Sterre’s dark gaze flicked towards Het Vuur, though she didn’t turn her head towards him. His sightless eyes stared back at her, somehow all the more piercing despite their uselessness, and his lips were parted as he puzzled over her words. She wondered what he was thinking.

It had become harder to tell lately. Things had changed.

And yet, she was not surprised to see the way his open lips quickly contorted into an angry scowl as he growled his response. How could she have ever expected anything different? Het Vuur didn’t like not knowing things, and she knew that same feeling. That did not make her own reaction any less aggressive than his own, however.

Sterre had never been fluent in her mother tongue, and without Het Vuur beside her speaking it for the last few years she had grown only more rusty, but she could infer his meaning from the tone of his voice. Besides, if there were only a handful of words that stuck stubbornly in her memory they were the curse words.

She pinned her ears back, flashing the whites of her eyes as she tossed her head angrily. She didn’t know exactly what he thought she was going to say that was making him so sullen, but she knew that his unwarranted rudeness was pissing her off.

“Don’t fucking speak to me like that!” she snarled, spinning around to face him.

Her expression was menacing even though it would be wasted on Het Vuur. Logically she knew his anger was misplaced, but her own frustration and raging hormones only drove her to fight fire with fire. The venom rose up like bile in her throat.

“Not everything is about you, you know. Just because you went blind doesn’t mean the rest of us ceased to exist.”

She was quiet a moment, shaking her head in anger. This exchange was going even worse than she had imagined it would, so she decided she might as well spit out what she had to say right now and get it over with.

“I’m pregnant,” she spat. “Je dom neuken.”

this thing of darkness
I ACKNOWLEDGE MINE