times. It seemed to ground him, and Ere had noticed that when they lost that connection he got a distant look on his face and became quiet. As soon as she took his hand, he would always snap back into focus, like he had been floating free, falling, and someone had caught him and tethered him to something that was real.