Excerpt: Tangled in Tendrils [WT]

Sounds of a fight filtered out of the dense shrubbery on our left. Growling and snarling, blade clashing against blade.
Marten pushed me deeper into the shrubs beside the path we had come on. „Put your back against that tree.“ He was whispering urgently, pointing to an oak standing a few steps from us. „I don‘t know who of us they are after. We need to keep you safe.“
I hurried to the tree and pressed my back against the bark. Marten lifted my arms and led them around the trunk of the tree so that it looked as if I was embracing it backwards. He pushed my head and feet back so they were also touching the bark. He fetched something small from a pocket and pressed it against my lips. It was a tiny and ice-cold pebble. „Lay it on your tongue. Do not swallow it“, he instructed me. I did what he said, shivering from the look of fright I saw on his face. Marten closed his eyes, one hand cupping my throat and one pressed against the bark of the tree. His lips formed words too quiet to hear.
Something or someone was moving through the underbrush beside the path, keeping out of the light.
[much later]
Ariane stared at her. Her gaze flipped to the pregnancy-test, back at Alanna's face, back at the pregnancy-test screaming its two blue lines to the world.
“Oh shit!”
Alanna sat down heavily on the loo. “I did not think... How could this happen?”
Ariane laughed. “You should not be so surprised. Mattis and you were all over each other. There was something bound to happen sooner or later.”
Alanna looked at the test again. Pregnant, huh?
Ariane went over to her and hugged her. She raised Alanna's face.
“How do you feel about it? Apart from the shock and surprise.”
Alanna twitched her shoulders in a minuscle shrug. “I love Mattis. He is a good man. I am sure he will be a good father.”
What she did not say was that her thoughts kept gnawing on one fact and its consequences. One fact Ariane had no clue about. Mattis was not human. In fact, he amounted to what could safely be called an alien. She was pregnant from a different species. What would happen? Would the baby be alright? Would she? Who could help her if something went horribly wrong? Where could she go to have this baby?
Ariane hugged her again.
“Will you tell him?” she asked softly.
“Eventually I will,” Alanna said. But who knew if the elven warrior would be overjoyed on hearing the news. Sharing your bed with a human was one thing, being burdened with a child by her something else entirely, maybe.