"I don't mind. We wouldn't have given it to you if we didn't want you to use it."
"Where is the Faerie, anyway?"
"Around here somewhere, but she should know better than to stay out after dark," he said, realizing that Sarraya still hadn't come back from her exploration of the ruins. "Jegojah, has Sarraya come back?" he shouted.
"Not yet. Jegojah, he will go get her," the Revenant called from the edge of camp. "The Faerie, she probably lost track of time again!"
"Most likely," Tarrin said in a quiet tone, agreeing with the undead warrior. "So, how long do you intend to string him along?"
Ariana blushed deeply. "I'm not-"
"Don't lie to me, Ariana," he said with a faint smile. "I'm not human or Aeradalla. I can smell it all over you. You can't hide it from me."
Ariana turned a deep shade of purple.
"It's nothing to be ashamed about," he told her calmly. "But lying to yourself is never a way to honor your feelings. If you want him, go get him. He's not going to fall into your lap. Well, unless you plan it out pretty well."
"I would, but I think he still thinks of me as the little girl he grew up with," she sighed. "I've done everything but throw myself at him, and all he does is laugh and call me silly."
"He doesn't think you're a little girl. Just as your scent can't hide your interest in him, his can't hide his interest in you. I can smell it on him. If you chase him, he won't run away from you."
"Are you serious?"
"Would I lie about something like that?" he said bluntly. "Sometimes I think it's a miracle other races manage to reproduce. You're all so incredibly silly about that kind of thing."
Ariana laughed nervously, blushing again. "I guess it's cultural," she said. "Little girls in our society aren't raised by their mothers to go chasing after the first boy that catches their fancy."
"Human girls are meant to be hard to get," Tarrin told her. "It's instinct."
"I'm not human."
"No, but you're probably related to them," he said evasively. "So that means that the instincts of humans are probably hiding inside you somewhere. One of them is 'women play hard to get'."
"I wonder why that is."
"Simple. A human male is looking for a loyal mate, who won't stray. If he has to work to get her, he's assured that she's not going to go running off after the first male that shows interest in her."
Ariana laughed. "I guess that makes sense."
"You other races wouldn't have half as screwed up a society as you have if you'd just listen to your instincts," he said accusingly.
"What's the custom of your people about marriage?"
"We don't marry," he replied. "There are seven females for every male, so marrying wouldn't work. Besides, Were-cats don't have the temperment to spend eternity with the same mate. We're transient beings. We take mates when the interest is there, and drift apart when the interest wanes. We don't form lasting attachments the way humans do."
"It sounds lonely. And what happens if you love your mate?"
"Love has nothing to do with being mates, Ariana," he said patiently. "I could love one Were-cat female, yet be mates with another. The love would have nothing to do with me being mates with the second."
"That sounds unnatural."
"Only to you," he replied. "Besides, you forget, we're a transient people. The love would fade over time, just as the interest does. At least the Were-cats don't try to fool themselves into thinking that love is eternal."
"You have a very cynical people, Tarrin," Ariana laughed. "Where's the romance and the poetry and the beauty?"
"Those aren't very common concepts among my people."
"It must be unbearable!"
"Not really. Were-cat females have as little patience about things like that as males. Females don't play games. They simply go after what they want."
"Without courting?"
"Courting among Were-cats begins and ends with 'do you want to sleep with me?'"
Ariana laughed. "Well, the poets among the Were-cats must have a hard time paying the bills."
"Probably. If there were any romantic poets."
"Well, have you ever loved someone?"
"Once," he sighed, thinking of Jesmind.
"What happened?"
"We tried to kill each other."
Ariana gave him a wild look, then burst out into gales of uncontrollable laughter. Tarrin didn't find it to be very funny, but if he were human, he had to admit that he probably would have. Not for what he said, but in the offhanded manner in which he said it. It almost did sound like a joke.
Jegojah strode into the campsite about then, carrying Sarraya by her wings, as the Faerie thrashed and hissed and threatened the Revenant with all manner of vile, ugly ways to die for a second time. Jegojah seemed thoroughly unimpressed by the Faerie's warnings, finally dropping her near the fire. Sarraya just barely managed to get her wings going before hitting the sandy ground. "Jegojah, he found the Faerie in one of the old buildings," he replied, "surrounded by Sandmen."
"They couldn't hurt me, you blockhead!" Sarraya screamed at him. "I was doing something important!"
"And what would that be?" Ariana asked.
"Oh, I see you're here," she said. "Well, I found a temple, and I was studying it. I was trying to find the names of the old Dwarven gods. I think that's some pretty important information."
"Important enough, it is not, to die over, no," Jegojah said. "One Sandmen, he was nearly inside the temple, yes."
"They can't enter it," Sarraya told him waspishly. "I know they can't, because they tried long before you got there. They won't come inside the temple's walls. And I have no idea why."
"Spirits, they can't enter ground consecrated to a god, no," Jegojah told her. "The power of the god, it repels them, yes."
"You mean all we had to do to get away from you was hide in a church?" Tarrin asked. "And how did you get on the Tower grounds? That's holy ground for my Goddess."
"Holy, yes, consecrated, no," the Revenant answered. "A difference, there is, yes."
The connection instantly clicked together in his mind. He remembered his talks with the Goddess about other gods, and the differences between Elder and Younger gods. "Wait a minute," Tarrin said quickly. "You said that the church repelled the Sandmen?"
Sarraya nodded.
"And that's an effect of consecrated ground?"
"It is," Jegojah affirmed.
"Then I think that the Dwarves aren't as extinct as people think," he announced quickly. "The gods of the Dwarves are Younger Gods. Their existence depends on worshippers. If that church's power is still in effect, then the god to whom it's consecrated still has to be alive. And that means that he has to have worshippers."
"That makes sense," Sarraya agreed. "I couldn't find a name anywhere in the temple. Or more to the point, I couldn't read anything. It's all in Dwarven."
"I doubt they'd be gracious enough to write things in a language you could understand, Sarraya," Tarrin said bluntly.
"You mean that there may be Dwarves still alive somewhere?" Ariana asked.
"I'm pretty sure of it," Tarrin replied. "They're probably living on some distant continent, far away from here, but there are still Dwarves. There have to be, if their god still has power in the world."
"Well, wonders never cease," Ariana smiled.
It made no difference to him one way or the other, but it seemed odd that they would discover that the Dwarves weren't really extinct. But that was a subject for another time. Tarrin was sleepy, and now that Sarraya was returned safely, he had no reason not to go to sleep. So he stood up long enough to shapeshift into cat form, then curled up into a comfortable ball by the fire.