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In his first month out, Malik wrote a letter every week. Short, simple things for the most part, due mostly to a lack of a great lot going on. But he wrote them as though he were speaking to her and there wasn’t the space between them, detailing the highlights of each day and the sights that came with it. He told her that he had managed to get leave to return home for the two weeks prior to and after her predicted delivery date, which was truth, and he wrote to her in more detail of what he remembered of Ayr, its towering spires, and the flowers that grew there. The great valleys, and the grassy stretches of hillside in those areas sheltered from the harsher winds.

Three days before they were set to move out from their base at that point, he received a letter in response. At greater length than any of his single letters, Vanariah’s neat, tightly coiled script told him of happenings back home: the baby was healthy and seemed to grow heavier every day, sometimes enough so to regale her with kicks from the womb; she had spoken with her sisters regarding what they knew of the Wymrith line of nobles and come up empty on how they might influence any lenience from them. She had done some initial inquiry into Ayr, its weather patterns, and viability for farm plots.

She still did not want to go.

But she conceded that, despite there being limited information on it, what she’d found suggested that certain areas looked more favorable than others and it was at least possible that some of it might be habitable.

In the second and third month, they moved base, and for several weeks following, moved too often to be in receipt of any postage. Malikai, though, wrote his own, and sent two in the in between. A week and a half before he was set start home, an armed ambush was reported a four-day ride north across the desert from their current post, followed by an oblivionite seizure of a neighboring trade road. His objections to their new set of orders, barely formed, fell on already deaf ears.

“Do you think you’re special, Olera? We all have families here.”

Weeks passed. And too quickly, the weeks piled to become months.

A skirmish became an onslaught. A sandstorm holed them up for days, but as quickly as nature dictated the standstill, so too did battle begin again as soon as the sands and winds ebbed. There was no détente within which to send a message homebound, and no reprieve even to dream on some nights, but Malikai counted the days regardless: this was the time around which Vana would be nearing labor, and this the day about which their child would be born; this many days after they would be settling into some form of routine, and it would be lonely, but they would be healthy and safe together and he would know soon enough the details of all the rest.

He wondered at the child’s gender and what name Vana had chosen after all. He prayed forgiveness for not being present. He imagined what it would be like, though, to return home and greet them together. Surely it was worth any war, any amount of fighting, for a chance at that. To have a wife, and hold his child for the first time.

Nearly five months passed before Malikai was in a position again to receive correspondence. He had four letters waiting for him. Two from Vanariah dated prior to the predicted date of delivery, one after. And one from her mother, dated less than a month prior to the current date. After some debate, Malikai started with the earliest first. He would later wonder if there was any good order to go about it, and conclude that there wasn’t.

In the first, Vana began ordinarily enough, much as she had in her previous letter, but she mentioned, some ways through, that she had come to feel more tired than usual on most days, something she attributed to her pregnancy, but still felt concern for. She must not have completed the missive in a day, however, because before the letter’s finish, she amended her initial concerns to add that she was decidedly worse off than she initially thought. Her mother had come to visit, and a healer had been brought to the house see to her. She blamed the weather and her anxiety, and wished him well, emphasizing a hope to see him soon.

The second, after its address to him, began immediately with, ‘Come home, Malikai.’

It did not improve notably from there, and Malik felt guilt stir in him, weighing on his chest and building in his gut with increasing magnitude the further his eyes made it down the page. A gash in his side, dug three weeks prior and healed over by their physician soldiers, throbbed as though in answer to his anxiety. Vanariah wrote of her sickness, and her fears. The illness had made her bedridden for the first time in her memory, and she drew on at length of her frustrations, her concerns, and the sound of the world outside the house. She wrote to him of her dreams — not the hopeful, daydreaming sort, but those that plagued her sleep, for she found herself asleep or in the in between often.

Some portion through the missive, the handwriting began to shift back and forth, making it obvious that she had aid and was perhaps dictating certain portions. In later parts, written in her hand, but slanted and ‘off’, her sentences rambled and waxed long and confusing, so that he couldn’t fully discern what it was she was trying to convey. A portion of neater script at the end told him that he was overdue, and if the goddess was good, he would be home before the letter found him.

Her third letter, dated two and a half months after what would have been her delivery date, was comparatively brief.

To My Husband:

Our daughter was born without breath a week and a day after the date you promised to return to me. I intended to write you sooner, but found the message too difficult to convey without anger. I thought that a space of days, or weeks, or months might grant me a cooler tongue and a less burdened heart. I was hopeful, but mistaken.

If the enemy has taken you, and Seren returned your soul to her light, forgive me my anger and my words and may you guard our daughter beyond the realms I still walk. I wanted only selfishly for something more than that which we have received, and feel that you have been stolen from me. It is almost easier to imagine that you have died. Together with her, perhaps, and in the service of those who took you. If it is a terrible thing to think, then may this letter not reach your eyes.

I have missed you greatly, but I am unsure now if I could bear to see you again. If you do still breathe, return when it suits you if it suits you. I will not write again.

Vanariah N. Olera

Malikai did not open the fourth letter.

In comparison, it seemed to matter little, or not at all. As little as anything did, if anything did. In three weeks, he — along with a handful of others — had been promised temporary leave since they were near to the south shore again and visiting the motherland would be simple enough. But in the hours after his eyes had poured until they grew bloodshot over the words offered to him, he found himself on a bluff instead. The ocean air swept inward, salty as it climbed up and rolled over the cliff face to press against him and fill his wings.

“It is almost easier to imagine that you have died…”

Malikai shut his eyes, and wondered if it would be easier on both of them if he had.

“It would have been simpler if you’d just let me go on ignoring you and hating you for things that weren’t your fault…”

“This is all your fault.”

“You feel stolen from me.”

Far below, the ocean swells broke over jagged rock like breath against glass, rolling back on itself while the rest dissipated into mist. If he disappeared, he would be a deserter. A traitor to the high lady and his people, never to be welcome home again. If he died of his own hand, it was as bad, if not more shameful in its weakness. If he fell to an enemy sword, then he would be brought back a hero. Glorified in death and failure without even his own family’s name to carry.

No fate seemed ideal.

But regardless, Vanariah deserved an answer.

No matter how he had failed or what awaited him when he returned, she had done nothing to merit his abandonment as spurned by cowardice. He needed to face her. To speak with her. To, somehow, apologize through the weight of all those hopes held between the both of them that felt saturated now with disappointment and loss, or hopelessness. And make amends.

Vanariah, as he found when he returned to her, wanted no such thing.

Their ship docked in late morning on the shore of Serenia, the weather gusty but otherwise clear and pleasant. It was late afternoon, waning into evening still by the time he made it off the ship, through procedure, onto his hastar, and to the outskirt estate that was the vineyard and their property. Vanariah was not out, and as he stabled his hastar, Malikai debated how to approach. It was his own house, of course — in a sense, as much as it was her own — but it still felt alien to him somehow, under the circumstances as they were.

He debated knocking.

He was coming home, though, to his residence and his wife. At length, he tested the door, found it open, and stepped in. Vanariah stood in the kitchen, back to him, a glass of wine to her right and a number of jars — some filled with cooked and crushed grape, others empty, clean glass — to her left, and a bushel of the fruit at her feet. He opened his mouth, hesitated, watched, and then cleared his throat. Perhaps he ought to have knocked.

He couldn’t have said she looked surprised to see him, but the reaction he got was certainly no more welcome — some convoluted mix between startlement, tension, anger, hurt, and disgust. In something close to that order. She looked away, finishing whatever she had been on with one of the jars before capping it, washing her hands, drying them, and then touching them to the counter.

“They did say that a boat would be in this morning,” she said at length. “I suppose if I was going to be expecting you to come crawling in, now would be the time…”

“It was—”

“Don’t. Speak.” Her fingers crimped the counter, holding for a pause, but in the silence that followed, she released it, taking up her wine instead and sipping before turning, finally, to face him. He couldn’t have said how long exactly they stood like that, wordless and waiting, before she dipped her gaze, diverting it. When she spoke again, it was quiet. “Get out.”

“Vana—”

“I said—get. Out.” She shook her head. “I thought I might be able to speak with you, but not now. Not like this. Come back in—” She tossed a hand. “Hours. Days. Weeks. Just leave me be until then.”

The guilt lingering in Malikai’s chest condensed, as though it were a physical substance pooling and tightening, heavy in his gut, and though he knew it wasn’t likely to be welcome, the words still pressed at his tongue, pushing until they fell out. “I am…so sor—”

“Out!” The fracturing crash of glass against stone accompanied the word, causing Malikai to jerk with startlement, and he might have fled, then, except for the stinging glint of wet in the rim of her gaze, and in that moment he could have fallen to the floor if it would have helped. Begged. Pleaded. Let her scream, and hit him if it eased the onset of tears that she shouldn’t have had to shed.

It was his fault.

But when she gripped another jar, he turned, ducking out the door as he was bid and shutting it behind him with grit teeth and a shake to his grip. A second crash followed in his wake, and he shut his eyes. Instincts and wants warred within him, then: a need to go back inside, face the result of his mistakes and fix them some way, any way, versus the knowledge that she wanted space, and didn’t want his fixing in any form. And it was her right to refuse that, no matter how it left him aching with the weight of the apologies she wouldn’t take.

He sank to the deck outside their house beside the door. Wrapped his arms around himself. Ignored the numb throb of knee just above his prosthetic, thanks to the chilled weather. And waited. Listening as silence followed the fracture of glass, as muted screaming followed that, and then as quiet, muffled sobs softened into nothing.

He wasn’t sure when he fell asleep, only that he woke, shivering and then frowning at the darkness, clothes crisp with the first hints of frost and mind still not caught up on what had awoken him. She spoke next.

“Get up.”

His exhale made white in the night air, and he shut his eyes again.

“You’ll catch your death of winter.”

It occurred to Malikai to ask if she wouldn’t prefer that, if it wouldn’t be ‘easier’ on both of them if he just sat where he was and let the fates decide. But he found he didn’t have it in him to argue, or even to speak. So when she nocked the door a half inch further open, he forced his numbed muscles into action, stood, and slipped inside. She made sure not to allow a brush of contact, and bolted the door behind them before stepping away from him, towards the hall and their bedroom.

“You can have the couch. Or the floor, I don’t care.”

He breathed out. “Vana—”

“And do not…” She shook her head, visibly taking a moment to gather herself before continuing, more evenly. “Don’t speak to me. Don’t touch me. I have no interest right now. I will figure out what to do with you in the morning. If I do feel like discussing this, I will approach you, do you understand?”

Malikai eyed her, throat tight, shoulders stiff, and body still saturated with cold. Eventually, though, he gave a dip of a nod, and nothing else. For a moment, as her eyes skimmed him, he thought she might say more—something, anything. But then she looked away, chin barely dipping, and she left him, footsteps tap, tap, tapping in retreat down the hall. At the creak and click of the bedroom door shutting behind her, he let his shoulders sink, walked the several steps to the couch, and collapsed upon it.

Unsure if there was any part of him that wasn’t shaking, he buried what remained of his anguish for the night against the cloth pillows adorning his ‘bed’, and fell to sleep alone in the room black with shadow.

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Malikai scritched his fingers over his beard. He squinted, blue eyes narrowing into the reflective glass he had propped up against the small desk beside his cot and studying what stared back. His hair had grown quite thick. More than enough to encompass most of the lower half of his face in a scraggly bush of a burnt-orange coils, and while he didn’t make a habit of shaving it often — usually opting to trim instead, for all the effort it was worth — for some reason, the niggling urge to be rid of it all needled at him.

The beard made him look older, he knew that much. It also was, whether obvious to the rest of the world or not, physical evidence of how little he cared to do anything about it. There hadn’t, for quite some time, seemed any reason, let alone need, to concern himself with the minutiae of his appearance one way or the other.

Not that there was much of it now, either.

When his mind helpfully drew up thoughts of a certain, wriggling green oblivionite tucked into his lap — ‘You’ve no idea how special you are…’ — heat crept for his cheeks, and he grunted. Silliness. He had never felt the need to groom himself especially for a whore. He didn’t now. He just…

Well, there was no harm in it. No real harm, in any case. He liked to consider himself beyond the age and past the point in his life where he felt any special need to deny, to himself at least, how he felt about one person or another, and there was no pretending that he didn’t enjoy the young man’s company on some level different than that usually reserved for those of his business. But Naarhiji conducted himself differently than those typically involved in his business, and Malikai welcomed that difference—and even, for better or for worse, the feelings that came with that.

He felt happier. More at ease. Lighter, and tentatively optimistic. He knew just as much that such things couldn’t last, but few good things did and nothing — good, bad, or otherwise — lasted indefinitely. So he saw no reason to stifle a temporary blessing with undue caution and fears for what might or would be in the future.

He didn’t need to do anything for or because of Naarhiji.

But he wanted to, and that was more than enough. He set up to get the process underway. Setting up a bowl and knife. Wetting his hair, and propping the mirror into place. Having a lot to take care of lengthened the process, but when your station wasn’t active, it left many idle hours, and in time, his efforts were fruitful. After washing his instruments and his face, he toweled away the wet and the suds, and studied the result. Not bad, he decided.

Ever room for improvement, of course. The thickness of his cheeks reminded him he could, as ever, stand to lose a layer or two of empty alcohol weight. But subtracting the scruff helped to cut back on the overall fullness of his face and did take a few years off his appearance, he thought. Feeling air on his cheeks and chin was also welcome in the desert heat.

“Ooooohhhhh…” A young, rolling voice with a thick west-quarter city accent sounded from the outside, opening a jolting tune. “In the Black Ball line I served my time—”

“To me way-aye, way-aye, hurrah!”

“Aaand that’s the line where you can shine!”

“Hurrah, hurrah, for the Black Ball Line!”

With each line, the chorus drew nearer, a band of several voices, only two of which Malikai could pick out immediately as they came closer to his cabin section. When their tune rang up again, they were nearly to the door.

“Soooo they sing, ‘Blow the wind westerly, let the wind blow…’”

“By a gentle nor’wester, how steady she goes—aaah…aye! Malikai!” Prescott Hale, a young private — somewhere about his early twenties — with hair like a windswept sunset and skin like a shallow coral sea, swung inward off the doorframe, only the feathery flutter of his wings catching his fall enough to stop him from toppling in completely on his face. His grin seemed to take up all the space below his nose. “And here I thought we had an intruder, oi? I didn’ know y’ had a face under all that fur o’ yours!”

Two wide, brown-violet eyes appeared next, peeking out from around Prescott and slipping in. Piper Kimberly — or “Kim” as everyone called him — had to be the youngest in their troop. Looking at him, Malikai would have pegged him for fifteen summers on first glance, if that. The boy insisted, though, that he was eighteen: complete with jaunty, twiggy limbs that looked something like bent branches lashed together, a nose that must have been broken half a dozen times, and the longest toes known to Magescians—visible as often as he could manage to sneak his shoes off. Which was often, usually against protocol.

When Prescott shot him a whistle between his teeth, though, Kim turned, and flashed a briefly toothy grin. With Kim’s attention, Prescott notched his head towards Malikai. “So what do y’ think, aye? What’s happenin’ that you’ve decided to grace us with your pretty face, old man?”

Kim shot him a glance. “Home?”

“Ah, no,” Malikai said. “I—” His words stalled, though, as the other two ‘singers’ in their party entered—both pausing immediately and stopping their conversation on spotting him. Bo Dawson — the only man in their unit older than Malikai who wasn’t above his rank — and Johan Artly, a married man not quite thirty, who only just arrived, and had immediately struck Malikai as the sort of character who seemed to have social standing enough that he ought to have been able to avoid their work altogether. Both men met his gaze briefly, looking away quickly enough that Malik had to wonder if he had imagined the stiffness in their gaze.

Even if he hadn’t, it clearly went over the heads of his younger company.

“Alright, alright, so spill—what, then?” Prescott pestered.

Kim’s toes hooked around ladder rungs like a climbing-beast’s as he moved to his upper bunk. When he dropped onto his cot mattress, several molted feathers puffed out and dusted down over the edge as he peeked over. “Lady?”

“Oooohhh—ayayay!” Prescott jumped in. “A Tukyere girl even? Or one of your whore ladies!”

Malikai shot him a squint. “You’re too young t’ say—”

“Whoooorrrre,” Prescott chorused. “Twenty-three summers isn’t too young t’ say whooooooooo—”

“—ooooooooooooorrrre!” Kim joined in his chorus from the top bunk, and Malikai resisted the urge to drop his face into his hands, managing to confine the motion to a rub at the bridge of his nose, eyes scrunching shut.

Children did not belong in armies.

He was far too old for this.

When it occurred to him that the very whore he was spending his time with was no older than the boys currently hooting to each other, the thought was only further emphasized. He was being absolutely ridiculous. Just as he opened his mouth to say something with a hopeful silencing effect, though, Prescott and Kim finished, and in the immediate silence came a single grunt of a comment from Bo.

“Soulless cunts, more’a like…” The spplt of spit to the floorboards smacked in the quiet, and Malikai felt a ripple of tension in his shoulders and gut, wings prickling with energy inside the confining magic of their tattoos. Though it didn’t strike him as such in the moment, Malikai would later note that it was the first overwhelmingly negative, intrinsic reaction he had ever had to a disparaging comment about the world’s darker race. In the meantime, however, other things filled in.

“Oooiii, gross, Bo!” Prescott snapped, crinkling his nose. “Ain’t none of us want your glob-slobber mouth mucus grimin’ up the humble sleepin’ abode—”

Bo took a step for him, gritted teeth bared and voice rough, but low in volume when he spoke. “An’ maybe…‘ain’t none of us’ wanna hear your wee boy voice wailin’—”

Malikai grunted, and Bo’s eyes twitched his way, narrowed and hooded under a thick brow. Eventually, he sneered and stepped past a blinking Prescott, and out of the cabin. Johan, who’d yet to say a word, glanced over him, and then followed without comment. After what could have been labeled an ‘awkward’ silence, Prescott cleared his throat, rifling a finger around the collar of his shirt, glancing to Kim, and then flashing an only barely less carefree grin.

“So, did I or did I not hear him say he wanted to hear our ‘wee boy voices’ wailin’? And, in honor of our appreciative company…” Prescott made a half ‘bow’ to Malik, and then tapped a fist to his chest in mock preparation as he cleared his throat. “Oooooohhhhhhh, whiskey is the life of man, always was since the world began—”

“Whiskey-o, Johnny-o—rise ‘er up from the down below!” Kim piped in over the bed.

Malikai gave in, dropping his face into his hands.

“Oh, nono, c’mon, then, be a sport!” Prescott insisted. “Y’ve got t’ join us! One, two, three, aaaannnnd—ooooooohhhh…whiskey here, an’ whiskey there—”

“Whiskey almost everywhere!”

“Whiskey up an’ whiskey down—”

“Whiskey all aroun’ the town!”

Catching Prescott’s eye in spite of himself, Malikai sighed, and with the barest twitch of an amused smile, drew a breath. “Ooohhhhh, I wisht I knew where whiskey grew, I'd eat the leaves and the branches too…”

“A tot of whiskey all around—”

“And a bottle full for the shanty man!”

Word Count: 1,681