Private Snow Melt

[Helena]

​

Been half a day since they had set out. Packs laden for the long ride that lay ahead, the whole world set to the motion of their horses steady beat, and the sun high above the branches and boughs of the forest that gifted its shade. A crisp chill still in the air that ruffled the fur about her cloak. Armor left behind. Sword still on her saddle, and her mind full on all the things that would be left undone. How much they would need doing upon her return.

Would the reports find their way to the right hands? Tied to the right birds? Run by the right carriers? What of the inspections? With her gone, would the Monastery go on? Or would it all fall to dust and ruin. A foolish thought. No doubt in that. Yet there it was. Rooted and spreading beneath it all these hours.

Far from the first time she had ridden out from its walls as Captain of Dawn, but that was to the point. She was not acting as Captain in this. Little more than a frivolity. A whim.

Still, you should go.

"What's the farthest you've gone from your home?" she asked in the calm moment that had stretched between them. Eyes ahead. A soft smile on her lips as her dark curls bobbed with the horse's gait.

Quiet shadow that he was. She could feel him there. Out of sight, yet never far from thought.

 

[Aarno]

The sun had turned behind them a time ago. The cooling of the day could be felt where the trees shaded the way, the breeze coming in from the North in turn and with new gusto, as it usually did from afternoon onwards. It tried his lighter Spring clothes with icy little tugs and tied knots in his hair, left untied as it was. Basic lack of foresight.

Though the wind easily stole away his little huffs and mutters, the Captain’s voice was clear through it. And even past her shoulder, ahead as she was. Must’ve been all that practice at at the helm.

“ Way up North — The beak at the end of Edjer Highlands, where black jagged rock suddenly falls to the Sea. “ That shape does appear a bit like a bird, doesn’t It. Only accessible by land or with those specific boats with their shallow hulls, as the coast there was much too riddled with every which rock, leering just beneath the surface. Hidden spots where a man might stand and look from a distance as if he is doing so on the water itself.

“ Part of my apprenticeship — for learning. One of my then Master’s acquaintances, a fellow magician, had set up a practice there. An absolute menace of a winter residence. “

Builds character, they’d said. A fine sense of humour, as they both strayed down the frozen hills on errands or the simple daily task of fetching water. And the ambience had definitely been an adjustment — the endless commotion of a city replaced by the constantly howling wind and steady crash of waves. Quieter and louder all at once.

“ A generous twenty years ago now, must be. “ He shrugged, figure swaying as the horse maneuvered around a little dent in the gravel, yearly melting waters having carved the path in half.

“ Yourself? Figure a Captain of Dawn will get plenty far, aboard an airship even. “

I heard of that. He smiled a little, the tune of it in his voice.

“ Whenever her office can spare her, anyway. “

 

[Helena]

"Just a young man then," she said with a smile on her lips. Found herself wondering, what sort of character the calm and reserved, Syr Latva may have been those many years ago. "Were you a proud young upstart, Aarno?" she asked, tease warm in her voice, head tilt ever so toward the mason sworn to knighthood.

"Seething away in a frigid prison, waiting for your opportunity to show the world your mettle?" like a sunbaked stone. "A tower against the crash of waves," the words hissed in her ears, and her mind painted the picture. "Silvered greens, muted with mist," She laughed. Looked back at him as the streams rivuletted through the rocks along their path. Hints of sunlight gleamed there about them.

"As a Captain of Dawn?" she asked as their horses hooves did clop, each knock punctuated the stretch in thought. Bird song there just above it. Crisp trills that cut through the gentle rustle of leaf, and clack of branch. "Suppose the ride down range has been the farthest," she agreed with a nod of the head, a look unto the road again. "An adventure all its own," she couldn't help but grin at the memory of it.

"Whole ship just, rattled on underfoot the whole way through," she shook her head. "The whip-wip-wip, of the fans, and the strange bend to the air, a tanginess like, copper almost, though suppose could taste like blueberries to another," she shivered, though the smile went on, her eyes looked back for him, "Have you ever tasted it?" she nod her nose. "The air about a shroud engine?"

 

[Aarno]

What was he to afford for such a bright counter, all in a smile. His own persisted as he thought on the long gone, master and that little hut at the cliffside both. He had to figure they were no more at the very least, seeing as the man and his abode had been equally ailed by what old age and relentless draft begets.

“ Yes. “ He’d merely affirm in that manner of insufferable self-assurance, an excavated effect from way back when he should’ve held his head all the higher. Not for believing himself above anyone, as in truth he never had convinced himself of the fact, but for the effect such a countenance should’ve had whenever people thought it true. There were enough of the sort, just as there were whomever should’ve seen right past the put on confidence. Fewest were the ilk who’d called him out on it, though, or the wealth of past conjecture he’d passed for knowledge.

The expression broke like a spell from his face, gone back to that subdued pleasantry. He watched the Captain’s figure as she kept posture in the saddle, explaining on the topic of airships. Engines. His eyes drew to a squint at the inquiry, lips pursing.

“ Can’t say I do remember a taste, despite having been aboard a ship equipped with such the once. “ Years ago that too. And to his then self it had lacked charm so severely he had foregone boarding one ever again.

“ Must’ve been preoccupation with the whole ordeal of being tied to the vessel. “ Much else to taste, too, drowning in what was neither water nor fresh air. “ Couldn’t leave when I wanted to — not like carriages, off which a particularly dramatic young man might wantonly just step himself out of, should he fancy. “ If he hadn’t done so in his petulant youth— Nigh broke an arm, a leg and his neck. He hazarded a smirk, only half of it for the memory itself.

“ But I do remember a sort of— feeling. “ A lungful, in and out, grip idly adjusting on the reins.

“ In the air and the wood of the ship, when one should lay a palm against it. The rumble of a heart, of sorts. A wanting in the fibres, a bit jittery, not unlike that belongst to an anxious lover. “

Or a— bound horse, yearning? Perhaps he should’ve gone with that instead. He bit his lip and found, of a sudden, the depths of nearby shrubs terribly interesting. Surefooted in a way he could never be, his horse plodded on in the wake of it’s leading kin.

“ Sensations of the Shroud. So much of it, always anticipating, funneled and bent to shape. “ Tone enforced to a level of a terribly composed man, despite his face, he continued on. “ Drawing in as much as it wishes to hurl off and leave behind. Repelling, almost. “

Causing palpitations. Difficulty of sleep. He’d rather just taste copper, honestly.

“ You weren’t in any such way affected, on your voyage? “

 

[Helena]

A nod at his introduction. Lips tugged at one corner. It was almost a formality. Chiseled away and cut down just enough by a practiced mind. Still, her attention lingered. Interest piqued.

She could imagine him, not so different as he was now. Might be his features were softer then, hair kept shorter, maybe. Eyes just as achingly forlorn as they always seemed. Deep as a rive basin, carved through a mountainsides. She huffed, and smiled to herself. On the ride they shared. No thing to be tied to. No walls to keep him trapped. She hid her laugh when he shared he... might have, hopped out of a carriage. Moving no doubt. At what speed, she couldn't help but wonder.

A nod. "Yes, indeed," she tittered behind a gloved knuckle.

The story went on. So she settled again in her saddle, hands down to reins. She shift her weight back, hips rolling in. to let the horse slow to the other's side. Saw him again, as he might of looked. then. Young and full of fire.

Fool enough to step out of a carriage mid roll. That all bled away as she thought on the heart he felt, then on his airship of yore. Bound and restless as he was. Hand against the planks. Feeling as much as he listened. Almost sounded overwhelmed.

"No," she answered plainly. A match to his earlier cut with single syllable, eyes forward, head high, back straight. Her facaded melted with warm feeling, and she shook her head. Turned, just so, to see his bright eyes.

"A lover you said?" she smiled wide with a sharp surprise, dragging up that flawed gem he had so tossed. Felt a flutter of heat in her chest. She laughed. Nod. "I like that," she confessed. Eyes ahead again. As their horses went.

"A sturdy heart that carried you on." she found herself saying, "Delicate to all the world around it, just as one was, adrift in their pull." she eyed him, sidelong and smiled. A play of words, surely, just amidst friends. "A strong wind might try and throw them to the earth," the drama in her voice. Too much fun in it really. "No, I can't quite say I felt such a thing," she tried. A bob of her nose, dark curls tied back into round blossoms that shift in the motion. More sure than any shrub. "I did feel the shroud though," she sparked. "Bent as you said, drawn in, and pushed out, like a strong breath, bellowed by sure lungs," She seamed pleased with that. "It was rather electrifying really," she smiled a secret thing. "That lover that carried me upon those winds,"

 

[Aarno]

She’d come alongside now, braving the path side by side, and he felt her eyes on him. Easy with the glances that seemed to enjoy keeping watch just as much as extending attention, caring for the words and the sight of whomever was in her company. He’d never felt entirely at rest beneath it, always minding his posture and own wandering gaze a little more, even if all that genuine and direct manner was everything he should’ve wanted.

Heart. He met her look, an acknowledging fondness in it for the softer words and the parallels he had to draw for the sight of her. He’d seen, heard and felt enough for it. Delicate, but with a pull. Magnetism.

He huffed a laugh at the sound of his own words, so pointed now that she spoke it a second time. Lover. If she was making fun of him, it was working, but he felt but amused with himself for it.

A swordsman’s sentimental poetry. Or was it that of a craftsman, thinking on the next symbol he would shape into stone forever. Either way, he had to for his own comfort imagine he was hardly the worst of them.

“ It is so, isn’t it. A lover. “ He hummed, in a keel of the head. “ Tender feeling beneath the skin, frightening and equally thrilling. Tears people apart just as much as it mends them together. “

Was this about the Shroud or erotic love? His master had taught him there was no difference — think on the feeling of laying next to another, pressing so close and yet unable to be close enough. The Shroud would never fuse with a man, endlessly separate even when it flowed literally through him, no matter how much he’d want otherwise.

To have and to hold. And yet, in the minutia of the flesh and the air about it that’d always open wide eventually, so strangely unsatisfied. There was that tale of an age old separation where two things should’ve been torn asunder, doomed to always search and even when they found their ardently sought, never coming together as they had been. Was that the residue of it, a visceral tingle about a wound that wasn’t and yet yawned, yearning to be impossibly filled.

He wasn’t alone in it, he knew. They’d written dialogues about it since thousands of years ago.

“ Don’t think I was much thrilled when I first discovered some ripple of it, Shroud, come stabbing at the fingers like so many knifepoints. Too young for it, to suddenly have read an arthritic pain on one I knew — excruciating to be felt in kind, let alone as a confused child, before I learned to shut the gravity betwixt two currents and interpret just the other. “ Because a part of it had been real. Pain always was. He flexed his fingers, watching the bend of joints made thicker with manual labour. Knuckles bouncing.

“ Straw and stone are much kinder. They feel things too and have memory, but it’s different. “ A wind in the leaves, a cycle of death, or just a grave silence. There was no reading the latter, which made it restful and conversational all in the same. Mystery.

The topic had ran away from him, again. He cleared his throat, perching a look upon her. The bounce of curls and clever dark eyes, the smiles that promised stories.

“ What sort of things do the Greystones have about them? Secrets, folktales? “

 

[Helena]

It is so, isn't it... as much as it mends them together.

"Now there is a thought," she said with a hint of excitement. Caught a glimpse of that far off look of his as he fell into some distant sea of thought. And yet she could see it there, crashing against storm white brows, and cascades that looked like pouring waterfall. She set her eye forward, lest she get accused of staring.

But she never minded the silence. Not on days like this. Clear air to breath, bright sun that shone above as the mother's belt did stir through the sky. The stones there in, bound to each other by the very forces they described as lovers, drift in their celestial dance. The boundless, the mirror, and the beast, all set unto the day's powdery blue.

Don't think I... he began anew, and her eyes glanced at him from their corners. Her breath held at the story. How he checked his own hand, and went on until the end. A soft hum, pulled from between her lungs, as the quiet fell between them once more.

"That's-"

A clearing of throat, and his large bright eyes seemed to burn onto her. She but smiled at their attention. Wondered why he seemed so nervous. A gentle dip of her chin.

"It must have been very frightening, Aarno," she could not help but say. "To feel that way, with no way of making sense of it then," she looked back to the road ahead, and the cool greens hills that rose before them. The dark stone peaks of the Greystones there, if just to spy the pair of riders moving down the trail, there behind the swollen earth, that so oft looked to be a woman, long laid down to rest. Head craned, and chest heaving into the air. The rolling hills to the east trailed to be her legs and feet.

"Of course we have our own secrets," she gave, tilt her chin forward, unto the hills that loomed ever closer with each moment that passed between them. "There in those hills, there is the Loch of the Green Lady," her eyes flit like sparrows to find him once more. "Guarded by the Green Coven," her eyes sparkled with a hint of mischief. "Might be, you'll hear the coven singing to the moons as we grow closer," she let her voice hush. Turned her ear up toward the hills, as if she anticipated the distant call.

 

[Aarno]

The comforting words lingered upon him as a knell. For one who fancied himself plenty confident, it was unnerving to feel a touch embarrassed. Not for the vulnerability itself, as it was something of an ugly habit of him to speak wantonly on any which difficulty, but that it should’ve elicited such a response — so earnestly affirmative and pleasant, but tonally shifted. As if more affected than himself was, which at this point in time was none at all.

It was so long ago. For how she eyed the distance, he too took shelter in the sight of it; the billowing peaks and drops, bright and spry spring grass that struck a colourful contrast to what loomed as grey as its name promised. And just so, a tale as requested gave it more depth, things not measured in yards. Green.

He arranged a smile of his own, brows arched in piqued curiousity as his head keeled to lend an ear to the wind in tune with her. Beneath the horses’ hooves, the trees creaked and hummed, the shrubs snapped and crackled, blackbirds and chaffinches sang somewhere unseen. He took it in with the satisfied air of a man about to drift to sleep, eyes rowing lazily around them in the wordless unsilence.

“ Coven, you say— “ He begun into it in time, quieter. “ Witches? “

 

[Helena]

With not but the sound of the world about them to fill in all that space that swirled in between. Riding down the road, and unto the hills so verdant and many green before them. Slow to roll toward. Clip by doubled clop. Horse breath smacked against the air as tails swished. The earthy tang of road dust and horse hair.

"Some have called them that," she said easy as the birds hopped. Branch to branch. Wings set to beating flutter. "Witches that haunt the hills," she smiled, a thing sharp with knowing. "Eyes set to glow like the fullest moons there in the shadows of day and night," Her eyes narrowed just a touch, the color of acorns fixed onto him, sidelong. Lip quirked up the more the side opposite of him. Almost a secret with the slight keen of her head.

An invitation.

A howl bayed through the distant sky. A tear through the air that made the drums of ears hum, and the marrow of the living thrum with shake.

Helena shook her spine as the shiver worked through her. All relish in the feeling as she looked to her own hands. Felt her finger nails and bones all the more as she splayed them and flexed.

"Ur Wolves," all smile.

 

[Aarno]

She performed the occult and mystique of it, catching his look that would linger during those turns of phrase. A puzzled sort of endearment sneaked into his smile and the set of his eyes, like he’d listened to a tale he didn’t quite believe, but wanted to.

It was done away by the howl and the announcement from a mouth that knew only but to smile at it. In adoration? Complete lack of fear. His brows remained where the wolves had hiked them up to, though the startlement itself melted away into another, more ponderant surprise. A little exhilarated, for the sliver of teeth in his smirk.

“ Can’t say I’ve ever met any. Let alone ones in a Coven. “ He admitted, tearing his attention away to the hills anew in easy wonder.

“ Who is the Green Lady? “

 

[Helena]

The horses seemed none too pleased by the peal of predator's song. Ears flicked, and heads shook as breath blustered out. Helena eased a hand over and tutt her tongue to soothe her stead.

She nod at Aarno's confession. Proud as she was of her own experiences. "Few have," she touched, voice with all the excitement of leaves unfurling to the sun. Her eyes followed his up to their looming destination.

"Their matriarch," she said, simple as a drop of rain sunk into the soil. "She is the ancient of the Coven. Crowned with antlers as old as the old growths, her coat turned green from moss, and so much of the secrets and treasures hidden amongst the tallest tree's branches ," her eyes seemed to find a spot only she could see. There upon the great woman that was the hills, betwixt where her chin dipped into the valley of her neck, and span of chest's gentle rise.

"They told me once, that where she walks, the trees sing. Their songs, old lessons meant to guide and grow," she huffed, a happy sound, looked to him with a surrendered tilt of the head and shrugged. "What they guided, and what they grew, only the trees know,"

 

[Aarno]

“ They— “ He spoke the word as if inspecting it for flavour, catching up belatedly to whom she meant with it. Hazarded an assumption. “ So you’ve met with the Coven? Or it’s members, at the very least. “

Curiousity and wonder genuine when he should meet eyes with her again. With the coy confidence of a man who may have always suspected something, but never far enough. She’d always have gone further, somehow. He was finding out.

“ But not the Matriarch. The singing canopies. “ As if in disbelief.

“ Does she live at the Loch, guarded? Have you been there? “

 

[Helena]

A nod. "They," she echoed, small smile at the curious taste of his voice on the air. "I have met with them, yes,"

Almost a laugh. Looked to him and saw the questions building behind his eyes. Shook her head and looked ahead once more, a huff of her own as she felt warmth like the sun come break through the grey day. Feint, but so sticky with each breath.

Another set of measures. Another set of probes. She but nod at the last of it. "I have been there," She didn't shy from his stare. "to the Loch," she gave, mischief a sparkle in her eye. A shift in her hips. Legs walking Roci with more energy, the dapple grey gelding moving from walk to trot up the trail with a little more haste.

A welcome to race.

 

[Aarno]

It seemed he’d spent his quota for— something. Questions? Intensity? Whatever it was, the point of it was obvious as she fled from alongside, urging the animal beneath her to a faster pace on the upward slope. For her smile alone, and mainly the mischief in it, he could ease into thinking next to nothing of it.

So he watched her go, allowing her those couple seconds of headway in his silence that merely observed the distancing — bounce of curls and the sparkle of sunlight in the black coils of them, the swish of a beloved horse’s tail and the click of hooves.

“ Hey, Captain! “ He shouted after her, spreading his arms. “ Pray tell, where are you going? “

Like an oblivious and abysmally pompous courtier, outraged that the good Queen, whom was also his very close personal friend thank you very much, should’ve ignored an invitation to his perfectly self-important garden party. Save for the smile about him that he couldn't shake even for the sake of theater.

“ I have not worn out my good graces already, have I? We have so many miles to go! “

He gave Svala some of his heels, which it respected dutifully by collecting a faster gait, then a brisk trot. It didn’t do to catch up too fast, after all.

 

[Helena]

"Come and quest after it, Syr Latva!" she teased back with a show of teeth, all twist in her saddle and over her shoulder as Roci went on trip-trotting up the path. The green world about them sped the faster. Curls a bounce as she caught that bright gaze of his against the rich grey blue of his visage. Slate, against ribbons of clouds. Something secret behind the curl of her lips.

Birds in droves of tens and twenties sprung from the bushes they had hopped and hid in as the steads rode past. Wings buzzed with flight. Little bodies dipped with the bob of small body's dive.

Legs walked the faster, and Roci gave more bite to his gait. Just enough to maintain the lead. All bounce and rhythm, sure and steady in the ride. Voice strong on the wind, she had no fear he wouldn't hear her. "Or are you so worried as to what you might find, at the end of these graces?!" too much smile to be anything other than play.