Welcome to Gaia! ::

Clkk — kkthhnk — clack!

Malikai swung, dipping his weight, pivoting, and driving back forward again with his blade as he moved. The ‘dummy’ he fought against was not especially top notch, the spellwork in it limited and its range of movements confined to a small area. But even the basics sufficed for a decent enough warm up, and it never hurt to drill from the bottom up. This had always been his philosophy when it came to training and never yet had he faltered. In any case, it wasn’t as though he had anything — or anyone — better to practice with at this hour.

Moonlight trickled in, white-silver from the skies above, and kept him company as he worked his rotations. Again. Again. Again. Step, thrust, swing, retreat.

Normally, he would have been home at an hour this late. Or, some years ago he would have been. At seventeen, however, his home environment was a different scene from that of his earlier childhood. His father, once only a blathering and harmless drunk, had seemed only to grow crosser with age, and the negative energy that came with late nights and the smell of alcohol so thick it felt as though it seeped from the walls made Malikai edgy. Restless. And eager for something else.

Pushing his body in the training courts and working his muscles until they stung seemed to help. Some. When he was breathless and panting, he focussed more on the workings of his lungs, the burning of his arms and chest and the growing, healthy, familiar aches of a body worked hard. Less on other, unfavorable things.

By the time he finished, sweat slicked his forehead — and most of the rest of him, for that matter — his arms refusing to budge more for the moment. So he let them rest, setting his practice sword aside — he didn’t feel as though bashing his lady blade against wooden practice dolls was a fitting sport for her — and rolling his stiff shoulders as he walked out from under the overhang of the inner training area and out into the open, fenced in dueling area. He shut his eyes, and exhaled heavily, waiting for a moment in the open night before opening them again and glancing about as he touched his fingers to his sweat-soaked shirt. Only after determining that there was indeed no one about did he grunt and pluck at it, shrugging his way out of it.

Despite being fitter, much fitter, now than he had been at younger ages, and more capable on virtually all fronts in general, a lingering self-awareness — and self-consciousness — lingered in the back of his mind, making him ever-uneasy about the idea of prying eyes on him. He scanned his surroundings as he bunched up the damp cloth and then stuffed an end through his belt to store it. He was at the edge of the city, on an open swath of property set up for training both soldiers for the Lady Avi as well as students of the attached school. Neither of which categories did he fit into, currently, but it was the closest area open with equipment suitable for working himself on his own, and after years of associating with nobles — or, at least, the Wymrith family by association to Lady Laesara — he had found that much of the time, most ‘rules’ barely existed when an invisible string could be pulled here or there.

He didn’t understand where or how, but in the interest of seeing to it that her ‘squire’ had a way to make himself less of a complete embarrassment, in one manner or another, the school had opened its training facilities to him. It was a solid hour’s walk from his home to the training field, but well worth it most of the time. The walking did him good, too, in any case. And, activity around the building had made him friends.

“Oi! Pumpkin spice!”

Malikai jerked, plucking at his previously discarded shirt and pulling it towards his chest as though trying to cover something while his cheeks heated. He turned, though, at the call, his blue eyes landing on—

He raised a hand, half-shielding his eyes from the stirred up rush of dust and wind as his new company descended from above, lime green and yellow spotted feathers stretched like a vibrant parachute at his back. Thhkk was impact seconds later, boots to the dusty training field and body in a crouch, and Malik squinted from beneath his palm.

“Rollan?” He frowned. “What’re you…?”

“It’s late. Don’t tell me you’re still practicin’?”

“Er…so shall I jus’ not say—”

“Come on, pumpkin spice—” The nickname was accompanied by a ‘hearty’ slap to the back after Rollan had made his way over, not hard enough to hurt, but Malik cringed anyway, “ —learn to live a little, eh?”

“Why do I ‘ave a feelin’ wherever you’re headin’ with tha’ thought is—”

“Trouble, my friend, is what keeps life interesting.”

Word Count: 858

Nirian, Lorith, and several others whose names Malikai did not manage to catch over the bustle of the active — active being a kind and grossly modest word — tavern scene, were a friendly bunch. Very, very friendly. Malik fortunately recognized several faces from training in the past, but all seemed to be friends of Rollan’s or friends of Rollan’s friends, which made it all, in the end, fairly confusing, and the mesh of endless activity did little to help him sort things out.

Again, however, ‘fortunately’ most who were already present at the scene when he and Rollan arrived seemed fairly well enough inebriated that they didn’t much mind — or even notice — that he knew almost none of their names. One or two notable cases could not even seem to properly pronounce (or remember?) their own, which was as discomfitting to Malik as it seemed to be amusing to Rollan. Quickly enough, though, after introductions elegant and not, attentions turned to more entertaining things: cards, tabletop ball games, various ‘challenges’ and dare scenarios which all seemed to eventually involve alcohol, and — for the brave few, it seemed — dancing. A portion of the tavern, deeper in, had a small uprised wooden stage where a mixed group filled most of the space to the tunes put on by a small troupe of musicians. The quality or type of music seemed to matter little, given that it had to be blaring in order to even compete with the tavern’s comers and ‘loud’ seemed to be its most redeeming quality.

Despite numerous prompts to drag him into the alcoholic portion of the festivities, Malikai declined each drinking offer and stuck to occupying himself with progressively easier games of cards. Not so much easier in that he was getting any better — or even fully understood the rules, since several of the proposed games were new to him — but because his competition was progressively more handicapped. After perhaps an hour or so of this, as he began to grow restless in the dissonance, he stood after the close of a game, stepping back from the table but then lingering uncertainly as he glanced about. Where—?

“Oi.”

Rollan’s voice pulled Malikai from his search, and he jerked around. “I, er…so, I was thinkin’ I might just—”

“C’mon, eh, you aren’t gonna leave me here are y’?”

Malik frowned, rubbing at the back of his neck. “It’s just—”

“C’mere a sec.”

Malik blinked, surprised by the brief flick of seriousness in Rollan’s tone before his friend caught at his wrist, guiding him off and, to his surprise, out. The outside air was cooler and the atmosphere — while not quiet — was quieter than inside. He shifted his weight, settling some off of his mechanical leg as he glanced to Rollan. “Yeah?”

“You alright?”

Malikai flushed inspite of himself, but nodding was easier and came quicker than making himself voice a convincing assurance. “M’alright, yeah—”

“Really, then?”

Malik frowned, eyeing his company. Even as he opened his mouth again, though, Rollan was speaking first.

“Come on. Is it your da?”

Malik’s cheeks burned, but his shoulders stiffened a fraction despite his best efforts. “Don’ see wha’ anythin’s got t’ do wi—”

“We’re just havin’ a bit o’ fun, Malik, oi?” Rollan said, touching a hand to Malikai’s shoulder and making him still. “There’s no harm in it as it is, ‘n y’ don’t have to be so afraid—”

“‘M not afraid o’ nothin’.”

“Didn’t mean t’ say you were,” Rollan said. “It’s just…if you’re worried one spot’ll make you like him—”

“It’d be an honor,” Malikai quipped with uncharacteristic forcefulness, “…t’ be like him…” He hestitated, brow furrowing further before his stiff shoulders sank and he turned his gaze away, scouring the surrounding shadows nested along the crooks and crannies of the nearby buildings and the way the moonlight painted stripes down over them. “In most ways, leastwise…”

“Aye,” Rollan agreed, voice soft. “In most ways it would.” He let his hand drop and stood back a bit, taking his time before going on. “I didn’t bring you here to make you uncomfortable, y’know. I really do want you t’ enjoy yourself, and if what’ll help that best is headin’ out…”

Malikai pushed a hand back through his hair, breath leaving him in a stiff, conflicted grunt before he shook his head. “You don’ ‘ave to—”

“Whatever it is you want to do, yeah? I’ll walk back with you.”

“You’ve got a lot o’ folk in there,” Malikai objected. “Friends o’ yours, they’ll—”

“An’ it was you I came to get, wasn’t it? S’not a big deal.”

Malikai eyed him, assessing before speaking. “You been drinkin’ too?”

“A touch,” Rollan said, and then, without prompting, held a small flask up. “A sip? S’not the best, but it’ll go down. Fairly sweet.”

Malikai blinked, and then hesitated. “It’s just…I’ve never—”

“Just a taste, aye? I’s not a poison, y’know. One touch won’t turn you into some’on you ain’t. You try it, you like it, you go easy, you have a spot of fun. You try it, you don’t like it, y’never touch it again. No harm, no foul, yeah? An’ leastways, it’s not like it’s a disease…choice is on you, each an’ every time ‘til ever and after. Can always put it down as easy as you c’n pick it up if that’s how you choose.”

Malikai sighed, reaching and taking the unassuming container into his grip to squint at. “Just a taste, mm?”

“Oi. With a figure like yours, you won’t feel it in a half hour if you don’t add more to chase it, and that’ll be the whole of your ride.”

Malikai wasn’t entirely sure he believed that, but he unscrewed the cap anyway.

Word Count: 974

Word Count: -

Word Count: 1,422

Years always seemed to complicate things.

Once-upon-a-time-innocent friendships became progressively less acceptable as he and his best noble friend, Laesara, aged and became saddled with duties and responsibilities expecting of their respective (and distinctly very different) roles among the social strata. Feelings he held — once as innocent as their friendship — budded and bolstered in ways he knew he could never entertain. She was so laughably far out of his league that it hardly bared mentioning.

And, as he had just moments earlier learned, Malikai was to be betrothed.

He stared at his mother, momentarily dumbstruck and not absolutely certain he had heard her right because—

“What?” he said. “Nobles get ‘rranged like tha’, not…why? An’ t’ who?”

His mother blinked, surprised as this were not the answer she expected, though he couldn’t imagine why it wouldn’t be. The information was as abrupt as it was strange, and inarguably unusual. True, some members of lower class families still arranged for the weddings of their children, or took up mating vows as a means of pooling resources or for convenience, as opposed to romantic flights of fancy. But it was distinctly rarer than those of the upper strata, who made it all but common practice.

“You’re seventeen summers, Malik, nearin’ eighteen,” his mother said. “Y’re not a baby any longer…an’ unless I’m mistaken, you’re makin’ no ground towards findin’ a girl in your own right, are you? Other’n those you’ve no business makin’ ground towards…” It wasn’t a particularly subtle jab, her expression stiff and meaningful when she shot him a Look with the statement, and Malik winced in spite of himself.

“Mum, with me and Laesara…y’ know I won’t—”

“I know no such thing. But the young Lady Wymrith is another topic altogether an’ not on th’ table for now. The girl is Vanariah, family Olera…she a lovely girl, only two years older’n you and the youngest o’ their four daughters. The family runs a vineyard and local winery out in the near country.”

Malik blinked, eyeing his mother a moment before frowning and rubbing at the nape of his neck, fingers absently catching at the small braid there. “You’re tellin’ me she’s lovely…an’ her family sounds to be a mark or several better off ‘n us…why me…? Wha’ could make it a good idea…” ‘To marry your last daughter to the cripple, soldier son of a baker…’

His mother waited a moment before explaining. “The three other girls married up an’ took the titles o’ their men. Her mother an’ father are hopin’ the arrangement can secure the Olera name…bring together two small families and make a bigger one, mm?”

Oh.

Despite being far from part of it, serving as a noble girl’s squire for a number of years had exposed Malik to some of the political atmosphere, enough to know that — at least among families that cared for the weight that came with their family name — the giving or taking of one’s mate’s name in a bonding ceremony was often a bargaining chip. An incentive for a family of greater wealth or title to consent to a marriage with someone of lower standing, on the condition that the surname of the more powerful family was kept.

Malikai’s family title was, of course, all but valueless. They were not noble, or even among the upper rank of merchant class, but marrying ‘up’ to a family which wanted their name continued could help ease the strain on covering more base needs for the family. Well worth surrendering a name.

“Your father is not well, Malikai…” his mother said, something in her voice softening and fragmenting in a way that immediately made his attention snap to her. “If this could go well…if y’ could be wha’ y’ need to t’ make this work, I think y’ could be happy, an’ it could put us on straight again. I…don’ think you’re attractin’ the sort of attention we can afford, spendin’ so much time with the young miss Wymrith girl…it’d help us if y’d come back down an’ put your feet on th’ ground.”

Malikai stared for a long moment, observing his mother as the weight of the information sank in. At length, he dipped his head in some semblance of consent. Much as he had always aspired to the possibility of a mate of his own choosing — a woman he loved, whomever she may be — and building a family together from there, many nobles took this path and they did not all seem cross and unhappy. Surely, if he only put in the effort to make it so, this could work, and he could come to love the woman he had — yet — never met.

“When may we meet?”

Word Count: 811

Due to complications, it was not until a year and a half after the originally planned date that Malikai Dorran and Vanariah Olera were bound by ceremony into a mated pair under the watchful eyes of their goddess. It was winter, the snow crisp and new, and her breath danced in the clear air like a spirit between her lips on each exhale. She wore pastel blue and rose, like the overhead sky and rising sun of dawn as it lit the snow, her gown and cloak lined in white fur and face flush from the chill. Despite the modesty of the event — neither family being especially wealthy, though hers had more to spare — it was played out in full swing, including a ‘donation’ of several downy wing feathers from each of those in attendance to fill the ‘first pillow’ for the wedding bed, a traditional opening meal of an all-white breakfast for purity that gradually grew more colorful and plentiful as the hours went on to symbolize a bountiful union, and ‘games’ requiring their cooperation to succeed.

By early evening, Malikai was half convinced that the complexity of such ceremonies was designed purely to dissuade anyone who wasn’t fully invested from daring to partake. Then came music, and when she consented to dance, he forgot his misgivings. For all his own clumsiness, she seemed surprised enough that he even knew the steps and by nightfall, she seemed to have given up on her habit of nervously twitching further away from him when he moved too near.

Just as well, since some minutes later, the marital binding began: the left and right wrist of bride and groom, respectfully, bound in white rope and knotted together before they were escorted to their chambers for the night. The door seemed to shut behind them with eerily grim finality, bathing them in darkness, and for a moment, Malikai could hear nothing but his breath, see nothing but black, and feel nothing but the rope at his wrist and the sense of his ‘wife’ at his side.

Then, Vanariah murmured a spell, and a twinkling of light like stardust rose from her palm and ghosted about the room. In the dim, golden glow of her magic, Malikai studied her face: the smooth corners and gradual, fair rise of her cheeks; the soft point of her chin, glint of light in her eyes, and the way her crescent lashes looked like a veil, hiding her gaze from his. He dropped his stare, and looked instead to their bound hands.

“Perhaps we best…work t’ loosen them, then?”

She glanced to him, then dipped her lashes again, and nodded. They moved for the bed. Though meant as a final challenge for eager newly mated couples to have to grapple with before they could progress to consummating their vows in more physical ways, Malikai found that the process with her was careful and surprisingly cooperative, each of them working at the binding with their free hand, communicating, and eventually loosening the rope fully to free themselves from it. He watched her rub her wrist, a soft glow emitting from her palm before she reached wordlessly over and touched her fingers to his, offering the same remedy.

He did not get an opportunity to comment before she reached for and began unfastening her dress. Immediately, his face blossomed with heat. “You don’t have t—”

She shot him a look. “I am not sleeping in this.”

Malikai shut his mouth, and began working off his boots. Upon finishing with them, he moved towards the far side of the bed, intending to settle there.

“Stop.”

He paused.

“Look at me.” When he did, her eyes were narrowed—not accusingly, but assessing him, like a puzzle, as they flicked down. At length, she met his stare, her lips barely pursed. “You can’t sleep like that.”

Malikai shifted his weight, pushing up onto his elbows. “I thought I would…”

She huffed and turned. “Undress. I will not be the only one bare, and those cannot possibly be comfortable.”

Malikai stared. Flushed. Shifted. Eyed her. Then, quickly diverting his gaze when she returned to her own process of undressing, did as he was bid. When he finished and glanced, his eyes caught a trail of skin: warm pink waves cascading loose and long down bare shoulders and a smooth back. He pushed his eyes away, and settled himself beneath the sheets. She brushed her hair, exposing the full of her back and the tattoos that marked it—wings pink as her hair, trapped in the spell magic of skin. He diverted his gaze again moments before she, too, moved beneath the covers.

For a long moment, he lay with his eyes shut, on his back, uncertain how much time passed as he counted breaths, the space between them feeling simultaneously so small that a twitch might close it and so vast that an ocean could flow between them. Then, she shifted, and being that they were both beneath the covers, he allowed himself to look. Her hair lay spilt over the pillow as she eyed him.

“You don’t think me ugly?”

He stared. A great many things came to mind. Some likely acceptable. Others completely unvoicable. How surely, surely it had to be obvious, by now, that he found her to be anything but. In the end, however, he simply shook his head, his eyes flitting down her of their own regard before darting sharply back up to her face. “Never…”

She frowned. Opened her mouth. Hesitated. And then sighed, her expression equal parts puzzled and curious before at length, she rolled, turning her back to him and settling atop the mattress. “Goodnight, Malikai…”

“And you…” he murmured.

‘My wife.’

Her magic petered out as she fell to sleep, and he followed soon after, his mind drifting off in the enfolding darkness.

Word Count: 988

When Vanariah lost their first child, Malikai was twenty years old. She screamed at him until her voice tore itself raw and hoarse, and then she sobbed, shaking and shaking in his hold until he feared she might fall apart against him as she wetted his chest with her tears. Until those moments, he could never have imagined missing and wanting something so much which he had never had to begin with. It was his fault. It was his fault. It was his fault, she said, and he believed her.

Or, at the very least, he nodded. Because perhaps it was, and even if it wasn’t, she deserved — needed — to load that burden elsewhere, and if he could help by taking it, then so be it.

It was his fault.

A week and a half later, he was shipped out, and would not return home again but three times in the following two years.

In those years, Malikai experienced war in person, as it was lived—not as it was written in textbooks. He took the first life he ever had, and then three others in the same day. Oblivionite blood looked indecipherable from his own in the snow, and all death smelled of warmed over s**t. When that battle came to a standstill, he wretched, emptying everything in his gut into mud-stained ice and snow. Someone in his company laughed at his back, and by way of consolance, assured him with a gripping gloved hand to the shoulder, “You’ll get used to it, kid.”

Malikai wondered then which would be worse: never to, or to ‘get used’ to it.

When Malikai was twenty-three, his mother died. On duty at the time, it was not until two weeks after the fact that he got word, and another three before he made it home. His elder brother, Tomlan, there already, recounted the burial ceremony to him and explained the events in its wake. How something had shaken loose in their father at the loss. How he had been found unconscious in the streets on the night after her rites were said, having all but poisoned himself in his own liquor and only the careful and immediate cleansing attention of healers had spared them from losing both parents. How he, Tomlan, was watching over him now, keeping an eye that he not repeat himself.

Three days, Malikai spent solely in his brother and father’s company, aiding Tomlan with the watch, helping to clean around the house he’d grown up in which, although tiny in reality, managed to feel gaping and empty without his mother to fill it, and running the errands that no one had seemed to have time for in the five weeks after tragedy. On the fourth night, he sat outside their front steps, in the dim glow of moon and starlight with the creek and muted bustle of the city’s nightlife audible in the distance. A healthy, chilled breeze had done the courtesy of sweeping away most of the day’s smog, making it possible to see the sky. He heard his brother’s footsteps approach, but didn’t look back or stand.

A clink sounded, followed by the brief trickle of liquid being poured.

“Drink?” Tomlan asked.

When Malikai looked, his brother held a silver, marked flask in one hand and a glass shot in the other, filled with clear liquid which caught the moonlight. He glanced from the shot to his brother, and then shook his head, turning back around and saying, before he thought better of it, “If I had one, I’d ‘ave twenty, an’ then I wouldn’ be much help t’ anyone.” In the yawning silence that followed, guilt dropped in his gut, and Malikai clarified, frowning and standing as he turned to look at Tomlan. “Tha’ isn’t—wha’ I meant was—”

But Tomlan’s hand clasped his shoulder, squeezing as he shook his head, and Malikai watched him down the drink instead. “Y’re good, little brother.” He gave him a brief shake, and then released his grip, tucking the flask away and taking up his own post to stare out into the night street. “Y’re good…”

In the quiet that followed, he studied his brother, whom he hadn’t seen in longer than he could count: the sunset complexion of his skin, so akin to their mother’s, and the wild, paradise blue of his hair. Like their father. It was streaked now, though, a few scattered strands of silver striping the blue even though he was only thirty-one summers. He looked older.

“It’s good t’ have you.”

Malikai blinked, then nodded. “Too long not…” he agreed, though even those words warred with him. These were not the circumstances he would have wished for, to merit a trip home. Tomlan must have thought something similar, since silence stretched again between them after that. It was strange, Malikai thought, that the longer you spent apart from those you loved and the more that transpired in the in between, the less you seemed to have to say when seeing one another again. It hurt something in him, but he knew not how to chip the quiet.

Finally, Tomlan spoke. “So, how is the dream life?”

For a moment, Malikai could only stare, mute and uncomprehending.

“The adventuring soldier,” Tomlan clarified. “Travelling to lands unknown, beautiful wife a’ home ever awaitin’ your return…”

Something jostled within Malikai at that. A hollow knot of guilt and entrapment made somehow worse by the reminder that this life of his had indeed once been his ‘dream’ so far as he had understood it then. When he managed to speak, his words came hoarse and hesitating at first.

“It feels…” ‘…like I made a decision when I was a child that shackled me to a sinkin’ hell I can’t escape where I hate what I do an’ I don’t even have the justification of knowin’ I’m any better than my enemy. Sometimes I wish I’d die in battle, an’ then I wouldn’t have t’ go on, or come home an’ find that things still always can get worse in the time it takes me t’ make the world a worse place.’ At his brother’s look, though, Malikai couldn’t let the words come. He didn’t need to hear that. No one needed to hear that, except perhaps his seven-year-old self and other children like he’d been. To his brother, he only shrugged and said, “S’not so bad. I get to travel a lot. I suppose it’s…not exactly wha’ I imagined, but…”

In the shadows of the cobblestone and soot-stained path that banked the front of their house and the alleys that stretched on down the way, Malikai could see the shapes of oblivionite soldiers. Mages like black ghosts, and warriors that moved as thieves in the night, but quieter. Or worse: a single eye staring out from the murk like an omen of death.

He shut his eyes. “It’s not so bad…” After a long pause, he ventured a glance to find that Tomlan was watching him, his expression pinched and unreadable. Then:

“I’m sorry, little brother…”

Malikai blinked. “Pard—?”

Tomlan looked sharply away, shaking his head. “I should have answered more of your questions honestly. You’d get so excited, an’ I didn’ get the chance t’ see you hardly ever, an’ I wanted…to be happy with you in those times, an’ not spoil ‘em, but I should ‘ave said…somethin’…”

“I don’—”

“It wasn’t ever th’ life Mum wanted for you, y’know…”

Malikai frowned. “I know.”

Tomlan eyed him. “Y’ could quit…come home—”

“I’m enlisted an’ war’s on its way,” Malik said. “Th’ real sort. Not all these little…spats an’ territory battles—”

“It’s been on its way for years—”

“Y’know I can’t quit. S’not so simple as tha’, an’ even if a soldier in my standin’ would be let t’ leave normally, you know I wouldn’t be.” Malik met his brother’s stare and held it until Tomlan looked away.

“Surely nobles have better things t’ do with their time. They can’t still care—”

“Was only a half dozen years ago, if tha’, an’ I’m not riskin’ it. ‘M still gettin’ sent t’ the s**t tail ends o’ the—” Pausing and remembering his company, Malik cleared his throat, frowning and flushing before rolling his shoulders and resting his weight back again as he diverted his gaze. “S’not so bad, anyhow. Dunno why bother.”

“You’re a s**t liar.”

“I don’ know how t’ do anythin’ else, regardless…”

“You could still learn t’ smith. Da could teach you—”

“Da’s old, an’ a drunk,” Malik said. The words hurt his chest a moment later, but he let the feeling be, shaking his head. “He couldn’ teach me even if I could leave, even if I did want t’ learn…”

“You could run Mum’s shop.”

Malikai felt something behind his ribcage constrict.

“Bake. Make cookies for a living…”

A foreign burn gathered in Malik’s throat, and for all that he fought it, in a moment he could still smell his mother’s shop in the mornings. See it in his mind’s eye. All the pots and bowls and towels in perfect order but for the area of actual cooking where everything was beautiful chaos. Sugar, flower, sprinkles and rolling pins. Sliced fruit or diced garnishes. Little cubes or shavings of chocolate or zest. All colors and shapes and sizes and types. But the smells. The smells could have made a gorged man hungry.

As compared to the heat and noise, sweat and frustrated curses that had come from his father’s workspace in those days, his mother’s kitchen was heaven and a sanctuary. When his eyes stung, Malik focussed his gaze on a single point of shadow in the distance, waiting for his throat to loosen and his breath to even.

“You should visit your wife ‘fore they ship you out again,” Tomlan said. “I can handle Father…”

Malikai managed a nod. When his brother’s footsteps retreated into the house, Malikai shut his eyes, and if his cheeks were damp by the time he made it to where his hastar was tethered — because he felt the need to do exactly as his brother had suggested and visit his wife in that moment — no one was around to see, and likely couldn’t have through the dark, regardless. He made it to their marital home with the moon at its highest point, the winds dancing through the vineyard like the bearers of great secrets. Vanariah was asleep in their bed.

He hesitated in the doorframe, watching the rise and fall of her breath and for a long, desperately tempting moment, he wanted to be selfish. Step in. Wake her. Speak to her. Cling to her. Cry to her. But she was at peace without him, far away in wherever her dreams took her, and she did not know to expect him. So, he moved in only enough to dip at the side of their bed and press a single kiss to her forehead, lingering with closed eyes and bated breath before forcing himself with willpower from some unknown source to withdraw.

He slipped from their room, down the stairs, and into the wine cellar.

When next he woke, it was to afternoon sunlight drifting through the curtains of his shared bedroom, and the room smelled of spiced tea and incense. He could not have said with certainty what all transpired in the hours between, other than what Vanariah recounted to him when she stepped over the threshold to welcome him to the world of the waking, and that was thus:

That she had found him in the cellar in a deplorable state, obviously distraught but babbling mindlessly until she pieced together that he was speaking of his mother, at which point she consoled him. That, in his moments of lucidity strung between silence, they spoke, and spoke, until the hours waned from late into early and morning graced the outside. And that he was fully unconscious when she levitated him to ease what weight she could and then carried what remained up the stairs, out, and to the bed.

As she outlined this, he watched her, tracing the light of evening as it filtered through her hair, her weight perched on the edge of the mattress, one leg tucked beneath her and the other hanging over. Sunlight looked like a thread on fire, caught between the waves of her pink locks.

“Why do I not feel like…?”

“A husk with your guts sloshing about and brain three sizes swollen in your head?” she asked, and Malik blinked, but when she reached, he shut his eyes, and her fingers at his temple sent a warm pulse of magic through him. “Silly boy…” A pause. “Did I never tell you that I once wanted to be a battle mage? A healer on the front lines…”

“Find it hard t’ imagine you as a healer…” he admitted, but her snort wasn’t as harsh as it could have been.

“I once did, just the same,” she said. “I worked hard at learning, until I was informed I wouldn’t be taking that path…some things stuck.” He couldn’t have said how long they spent, then, with him laying there, eyes shut as her fingers carded idly through his hair. Then, she said, “A messenger came this morning to our door, after I had set you to bed.”

“Mm.”

“They said you were to report to duty, come tomorrow morning…that your squadron would be moving out by sundown.”

Malikai’s exhale left him raggedly. His eyes squeezed tighter shut, and something in his expression fractured. When he spoke, the words were quiet. “I’m tired…”

“I know you are.”

He swallowed, hard, forcing a breath in. “Miss you…when ‘m gone, I always do…” His fingers found her wrist, her arm, her shoulder, trailing up and then catching to just barely tug. She leaned, ceding to his pull and kissing his closed mouth when he pressed it to hers—and then his open mouth. She shifted her weight, settling it over him until his pulse thudded loose and messy in his chest, and his touch found her hips, her skin. “Always miss you…”

“I know you do.”

“So much…”

“I know.”

“I love you…” he said.

And in the space of silence that followed, he heard the wind rush low about their house and through the vineyard. He heard the distant, evening birdcall in the forests beyond, and when the rustles of skirt and lace fell away and she sank to him, the lines between them blurring, he heard her say, “I know…” and that, in the moment, was enough.

It had to be.

Word Count: 2,472

When Vanariah was five months pregnant, Malikai received word that he would be stationed off-continent. Again. In two weeks.

He spoke with his immediate superior officer, Sergeant Brennan Dahlt, explaining his intent to unenlist and the surrounding circumstances, specifically his wife, child on the way, and near-decade of service thus far. He was referred up.

After following a chain of denials on through the ranks—from the tiered sergeants to the warrant officers, to lieutenants, and finally to his captain—it was eventually explained to him on no uncertain terms that his contract, such as it was, was non-negotiable, and that breach of his duty of service at the current time would result in indefinite banishment from Serenia proper and its surrounding shores on penalty of incarceration upon landing with charges of treason. No time range for his peaceful dismissal was offered. If he wished to further dispute the terms, he would need to speak with the commanding general of his legion, Lord Baelen Wymrith.

Malikai returned to his wife.

“I don’t understand.”

“He’d sooner ‘ave my head than—”

“I don’t. Understand, Malikai,” Vanariah cut him off, and Malikai shut his mouth. “It has been. Eight. Years. What does he think—what do any of them think this is going to accomplish? That you’re going to do? You haven’t seen this noble b***h—”

“Vana—”

“—in nearly a decade, you haven’t spoken to her—” She paused. “You haven’t spoken to her, have y—?”

“No,” Malik said, and then winced at the volume with which the word had come out. “No…” he repeated. “I haven’ sent her a word since—”

“You’re my husband. You’re my,” Vana repeated, “husband. And they’re taking you from me. From us.” When her fingertips flit intrinsically to her belly, the word needed no further elaboration, and Malikai felt a weight in his gut congeal and sink. “It’s ridiculous.” As her voice fractured, he took a half-step forward, but she countered with a half-step back. “It’s ridiculous and all it is is a power game to them, to show that they can, that they can curse you with this as long as they like for something you did as a stupid boy.”

“I’m sorry—”

“This is your fault.”

“It is my fault, ‘m sorry—”

“You’re going to leave, be taken far across the sea to some foreign continent where you’ll be gutted open by some eyeless, soulless monster of a soldier—”

“‘M not goin’ to—”

“—and maybe, maybe there will be enough of you left that they bring you back in pieces—”

“Vana—” When he stepped again for her, she jerked away.

“Don’t. Touch me…”

“‘M s—”

“I don’t want to hear that you’re sorry, Malikai,” Vana said, and Malik opened his mouth, but shut it a moment after, dipping his chin and diverting his gaze. “Apologies don’t change anything. I will not be ‘that’ mother. Sitting at home and waiting for the few weeks or months out of the year or years for a man gone to possibly return, raising a child alone that barely knows what their father looks like let alone remembers the sound of his voice…”

A pause stretched between them, long and heavy, wherein Malik’s gaze flit back to her, his chest wound tight and breath stiff as though being forced slow through too small a space. And his fingers itched to reach. But he didn’t.

“I don’t want an apology.” Her eyes lifted, facing him. “I want you to say that you’ll be here. When our child comes into the world and after. After all the effort you put into making me care one way or the other whether or not you died out there, make it worth something…and stay. Raise this child with me. Be a father—”

“Y’ think I don’ want that…?”

“I think you clearly do not want it enough if you ********, Vanariah, there is nothin’ I want more’n tha’—”

“Then do something about it!” Her stare was hard and unyielding in the quiet that followed, and Malik was first to look away. “You can go on all you like, ‘‘M sorry, Vanariah, ‘m sorry, ‘m sorry, ‘m sorry, ‘m sorry…’ but if you don’t do anything…” She shook her head. “Nothing will change. And maybe you can live like that. Maybe you can keep going out and doing something you hate because it’s what you’ve always done, and you can bow your head, and follow orders, and drink every time something upsets you until you forget how much it upsets you—but I can’t. And I won’t. We’re not old, either of us, yet…”

When he looked back, she was frowning.

“But I’m not so young of a maid as I once was, and this…may be the only child we ever have. I want you to be here for it.”

Malikai drew a breath, and released it, studying her. Then, after an egregiously long pause of hesitation, he said, “…we could leave.”

Her gaze flicked to his. “Leave,” she repeated. He opened his mouth. “To where?”

“Anywhere—”

“To Aisko?” she challenged. “Where it’s as bitter cold in summer as it is here in winter and the ice never melts and nothing grows?”

“To—”

“Or Eowyn?” She gave a fractured laugh. “Where there’s enough sand to fill a great ocean and more hybrids than there are citizens, and the war itself would be at our front door—”

“Ayr?” Malikai said.

“Where—”

“It’s not so bad,” Malik pressed, before she could run him over. “I’ve been there, an’ there are some lovely stretches o’ green as well as great mountains. It is a touch stormier’n here—”

“Just a touch?”

“But if we had a house tucked away enough, with the rocks as windbreakers—some valley somewhere…the winters aren’t even so bad as here…” He paused, having expected her to cut in again, and glanced, watching her. At length, her brow pinched, but it wasn’t as deep as before.

“This is where my home is,” she said. “I’ve always lived here. My family is here, this business is here, the vineyard, the fields…I grew up beside these mountains…this is my house.”

“Aye…” Malik said. “I know all tha’…but if I quit, I’ll be banished, an’ if I come home, I’ll be arrested, an’ if I come again I see no reason why they’d not see fit t’ behead me out o’ spite, an’ a’ tha’ point I won’ be able t’ father or be a father t’ anyone…” He eyed her. “I don’ know wha’ else y’ want me t’ do, but if y’ have any suggestions…”

Vanariah frowned, studying the far wall. “We don’t have a home there.”

“If I started savin’—”

“This child is coming in four months,” Vana said. “We don’t have time for—”

“I don’ know wha’ else you’re askin’ of me, Vana.” When he said it, for once, she breathed a terse sigh, but let it drop, eyeing him and waiting. When he stepped, finally, she held her ground and let him reach to rest a tentative hand on her hip. “I’ll ask ahead o’ time, surely I’ll be able t’ get th’ time off a’ least t’ come visit you when th’ baby’s due, oi? Unless I’m in direct combat…an’ I don’ think I will be. I’ll start savin’ now, an’ you can judge wha’ we have here between us already. I’ll come home when you’re near due an’ I’ll be with you…” He lifted a hand, hesitated, and then — when she didn’t turn away — let his thumb brush her cheek. “I’ll be here…an’ I’ll see our baby into th’ world with you, an’ I’ll return again soon as th’ fates will allow me, an’ we can find a place together…”

“You dream a lot, Malikai…” Vana’s gaze wandered up to his face, and she held his stare. “And you make a woman a lot of promises that could be hard to keep.”

“I do,” he admitted. “But I’ll keep them to them, I swear it. I swear t’ you…”

“I don’t…want to leave here…”

“I know y’ don’t…”

Her fingers caught his wrists, catching and guiding them down, and he let her bring them to her sides and the lower rise of her belly on each as her eyes assessed him. “Do you mean it? When you say you want to be a father? Not every man does, you know…” she said, and his breath left him in a shudder that might have been a laugh if not for the way it hitched on the way out. He blinked rapidly, not daring for a pause to meet her gaze, but when she caught his cheek in her hand, he nodded, eyes shut.

“I do. I meant it when I said I don’ want anythin’ more.” He forced himself to meet her gaze. “I want this…I want you, an’ our child, an’ I want t’ be with you, an’ make you happy…surely there’s enough room in this world for tha’…”

At length, after a stretch of silence long enough for him to forget to breath in the in between, she released a petered exhale, and her thumb skimmed the rise of his cheek before looping back and tugging lightly. He sank into her kiss. “It would have been simpler…” she said, “…if you’d just let me go on ignoring you…and hating you for things that weren’t your fault…”

“Mmm…” Malikai managed a half-smile when they broke, but couldn’t quite make it look regretful. “Sorry for complicatin’ your life?”

Vanariah tisked, arching an eyebrow. “You’re not sorry for that…”

His smile spread into something more genuine, and he leaned, touching their foreheads together. “‘M sorry for upsettin’ you, much as I have…” he said, and when he laid an arm around her, she let him hold, humming beneath her breath.

“Oh, aye…you’re sorry that. I’ll make sure of it if you aren’t enough yet…” When she glanced up, though, her gold eyes were serious as they held his. “Come back to me, soldier boy…” she said, managing to make it sound almost akin to a warning, “…and keep your dreams and your promises…I wasn’t raised to be a waiting woman. And I don’t take well to disappointment.”

“I will,” he said, and dipped to catch her lips again in a brush of a kiss. “I do promise. You’ll see.”

Word Count: 1,785