I looked over my shoulder to tell him it only seemed polite, that I was already an imposition, but I couldn’t get the words out. He was naked. Unabashedly so. I blinked once or twice and whipped my head away. I swallowed and found I still could not conjure up any words. It was, in fact, the first time I’d been in a room with a naked person since, perhaps, my birth. Certainly I had not been in the same room as someone in that state in my conscious life.

“Look, you want the inside or the outside?”

I hastily rolled up my bedding and made for the door, my chin tucked down and my eyes pinned to the floor. I was almost there when Sorcha caught me by the wrist. “This is improper,” I croaked.

“What’s improper is you being such a dainty priss. Come on, man, let’s just get some sleep. I’m the youngest, yeah? I’m used to sharing.”

“I’m not. We don’t. I…you’re naked!”

“Well, yeah.”

“I can’t.”

Sorcha sat on the bed. He leaned against the wall with his arms resting idly on his knees. He’d chosen a place in the small pool of light from his lantern. From the corner of my eye I could see the smooth, unbroken lines of his body. “Can’t what?” he asked.

“I can’t share a bed. It’s not done.”

“Really? Not even with your brothers and sisters?”

“I’m an only child.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, so I should really just…”

“So, what, you just up and bolt whenever you’re done fucking?” he asked. I glanced over. He was stretching, his arms snaked up the wall and his chest pulled tight and tall. He caught me looking and grinned.

I turned a deep red and stared at my feet. “That’s not done, either.”

Sorcha laughed. “Oh, sure, me neither. Certainly wouldn’t ever, no. Sure, Ariah. Look, just curl up and get some rest, eh? You can have my spare blanket all to yourself. We’ll have to share a pillow, though.”

Now, I have always been impressionable. It has always seemed to me that to go with the flow of a situation is more prudent than to hold steadfast to arbitrary rules. And I was very tired, and perhaps still a little stoned. The mattress didn’t look like much, but I’d just spent weeks sleeping on bedrolls so thin they might as well have not existed, or trying to sleep sitting upright in the train since the elves’ cars never have bunks. As impressionable as I was, there was yet one thing that held me back. “You’re naked,” I said. I just blurted it out, my voice horrified and slightly shrill.

Sorcha laughed. “Fucking hell, that’s what’s keeping you on the floor?”

“Well, I…yes?”