The Heir of Ithalos

Three had set off by the Westerland road, the well trod path that carved through glen and hillock alike. A hundred miles at least they plodded along the Empire's reach in the deepest parts of the south. The air was too hot for early spring, permeating even the dense shade of an Alabama woodland. It was only eleven in the morning, or was it ten in these parts? Knowing the time of day by anything other than where the sun declared, was all but impossible in the wilds. Den Fletcher licked the dry from her lips and thought it closer to noon. If there was light, the horses would push, for they told the time no better than people. If they grew weary, they would rest for a time— in shade or night, whichever found them first.

It had been six days since the capitol, and eighteen times had the horses rested. Tyrus was rank with sweat and Elia had long overstayed her turn in the shade of the empty carriage. Den sighed deeply, the palms of her hand no longer the lightest hue of brown, but now the chafed red of one who had carried the reins far past her allotment. Pain did not matter, Elia was the chief source of complaints. Den despised the recruit, and expected only disappointment from her. Elia who had not struggled as Tyrus had for her position, who'd neither graduated from the University as Den had, nor served in the ranks of the guard for longer than the boot camp that she skated by on daddy's good graces. The longer Elia rested there, the more scorn Den bore her. It would drive her mad if she did not distract herself soon. The welling of hate had been subtly growing more obvious in her sighs and breaths and although Den would deny it, it was purposeful. Den wanted desperately for Tyrus to validate her turmoil. 

"Furthest you've been out, eh?" Tyrus said, taking the reins from her hand. She breathed in the humid air, peering through the canopy and into the ashen veil. It was almost beautiful; she could almost see the sun behind it. Looming, marching towards its equinox. A beast caged by what carnage the earth had wrought in her throes, trying to burn them as it had in ages past.

"Yep." She said, without looking away. The back of Den's head pressed against the roof of the carriage and she felt the warm wood upon her scalp in great comfort. The breeze whisked through the woods and kissed her cheeks and open palms, a much needed rush of vigor. "Couple of miles back was the furthest."

"We're holed up in the Rouge for ten days at the least. Know what you wanna do while you're there?"

"I'd heard about the hunts."

"They don't take outsiders on those, let alone a tax collector." He sounded solemn in his doubt, the gruff voice of a father figure telling his child that they are too young to play in the woods past dark. Den had loved to play in the woods past dark.

"Why not? I've heard it's dangerous. Gators and the like."

"I've seen the skulls. The funerals. It is best left to those who are born to it." Tyrus said, gently for fear of sparking resentment, but Den brushed it off and nodded.

"Big skulls?"

"I saw a skull with a maw that could fit you in there standing at it's widest point."

"Only out west." She laughed. "I think I'll stick to what Dad taught me. Deer and hogs."

"For the best likely. Too much meat on a three ton gator, you couldn't eat the thing given a winter and a cart of ale to wash her down."

"That's..."

"That's a lie. I've seen you eat, girl." Tyrus corrected. Den gave the older man the satisfaction of a laugh and lifted her head, turning to peer through the small gap in the carriage. Elia was awake after all, reading a book, too engrossed to notice Den staring at her. Den turned around and reached out to Tyrus, asking for the reins.

"You sure?" he asked. She nodded with a devious smile upon her face, holding the reins in one hand and a single finger to her lips. Winking at him to play along, he smiled back at her.

"How many are there?" Tyrus whispered, loud enough that Elia could discern a newfound seriousness in his tone. Den could faintly hear the clop of two bookends trying to reach each other.

"At least six or seven." Den replied in her own serious whisper.

"Horses?" he asked.

"As many."

"Armed?"

"To the teeth."

"Go then, ride like the wind."

Den set the horses to a full gallop and Elia bounced around in the carriage barely holding on by the handle above the seat. What luggage they had tied down in the back-most seat almost burst from its constraints. Elia grunted and to Den's surprise edged her way to the inside of the gap in the seat, exasperated and looking for words.

"What's going on!?" she finally managed upon.

"Bandits, hot in pursuit, shoot them from the top-hatch." Tyrus ordered. Scurrying, Elia began loading shells into her double barrel shotgun, fumbling many of them onto the carriage floor as she did. When she finally managed to put two rounds in the gun, she popped open the hatch and peered out of it. Seeing nothing along the trail behind them.

"Where'd they go?" Elia asked. Den slowed the horses down to a trot.

"We lost them while you were loading shells." Den said. "Mary-Lou and Ole Brownie are some of the fastest mares the Empire has. Malnourished bandit horses stood no chance."

"You bitch." Elia said. Den handed the reins over to Tyrus and stood upon her seat, bowing as to an audience, almost taking the low-hanging limb of a tree to the back of the head for her efforts.

"It is well past time you relieve Tyrus his watch."

"I cannot tell the time out here so well."

"Nor can you ask?" Den said.

"It is best you just tell me, since you're out there where the sun is plainer to see."

"That is fair. From now on I will simply tell you when to wake, when to sleep, when to eat, and when to shit." Den said.

"Vulgarity again, Miss Fletcher. Again I am in great wonder where you get it from." Elia retorted. Den's jovial attitude had ended in a snap like the sudden onset of winter. It was all Tyrus could do to press against her leg with a free hand. Den turned to the open hatch where Elia sat awkwardly with a shotgun resting on the roof.

"Ms. McKinney, I'll ask you once not to talk about things that you are uninformed about." Tyrus said with a glare that could stun a raging bull. His pale blue eyes coursed over her and lulled her fire. She climbed back into the carriage and rid herself of the gun before crawling back out and sitting atop the carriage, laying her back across the smooth seams of the now closed hatch.

"I suppose I'll take the reins after we water the horses, aye?" Elia asked. Den knew the girl had heard rumors of her brother, but family was a sore spot right now. Den's father had passed away amid the winter. His old bones were not want for another year, especially another year in absence of his beloved wife and son. Den would not begrudge Elia. This once. Elia had Tyrus to thank for that.

"Aye." Said Den. "We're a mile and a half from Callum's Hill. Ahead of schedule by a full day no less. We'll stop the night there. Tyrus could use a hot bath and I could eat a chicken or two before we get back on the road."

"Then I'll take reins first thing in the morning if it please you. I'm sorry for speaking out of turn, Miss Fletcher." Elia said.

"Think no more of it." Den replied as Elia fell back into the carriage and continued to read as they rolled over bump and root. Den would think more of it. She did not expect an apology from the girl, did she respect Tyrus enough to apologize for his sake? It was an open secret that Elia did not much care for Den, and in turn Den thought her a product of nepotism. Elia, like many looked down on Den for her brother's actions. Isaiah going AWOL all but ruined her chances at graduating into rank. She had opted not to even test into the military because of the malicious gossips. Den had been lucky enough that Isaiah deserted amid her sophomore year, that she'd had time to pivot into a good internship at the treasury. Every moment she spent on trails of Surtres made her glad of her choice. That she needn't heed children such as Elia in times of war. That she hadn't been shipped off to Mobile or god forbid Virginia. She ate well on the road, hunted when she pleased and sat behind a pleasant little desk in winter, counting what coin was owed or gathered. Allen Temeris was a kind man to work for, and his older brother, Prime Minister Winnower Temeris was a paragon of peacetime leadership. Such had not always been the case. Edward Carradine, had been a ruthless man and Winnower's predecessor. Carradine had called troops from the Mobile garrison, gotten Isaiah's lover killed in his arrogance. It was always this way in wartime, the peaceful despise the warmongers. So too did the warmongers harbor disdain for her ilk in peacetime, the only difference was that her ilk were on the right side of history.

The town drew closer and the bumpy road began to branch off into smoothed inlets of neighboring houses. The omnipresent trees became more disparate from one another although still present, like a thinning of hair upon the soil of these lands. Den saw a burgundy house with a lopsided shingled roof through a thin copse of trees. As they followed the path to town proper, a church of Christ painted white with stain-glass windows loomed over them. From the porch of it sat an old woman reading her bible in a squeaking rocking chair. Looking up with deep brown eyes beneath a tan sunbonnet. The woman eyed them curiously, but probably noted the crests on their uniforms. She smiled and nodded to them in passing going back to her pages.

They found the inn without trouble. Elia stayed outside with the horses, hitching them and giving them what was left of their apples. Inside the bar was mostly empty, a lone woman sat in the corner, red-haired and nursing an ale as she wrote in some ledger. Startled by the brash light of the open door, she stood and swilled her drink before rounding the counter in a hurry. In doing so she failed to suppress a belch that Den could smell the falafel on before she'd even made it to the register.

"Howdy howdy, I wasn't expecting y'all for three weeks and some days too. I ain't finished yet, you'll have to give me a few days." The woman said.

"We're actually from Georgia, pay no mind to the uniforms." Tyrus said, "Just seeing about a room for us and the horses." Tyrus placed six slabs onto the table, iron pieces three millimeters thick and an inch and a half long, perfectly rectangular with a small indented letters denoting the origin of the metal. These were all fresh mints not a fleck of rust on them. The woman swiped them up without inspecting them beyond the count. She pocketed one and placed the others in a drawer where they clanked with the coin that preceded them.

"Good then. Shaping up to be good taking for y'all this year." she asked. "Ale?"

"Got cider?" Den asked. The woman nodded. "Then it is a good taking."

"Weather was very nice up until late Autumn last year. Bumper crop."

"I'm glad to hear it." Tyrus said. The barmaid winked at the grizzled man, he was around the maid's age although he didn't look it. She bore the pale skin wrinkled skin of a tombling. The only thing aging Tyrus were scars on bronze skin, one above his right eye, and another along his left cheek, deeper but not as lengthy. He was not interested in flirting although Den had seen him interested elsewhere. This woman was not his type although his type usually wore down his will with steep mugs of the golden brown. He refused the offered ale and cider and chose instead well water and a piece of brown bread.

"Stomach troubles?" Den asked.

"No, just cautious this far west." Tyrus replied.

"We've not left Surtres yet." Den said.

"I seldom drink out west. Collecting taxes in Columbus and collecting taxes in Baton Rouge are entirely different beasts." Tyrus said. His voice was one of warning. Den couldn't help but pay closer attention to his scars as he spoke. The shorter one had been a knife wound, she'd know the shape of it anywhere. Her father had one on his lower back, he felt phantom pain there sometimes. He never wanted to talk about it though. Den assumed Tyrus wouldn't be forthcoming with the story of his own either. The two were so similar it almost felt like having him again.

"I will limit myself to just one, since I've already ordered it."

Elia came in from the heat with beads of sweat upon her brow that she soon after wiped on the sleeve of her red-checkered flannel. The skin on her face were almost as red as her shirt, although she'd never let on in spirit.

"Veil parted?" Tyrus asked. He had barely even glanced at her, just enough to know the finer details of his surroundings. Enough to ensure that no action needed to be taken on his own part.

"For a few seconds. Didn't notice until it started to sting." Elia replied.

"Happening more and more lately." The barmaid said as she returned with the cider, bread, and a pitcher of ice water. She poured three glasses of water and divvied them. "Don't go touching metal poles around here unless you know them to be cool. Your skin will stick to them same as in the dead of winter."

"Sane advice, ma'am." Elia replied. The three took their waters and swilled before pushing cups of rattling ice back towards the woman, who pushed the pitcher toward them and walked around the counter.

"Let me go get them horses up, y'all take a load off." She said. Pulling a pinched brown cowboy hat from a hook in the corner. The three took a seat at the bar and nursed what was in front of them. Tyrus split the loaf in three and handed each of the girls a bigger piece than his own. Then ate his slowly, sure to wash down every bite. It was stale, three days old likely, but not without its salt and sugar. Not doughy either which was uncommon even within the reaches of the capitol.

The woman came back in fifteen minutes, said her name was Candice and asked for theirs' that she could pen them in her ledger. They obliged and went back to their sitting, more restful than the bumpy carriage albeit not as soft as they'd have liked. An old man walked in while they waited and sat, served in less than a minute without a word between. He drank his tall beer from his brown glass bottle and slumped over in his chair asleep, all within thirty minutes. Candice then brought from the kitchen a warm meal of pulled pork and coleslaw. Dry but with a smooth boat of barbecue sauce in the center of the table to drown it in. Elia slid five iron to her and bargained a beer such as the sleeping man had swilled. When their own stomachs were full, Candice took them to their rooms. A two bed room for the women, and a single for Tyrus. Such was the way in Christian settlements, what were left of them. It was naught to complain about. Usually it'd be three to a room with one to four beds between each and all. To have her own bed at a reasonable price was well worth the coin, especially after six days on the road. She'd likely sleep four hours now then wake again for dinner. When her head hit the pillow the void would not find her. Instead she lie awake, staring at the ceiling. It wasn't that the bed was not comfortable, but rather the racing thoughts that had plagued her for two months now. Her father's face, growing sicker, paler. His tight skin over brittle bones. The way his shirts covered him like a tarp in his malnourished state. She'd rather nightmares of the end times.

Den managed to find sleep eventually. That it took so long was why it startled her to wake. Wondering what time it was, whether she had slept for centuries like a child's fable. She jerked up and sure enough Elia was there reading, startled by Den, she slammed the book down and glared.

"Sorry." Den said, running her hands across her forehead, throwing the hot covers from her body to the side.

"No worries. Nightmare?" Elia asked.

"Dreamless."

"Seems even worse that way, no?"

"Of course." Den replied. Elia didn't close her book, but instead set it on the blankets that covered her legs.

"You're a silent sleeper." Elia remarked. "Perhaps that is just when the sleep is dull and uneventful? Do you dream often?"

"Only once or twice a week usually. That I can remember."

"I struggle to find sleep, when I do I scarcely dream, once in a moon at most. Usually something mundane like going to the store with my father, although he is not one to spend his time so frivolously." Elia said. Den thought that the girl looked forlorn and longing to vent her frustrations. Den relented. Then she considered.

"You don't want to be here." Den said after careful moments of silence.

"What do you mean, of course I want to be here. Where else would I want to be?" Elia asked. She closed her book this time and sat upright. Sipping from a glass of water on her nightstand. Den had read Elia, and Elia had moved to defend herself, knowingly or not.

"I mean that this is your first job, a job that some work decades towards. Given freely by your father, despite the fact that you show far more interest in equestrianism." Den said. Elia looked as if she was about to speak in her own defense, but Den continued. "It explains why you hate taking the reins, but love feeding and grooming the horses. Why you took five minutes longer than necessary tying them up outside. It is unacceptable for the Treasury Secretary's daughter to wind up a horse-breeder. I looked at the tax records the moment you were assigned to this unit. The moment I knew that you were Tyrus' responsibility, the moment I knew that my promotion would fall to you should I fail and you succeed. You're here because of the well documented purchase of a track and stable in the heart of Macon. Admiral Aldous McKinney, Secretary of Treasury made that purchase. You'd work your job, move up the ladder, groomed to be his successor. In exchange you would have your off months in leisure. Does that sum up the bargain?"

"Why would you do all of that, say all of that? What do you have to gain?" Elia replied. "It is not unheard of for a daughter to follow in her father's footsteps."

"Had you followed in the Admiral's footsteps, you'd have saved three-hundred and eighty-two lives in the Chesapeake before aspiring to the department of treasury."

"Is it just that then, that you have no room in your heart to let me earn your respect?" Elia said harshly. "Are you so bitter of your own lot that I should not have a chance? Or do you wish your own family were suited to do the same for you? To do the same for your brother?"

"I respect your father as I respected my own. They both worked very hard, the difference is that you seem to think that your father worked hard so that you wouldn't have to. My father taught me to work knowing that I would have to. Your father may think that his gift, his bargain is one of love, but it is an exchange that neither of you understand the consequences of. You are going to fail out here. This is not an opportunity, it is a responsibility, and a dangerous one at that." Den said as Elia looked on in what seemed to be abject horror.

"I was trying to be kind to you, Miss Fletcher. To be a part of this team. That we may come to respect each other. You are a vile person and I'll be glad when I take whatever promotion is intended for you." Elia replied and picked her book back up, flicking to a page in the back half of the novel.

"Do you know how many people return from this route?" Den asked. Elia sat ignoring her for a moment. Den let the silence wisp around the room, filling in the corners. The cracks in the dresser and underneath the doors leading away. The echoes of silence could last until morning if Elia let them, Den would show no weakness in speaking again first no matter how much it pained her to wait, but every moment that Elia stewed in that question added emphasis to the answer that rested on Den's tongue.

"How many?" Elia asked after twenty minutes of silent sitting.

"Sixty percent." Den said, and the stubborn stoicism fell flat, letting fear ripple across her face. "It had been forty percent once. Then the Treasury permitted the corps to remove their uniforms before they crossed the border."

"Your point, Miss Fletcher?"

"Is that of three of us, one is likely to die, and that a failure on your part might condemn one of us rather than your own self. What I don't understand is why your father would send you on such a mission. Are you on his wrong side? Or did he want a boy?"

Elia's face no longer colored itself bronze but the swell of beet red under orbs of ghastly blue. The gun on her bedside table was calling to her and Den could see the contemplation in the girl's eyes. Den sat up herself, feeling her own gun which she kept under the pillow. She hid it in her lap beneath the blankets, praying that she wouldn't have to use it. That Elia would keep her senses.

"Your brother..."

"Is a deserter, a traitor, a gunrunner?" Den said, cutting Elia off. "You think that I haven't heard it all before? You're a home-schooled brat, I wouldn't expect you to understand that others have said exactly the same things you're thinking to me one-hundred times over. Your father wants you to be something you aren't. I understand that much. How are you resolved to fix it?" It was the question that forced Elia's eyes away from her iron. Her face cooled and she stewed in the doubt wrought.

"I wanted to show him that I could do this, then in autumn thrive with the horses, demonstrate to him that it isn't fancy, that I could just do that and quit this place at a gain. Before I left, he told me that his support is contingent on this job. That the family is more important than my personal needs."

"My mother told me to work on sewing that I may be a seamstress worthy of a good husband. My father told me to be a woman that people aspire to imitate. My brother told me to get as far away from this place as you can and take as much as you can with you when you go. I loved my father."

"Must be nice?"

"I loved my brother more, before he split. He'd always been a scoundrel, but he taught me how to fight, flip relics, and shoot. I'm as much a scoundrel as him, and I've no clue why he did what he did because I wouldn't have turned on Surtres for the price he did. The guns that he stole were worth a sum total of three-thousand silver coins. He'd have made the same in three years time. Even less had he been promoted."

The two had calmed then, Elia's teeth were gritting audibly, likely from the chill, and her eyes never left Den. The malice was gone but not the disdain. It made her feel uncertain if she had said what she intended. Whether she had burst and handed all of her ammunition to an enemy. Den sucked in air and sighed a leaden breath on the exhale.

"My point is that my brother didn't leave Surtres for money. It was likely because he felt suffocated trying to do what I'm trying to do. To build. To do what your father is trying to do. You aren't obligated to dedicate your life to his dream. You'll waste a lot of your life trying to, and when he dies you'll be free, but you'll know nothing else. Or you'll be dead, like the other forty percent." Den said. Her hands fell away from he gun and wandered to her pocket. She rubbed her thumb on the smooth red jasper that she kept. The perfect sphere buzzed in her hand and tickled her blood with the latent magic she had come to know. And what is my dream, now that they are gone?

"Come get dinner, it won't be hot much longer." Tyrus said through the door. Neither of them were startled. The air was static and held them both in its stillness.

Seven and thirty. Yes, a good time for dinner. Den's head hit the pillow again once Elia stood. Elia would leave her alone to stew in a perceived anger. No. Den was not angry, nor did she feel the need to prove herself to a little girl with nary an ounce of doggedness or rigor. She stood once the room was empty, seeing that Elia had left her gun at bedside. One by one the brass fell upon the bedside table. Then all at once Den scooped them up and put them in her own pocket. Her service weapon would likely have more want for them. And again her hand brushed against the cool surface of the jasper. It had sung before, but each night she had touched it and the further from home she went, the louder it called to her. She took it out and peered into the smoky surface of the thing. Den's honey-gold eyes smeared by its reflection. What are you? She studied it with her thumb and found no change in it. The same little gift that Isaiah had given the last time she saw him. Would that I'd have had a gift worthy of him. A dagger perhaps, to save me the trouble of wondering what became of him.

The sun shone true through the veil come the morning, birds flitted in the barns and townspeople were rolling in from farmsteads to pitch stalls outside the inn. In lieu of a true market square, each and all simply set up shop around the alehouse and knew it effective marketing. Den haggled an old man down to an iron and a half a piece on six tins of sauce laden baked beans. Those would go well over a fire, or cold in a pinch. Elia walked by Den as she browsed, perusing to seem busier than she was, the items for sale were rather provincial for the young woman's taste and her feigned interest was noticeable even by the half-asleep guard dogs that the merchants had chained to their stalls.

A gray mustached man sold lion's mane mushrooms at five iron a head, which was too rich for Den's blood, but Elia rejoiced at her find and paid two silver. Of course she had silver on her. Conversely, Tyrus bought nothing but hard-tack at a half iron a pound such was his way. Each and every split silver went to his daughter, Corrine; she was fourteen and nearing college age, and he fancied her a doctor as she so aspired. The soldiers that came back from Virgie oft treated their children like this, happy to see them happy. Desiring them no fraction of their old plights. Tyrus neatly placed the tack in a wooden box that he stuffed deep in his travel sack, having no fear of needing it soon after the bread and milk of their breakfast. He pointed to his wrist when he was sure Den was looking. That time at last.

The horses were well rested. What lethargy that had plagued them after their jaunt yesterday was gone and they kept pace for hours past copse and farmstead alike. Rows of sprouting corn surprised Den as she passed them. They were not withered beneath the hidden sun, but flourishing despite its untruth. Elia drove beside Den and likely wondered the same. Den reached into her pocket once more and felt life in the stone. It was warm in the noonday heat and warmer still for what magic endured in it. What happened in Georgia that the magic will not go there? That every step away the strength of it heightens?

The cart hit a bump and Den woke from her stupor to swig from her water bottle. Elia hadn't said a word to her today, she had simply taken the reigns as Den sat beside her fiddling in her pockets like a schoolboy.

They were two days ride from Mobile where they'd scheduled four days respite from the road. They prayed for good weather that they would be spared a stop shortened. Mobile, despite its heavy military presence was a hub of entertainment and good food. It was the most isolated city in the empire and its culture bore no resemblance to any of the other six cities of Surtres. Den had read as much and been told more by Tyrus and Babqui, Tyrus' mentor, whom she had made the Georgian coastal tour with the year prior. Babqui had been revered, and had made the Louisiana run a total of seven times during his tenure, a more than respectable statistic.

Camp was settled come mid-evening and the humidity sunk into their skins like a lotion. Den knew sleep would be scarce tonight. She gathered firewood, washed in a stream, ate and ate again. Nothing tired her. When darkness fell she took first watch hoping to abate her discomfort with the lust for rest that never came. She reached into her pocket and the stone was warmer than usual still. It was almost hot. If it were any hotter she might begin to fear letting it sit with loose bullets. Then thirst took her fancy and she forgot about it for a time, finding it again some twenty minutes later, it's heat waning like the evening stones. Den began to believe she had imagined it all, the buzz in her ear in the dead of night, but as she held it the heat came back to her it was as if by thought alone, acknowledgment were it animate. So she tried her best to put it away, to rest it in her knapsack. She found that she grew uncomfortable with even just the extra layer of separation. She held it to her heart then in the front pocket of her jacket. Then that were not enough either. She made sure none were looking and wrapped it tight in spare cord. She hung it from her neck so that it touch her bare skin. Upon her breast it cooled and rested taught and weightless to her. What anxiety had gripped her for an hour fell away and the world came back to her all at once. Elia was still gone, foraging likely, or jaunting with the horses. Tyrus fished in the stream for what good that would do him. The fire was almost dead when she came back to it. She stoked it hastily. It breathed again to a soft murmur, flickering its life.

I am born again among the reeds,

Laughter rising from the creek.

Smoke belies the city hollows,

Fire grows and fire swallows.

Den sang the song as she was want to. The song her father sang when they went camping, and so doing she didn't hear Elia hearing her, slinking to the log adjacent. Den didn't start, refused to give Elia the satisfaction of making her feel uncomfortable.

Let my body float upon the bay.

A warning to the north's dismay.

Mother Surtres feel no sorrow.

A soldier's life is only borrowed.

Elia sang the next verse albeit a different one to the one Den's father had sang to her all those years ago. Of course Elia's father were likely less shy about the war being that he fought the naval stalemate that lay ruins over Norfolk. The famous battle that left the Chesapeake Bay a graveyard for naval vessels and a wasteland for the fishmongers who'd once settled there.

"I'd like my bullets back." Elia said. It was not the petulant girl from last night speaking, she held something deeper in her tone, something well thought through. "I know why you took them, and it was wrong of me to make you feel uncomfortable despite what argument we were having."

"There are more in the cart, I figured you'd just grab more when you figured it out." Den said.

"Yeah, but I wouldn't be able to kill my ego that way."

"I suppose you wouldn't" Den said calmly. Counting the six bullets she had taken. When she had loosed them she stood to meet Elia, she'd walked to meet her, too close for a comfortable exchange without the tight bending of elbows. The girl was taller than Den by a half-foot, but Den had never been intimidated by size alone, even Tyrus scant scared her when he was trying to be menacing or stern. It was one of the few things Den liked about herself; the physically daunting seldom overcame her, which is why she came to hate what she was unsure of. What she feared was a future that she could not see herself a part of. Elia held her hand out patiently but Den was hard pressed to keep her eyes off of the girl's face, a sum of anger, bravado, and somehow sincerity. Den dropped a single bullet into her hand, she was sweating now, unsure of herself.

Elia kissed her. The rest of the bullets didn't really matter then. Den forgot she even held them. A muffled padding on the dirt somewhere beneath her. Den moved to push her away, but when she touched Elia's chest it was soft, her lips were soft too... and so pretty. Elia was a pretty woman, and what must Elia think of her? To assert herself like this. Who was she in this woman's eyes, in her innermost thoughts? How many moments had passed, would Tyrus come back to see them making fools of themselves. They were on the ground then. Dirtying their shirts, pulling hair softly and breathing in each others' ears until they forced themselves apart to breathe cool air that the other hadn't just expelled.

They stood then, each looking around to see what had been seen... only to find a clearing, and Tyrus nowhere to be found. Elia pulled the bullets from the ground and said nothing. Den sat where she had been, fondling the stone, warm again to her delight and tingling in her fingers as her heart settled it back to cool. Elia sat on a dragged log adjacent her and struggled to find words as well. She was deep in thought, her breathing soon slowed too. Den giggled and Elia glanced at her, began to pout but stayed herself, seeing that Den kept eyes upon her in a warm way. Elia chuckled a little until she broke into full laughter.

"What's this then?" Tyrus said, coming from the woods with bundle of fallen limbs. They each turned to stone for a moment.

"Funny joke." Den said.

"Let's hear it then." Tyrus said. Den knew that wry smile that told her that he knew she was lying.

"You had to be there." Elia said quickly. Tyrus nodded.

"Mhm." He said. His eyes on the dirty sides of their shirts. Elia would've seen that he knew, could she muster eye contact with the man. Den began thinking it rather funny, being in on the joke. So long as it remained a joke. She doubted it would have had he admonished her right away. Den feared his disapproval more than a knife in the dark, more than what feelings hid unresolved for having acted upon what she hadn't known she harbored. The stone was hot now, heavy on her neck like a noose. When Tyrus sat down and put pan to fire she settled again. He mixed water in a clay bowl with masa and loose grain until he had a dough. Then he cooked it off in the hot pan until it seared on both sides. He made three cakes and set them aside to cool while he panned mushrooms and cured fish along side each other with oil from a small vial, mashing it into a paste with a spoon as it softened. Last was the rosemary, not to burn it. And then it cooled for just a moment before all had decided they'd waited long enough. For the day had been torture after a good rest before. The second day from town was always the easier, but a reward at the end made the first bearable. It was salt and earth, the smell of smoke saccharine and seeping. What wind blessed them calmed the fire as they ate and grounded them in their lives as they were. Not as they could be, and not as they had been. And Elia's smile had been beautiful between every bite. Between every sip of cider that passed her tender lips. Den couldn't help but smile herself.