Private Pale Leaves

"The staring is free now?"

She rubbed her forehead, muttering between gritted teeth. “You’re bloody insistent,” she said, voice low and harsh, like a rasp. “Fine. Have it your way.” It felt like a surrender, but she told herself it was because she had no better options and no energy left to argue. Heart hammering under ribs that felt too fragile for the weight of it all.

"I fucked you and you know it."

“No." She gave a long sigh, one that tasted of smoke and spent magic and raw ache of her body." You didn’t know if I’d pull my weight or just drink myself into the dirt.”

Daniyah stood still for a moment. He thought her worth more now? Maybe.

---

The river came into view like a ribbon of silver under the gray light, curling through the trees. She guided the mules along the stony bank. Daniyah had no sense of distance left in her mind. She skirted the bank, eyes scanning the ground for a flat patch, something free of gnarled roots and sharp stones. She found a spot where the earth was damp but forgiving, yellow pine needles cushioning the soil. She kept her hands busy with the ropes and reins, making sure the animals were settled and tethered, the only small control she could still assert.

When the mules had eaten their fill and settled for the night, she let her pack hit the earth with a soft thud and trudged toward the water. Letting herself fall into oblivion was a temptation too sweet. The exhaustion pressed on her eyelids. She almost pitched forward, face-first into the riverbank soil. But she slid to her knees on the riverbank, and let her hands dip into the cold current. She cupped the water, lifted it, and splashed it over her face.

The cold stole the sting from her limbs for a moment, shocked the weariness into her blood. The water ran down her chin and neck. She tilted her head back and let a handful of water slide over her hair, icy fingers catching at her temples, trying to knock some sense back into her skull. It gave her a small, trembling clarity, a tether to the world, however fragile.

His eye quivered.

Cold. Calm. No bite? No fuck you or that will cost you extra? That's what had made it all so strange. She had gone so cold. And now she just, agreed?

"You Didn't know if I'd pull my weight or just drink myself into the dirt."

He passed what spit had gathered in his mouth down his throat. Eyed her as she stood still, her back to him. His brow cocked. Lips parted, for want of an answer. What in the eight moons was this?

"Right, then," he said. "But you pulled your weight," he muttered. "And mine," shook his head. Stepped and bent as he grabbed up his pack. Slung it over his shoulder. Felt the cold pull of the Widow's Heart swirl. Felt the long and lazy scratch of the demon, there in his skull. Grabbed up his sword, and turned his neck to peer over his shoulder with his lone green eye.

---

The trek was nerve wracking. The way she dragged her feet. Hands firm on the reins, sure. But all the rest of her? His lips twisted into a frown. His eye tracking. Watching. Step after step.

Suppose he didn't mind the site of her none. At the head of their little procession of beasts and broken hearts. Head high, even if she couldn't see straight.

The two mules ate their fill of shrubs, and she dumped her pack. He let his down easy. Fingers quick to unbuckle armor. Watched as she tread to the water. Wobble and wavered. His eye widened, and he half stepped toward her. But she fell to her knees instead of into the water.

He cursed quiet under his breath. Left the armor on and stepped after her. Slowed at his approach. Oskar snapped a bite at him. He flinched out of the way, and clicked his own teeth at the rowdy boy. Tut his tongue and shook his head. But the beast just showed his teeth with something like a grin.

Garrod grinned back. Looked over to the river. To Daniyah. Splashing water on her face.

---

The cookfire popped and hissed. The pan, glistened with the bit of olive oil he had used this time round instead of the pork renderings. Pricey stuff. Olive oil. Did his best not to use it most of the time.

He had found some mushrooms on their trek over. Hen of the woods. All frills and a dark woody color. He prepped it quick. Cleaned the delicate fronds. Sure to pat them down with a rag.

The fungus sizzled and hissed. As oak smoke rose sweet about the fire. Poked at the mushrooms with a good stick. Eye peered over to the river, all run and rush almost gentle against the rocks. Cricket song in the air there with the fire crackle, and the night birds. He pulled the mushrooms, and set them unto a bowl. Poured the beans into the pan. Then the water. Wild onion he'd saved. Extra pinch of salt. Let it boil. Lid on, usually helped speed things along.

She had slept in worse places. Forgotten crypts, crumbling bell towers, once even in a half-dug grave when a snowstorm came sudden.

The water had woken her enough. Her limbs still felt like they belonged to someone else. As Garrod worked behind her, coaxing fire from kindling, Daniyah began stripping out of her gear. Fingers worked at the clasps, thumbs aching as she worked them free. The leather armor creaked, stiff with salt, soot, dried blood, and ectoplasm. It had the smell of weeks on the road, of half-burned herbs and old tallow, of rain-soaked ash and freshly opened tomb. One charm caught in a strap, a loop of bone and copper wire wound tight beside a pouch of salt. She muttered under her breath and tugged it loose.

Piece by piece, the armor came off. The reinforced leather cuirass, carved with runes too old to read and scratched, patched where claws and cold iron had scraped her. Bracers. Her belt sagged under the weight of pouches, she dropped the whole thing on the ground. Her shirt clung to her ribs, darkened from both grime and ash. Salt-streaked and sweat-damp, it clung to her spine. She kicked off her boots and stretched her feet contentedly.

Daniyah rolled her shoulder, sore and stiff, and let the last of the gear fall to the ground like an old skin. The wind kissed the sweat at her back. Smells started to rise from his fire, strong enough to turn her stomach. It made her jaw ache with hunger.

She did not have the energy to fill the silence. The river gurgled beside her, dark and glinting with dusk’s last silver. Her eyes scanned the banks, half out of habit, half to keep herself from thinking. A glimmer caught her eye near a hollow in the rock. She nudged aside a flat stone and found a pale shard of quartz. She rubbed it with her thumb and turned it in her hand. She pocketed it without thinking and moved on, eyes down. Fingers brushed past wild mint, a twist of river sage, and the brittle skeleton of a dead bird tangled in reeds. She wandered the edge of the riverbank, head bowed, shoulders still heavy with weariness, though the walk helped shake off the worst of it. Pebbles crunched underfoot. Her hands moved on their own, turning stones, checking stems, and the low, waxy leaves of riverside herbs.

She wandered back into camp, didn’t say anything right away, just stepped up beside where he knelt and, without looking at him, held out her hand. "Found this," she muttered, "Might keep your fiend entertained for five seconds."

Garrod's ears were full of the crackle and crunch of warm flames eating away at the wood. Nose full of the nutty scent of the oil, mixing with the smell of the wild onion, and the sweet mild earthiness of the beans that stewed and bubbled in the pan.

Pushed and stirred them with his cooking stick. A spare piece of oak he had hacked off with his hunting knife's heavy head.

His body ached, from head to toe. Joints strained and mangled from being flung back by the witch fire blast. Felt the hurts as he worked easy figure eights in the thickening slurry. Splitting the kindling had reminded him, just how fucked he would be in the morning. Ligaments all stretched and wrecked, to the brink of snapping.

Still, he found himself wearing a ghost of a smile, all bent low there in the fire glow. The warmth bleeding across him. All wrapped around him as it sank into his bones. He always did like cooking for someone else.

"Found this... might keep your fiend entertained for five seconds."

Something like a laugh bounced once across his shoulders. "You say that like he's my cat," tapped the stick clean of bean and wild onion with a soft clang clang. Looked up to see what she held out.

A hagstone.

A rounded piece of black stone, naturally pierced. A stone born with a hole right through its heart, its edges worn smooth by time and water. Whispered about in every barrow-born tale from the Edjer Highlands to the sandy oceans of the southeast. A true one. Not carved. Not shaped. Not a fake one, like those the fraud-witches in Crorefell tossed around and tied red strings to. She dropped the hagstone into Garrod's hand.

“Demons and cats aren’t all that different,” she smirked. It might paw at it, investigate. Her eyes flicked to him, half-lidded, tired. “I even found a whispering seed. Could try it later, see if he humors us.” She lowered herself fully, settling onto the warm soil next to Garrod, letting the heat seep into her stiff muscles. One hand rested on the ground for balance.

Fingers curled in the damp loam as he played around with the hagstone. "You should try looking with your other eye..." That eye. Or rather, the place it used to be. Whatever was left in that hollow behind his eye patch. Her voice was not quite biting. Not quite joking, either.

A hole looking through a hole, Daniyah couldn’t say if it would grant him any sight or shove him headfirst into the yawning abyss. But old magic liked to twist like that, perverse and mocking. A void within a void, a hollow staring into another hollow. Might summon a vision or ghost-lights flickering over what had passed... or nothing at all.

The pale gleam of the river behind her like a blade laid flat against the world. Her shoulders moved slow with breath, but her eyes were sharp, watching the flames, not him. Garrod’s question hung in the air, soft as the steam rising from the iron pot. She shifted where she sat, her thumb brushing a row of bone-carved runes around her neck.

“If a ghost, spirit, or worse speaks near a whispering seed... you can hear it. The voice fades quick. Short-lived. Like whispers." Old hags used the seeds for far crueler work than simple messages. They slipped them beneath floorboards, tucked them in the shadows of a room, and let the whispers gnaw at the mind of the living.

Daniyah glanced at him. “You want a hand with that?” she asked and nodded toward his clanking plates.

Warm as it all had been till then, what she said sent a chill down his spine.

Words like a sword waiting to be picked up.

Put it up to his eye. Belephus' eye.

You would listen to this, WITCH, Oh Bearer Mine? the voice clawed there, in that absence of his left eye. Felt the laugh hiss and shake. Like little hooks kneading out of nervous tick. Wretched and wasted as she is.

A hint of a laugh from the one eyed hunter. "Funny that," he said. Smile wistful. He stopped chopping. "A hole to a hole," said with a bit of dream to it. started plating the beans in bowls with measured ladels. "A lense for no eye," Let his breath out, easy as the steam curled and wafted. The mild earthiness, bolstered by the oils nuttiness, and the gentle sweetness of the oak's smo. He Shook his head. Halfway between pours, and yes and no.

"Suppose it could be interesting,"

She was hear, after all. And his eye looked to her. Took her in. All twilight. Moon painted by the river, and fire lit. Body eased and eyes like bolts. And damn if she hadn't struck him. How her chords of muscle taught as bowstrings ran up her arms. Down to fingers digging through the dirt, moved to finger her charms.

He remembered how she'd braided those bells into his hair. How she held him.

Blinked and looked back to the fire. Back to the hagstone as she spoke on the Whispering Seeds.

Nod. "Sounds useful," he said. Set down a bowl for her with a clink and clatter of his cuirass and tassets. Chainmail there under. "Maybe," Shift his weight to grab up the mushroom, cut and diced on a nice flat stone, where they roasted a little more by the fire. Browned and caramelized. "After we eat, we try them out," Scooped it up with the wide knife's blade and hand in a smooth gather. Set the first juicy bunch unto her bowl. Careful. Fanned them out some, so they rest easy and pretty stop the bean stew.

She offered to help him. He almost seemed struck. Moved to scoop up the other mushrooms. Gave a nod, as he laid them into his bowl. "If you're offering." Eased back and knelt beside her. Butt on his heels. He wiped his knife down in the crook of his sleeve, and set it into its sheath at his belt with a click. "Food has to cool some anyway,"

Daniyah saw the way he looked at her. And she recognized that look. Hunger that had nothing to do with stew. She’d seen it before, in better places and worse ones. It came dressed in a dozen faces, some she still missed, but it always looked the same in the end. Neither of them got the luxury of pretending it ends well. Daniyah shifted where she sat, knee drawn up, elbow resting there as she watched him in the firelight.

“You’re easy to read when you're hungry,” she said, more a tease than an observation. She took the bowl from him. She settled back onto the packed earth by the fire, her charms clicking faintly as she moved, bones, silver, and claw. Relics of old battles and even older fears.

Daniyah placed the warm bowl down by the fire with a soft clink, steam curling in lazy spirals between her knees. The scent of the stew, beans, wild onion, smoked and charred mushroom mingled with the scent of river mist, wet fur and sweat. The rustle of worn leathers and the soft crunch of her knee on ground as she crawled up to sit at his side. Her fingers found the leather straps, felt the old scuffs and worn stitching. She worked them loose, one by one.

Every buckle she unfastened made her think of another lifetime. Of another fire. A colder night. A different man sitting before her with his head bowed, quiet and bruised after another fight. She hadn’t done this since then. Since Brayan. Since she’d been an apprentice with a blade too big and too many questions. She hadn’t touched anyone else’s armor since. She forced herself to keep her thoughts half in the work, half in the memories. The steel shifted and rustled over the mail. She pressed her palm against him, steadying the weight as she lifted one plate free and set it down beside them.

He felt red across the face. And not just from the burns of the witch fire. He angled his face a touch away.

"And you're a right mystery, no matter when I look at you," he confessed. Tender and raw

He felt her shift as much as he saw her. Through the leather of his boots, and the bones of his feet, pressed against the soft earth. Listened to the rattle and click of her trophies and wards. Liked their haunting rhythm. Almost felt like an old lullaby. A song he knew too well.

I'm still here. It sang betwixt every click of bone. I still breath. It whispered between the chimes of silver there amidst the fires pop. I still bleed. It promised, as it scratched atop her heart.

Felt his hands tighten to balled fists against his thighs as she approached. Loosed as she sat beside him. Worked tips into his own flesh as she popped buckle after buckle. Felt lungs fuller when the shell came loose.

Didn't want to think on when last, another pulled his armor off like this. Didn't want the ruin that was, make the moment now any less. Small as it was. For all it was. But there they were when the armor came free. Tears in his eye. An ache in the other. A pain as it burned.

A pang of fear as his heart kicked faster. Spine stiff as he eased back down. Blinked and felt the cool heat of lágrimas, rolling down his face. A laugh.

"Fuck," he hissed beneath relieved breath. Wanted to hide.

Her gaze lingered, skeptical at first. Like she was trying to piece together what the fuck had cracked him open. Because it wasn’t just relief. It was something else than his body finally getting to breathe. Fingers reaching out before she could stop herself. A calloused thumb swiped across the sharp ridge of his cheekbone, catching the hot trail as it carved through the grime and sweat of the day.

She wasn’t good with this sort of thing. Tenderness twisted strangely in her chest. Made her feel like something in her ribs had grown crooked. She wiped another tear away with the pad of her thumb. She watched how he flinched from the shame of being seen like this. Firelight licked across his face, painted his wet cheekbones in rust and ruin. All carved out and bleeding from places no blade touched.

“Made you blush and cry today. Gods, you’re softer than you look...”

There wasn’t malice in her voice. But it wasn’t sweet either. Their way of the world, the jagged crawl of a life spent hunting nightmares and sleeping in dirt, softness wasn’t expected, and when it showed, it was usually bleeding. She eased back, hands resting on her thighs.

She reached for her bowl, now just warm enough to eat without searing the roof of her mouth. She watched him from the corner of her eye. Flicked a glance to his boots, his hands, then finally to his face. “You hurt somewhere I should know about?” She couldn't get any closer than that to: "Are you okay?"

Yes, then no.
Old hurts.

Well shit.

Daniyah stilled.
The spoon hovered halfway to her mouth. The stew’s warmth steamed against her face.

Whatever fragile wall he’s built around himself seemed to waver under her presence, and whatever ghosts still lived in his bones, it was the kind she could not banish with salt or iron.

Her instincts, honed on corpses and curses, gave her no map for this, how to be near someone alive and breaking. She didn’t know whether to say something, stay silent, or shove him into the world with a harsh word to make it easier. Her fingers itched with the need to fix, to protect, to strike, to do something, anything.

She looked at him, really looked. Follows his hand to his scars on his neck. The way his eye wouldn’t settle, the way his shoulders curled like he was bracing for another blow. Not from her. She lowered her spoon, it scraped against the bowl as she set it down.

Old hurts.

“Oh, fuck...” she mutters. Daniyah leaned closer, her fingers brushing against the nape of his neck as she moved his white hair aside. “This one?” she asked.

Her hand didn’t leave his neck. Fingers traced the scar slowly, rough pads brushing over the uneven skin. Reading the scar with her fingertips. Warped skin beneath her touch, and she let her thumb circle the worst of it. Her touch was steady in the same way you might comfort a wild thing used to lashes instead of hands.

That surprised her more than anything. He used to flinch from her. The look he gave her just yesterday had been sharp as flint, half-ready to draw steel just because she existed. Judgement in his one eye, like he already had her pegged. All suspicion and armor. He had looked at her like she was an affront to whatever code he lived by. Snake-oil witch. Talisman-rattler. Grave-scavenger. Like she was half a step from madness. Maybe she was. But still, he bent his head to her touch. She could feel the way the muscle jumped beneath her palm, feel the skin rising in prickles, the pulse that beat harder the longer she lingered. Whatever the fuck this was. She wasn’t sure what to do with it.

Her palm settled against his neck, warm against that cold and smooth scar. “You don’t owe me the story, but..” she added. “S’pose you’ll want to talk about it now." Words quiet in a way that didn’t come easily to her. Her thumb moved again, slow circle at the base of his skull. She didn’t know if she was comforting him right.