You nod. What can you say? You've no doubt proven to her without a doubt that you're an utterly mannerless idiot. Gawking at her like a slack-jawed hick staring at travelling acrobats.
You say you've got the water and groan inwardly at the fact that only an idiot wouldn't already know that, based on the still-dripping skins you're carrying. You put them down next to the rest of her equipment and duck off to collect more firewood. It gets cold here on the edge of the plain and beside, you need an excuse to get away and cover your embarrassment.
You realise how you must look to her. Having to be saved from bandits, half-naked, continually staring at her. You're utterly mortified.
After you regain your composure, you return to the camp with an armful of wood. You add it to the pile and sit down near the fire. It's getting colder, and being near-naked under the cloak, you're really starting to feel it.
Leuna notices you shivering. She gets up and starts to rifle through her belongings.
"What are you looking for?" you ask her.
"My needle and thread," she says. "You need some proper clothes."
-
Having had no time to hunt, it's biscuit for dinner, and Leuna busies herself at her needlework as you eat. She's cannibalised one of her own tunics and is altering it, her deft fingers graceful and unerring with the needle and thread.
Once it's finished she hands it to you and you excuse yourself from the ring of the campfire to put it on. The needlework is finely done. You unwrap the cloak and slip the tunic on. It feels good to be dressed properly again and not threatened by sudden slippage. You roll up the cloak carefully.
The tunic smells just like the cloak did, infused as it is with the ghost of Leuna's scent. It can't just be your imagination. It's a very pleasant scent indeed, and for some reason you find it very comforting.
When you return to the firelight you find Leuna holding the little crescent clasp you saw earlier and staring at it. Feeling like you're interrupting something, you sheepishly hand the rolled up cloak to her, but she shakes her head.
"You'll need it to keep warm," she says. "I know how badly Easterners are affected by the cold."
Well, she is from Mendia, after all. They're most at home in the rocky defiles of their mountain homeland, and her Elurran blood would make her unsusceptible to the cold.
You sit down and take a drink of water. It's pure and refreshing. You wish you had something a little stronger, though. You sigh, thinking about how you'd be at the Sulphur Road Inn right now, eating beef and drinking ale if it wasn't for your streak of bad luck.
Leuna looks at you, her head cocked. "Still not warm enough? Should I put some more wood on the fire?"
You shake your head. No, you're warm enough.
There's a short silence as you both eat your biscuit. You apologise for taking the food from Leuna's mouth. She just laughs and says, "If I was a better rider you wouldn't have lost your rations."
Dreading a return of the silence, you quickly ask her why she's traveling to the capital to swear fealty to the Regent.
"I'm tired of the life of a knight errant," she explains. "As a Knight of the Rose and vassal to the Regent I'll be able to have my own squire and perhaps one day a fief!" She sighs. "One day."
There's an almost childlike excitement in her voice and it's incredibly charming in such a self-assured individual. Self-assured and mysterious.
Something must have shown on your face as Leuna starts to tell you more about herself. She speaks quickly, seemingly as scared of the silence as you are.
She was found wandering the mountains as a small child by Mendian trappers, who brought her back to their little community. Efforts were made to locate her family amongst the Elurrans, but to no avail. The only clue they had to her identity was the clasp that she had with her when she was found.
"That crescent-moon clasp," you murmur, suddenly understanding her obsession with it.
Leuna nods, her fingers tracing the edges of it. "No one seemed to know where I'd come from. No one among the Elurrans was missing a child. Or so they said."
You ask her if she ever tried finding her family after she grew up. She nods, but the question seems to make her uncomfortable.
"I couldn't find them," she says, leaving it at that.
You don't press her.
Luckily, the Mendians display little of the racism many of the other peoples of the West feel towards the Elurrans, due to their religious beliefs, and she was taken in by one of the major families of the settlement. She grew up just like a normal Mendian, hunting, fishing and praying.
"I always knew I was different, though. I mean, look at me." She smiles awkwardly. "Black as a crow among Mendian swans. And then I grew tall and just kept on growing."
When it came time for her to take up a trade, she tried her hand at everything, but it was only when an old ex-knight in the village saw her hunt and kill a leopard deep in the mountains that she was taken to the Academy in the Mendian capital of Gotorleku as an apprentice.
"It was a strict life," she says. "But compared to my upbringing it actually tasted like freedom. I spent ten years there, and when I earned my sword I became a knight errant. But I have to admit, freedom has started to pall." She sighs. "You start to miss the company of others, and hot water... and food especially." She chews a hunk off the rations and chews it without pleasure.
It's your turn to fill her in with your life story. It's nowhere near as interesting, being a pretty pedestrian account of the life of a merchant's son in peaceful, sunny, ocean-facing Elkiad, but she seems wrapt and asks you for explanations almost every step of the way. She seems especially amazed that men and women mingle freely in your little city-state.
"But doesn't anything ever happen?" she asks.
You ask her what she means.
"You know. When a boy and... and a girl... I mean, if he likes her... and she likes him..."
You smile at her blushing discomfort and say that in the East people are free to follow their heart if they meet someone they like, though of course richer and more powerful families tend to have arranged marriages.
She nods in understanding. "Like our marriages."
That's right. The Mendians have a tradition of betrothing their children while still very young.
"So, I guess you're already betrothed, then," you say.
The question seems to embarrass her. Leuna shakes her head.
"But I thought..."
You shut your stupid mouth. Of course there'd be a problem. Just because their religion requires that everyone be treated equally doesn't automatically mean that anyone would want her as a wife or daughter-in-law. It's easy to tolerate a fellow townsperson, after all, or act like you do, but to take someone into your family, someone who looks so different from everyone else...
You throw a piece of wood on the fire. Sparks flick up and spin around the swirl of grey-blue smoke. Feeling a total fool, you sit there, not sure if you should try to start the conversation up again or stay silent.
Leuna watches the sparks as they flicker and die mid-flight and after a while starts to talk again. "It's not that I don't want to get married," she says. "It's just...well." She sighs. "I suppose it doesn't matter. The life of a knight doesn't really leave much time for that sort of thing, anyway."
Because of all that righting wrongs and protecting the weak? you suggest.
Leuna laughs. "I'm sorry I called you weak."
You let the subject die at this point. You're feeling guilty for having brought the whole thing up, but there's also a strange sense of relief that she's not betrothed to anyone.
After a while you suggest that it's probably better that you both get some sleep. Leuna starts at the word and as you get up to find yourself a comfortable place by the fire, she looks increasingly nervous. You ask her what's wrong.
"Oh, it's nothing. It's just..." She looks across at you with surprising shyness. "I've never, ever slept with a man before."
You spit out the mouthful of water you were just about to swallow and start to choke. Leuna looks at you in alarm, but you wave her off and cough your lungs free.
She blushes. "I think maybe I said something strange. I do that sometimes." She quickly explains that in the Academy, the male and female apprentices lived in separate quarters, only coming together occasionally for training.
You nod. It's not an unusual situation. Leuna seems to have escaped a strict childhood to end up somewhere with just as little freedom, despite what she said.
You take the cloak and find a nice, secluded corner of the cave. Leuna sets up her own bedding in a different corner, across the campfire from you.
The fire burns down to embers as you lie there, staring up at the shifting shapes of grey, red and blackness that make up the cave's ceiling. Wrapped up in Leuna's cloak there in the dark you become even more aware of her scent and it seems to have a soporific effect on you. You hear Leuna shifting herself to find a comfortable spot and not long afterwards you're asleep.
--
Your sleep is not a restful one. After your mistreatment at the hands of the bandits, you seem to be too alert to enter deep sleep and keep waking up. Leuna seems to be asleep, though. There's the occasional shifting of material on bare stone, the odd feminine murmur.
You've almost struggled back to sleep when you hear Leuna stirring. She gets up and you hear her scrabbling around in the dark for a while. There's the sound of the cap of a water skin being popped and drinking. Then you hear the pad of her feet as she leaves the cave. When she returns a short while later, you've almost drifted off to sleep again.
But the soft padding of her feet on stone grows louder. Maybe she wants to ask you something.
She says nothing, and instead lies down not far from you, where your bedding has spread out during your tossing and turning. What is she doing?
She sighs and murmurs, then, moments later, her gentle regular breathing tells you that she's fallen asleep. She must have still been half-asleep after she woke up before and mistaken your bedding for hers when she came back.
You turn over and agonise over whether to wake her or not. It's probably the right thing to do, but you have a sudden image of a half-asleep knight mistaking you for an assassin and breaking your neck. It would be a particularly tragic end to your adventure.
You've finally decided to get up and move to her bedding instead when you feel sleep finally getting its talons into you. You can barely lift a hand up off the floor. Maybe it's having Leuna so close to you that you feel safe and protected.
Your thinking becomes stranger and stranger and before you realise it, you're asleep and dreaming.
You dream that you're on horseback, riding through a vaulted forest. The horse's head is in front of you as you ride bareback, and you're holding onto its mane. One either side of you, long, skilled, feminine hands are holding the reins. You can feel the warmth of brown arms resting on top of yours, the softness of breasts pressing against your back.
They belong to Leuna. You're riding more-or-less in her lap.
You lean forward, worried that she'll get the wrong idea, and try to put a little respectful space between the two of you. But then she takes a hand off the reins and you feel it slip across your chest.
"Stop squirming, my cute squire," says Leuna from behind you. "You'll fall off the horse."
She presses you closer to her with her arm in a half-hug. Your struggling achieves nothing, since her strength is inexorable. Those breasts are squeezed against you again.
Fighting at this point seems stupid. You feel your desire to do so ebbing away as the warmth of her body spreads through you. Then she drops the other rein and her arm closes around you, completing the embrace. You feel the warm sweetness of her breath against the stop of your head. What's the horse doing? He doesn't seem to need direction anymore. You look up.
There's no horse's neck there, no mane, no reins: just shadows and a warm orange glow.
You realise you're awake. You're in the cave where Leuna and you set up a campsite. And she got confused and came over to your bedding and...
And now she's hugging you from behind.
You stiffen, wondering what the hell you should do. You try and lift one of her arms away, but it's like struggling with a length of iron chain that's wrapped around you. Leuna stirs and hugs you to her more closely. You can feel her face nuzzling into your hair.
You decide not to fight against her. Escape seems impossible, and anyway, being held by her is far from worst thing in the world. She's warm and smells really good, and the firmness of her arms and stomach contrasted with the ample softness of her chest is starting to make you excited.
You flush hot, ashamed at your reaction. But even that is not enough to stop sleep reclaiming you. Being crushed in Leuna's arms, you quickly begin to feel relaxed and safe and before you know it, you're asleep again.
--
You wake up before Leuna does. Sometime during the night she must have finally released you from her embrace, since she's lying on her back, her arms and legs splayed out, snoring lustily. You lift the single arm that's lying on your chest and gingerly place it on the bedding. She stirs a little but doesn't wake up.
You pad outside and stretch in the early morning air. It's fresh and delicious. Here at the edge of the forest a great patch of sky is visible and the deep blue fills you with good cheer.
You're in a surprisingly good mood, you realise. You haven't slept so soundly in years, even in your own bed back home. It must have been having Leuna beside you that did it. Maybe it's just the way she smells so good...
You sniff yourself, expecting her delicious scent, but instead you just smell yourself. You grimace. If you're travelling on your own, it doesn't matter, but with her with you...
Stupid, she's a knight. Like she cares whether you smell like sweat or not.
Still...
She looked like she was going to sleep for a little while longer. You're probably going to be on horseback all day so this'll likely be the only real chance you'll get.
You walk down to the little river and follow it upstream a short way. There's a spot there where under the shade of a willow the water has eaten the bank away and created a deep eddy outside of the main flow of the river. It's the perfect spot to wash.
You soon find it. The first sign is a quillaja tree, not native to the area, planted there by a foresighted traveller from the hot south long, long ago. You strip a piece of bark from it and take it with you.
You peel off your tunic, wash some of the more offending parts with a quick scoop of water and then hang it in the branches of the willow to air. Then you slip gasping into the cold water and quickly duck your head under.
If you weren't awake before, you certainly are now. You splash yourself with water and scrub under your arms, then snap the bit of bark that you stripped from the tree into two and rub it together. It's an old traveller's trick: there's something in the wood that soaps up and creates a thick, scented foam in water, and you apply it quickly to your hair and offending parts of your body. Then you dive back under and rinse yourself.
You pull yourself partway out of the water and lie against the slab of yellow rock beneath the willow. The sun has been on it for a while and so it's warm. You put your underwear on it as well to hasten the drying process.
It's then that you see her. If you hadn't chanced to look in that direction at that precise moment, you probably never would have seen her.
Leuna, watching you bathe.
You let your eyes slip off her without acknowledging that you saw her. She came looking for you, obviously, but why isn't she making herself known?
Maybe too embarrassed.
Then why is she still there, watching you?
You're filled with an odd mixture of shame and excitement. It's a strange feeling. You lie back against the stone and close your eyes. Is she still looking at you? You're sure you can feel her gaze.
Is she having a joke at your expense? You're not exactly the best example of male physical perfection after all.
Then you realise she may have never seen a naked man before, even a half-naked one. The thought is so utterly adorable that you're glad for the coldness of the water about you. It's the only thing keeping you from getting so excited you'll be unable to get out of the water.
You decide that your underwear and clothes are probably as dry as they're going to get and so you slip out of the water. You're careful to keep your back to her. She might be curious, but better not to shock her all at once. She can probably deal with a bare butt no problem.
You retrieve your clothes and underwear as nonchalantly as you can and then secrete yourself behind the willow and give yourself a quick dry down. Then you dress yourself and make your way back to the cave.
Leuna is there when you get back. She's stoked up the fire and has a little pot over it, boiling water.
She glances up at you, but just as quickly her eyes return to the task in front of her.
"I'm sorry," she says. "I sometimes sleep a bit heavily. The other girls at the Academy always used to tease me about it."
You say something in reply, but you've forgotten it as soon as you say it. You're too distracted by the blush you spotted on her face when she looked at you. So instead you remark about how good something smells.
"Oh, it's just the tea," she says.
Tea? You had it once. You come over and she opens the pot for you.
There are green leaves in there, swirling about in the steaming water. You say that the tea you had was black.
"Oh, yes, that's the way most people drink it I suppose. But it's just as nice green as well. It's very invigorating."
It's soon ready and after a mouthful of rations you sit and enjoy the tea. It's as delicious as Leuna says, although a little bitter.
You sit and drink in silence. After a while you mention to Leuna that there's a good spot to wash if she wants a little upstream, and that she can't miss it.
She's flushing redder than usual, and she stammers a bit when she thanks you. But then she says, "Oh, do I smell bad?"
You swallow the hot tea already in your mouth and almost scald yourself as you stumble over your words saying that no, she doesn't smell bad at all. In fact, she smells very nice. It's just that you thought, maybe, after sleeping in a cave she might feel a bit more refreshed if...
You're babbling and so you stop.
Leuna seems amused by your outburst. But she shakes her head.
"We'll reach the inn by this evening, right? And I'll be able to get some proper hot water there."
You nod. You feel pretty awkward all of a sudden, the feeling exacerbated by your sudden realisation why Leuna didn't take up your offer.
She's worried you'll spy on her like she did on you.
The thought is distractingly exciting. Those long legs of hers, and those breasts you had pressed against your back last night. They must be pretty big.
After breakfast you get ready to depart. Leuna splashes some cold water on her face and make does with that. Then you're on horseback again.
The day is as gorgeous as the early morning predicted. The forest behind you now, you proceed out onto the grasslands. Around you patches of the yellow prairie grasses are stroked by the breeze, like an invisible giant running his hand across them. Overhead, clouds like great white fairy castles march along the horizon.
"Beautiful," says Leuna.
You agree. But they also make you nervous. The plains are well-known for flash flooding, and even when it's not raining here there's still a danger if the highlands are suddenly inundated with a downpour.
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