Private Tales Scorched Earth

[Raigryn Vayd]

Raigryn was slower to pick up each sign. He was older, distracted and had a head full of far too many facts already. Fife was always more precise with her hands. Hands better suited to lifting purses and making intricate gestures.

Maellarn was rarely harsh, not obviously. She would repeat the correct gesture until he managed it to her satisfaction.

Fife was taking this very well, he decided. It also made him face up to the reality that she knew him and trusted him. His fear hadn't even been for he might do. It had been that Fife would immediately jump to conclusions about his intentions. All those things he worried about. If her faith had been broken because she had feared that everything he had done for her had been for the wrong reasons.

Even thinking about it made him realise how flustered and irrational he was. He had been entirely convinced that he had been teaching a young boy for many months. Fife had seen quite how real his surprise had been.

"Raigryn?"

Maellarn's voice in the middle of a lesson usually meant something had gone wrong. She was watching him with one eyebrow raised.

Dark straight hair, not tall, not short.

Good. That will be enough for today.

As she stood and turned away Raigryn pulled a brief grimace at Fife. He had been caught in his own thoughts.

 

[Fife]

She finished, and both she and Maellarn turned to Raigryn, but he was worlds away. Not a good place to be when she was flying to teach them. She got his attention with his name, and he answered, but it was clear that none of them were very invested in lessons when there were other things that needed handling.

Fife measured his face before he looked at her, biting back a smirk and glancing over at the idemni all wandering away now.

You want to go talk to her? I am going to the lake while I am allowed to. She had already brushed the horses and had nothing better to do with her time before the dinner hour. She had a moment to be grateful it had come out that she was female well before coming here. That made keeping a sober expression more difficult.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

Ever since she had said that she actually quite enjoyed contact he had wanted to hold her close. There was a bond between two empaths and it would grow stronger as they held less back from one another. Yet physical contact was still a way to find mutual understanding and comfort that couldn't be replaced by magic.

"I will follow her to apologise when I do not suspect she is going off to torture secrets from an enemy spy," he replied. She had dropped that piece of information deliberately. It would not have been without reason.

Meet you at the tent.

It still tickled him how literal the tent sign was made with both hands. Most of their sign was one handed so it could be done with a weapon in hand.



Back at their tent he was left with his own thought and feelings. He was left with a book that had broken free of its shackles. Yet the book was no longer quite as dangerous to look upon. He suspected that one day it would sit up on the top shelves with the other emotional moments of his past that had been an gone. It didn't feel that it would go away any time soon. Fife was over in the oasis, having her hair braided and...

He drew that line of thought to a sharp stop. The page of his real book had been open almost since he had arrived and Fife would be back any moment.

 

[Fife]

She couldn't help snickering at that, quickly hiding her grin behind a hand and looking around to make sure she hadn't been caught. No matter how hard she tried to be serious, she was all too barbaric about her frequent shows of mirth. It was strange how much a year could change a person.

Fife waved to Raigryn, agreeing to meet back at the tent before dinner, and made for the lake. Now the middle of the afternoon, and the sun was hot, but the shade of a few trees made it rather pleasant. There had been many nights in Elbion she thought she would freeze, fingers and toes and nose red and burning. She would take the worst heat over a hundred days than to experience that feeling again.

She found a shady spot to sit and listen to the gentle waves of the lake lapping at its rocky shore. It was warm enough she would have liked to be in the water, but had sense enough to stay out. Perhaps she would fess up to not being able to swim?

It was one of many things she sat and thought about. Having the time to simply think was both good and bad. Good: she untangled her thoughts and ruminated. Bad: it often turned over more questions than she had started with or was able to answer on her own.

Unable to avoid going back forever, however, as the sun was creeping across the sky and the men would be coming to bathe around dinner. She didn't want to be anywhere nearby when they did.

Fife returned with much of her usual afternoon pep. Whistling hello and kicking off her shoes with a smile, she might have easily forgotten their earlier conversation. She took off her sword and knife before going to her usual seat at the table, but leaned over to look at his book.

Still reading that one? See? There was nothing scary about this. It was just her and Raigryn. He had been feeling this way for a while now, and nothing had changed when she was still clueless. This could still be the same now that she did know. Right?

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

"Erm, yes, still reading, this one," he replied, his hands still holding the book. Having thought about it, he supposed the men got the better deal, able to wash away the grime of the day before going to bed. He didn't feel like heading down to the secluded corner of the oasis just yet.

"Do you want to come and read for a while?" he asked, shuffling toward one corner of the pillows. A part of him thought this was a bad idea. It whispered that he should have gone to his half of the tent and hidden in shame. He didnt want to make her feel even more awkward. She was handling this with surprising maturity, given how little charitable human interaction she'd had in her life.

 

[Fife]

At his question, Fife appeared to stall. She sat perfectly still, watching him for several very quick heartbeats, then looked to the other side of the cushions to give it the same blank look. All of her confidence from the moment before vanished. She'd been the one to suggest sharing the cushion pile earlier that same day. Her expression was void before she drew a deep breath.

It didn't matter. It didn't change anything. She wouldn't have hesitated if she hadn't known.

Fife nodded. Unsteady hands unwrapped her new book and she sat down at the far end of the cushions. Probably too far to be reassuring, but still so close he could hear how she struggled to breathe evenly. She was sure he would be able to hear her heartbeat, clamoring like a bird desperately trying to escape her ribs.

But it was progress -- a show of trust that knowing what she now knew didn't undermine what they had spent a year building. Looking over at him, Fife offered a smile that appeared far more settled than she felt.

Not that scary. She was a liar. It was terrifying, and she had no doubt that a taste of that fear was bleeding through in spite of her efforts to keep it quiet. Sitting this close,it would be easy to scrape the excess from the top. But Fife was also quite sure it would have been just as stressful without today's revelation.

Pushing it from her mind because thinking about it only put it more into focus, she turned her mind to the book he had given her instead. She'd flipped through his tomes and had always treated them carefully. Books, as Belduhr had explained in an overly wordy, long-winded explanation, were expensive for the time, care, and materials it took to make them. His press, though new, produced more quickly than the traditionally hand-written process. It was, however, still time-consuming and the materials were just as costly. And Raigryn had said this one was special, rare. Also something about its owner and lists he would like to stay off of. She would be careful, then.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

Raigryn tried to put that fear from her mind. There was a swell of temptation to reach for it and drain it away, to ease her nerves. That would most definitely have been crossing a line. These were feelings that she needed to sort out on her own.

It brought to mind a question. All those emotions he had tapped into upon request he had done without qualm so why did it matter now? He was close to this and saw that it was wrong. How many times had someone else been on the receiving end of a shift of emotions from empathy and blamed the mages? How many times had that happened before the call to have his discipline of magic banned had become loud enough to reach court?

"I should make a better show of pretending to read when I'm wrapped up in my thoughts and just skimming pages," Raigryn said with a smile, trying to ease the tension. There was always that itch to try and make things better, even when he knew the real issue was time.

 

[Fife]

Of course, when he made a joke, she was looking up with a smirk. His little jest served to soften her nerves just a bit more. Fife made a small show of leaning to look at the page he was on. When it was, in fact, the same as what she had seen earlier, Fife laughed more genuinely.

You are ridiculous, she signed with a shake of her head. She really didn't understand where all these apparent thoughts of temptation were coming from. She was the least tempting person she knew. Fife sighed.

Fortunately, I am more forgiving than Maellarn. Do as you like; this is your home. Where better could he let his mind wander? Here, at least, he wasn't going to get in trouble for it.

Settling in again, his ruse worked. The soft grin wore on her lips as she returned to her book. The first page was daunting, but with her mood lightened, she wasn't as dissuaded as she might have been. Fife sat upright, the cushions little more than a formality beneath her, and she rested the book on her thighs and bent knees. Her shoulders were still drawn up and tense, but eased as her focus shifted to words instead of his physical proximity.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

Now he had revealed the concept for the purposes of humour he actually had to concentrate on the subject matter. This of course revealed to him that the content of the book was downright tedious compared to what his mind could imagine.

There was a war inside his own mind. Worries over ruining their relstionship and his temptations were dragons of ice and fire winding around one another in battle.

"Any words yet?" he asked quietly, trying not to break the silence too quickly.

 

[Fife]

She had almost chipped away at the first page when he asked about words. She looked up at him and shook her head. Not yet. He had been right that it was relatively simple. Compared to his boring books and Belduhr's letter, it was pleasant. She had the same habit of chewing her lip idly as she concentrated.

Returning to it, she made it through to her first page flip before she looked up with a rather silly grin. Like it was some kind of great achievement. To her it was. It might have been simple, but it was exciting in a soft, quiet way.

Fife did, however, finally come to a word she didn't know. Her brow creased and she stared at it for a while, trying to make sense of it before finally turning to Raigryn.

I don't know the meaning, she signed before holding the book out and pointing to the word in question.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

"Oh?" Raigryn asked. He shuffled closer across the cushions. He placed a hand under the spine of the book, thumb in the crease and twisted it around slightly. cello

"Oh you do know this one. It just looks very strange written down. That's curiosity," Raigryn explained. He did a quick scan of the page and nothing else stood out. This was a better way for her to learn. To relax at the end of the day instead of suffering more lessons.

"I think you'll enjoy reading," he replied, still blissfully aware of the accurate recreation of the original elvish in chapter three.

 

[Fife]

He half turned the book away from her, a single hand managing what took her two. His hands were very close to hers, but he had to shift over to read the word she pointed out for translation. "Curiosity." Good to know she had been very far off on that one.

She watched him as his eyes scanned the page, the ease with which they roamed over the text. At this proximity he looked like an entirely different person. It was an odd feeling, like she knew what he looked like but couldn't really describe it. His eyes especially. They just seemed brown from a distance, but this close they had depth, were more than just brown. They were dark like well-used leather to a softer color reminiscent of the shiny back of a summer beetle.

Fife looked away with a smile when he finished, pulling the book back into her lap. She must have been feeling anxious because her pulse had picked up. And was her face warmer? Finding where she was again took a conscious effort, and this time she had the presence to put her finger down in her spot to mark it.

A lot of good it did her when she immediately lifted her hands to speak.

I like it so far. I am very slow. It could very easily take her all day to read what he read in less than an hour. Still, she was learning.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

Raigryn could feel her eyes on him. He was trying not to sweep his gaze over her in return. He knew what would add flame to the dry kindling. Raigryn didn't want her to think worse of him. To think he was becoming lecherous. Mostly, as before, he was worrying on her behalf too much.

"As long as you are enjoying the reading then it doesn't matter how long it takes you to get through it. Its one of those 'the journey is more important than the ending' kind of things."

Ragryin settled down to his own book, this time close enough that his elbow brushed against hers every time he changed the page

 

[Fife]

Raigrun never failed to deliver with a piece of sagely wisdom that made her shortcomings easier to swallow in the grander scheme of progress. She was enjoying it. That didn't surprise her; he hadn't shown her anything she had disliked yet.

Except that thing with the plague ghouls. She had definitely disliked that.

The longer they read in companionable silence, the less she thought about how close he was sitting or the fact that his elbow brushed his. It sent a shiver up to her shoulder the first time, completely pulling her from her thoughts of the words on the page. Perhaps she had overestimated how big the space was. Or, more likely, how big he was. While Fife was aware of just how small a space could be before she couldn't fit, judging him was a greater challenge.

The story was off to a steady start, and Fife occassionally asked him for words. Some were entirely new, but most were just strange spellings. She worked through what she could and asked him about what she couldn't.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

By contrast, his book was no as exciting. Yet he did manage to delve into it. There was a rhythm to the words on this one. Almost a plain poetry of the history it described. Like a metronome for the mind that ticked along to while away the time.

Realising that some hours had passed he slowly closed his book. He reached out without much though and rested his hand on her shoulder.

"Do you want to get some food now?" he asked.

His brain was dragged from the rhythm of the writing and into a more discordant dance. Fife had a slender form, her shoulder engulfed by his hand. She likely never would grow much more given her age. All down to not enough food.

Her grey eyes held much more detail this close. Patterns that almost seemed to hint at colour, without being so arrogant as to parade any vibrant hues.

 

[Fife]

She had always liked listening to tales at taverns and catching the performances of bards and minstrels where she could. She had always enjoyed any of Raigryn's tellings, whether real or imagined mattered little.

This was certainly no different. Every word built toward a picture in her mind. Page by page, she was slowly engrossed by the story.

Fife had gone a while without asking for help when Raigryn put his hand on her shoulder. She jumped and heat immediately rose to her cheeks. Turning to him with a smile, she nodded.

Always. She added the sign for humor, as if it was necessary. Fife slipped out of his hand like water, fluidly rising and quickly stepping to the table. Her face was still rosy as she picked up a delicate feather and placed it in the book to mark her place. It wasn't necessary, but she put it back in its wrapping. It kept her hands busy, which distracted her mind. She had done it and nothing bad had happened.

The smile shs gave Raigryn was almost victorious.

What do you think it will be? No doubt something they had had many times already and likely spicy.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

Raigryn offered a slow nod of appreciation at his she treated the book. He truly, truly, did not what to deal with the wrath of its owner if they took it back damaged. Even a single folded corner could be fatal.

"It's going to be between slightly and very spicy," he replied. "What do you think..."

Red, yellow, orange or brown? He asked, continuing to practise his colours from the signing session.

Fife was taking this far better than he might have expected. He felt a deep satisfaction, a joy, at knowing that came from a core of trust that had built together.

As was typical of the evening, he groaned as he stood up to pack away his book.

 

[Fife]

Orange or red. You will be very happy and I will burn like midday. Fife sighed, but there was still a hint of smile at the corners of her lips.

She was smiling now while she could. Fife was doing her best to balance the strong neutrality of the Idemni culture and finding out that she really did enjoy being happy. It was surprisingly easy to shock their hosts, as it turned out, and that was with what outsiders considered basic human affection.

There might have been a time when she would have agreed with their culture's principles about emotion. Fife hadn't been expressive still a short time ago. If Raigryn had brought her here first, she would have been an entirely different person.

That gave her pause. If people could become Idemni, that earlier version of herself might have. Would she have stayed and he gone, alone? That that upset her at all spoke volumes.

It was an odd moment for feeling the slight and sudden swirl that leapt through her, between questions of food spice by color and Raigryn groaning in complaint as he stood. But she shook her head to dispel her thoughts in favor of a question that didn't elicit that odd mix of sorrow and joy.

How old do people live to be? she asked, rather suddenly. You're not that old.

She paused, looking up at his hair and reconsidering the statement for far too long with raised brows before shaking her head once more.

No. I have seen old and you are not.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

He wouldn't have expected Fife to be dropping that question now. His eyebrows told that story in a truly scandalous manner by Idemni standards. The expression slowly shifted down into a warm grin.

"No I'm not that old," he admitted. "War is quite horrible. All those battles take a slow toll which mean that I sometimes ache in the evening."

He mentally married up a flash of confusion and what he had been saying.

"A toll is a charge people take for something. Like the tollman on that bridge west of Belgrath," he explained.

"I'm forty eight, a lot of people don't make it this far. But I have heard of men making it to almost a hundred years old. Hopefully I'll make another three decades," he mused.

 

[Fife]

It had been a serious question, and that it might have been offensive was missed on her. He seemed amused by it, if obviously surprised. She listened as she pulled on her little boots, but looked up with a moment of surprise.

100? She couldn't even imagine. Several aspects of that statement blew her away. Fife felt a very real moment of sadness in the wake of her awe. She supposed a drawback of finding friends was the eventuality of them leaving in some way or another.

She shook that feeling very quickly. No thank you.

You are 48? Do you know the day? Her smile returned. She put her arm through her sword belt and waited at the front of the tent for him.

Fife had a starry look about her eyes, generally associated wifh learning basic concepts that were still new and exciting to her. Knowing the date of one's birth might have been mundane or inconsequential to anyone else, but she didn't have the first clue about hers. It made everyone else's so much more mysterious. Her upbringing had been so different that she might as well have been raised on a whole other world.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

"Bt the calendar where I was born the seventh of Alva," he replied. His voice stretched out over every syllable as he replied. Realisation hit him and he continued.

"Of course you don't know, do you? Well, why don't you pick a day and we'll celebrate another year on that one every year?" he offered.

He wondered if she was giving much thought to the age divide between them. He had been. He had been a lot.

 

[Fife]

Fife added that to her growing catalogue of knowledge. She was well accustomed to memorizing things, never having the convenience of the written word of the ability to ask for details a second time. She was reluctant to be thankful for how challenging her life had been, but it had borne some useful skills.

She actually frowned at the idea of picking a day. There are a lot of days. She looked uncertain. Can I consider it? How did one go about picking a day?

Her smile rebounded quickly, however. Prancing ahead of him outside, she walked backwards a few paces in order to face hin as she signed.

How old do you think I am? She had already made it clear that she wasn't sure. She had gone off of a vague sense of time in her earliest memories to those which were tangible. By her guess, she might have been twenty, but also two years on either side of that. A four year range wasn't much in a broader sense, but she was still young enough it made a difference.

But as soon as she asked the question, she realized what she had said. Fife was sure to put a few more steps between them as she bit back her smirk in public.

Then again, you really believed I was a young boy. You may not be the best to ask.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

Raigryn had to mentally rally himself a little. The conversation was edging into territory he was struggling to face up to himself. He had known plenty of couples between older men and much younger women, but the practise was far more common in the nobility. In those cases it was usually an older Lord looking for someone young to bear children.

It all left him with a slightly awkward feeling. He was an empath and he knew what his feelings were. Denial hadn't worked in several weeks of trying.

"You haven't grown any taller since I've known you, even eating properly. People don't normally stop growing taller until they're an adult. You look much better for putting some weight on. So I'd guess at over eighteen, but I don't know by how much. You remember the year where Elbion was hit by blizzards all winter? That was...eleven years ago."

 

[Fife]

He must have been mulling on something, but she wasn't sure what about this was bothering him. She felt a tad guilty for teasing him about it. It was hardly his fault she had passed so convincingly. And she supposed his current feelings weren't easy knowing he had believed her.

She was thinking about apologizing, but her cheeks colored at what might have been observation or compliment. Fife wasn't quite sure.

Regarding the blizzards, she felt a spike of pain at the memory. Her smile was gone.

Yes. Unfortunately, she added to herself. Fife looked away as she tried to think about how to describe any defining features at that age -- whatever it had been. She was very obviously having a hard time with it, skirting the memory that upset her.

I remember a couple years before then, too. 2 or 3 years? Really well. I was a child but not small. I was by myself after.

// Raigryn Vayd //​

 

[Raigryn Vayd]

A shame that almost any memory of large events in Elbion would be painful for her. Painful for any living on the streets. Raigryn nodded solemnly.

She was a child by herself after? Just her expression elicited a pang of regret. He hadn't meant to draw on such a particular pain.

"If you properly remember back forteen years then...you're probably nineteen or older Fife. Somewhere between eighteen and twenty one.

"Would you like a hug?" he asked softly. The notion of counting seemed far less important than the memories he had drawn her too.