The satchel lures in my frown for a beat.
It’s not exactly large and lumpy. But it has so much fucking stuff in it, like extra clothes for me, leathers for him, cloths and soaps and phials of medicinal powder and whatever the fuck else, it must be magical somehow.
Mush, mush, mush.
It’s all too much.
My fingertips press into the dents of my temples, firm, and I slowly fall back onto the boulders.
Darkness greets me, a sky full of it, just black.
Still, I pretend to see the stars. I pretend there’s a full moon above, right in the middle of a canvas speckled with glittering stars.
Those were never really my thing, though.
I liked dawn.
Dusk.
The gloaming.
Moodiness and poetry.
In all the hiking trips, camping out there in the mountains, as far as Nevis, that is what I would do. Sneak off, quiet, alone, and watch the transitions paint the skies.
It’s a sad thought.
Because I’ll never see that again.
ELEVEN
The edge of an overhanging boulder digs into my spine, right at the small of it.
The steam rises from the hot pool, mesmerising me with those smoky dances above what should be crystal blue waters, but since it’s so dark, and the nearest piked torch casts a fiery glow over the waters, it looks sort of otherworldly.
Dangerous.
The noises have all merged into one—the creaking of the carts up on the trail that some captives are sorting through, the huffs and growls of those hairless, creepy steeds up on the path, the laughter of the fae moving in and out of pools, the clinking of bottles being passed around.
The fae apparently find joy in the fun of the hot springs, something they might know from their own world.
But I don’t like it.
Their jovial laughter feels off.
I can’t quite put my finger on why it floods me with a distinct sort of nervousness that pings in my bones. But I know I can’t relax with them, so I watch them all, from captives who wash in the river and apply that same brownish oil to their bodies to the ones who work, then the warriors who still soak in the waters to the ones who throw back gulps of dark liquid from the bottles.
I’m not alone in my mistrust of the light nature around camp.
The working captives who heave those massive plastic containers of water, laundry baskets and sacks of grain, their gazes are alert, swerving, troubled, and most wear the early sheen of sweat, but not from the hard labour.
I stick close to him, the cold one.
Boots planted on the smaller, softer rock down one level, like a staircase built by nature itself, he sits on the flattened boulder beside me—and no matter how close I edge towards him, scooting inch by inch, he doesn’t shove me away.
All the attention he’s spared me since he sat there is a lingering look, and I’ve closed a metre of distance in that time.
Now, his elbow grazes my arm as he passes off one of those dark purple bottles wrapped in leather for grip or insulation, maybe just decoration.
