And then she was doing it again. “Stop lecturing me,” he said with a snap. “You think I don’t know that? I’m the one who woke up with—” he cut himself off. After a grumble, he finally added, “I know it’s real,” But he didn’t want to be reminded.
When she asked the identity of his tormentors, he only swallowed, and when he looked at her it was with a wetness in his golden eyes that he couldn’t explain. Behind all the shit and feelings and hurt emotions was buried someone pleading for rescue themselves. Someone plunging into something they knew they shouldn’t want.
His hands went to the collar of his t-shirt as if about to rip it apart. They didn’t reveal what was hidden beneath, but Sierra knew what was imprinted across his chest.
He wanted to say it, but the words lodged somewhere behind the trollkors. I’m not a man. I’m not even human. I’m a freak. He felt it churn in his blood even then. His eyes saw the shade of another world with wherever he looked. His senses curdled with smells and sounds unwelcome. And those were the best. The worst was unthinkable. He looked at the water, wondering again if she was near. Did she sense him? Did she lust after blood?
He growled again. Helping others proved to himself that he was a good, even if he was a monster. Even if Sierra didn’t believe it.
Sierra growled. Stop lecturing him. She was angry. He didn't want her help. Why was she even here? Why had he followed her after she left. But there was a scent on Tristan that she wasn't completely sure of. Was it anger? or fear? He claimed he understood, but he pretended what happened there hadn't. She growled deeper.
She didn't know what he wanted. She couldn't help him. He didn't want her help. "What am I even doing here if you don't want my help. I'm sorry your nightmares are in your dreams, but mine. Mine are here in the real world. Dealing with people. Walking in towns and cities. Making friends. Which I thought you were. Obviously I was wrong." Her anger boiled her blood, her mind rolled with the wolves, it was good they were far away. Even Never hunkered down ready to pounce and stalk whatever ever prey was in the wind. But there was nothing just Sierra's anger.
Sierra smelled of a volcano about to erupt. He could practically feel the ash and smell the sulfur, but it was all the heat of a raging emotion. It churned inside his own mind, like kicking embers almost smothered to fresh life. He'd never been so furious in his life, not even with his Uncle. Yet as he watched Sierra leave, her departure did not sooth the frenzy of his blood.
It must not have been her that his anger was aimed.
Finally, he kicked at the pebbles and stomped in the opposite direction.
Sierra walked away. In the distance, she heard pebbles skid across the ground and footsteps leaving. Her heart sank. And that was it.
The wind picked up and scatter leaves and debris across the land. The scent of nothing lead her forward, but a piece of paper fluttering by caught Sierra's attention. It looked like one of the woman's sketches. Sierra looked back and didn't see Tristan in the distance. She sighed and chased after the paper. She should return it. But it was more an excuse to not leave than anything and Sierra knew that. Knew leaving like this was not right. But there was nothing between them. Not even friendship -- he hadn't even tried to convince her of that.
The paper fluttered into a bush and Sierra nabbed it from the branches before it could flutter away again.
Sierra straightened the rumbled paper and stared at the image it depicted. She'd seen the creature in the lines. She'd felt it's warmth, see the ancient one. How...
Sierra turned and ran back to the room she had shared with Tristan. His familiar scent carried on the wind as she drew closer. He was still far ahead. Sierra called out, maybe he'd stop, maybe he wouldn't. "Tristan..." She didn't wait for him to stop and turn around. "She saw the ancient one." She slowed to a walk and held the drawing in front of her so Tristan could see the lines as they flapped slightly in the wind.
After Sierra left, Tristan was alone with the pulse of his own heart. The throb slowly dwindled and the threat of loneliness loomed once more. People were unreliable, unpredictable, emotional bags of blood, he thought. For the wolfpack, order was straight forward. Need drove them for food, shelter, mating, and rest. Tristan had all of those things, so why did he claw, gnash and fight for more?
He sighed, regret casting its scent from himself. The scent would be unknown to a wolf. Thorn Paw wouldn’t understand. Tristan was human and he barely understood. Maybe his uncle, the reclusive troll, had the right idea.
He should go after Sierra. Maybe he’d not be able to convince her to stay, but at least to tell her he was sorry. Before he could make any such plan, her scent returned. Had his wishful thinking conjured her?
“Sierra?” he said to himself, but the words were stifled by the bristles of his beard. She held up a drawing, and he was frozen with shock. Not that the page showed what he and Sierra saw in the far woods, but that she was there.
He took her hand, the one that held the paper, and all but dismissed the image. He stared into her eyes, wishing that she would discard the contacts and display the gold he knew burned within. “I’m sorry,” was all he said. “I am a terrible partner. Terrible mate. Terrible everything. If you stay, I will probably hurt you again. I make no claim to be a good man. But if you stay, it would make me happy,” he wanted to kiss her, but unlike the last time he stood at these waters, he controlled himself.
Tristan took her hand. It was electric. His words caught in her throat. Partner. Mate. But he was saying he was terrible which was further than the truth. She didn't want to go. With her free hand she reached up to his cheek with a smile. "You aren't terrible. You are just human." She stood up on her tip toes and was going to kiss him, but she saw over his shoulder. "The doctor is leaving."
Sierra landed back on her feet, kiss not forgotten. "Does that mean your friend is okay?" Sierra took Tristan's hand, "We should check on her." She took a few step and whispered. "I'll stay with you and Bree."
Human.
The word soothed the lines from his eyes. Sierra leaned close enough that he could hear the sound of her heartbeat. Or maybe it was his own. A quiver, almost imperceptible to the eye, pulled him near, but the moment was shattered by revelation.
He looked over his shoulder, cursing the old man for interrupting a moment Tristan was unsure would ever return and for abandoning a woman clearly in need of medical attention.
Sierra must have sensed his relief when she declared her willingness to stay. He grasped her hand and pulled. “I don’t know. Let’s find out,” he told her and together went back in search of the girl.
He waved at the doctor, urging him to stop but the man looked confused and drove away.
"Nimeda?" he called as they returned to the room.
It wasn’t painful, like it had been in Eha’s cottage. It was just all-consuming, and when it finally ended, exhaustion unravelled to the furthest reaches of Thalia’s soul. The pencil tumbled from aching fingers, and for a moment she only reached to gather in her knees and felt the weighted burden of her endless existence. Had her surroundings held even the faintest promise of sanctuary she might have rested an eternity in that position, but there was nothing in here she wanted to remain close to. Her fingers wrapped the mark on her ankle and squeezed, even though it hurt. Then she pulled herself up.
She was slow, testing the limits of her balance, rubbing at cold limbs; caught between the instinct to flee and the fear of what she would discover behind the locked door.
The doctor (don’t think about him) had said the others were already gone, which neither concerned nor surprised her. Dreams intersected Thalia’s life like crossroads, and like Patricus they continued on other trajectories. She wasn’t an axis upon which anything turned, and she wasn’t special. She’d told the Pope that too, although she had come to regret how blunt she had been in her surprise at his motivation to find her. Thalia barely knew him, yet thoughts of him swarmed her with melancholy. Like losing something you’d never even had; something unquantifiable, but vitally important, like life-blood.
Seconds trickled by and she slowly pieced herself back together, stepping lightly around memories that might drag her back under, and glazing right past the scrawlings she’d made on the bathroom walls. Some old habits died hard, and by now she knew she was in way over her head, just as Patricus had warned. But she was so bone-weary of warnings. No one sane would encourage her to the ends she pursued, and she didn’t seek protection from the dangers, but she couldn’t stop either. She padded a circle across the cold tiles, and finally forced her leaking thoughts to consider practicalities. Her head throbbed. She needed to figure out exactly where she was. And she needed proper clothes, and shoes, and the wallet that was currently still in the adjacent room. The one she desperately didn’t want to have to go into.
So instead she squatted by the mirror she had unhooked from the wall, to at least assess the wound on her head, unprepared for how much blood rusted up the side of her face -- but moreso for the startling moment that the face staring wide-eyed back at her was not her own.
Everything prickled cold at that impossible certainty, riding waves of shivering fear through her very core, even as her own bloodied features realigned. A cruel whisper curled in its wake; that something in her had finally snapped. That maybe Aylin was right. “I’m not crazy,” she said. Tears swarmed her eyes hot, but she only pinched them away with her fingers. She couldn’t afford this. Delusions had never crept into her waking world before; not like this. She pushed away from the mirror, all thoughts of nursing her injury forgotten.
Panic threatened. The walls of a trap she wasn’t sure how to escape.
She pressed her hands against her chest like she might quiet the hammering beat within, or at least force herself to pull together into some semblance of control. Because where was there to run? She’d chosen to take the journey alone, to wander far from home and comfort and a sister who begged her to return. She’d chosen not to hide from strange gifts and stranger curses, drifting further and further from the sort of life that could ever be considered ordinary. “You’re stronger than this,” she said. You have to be. Yet she was desperate for a touchstone to reality -- to a reality she recognised anyway, and suddenly feared might be finally slipping right through her fingers. There were only the images circling all around, though; miserable proof of her own abnormality. And though she didn't want to, for it seemed the most nebulous of life-rafts, she forced herself to look.
The drawings were rushed, like denying the outlet had made their birth all the more frantic. Thalia's cautious scrutiny finally stopped on the man beneath the soaring ravens, framed by the island's Rock, one of his eyes white as bone. She recognised his face; from older sketches, but also from the bus station in Estonia. It had frightened her at the time, it still did, but if there were answers in dreams then maybe it was time to confront the common thread. She had promised Patricus she would be careful, but sometimes the only thing to do was shove your hand into the monster’s maw and hope it didn’t bite. And if it did? Well, she didn’t think about it. It was something to hold onto. And for now the resolution was enough.
Thalia fumbled the lock, fingers numb. One hand still curled into her chest like she was grasping at a knot keeping everything she was tied together. She was no longer thinking, just cresting oblivion in the way she did to keep afloat. She hadn't heard voices, or footsteps, and as she turned from pulling the bathroom door closed behind her, her eyes rounded wide as river-rocks to discover the two figures beyond, and the animals with them.
Relief flooded Tristan and Sierra smiled. The soothing scent of his relief flooded with her own. It was nice being wanted. Maybe not needed here, but wanted none-the-less. But there was panick and uncertainty wafting from the bathroom. Sierra hadn't been paying attention to the words she could almost hear, but maybe she should have. But she still looked disheveled -- still very hurt.
Sierra let go of Tristan's hand and took a few step towards her holding the drawing in her hand outstretched. "I think this is yours. Are you alright? Can we help you?" She glanced back at Tristan with a smile. "Maybe we can get you some food, some clean dry clothes?"
Nimeda was trapped in frenzy. Tristan stared with a wary sort of fascination, like if he were to make a motion too great, the delicate dance would disappear. She moved like a fish darting erratically in shark-filled waters. Then he found no need to pop this bubble. She found them on her own, and like the fish suddenly seen by the predator, she floated absolutely motionless. Without reaction.
He stretched forth a hand offering sanctuary and peaceful reunion. Tristan was a man of imposing size and uncouth appearance. Despite the golden eyes and the guttural voice, he could be quite gentle, and he hoped she sensed a friendly spirit. She clearly didn’t recognize him. The possibility that she did and reacted with such fear was not something he wanted to imagine.
“Nimeda, you asked me to come here. I came as you asked,” he eased forward a step, then another. “I found you unconscious by the lake. We called the doctor. What happened? Did someone hurt you?”
As he came closer, he naturally absorbed the carnage strewn about the bathroom. He didn’t understand, but if anyone in the world was accepting of peculiarity – of difference – it was him.
“I’m Tristan, remember? Vánagandr?”
With a nod, he added, “and she is Sierra.”