#aeres

Haleth doesn't have time for reaching for sunlight. She needs to lead her folk to their new land.

'How many are still not in walking shape?' she asks Aeres one evening as she does every night, in their camp near their burned old homes where they gather resources and prepare for the journey.

'Only a few', Aeres says. She looks tired. 'Though not all can walk a full day at first.'

Haleth can't stop her eyes turning to Aeres' own legs. They will have to go slow, Haleth knows. Besides the freshly injured, there are those like Aeres, and the old and the young.

Haleth stifles a sigh of impatience. She wants to leave this land that is in her eyes all burned and blood-spattered and, no matter what the shining-eyed elf-lord says, not a free land anymore.

'You have been working hard to help everyone recover', Haleth says to Aeres.

'We have not many healers left', replies Aeres. 'I do what I can.'

Dorrin, the old healer who took Aeres in after her mother died and taught her, died in the battle between the rivers, trying to help the wounded. Haleth knows that Aeres misses him.

'We all do what we can', Haleth says, rarely one to weave fair words.

But as she leaves Aeres' tent that smells of pungent herbs and salves, Haleth squeezes her shoulder.

*

When they begin their journey, Haleth suddenly sees Aeres all the time. When their people lived in peace, a healer wasn't as important or visible a member of the community as she is now. And besides being a healer Aeres is a friend of Toreth, Haleth's sister-in-law. Aeres often helps Toreth with both her grief and her son, Haleth's nephew.

Haleth has never been as close with Toreth as most sisters-by-marriage tend to be. They both have quick tempers and have found it best to not spend enough time in close proximity for them to spark. After Haldar's death Toreth has been more quiet and drawn, mourning the loss of her husband so young.

Apparently Aeres likes children for she volunteers to help Toreth with Haldan, and soon she does it every day, becoming an everyday fixture at the campfire Haleth makes every evening for her sister-in-law and nephew. There Aeres sits, feeding Haldan and telling him bedtime stories, or boring things about plants make him sleepy when he is too energetic too late and Toreth only stares into the fire, silent and still.

In the evenings, Haleth watches Aeres with Haldan and feels weak in her chest.

Aeres has brown hair that glows in firelight, and dark brown eyes and long lashes, and she smiles at Haldan's babbling commentary and at Haleth's supposedly-witty asides.

Aeres is not strong or lively like some women Haleth has desired, but she is lovely and she is helping take care of Haleth's family and she never complains about having to walk all day every day even though every evening when they make camp she moves with the sort of deliberate carefulness that Haleth knows means pain.

Haleth knows it is hard for her, all the walking, and for many others, yet she must harden her heart and have her people walk a long way almost every day. While winter is not coming yet, it will eventually, and they need to be much farther on their journey by then.

One night Aeres barely moves, just sits by the fire pale, clutching her wool cloak around her while others still bustle around her making camp for the night.

Haleth sits by her side. 'Tomorrow we will rest. No marching', she says, feeding more wood into the fire she just built.

'Not on my account.' Aeres bends to knead her bad leg around the knee. 'I will be better in the morning, I promise.'

'I know', Haleth says. 'I know. But we all could do with a day of rest again. And those who don't need it, we'll hunt, get some meat for the next few nights.'

Aeres nods, the fall of her hair that has escaped its tie obscuring her face as she still rubs at her leg.

'Then I will take another look at Amhar's wounds', she says. 'The one on his arm is still not scarred right. I cannot understand how. It should have either healed by now or…'

'Or killed him', Haleth ends for her.

'Yes.' Aeres nods again. 'There was some strange poison on some of the orcs' spears, I believe, but not all. Not all wounds that our fighters sustained that day were like this. Some were more deadly, many less lingering.'

'I'm sure that you will figure out how to treat Amhar's arm', Haleth says, trying to be reassuring.

'I hope so. I am not sure what to do, to be honest; I'm not sure that what I've been doing is right. I always had Dorrin to ask for confirmation before but now…'

'… but now things are different and you have to make decisions on your own', Haleth says. She never knows how many days she should have her folk march before a day of rest, never knows if she is pushing them too hard or not enough.

'Of course you understand.' Aeres lifts her head. 'Yet you are making good decisions, Haleth. You are leading us well.'

Haleth is never shy but all she can say is, 'I hope so.'

She is confident in her bigger decisions but not always in the small, everyday ones.

She never expected to become the leader of her folk, but she suspects Haldar would not have been sure what to do in this situation either.

*

Aeres is of age with Toreth, a few years older than Haleth's own nineteen summers. Haleth remembers that two summers ago one of the men Aeres' age tried to court her but she refused all his gifts, to the laughter of the other young men. Haleth can't remember seeing Aeres ever grant her favour to any of them.

As they journey northwest across the great plain that the elves call Estolad, and tiredness settles on Aeres' face until it is an everyday sight, Haleth… she doesn't give Aeres those sorts of gifts, little trinkets and bunches of wildflowers tied with pretty ribbon and honey-cakes purchased from the village's best baker. There are no such gifts to give now. 

But when Toreth doesn't see – because Haleth wants to keep the peace in her family now, one more responsibility she doesn't feel all that equipped for – she gives Aeres the best cut of meat; and the warmer blanket, her own, when they settle down to sleep; and some evenings she forces some of her vigilance off her own shoulders and tells her guards to make watch arrangements instead, and fetches water for Aeres and Toreth and Haldan herself, the three people she thinks of as her family now.

Once or twice when she brings a brace of freshly caught rabbits to Aeres to skin, she sets a late-summer flowers on top of them. It is more gruesome than sweet, flowers on top of the dead empty-eyed animals but it makes Aeres smile.

And she accepts them, like she accepts all of Haleth's little not-gifts, with little demurring apart from the first time Haleth gave her something that is hers by right of her leadership.

'This is yours', Aeres said holding Haleth's thick blanket that she'd handed to her, her eyes shadowed and questioning under the sparse trees that serve as their roof for the night.

'Yours for tonight', Haleth answered that night, and the next, and from then on Aeres only smiled when Haleth gave it to her.

*

Aeres has the sometimes-brisk, sometimes-gentling voice of a healer, and Haleth is learning her every tone and nuance.

'Are you well', Aeres asks one night, dark eyes worried as she looks at and speaks to Haleth in a way that she does with her patients, yet not quite.

She has been rubbing salve on a little hurt of Haleth's, but Haleth doesn't feel like her patient.

Still she says, 'I am tired', because there is no one else to hear just then. She has strong limbs and good lungs but sometimes she too grows tired, especially as the days grow cooler and shorter and their stores of food meagre.

'Tomorrow the sun will shine', Aeres says, soft. 'I could tell by the sunset. It will be a warm day, a fair day.'

'Perhaps I will not be so tired tomorrow, then', Haleth says, as comforted as Aeres no doubt intended her to be.

They sleep close to each other that night, close enough to touch if just one of them reached out a hand.

*

'In the sun your hair is spun of gold', Aeres says to Haleth the next day as they are spending the midday break from walking together. Aeres sorts through herbs brought to her by  children eager to help, and Haleth sharpens her knife for her.

And finding poetry somewhere deep within herself where it never was before, Haleth replies, 'In the sun, your eyes are warmer than even the light.'

Aeres blushes and bows her head. She doesn't blush often, Haleth knows, and not just because it doesn't show easily on her light-brown skin.

She looks at Haleth from under her dark lashes. 'If you were a man I would say that you were courting me', she says. 'Giving me the best bits of meat, and making sure I am warm, and doing little errands to make my days easier though you do not need to.'

Haleth is quiet for a moment, her heart heavy in her chest and the knife cold in her hand, and then asks, 'Would you like it better if I were a man?'

Women courting women is rarer.

Aeres lifts her eyes and they are tired as always but warm, still. 'If you were a man I would tell you to stop.'

And she doesn't say anything more, just continues sorting herbs where she sits by Haleth's side.

That night Haleth spreads her bedroll right by Aeres' and as darkness falls around them, quiet and gentle and guarded by others, she holds Aeres close and kisses her the back of her neck where her hair is softest.

Aeres sighs quietly (contently, Haleth imagines; hopes) and turns in Haleth's arms, and tucks her head under her chin.

'Yours for tonight', Aeres whispers, her breath warm on Haleth's collarbones. 'And the next, and the next, and the next.'

*