A Knightly Respite

Her hand no longer sits on my hip, it has another task. As quiet tears stream down my face, seemingly without end, Elyn's expert fingers swab them away. I do not think my bleary vision will ever clear, and yet she shows no signs of impatience. I weep, drawing ragged breath after ragged breath, and she is there all the while,

"I've a mat," she says. "We needn't stay on the hard earth all night..."

"In a moment," I ask. "In just one moment."

She gives me many more than that. We huddle together, and I find myself pleasantly drowning in the sound of her breathing. My ear rests against her chest, her full breasts the most comfortable pillow I've ever known. As I recover, her hand strokes idly up and down the length of my back. My skin tingles with novel sensation, and I feel alive. With my eyes closed, I imagine my cares being washed away, one by one, with each tender inhale and exhale of her breath.

I do not realize I've dozed off until she sits my sleeping body up as if I weighed no more than a child. I make some quiet, incoherent protest, but find I lack the strength or coordination to stand without her help.

Soon after, she lays me down upon her bedroll and the heavy material retreats beneath my weight, embracing me. Such finery royal knights possess; even their traveling mats of are more comfortable than any bed I've known...

But the comfort is empty across all the moments I must be patient, too tired to do anything but listen to Elyn drop more wood into the fire. Inside my stomach a pitted core of yearning grows and grows, unsatisfied until her weight and warmth return to me. When they do, and she layers her shape atop mine, the trigger springs inside my body. I tumble headlong into sleep.

***

I am roused by the gentle nudging of her fingers.

"Ort," Elyn says, softly. "Time to wake."

The fire long since out, I recognize the encroaching mid-morning cold, but her thick woolen cloak lies atop me. If I wore everything I owned, all at once, it might be but a fraction of the comfort this one garment imbues in me. Waking ever so slowly, I drag my face against the fur that fringes the cloak's hood, wondering what animal bears a pelt this soft, and this thick. Could it be some mythical beast she's slain and then converted into a garment? That sounds a nice fairy tale.

"Here." She hooks a hand under my shoulder and sits me upright. "I wanted to share a breakfast with you, before we parted."

I blink my eyes against the hazy gray of the morning. It must be just after dawn. "Parted?" I ask.

Elyn contorts her eyebrows, a queer expression on her face. "I've to hurry back to the city, I'm already a night delayed."

"Ah," I say, nodding. My drowsiness insulates me from the full truth that I logically know, but have not yet begun to feel.

She picks up a small parcel of oiled parchment, undoes its twine wrapping, and offers it to me. Nestled inside are some cold sausages.

"What's left," she says, "From last night."

I take them mutely, pressing a few into my mouth at once. Instantly, I regret it. Not the taste—they are better than many fresh meals I've had—but the discovery that chewing has brought my slumbering mind to motion.

"Will you be all right?" asks Elyn. "I can escort you partway back to the city, but before we reach the gates I'll have to—"

I shake my head, warding off her verbal reminder of the wide chasm that separates our social stations. "There's no need."

"You are self-sufficient, I know," she says. "I only thought I'd—"

"Why?" I ask. I struggle to keep the impatience from my voice, but that dam has already broken, I believe.

"Why?" she echoes.

My hand twists, crushing the parchment between my fingers. I rivet my eyes to the floor of the cave. "Did I do wrong by you? Was I not satisfactory? Was I insufficient?"

"Satisfactory?" she asks. "Insufficient?"

"Perhaps I should say incorrect, incongruous, or even ill-equipped."

"Ort..." Her hand lilts lightly upon my shoulder. Barely a touch, still it is an unbearable weight.

"Leave off," I say, shaking my shoulders until her hand obeys and leaves me be. "Why would you do that?" I ask. "Why would you do to me what you did last night only to leave, only to act as if I should be grateful you've deigned to offer me a goodbye before you did?"

"Because..." She says, drawing out the single word into oblivion. A moment's thought is ten moments longer than would've made me comfortable. Does she not understand, when she seemed so perceptive last night? Has she no idea how that hesitation compresses down upon my insides and leaves me fit to choke?

No, seemingly she does not. Elyn speaks slowly, as if she were placing each word in front of me, like an elaborate place setting at one of her royal entertainments, except in lieu of knives and forks are an array of utensils made to suggest comfort, rationalization, and explanation. "I'm sure you understand—women like we, this sort of companionship—it is only ever brief instances..."

"Is it because I'm chijac?" I ask, preempting her words, perhaps with the hope that this will forestall further dithering, and thus bring a quicker end to this wretched parting.

Her brows contort, seemingly desperate. Though if it's desperate to come up with a sincere explanation or desperate to invent a better lie, I do not know.

"That was a new experience for us both, I think..." she says, but then shakes her head with a snap, closing the book on that idea. She her eyes firmly on me. "Ort, you were beautiful. I do not regret a moment of it."

She reaches for my hand, which I've unconsciously clenched deep into the opulently fur of the cloak around my shoulders. I cringe away and, in doing so, spill what's left of the sausages to the dirty floor.

"Why would you say that?" I ask.

Elyn blinks. "That I've no regrets?"

Wetness blots my vision. I draw the backs of my hands against my face, trying to ward away the feeling, or at least catch the tears before they spill down my cheeks. "Why call me beautiful? Why preface your departure with a lie? You could simply go and save the effort."

Elyn rises from sitting to kneel beside me. Her hands go to my face, drawing around my cheeks and pulling my face to hers. "You are beautiful. Let no one tell you otherwise."

My hands occupied, I've no way to resist her embrace. I've nothing to do but look at her as fresh sobs spool out off me. As hateful tears roll down my cheeks, Elyn pulls my face to her breasts, digs her fingers into the hair at the back of my head, and waits patiently as I do a wonderful job of soiling her fine doublet with my common snot.

She doesn't speak until my body has calmed itself, until my sobs have wound their way down to slow sniffles. Hooking her arm under my shoulder, she turns me, so that I rest against her side, and she traces slow lines through my hair with her fingers.

"You seem the type it's easy to grow fond of," she says. "But we are of two different kinds. There's little space for you in my world or for me in yours, I imagine. That doesn't mean I'll any less treasure what we shared."

A vice grip has found its way around my heart. As it turns and crushes down at me, whatever burgeoning rage I had at Elyn and her dismissal of me evaporates somewhere inside my body. I stare at the ground, makes it easier to speak. "Simple for you to say." My voice is dull. To say my tears have left me bereft of emotion would sell the feeling, or lack thereof, rather short, I think. "You've a castle to go back to, and many fine things besides."

"Not all fine." Done sorting my hair, Elyn traces a finger gently, carefully, around my ear. "I've little time," she says, "and fewer words, but only to apologize, and say that... it need not be impossible we'll see each other again, just not likely."

"I understand," I say.

"Do you hate me for it?" she asks.

"I might." I hope to clear my head by shaking it out, but my mind feels as if someone has wrapped it in bolts of thick velvet. Is this real, or do I still doze? If this is a dream, it seems an unnecessarily cruel one, even by the standards of this hapless girl. "But there are other things I hate a great deal more."

"May I kiss you before I go?" she asks. "It's said that kissing a knight before a journey brings good luck on both parties."

Unable to meet her eyes, I think I should deny her request. I think I should order that she go and leave me to my misery. But, even with that thought ringing between my ears, I give a silent nod.

Lacing her arms around me, Elyn draws me into her quiet, final kiss. Our eyes closed, it becomes almost easy to indulge in this gentle moment, forget the world, forget her leaving, forget the miserable shape of my body in this dreary morning. I pull my hands up around her neck and press the pads of my fingers down as deep into her warm skin as they can go. She kisses me, her lips only halfway parting, and it lasts a moment and it lasts a year, but all too soon she leans away and leaves me rutting my lips against the cold, empty air.

"Take care, Ort," says Elyn. "Self-named, no family, nineteen years come this autumn." Standing, she belts her sword to her waist and removes her cloak from its winding clutch around my booted ankles. She throws it over her shoulders, does the clasp, sets her shield, and hefts her baggage. When she eyes the bedroll beneath me I make a delayed attempt towards rising, but, putting her hand against my shoulder, she stops me.

"Hold onto that." she says. "It's a poor gift, I know, but providence may offer you some opportunity to return it to me."

And then she is away.

As I look down at my hands I imagine what her thoughts might hold as she sets out on the short journey back to the city. My ass shifts subtly against the bedroll. I'm sure she thought she was doing me a favor, leaving me an object not only comfortable and practical, but an artifact of our shared memory to treasure and cherish as I exit the dream of this cave and reenter the reality of my hardscrabble peasant life.

I open my fingers, revealing the silver chain I slipped from around her neck during our kiss. I clench the unicorn pendant inside my fist and smile. Perhaps she would've kept the bedroll, had she known she'd already given me something to remember her by.

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Thanks to Bramblethorn, a brilliant writer on this very site, for taking the time to help with editing this story. If you'd like to be updated when I post new works, feel free to reach out to me via the contact option in my profile. Thank you so much for reading!