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Night Wind

Two days after moving into Araceli’s living quarters, a sandstorm swept through the city. It whipped at the buildings, funnelling down the narrow streets and choking anything foolish enough not to take shelter, leveling parts of multiple shoddily constructed housing settlements in the area Detraeus had lived in previously, his former lodgings included. He took it as Soudana’s signal that he was on the right path, vague and strange though it seemed.

For the first week or so, he kept rigidly strict to his word. He kept his belongings confined absolutely to ‘his’ space, rose before dawn as he always did, worked through his physical training routines and did his best not to cross paths with her. Araceli, it seemed, had other plans. Whether it was his imagination or intentional, he never fully discerned, but it seemed every time he moved in or out, leaving ‘his’ room or working in the house’s surrounding area through his exercises, she crossed paths with him and found ways to share the same areas with him to greater and lesser degrees.

Over time, he took to letting his gaze linger longer. He let himself watch her out of the corner of his vision, pretended to distract himself but made note of the way she carried herself when she relaxed, the way her hands moved when she cooked or carried parcels or read a book. And slowly, very slowly, he got used to her.

Not just comfortable with spending the time with her that it took for them to spar together, but accustomed to having her there, around him, to the point where — weeks later — many of the spaces he frequented would have felt lacking without her mark on them. His day would not be full without the way her bare toes curled on cool surfaces, or the way she held her thumb between her teeth at the most exciting parts of a book, the way her wings fanned out under the first touch of sunlight to them, or the way her hips cocked ever so slightly to the right when she cooked. The way her fingers still sometimes lifted towards the scar on her cheek when she was uncomfortable with something.

Her house smelled like her when he moved in, and very gradually, it began to smell like the both of them. Two days after he caught himself missing her while he was out on a hunt, he arranged to take on a guard-for-hire job. A three week caravan trip without notice, out to Eowyn’s far eastern edge where his only concern was to defend the merchants and the goods under his post and think of nothing else. It took him far across the desert and far from her, giving him space and time to let his thoughts work themselves out. He needed to separate himself. He was growing too comfortable.

He returned with a gash in his side and arm, and Araceli said nothing that he expected her to. Not that he should never leave again without warning. Not that he shouldn’t take on jobs so dangerous. Not that if he was going to share her home, he need at least inform her of his whereabouts. Only that he was foolish for getting himself hurt, and insisting that he let her redress the wounds herself before she let him out of her sight again. He watched her fingers move against his skin and didn’t flinch, simply listened to her voice, breathed her air, and remembered how much he missed both.

He had lost track of the days that passed since then when he returned to a different set of sounds than usual.

Clack.

Clack.

Clack.

Detraeus frowned, rolling a shoulder — still sore from his most recent match in the pit, which he was freshly returning from — and walked around the side of the house to the back, towards the source of the noise. It was late evening with the season well into fall and approaching winter, making even the desert winds cooler than usual. He found Araceli with a hammer, beating at a strange, half-formed construction project that had been in this area for as long as he’d shared the house with her, though he had never asked about it. She had never spoken of it, and seemed even to avoid it. Until now. Then, he noticed her posture, the set of her face, the extra bite to the surrounding winds, and the sounds mixed in with the brittle clack, clack, clack of her hammer.

He moved in on hunter’s feet, silent, and unnoticed by her in his distraction. “Ara…” She startled, jerking around even as he caught at her wrist to steady her. Upon recognizing him in full, she blinked rapidly and flushed, looking immediately away and brushing her spare hand quickly over her eyes as she pushed an unconvincing smile onto her lips. “Ara,” he repeated, relaxing his grip but not fully letting go, “…what are you doing?”

Detraeus drew a sharp breath as Ara shuddered, his fingers slipping up from her wrist to shoulder and body drawing in closer on instinct. But he faltered before he let himself hold her, warring desires fighting for dominance. Eventually, he sighed, shutting his eyes briefly and squeezing before letting go and silently moving to her small supply of tools and grabbing what he needed to aid her. The air was too empty, though. Too quiet, without her happiness, and — so contrary to his general character — he found himself talking to fill the silence. To distract her from what weighed on her emotions.

“Have I ever told you how I met Casseth?” he said as he lifted a saw. “I wasn’t yet all of ten summers at the time…skinny as my own arrows and small enough that a big breeze could have knocked me off my feet if it took half a shot at it. I’d only just found my bow some month or so before and could barely string it, let alone shoot it…was on the outer edge of the Terra Expanse, headed north since that’s all the direction I had, knowing I wanted to make it to Soudul. Above, the moon is full as a ripe melon, but starting to sink when I hear this…sound, rumbling through the rock and brush, down the edge of the mountain, and a roaaarr so loud it makes your bones quiver and every hair on your body prickle to attention…”

He worked as he talked, sawing away at pieces that couldn’t be undone and working with a chisel and hammer where they could.

“It was an arrical. Big enough that one could have fed on ten of me and not been full, but seemed food up in the mountains was scarce enough for it to take slim pickings where it could find them…came after me like a rockslide — loud, fast, out of nowhere, too big to stop and impossible to avoid. Right then, as I watched it break through into my line of vision, I knew I was gonna shoot it, or die that night and the latter was more likely twenty thousand to one, but I couldn’t outrun it…so I got down on a knee, strung my massive bow still near as tall as I was, aimed, and shot.”

Detraeus tilted his head, thoughtful as he stooped to tug and yank at a loose piece until it came free, then lifted and carried it over to the growing stack of deconstructed wood scraps.

“I think it was the first arrow I ever loosed that hit a live target. Straight between the eyes, too. I was so stunned, for a moment I couldn’t breathe, and then, when I could…I was off faster than you’d ever imagine a child could run, legs burning, breaking for the next cluster of rock and trees. As the goddess would have it, I stumbled directly into someone’s camp. A man and his boy, set up right on the edge of the valley…my first thoughts on spotting them, standing there frozen and staring, were that if they decided to kill me, too, I had no recourse. Then I thought, perhaps if I let the arrical focus on them, I might slip out with my life…”

Detraeus shrugged.

“Things went a bit differently than I anticipated, as they often do. The man was a skilled oblivionite warrior…” He eyed Araceli out of the corner of his vision, evaluating her reactions. “Between him, his son, and his bonded…they saved my life. Held off three grown arricals to the break of dawn and killed them, skinned them, cooked what we needed, fed me…first solid meal I’d had in half an age, it felt like. I remember…Casseth, back then, was so much like he is now. He was so…happy I couldn’t bring myself to understand it at the time…and he talked. Talked and talked — wanted to know so much, asking so many questions…”

Detraeus shook his head, a pinched half-smile edging at the corner of his lips.

“He did nothing but confuse me. I don’t think I spoke but half a dozen words to them all total, despite their kindnesses. Never thanked them. But…on our way out, with Kilian insisting on taking me the remaining distance to Taliuma…Amadia, his bonded, she took me on her back. I’d fallen asleep against her earlier, despite my best intentions to not sleep in a stranger’s presence, and…I had a strange trust in her so that, when she first took into the air with me on her back, I was afraid but…soon enough it elating, beyond empowering. I had the world beneath my feet, the wind under my hands, I was up and it was wild and free…”

He glanced down and sidelong, caught in the memory of it.

“I remember screaming out, ‘I am a dragon!’ my heart beating so fierce I really thought it might have worked its way out of my chest if I let it. It…was far and away the happiest memory I had to date, the only time I could remember smiling…laughing…” He flushed, frowning and shrugging the thought off and moving the story along. “They saw me to Taliuma, gave me my ‘share’ of the coin from felling the beasts, and Casseth…” Detraeus tapped the large, intricate black dagger still at his hip, “…gave me this dagger. First gift I ever received and I’ve not taken it off since. It was raw chance I met him again, a decade later…but I can’t say I’m not grateful for it.”

When he stepped back to look, the once half-constructed stable was now nearly at its finishing edges, nearly completely demolished, and the sun was low on the horizon, the main body of it already out of sight and only a sliver left over the lip. Detraeus dusted his hands off on his pants and glanced to Araceli.

Detraeus blinked, eyeing her, then nodded. After setting away the tools, he followed her around the house, helping her retrieve some of the gradually smoking garghon meat in the outside cook pit before heading inside. Though he had nothing but the most basic concept of how to cook, previously — that is, keeping meat over a fire until it no longer bled and his teeth could cut through it — he had picked up information over the years, first from Martrae’a, and then from Araceli. With it and her instructions, he helped her where he could, both to pass the time and speed the meal along, as well as monitor her mood should it shift for the worse. He sliced meat, chopped produce, washed grains and ground the spices she needed as she worked, and in the down time, he watched her.

Araceli looked at peace while she cooked. Happy, and entrenched. Her fingers moved with practiced skill, flicking through the motions with the ease that he drew a bow, and Detraeus enjoyed simply observing the flow. Well after the sun had sunk beneath the horizon and the stars had come out to glimmer overhead, they each had a plate of slivered garghon meat, cooked in a richly spiced sauce and served atop black rice shipped in from the rice paddies of Soudul and lined with steamed lokri sprouts and onaori seeds. Still, he hesitated at the small dining table’s edge, uncertain if his presence would be welcome for the meal or if she would rather have the space to herself now. Ara, though, immediately motioned for him to sit.

“I didn’t cook it just so you could run off on me,” she said, and then paused. “Unless you’d rather go…” The pinched look on her face, however, said more than enough, and Detraeus moved in to sit, waiting until she’d settled before lifting his utensil.

“What would your family think?” he asked, just loudly enough to be heard. “Inviting an oblivionite to your table…”

Detraeus ate as she spoke, listening, and only looking up fully at her last statement. He’d known it to be true, Casseth having warned him about her ‘strong opinions’ before he had even known she was the same girl he’d ran into twice before then, and he couldn’t say that the rest of her words surprised him either. Despite his limited personal experience with dovaa in particular, not even a fool could miss the rampant racial prejudices evident in every corner of the world, permeating the thoughts and cultures of all the pure bloodlines of the gods. So, after limited thought on it, he grunted and returned his attention to his food and utensils.

“You changed your mind. Let me guess…” He stabbed at a piece of meat. “Casseth’s innate goodness swept you away…” He spun the fork through his rice. “He…charmed you with his kindness and good humor, opened your eyes to the possibility of something better in an oblivionite…cleared the way for a new opinion.” After lifting the mouthful to his lips, Detraeus chewed with more negative energy than was precisely necessary. It wasn’t his intention to be jealous of Casseth, but he had to admit that there were more areas than he would have liked where the hybrid — no, his friend — outshined him there and back again. And moments like this only seemed to drive the point home. He wouldn’t even be sitting at the table with Araceli if it weren’t for—

“…no, actually,” Ara admitted quietly after an extended pause, startling Detraeus into stillness halfway through a bite. “You did.”

He coughed, half choking. It took him some time to regain his breath and posture, covering his mouth with his hand as his lungs struggled remove rice from his windpipe, but even after he succeeded, his expression remained dumbfounded. “I—what?”

Detraeus flushed, puzzled, but silent as he listened. This was perhaps the first he’d ever heard of someone warming to him before Casseth, the first time he had ever cleared the way for Cas on a social issue. Perhaps, though, Ara simply did have truly bizarre taste in men. He kept his snort to himself.

And emotions, yes. But a soul, no. He would never have a soul. Not that, for the most of his life to date, it had mattered much to him. What would he have done with an afterlife anyway?

Everything that he wanted to accomplish involved this life and this plane. His entire world revolved around building his strength, paying homage to his goddess, and exacting revenge on those who wronged him. Death, from that perspective, was a welcome reward to come only at the end of a long job well done, and he had seen no purpose to himself outside of that. Eternal quiet and nothing beyond — he imagined it like sleeping, and never waking up.

Only very recently had it occurred to him why some seemed to cling so desperately to the concept of something beyond the life and world they currently inhabited.

At Araceli’s final question, Detraeus glanced up and shook his head. “Never.”

Detraeus frowned, rolling his shoulders as the muscles there bunched with tension at revelation revelation, and attention following her every movement. It wasn’t that he hadn’t heard similar or worse stories. He’d spent three years in an orphanage and before that — well — suffice to say he knew more than his fair share of tales from bitter children with broken, butchered, or non-existent families. It was different, though, to hear it from Ara. She had seemed to him, until this moment, above all that, somehow. A pretty, wealthy-enough pureblood dovaa girl with the world on her side. Friends. Family. He, and the children he grew up with, were a different caste. Despite pureblood status or not, they were in with the hybrids: outcasts, gutter trash, renegades and unwanteds. Little pieces of nothing, scraping by at the edges of society.

Araceli was supposed to be exempt from all that. Protected inside the glistening safe haven built for her by her god. Untouchable and immune to the worries of the world below. That, it seemed, was not the case, and he studied her expression as it shifted.

He almost opened his mouth several times, irritated beyond reason that, of all things, it was blind stupidity in this case that had left her parentless. What sort of uneducated imbecile did it take to think that a darkened eye had anything to do with oblivionite blood? They were eyeless as a species and couldn’t genetically pass on any degree of pigment via their bloodline because there was no place in their genetics for an eye to begin with — other than the third eye, which was completely separate. If Araceli’s mother, a pureblood dovaa, had shared a bed with an oblivionite, the child would have at the very least come out darker skinned, but she was nearly as pale as the stars, and if the genetics had affected her eyes, they simply would not have grown in. Not come in black.

Detraeus shook his head. “Your father was a fool. And selfish, for robbing you of both your parents so young in a fit of blind ignorance. You look nothing like an oblivionite. Or a hybrid…and you are beautiful.” He glanced to his plate, empty now, and stood. The meal, dramatics aside, had been delicious; there was no doubting Ara’s skills as a cook. “Are you finished? I’ll clean.”

Detraeus froze at the touch, but didn’t pull away, watching her instead until she let her hand drop. “Your parents…the ones who raised you…they did a good job,” he said.

With that, he moved over to the small sink beside her cooking space. It was strange to him, still, even after the months he’d spent in the house, to have the luxury of plumbing. Martrae’a had not had it and all her water had needed to be pumped from the well outside and heated over a burning stove fire to disinfect it. Where he had last lived, he’d shared a single well pump with everyone in the building and the entire surrounding area was filthy more often that not. Washing like this, even in a small, rickety little sink, was a wonder by comparison.

After he finished with their limited dishes, stored the spare food away in the small icebox that Araceli kept cold with spelled aiskala runes — purchased on the Plane for far cheaper than the exorbitant prices they went for on the Eowyn market — and cleaned the remaining area, he departed into his room to dedicate his evening hour to his letters and penmanship. Araceli, however, lingered on his mind until long into the night.