​
That brush of his knuckles to her cheek felt like the first careful steps toward redemption, and her eyes fluttered shut at the touch, a quiet hum of contentment stirring low in her throat. Her hand slid from the nape of his neck, up the sinew of his forearm, fingers seeking his until they threaded through. She pressed her cheek briefly into the back of his hand and guided their joined hands to her lips.

She opened her eyes to study him, admiring the long slate of his lashes that filtered the morning light like pale crystal. It filled her with a strange warmth, despite his jarring question.

Which was proving not to be an easy one to answer. Her brow knit as she thought.

Why had she tried to sleep on the floor?

The reasons had made perfect sense last night. But now, without the yelling and words brandished like weapons, she felt sheepish to reveal them.

Was Farren meant to explain that among Bell Keepers, beast-kin, the floor didn't hold the same weight of shame? Or that part of her had genuinely wanted to avoid upsetting him further? Or—

Or... that she hadn’t wanted to be in the bed if he came back and looked at her like she was something to be endured?

That it had seemed easier and safer to place herself on the ground and call it practical?

Because you couldn’t be rejected if you’d already chosen to occupy the space no one asked you to leave.

She cringed inwardly for the shape of it from his eyes. Gods, it must have looked pathetic. Like some dutiful hound making way for its master’s favored chair by the hearth.

Her throat bobbed with the effort of swallowing it.

“I am discovering,” she murmured against his knuckles, her grip tightening slightly, “that... I may... have a... propensity for needless self-sacrifice.”

Her eyes flicked away, face tinged with heat at the exposure of her own folly. “I felt... that if you didn’t want to be near me, or…” She winced faintly. “Share a bed… I could be understanding. I could make it easier.”

@Aarno
 
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He listened, expression unshifting, allowing her keep his hand. The other held on, resting on the bend of her side, the warm and soft fabric of her tunic.

At least she’d identified the cause and saved him the trouble of wringing it out of her or worse — wondering about it. The causes for things as this usually were myriad and most of them unflattering, either to him or her. Sometimes both, like he’d suspected to be the case this time around. Despite himself, he accepted the explanation in a nod, singular.

“ And you shifted. Into something that could neither speak nor embrace. “ Not as we had or do, right now. He kept his tone as it was, unaccusing if sombre. Curiousity as only early morning would bid, with an edge of tiredness.

“ Was that for my comfort too? Or yours. “
 
Farren looked back at him. Unable to stop herself, just like always.

Her eyes traced his, studied the dark cast of thought behind them. Then lower— pausing on his mouth, as if she were trying to imagine the words they might’ve said last night if things hadn’t broken apart. If they’d kept going, shouting, bleeding more hurt into the open. Or if they had reconciled and heated salvation had found them once more.

She swallowed, the edge of her expression tilting faintly with regret, before her gaze drifted down to the place their hands remained joined.

“Would you believe me if I said both?” she asked at last, voice rueful.

Her thumb brushed the back of his hand once. “I felt… empty of good words. Like if I kept trying to find any more, I’d just keep saying the wrong ones.”

She shifted, chewing at the inside of her cheek, as though she might follow it with something better. Something with less apology and less self-scourging.

But the silence lingered too long ad her stomach let out an ungraceful rumble.

@Aarno
 
He bobbed his head, an image of understanding. That was her escape to have, he had to suppose, no matter how much it’d disappointed him. Even if he had to acknowledge it was probably for the best for how it forced them apart, to forfeit argument for the rest of the night.

Rest and light. Defused. And famished, apparently, if that sound resonating off her into their silence was anything to go by. Hollow in the stomach.

He urged her closer, to come rest against him. If just for the couple more minutes.

“ Tell me of your plans for today. “ He asked, trying the side of her hair in a gentle stroke.

“ Breakfast with your family, perhaps. Davina. And? “
 
It all felt so terribly and wonderfully domestic.

And for just a moment, Farren let herself indulge the fantasy of what it might be like to wake like this most mornings. Pulled apart as they would be by Dusk assignments and Monastery duties, gone for days or weeks at a time. But always coming back. And in the midst, finding each other in the small things. Their letters. And pockets full of rocks and flowers and stories of monsters in the shroud, and good people helped.

It would be a good life. She didn’t know if she could ask for better. But as she'd learned, ask him she would.

Her cheek brushed against his shoulder as she shifted to rest more easily in his hold, and her voice came quiet, settling into the soft give of his chest and the affectionate petting of her hair.

“Well, as you remember on our trek over,” she began, “the day after the festival is when the caravan packs up and they all move west toward the spring grasses.”

A smile flickered at the corners of her mouth, the first since last night.

“As for breakfast… I was really rather hoping we’d break bread together. There’s hardly any sugar left to spare, but—” her smile widened, teasing “—all the fell-deer cream you could want to luxuriate your coffee with.”

A soft huff of laughter escaped her. “Though I am curious what your elevated palate will make of it.”

She reached up to toy gently with the edge of her collar, brushing her thumb over the stitching absently.

“But first—yes. Davina. For that tea.”

“Then we can eat. Ride out with the caravan for a time. Say our proper goodbyes before we split off and head home.”

A breath.

“Does that sound alright to you?”

@Aarno
 
Eat. Ride out with the caravan for a time. Proper goodbyes.

He took it in, saying and giving up nothing while she spoke. Kept his arm around her, watching the bit of her face that was visible past the wisps framing it.

It should’ve sounded lovely. By all intents and purposes it was. And yet, the breath in his chest felt heavy, lungs netted through with taut string. A clutch about his throat, face a slack mask as he eyed the triangle of sunlight on the pelts, cast through the gap in the entrance. How it’d move only when one looked away.

She bid him speak. For a couple audible heartbeats he couldn’t. Dread.

“ It sounds wonderful, but—“ He begun gently, fingers fidgeting where she’d laced hers into them. “ I think— “ Put weight on the words, brushed his thumb over her knuckles.

“ I should go. “

At once.
 
Go.

A sudden, sick heat bloomed out from her chest, sharp and disorienting, before it bled cold down her arms, numbing the tips of her fingers. It crawled up the back of her neck like something feral and cornered.

Breathe, she told herself.

Don’t let him see it. Don’t let him know the way that word gutted her.

Of course he wanted to leave. Of course he did.
But had he not just spoken of that fucking pond? And the fish? And how they’d 'get there'?
How, Aarno, she thought bitterly, if you keep choosing to run.

The worst part, the part that made her stomach turn, was that he knew she wouldn’t stop him.

Farren, who was born to a people without tethers, who had never known a cage outside of the one she built for herself. She would never force him to stay.

It was not in her nature.

Especially if being beside her felt like drowning.

So she swallowed it.

Banked the tremble in her hands, smothered the fires stoked beneath her ribs.
Her voice, when it came, was quiet and flat. Tempered like a blade drawn from the forge and plunged into cold water, made stronger for the shock of it.

This was nothing more than asking about the weather, as if everything didn’t hang on his answer.

“But do you want to leave, Aarno?”

Leave me?

@Aarno
 
“ Yes. “ He responded on instinct, eliminating any delay that’d let doubt thicken to a shroud through which it’d be impossible to see reason. While they were here, her tone as it was and neither yet having pulled away, it would’ve been foolish to not speak how he felt. Actual honesty.

And he didn’t want to explain it to her. How he should’ve loathed to be but some wrathful geist at her side as they went on with the day, haunting her and every interaction she’d have with her family. A heavy presence in all that little bit of time she had left to enjoy the reunion with beloved kin until they’d all split up again, for another year or longer.

He could endure the stares for his shouting and callous disregard for both peace and appearances. He’d done it before. But to burden her, risking she’d feel like she couldn’t act nor speak as she had, the way everyone here knew and loved her for—

No. He wouldn’t be that curse to be a appeased, a spell for her to sacrifice for. So—

“ I’ll leave right away — It doesn’t have to be complicated. “ He didn’t mirror her flat tone, keeping a subdued warmth to his as he watched the sunlight flicker on the floor. The swing of branches.

“ Will take the same route we came. “ A little scenic, but easy underfoot. A fine enough trek. “ Same stops as before. And whenever you should part with the caravan, you can seek me out. To travel rest of the way home together. “

He made it a suggestion, glance daring to land upon her. Trying to read her face for the things she wouldn’t say. How many were there?

“ I’ll wait for you. “ Promised, kept still and lingered as only befit the ending of sweet things. Closeness, the leisure of morning, whatever this was.

“ Unless you’d rather I didn’t. “ Spoken like it mattered. It wouldn’t.

He’d wait regardless.
 
How quick that yes and the plunge of her gut.

Like he had taken the sword she’d forged and sunk it into soft underbelly that she had guarded so well.

Did he feel the blood pooling between them?
How hot the feel of it and cold her skin?

Would she start gasping for breath first? Or would she fade quietly beneath him?

And would he even notice her dying softly?

But there came the slow realization as she bled out, his words poised carefully between them, the sword receding—

That perhaps he saw his version of kindness being shaped by the belief that distance was less cruel. Was it shame within himself, and not shame of being with her?

And maybe she understood that. In some weary, exhausted way.

But she wasn’t sure she could survive hearing the full weight of that answer— not while she lay here, bare in every sense. She’d given too much. Taken more than she ever meant to. Devoured it all like she was starving. And now she was too full of him to speak without choking on it.

Farren untangled herself with care. She pressed a kiss to the back of his hand, one last indulgence.

“As you wish,” she said, mouth in the shape of a composed smile. “I’ll at least see that you’re fed before you go.”

She rose without ceremony and dressed, callused fingers parting and twisting her hair into practiced knots. The bells tied last, one by one, that very dear ritual of becoming herself again.

But before she reached for the flap of the yurt, she paused.

“If you’re willing, could you take my horse. Just for a time. Until we meet again?"

“I want to help with the migration. Run with the other Bell Keepers. It’s a large herd this season—and I…” A flicker of breath, a glint of teeth in something close to a wistful smile. “I miss it. The run of wolves in the ferns and the heather. The herding. The shepherds' song.”

@Aarno
 
As he wished. What else was there to ask for? He couldn’t muster a smile in turn for it as they parted from where they lay, too preoccupied with the peculiar air about her. Methodical, meticulous, eerily calm.

After all he’d seen of her it felt put on. And there was nothing for him to do about it, not presently, no matter how much it bothered him. He took his cue from her thereon and sidled off the bed sluggishly, directly into gathering of his clothes. Most of them strewn about and forgotten on the floor around the bed. Some yesterday eve.

He wouldn’t look into even her general direction until she spoke again, halting at her exit and pausing him from where he’d been inspecting the spare overtunic he’d brought. Grey and washed out. He glanced up from it, face blank.

“ Yes, of course. “ Until we meet again. It would be no trouble at all, after everything, the sentiment of it in his nod and eyes that’d soften with the hint of a smile. They kept as she explained why she needed the favour, a bit of her spirit restored.

“ Then run. Herd, smell the ferns and the heather, listen to the songs. To your heart’s content. “ He affirmed, hands working the tunic sleeves into his arms, before he slipped it over his head and on properly.

“ And commit to memory. “ Yanked at the hem and fished his hair out of the collar.

“ So you can tell me about it, later. “
 
Aarno's words settled somewhere deep in her chest, in a place Farren had been trying not to feel. A strange tightening bloomed there, warm and aching all at once, a feeling she was still too bruised and uncertain to name.

But though their garden was filled with thorns. Farren could now see through the bramble that roses still grew. Flowers they had watered with blood. Wild and stubborn things. Even if it was because they had pressed the knives to their own skin.

Fingers fidgeted with something small and cool in her hand that she had pulled from her pack, worry-stroked between thumb and knuckle. She stepped forward before she could talk herself out of it.

“To my heart’s content,” she echoed, pressing a hesitant kiss to his cheek.

Like her, it lingered.

She took his hand next and tucked a stone into it, closing his fingers around it gently. It was smooth and pale, the one she'd found days ago on the trek here. Unremarkable to anyone else. But she’d carried it anyway to give to him. Her promise given, in his palm.

Her smile was a strange thing, splintered and soft.

'I’ll wait for you.'

"And I'll look for you." Anywhere.

FIN​

@Aarno
 
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