Private Pale Leaves

"No argument there," he muttered, stopped in his tracks. As the light dimmed. He looked over his shoulder to see the glitter and gleam of her dull into shadow.

Looked down to see one of the two pieces left in her wake. Burning against the earth. All pool of fire and honey come refractions across the Maldizia.

Like some premonition.

Shook his head. "No taking that one back," he turned away from her empty ritual ground.

Saw the gleam of old glass there on its mossy throne, where she had placed it with that odd smile slant across her mouth. Eyes like windows to something else. Scared the shit out of him.

He stepped to the bottle, bent down and snagged it up. Tilt it this way and that to feel the slosh of how much was left.

Plenty for a pull.

"Widow's Breath," he recalled. "Henbane, and datura," he tested the sounds of them on his tongue. "Like the names of old friends," uncorked it. Gave it a sniff. Huffed away at the burn of it. "Loosen the soul alright," turned toward it. Peered down it's mouth.

Thought of how she'd said please.

Hissed through his teeth and took a mouthful. Sweat from the night's heat run down the side of his face.

Coin glinting on the ground was too valuable to leave abandoned, no matter the mess between them. Muttering she stepped back, legs wobbling, fingers closing around the cold metal as if pulling it from a trap.

Her gaze flicked up just in time to catch him lifting the bottle of Widow’s Breath, just like a reckless child grabbing something deadly. Watching him tilt the poison to his lips was like leaving a vial of lye within reach of a toddler and seeing them swallow it anyway.

“No... Why the fuck would you do that?!" The words tore out, ragged and raw, barely more than a strangled scream. The poison had dulled her limbs, blurred her thoughts, but panic burned fierce through the fog. The golden coin fell to the ground a second time. Without thinking, Daniyah rushed forward, almost crashing into him from behind. One of her hands grabbed a fistful of his white hair and yanked hard, pulling his head back sharply. With her almost hanging over his shoulder, her other hand locked around his chin, fingers trying to force their way between his clenched jaws.

"FUCK! Open! Your! Mouth!" she hissed through gritted teeth, fingers pressing deep against soft, unwilling flesh. If Daniyah failed to force the poison from his gut, the venom would seize him quickly. Widow’s Breath was a hellish cocktail. The venom roared already beneath her skin, already threatening to drag her down into fevered delirium as she fought to save him.

Gulp

A shout, gutteral and hot ripped through the quiet. Too relaxed from the oils. From the languid care he had allowed himself.

"What?" Shoulders set to shrug. "I'll cover the cost of your precious-"

He managed to half turn before he felt armored and charm laden weight slam into him.

Set him to daze and stumble step as his right hand slipped from the bottle. Thick glass knocked against mossy stone. Sent a crack all splinter up the bottle's side before it ripped onto its side and rolled as it spilled.

Glug, glug, glug.

A cough. Choked on the acrid bitterness of potent poisons, and the syrupy sweetness of plum brandy still coating his mouth.

"The fuck are you," a yank at his hair pulled his head back hard. Wrenched his neck. Apple and scar exposed to the still wind. His eye flared wide. Pupils dilated to drink in everything they could. Fingers grabbing at his chin as she bared her weight on him. He snarled. Growl tearing through his throat.

Through clenched teeth. "Get," he opened wide and snapped his bite down on her knuckles. " er ucking ands oh eee!!!" gnashed and thrashed as his legs sprawled wide. Muscles like springs, and bones like sturdy iron, shift the weight. Boots scraping in the gravel and dirt. Worked himself under her as hands grasped and tried to rip at her limbs.

He would throw her over. Dump her onto his back. Just needed one good. Bump.

Bump.

His heart hammered slow behind its cage of bone. Bump.

Bump.

Legs went to soup. Bump.

Bump. Ringing in his ears.

Bump.

Fell back onto her.

Bump.

Eyes wide open.

Daniyah snarled through gritted teeth because of the sharp pain of his teeth biting into her knuckles. “You’re one stubborn bastard.” she spat. His strength was brutal, like a cornered beast fighting for survival. “Not today!” When he tried to throw her off, she clung to him like a monkey.

The world tilted sickeningly as they both crashed down to the ground. His body went slack against hers, muscles no longer coiled with resistance but trembling, twitching as the poison clawed its way through every fiber of him. He would first feel it as a creeping chill beneath his skin, cold like the touch of frost. Seeping slowly through his veins and settling deep in his bones. It would crawl upward, numbing.

His breath would grow shallow and uneven, each inhale a struggle against an invisible weight pressing down on his chest. The cold would seep into his lungs, tightening, constricting, turning each breath into a rasping whisper caught between life and the other side.

His vision would begin to warp, edges blurring, shadows lengthening and twisting into shapes that shouldn’t exist. The air around him thick with whispers no living ear could hear. Voices slithering like snakes, calling, beckoning, promising and wishing for both terror and release.

His heartbeat would falter, thudding slow and uneven beneath ribs growing brittle and frail. Every pulse a distant echo, growing faint as the Widow's Breath dragged him further from the world of the living, pulling him closer to the cold void where light and warmth were forgotten.

Slowly, Daniyah pushed herself upright, muscles trembling. Her back pressed against the mossy stone. Her fingers fumbled inside her pouch, searching blindly until they closed around the familiar shapes of the copper bells. She reached out, gently this time, running her hand through his tangled hair. The task was clumsy, her hands unsteady, her knuckles was bleeding, but she knew the ancient weight those small wards carried. She began to braid the bells carefully into his hair, her fingers moved with painstaking slowness. "Just ... let me do this."

His soul was loose, even she could feel it trembling. A pulsing thing caught between worlds. Out there, in the night, the hungry things waited. Hungry for that flicker of life, that wavering spark.

They whispered from the forest’s edge, voices low and slithering like snakes curling past the trees. Their words were half-truths and poisoned promises, seductive lies meant to lure the lost and the weak closer. Because of the bargain he’d made with the fiend, those hungry things dared not come too close. They dared not touch what was promised to another master. Instead, they circled like wolves outside a fragile keep, snarling at the unseen walls that held them at bay.

"Try not to look at them too much." Daniyah murmured close to his ear. Because spirits, demons, ghosts... all the undead loved attention. Like desperate theater kids on a stage nobody showed up to, they’ll ham it up just to get a glance. They craved the spotlight, the fear in people's eyes, the shiver down the spine.

Lungs pulled greedy for air. Felt desperate to feel that rush of breath pass through, across, and down wind pipes. Each beat of the heart a slam through him stuck in the slow motion of the setting sun.

The turn of the moons. Sovereign and Schemer. Beloved and Beast. Behind the Mirror, where the Fiend danced and the Sage pondered. All there for but a cut and a twist of the Thief's nib.

A world of ash. A world of mud. Cloudier for every move he tried to make.

Never mind the sweet trace of hands sharp with gentle care. Come tie ribbons and knots twined copper in his hair.

Smell of iron full in his nose. Smell of sage, still dusted there.

Drop his heart's half dying beat. And the ash and the mud would settle.

Stage set for the menagerie of madness, all twisted turned, and gleefully wrong. Teeth too long. Bodies like marbles, legs like straw stalks. Eyes where eyes had no place being, beneath tongues lolled out from pits of skull and beak.

Titter and laughter. Tease and claw. They poked. They scratched. They tried to gnaw. Come green fire to lash them back. Warning with burn.

No no. Too hungry. Too new to really know those old and shredding teeth. A thing like a chicken, with head of a man, and eyes all full of slugs smiled and grinned. Teeth pearly and straight. Beat it's wings. Scratched talons across silt that billowed and stirred.

Leapt to him, so marked and green flamed.


Old iron come scraping. Old iron come groaned. Gnashed in wash of jaws that rippled and shook. Tore through that chicken fucker like knife through plucked and pimpled skin.

Just something bigger in the night.

Ghost of Garrod stared wide eyed. Felt still.

As that old laughter but rumbled on. Oh Bearer Mine. It whispered it's sweet promise.

His hands grabbed at something. Anything. As breath knocked out from his lungs. Eye that couldn't see, save the swirl of it all, stared desperate at her. The weight of copper on his skull. Pulled at his hair.

All the crowd of happy evil just clapped and laughed on in their seats of shifting sands and curling waste.

On to the next one! They called. They demanded. They cheered.

The talismans hanging from her weren’t just trinkets out here, in the spirit world. All her charms lit the spirit world like a single spotlight. The forest was a stage tonight, black curtains of pine and spruce hemming them in. Daniyah burned there like a parade float on fire, every talisman blazing its second life.

The wolf’s tooth, just canine tooth in a leather strap in the waking world. But on the other side of the veil its shape stretched and swelled into the hulking form of a big spirit-wolf, all glowing grey fur and ember eyes. It prowled the edge of his loose and glowing soul, teeth snapped at any specter fool enough to drift too close.

The little brass bell at his temple and the ones braided into the mule's manes? Here it rang like a cathedral’s toll, each pling sending ripples of a bright copper-red choir of light outward. The nearest spirits hissed and cringed. The carved knot of ashwood tucked behind the pale mule's ear took on the shape of a towering ash giant, its long, rootlike fingers swatting and crushing anything with the gall to linger too long.

They didn’t like being pushed back. Weaker ones slunk into the murk, muttering curses in languages older than stones, but the hungrier, braver things stayed at the edges. Like an overexcited cast waiting for their cue, they crowded the edges of the gloom. Attention-starved carrion things, spirits who’d been ignored too long. A faceless thing in a moth-eaten cloak twirled in slow, ridiculous pirouettes over their heads.

Even as just a splinter of its true self, his fiend was stronger than most of the pale wretches drifting here. In that small piece it still tore through a spirit like it was nothing more than wet parchment, shredded, crumpled, and scattered to the ground. Where the spirit wolf was quick to devour the remains.

Her eyes met Garrod's burning green, the pupil wide and feral. She could see her reflection in its molten swirl, warped and stretched like a flame seen through glass. Her other hand pressed into the side of his throat, fingers feeling for the pulse, the thud-thud. Still going, though sluggish. She counted each beat like they were her own coins. Her palm pressed flat against the hard plane of his belly, feeling the stuttering rise and fall beneath her hand. “Still breathing,” she said, counting each shallow drag. The rhythm was ugly, uneven, but it was there. “You’re not dead yet."

She grabbed his hand in hers. “Ride it out, Garrod.”

He probably swallowed only a mouthful, she hoped, enough to loosen the edges of his mind but not enough to drag him under completely. She’d made him her fetish now, an anchor, something to focus on, to keep her tethered. To hold herself here, on the edge of sanity, steady against the pull of delirium that clawed at her own mind.

Daniyah kept her palm on his chest. One rise. Two. Then nothing. Then nothing for a long time. Then nothing for too long.

Her gut clenched. She bent forward, close enough to feel the cold radiating from him, the stink of poison and sweat heavy in her nose. Her lips parted, ready to push air into him.

.... and he sucked in a breath on his own, sharp and rattling, as though dragged up from somewhere deep and unwilling. She rolled back slow, not in relief, but with the "this was going to be a long night", and she’d likely hate every minute of it. Her pulse thudded in her ears.

The forest’s gloom shifted, the black boles of the pines creaking in slow arcs, leaning closer as though the trees themselves wanted to watch. The audience pressed in. No seats, no curtain, just rings of pallid, hungry faces emerging from the undergrowth, eyes and mouths too wide, limbs swaying in ways they shouldn’t bend.

They moved, threading between the black-boned pines, leaping from root to root. A tall one, all limbs and too much neck, was draped against a tree trunk like a wet shirt. Two crouched in the moss, faces smeared streaks of shadow, pretending to be wolves. They snapped invisible teeth and loped in uneven circles, occasionally glancing at the living with glittering, overbright eyes as if daring them to join their dance of the wild.

And then there were the ones in the trees. Perched like crows, swaying. One let its head loll all the way back, mouth stretching wide, before whispering a string of silent syllables at them. The faceless twirler, spinning slow and wide, its moth-eaten cloak billowing like drowning weeds above them.

Sliding a glance toward Garrod, she hissed. “Don’t stare. Every moment you do gives it more of you.”

The shadows between the trees writhed with those unborn and unnamed children, all painted smiles, eyes too wide and too dark. Their limbs jerked in ways no bones should allow, their clothes dripping with forest rot and something thicker. They didn’t walk so much as skip, sway, and twitch. She saw their teeth glint between the leaves, heard the breathless hiss of their laughter. They flitted in and out of the gaps in the trees.

“You’re still flesh, Garrod.” She leaned close enough that the talismans around her neck swung forward and brushed his collarbone. Her nails trailed over the inside of his arm, tracing down the muscle with the same touch of someone testing a wound. It wasn’t tenderness, it was a summoning. A reminder to his body that it was still earthbound, still capable of flinching and shivering against sensation.

Twirl and twirl, the moth eaten cloak spun and fanned, hypnotic. Stars shined through the holes in its fabric like so many eyes burned bright and wide.

"Don't stare..."

What the crow things whispered. What the wolf things dared.

"Come then hunters, come"

"Give chase to your prey,"

"Come then hunters, come"

"Put end to this dark day."

"Only an eye, maybe an arm"

"Maybe a child, who can say,"

Laughter from the crowd.

"We'll treat you better,"

"We'll treat you nice,"

"Nicer than Ul'Varek~"

"Nicer than Eidelweiss~"

The last name twisted him. Folded his spine. Turned him young and powerless. Put into the dark with knees bent upon harsh stone. A hand gripped tight across the hairs of his scalp. Gave him a shake. Yanked hard to show tender meat of larynx. Knife drawn and wet with the blood. Just run fresh across neck.

His lungs lost breath, his eye flared white, as his jaw snapped tight and a scream ripped through teeth pressed shut. His hand tried to reach out. Raised to try and stop the knife. Too heavy now, just as it has been before.

Their laughter rang out clear as shattering glass. There just beneath the chant of bells and burn of ward light, and her fingers that gripped at bone.

Chime the talismans. Shine bright their light. Cold silver coins brush against collar bone. Nails raked across scars and discolored flesh. Made his skin crawl to feeling , and his spine come alive. Left trails of red that brought him back from an old death. Back to the smell of roses and sage. The sound of bells in his hair and the pull of their weight.

"Daniyah," he said the name like a whispered prayer as the copper voices sang bright in his ears. His hands clasped firm against her arms. He pulled himself closer to her. Felt the bells in his hair rattle and chime their protection. Felt himself a drowning man, clung desperate to a life line. "I can't believe you offered me that shit," he croaked.

A wave of sickness washed over him. "Ghanga's tits, he lurched. The poison twisted in his guts. He pulled then pushed and bulled her off him in a rattle of talismans and copper bells all clamor in his hair.

Garrod scrambled on his hands and knees some yards, stopped cold and wretched a hot mess turned splash on the ground. It steamed there by the moss covered rock. His protective charms all dangle and soft ring in curtain about him.

"Fucking hells," a cold shiver shook up his spine. He tried to hold it back. A vane effort. A second wave of sick spilled out of him. A miserable sound left his throat as he wiped his mouth clean.

"Daniyah," he said her name like a prayer, but one pulled through clenched teeth. It had been a low, rough thing, and she’d felt it slip past her ribs and curl low in her belly.

Her bells whispered with each slow movement in the sodden grass, a sound at odds with the stench of what he’d just brought up. "You should,” she said, voice bright with mock wonder, “know better than to swallow the first thing someone hands you.” The words hung there, heavy as the damp. Her smirk was slow and wolfish.

"Gulped it down, like a boy trying to prove he can stomach his first pint.” Daniyah muttered and crouched down next to him. Her pale eyes roved over him, shamelessly taking in the way he braced himself against the ground. The strain in his arms, the tension in his jaw, the way his breath still came ragged. The talismans on her wrists slid together with a whisper as she leaned her elbows lazily atop her knees, watching him shake.

She reached into the pouch at her hip, fingers curling around a small milk glass vial shaped like a shard of moon. She rolled it between her fingers before tossing it, underhand, so it landed in the moss just under his face.

“Drink that, before you drown yourself in bile." The antidote. The vial's contents were sluggish, oil-slick black, and even in the weak light, it gleamed like a drop of night sky. “Go on...” she said, straightening, bells whispering with the shift of her weight.

Almost idly, she reached down. Her fingers slid into his damp hair, combing through the white strands. Until they found the bells. One by one, with a short tug, she freed them, letting the little charms fall away. “There,” she murmured, voice dry as smoke. “No more bells." She had promised that he would not have to wear them. They lay silent in the moss around him now like little copper-colored berries.

Gulped it down, like a boy trying to prove he can stomach his first pint."

A low roll of laughter from the back of his throat. Bones long, spine curled, sweat clung to him like a second skin sloughing off.

"Had to get my coin's worth somehow," he tried confidence. But his body shivered as he burped up some sick. Arms trembled as he felt it climb up his throat. Managed to keep it down with a moan. Fingers clawed into the dirt.

The damp soil acted as its own anchor. How it sift between the creases, and slipped through his fingers.

He had to gather his breath through the tumble of his hair. Shook his head. Set his bells to chime. "Maybe even learn a thing or two," closer to the shuddering truth.

A new little something plopped there against the unspoiled moss. Dark and brilliant in its glass, like the space between stars. He let the twitch of his guts settle down before he grabbed it. The vial like a moonshard. Cold as his fingers wrapped about it. Squeezed.

"Go on... soft sound of silver coins on strings pulled his eye to her. The way she looked at him. The way she still looked. Fire kissed and shimmering sure in her power. Had him biting the inside of his lip.

He hinged up, spine stacked, bells chimed all soft song, lulled against his ear. Uncorked it. Drank it down.

Bitter sludge. Too heavy to wretch as he pulled it down his throat. All licorice, pine, and herbaceous bite against the sick.

Her touch sent cold shivers down his spine His eye wide with surprise. How close she was then.

But she had been closer, hadn't she? And his eye settled at the fevered memory.

Minutes ago, hours? How was he to know. In the grips of the poison. Her fingers had dug into him, hot and unapologetic in how they gripped and scratched. She had been over him. All harbor in the storm.

As her fingers worked through his hair, he didn't even realize how his breath had spilled out, and how he curled towards her touch. Stomach turned with an all too different twist as she worked the bells free.

The sound of them thumping against the moss panged down at the base of his spine. Pooled to a stiffness.

"There... No more bells,"

How he wanted more of it.

Fingers of his right hand traced the bells there in the thick moss. Felt the round of their metal, followed them up, to where blood had stained some. His right hand caught hers, crusted in old blood. Knuckle still glistening where his teeth had bit. Brushed his lips against the wound. Breath drawn in all electric shake. Bit the skin to the knuckle next to it. Brushed his cheek against tendons and wrist.

How he bent into her touch like a beaten hound pretending it wasn’t begging.

Her right hand slipped from the weave of his hair, falling free, and before she could think, he seized it. Teeth bit down along her knuckles, sharp and hot, and she hissed, caught between surprise and that strange pulse in her. She felt it all the way down to her toes, and it made her breath stumble in her chest. That stubborn mouth that had spat nothing but barbs at her since the moment they met. That smug grin had made her want to throttle him.

Her eyes should’ve been on the trees, on the dark where danger lived, but instead they dragged over him. Her gaze caught on the line of his lashes, the pale scar under his ear, the old cut on his shoulder. The fine tremor in his throat when he swallowed. He brushed his cheek along the inside of her wrist, lips ghosting over tendons in a way that made it far too easy to picture him elsewhere.

Gods, she hated that. And wanted it. And hated herself for wanting it. Perfect timing, Daniyah. Really smart.

Idiot.

Hellfire, of all the times!

She still tasted the metallic tang of the poison in her mouth, still felt the cold crawling through her veins. He had spent the past hours being an insufferable, cocky ass. She didn’t even like him...
…well. Not much.

He reeked of bile. He’d only just finished retching up whatever the poison hadn’t stolen from him. And she wasn’t any better, her pulse still raced uneven under the toxin’s afterburn. They were supposed to be working.

Her touch drifted. Along the curve of his jaw. Over the bristle at his cheek. Thumb brushed the corner of his mouth. Along the pulse in his neck. The warm column of his neck. Her breath came heavier, too close to a sound she didn’t want him to hear.

Then, sharp as steel across the damp night, her left hand came up and smacked him.

"What the hell do you think you’re doing?!" she hissed. Daniyah leaned back, chest heaving, eyes blazing.

She flicked her gaze over Garrod. He looked… miserable, like a man teetering on the edge of self-pity. “For fuck's sake..!” she muttered, the words tasting like dirt and iron. Daniyah jerked herself up with a grunt, knees stiff and thighs protesting after the long squat.

“We’re both still swimming in toxins, your mouth is full of vomit, and if you’ve got any senses left, your priorities are the Weeping Widow, not this… This,” Daniyah gestured vaguely at the messy, tense space between them. They were on a mission that demanded every shred of focus they could scrape together. She took a breath, letting it steam in the cold night air.

Daniyah took a step away, over moss and detritus, and almost went ass over teakettle on the slick, steaming mess he had left behind. A curse hissed from her teeth, low and rough, mostly frustration than anything else. Muttering, she dragged the edge of her boot against the mossy stone, wiping off the worst of the mess.

“Get the fuck up, Garrod,” she snapped.

"Get the fuck up, Garrod,"

Teeth clenched. Fist balled. Breath ripped through him hot as it came out of his nose in a huff. Shuddering lungs pulled in a new one, cold and foul.

Bowed his head to all of it, and pushed up off the forest floor. Wobbled with the full measure of himself. Moved to his pack, where the bowl and the water skin still laid. Picked up the skin, stepped toward the outer edge of camp.

Fucking ghosts. Fucking ghost hunter.

Washed up. Splashed some water across his face. Shook his head as the sludge of the poison worked through his blood.

How many of the voices could a Wraithbinder hear?

Moments later, he came back to the pile of sick. Trench spade in hand. Bent to the work of digging a hole and getting rid of it.

Wouldn't say another word.