? New FREE Patreon Post: The Heaviness of Singer Lain: Fawning

  I just published a deeply personal post about the trauma response fawning—why it happens, how it protected me, and how it shaped Lain (yes, literally) in Singer Lain, especially going into Book Two.

  If you’ve ever wondered why she endures what she endures—and why that matters—this is the clearest window I can offer into the heart of the story.

  Snow fell thin as ash against the chapel windows. Myren heard the hymns from outside, the harmonies drifting through the cold night air like trails of warm honey. The full moon stood high above the Cloudspine, washing the snow-covered clearing in silver. Inside, the Kelthi of the mountain hamlet had gathered for the monthly moon service, a practice older than books. It was an hour of song and communal breathing, of caring for the wyrms below them. The steady thrum of harmony carried them through winters harsher than this one.

  But tonight, something else lay beneath the songs, a watchful quiet.

  Myren stood near the rear pillar, half in shadow, half in the soft spill of lamplight. From here she could see the whole room: the bowed heads, the flicker of scale lamps, the stairs that led down to the crypt, and Nimaira swaying gently with her newborn daughter. Little Lhainara slept curled against her mother’s chest, her ears still soft and curled with white spots, her tiny breaths nudging at the edge of the song.

  Warden Oranthis stood stiffly beside them, listening for more than the hymn. His glance kept drifting to the chapel door.

  “They’ll come soon,” he murmured when Myren passed near him. “The envoy.”

  “Envoy,” Myren repeated, though the word settled uneasily in her mouth. “At moonrise? With Brighthand escort?”

  He didn’t answer. Nimaira gave Myren a small nod, as though asking her not to stir the air any further.

  Myren tried to focus on the chant, but the hum beneath her feet tugged at her attention again. The wyrm egg, deep in its chamber under the chapel floor. She felt each tremor through her hooves. The wyrm’s daughter, asleep in her shell, waiting for the world to be ready. It was a comforting presence on most nights.

  Tonight, its pulse was quickened, restless. Myren felt its resonance more sharply than anyone else. There were not many fully Tuned Kelthi in the world – it was rarer for them than it was for humans – but Myren was Tuned enough that it sometimes felt like the egg breathed with her. Tonight, the breath came with a note of unease.

  Myren braced one hand against the stone pillar. “The egg’s uneasy,” she whispered.

  Nimaira’s gaze flicked toward her, anxious but hopeful. “They said negotiation,” she murmured, more to herself than to Myren. “Their missive spoke of peaceful intent.”

  “And Brighthand armor,” Myren said,“says otherwise.”

  Nimaira inhaled sharply and pressed her lips to Lhainara’s brow. The child stirred but did not wake.

  The Dagorlind had never visited this far north without suspicion trailing behind them like a cloak. But these were Nara’s parents, hopeful and earnest, too willing to believe people might do the right thing if given a chance.

  Oranthis stiffened. “We can’t assume treachery.”

  “And we can’t ignore the signs,” Myren whispered back.

  “They came last winter without bloodshed,” Nimaira pointed out.

  “And left after taking half our stores,” Myren muttered.

  Nimaira gave her a firm look, but Myren caught the tiny quiver in her eyes. Even she, ever hopeful, wasn’t entirely convinced.

  Then a knock sounded at the door, and the hymn snapped off with a collective gasp.

  Oranthis stepped forward. “Open it.”

  A man unlatched the door. Cold air surged in, carrying snow and torchlight.

  Three humans entered first, Brighthand soldiers, torches held low, their armor gleaming icy in the moonlight. A Glinnel followed, hood shadowing her face. They did not bow, nor did they remove their helmets. They stood like a verdict at the threshold.

  Myren shifted deeper behind the pillar, the angle hiding her from their direct line of sight. She could slip to the staircase unseen if she moved carefully.

  “Good evening,” Oranthis said, voice steady despite the tremor that went through his tail. “You’ve traveled far. What matter brings you to us?”

  The Glinnel’s tone was too calm as she spoke. “We come to address concerns regarding your village.”

  No one dared voice the fear that rippled through the room. Dagorlind concerns were dangerous, especially to Kelthi.

  “We would be happy to allay any concerns you might have,” Oranthis said without a trace of worry. He was always a good liar. “How can we put your mind at ease, Sister?”

  “Elder.”

  Oranthis blanched. “Of course. Elder. My apologies.”

  The Glinnel tilted her head, as if gazing around the room, though her face was still shadowed. “I am told this village houses a great bell where your people chant and sway and perform your snake-dances.”

  Myren frowned. As if what they did in Ivath was so very different.

  “Many Kelthi settlements do. This is not so strange; The Dagorlind have long allowed us our ways.” Oranthis’s tone tread carefully around the edges of actually correcting the Dagorlind emissary with her sword-bell legion. “Have there been complaints from downwind? I am sure we can’t have been that loud.”

  A small chuckle prickled one side of the room and was quickly stifled. The Glinnel was still as stone.

  “Your lowing calls and barbaric atavisms have been tolerated to a point, because they are less than wind to Ivath and the great Underserpent of the Dagorlind. But they have increased of late, and grown in intensity, and we have finally discovered why. Do not be glib with me, Warden: It would cause me no end of joy to end your vulgarities once and for all. We have been granted insight, and we will not leave until our concerns are put to rest.”

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  Nimaira stilled with a fury only those who knew her would recognize, a tension of the hands and neck. Oranthis didn’t take the bait, but Myren didn’t need her Tuning to feel his offense.

  “Your concerns must be very grave, Elder,” he said softly.

  “The gravest.”

  “Let me be grave as well, then. Whatever you feel about us, the Dagorlind have allowed us to live as we always have: in peace and privacy, and at a far remove. I promise you, we are no threat to Ivath. Nothing has changed here.”

  “Beyond your nascent blasphemy, you mean.”

  The word sucked the air from the room.

  Nimaira’s arms tightened around Lhainara. A few Kelthi edged closer to their families. Myren felt the egg’s pulse hammer through the stone.

  Blasphemy. This had been a snare from the start. Oranthis tried to stop what was already in motion.

  “We speak no ills of the Dagorlind or the Underserpent. We tithe and pay the homage asked of us. There is no blasphemy here.”

  “There is corruption under your very feet, of the rankest defilement. This village is beset with Wyrmrot.”

  This time the fear was unstemmable. Someone in the room shouted “No!” The Brighthand each put a hand on their sword hilts, setting off a chorus of sword-bells that stood Myren’s fur on end. Oranthis held up both his hands.

  “Elder, there is no rot,” he insisted.

  The Glinnel pulled back her hood, and her pleased smirk turned Myren’s stomach.

  “You compound your sin,” she said.

  Warden Oranthis took a step forward and a Brighthand drew his sword in response. The Warden placed himself between the blade and his people.

  “Don’t do this, I beg of you,” Oranthis pleaded. “There are children here. Newborns. Innocents.”

  The Elder’s smile widened. “And you have damned them, Warden.” She waved a hand. Two Brighthand soldiers advanced toward the altar.

  Myren’s breath caught. The egg.

  Nimaira met Myren’s eyes with a glance that was brief, urgent, and unmistakable.

  Myren slipped behind the pillar and stepped lightly down the narrow stair. The voices above muffled into a tense hum. At the bottom, scalelight flickered along the crypt walls, illuminating the dozen Kelthi gathered below – elders, children, anyone unable to stand in the colder air through the full-moon service. They looked up when Myren burst through the doorway.

  “They’re here,” she whispered. “And not as envoys.”

  A quiet dread rippled through the room. The ancient eyes of Tharion met her own, his antlers so large and gnarled with age that his neck was nearly as wide as his face.

  Myren crossed to the alcove where the egg lay nestled in its bed of warm moss and woven blankets. She knelt beside it. The shell glowed faintly, as if lit from within.

  When she touched it, it pulsed sharply with fear.

  “I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m taking you out.”

  Tharion stepped forward. “You must go on without us. We cannot follow.”

  Myren froze. “What?”

  “If the egg is removed hastily, the tunnel will collapse. The tunnel is anchored by the egg. It is meant to house it when it hatches. It will pull its energy from the tunnel when it is moved.”

  Myren looked toward the back of the crypt. An arched opening led to the narrow escape tunnel, carved generations ago by the wyrm that slept now beneath them. The wyrm that had gifted this egg to their people.

  Remove the egg, and it would fall.

  “Then go ahead, and I will follow,” Myren said urgently. “I will take the egg out last.”

  “We would slow you,” the woman said.

  Myren shook her head. “You can’t stay –”

  Something heavy slammed to the chapel floor above. A cry followed – cut short.

  Myren swallowed a sob.

  “Take her,” the woman whispered. “The wyrm-child must live. We will hold the door as long as we can. Perhaps they will not find us here.”

  Myren wrapped the egg in its wool blanket. The moment she lifted it, the tunnel groaned, a deep, grinding rumble that shook dust from the beams.

  She ran.

  The tunnel vibrated under her hooves as she sprinted, ducking under a low beam just as it cracked behind her. A burst of cold air signaled the passage’s end, she was almost there –

  The tunnel collapsed behind her. The force knocked her to the ground and she rolled, instinctively cradling the egg to her chest as her shoulder struck the dirt. Then she scrambled to her hooves and climbed the final incline, bursting out between boulders into moonlight.

  She turned just in time to see the chapel ignite.

  It began at the corner beams, a sudden bloom of orange that licked hungrily up the carved wood. The Brighthand fanned out around the structure, torches raised, shadows leaping monstrously across the snow.

  Then came the screams.

  At first just one, a high, ragged cry scraping the night, but it was joined by another, then a brutal reversal of the chorus they’d only just been singing. Myren staggered backward, nearly dropping to her knees as bodies pressed against the chapel windows from the inside, palms slapping desperately against the shuttered frames. Someone smashed at the glass with their forearm. It cracked. A Brighthand soldier strode forward and slammed the flat of his spear across it, forcing the trapped Kelthi back into the smoke.

  “No,” Myren whispered. Her throat closed around the word.

  She took one step toward the chapel, then another. Her breath came in short, stunned bursts. She could see shapes inside, the flailing of antlers, the flash of scales as bodies heaved against the walls. A child’s voice shrieked for its mother. A man coughed so violently she could hear it from the ridge. The fire roared up the rafters and the moonlight flickered as smoke belched out of the roofline.

  Another window shattered outward. A pair of hands clawed at the ledge, an elder’s great antlers silhouetted for an instant in the firelight as he tried to pull himself through. Before he could climb out, a Brighthand guard struck him with the butt of a spear, once, twice, driving him back into the inferno. His scream cut short with a sound that did not seem Kelthi.

  Myren lunged forward, heart cracking in her chest. She made it three strides before the egg in her arms jerked wildly, a fearful tremor vibrating through her whole body. She faltered.

  If she went back, she would die. The egg would die. It would have all been for nothing.

  Snow hissed as burning debris fell from the roof. The chapel walls bowed inward with a groan that sounded like sorrow itself. Another figure hurled against the window, a woman this time. A Brighthand seized her by the wrist as though to help her –

  – and shoved her back into the flames.

  Myren pressed a hand to her mouth. A keening sound rose in her throat. The cold bit through her coat, through her hooves, but she couldn’t feel it.

  She should have stayed.

  A crack split the air as everything but the central beam of the roof caved in, sending a column of sparks spiraling upward like fireflies fleeing a dying lawn.

  There were no more screams.

  Myren trembled under the silvered sky, vision blurring. The egg pulsed against her ribs, frantic at first, then softer, as if sensing her despair.

  She bowed her head until her brow touched its warm shell.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t –”

  Her voice faltered.

  Smoke billowed in a great black plume over the chapel, obscuring the stars. The Brighthand moved methodically through the snow, knocking down any Kelthi who crawled free of the wreckage, making certain no one lived to tell another story.

  Myren forced her hooves to turn. One step, then another. Snow crunched beneath her, muffled under the weight of grief. She did not look back again.

  Only when the mountains softened beneath her hooves and the first warm breath of morning spilled up from the earth did she allow herself to stop. To sit. To cry.

  The egg vibrated, weak and uncertain.

  Myren drew a shaking breath and held it close. “Hush now,” she whispered, voice breaking. “You’re safe. I’ll get you home.”

  And with the burning village still smoldering behind her, she stepped into the shadowed cleft of the hidden valley, alone.