Fawn laughed. “Naturally.” Her mind started to drift off in a little lewd speculating of its own, abruptly jerked back to attention when Dag continued in his thoughtful-voice.
“I’ve never made a child, myself. I was always very careful, if not always for the same reasons. There’s not a few who have trouble when they switch over from trying to miss that target to trying to hit it. All their prior care seeming a great waste of a sudden. The sort of useless thing you wonder about late at night.”
Had Dag been doing so, staring up at the stars? Fawn said, “You’d think, with that pattern showing in women’s grounds, it would be easier rather than harder to get a baby just when you wanted.” She was still appalled at how easy it had been for her.
“So you would. Yet so often people miss, and no one knows why. Kauneo and I—” His voice jerked to a halt in that now-familiar way.
She held her peace, and her breath.
“Here’s one I never told anyone ever—”
“You need not,” she said quietly. “Some people are in favor of spitting out hurts, but poking at them too much doesn’t let them heal, either.”
“This one’s ridden in my memory for a long, long time. Maybe it would look a different size if I got it outside my head rather than in it, for once.”
“Then I’m listenin’.” Was he about to uncork another horror-tale?
“Indeed.” He stared ahead between Copperhead’s ears. “We’d been string-bound upwards of a year, and I felt I was getting astride my duties as a company captain, and we decided it was time to start a child.