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Fireside
Leram shot awake, his breath caught in his throat, icy cold sweat soaking through his linen shirt. His sleep had been dreamless, haunted only by a black void and the dull ache of something being wrong. He wasn’t sure what specifically had woken him. It was still dark, the quiet night kept from total silence only by the faint hum of insects and gently rustled leaves of the trees above. The fire had already burned down to dull embers, casting the faintest hint of light and warmth from its ashes, but it was otherwise pitch dark. No moon or stars shone through the dense clouds overhead--not that the light could have penetrated the canopy of branches anyways.
Already shivering from the biting cold, he rolled onto his knees, then staggered up to his feet. Might as well stir the fire and get some more heat. He felt around with his foot for the stick he’d used earlier for dinner. Lots of dirt and small rocks and dead leaves… There it is. He bent, picked up the stick, then dropped into a squat beside the fire. He poked at the coals to nudge them back to life, feeding them a handful of the dead leaves. The fire reluctantly smoked and burned, casting a pitiful amount of light around the campsite.
Across the fire, leaned up against a tree, sat Talon. The other man was still asleep, arms crossed over his chest, head hung low, hair draped over his face like a funeral veil. Leram spared only a glance at him between sprinkling handfuls of leaves on the fire. Talon should have been keeping watch, but Leram wasn’t going to fault him for dozing off. They’d been walking for almost four days through the dense forest, refusing to rest until it was too dark to see where they were going. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if they had a destination in mind… But they had no such thing…
Leram lowered to the ground, sitting with legs crossed and the fire-stirring stick resting across his lap. A few scant flames had started rising from the coals, and his thoughts were already wandering as he stared into them. Four days… Four days, and nothing. They’d been tracking her so easily before, only to lose all trace of her the moment they entered the forest. How could an injured, sick woman lose them so quickly?
A fresh chill crawled down Leram’s spine. His gaze flicked toward Talon once again, this time falling on the sleek leather scabbard of his sword where it rested on the ground beside him. He knew the blood had already been cleaned off, but part of him still expected to see flashes of red every time the other man drew his weapon. He often found himself rubbing his palms against his pants, trying to wipe away crimson stains that were no longer there.
Talon stirred, drawing him out of his darkening thoughts. He waited a few seconds to see if the other man would wake up, but Talon settled back into sleep again. Maybe it was time to go back to sleep as well…
It was hard to tell at what point things changed. Leram only remembered sitting at the fire and thinking about going back to sleep. Suddenly he was still there, still staring, but he was hyper aware of the warm back pressed against his. Beneath the fire smoke, the subtle scent of hay and apple blossoms reached his nose, bringing with it a dense wash of homesickness that would have left him weak-kneed if he wasn’t already sitting. For a moment--for the most fleeting, heartbreaking moment--he thought everything had been a nightmare, and the scent would pull him to wakefulness in his bed back home.
What he wouldn’t give for that moment to be real. To forgo the horrors he’d witnessed and wake up back home. To step outside and see her as she once was.
“Hey Leram.”
Her voice was the same, yet not. She had never sounded so tired. Briefly he considered turning around, just to make sure it was really her… But something beyond his own thoughts told him that if he moved, she would vanish again, and he would have lost her a second time. So instead, he took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the scent of home.
“Hey Mags.”