Author: Tristraam
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OOC: I have decided to break with my normal modus operandi and post the first chapter of this tale without knowing how it will end. Due to the amount of me in the story, I will be writing blind, as it were. I can see the path, but not the clearing. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I do.
This is dedicated to laughing Allegra, because life isn’t about the happy endings. It’s about the sad ones, and what we take from them into the next story. I miss you still, sweet one.
Ayr’Dal
I
She kneels down before him, pressing her palm delicately against his frail chest. Her fingers trace lightly against his ribs, noticing their shocking prominence. Abruptly his breath hitches. Eyes clenching like fists, a rough, barking cough erupts from him as he heaves forward. Tiny flecks of blood spatter his companion, crimson stars shining against the ivory sky of her bodice as she crouches before him, patiently enduring the torrent.
Slowly the coughing subsides, his head returning to the makeshift pillow she has created from her much-needed coat. His breathing comes low and ragged, each inhale a tiny battle in the war against the fever wracking his body.
"He is leaving me," she thinks with heartsick certainty.
There is something about those whose lives are ebbing away. Something between emotion and scent, like the memory of a fragrance. You could sense it - the tenuous touch of a finger scraping the back of your neck, and the feeling of it weighed against your shoulders like a woolen coat in the rain.
Her hand slides up to his face, fingers brushing back his matted hair. He raises a trembling hand, grasping hers and pressing it against his breast.
"Alethea,” he croaks weakly between laboured breaths, “I am so sorry that you must see me like this. I would have your last memories of me be of my strength, not my weakness."
She bows her head, kissing his hand gently. Sliding upward, her lips glide tenderly against his burning cheek.
"Love is not jewellery and ball gowns," she whispers in his ear, "Fancy parties and moonlit walks by the sea and flowers and sugar-sweet poetry."
Nodding her head softly, she brushes her eyelashes against the fleshy tip of his earlobe.
"Don't you see, Lanthaneis?" she chides, "Love is not seeing someone at their best. It is seeing someone at their worst, and still wanting them, no matter what the worst may be."
Her voice catches in her throat, and she squeezes her eyes against a flood of sorrow that the greatest of dams could not impede.
"And," she thinks to herself, "it is seeing your lover dying, a pale wisp of what he should be. It is seeing his dishevelled, emaciated form and praying to the gods again and again for one more hour - just one more, because I am not ready to let go yet."
Feeling the grip on her emotions beginning to fail, she pulls back from him, pressing her lips to his forehead before she rises.
“Sleep now, love. We’ve not that far to go, but you will need your strength. I’ve the fire to tend.”
Wrapping her thin cloak tightly around her, she steps from the tent. A soft, bitter wind greets her, pulling the shelter’s heat quickly from her body. She looks out across the snowy hills, her eyes searching for any hint of civilisation. She knew they could be no more than three days from their destination, and yet they had not come upon a single soul in weeks. She had hoped to encounter other travellers or, even better, a scouting party from the city - anyone who might have skills to heal her ailing lover. But they were alone. And she could not risk leaving him. It was down to his strength of will, her feeble knowledge of herbs, and prayer.
She plucks up a few pieces of wood and carries them to the slowly fading remnants of the fire. Dropping them in a heap, Alethea slips to her knees. She takes up one of the smaller pieces and gathers the glowing coals into the centre of the pit. Absently, she reaches to her right and begins to place the branches one by one atop the ember pile, allowing the winter breeze to rekindle the blaze.
At length she pauses, hovering another branch over the top of the blaze. She takes the piece of wood in both hands. Knuckles white with tension, she slowly wrings it back and forth. Tiny shards of bark, stained crimson from her now lacerated hands, crumble between her fingers, speckling the snowy earth before her.
With a strangled cry, she raises the branch above her head and stabs it cruelly into the icy soil. She draws it roughly from its earthy sheath, sending a spray of dirt and snow into the air. Again and again she strikes, cutting a deep trench in the permafrost and pouring into it all the anger and sorrow the cavernous well of her heart contains.
There is a sudden snap as the branch cracks. She looks at it a moment, then falls exhausted onto her backside, letting the broken stake slip from her fingers and pulling her knees up to her chest.
It could not be over. They had endured far too much for him to be pulled from her embrace now.
Giving in to the fatigue, Alethea leans forward, staring into the burgeoning fire. The damp wood hisses and pops as the embers’ heat seeps through it. She watches as flakes of glowing ash rise into the night and wink out, like dying stars. The aseptic fragrance of pine wafts into her nostrils, sparking a strange nostalgia.
Her eyes grow cloudy. A warm trance of memory envelops her. Old sounds slip through her ears; the noisy shuffle of a marketplace, merchants calling out their wares. The narcotic scent of exotic spices and roasting meats intermingled with the pungent closeness of a bustling crowd; Long-forgotten smells tickling her nose. She blinks lazily at the moisture gathering in her eyes as the aromatic smoke of the fire surrounds her.
Her head lolls forward lazily, surrendering to the dream-state. The years peel away from her mind like the skin from an orange. The sounds grow more distinct, echoing through her ears. The myriad of scent magnifies into tastes, assaulting her senses.
A wild sense of spinning engulfs her. Raising her hands to her face, she rubs her fingers across her eyelids in an attempt to drive away the vertigo. Gradually the dizziness fades, until all that remains is a dull throbbing in the back of her throat.
Alethea lowers her hands. Her eyes flitter open, and she gasps suddenly. Somehow, impossibly, she was home.
--continued--
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