Matching Day

Lenei tried to look less haggard as she answered, "We settled it, didn't we? You belong to Salvia."

Mason grunted, looking insufferably unhappy. "I'm meant to be with you, I think," he said abruptly.

"How could you possibly know? How could anyone possibly know they were meant for someone without knowing anything about them?"

"Ha!" Mason said triumphantly. "That's what everyone's doing anyway, isn't it? Aren't they all just assuming that they're meant to be together without knowing anything about each other, just because the community leaders say they are?"

"Mason, stop," Lenei said firmly, shaking her head. "Don't you realize that this is what our society is built on? I think you're just being lazy, not even trying to get to know Salvia."

"Have you met her?" Mason's strained question revealed his frustration. "She's...she's awful! She parades me around like a - gods, like a show dog - and constantly makes these ridiculously shady comments about our 'evening activities,' as she likes to call them -- the girl's determined to get me decapitated by her war axe of a father!"

"You know, it's not unheard of for matches to..."

Mason's scowl made her trail off. "Don't even suggest it. We are going to have an actual wedding, after all," he said sulkily. "You'd think she could at least wait that long."

Lenei giggled at the absurdity of it. "You are concerned about her impatience for--"

"--She's got a running bet with several other girls about how quickly she can tempt me! They're all competing, like it's some sort of game or something. Well, she's figured out by now that I'm more tempted to run like hell back to Micrague than..." He didn't need to finish the sentence.

"Then why haven't you?" Lenei asked quietly.

"Because there is a girl here in Treston that does tempt me," he said, sliding a little closer to her without appearing to move at all. Lenei's eyes darted back toward Salvia, but the girl was obliviously half-shouting in her eagerness to say goodbye to all the girls who would be leaving.

"Mason..."

"Meet me tonight, Lenei."

"What?!"

"Please, Lenei."

"I can't!"

"Why not?"

"It's just...it's not done! It's not right."

"It's also not right to leave a dazzlingly beautiful, possibly perfect girl alone for life, but they've done that, haven't they?"

"Mason!" Salvia's brutally nasal voice broke into the steadily intensifying argument with the delicacy of a hammer, and she swooped in between Mason and Lenei with calculated accuracy. "Come on, we've got brunch with Tevia and Bryce this morning before they leave, or don't you remember? Goodbye, Lenei."

As he was steered away, Mason shot one last pleading look at Lenei, who shook her head slightly. She could not meet him, not tonight, not ever. He was not hers; she told herself that repeatedly, never letting the words slip from her mind. If she did, even for a minute, and she allowed herself to believe that he could fill the void that Bracken had left, she would find herself drawn to him, wherever he was. She hoped the repetition of that thought would be enough.

***

"Gimme'nother'un, Sally," Lenei slurred, grabbing the glass away from Salvia, who was chatting with the other girls who had not left that morning and trying to pretend that Lenei was not there.

"Get your own!" Salvia objected, jerking the glass back hard enough to slosh it on her dress. She and the other girls laughed uproariously, as though this was the best joke in the world.

Lenei was not as drunk as they all believed she was, but she made a good show of it; she had found that, when people believed she was totally inebriated, they tended to speak as though she was not there. She could sit apart from the group and observe the social undercurrents beneath the surface of this small fireside gathering.

The boys were seated largely separate from the girls, who whispered theatrically everything they did not shout, and who screamed with laughter at every other word or so. Lenei watched the way Maize's blond boy hovered just behind her, talking to the guys but turned a little to the side so that he would immediately know if she needed anything; he was already besotted. The other boys kept a watchful eye over the group of girls, but seemed more intimidated by the giggling gaggle than enamored of them.

Mason sat at the back of the group of guys, shrouded in flickering shadows, as far from Salvia as he could get. He had been nursing the same drink since the party had begun, and had drunk maybe two sips, as far as Lenei knew, so he was certainly the least impaired of all of them.

She stood and pretended to stagger, actually tripping in the process; she would have tumbled headlong into the fire had it not been for a fortuitous snag of her wrist by Maize's blond.

"Thanks," she mumbled. She poured herself another tall glass of whatever Crista had brought and threw back a burning mouthful of it.

"Hey, leave some for the rest of us, Lenaninny," Salvia drawled, smirking. "That's for celebration; don't take it all up with your pity party."

"Shut it, Salvia," Lenei muttered, taking another drink.

"I've got as much right to talk as you do! Maybe more...since I can actually contribute to society. What can you do? Matchless...childless...hell, maybe they'll give you a pet so you don't suicide."

"That's enough," Lenei said with a little more heat, her generally slow anger bubbling up hotly in response to the burn of Salvia's words.

"Tell us, what's it like to be without a match?" Salvia continued cruelly. "To know that you'll be totally alone for all eternity?"

"Probably about what it feels like to know you'll be ugly and obnoxious for all eternity," Lenei replied nastily, her anger peaking.

"That's pretty funny, coming from someone so unattractive that a guy actually killed himself so that he wouldn't have to be paired with her," Salvia retorted, sloshing her drink over both of the other girls with the intensity of her gestures.

"And you think Mason is so thrilled to be your match?" Lenei cried. "He'd rather--"

"--Hey! Calm down, both of you." Mason stepped between the two of them, hands raised in case the argument came to physical blows, which it might have, if Lenei had finished her sentence. "Why the hostility all of the sudden?"

"She started it," Salvia said poutily, and Mason shook his head.

"No, she didn't. Regardless, I'm finishing it. Somebody should take Lenei home."

"Let her take herself home," Salvia hissed. "Maybe we'll get lucky and she'll impale herself on a tree branch or something."

"Salvia, come on, break up the party. I'll walk you home," Mason said patiently.

"No!" she whined. "I'm having fun. You just sit back down and have yourself another drink. You're clearly not having a good enough time."

Stone-faced, Mason watched her flounce back to the fireside, flanked by Maize and Crista, and then he turned to Lenei. "You want to go home?" he asked brusquely. She nodded, consenting to being led along the tree line back toward her house. How he knew where she lived, she had no idea.

When they were out of sight of the fire, Mason took her hand, and she responded with a faint smile, letting his warm fingers be a talisman against the cold night. "Lenei..." he began, but he seemed to rethink speaking as they took a few more steps side by side.

"What?" she asked, and it was a long time before he answered with a question of his own.

"What is it that you don't like about me?"

"What?" she repeated.

"Why don't you like the idea of being with me?"

"Who said I don't?"

"Well, you say you can't possibly be with me because I'm Salvia's match...but it can't just be Salvia, can it? I mean, it's not like the two of you are the greatest friends, based on that show back there."

"You're...not mine," she said, repeating that mantra that had run like a hamster in a wheel through her mind all day long.

"But I want to be."

Lenei shook her head slowly, deliberately. She didn't even realize she had stopped in the middle of the forest, still clinging to his hand like a drowning person to a floating bit of flotsam. "You can't. They won't let you."

"Who won't let me? Who's to say that I can't love any woman I want? Who on this earth has the right to tell me I can't be with you?"

"Well...they do," Lenei replied vaguely, trying to concentrate on his words as he spoke too fast.

Mason shook his head in fierce denial of the indistinct statement. "No. The only person who has the right to govern who I fall for is me, and I pick you."

"Gods, Mason...do you even know what you're saying?"

"I know what I want, and I know what I don't want. I don't care about society's norms or whatever it is that makes you so scared."

"I'm not scared."

"Then what are you?"

"I respect the system."

"The system has destroyed your life, Lenei."

"What's better, then? Chaos?"

"What's better is being able to choose. I would never, never have chosen Salvia. In a thousand lifetimes. But you?"

"Why me, Mason?"

"Because you're different! You're not just beautiful and sweet and quiet; you watch people, you notice things. You see the world a little differently than everyone else. You're above the pettiness of girls like Salvia."

"Obviously not...I just let her get to me."

"Yeah, well, you're drunk."

"I'm not drunk!"

"Gods, Lenei, of course you are. I saw you staggering around back there."

"I am not," she maintained. Truly, she was barely buzzed, but Mason didn't seem to believe her. She wondered if he would try to take advantage of her apparently inebriated state, and decided he would not.

"Would you be angry if I kissed you?" Or perhaps he would.

"Would you kiss me if I didn't want you to?" she countered.

"Do you really not want me to?"

"You're Salvia's," Lenei said stubbornly, running those words through her mind again: He's not yours.

"Lenei, for once, could you think with your heart and not with your head? What do you want?"

"Mason..."

"What do you want?" he insisted.

She stared at him for a moment before sighing in defeat. "You," she muttered.

His smile was triumphant. "Then I'm yours."

"Salvia will never let you go that easily."

"What Salvia doesn't know can't hurt her."

"Mason, no! People would find out. Salvia would find out, and I don't know what the consequences would be for breaking a match, but I'm sure it wouldn't be pretty."

"Then we'll get out of here! Come on, we'll leave tonight. Let's go somewhere where they've never heard of Matching Days. We'll find a place where people pick their own people to love and we'll settle there."

"I can't leave, Mason. This is my home! And besides...do you even know if such a place exists? We could run through the wilderness for the rest of our lives and never find anything like that. We could die looking for it."

"Then we'll stay," Mason said with a sigh. He studied Lenei seriously for several long minutes, his face serious. With a quick dart forward, he pressed his warm lips against hers, surprising her into a gasp with the suddenness of the contact. When she didn't immediately push him away, he stepped closer, running his hands down her arms from shoulder to wrist.

She shivered and pulled back, her eyes wide. I can't kiss him, she thought frantically. It goes against everything...he's not mine...he's not mine...he's not--

His leaned forward again, catching her lips with his, and her train of thought was completely derailed. She was startled to find her own arms wrapping around his neck, drawing her closer to his warm body. His hands found her waist and lifted her so that she was standing tiptoe on his feet, putting her mouth level with his.

It was him that broke away the second time, with a rueful grin. "Ah..." he groaned. "You're drunk..."

She shook her head. "I'm not, I promise."

He eyed her doubtfully. "Regardless, I should take you home," he sighed. "Salvia's probably wondering where I've wandered off to."

"You're going back to her?" It shouldn't have bother Lenei, but after that kiss...the boundary lines had shifted, somehow; she felt she should have sole ownership of those lips.

"For a while," he said, his smile seeming to suggest that he understood her thoughts. "Will you meet me tomorrow night? Here?"

Lenei contemplated it for two fractions of a second, and then her heart spoke for her. "Yes." She felt like that one kiss had been a crucial moment, setting her feet on a path from which she could not stray. She had to meet him; fate demanded it.

He walked her briskly to her back door and kissed her sweetly on the forehead in farewell before turning to jog back to the fireside gathering.

"Wait, Mason?" Lenei called when he was almost out of hearing range. He turned and cocked his head to the side questioningly. "Don't kiss her like that, okay?"

His face split into a pleasant grin. "Only you," he assured her, and then he melted into the darkness like the dream he was.

***

One more step, Lenei told herself, Just one more step. He'll be on the other side of those trees. No one followed you, Lenei. No one knows you're meeting him. You can't be caught. Just take one more step,

She took a step, and then another, forcing herself across the strip of scant foliage and sliding as quickly as she could back into the blessed anonymity of denser trees. Her heart, once speeding like a runner's, was now making sick, wet thumps in her chest; she was afraid she might be having a heart attack. Fear made every limb shake uncontrollably, and each breath quiver in her chest. Gods, I should not have come, she thought frantically.

And then she saw him. He was looking up at the stars, his grey eyes luminous with their light, his hands shoved in his pockets as he took one deep, calm breath after another. Why wasn't he as nervous as she was?

She shifted, and a twig snapped, bringing Mason's eyes down to earth. Perhaps he had been nervous after all, because when he picked out her face among the leaves, he let out a momentary sigh, his mouth sliding into a smile of relief.

"You came," he breathed, extending a hand toward her, beckoning for her to come out of the trees. Lenei nodded, glancing in every direction at once as she slipped out of hiding cautiously. "I was afraid you wouldn't." He took her hand when she was close enough. "Are you alright?"

She was panting with the effort not to run. What if someone came upon them? What if they were discovered, here, together? It had been bad enough when she thought she might be caught sneaking out of her window in the middle of the night, dressed like it was daytime, or skulking through the woods on her own; if they saw her with Sylvia's match--!

"Hey," he said gently, kissing her softly on the forehead. "It's alright, I promise. No one will find us. No one will ever know anything about this."

"How can you know that?"

"Whatever happens, Lenei, I promise you'll be safe. I won't let anything happen to you." She wanted to laugh at the words, at the hollow promise that he could not hope to keep, but he enfolded her in warm, unyieldingly strong arms, and she felt safer than she had all night.

He tried to comfort her, kissing her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks, but she still stood stiffly in his arms, trembling all over.

"Here, come here," Mason murmured, sitting down on the leafy ground and pulling her down next to him. He tucked her against his side, wrapping an arm around her waist and shifting his shoulder so that she could comfortably lay her head on it, if she chose to; she did.

"Why did you ask me to meet you here, Mason?" she whispered.

"I've told you...I think we're meant to be together. And I wanted to be able to talk to you without, you know, the entire community looking sideways at us. Or Salvia's interruptions."

"So you just wanted to talk?" Lenei's mind flickered back to that fate-altering kiss the night before, the experience that had made her jittery all day, wondering what another nightfall would bring.

Mason laughed quietly. "As reluctant as you were to meet me here at all, I figured I wouldn't push my luck," he said, flicking a mischievous grin down at her.

"A kiss might not be totally out of the question," Lenei said after a pause.

"Your wish is my command."

***

"So, tell me about your family, Mason," Lenei said, tracing the lines of his palm with one finger. How long had they been out there? Although it felt like she'd been with Mason for only a few minutes, at most, she was deathly afraid that dawn would break soon, and they would have to part ways, sneaking back into their respective beds.

"Oh, they're nothing special," he said with a shrug. "My father's done pretty well for us with inter-community trade, and my mother's a self-proclaimed busybody. I have two little sisters who must hate me, for all the grief they cause me, and a cat that only eats because I ask him to every day."

Lenei sympathized with the cat; she would follow Mason to the ends of the earth, if he asked her to and really meant it. She wouldn't tell him that, though. He still believed that the answer to all their problems was to run off into the wilderness and never look back.

"They must love you a lot, to plan a big wedding for you - and build you a house! My father expected my match to do that with his own two hands."

"Nah...they mostly just like being a spectacle in town, and a big wedding's the best way to ensure that everyone's talking about you. As for the house, I'd rather build it myself, honestly. I feel like a child with them paving the way for me like this."

"I'll bet Salvia's bragging to everyone who'll listen about her fairy-tale wedding and big stone house - at eighteen!"

Mason shrugged, looking stormy. "She keeps asking me when we can have our first baby boy. A baby? I'm not ready for a baby. I could go another decade before I would even think about having kids. I'll be nineteen when we get married, for gods' sake."

"Nineteen?"

"I barely missed the cutoff for the last age group, so I think I'm probably the oldest in ours."

A chill wind snuck down Lenei's collar, and she shuddered, enjoying Mason's immediate response of wrapping his arms around her and pulling her back up against his chest. She could get used to being held that way. She lay her head back against his shoulder, and he sighed happily.

"Mason?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you still intend to marry her?"

He shook his head, tousling her hair where his chin rested on it. "That big house will be ours - yours and mine - or they can give it to one of my sisters, for all I care. All I want is you."

The chuckling scream of an owl broke the silence of the night, foreboding as the lustrous moon lay silver-lined shadows over the pair. "What are we going to do, Mason?"

"What do you mean?"

"What are you we going to do? I mean, you're supposed to get married in a month, to Salvia, and I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life unhappy and alone. People are going to notice if either of those things don't happen."

"We could tell them that I prefer you to Salvia..." Mason said doubtfully, and Lenei didn't even bother to reply. That was clearly not an option. "Or we could run, like I said originally."

"There's nowhere to run," Lenei murmured.

"Then, I suppose, this is our only option."

"What is?"

"This. Meetings, like this."

"What, you mean you want to keep meeting me in secret like this?"

"Sure, why not?"

"Won't someone in Salvia's house notice that you sneak out every night?" Mason was living with Salvia's family until his own house was built in Micrague, but, to Salvia's dismay, he was not taking advantage of sleeping just down the hall from her.