In Kuroinu

Mila had organized the entire first floor of the inn into a supply depot and I was pretty sure she hadn't slept.

I came downstairs at dawn and the common room had been transformed. The tables were pushed to the walls and covered in neat rows of cloth-wrapped bundles. Dried meat on one table. Grain and hardtack on another. Medical supplies on a third, organized by type and labeled with little tags in handwriting I didn't recognize. Waterskins hung from hooks along the bar in a line, fat and full, and next to them she'd stacked leather pouches of what smelled like dried herbs. A map was pinned to the wall with the northern road traced in charcoal and resupply points circled. She'd circled eight resupply points. We were going to be on the road for maybe four days.

Mila was on her knees in the middle of the floor, repacking a canvas bag for what had to be the third time based on the items spread around her. Her ears were flat and her tail was doing the tight, controlled wag she did when she was working on something she needed to get exactly right. Her hair was loose and tangled and there was a smear of flour on her cheek from the bread she'd apparently baked at some point during the night.

"Morning," I said.

Her ears shot up. Her head turned and she looked at me and then at the disaster of supplies around her and her ears went pink.

"Oh! I was just- I wanted to have everything ready before- I know we don't leave for three days but I wanted to get ahead of it because if we wait until the last day then the dried meat won't have time to cure properly and the bread will go stale if I bake it too early so I need to plan the baking around the departure and Llusse said elves need more water than humans so I've packed extra waterskins but I don't know if that's enough and-"

"Mila."

She stopped. Her tail slowed. She was kneeling in a circle of provisions with a half-packed bag in her hands and she looked up at me and her brown eyes were tired and a little wild.

"Have you eaten?"

Her mouth opened. Closed. "I was going to eat after I finished the-"

"Have. You. Eaten."

"...No."

I walked to the kitchen. There was bread cooling on a rack, fresh from the oven, and I cut two thick pieces and found butter in a crock and a jar of preserved fruit that was either strawberry or close enough. I put everything on a plate and brought it back and sat on the floor next to her and held it out.

She stared at the plate. Her tail started up again, slow, uncertain.

"Eat," I said. "Then show me the resupply points."

Her ears perked forward. She took the plate in both hands and held it in her lap and bit into the bread and butter and her tail picked up speed while she chewed. The bread was good. She'd made it and she was eating it and she probably hadn't tasted her own baking in hours because she'd been too busy packing to stop.

I looked at the map on the wall while she ate. The northern road ran through three settlements before hitting the border of the Shield Alliance territories. She'd marked water sources, potential campsites, and a note in the margin that said "Llusse says avoid the eastern fork - bandit reports." The handwriting was small and tidy and she'd included a little drawing of a mountain at the top of the map that was either decorative or geographical. I couldn't tell.

"You did all this last night?" I asked.

"Mm." She swallowed. "I started after dinner. Filia said we needed supplies and I thought if I just made a list it would be easy but then I started thinking about quantities and shelf life and weather considerations and then I was pulling out the preserved meats and checking the grain stores and then it was midnight and I'd reorganized the pantry." She took another bite. Chewed. "I might have also reorganized the root cellar."

"The root cellar."

"It was a mess down there, Haruto. Nobody had rotated the stock in weeks. The turnips were going soft."

An old man came in through the inn's front door while we sat there, looked at the supply depot that had replaced the common room, looked at Mila on the floor surrounded by bags and provisions, looked at me sitting next to her eating bread, and turned around and left without saying anything.

"Regular?" I asked.

"Mr. Aldric. He comes in for ale at breakfast. I'll save him a mug." She was already standing, wiping her hands on her apron, moving toward the bar. She poured an ale and set it on the end of the counter near the door with a little note that said "Mr. A - bread in the kitchen." Her tail wagged once as she placed the note and she came back and sat down and picked up her bread again.

We ate. She walked me through the supply plan between bites, pointing at bundles and explaining her system. She'd organized everything by day. Each day's rations were wrapped separately so nobody had to dig through the main pack. She'd packed a separate bundle for wet weather with the food sealed in waxed cloth. She'd measured herbs for Tianne's healing mixtures and packed them in pouches labeled in a code Tianne had apparently taught her.

"This one's yarrow, this one's elderflower, this one's the one that smells like feet but works on infection," she said, holding up three pouches. Her ears were up and her tail was going at a steady educational-lecture pace. "I also packed extra bandages because Tianne always runs out and she won't admit it, and I wrapped the splint supplies separately because last time they got tangled with the cooking kit and everything tasted like birch bark for two days."

"Last time?"

"Hadern. The supply bags got jumbled on the march. Nobody mentioned the birch bark taste but I saw Llusse's face." She paused. Her ears tipped back. "Llusse's face when she eats something she doesn't like is the same face she makes when she looks at you, actually."

"Charming."

"She likes you."

"She has a very aggressive way of showing it."

"Her ears go pink." Mila said it matter-of-factly and took another bite of bread.

The morning went by in preparations. Filia came down and reviewed Mila's supply plan and made two changes and approved the rest with a nod that was as close to effusive praise as Filia got. Llusse left at first light to scout the northern road, her bow across her back and her green eyes flat and focused, and she didn't say goodbye to anyone but she took one of Mila's breakfast rolls from the counter on her way out. Tianne came in and found her herb pouches already packed and labeled and she stood there holding them and looking at Mila with an expression I'd call grateful if Tianne ever did anything as simple as grateful. She hugged her instead, which made Mila's tail go at double speed and her ears turn pink and her hands wave in the air for a second before she hugged back.

I spent the afternoon with Filia going over the travel route and discussing the approach to Celestine's territories. We'd be entering as Lesdea's representatives, which meant diplomatic protocols that Filia knew and I didn't, which meant an hour of Filia explaining court etiquette while I nodded and tried not to think about the fact that I already knew what Celestine's court looked like because I'd seen it in an anime.

By late afternoon I went looking for Mila because Tianne had mentioned she hadn't seen her since lunch.

She wasn't in the kitchen. She wasn't in the common room. The supply depot was complete, every bundle in its place, the map on the wall updated with Llusse's scouting notes from a runner she'd sent back. All of it done. And Mila was gone.

I found her on the roof.

The inn had a flat section of roof at the back, above the kitchen, with a ladder that led up from the storage area. Mila was sitting on the edge with her legs hanging over, her ears drooping, her tail flat on the shingles behind her. She was facing north. The sunset was behind us, orange and red across the western sky, and the light caught the side of her face and the tops of her ears.

I climbed up and sat beside her. She didn't look at me. Her ears twitched when I settled but she kept her eyes on the north where the road went and the sky was already going dark.

"It's going to be dangerous up there," she said.

"Yeah."

Her hands were in her lap, fingers twisted together. The flour was still on her cheek. She'd run out of things to do. That was why she was up here. She'd done everything she could and there was nothing left and the feelings she'd been outrunning all day had caught her.

"The others will get stronger," she said. "From you. The power. They'll get faster and tougher and their magic will get better and they'll be able to fight things they couldn't fight before." She swallowed. "I won't."

I waited.

"I'm not jealous. I'm not- I don't resent them for it. It makes sense. Filia's a swordswoman. Tianne's a priestess. Llusse can put an arrow through a goblin's eye from a hundred yards." Her voice was steady but her ears were flat and her tail hadn't moved. "The power goes to them because it makes sense for it to go to them. They fight. I pack bags."

"Mila-"

"I packed your bag first." She looked down at her hands. "This afternoon. Before anyone else's. I packed yours first because I wanted to be the one who did it and I don't even know why that matters and it's stupid."

"At Hadern," I said. "When the orcs hit the village. You said 'I can hear them. I know where they are.' And you went in. No weapon, no armor, no boost. You went into a burning village and you pulled people out of buildings while the rest of us were fighting. You held a kid in your lap while her parents were being treated for burns and you held it together for her even though your hands were shaking."

She was quiet.

"You heard those survivors before Llusse did. Before any of us. You knew where they were hiding because you were listening for people, not threats, and that's why they're alive." I looked at her. "And yeah, you packed supplies. You packed them so well that nobody went hungry on a week-long deployment and the only complaint was that the splints made the food taste like birch bark, which you fixed for next time because of course you did."

Her lower lip was pressed between her teeth and her eyes were bright in the fading light.

"That's not the same as-"

"Mila." I waited until she looked at me. Her brown eyes were wide and wet at the edges and her ears were halfway up. "The harem isn't about combat power."

Her ears went straight up. Her eyes went wide. Her mouth opened and her tail, which had been flat and dead on the roof behind her, lifted and froze in mid-air.

"H- harem?"

I grinned. "Did I say that out loud?"

"You- you said- did you just-" Her ears were swiveling independently, one forward and one sideways, like they couldn't agree on a direction. "Harem. You said harem. Out loud. On a roof."

"Seemed like the right venue."

"You can't just- that's not a word you just- Haruto, that means-"

"I know what it means."

Her mouth worked. No sound came out. Her tail was vibrating behind her, a low-frequency tremor in the shingles under it. Her cheeks were dark and getting darker and her eyes were enormous and her ears had gone from flat to straight up to slightly backward in about four seconds.

She tackled me.

Her arms went around my chest and her weight hit me and I went backward onto the roof and she was pressed against me, face buried in my shirt, ears flat against my jaw, and her tail was going so fast it was thumping against my calf like a drumstick. Her hands gripped the fabric at my sides and her body was warm and soft against mine, smaller than Filia, rounder, and she smelled like bread and flour and the herbs she'd been packing all day.

I put my arms around her. She made a sound into my shirt that was muffled and high-pitched and might have been a word or might have been beastkin for I am losing my mind. Her tail was thumping against my leg faster than I'd ever seen it go and her ears were hot against my neck.

She didn't let go.

The sunset was finishing behind us, the last orange going purple at the edges, and the first stars were showing in the north where the road led toward the Shield Alliance and the fortress-cities and everything that was coming. Mila was warm on my chest and her heart was hammering and her tail was beating against my calf and her fingers were curled into my shirt and she held on.

"Haruto."

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to be so good at this." Muffled. Into my shirt. "I'm going to pack the best supplies. I'm going to make sure everyone eats. I'm going to be the best harem member who has ever organized a root cellar."

I laughed. She made another muffled noise and her tail thumped harder and she pressed her face tighter into my chest.

Her body was warm against mine and soft in places that registered even through two layers of clothing. Her hips against my side. Her chest pressed into mine. Her hair in my face. She smelled good and the awareness of her was there, the same low pull I felt with every woman I'd held since coming to this world.

She lifted her head eventually. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright and her ears were up and forward and there was a strand of hair stuck to the flour on her cheek. She was close. Six inches, maybe. Her mouth was open slightly and her eyes were on mine and she looked happy in a way that used her entire face, eyes crinkled, ears forward, everything aimed at me.

"Three days," she said.

"Three days."

"I should repack the wet-weather bundle. I think I used the wrong waxed cloth."

"Mila."

"And the tea supply is low. I should check if the merchant-"

"Mila."

She stopped. Her ears twitched.

"Stay up here for a minute."

She blinked. Looked at me. Looked at the sky. Looked back at me. Then she put her head back on my chest and her arms tightened and her tail went from frantic to a slow, steady wag, and she stayed.

The stars were coming out. The air was cooling and somewhere below us in the inn the old man, Mr. Aldric, was finally getting his breakfast ale. The note Mila had left must have been enough.

Her breathing was slowing. Her tail was still going, steady and warm against my calf, and her ear twitched when a bat passed overhead.

"Haruto?"

"Mm?"

"I'm not letting go yet."

"I know."

Her tail wagged. The stars kept coming.

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