Post by Eurydice on Apr 18, 2008 21:50:32 GMT -5
((For Mene and Kavrin, en route to Laxwind. This took way longer to type up than I thought it would ^_^ I am blaming any typos or poor phrasing on the allergies which are currently pwning my noob ass.))
Numberless stars glittered like jewels as smoke from the campfire swept up to meet them, mingling with the wispy clouds that occasionally wound past the moon, nearly at its full circumference for the month. Mene Firiel sat back, scribbling in a little leather-bound notebook that she had purchased before they left Vanlune; her wings were folded primly behind her, and her eyes peeked over the top of the page to take in the scene before her, where Kavrin was frozen like terrified prey, locked in a predator’s gaze. Their half-elven traveling companions chortled and nudged him while he blushed deeply.
It had been like this since the little party had first set forth; Varyn, the head of the caravan, had taken one look at Mene and Kavrin, and immediately “knew” that the two of them were sweet on each other. This news had spread through the caravan like a plague, in speed and, as far as Kavrin was concerned, undesirable effect. The more he attempted to correct their mistaken impression of the matter, the more they smiled and winked and steered clear of the two to assure them adequate “private time.” Mene found the matter a bit embarrassing as well, but it was much more amusing to watch Kavrin’s reactions than to feel uncomfortable about it all.
At the moment, he was attempting to form a dignified reply to Varyn’s query regarding the fact that with little Naira about to get hitched, Kavrin ought to hurry up and help Miss Mene to do the same. The halfies were clearing the dinnerware and laughing. Mene couldn’t help it; she laughed as well.
Kavrin only blushed deeper. “I’ve told you, Varyn, you’re mistaken. There’s nothing going on between Mene and me.”
Varyn’s smile only widened. “Quite right, there isn’t; and so, I’ll leave you two alone so that you can remedy that.” He guffawed once more and, pots and pans in tow, retreated towards the other side of camp. Mene gave a little wave as he went, stifling a giggle as he whispered something to one of the other halfies, both of them erupting into raucous laughter as he did.
She glanced up at Kavrin, who was poking at the fire with a rapier-length tree branch that he had been fiddling with since before dinner. “You mustn’t mind them, you know; you only make it worse by objecting.” Her pen started scratching the page again. “Why does it bother you so much, anyway?”
The young man settled down beside her and started absently breaking up the branch into smaller pieces, tossing them into the fire as the flames danced in his clear, blue-gray eyes. “I… well, I don’t like people having the wrong impression of me.” He smiled uncertainly. “I have enough trouble figuring out who I am to begin with.”
“I should think that being the star pupil of a teacher like yours would give you some definition.”
Kavrin chuckled. “Star pupil? I guess since there’s no one else to compare to, that makes me the star.” He shook his head, fiddling with the last twig that remained in his hand. “Anyway, it’s more than that… don’t you think ‘Turtleborne’ is a silly surname?”
To be honest, Mene hadn’t found anything to be a particularly silly surname, since coming groundside; you couldn’t afford to, really, this far from your native lands. It sounded like a good half-elven name, ‘Turtleborne’ did; so what if he wasn’t a half elf? “It’s a name,” she said with a shrug. “Doesn’t define who you are.”
“Actually, it does,” he said with a sigh. “I didn’t inherit the name ‘Turtleborne’ from my parents; I don’t even know who they are. When I said Kirara was like my mother, I meant it. She found me on the back of a river turtle when I was an infant; she’s the one who gave me that name.”
Mene didn’t really know much about river turtles. They were large, silent, sentient, and, according to Raowlar, very boring. “It still doesn’t define you, does it? It just tells a part of your story.”
He seemed to consider this, laying back against the ground, pillowed against his little bag of belongings. The stars gleamed in his eyes. “Blood flows like the river, from parent to child. They might not define all of me, but my parents define some of me.” He nodded slowly, as if having come to a reasonable conclusion. Mene eyed him; he was, she had noticed, prone to abruptly making similarly profound statements, especially when he went into a rivertrance.
She was not entirely sure what to make of him, in this respect; Kavrin seemed a very knowledgeable, canny craftsman in his art, but it seemed so impractical to Mene, to approach magic from such a spontaneous, wishy-washy , unscientific method. She couldn’t deny the raw power that he could wield, though. It was so curious, this medley of surrender and control, and she wished she had the means to study it more completely, if such a thing were possible to begin with. Perhaps after this little adventure was over, she’d look into the matter.
Well… after she had finished sorting out dragon’s blood, and what part it might play in her alchemical endeavors. There was so much work to do, and only one lifetime in which to do it.
He looked sad and lovely as he sat there, pondering his past, with moonlight washing his face. “Well, I think you did well enough without your parents… your ‘real’ parents, whoever they may be.” She went back to writing.
“I suppose…” he murmured, falling silent once more. His gaze drifted aimlessly between the lines of constellations, as if puzzling out a language there; with so much distance between each letter, so many variables and possibilities, the task was an impossible one, but his gaze remained curious, thoughtful, for it did not matter if he could distill any real meaning from the patterns above; it was the act of searching itself that made any search worthwhile, and all searchers knew that.
Mene, hearing none of his thought process, had drifted back into her own little world and was scratching the idle pen across the paper when out of nowhere, Kavrin sat up and peered over at her, as if she had just said something intriguing. “What are you doing, by the way? You’ve been scribbling in that little book like mad, ever since we left the city.”
“Oh, just…” She usually loved to talk about her work, but ever since acquiescing to the Woolward Academy, she’d felt hesitant, ashamed, like the sell-out she was. Real scientists didn’t get ahead in the world by putting up with stodgy academics who didn’t know the first thing about practical application. Real scientists took risks on their own. “…brainstorming,” she said, after a moment. “Alchemical theory.”
Kavrin nodded, a little uncertainly. “Does it have to do with what you mentioned at the ball? The um…” His brow furrowed slightly as his tongue formed the unfamiliar sounds with careful effort. “Alternation of Sky Elven Blood Chemicals?”
Mene hid a smile behind the pages. Honestly, he was as bad as Naira! “Yes. Ish. Alteration of blood chemistry. It’s…” Her eyes swept the spidery, uneven script that she had written since dinner, hopeless guess-work, all of it, which only practical application would resolve to any sort of surety. If it didn’t kill her first. “Well, it’s slightly risky, that’s all. So, it’s good to know what you’re doing before going ahead and experimenting.” She brandished the book lightly for emphasis.
To her relief, he didn’t immediately jump on the risk factor, as so many did. She couldn’t begin to count how many of her family, friends, and co-workers had chided her for recklessness. “I suppose you can’t accomplish anything worthwhile without at little risk,” he said amiably. “That’s what Kirara says, anyway.” A cool breeze made the fickle flames dance, and Kavrin pulled the cloak tighter around himself, ruminating on the matter. The winter months were a little ways off yet, but the nights turned cool quickly, despite the fire before them. “So, you’re experimenting on yourself?”
She chuckled and drew closer to the fire, wings hunched against her back, hugging her cloak around her against the cold. “Not exactly a plethora of Sky Elves for me to experiment on down here, is there? Besides, there aren’t a lot of us who’ll… accept that the risk is necessary. So I have to.”
Leaning over to the little wood pile, Kavrin took another small log and tossed it on the fire, watching the shower of sparks leap up. “Makes sense. What are you trying to do, anyway? Seems like changing around your blood could be dangerous.”
Mene regarded him thoughtfully, not sure at first how much to explain, how much he was likely to know already. “Well… Sky Elven wings are engineered, not naturally evolved. They’re a fully connected, integrated part of Sky Elven physiology, but not a functional one. In all the history of our people, flight has never been a feasible reality. I want to change that, and I think alchemy’s how it can be done.” She smile wistfully, thinking of that first day that Caban had been assigned as her lab assistant; he’d been so frightfully nervous that he’d barely made eye contact. This will never do, she had chided him gaily. I can’t have an assistant who won’t look up—you will be forever walking into things. That had provoked a shy laugh and a shyer glance. He hadn’t turned away from her after that, though. Until the end of things, of course.
She shrugged off the memory. “Most… well, all of my colleagues think that’s crazy, that our wings are part of our heritage, and messing with them is practically heresy. I got kicked out of our alchemical academy because I wouldn’t stop. But I think we owe it to ourselves, and the only way we can honor our heritage is taking it, molding it, and making it our own, instead of just sitting pretty and letting it be.”
She hadn’t realized how much passion had built up in her voice until she heard the silence between them after she stopped speaking; that silence hung, profound and ineffable, between them, as Kavrin gazed back at her in curious surprise. Mene cleared her throat and, feeling awkward, went back to her scribbling.
Kavrin continued to study her, and the silence did not abate for some time.
When he finally did speak, Kavrin’s tentative smile had broadened into a full grin. “You want to fly?” He watched her nod and shook his head in wonderment. “Wow.”
Mene giggled. “Ever since I was little. Drove my parents crazy.”
“What,” laughed Kavrin, settling back a bit, “did you jump out of windows or something?”
For the first time since they met, Mene blushed; Kavrin laughed, a sound of pure, spontaneous delight. “No! Really?”
She tossed her coppery hair and nodded. “My dad jumped after me, once, just to make sure I didn’t get hurt too badly. I was so mad at him, I didn’t even consider that he might have gotten hurt too, although thankfully, he didn’t.” Her face danced between a smile and a grimace. “My mother was ready to beat me senseless for that, though.
Kavrin shook his head, still shaking with quiet laughter. “I never would have pegged you for the reckless type. So…” He peered over at her book. “Have you made any progress? You must be onto something, otherwise you would be assaulting that poor book so.”
A swift breeze wended between them. Mene bit her lip. “Not for a while, actually.” She looked down. “I was pretty much rudderless, when I landed groundside. I learned a lot living with the wolvans, and it really did revolutionize my work; it was just more in the healing arena, and less in the way of what I wanted to do. The Woolward Academy… brought me in recently, to work in association with them. In exchange, I get to experiment with Dragon’s Blood. I’m hoping it’ll help.” She flourished the book and pen once more. “So, that’s what I’m working on.”
“Dragon’s Blood?”
“I want to get it right, when I finally start using it. Hence all the notes.”
Kavrin’s eyes narrowed. One of the most potent, densely rich magical mediums in the known world, and she meant to experiment with it? One of the most mercurial, unpredictable modifiers that one could add to any spell, and she thought that notes would help? It was something alchemists could study for a lifetime, without learning all of its secrets, and Mene Firiel, this idealistic, young Sky Elf, imagined that a few weeks’ research, would be adequate, allow her to ingest the stuff without dying violently in the process. Kavrin had been around unconventional thinkers for most of his life, of course, but the sheer audacity that this young woman seemed to exhibit on this matter, without even realizing it herself, was astonishing.
Mene stared back, unblinking, defiant, waiting.
Sighing, Kavrin ran a hand through his messy, dark hair, shook his head, and moved closer to her, craning his head to look at the leather-bound book. On sheer, silly instinct, Mene started to pull the papers away, but she stopped once she realized what she was doing. “Let me see what you have,” said Kavrin. He didn’t flatter himself to think that he knew half as much as she needed to know for what she wanted to do, but he probably knew more than she did on the matter.
She opened the notebook willingly, starting at the beginning of her hasty notes; he leaned closer but, perhaps out of respect, didn’t touch the pages, and so she watched for him to nod when he was ready for a new leaf to be turned. In vain, she watched his face for reactions, positive or negative, but the young man was impassive as his eyes roamed along her hurried hand, expressing nothing except to nod once or twice, point at a passage, and move on.
Finally, after a few more minutes of the like, he spoke more definitively. “You should know that Dragon’s Blood itself is very dangerous. It’s not just a… what’s the word… catalyst? It has to be properly neutralized, when you use it.”
Mene listened, captivated. “How so?”
“Dragon’s Blood is… well… I guess you could say that it’s still alive, even after a dragon gives it to you. Riverwater is an intrinsic part of a dragon’s blood, and that connection with the River is like a connection with Ifane herself. That’s why the blood doesn’t die, unless the dragon who gave it does.”
Without even realizing it, she had taken up the pen again and was jotting down notes like lightning. Her hand was moving so quickly that she was brushing her fingers against still-wet ink, smudging blood into connection, Ifane into blood. “Then what does the blood… do? If it’s still alive, how does it behave differently from any other elements one might use?”
“The blood is an extension of the dragon.” His tone was dry, precise, the tone of the scholars that Mene had been around most of her life. It was surprising to hear that tone coming from the young rivermage who frequently spouted strange metaphors and seeming inanities on the nature of life. She didn’t have time to be amused, though; she had to keep writing. “If you have a vial of it, it’s like you’re carrying around a part of him. If you take even a little bit of that blood into yourself, it’ll grow inside you, and the dragon’s soul will fight yours for control of your body.”
The sound of pen on rough paper scratched to a halt. Mene stared at Kavrin, her head tilted slightly. “Fight your soul?” She didn’t believe in souls.
He nodded gravely. “It isn’t meant to be ingested. But there are ways to neutralize the blood, sever the connection.”
“How?”
Deft fingers went to the pen in her hands. “May I?” Kavrin gestured to the next blank page in the book.
Mene nodded, eager to see; she handed him the book, moving closer and craning her neck to look over his shoulder as he worked. “Of course!”
Kavrin’s hand leapt to the page and made a few, quick marks; when he withdrew, there was a cartoonish form of a dragon on the page, as well as a little bottle next to it and a squiggly line above both of them. “A vial of Dragon’s Blood is connected to the dragon’s soul like this.” He drew a few more lines, chaining the river to the dragon, the vial to the dragon and the vial to the river. “Say the dragon’s soul is a river; the vial of blood is connected by a stream that branches off the main river. That’s called a soulstream.” His hand moved over the page again. “You need to block the soulstream from reaching the vial of blood, to ingest it safely. Rivermagic is the easiest way to do it, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.”
She nodded, watching intently and drifting closer as she peered at the drawing. “The easiest way… but there are other ways?” She hoped for runes. Or material components. She could understand those.
“Hm. I’ve heard from some riverwitches that you can block the soulstream using runelore as well. I don’t know, though; I imagine the runes used to manipulate dragon souls would be incredibly complicated.” He shook his head and, not realizing how close she was, turned to look at her, just as she pushed forward to point at a detail on his little diagram; and before either of them was quite sure what happened, Mene’s lips pressed gently against his cheek.
An indeterminate moment passed, and Mene jerked back, blushing slightly; Kavrin pulled away as well, as beet red as he had been when asserting to Varyn that there was nothing between them “W… what was that for?”
Words that didn’t feel like her own came out. “For giving me more information than I had before.”
She blushed deeper as she saw him smile confusedly. From the dregs of her imagination, she fancied their halfie companions watching the scene via spyglass and cheering the two of them on, and that thought managed to snap her out of the surreal pace that had settled on things. She snatched the book and batted him with it playfully. “Just got close, and we both moved fast. Caught me by surprise. That’s all.”
“Oh. Uh… sure…” Kavrin blinked a few times; an uncertain, nervous smile ghosted through the commotion for a moment before he looked away slightly, dazed. A brief, confusing silence ensued, in which neither of them was quite looking at or away from the other. “Um.” Kavrin cleared his throat. “…What was I saying?”
“Um. The soulstream.” Mene shook herself. “Blocking it via rivermagic is hard, but doing it via runelore would be harder.” She handed the book back, feeling slightly foolish for having grabbed it back in the first place.”
“Right.” Kavrin’s fingers flipped through the pages quickly, scanning the pages until he was back on the cutesy drawing of the dragon, the bottle, and the river. “Anyway. I don’t really know much in the way of runelore; and as for rivermagic, I’m not quite sure where to start with that, either. This is difficult stuff, dealing with dragon souls.”
Mene tried not to sound too haughty and skeptical, but bits of this really did sound a bit silly. “When you say the dragon’s soul fights your soul, what exactly does that mean, physically?”
Kavrin, of course, didn’t find it silly at all. “It’s, er… not pretty. You get sick, very… fever, vomiting… and dragon scales start to grow all over your body.” He grimaced slightly, remembering. “I saw it happen once, when I was younger; this old rivermage thought he’d blocked the soulstream, and he drank an entire vial. The blood took over his body, and he, uh, died two days later.”
She eyed him.
“It isn’t meant to be ingested,” he repeated, feelingly. “People’s bodies aren’t able to handle a dragon’s soul.”
It wasn’t a soul, she decided firmly. There was some sort of harmful chemical in the bloodstream that needed to be countered very carefully, and that was that. Rivermages were wise and powerful, but the metaphors and allegories were all getting a little thick for her taste. Mene liked to be able to put things under a glass for study; she could not do this with a metaphorical soul swimming in the Dragon’s Blood. The word “toxin” suited her well, though, and it seemed an accurate description. “I’ll be careful,” she said after a moment. It was her standard response when pressed about her studies, and it was usually enough to satisfy the person questioning her intents, or at least make them throw up their hands in annoyance and leave her alone.
The young rivermage smiled. “You really are reckless, aren’t you?”
Mene grinned uncertainly, looking down.
Kavrin looked up at the starscape above them with thoughtful eyes. “Well. I’m not going to say anything like, ‘Don’t do it,’ or ‘Promise me you won’t.’” Not looking at her, he didn’t notice her flinch at his words, blushing more deeply than before and turning away to stare into the dark columns of the trees. “I mean, to be honest, I want you to it. I’d love to see you fly through the air; it’d be the most beautiful thing…” He spoke the words simply, carelessly, and the subtext of what he had just said caught up with him a moment later. He coughed. “I mean… it’d be nice for you to finally accomplish what you’ve been working on your whole life.”
“It would,” she said softly. “It really would.”
Moving his gaze from the field of stars, Kavrin was surprised to find her turned away as she was, almost as if hiding. “Let me help you. I want to make sure you don’t do it wrong, with the blood.”
Mene looked back at him. She wondered if finally, after the Academy, Caban, the wolvans, Raowlar and Naira, and the Woolward scholars, she was going to get herself into a partnership that would yield her what she wanted, without unreasonable compromise or blind criticism. She wondered how long his talk of not holding her back would last, and she shivered slightly, thinking of the golden vision that had graced her weeks ago, the day before the Council had started. “I’d like that,” she said finally. “And,” she added wryly, “I can certainly use all the help I can get.”
“Well,” Kavrin shrugged, “if rivermagic is tough, and runelore is tougher, then I think if we combine them, we could block the soulstream properly.” He handed her book back; idle fingers free again, his fingers explored the dark earth and found another twig to break up into little pieces. Slowly, methodically, he tossed the pieces into the fire.
Holding her hands up to the flames, Mene watched the warm light reflecting off of her pale skin; it almost seemed to glow. “Where’d you learn all that? From your teacher?”
“Mostly.” He nodded. “And other riverwitches. Kirara is my teacher, but we visited other riverwitches along the bank; she always taught me to keep my ears open, soak up anything I could.”
Mene grinned. She couldn’t believe how lucky he was, to have that kind of knowledge to draw on, from people who actually wanted to teach, to help. How much more quickly might she have progressed, if she had an entire community, working towards the same goal as she did… “Well, no one wanted to touch my research.” That was an understatement. “I got most of my knowledge from trial and error.”
“Trial and error, huh?” He smiled knowingly, the smile that two strangers shared upon realizing that they shared a secret. “Well, they say the best way to learn is to just get tossed in the water. Granted, it’s also the best way to drown.”
It was comforting to know that there were certain constants like that in the world. “It works for falling from a third floor window to a very hard ground as well,” she laughed.
Kavrin chuckled. “Fortunately, I’m a good swimmer.”
“And I’m good at falling on my face, both literally and figuratively.”
He regarded her sadly; it wasn’t a look of pity but one of genuine sympathy. “No one on Vel Faas is the slightest bit interested in flying?” In the cold night air, barely discernable clouds of vapor had started to become visible as they exhaled, and Kavrin watched idly as the condensation dispersed before him.
A shrug. “A few colleagues stuck with me for most of my research…” She shook her head, grimacing. “I don’t know, it might have just been because they felt bad for me. Anyway, I don’t think they aren’t interested, I think they all think it’s just hopeless.” Shrugging again, with a what-can-you-do? look, she turned her gaze up to the sky. Her tone was quiet but firm. “Just means there’s more work for me to do, that’s all.”
The moon was high above the trees now, and most of the clouds were gone; only a handful remained visible, giving the moon a hazy halo as it shone down. That slight fuzz only emphasized the rest of the night sky, black space and white lights sharply in focus against the cloudy ring around the moon. Mene sighed and hugged her knees, resting her chin there and staring into the fire. In her somewhat limited experience traveling, there always seemed little more to do, after darkness fell, but scribble a few notes and watch the fire dance. She yawned; her wings flexed behind her, shuffling and preening.
“Tired?” Kavrin asked.
Mene shook her head, even as another yawn enveloped her. “It’s silly, isn’t it? When I’m out traveling like this, bed time just seems to want to come right after dinner.”
He stared at her curiously. “It’s early yet, Mene.”
Stifling a third yawn, she waved off his concern. “Ahh, I’m fine. Tell me more about Dragon’s Blood.”
Kavrin quirked a brow. “You’re obsessed, aren’t you? Not really much more to tell.” He wished it weren’t the case; she seemed so adamant that this was the path that her life-long quest needed to take, and he truly wished there were more for him to know about the stuff. It was like she was forcibly compelled to keep pursuing this course of study, this riddle with no answer, and he should have liked to be able to shoulder some portion of her burden more usefully. “Not much that I know, anyway; I’m not alchemist.”
Mene smiled sleepily, tilting her head to look at him as she rested a cheek on her folded knees. Her wings extended slightly, where the breeze caught them, brushed the feathers as lightly as a lover’s touch. “What about effects, aside from its use as a catalyst?”
Blushing, Kavrin wracked his brain for any other tidbit he might give her, trying not to be distracted by how adorable she was when she looked at him like that. “Er… the only other thing I know about Dragon’s Blood is that you can use it to mend broken steel. I think you just apply it directly to the blade; it doesn’t need to be treated or prepared.”
She sighed happily, utterly entranced. “That’s incredible.”
Kavrin nodded, smiling. “I’ve heard of a smith who used Dragon’s Blood to mend a sword that’d been snapped in two. Apparently, the sword was even stronger after it had been mended.” An idea came to him; he squinted into the fire for a moment and then looked at her, pleased with himself. “You know, thinking about it now, I guess that’s because there was a soulstream connected to that sword.”
She was, of course, still a little dubious of all of this soul business, but she certainly wasn’t going to say so when Kavrin so ardently believed. “Yeah… ‘sagood theory.”
Her vision swam slightly, and her eyes watered a little from working so long by firelight. With a little sigh, she closed her eyes, curled up like a kitten.
Somewhere, in the drowsy edge of awareness, she heard Kavrin shifting in his seat on the ground; when he spoke, it was with tentative concern, shy and uncertain. He shouldn’t have had to ask, really; he would have seen, plain as day, if something were truly wrong with her, but he voiced the question regardless. “Mene… are you alright?”
Mene blinked, unsure as to whether or not she’d drifted off to sleep. In the firelight and smoke, the haze of dreams seemed a close companion even before she closed her eyes. “Just a little sleepy,” she murmured, cocking her head. “Long day of traveling.” She scrunched up her face, trying to will some wakefulness into it. It hardly helped; Mene was so used to constant, active engagement with the world, and any time she had a task before her, she was awake; without any concrete goal before her, she felt a little useless, adrift in a sea of possible actions and outcomes, and sleep seemed like the only viable option. She inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly. And as she said, these days of travel had been exhausting to one whose usual activities for the day were limited to the area of her house.
“It’s not your anemia, is it?” Kavrin asked.
“It’s always there, to some degree,” she shrugged. “It’s just something you learn to live with. Like useless wings.” She let them billow again, for effect, tucked them in, and then sat back, her head hanging loosely to one side as the firelight danced in her drowsy eyes.
Kavrin didn’t seem convinced by her assurances that the anemia wasn’t a big deal, when she’d first mentioned it to him, and he didn’t seem any more convinced by her absent protests now. “Do you want to sleep?” He moved over next to her, peering at her, as if being right next to her would let him see whatever tiny piece of her wasn’t fully under her sway. An involuntarily concerned hand rested on the ground behind her, in case she should need support.
To his surprise, Kavrin felt her head graze his shoulder and settle there, pillowed on bone and flesh and thick cloth. Instinct kicked in almost immediately, and the hand planted on the ground at her back came further around behind, slow and gentle, so that she could lean on him without sliding back onto the ground. It occurred to him, after a moment, to be surprised at himself for reacting in such a way and not shying back or freezing up, but Mene didn’t seem to be aware of what she was doing any more than he was. The timid contact warmed both of them; her bright hair, unbound and unkempt, left half of his vision bordered by red gold light. Her voice was soft and sweet. “No, it’s fine… I like just sitting out here, and it’s nice out.” She sighed quietly, her nose pushing against his shoulder.
She looked peaceful, content, breathing evenly against his cloak, and if Kavrin had been considering shying away earlier, he certainly wasn’t going to do so now. “Ah… alright, then.” His face felt uncomfortably warm, and he wondered, for a moment, where Varyn and the others were, if they were watching, but it hardly seemed to matter.
He heard Mene sigh-yawn again, the sound light as air. “So, what do you want to find out there, Kavrin?” she murmured into his cloak. “I want to fly; what do you want to do?”
Kavrin didn’t answer for some time, and before long, he could hear Mene’s soft, even breaths deepening as sleep crept over her.
Through her radiant hair brushing his face and the image of her wings billowing against the blue, black, and green of the night, the firelight seemed to glow like polished copper as he stared at it. It was starting to fade, the fire was, but it would be hours before it died completely, and one of the halfies would notice it soon enough. Kavrin didn’t feel like moving at the moment. What a question. What did he want? With a kind, clever girl resting her pretty face against him, dreaming on his arm, what could he possibly want?
His cheek brushed the top of her head, smooth and cool. “I don’t know,” he said, smiling softly.
Numberless stars glittered like jewels as smoke from the campfire swept up to meet them, mingling with the wispy clouds that occasionally wound past the moon, nearly at its full circumference for the month. Mene Firiel sat back, scribbling in a little leather-bound notebook that she had purchased before they left Vanlune; her wings were folded primly behind her, and her eyes peeked over the top of the page to take in the scene before her, where Kavrin was frozen like terrified prey, locked in a predator’s gaze. Their half-elven traveling companions chortled and nudged him while he blushed deeply.
It had been like this since the little party had first set forth; Varyn, the head of the caravan, had taken one look at Mene and Kavrin, and immediately “knew” that the two of them were sweet on each other. This news had spread through the caravan like a plague, in speed and, as far as Kavrin was concerned, undesirable effect. The more he attempted to correct their mistaken impression of the matter, the more they smiled and winked and steered clear of the two to assure them adequate “private time.” Mene found the matter a bit embarrassing as well, but it was much more amusing to watch Kavrin’s reactions than to feel uncomfortable about it all.
At the moment, he was attempting to form a dignified reply to Varyn’s query regarding the fact that with little Naira about to get hitched, Kavrin ought to hurry up and help Miss Mene to do the same. The halfies were clearing the dinnerware and laughing. Mene couldn’t help it; she laughed as well.
Kavrin only blushed deeper. “I’ve told you, Varyn, you’re mistaken. There’s nothing going on between Mene and me.”
Varyn’s smile only widened. “Quite right, there isn’t; and so, I’ll leave you two alone so that you can remedy that.” He guffawed once more and, pots and pans in tow, retreated towards the other side of camp. Mene gave a little wave as he went, stifling a giggle as he whispered something to one of the other halfies, both of them erupting into raucous laughter as he did.
She glanced up at Kavrin, who was poking at the fire with a rapier-length tree branch that he had been fiddling with since before dinner. “You mustn’t mind them, you know; you only make it worse by objecting.” Her pen started scratching the page again. “Why does it bother you so much, anyway?”
The young man settled down beside her and started absently breaking up the branch into smaller pieces, tossing them into the fire as the flames danced in his clear, blue-gray eyes. “I… well, I don’t like people having the wrong impression of me.” He smiled uncertainly. “I have enough trouble figuring out who I am to begin with.”
“I should think that being the star pupil of a teacher like yours would give you some definition.”
Kavrin chuckled. “Star pupil? I guess since there’s no one else to compare to, that makes me the star.” He shook his head, fiddling with the last twig that remained in his hand. “Anyway, it’s more than that… don’t you think ‘Turtleborne’ is a silly surname?”
To be honest, Mene hadn’t found anything to be a particularly silly surname, since coming groundside; you couldn’t afford to, really, this far from your native lands. It sounded like a good half-elven name, ‘Turtleborne’ did; so what if he wasn’t a half elf? “It’s a name,” she said with a shrug. “Doesn’t define who you are.”
“Actually, it does,” he said with a sigh. “I didn’t inherit the name ‘Turtleborne’ from my parents; I don’t even know who they are. When I said Kirara was like my mother, I meant it. She found me on the back of a river turtle when I was an infant; she’s the one who gave me that name.”
Mene didn’t really know much about river turtles. They were large, silent, sentient, and, according to Raowlar, very boring. “It still doesn’t define you, does it? It just tells a part of your story.”
He seemed to consider this, laying back against the ground, pillowed against his little bag of belongings. The stars gleamed in his eyes. “Blood flows like the river, from parent to child. They might not define all of me, but my parents define some of me.” He nodded slowly, as if having come to a reasonable conclusion. Mene eyed him; he was, she had noticed, prone to abruptly making similarly profound statements, especially when he went into a rivertrance.
She was not entirely sure what to make of him, in this respect; Kavrin seemed a very knowledgeable, canny craftsman in his art, but it seemed so impractical to Mene, to approach magic from such a spontaneous, wishy-washy , unscientific method. She couldn’t deny the raw power that he could wield, though. It was so curious, this medley of surrender and control, and she wished she had the means to study it more completely, if such a thing were possible to begin with. Perhaps after this little adventure was over, she’d look into the matter.
Well… after she had finished sorting out dragon’s blood, and what part it might play in her alchemical endeavors. There was so much work to do, and only one lifetime in which to do it.
He looked sad and lovely as he sat there, pondering his past, with moonlight washing his face. “Well, I think you did well enough without your parents… your ‘real’ parents, whoever they may be.” She went back to writing.
“I suppose…” he murmured, falling silent once more. His gaze drifted aimlessly between the lines of constellations, as if puzzling out a language there; with so much distance between each letter, so many variables and possibilities, the task was an impossible one, but his gaze remained curious, thoughtful, for it did not matter if he could distill any real meaning from the patterns above; it was the act of searching itself that made any search worthwhile, and all searchers knew that.
Mene, hearing none of his thought process, had drifted back into her own little world and was scratching the idle pen across the paper when out of nowhere, Kavrin sat up and peered over at her, as if she had just said something intriguing. “What are you doing, by the way? You’ve been scribbling in that little book like mad, ever since we left the city.”
“Oh, just…” She usually loved to talk about her work, but ever since acquiescing to the Woolward Academy, she’d felt hesitant, ashamed, like the sell-out she was. Real scientists didn’t get ahead in the world by putting up with stodgy academics who didn’t know the first thing about practical application. Real scientists took risks on their own. “…brainstorming,” she said, after a moment. “Alchemical theory.”
Kavrin nodded, a little uncertainly. “Does it have to do with what you mentioned at the ball? The um…” His brow furrowed slightly as his tongue formed the unfamiliar sounds with careful effort. “Alternation of Sky Elven Blood Chemicals?”
Mene hid a smile behind the pages. Honestly, he was as bad as Naira! “Yes. Ish. Alteration of blood chemistry. It’s…” Her eyes swept the spidery, uneven script that she had written since dinner, hopeless guess-work, all of it, which only practical application would resolve to any sort of surety. If it didn’t kill her first. “Well, it’s slightly risky, that’s all. So, it’s good to know what you’re doing before going ahead and experimenting.” She brandished the book lightly for emphasis.
To her relief, he didn’t immediately jump on the risk factor, as so many did. She couldn’t begin to count how many of her family, friends, and co-workers had chided her for recklessness. “I suppose you can’t accomplish anything worthwhile without at little risk,” he said amiably. “That’s what Kirara says, anyway.” A cool breeze made the fickle flames dance, and Kavrin pulled the cloak tighter around himself, ruminating on the matter. The winter months were a little ways off yet, but the nights turned cool quickly, despite the fire before them. “So, you’re experimenting on yourself?”
She chuckled and drew closer to the fire, wings hunched against her back, hugging her cloak around her against the cold. “Not exactly a plethora of Sky Elves for me to experiment on down here, is there? Besides, there aren’t a lot of us who’ll… accept that the risk is necessary. So I have to.”
Leaning over to the little wood pile, Kavrin took another small log and tossed it on the fire, watching the shower of sparks leap up. “Makes sense. What are you trying to do, anyway? Seems like changing around your blood could be dangerous.”
Mene regarded him thoughtfully, not sure at first how much to explain, how much he was likely to know already. “Well… Sky Elven wings are engineered, not naturally evolved. They’re a fully connected, integrated part of Sky Elven physiology, but not a functional one. In all the history of our people, flight has never been a feasible reality. I want to change that, and I think alchemy’s how it can be done.” She smile wistfully, thinking of that first day that Caban had been assigned as her lab assistant; he’d been so frightfully nervous that he’d barely made eye contact. This will never do, she had chided him gaily. I can’t have an assistant who won’t look up—you will be forever walking into things. That had provoked a shy laugh and a shyer glance. He hadn’t turned away from her after that, though. Until the end of things, of course.
She shrugged off the memory. “Most… well, all of my colleagues think that’s crazy, that our wings are part of our heritage, and messing with them is practically heresy. I got kicked out of our alchemical academy because I wouldn’t stop. But I think we owe it to ourselves, and the only way we can honor our heritage is taking it, molding it, and making it our own, instead of just sitting pretty and letting it be.”
She hadn’t realized how much passion had built up in her voice until she heard the silence between them after she stopped speaking; that silence hung, profound and ineffable, between them, as Kavrin gazed back at her in curious surprise. Mene cleared her throat and, feeling awkward, went back to her scribbling.
Kavrin continued to study her, and the silence did not abate for some time.
When he finally did speak, Kavrin’s tentative smile had broadened into a full grin. “You want to fly?” He watched her nod and shook his head in wonderment. “Wow.”
Mene giggled. “Ever since I was little. Drove my parents crazy.”
“What,” laughed Kavrin, settling back a bit, “did you jump out of windows or something?”
For the first time since they met, Mene blushed; Kavrin laughed, a sound of pure, spontaneous delight. “No! Really?”
She tossed her coppery hair and nodded. “My dad jumped after me, once, just to make sure I didn’t get hurt too badly. I was so mad at him, I didn’t even consider that he might have gotten hurt too, although thankfully, he didn’t.” Her face danced between a smile and a grimace. “My mother was ready to beat me senseless for that, though.
Kavrin shook his head, still shaking with quiet laughter. “I never would have pegged you for the reckless type. So…” He peered over at her book. “Have you made any progress? You must be onto something, otherwise you would be assaulting that poor book so.”
A swift breeze wended between them. Mene bit her lip. “Not for a while, actually.” She looked down. “I was pretty much rudderless, when I landed groundside. I learned a lot living with the wolvans, and it really did revolutionize my work; it was just more in the healing arena, and less in the way of what I wanted to do. The Woolward Academy… brought me in recently, to work in association with them. In exchange, I get to experiment with Dragon’s Blood. I’m hoping it’ll help.” She flourished the book and pen once more. “So, that’s what I’m working on.”
“Dragon’s Blood?”
“I want to get it right, when I finally start using it. Hence all the notes.”
Kavrin’s eyes narrowed. One of the most potent, densely rich magical mediums in the known world, and she meant to experiment with it? One of the most mercurial, unpredictable modifiers that one could add to any spell, and she thought that notes would help? It was something alchemists could study for a lifetime, without learning all of its secrets, and Mene Firiel, this idealistic, young Sky Elf, imagined that a few weeks’ research, would be adequate, allow her to ingest the stuff without dying violently in the process. Kavrin had been around unconventional thinkers for most of his life, of course, but the sheer audacity that this young woman seemed to exhibit on this matter, without even realizing it herself, was astonishing.
Mene stared back, unblinking, defiant, waiting.
Sighing, Kavrin ran a hand through his messy, dark hair, shook his head, and moved closer to her, craning his head to look at the leather-bound book. On sheer, silly instinct, Mene started to pull the papers away, but she stopped once she realized what she was doing. “Let me see what you have,” said Kavrin. He didn’t flatter himself to think that he knew half as much as she needed to know for what she wanted to do, but he probably knew more than she did on the matter.
She opened the notebook willingly, starting at the beginning of her hasty notes; he leaned closer but, perhaps out of respect, didn’t touch the pages, and so she watched for him to nod when he was ready for a new leaf to be turned. In vain, she watched his face for reactions, positive or negative, but the young man was impassive as his eyes roamed along her hurried hand, expressing nothing except to nod once or twice, point at a passage, and move on.
Finally, after a few more minutes of the like, he spoke more definitively. “You should know that Dragon’s Blood itself is very dangerous. It’s not just a… what’s the word… catalyst? It has to be properly neutralized, when you use it.”
Mene listened, captivated. “How so?”
“Dragon’s Blood is… well… I guess you could say that it’s still alive, even after a dragon gives it to you. Riverwater is an intrinsic part of a dragon’s blood, and that connection with the River is like a connection with Ifane herself. That’s why the blood doesn’t die, unless the dragon who gave it does.”
Without even realizing it, she had taken up the pen again and was jotting down notes like lightning. Her hand was moving so quickly that she was brushing her fingers against still-wet ink, smudging blood into connection, Ifane into blood. “Then what does the blood… do? If it’s still alive, how does it behave differently from any other elements one might use?”
“The blood is an extension of the dragon.” His tone was dry, precise, the tone of the scholars that Mene had been around most of her life. It was surprising to hear that tone coming from the young rivermage who frequently spouted strange metaphors and seeming inanities on the nature of life. She didn’t have time to be amused, though; she had to keep writing. “If you have a vial of it, it’s like you’re carrying around a part of him. If you take even a little bit of that blood into yourself, it’ll grow inside you, and the dragon’s soul will fight yours for control of your body.”
The sound of pen on rough paper scratched to a halt. Mene stared at Kavrin, her head tilted slightly. “Fight your soul?” She didn’t believe in souls.
He nodded gravely. “It isn’t meant to be ingested. But there are ways to neutralize the blood, sever the connection.”
“How?”
Deft fingers went to the pen in her hands. “May I?” Kavrin gestured to the next blank page in the book.
Mene nodded, eager to see; she handed him the book, moving closer and craning her neck to look over his shoulder as he worked. “Of course!”
Kavrin’s hand leapt to the page and made a few, quick marks; when he withdrew, there was a cartoonish form of a dragon on the page, as well as a little bottle next to it and a squiggly line above both of them. “A vial of Dragon’s Blood is connected to the dragon’s soul like this.” He drew a few more lines, chaining the river to the dragon, the vial to the dragon and the vial to the river. “Say the dragon’s soul is a river; the vial of blood is connected by a stream that branches off the main river. That’s called a soulstream.” His hand moved over the page again. “You need to block the soulstream from reaching the vial of blood, to ingest it safely. Rivermagic is the easiest way to do it, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.”
She nodded, watching intently and drifting closer as she peered at the drawing. “The easiest way… but there are other ways?” She hoped for runes. Or material components. She could understand those.
“Hm. I’ve heard from some riverwitches that you can block the soulstream using runelore as well. I don’t know, though; I imagine the runes used to manipulate dragon souls would be incredibly complicated.” He shook his head and, not realizing how close she was, turned to look at her, just as she pushed forward to point at a detail on his little diagram; and before either of them was quite sure what happened, Mene’s lips pressed gently against his cheek.
An indeterminate moment passed, and Mene jerked back, blushing slightly; Kavrin pulled away as well, as beet red as he had been when asserting to Varyn that there was nothing between them “W… what was that for?”
Words that didn’t feel like her own came out. “For giving me more information than I had before.”
She blushed deeper as she saw him smile confusedly. From the dregs of her imagination, she fancied their halfie companions watching the scene via spyglass and cheering the two of them on, and that thought managed to snap her out of the surreal pace that had settled on things. She snatched the book and batted him with it playfully. “Just got close, and we both moved fast. Caught me by surprise. That’s all.”
“Oh. Uh… sure…” Kavrin blinked a few times; an uncertain, nervous smile ghosted through the commotion for a moment before he looked away slightly, dazed. A brief, confusing silence ensued, in which neither of them was quite looking at or away from the other. “Um.” Kavrin cleared his throat. “…What was I saying?”
“Um. The soulstream.” Mene shook herself. “Blocking it via rivermagic is hard, but doing it via runelore would be harder.” She handed the book back, feeling slightly foolish for having grabbed it back in the first place.”
“Right.” Kavrin’s fingers flipped through the pages quickly, scanning the pages until he was back on the cutesy drawing of the dragon, the bottle, and the river. “Anyway. I don’t really know much in the way of runelore; and as for rivermagic, I’m not quite sure where to start with that, either. This is difficult stuff, dealing with dragon souls.”
Mene tried not to sound too haughty and skeptical, but bits of this really did sound a bit silly. “When you say the dragon’s soul fights your soul, what exactly does that mean, physically?”
Kavrin, of course, didn’t find it silly at all. “It’s, er… not pretty. You get sick, very… fever, vomiting… and dragon scales start to grow all over your body.” He grimaced slightly, remembering. “I saw it happen once, when I was younger; this old rivermage thought he’d blocked the soulstream, and he drank an entire vial. The blood took over his body, and he, uh, died two days later.”
She eyed him.
“It isn’t meant to be ingested,” he repeated, feelingly. “People’s bodies aren’t able to handle a dragon’s soul.”
It wasn’t a soul, she decided firmly. There was some sort of harmful chemical in the bloodstream that needed to be countered very carefully, and that was that. Rivermages were wise and powerful, but the metaphors and allegories were all getting a little thick for her taste. Mene liked to be able to put things under a glass for study; she could not do this with a metaphorical soul swimming in the Dragon’s Blood. The word “toxin” suited her well, though, and it seemed an accurate description. “I’ll be careful,” she said after a moment. It was her standard response when pressed about her studies, and it was usually enough to satisfy the person questioning her intents, or at least make them throw up their hands in annoyance and leave her alone.
The young rivermage smiled. “You really are reckless, aren’t you?”
Mene grinned uncertainly, looking down.
Kavrin looked up at the starscape above them with thoughtful eyes. “Well. I’m not going to say anything like, ‘Don’t do it,’ or ‘Promise me you won’t.’” Not looking at her, he didn’t notice her flinch at his words, blushing more deeply than before and turning away to stare into the dark columns of the trees. “I mean, to be honest, I want you to it. I’d love to see you fly through the air; it’d be the most beautiful thing…” He spoke the words simply, carelessly, and the subtext of what he had just said caught up with him a moment later. He coughed. “I mean… it’d be nice for you to finally accomplish what you’ve been working on your whole life.”
“It would,” she said softly. “It really would.”
Moving his gaze from the field of stars, Kavrin was surprised to find her turned away as she was, almost as if hiding. “Let me help you. I want to make sure you don’t do it wrong, with the blood.”
Mene looked back at him. She wondered if finally, after the Academy, Caban, the wolvans, Raowlar and Naira, and the Woolward scholars, she was going to get herself into a partnership that would yield her what she wanted, without unreasonable compromise or blind criticism. She wondered how long his talk of not holding her back would last, and she shivered slightly, thinking of the golden vision that had graced her weeks ago, the day before the Council had started. “I’d like that,” she said finally. “And,” she added wryly, “I can certainly use all the help I can get.”
“Well,” Kavrin shrugged, “if rivermagic is tough, and runelore is tougher, then I think if we combine them, we could block the soulstream properly.” He handed her book back; idle fingers free again, his fingers explored the dark earth and found another twig to break up into little pieces. Slowly, methodically, he tossed the pieces into the fire.
Holding her hands up to the flames, Mene watched the warm light reflecting off of her pale skin; it almost seemed to glow. “Where’d you learn all that? From your teacher?”
“Mostly.” He nodded. “And other riverwitches. Kirara is my teacher, but we visited other riverwitches along the bank; she always taught me to keep my ears open, soak up anything I could.”
Mene grinned. She couldn’t believe how lucky he was, to have that kind of knowledge to draw on, from people who actually wanted to teach, to help. How much more quickly might she have progressed, if she had an entire community, working towards the same goal as she did… “Well, no one wanted to touch my research.” That was an understatement. “I got most of my knowledge from trial and error.”
“Trial and error, huh?” He smiled knowingly, the smile that two strangers shared upon realizing that they shared a secret. “Well, they say the best way to learn is to just get tossed in the water. Granted, it’s also the best way to drown.”
It was comforting to know that there were certain constants like that in the world. “It works for falling from a third floor window to a very hard ground as well,” she laughed.
Kavrin chuckled. “Fortunately, I’m a good swimmer.”
“And I’m good at falling on my face, both literally and figuratively.”
He regarded her sadly; it wasn’t a look of pity but one of genuine sympathy. “No one on Vel Faas is the slightest bit interested in flying?” In the cold night air, barely discernable clouds of vapor had started to become visible as they exhaled, and Kavrin watched idly as the condensation dispersed before him.
A shrug. “A few colleagues stuck with me for most of my research…” She shook her head, grimacing. “I don’t know, it might have just been because they felt bad for me. Anyway, I don’t think they aren’t interested, I think they all think it’s just hopeless.” Shrugging again, with a what-can-you-do? look, she turned her gaze up to the sky. Her tone was quiet but firm. “Just means there’s more work for me to do, that’s all.”
The moon was high above the trees now, and most of the clouds were gone; only a handful remained visible, giving the moon a hazy halo as it shone down. That slight fuzz only emphasized the rest of the night sky, black space and white lights sharply in focus against the cloudy ring around the moon. Mene sighed and hugged her knees, resting her chin there and staring into the fire. In her somewhat limited experience traveling, there always seemed little more to do, after darkness fell, but scribble a few notes and watch the fire dance. She yawned; her wings flexed behind her, shuffling and preening.
“Tired?” Kavrin asked.
Mene shook her head, even as another yawn enveloped her. “It’s silly, isn’t it? When I’m out traveling like this, bed time just seems to want to come right after dinner.”
He stared at her curiously. “It’s early yet, Mene.”
Stifling a third yawn, she waved off his concern. “Ahh, I’m fine. Tell me more about Dragon’s Blood.”
Kavrin quirked a brow. “You’re obsessed, aren’t you? Not really much more to tell.” He wished it weren’t the case; she seemed so adamant that this was the path that her life-long quest needed to take, and he truly wished there were more for him to know about the stuff. It was like she was forcibly compelled to keep pursuing this course of study, this riddle with no answer, and he should have liked to be able to shoulder some portion of her burden more usefully. “Not much that I know, anyway; I’m not alchemist.”
Mene smiled sleepily, tilting her head to look at him as she rested a cheek on her folded knees. Her wings extended slightly, where the breeze caught them, brushed the feathers as lightly as a lover’s touch. “What about effects, aside from its use as a catalyst?”
Blushing, Kavrin wracked his brain for any other tidbit he might give her, trying not to be distracted by how adorable she was when she looked at him like that. “Er… the only other thing I know about Dragon’s Blood is that you can use it to mend broken steel. I think you just apply it directly to the blade; it doesn’t need to be treated or prepared.”
She sighed happily, utterly entranced. “That’s incredible.”
Kavrin nodded, smiling. “I’ve heard of a smith who used Dragon’s Blood to mend a sword that’d been snapped in two. Apparently, the sword was even stronger after it had been mended.” An idea came to him; he squinted into the fire for a moment and then looked at her, pleased with himself. “You know, thinking about it now, I guess that’s because there was a soulstream connected to that sword.”
She was, of course, still a little dubious of all of this soul business, but she certainly wasn’t going to say so when Kavrin so ardently believed. “Yeah… ‘sagood theory.”
Her vision swam slightly, and her eyes watered a little from working so long by firelight. With a little sigh, she closed her eyes, curled up like a kitten.
Somewhere, in the drowsy edge of awareness, she heard Kavrin shifting in his seat on the ground; when he spoke, it was with tentative concern, shy and uncertain. He shouldn’t have had to ask, really; he would have seen, plain as day, if something were truly wrong with her, but he voiced the question regardless. “Mene… are you alright?”
Mene blinked, unsure as to whether or not she’d drifted off to sleep. In the firelight and smoke, the haze of dreams seemed a close companion even before she closed her eyes. “Just a little sleepy,” she murmured, cocking her head. “Long day of traveling.” She scrunched up her face, trying to will some wakefulness into it. It hardly helped; Mene was so used to constant, active engagement with the world, and any time she had a task before her, she was awake; without any concrete goal before her, she felt a little useless, adrift in a sea of possible actions and outcomes, and sleep seemed like the only viable option. She inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly. And as she said, these days of travel had been exhausting to one whose usual activities for the day were limited to the area of her house.
“It’s not your anemia, is it?” Kavrin asked.
“It’s always there, to some degree,” she shrugged. “It’s just something you learn to live with. Like useless wings.” She let them billow again, for effect, tucked them in, and then sat back, her head hanging loosely to one side as the firelight danced in her drowsy eyes.
Kavrin didn’t seem convinced by her assurances that the anemia wasn’t a big deal, when she’d first mentioned it to him, and he didn’t seem any more convinced by her absent protests now. “Do you want to sleep?” He moved over next to her, peering at her, as if being right next to her would let him see whatever tiny piece of her wasn’t fully under her sway. An involuntarily concerned hand rested on the ground behind her, in case she should need support.
To his surprise, Kavrin felt her head graze his shoulder and settle there, pillowed on bone and flesh and thick cloth. Instinct kicked in almost immediately, and the hand planted on the ground at her back came further around behind, slow and gentle, so that she could lean on him without sliding back onto the ground. It occurred to him, after a moment, to be surprised at himself for reacting in such a way and not shying back or freezing up, but Mene didn’t seem to be aware of what she was doing any more than he was. The timid contact warmed both of them; her bright hair, unbound and unkempt, left half of his vision bordered by red gold light. Her voice was soft and sweet. “No, it’s fine… I like just sitting out here, and it’s nice out.” She sighed quietly, her nose pushing against his shoulder.
She looked peaceful, content, breathing evenly against his cloak, and if Kavrin had been considering shying away earlier, he certainly wasn’t going to do so now. “Ah… alright, then.” His face felt uncomfortably warm, and he wondered, for a moment, where Varyn and the others were, if they were watching, but it hardly seemed to matter.
He heard Mene sigh-yawn again, the sound light as air. “So, what do you want to find out there, Kavrin?” she murmured into his cloak. “I want to fly; what do you want to do?”
Kavrin didn’t answer for some time, and before long, he could hear Mene’s soft, even breaths deepening as sleep crept over her.
Through her radiant hair brushing his face and the image of her wings billowing against the blue, black, and green of the night, the firelight seemed to glow like polished copper as he stared at it. It was starting to fade, the fire was, but it would be hours before it died completely, and one of the halfies would notice it soon enough. Kavrin didn’t feel like moving at the moment. What a question. What did he want? With a kind, clever girl resting her pretty face against him, dreaming on his arm, what could he possibly want?
His cheek brushed the top of her head, smooth and cool. “I don’t know,” he said, smiling softly.