Editing Story:ROAD TRIP! (Warhammer High)/Part Four (section)

===Freya's Gifts===


One quick trip in the lifts later, the group bedded down.  As Alex struggled out of his vest, Freya closed the door to their suite and pondered the day.  “What do you think of my home so far?” she asked.  Her reflection in the mirror on the back of the door showed her in her Fenrisian cloak, and she paused to adjust the drawstrings, idly closing the hood over her face.

“I had a blast,” Alex said, his voice muffled by the shirt he was removing.  “The ocean was amazing.  I can see why you wanted to come back, it’s a hell of a planet.”

“All you’ve seen so far are the military and some water,” she pointed out, playing with the hem on her cape.  “The parts that will stick…we haven’t seen them yet.  Thanks, though,” she added.

“Rock-climbing tomorrow, then?” Alex asked.

“Yep.  Ever gone?” she asked.  She slid her hands behind her and unclasped her skort, letting it fall away.

“Nope.  Should be fun.”  He sprawled back on the bed, fumbling for his slate.

Freya walked up beside the bed, sliding the cloak’s clasps loose and draping it over a chair.  She settled down beside Alex and watched over his shoulder as he checked his messages.  “Hmm.  Nothing.  Want to write home?” he asked.

“No, I’m fine,” she said.  She tugged her shirt loose and snuggled against him as he turned the slate off.  “You’re not writing?” she asked.

“I sent a message while you were already here on the Fang,” he said.  He peered up at her.  “So…why did you ask Konnar to tell his story to us?”

“I thought it would be interesting for you guys to hear a real Fenrisian storyteller,” she said.  “Wasn’t it?”

“It was.  I just thought he was going to go on a rant about pyskers or something, from the way he was building it up,” Alex truthfully said.

“Mmm.”  She rolled away from him to lift her own slate from its slot on the charger.  “He’s a psyker, you know.”

“I thought as much, but I couldn’t have been sure,” Alex said.  “What time should we get up tomorrow?” he asked.  “And is there a gym for serfs?”

“Sunrise.  And we’re going mountain climbing, you won’t need a workout, trust me.”  Freya sank back onto the bed, reading over her own messages.  “Fuck.”

“What?”

“I have over seven HUNDRED messages,” she said.

“What?  How is that possible?” Alex asked.

“They’re not Astropathic.  They’re from the Brothers, welcoming me home.”  She smiled wistfully.  “I missed you guys too,” she said, running a fingertip across the slate’s screen.  Freya started paging through the messages, reading and deleting them as fast as her eyes would allow.  “Awww, that’s cute,” she said.

Alex sat up to look over her shoulder.  “What is it?”

“Not a specific letter, the others are just really pleased to see me.”  She paused her perusal to glance back at him with a watery grin.  “I missed my pack, baby.”

He sat back on his haunches.  “What does it feel like?  That’s not really an instinct I have,” he said.  Her statement had been an acute reminder of her non-human side, on a day that had been full of them.

“How can I answer that?  I’ve always had it.”  She thought it over, putting the slate down.  “Hmm.”  She reached over and lifted her cloak from its seat back.  “All right…you remember the way it felt when your rugby team won the championship last year?  After the official party, and everyone went to the afterparty at Carlos’ house?”

“Yeah, it was rad as hell,” Alex said proudly.

“You spent the whole night with the team, just rejoicing.”  She rolled the cloak over her hands.  “Same feeling.  Not just pride and accomplishment, but confidence.  You felt like you belonged.”

“Yeah, I did,” Alex said.  “Is that what it feels like for you?”

“No.”  She sat back down at his side, running her fingers over the pelts on the hem of the cloak.  “I felt that way when the wrestling and track teams won, too.  It wasn’t like this.  It was like…that, plus…”  She sighed.  “You ever been to one of Uncle Vulkan’s house parties?”

“Uh…yeah, with you, a few times,” Alex said.

“You know how after a while, it just feels like nobody there is out of place, even if you know they would be in any other context with the same people?  Like, I remember the first one Jake went to.  He spent most of the night on the rooftop gardens with Venus, because he was so nervous around all the Space Marines and nobles.  Hell, the EMPEROR dropped by later.  But by the third or fourth party, Jake was chatting, shaking hands, telling stories.  You were too, after a while.”

“Yeah.”  Alex felt the pelt too.  The fur was surprisingly thick and heavy.  “So…it’s like the two feelings together?”

“Sort of.  It’s like them, only even more.  You know?  It’s…”  She screwed up her face.  “I’m sorry, I don’t think I can describe it to a human, even you.  I don’t think humans can feel this.”

He shrugged, disappointed.  “All right.”

“It’s as much smell as sight,” she said.  “It’s as much ambient noise as speech.”  Freya slid her fingers over the back of his hand on her cloak.  “It’s just…belonging.  Not feeling the need to belong, but being exactly where you want to be.  Terra’s home, I said that on the way here and I meant it.  But this is where my pack is.”

She looked up at him, smiling shyly.  “You being here…contributes something, too.”

He smiled back.  “Thanks, Freya.  Does that mean that you think of me as a pack member, or whatever?”

“I guess so.  It’s…”  She thought it over, then puffed out a breath in irritation.  “It’s so hard to describe.  It’d feel the same if we were on a completely different planet, as long as the rest of the Vlka were there too.”

“Can you identify how many Wolves there are around just by listening really hard, and smelling the air?” he asked.

“Not in a building with closed ventilation, no,” she said.  “It’s easier if I’ve met them more than once.  Like…like you.  When you see me out of the corner of your eye or whatever, you don’t stop to remember my name every time, do you?”

“Well, no.  I know who you are.”

“Right.”  She nodded emphatically.  “I do the same, only for every sense.  It really confused me when I was very small, that I was the only one besides Cora who could do it.  After Miranda and Angela manifested their powers, they could do it with psychic imprints, too, but for the longest time it was just the two of us,” she said.  She leaned in next to him, inaudibly inhaling the air.  “Like…when I smell you, I don’t even think about it anymore.  It’s just… ‘this is Alex.’  Automatic.”

“Hmm.  But when you meet someone for the first time, you identify them with other things?” Alex asked.

“Yeah.  Like that General Mustafa guy from downstairs.  I could tell the second I walked in the door that he’s a problem smoker.  The guy next to him, Bletcher, he used to use Onslaught, but it was a very long time ago, and he’s had at least one juvenat since.”

“Wow.  That must be overwhelming,” Alex said.

“Nah, it’s been like that since I was a kid, so I don’t even notice.”  She leaned back on the bed a bit, staring at him from a prone position.  “I thought we’d talked about this before,” she said.

“Well, in passing, yeah, but it’s never really been…you know, relevant to something we were both doing,” Alex said.  “What do I smell like?” he asked.

“Alex.”

“I mean when we first met,” he said.

“Oh.”  She thought back.  “Just… ‘athlete, lives with both parents, sexually active, hangs out with smokers, mild allergies, loves pancakes,’” Freya listed.

“You can tell all that from just the way I smelled?” Alex asked, flabbergasted.

“Yep.  Or other things.  The way you talked, the way you moved, the way your internals sound.”  Freya looked over at him, coy.  “Did I get any wrong?”

“No, it was all right.”  He shook his head.  “Man…that’s crazy.  How did you know I still lived with both parents?” he asked.

She waved a hand.  “You had pheromones from an adult man and an adult woman on your clothes.  It was an instinctive guess.”  She sat up a bit, letting her complex braids pool behind her.  “It helps that we were in a room that had just been cleaned.  Smell is actually the easiest sense to remember, for humans and for me.”

Alex shook his head.  “Well, it’s amazing, baby.  Your senses blow my mind,” he said with a chuckle.

She laughed too.  “It only really strikes home for me just now much different mine are from normal people’s when I’m talking to someone like this.  Even a Thunderwolf doesn’t have senses as sharp as mine.  They’re something the Emperor designed specifically for the Legion, to make sure we would be impossible to evade in the field.”  She settled back against the pillow with a satisfied smirk.  “It’s just my luck that it makes everything else easier too.”

He lay down next to her, one eyebrow raised.  “How could you tell I wasn’t a virgin?”

She snorted.  “Because the night before I saw Kathy Halsey walking a little funny in gym class, I saw her vanish into a bedroom at a party, with you.”

He blushed a bit.  “You, uh…you saw that, did you?”

“And heard.  And smelled.”  She flashed a smile at his awkwardness.  “Welcome to my life.”

“Uh huh.”  He looked away for a sec.  “Sorry.”

“Psssh, you think you’re the first dude to get laid within a hundred feet of me?  If I held it against you, trust me, you’d never have had a chance,” she scoffed.  She smiled up at him again, a bit more seductive this time.  She traced a finger across his bare chest.  “If anything, it was a point in your favor.  Kathy was having a grand old time.  I wanted to see what all the fuss was about,” she said softly.

He grinned broadly, puffing up a bit in machismo.  “Well, thanks kindly,” he said.

“Which is the only reason I didn’t smack your ears upside down when you tried to smooth-talk me out of my tights after that wrestling meet,” she continued.

He deflated again.  “Oh.”  He peered back down at her through narrowed eyelids.  “I don’t remember you taking it poorly, though,” he pointed out.

“Mmm, well, a nice butt and strong hands are all well and good, but if all you wanted was some Bro Points with your friends for getting off in a Primarch’s daughter, that would have ended VERY poorly for you,” she assured him.  “Luckily for us both, you can cook too.”  She smiled happily at his hurt expression.

“Oh, Freya, that’s just mean,” he complained.

She leaned up and pecked him on the lips.  “I’m changing my college plans to stay with you a little longer, Alex baby, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” she whispered in his ear.

He smiled regretfully at that, and slid a hand behind her neck to hold her to his lips a little longer.  “Sorry to put you out, cutie.”

She pulled away, her eyes sleepy and content.  “No trouble.”  She tossed the cloak over its chair back and rose from her position to begin her bathroom routines.  “Now you rest up.  Mountain climbing works your arms like nothing else in the world.”


Across the hall, Remilia flipped her own slate on in bed to find that she had two new messages.  She opened one to find it to be a routine check-in from Mechanicus station in the outer system, greeting Her Highness Princess Dorn to Fenris, and the other was a message from home.  Responding to the first with a simple ‘Thanks, it’s good to be here,’ she opened the second.

‘Remilia, I hope this message reaches you before you arrive on Fenris.  If not, then you should know, I’ve taken to the field once more,’ the message from her father read.  ‘The Phalanx is plying the stars around the resurgent greenskins, and I will be taking a thousand Astartes from the home guard to join them, with a few dozen Joint Task companies joining me.  We will be gone when you return.’  Remilia closed her eyes in silent frustration for a long moment.

She opened them and resumed reading when her irritation faded.  ‘I know I said I would be there when you returned, if I could.  Sadly, I can not.  The rising tides demand my attention, Remilia, and I am sorry.’

“Sure, Dad,” she said tiredly.  “Of course.”

‘I do hope you have found this trip of yours fulfilling.’

She giggled.  “In more ways than one, Dad, but let’s keep that to ourselves.”

‘I know the worlds you’ve selected are hardly hospitable ones, and I was saddened to hear of your friend’s injury on Nocturne.  I hope he’s well again.  When you return, please stop by to see your mother before Orientation, she’s worried sick over your choices of destinations.’

“Can’t blame her,” Remilia said.

She skimmed the rest of the brief message and turned on the transcriptor to compose her reply.  As soon as she was done, she sent it and switched off the slate.  She settled back against the rough sheets.  “Wonder what Fenrisian rock climbing is like.”