Whatever Aevrin might say about competitive streaks, it wasCassia'shonor on the line. She was the cook, not Aevrin. Andhedidn't have a clue what he was talking about. There were few pleasures in life as good as the simple ones.
Aevrin
Aevrinpausedjustoutsidethe grocer’s swinging doors, studied the heavens, and then started pulling the wagon briskly back towards the cart. Energy crackled in the air above them.
“Looks like rain,” Cassia mentioned, walking by his side.
“Certainly does,” Aevrin said. “Let’s try and beat it. Here, Miss Cassia—hate to ask, but would you mind loading up the back with all this? I ought to get the tarpaulin on, just in case.”
Some of the items they’d bought were paper-wrapped. Rain and ice storms started suddenly this time of year, with the sky so moody.
“Of course. Did you think I was just going to watch?” she asked, raising a perfectly-arched eyebrow quizzically.
He knew Cassia was a hard worker, but it was rude to presume. With a shrug, Aevrin hauled the bundle of canvas and wooden poles out of the back of the cart, working as fast as he could. He didn’t want to risk driving home without it, but nor did he want to delay leaving. The sooner they moved, the betterthe odds of getting Cassia home before the weather turned. As she began hauling the goods into the bed of the cart, he slid the wooden poles into the slats along the cart’s left and right rims. Soon the tarred, waterproof canvas stretched taut over the vehicle.
They cut back through the town, Cassia driving more confidently than she had on the way there.Maybe if she gets comfortable enough she’ll stay for good, he found himself thinking. The wind had picked up and torn strands of her hair loose from her braid. She was holding the reins a little wrong, but she looked so fiercely determined he didn’t dare correct her. And anyways, she was getting Stal moving, and in the right direction at that, so he didn’t think it mattered much how she wrapped her fingers around the leather straps.
They’d made it halfway home when the sky broke open.
Hell unleashed. Torrents of rain sizzled on the dusty road, the tarpaulin quivering under the assault. He couldn’t see more than five feet down the familiar landscape. A jagged ice shard clacked against the footrest in front of him. It would be a painful storm to get caught in without shelter.
Stal stopped uncertainly. The bull bobbed his horned head and took a shuffling step back, then lowed. Aevrin knew the road ahead of them sloped up to the top of a shallow hill, though he couldn't see it through the rain. Rivulets of water were rapidly turning the ground to mud. If they just kept going ten minutes or so further, they’d be back at the ranch, but that wasn’t much comfort when he couldn't even tell if the road was washing out.
“Here.” Aevrin raised his voice to pitch over the downpour. Reaching over, he took the reins from Cassia. The tarpaulin stretched a foot in front of them, but wind slashed the rain in under the covering to pelt them. “Get in the back. It’s safer.”
“I’m fine,” Cassia said.
“I’m serious, Miss Cassia. Get in the back,” Aevrin repeated.
When it rained like this, so hard and fast, it was easy for the dry ground to flood. The storm wouldn’t last long; these ones never did. But the last place he wanted to be was one of the valley’s low points. He barked a command to Stal and cracked the whip hard overhead.
Startled, the bull kicked out his hind legs, threw his shoulder forward, and hauled ass up to the top of the hill. Up there the wind was harder, the rain stinging. Cassia raised a hand to shield her eyes. The edge of the tarpaulin fluttered in the violent wind.
“Here’s what we do,” Aevrin shouted, as Cassia wilted under the rain, still refusing to move. “You get in the back. I’m going to batten the tarpaulin tighter…”
“No,” Cassia said quickly, turning to him with her wide amber eyes, strands of hair already plastered to her cheeks. “That’s not fair. You can’t be the only one who gets wet—”
“Don’t worry, I already got you all wet,” Aevrin told her grimly, wishing he’d insisted on a different day for the trip to the grocer. For some reason Cassia’s eyes widened even further. He could hear the ice falling with the rain now, the occasional loud thunk on the taurpalin’s roof against the relentless patter of the waterdrops. “But I’m not going to make you any wetter than you gotta be. Anyways, before you go complaining that you’ve got nothing to do, you’ve got a job too.”
“If it’s ‘guarding the produce,’ that’s a made-up job.”
“It’s not. The water’s coming in all-ways. Make sure anything that can’t stand a little wet is in the middle?”
“Got it,” Cassia said, though she sounded reluctant.
“And see if you can find that custard.”
“Custard,” she echoed, with a laugh. The temperature had plummeted with the rain. Cassia’s shoulders looked stiff, her arms tight at her sides. “Just what we need.”
“You get back there before our food turns to soup.”
His first stop was Stal, who hung his miserable drenched head, puffing sad little clouds of smoke. No armored bulllikedthe wet, and the poor fellow couldn’t even retreat under one of the pasture’s lean-tos or bully his way into the center of the herd. To keep the bull from deciding to make a break for it through the mud, Aevrin unhooked him from the cart and led him around to the better side of the cart, where it would provide a small break from the wind and a pitiful fraction of shelter from the slashing ice. Stal’s armored plating would keep him from getting hurt, but Aevrin couldn’t imagine it felt nice to get hit.
He didn’t worry about fire risk. It was too wet for Stal to try burning by himself. He’d need a whole herd to get a fire going in weather like this. As Stal grumbled, Aevrin tightened the tarpaulin’s ties. By that point even his waterproof hat wasn’t keeping the rain off his face. One of the ice shards slashed against his shoulder, meeting with thick, hardened leather and finding it impenetrable.
He clambered into the bed of the cart through the back, his clothes and the cold clinging to his skin. Water dripped off every part of him. Cassia knelt in a pile of groceries, rearranging the food in the small space as he’d requested.
“Sorry, miss.”
