Rue laughed a little laugh of pleasure when she realised it was Bracken from the Ancient System hesitating about outside her tunnels. She recognised that he was not dangerous from his noisiness and diffidence about entering her tunnels, and the fact that he had approached from the direction of the pastures suggested who it might be. She went up to one of the entrances and the sight and scent of him confirmed it. So she laughed, because she was more than glad to see him. But she wouldn’t make it easy, oh no! Not she!
In the three days since he had left, she had been ever so busy. Scurrying about cleaning the place of dust and old vegetation, and finding the best place for worms—just as she had in the adjacent Hulver’s tunnels. She sang songs to herself that she had not sung since puphood and which she had forgotten that she knew. She shored up one or two tunnels, sealed all the entrances that lay towards Hulver’s tunnels and started to extend the system on the other side. She made her burrow in the tunnel that Bracken had burrowed for her because it had such a lovely quality of sound to it—just as he had said it would have—and then she slept in it long and peacefully, like a log. When she awoke it was a lovely misty September dawn and as she poked her snout out of one of the entrances and looked about, and then came back into her tunnels again, she asked herself, ‘What’s it all for? What do I want such a well-burrowed system for?’
She answered herself as quickly as a September mist clears on a sunny morning: ‘For mating. That’s what!’ She fancied having an autumn litter. She fancied hearing pup cries up here on the slopes where those old stick-in-the-muds down in Barrow Vale said nomole ever had litters. Too ascetic and dangerous, they said.
So when she heard Bracken snouting about outside soon afterwards, she could not help laughing for the pleasure of it and with delight that her life seemed to be taking a turn for the better at last. So she started the pretence that she didn’t want to see him by running up to an entrance where he was wondering whether or not to enter and saying, ‘It’s my system now, Bracken, so even though you did stay here once, you can’t anymore.’ She even pretended to snarl a bit and scratched the wall with her talons.
Bracken crouched out on the surface listening to these goings-on in some puzzlement. He could hear what she said but it didn’t match up with the nice way she smelt. He had been near plenty of hostile systems in his time and none had ever smelt quite so welcoming as these tunnels of Rue’s.
Bracken hesitated at the entrance, not quite sure of himself, but not so dim as to think that he could really be hurt by Rue. ‘Hello!’ he said, in as friendly and open a way as he could muster when Rue reappeared. ‘I was just passing!’
At this Rue laughed out loud, scratched the side of the tunnel a bit more, than backed a bit down the tunnel snarling and growling in a delightfully pathetic way that invited Bracken to follow her down the tunnel, which he did.
‘Um,’ he began, ‘what a lot you’ve done here!’ This turned her snarls into giggles and he laughed, too, and soon they were playing such a delicious game of scratching, snarling and talking nonsense that Bracken began to enjoy and relax into it. He wasn’t quite sure of Rue—he thought correctly that this was her system now and that he must not take liberties with it—but he knew that for the time being at least she wanted him to be there.
Suddenly Rue ran off, and Bracken heard her crunching away at a worm. He stayed where he was and soon she came back, bringing one for him. They ate in silent intimacy. When they looked at each other again, she was a bit meeker and her eyes were shiny and her mouth open. She crouched still and he came up to her, snouting around her, diffidently at first but then more boldly, more deeply. He liked the delicious moistness of her, he liked her snouting at him, under him, over his soft parts that grew harder, he liked her smiles as if she knew a delightful secret that she wasn’t going to tell him, but much, much better, that she was going to show him. He scratched her with his paw, nuzzled hard into her, pressed himself closer and closer to her, as she twittered and champed and swung her back round to him and then back-quartered into him and he into her.
‘He’s like a pup,’ she thought delightedly, because she had never mated before with a mole who was barely an adult. But when he finally understood what it was about, and was on her and taking her, she was surprised at his strength and laughed with pleasure at his delight in her and at the shuddering way he relaxed into her.
