#cuffed together

Laurance yelped, nearly dropping Matsu as the mer’s head lolled back, blood dripping down Laurance’s shoulder and the mer’s chin. Laurance hissed and kept walking, looking down at Matsu’s foot to see the blackened wound. It wasn’t looking any better, but it didn’t look any worse either. Maybe Matsu was going to start healing soon. Laurance hoped so. Having to haul his hallucinating friend across a desert was almost worse than anything Yor and Kulor had done to them. 

“It’ll be okay,” Laurance whispered. “We’re going to make it. We’re gonna be okay. We’re almost there. Just-”

He spotted the snake in his path before he got too close. He stopped in his tracks as it sunbathed, content and right in the middle of the road. There were cactuses on either side, which actually seemed to point that this was literally some kind of road, so Laurance couldn’t walk around. If Anisha were here, this would be easy. She wasn’t able to speak to animals, but she was wonderful with reptiles. He’d seen her convince hungry snakes to unwrap themselves from unwary prey. Which was himself half the time. 

Laurance sighed heavily. He took a few steps back, hoisting Matsu up higher on his hips and then ran and jumped over the snake. The snake didn’t seem to mind, however, Laurance slipped in the dust on the other side and crashed to the ground, his ankle burning with a sudden and fierce pain. Matsu rolled out next to him, only kept from flying into the cactuses by the chain between the two of them. 

Laurance laid on the ground for a long moment, gasping for air and filled with terror and anger. He would have to keep carrying Matsu across the desert with a messed up ankle in the hot sun for at least another day and a half if Matsu didn’t heal quickly, and he just didn’t have the strength to keep going. Laurance laid there, his ankle throbbing as he tried to force himself back up, but he couldn’t bring himself to. 

Maybe if he just got some water. That was an easier step in between him and his goal, but when he lifted his head to see where all the water skins were, he found that three of them had popped, draining their precious fluid everywhere when he was sulking and there was one left. 

Laurance put his head back down, gritting his teeth as he tried to keep his gasping breaths from turning into sobs. He wasn’t getting any water until they got somewhere because Matsu needed it more. Laurance was going to lose his mind. He curled up around his leg and continued to lay there as Matsu writhed on the ground helplessly, sick out of his mind. 

Laurance didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep until he came awake, shivering so hard his teeth were chattering. Matsu had fallen asleep next to him. Laurance looked over at Matsu’s foot and sighed a breath of relief. It was healing. There was a scabby wound there, but it didn’t seem to be actively trying to kill the mer. Laurance slowly sat up, rubbing his aching head and checking his own ankle. It had swollen a little, but the depression nap seemed to be a good thing. Laurance put a little weight on his foot, and while it hurt, it wasn’t too bad. 

Laurance turned and shook Matsu to see if he could get his friend to wake up. Matsu opened one eye, looking up at Laurance before grumbling and closing his eyes again. “S not even morning, Laur,” he sighed. “Let me sleep. We’ve already walked for half the night.”

“No, that was last night,” Laurance said with. “You know, last night when you got stung by a scorpion and have been out of your mind while I had to carry you.”

Matsu’s eyes snapped open and he sat up to look at his foot. 

“Oh, yeah. It’s healing though,” Matsu said cheerfully, looking at Laurance properly now. “Ugh, you look like hot garbage, though, what happened to you?”

“You did,” Laurance said, rolling his eyes as he slowly got up and went around picking up their things. “Thanks for biting me, by the way.”

“Oh, stars, I’m sorry, Laurance,” Matsu said, testing his own feet out to see if they would take his weight. 

“It’s alright. Not like you did it on purpose,” Laurance said, but even as he said that and rolled his shoulder forward to grab something, he felt a tight and painful urge to dull all of Matsu’s teeth. He picked up the next object with his other arm. 

“So, how far did we get?” Matsu asked. He felt bad that Laurance had to carry him, of course, but another part of him was ecstatic that they made progress without him having to be mentally present for it. Sure, he was in a lot of pain, but he honestly didn’t remember much of it. 

He frowned when Laurance gave him a sheepish look. “Um…. maybe a few hours? We started when the sun was rising but well, when the sky was almost overhead there was, ah, a snake, and I jumped over it and, ah, twisted my ankle.”

Matsu stared at him, and then the spilled items. “And we’ve just, what, been laying here for the rest of the time?”

Laurance nodded again, not quite meeting Matsu’s eye. “I had a really bad day.”

Matsu nodded, hiding his disappointment. “Okay, yeah, that’s fine. Things happen.”

“And when I fell it popped a lot of our water. We have one left.”

Matsu closed his eyes, taking a slow, soothing breath. “Yeah, okay, yeah.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Laurance gave him a pitiful look, one that said he knew it wasn’t okay. “You can have it.”

“Nah, we’ll share it.”

“You need it more.”

“You know what,” Matsu said quickly, “Let’s not talk about this right now, yeah? Let’s get walking.”

Laurance nodded vaguely, looking around to make sure he had everything before they turned and limped together down the road. 

…………………………………..

By the end, Matsu and Laurance had their arms around each other to help one another limp along. They were making a depressing amount of progress, but it was better than nothing. Matsu was mostly healed, but even though the wound was gone his ankle still hurt down to the bone. 

Still, he could walk pretty much fine. 

Laurance was not so lucky. They finally had to stop near morning when Laurance’s ankle finally just gave out on him. 

Laurance sat in the dust, slowly rotating his ankle to test how much movement he had. He sighed heavily, stretching out on the ground, shivering as his body started to cool off from the effort of traveling through the night. 

Matsu sat down next to him and sighed softly. "Do you think they'll catch up with us?"

“I don’t know,” Laurance said. “I don’t think so. But tomorrow should hopefully be our last day on the road.”

“It better be,” Matsu said, giving the water skin a disparaging look. 

Laurance nodded, leaning into Matsu as they sat on the edge of the road, the stars shining above them. Here, near the end of their journey, Laurance looked up at them. 

The skies were clear for miles around with no major light pollution to be seen on this entire planet. Well, maybe the mage cities on the other side of the globe, but that wasn’t their concern. 

Matsu leaned back, looking up at them as well. “I wonder what stories these people tell about the stars.”

Laurance nodded. “Anisha might know.”

Matsu snorted. “Yeah, she’d be talking our ears off about them.”

“And then Kira would tell her to shut up and go to sleep.”

“Yeah.”

Silence fell between them as Laurance wondered about their wives once again and where they were. There wasn’t much that could get between Anisha, Kira, and their husbands. The worry inside him curdled in his gut as he turned his attention to a certain set of stars to find some comfort. 

“There’s the Protector,” Laurance said gently, pointing out the set of stars. They were shaped in the symbol of the Telari, the first dragons. The protectors of the universe that were to work with the other base races to make progress and learn everything they could in this life. The stars were bright and a slightly blue hue, bluer than the others, making them seem brighter in comparison. They weren’t really stars, he supposed, but really any light in the sky that was far enough up could be considered a star. The Telari had used some sort of magic to set their symbol in the skies in every world they went to. People had tried to track down where these stars were placed because they seemed to be visible in the exact same way on each planet, but after you left the haze of the atmosphere, they disappeared. 

That probably made them not stars, then. It was likely an enchantment placed on the planet that affected the minds of all those who lived there. An enchantment that seemed to have outlasted their enchanters. 

Matsu stared at them, his bright eyes tracing their shape before he sighed and nudged Laurance. “We should sleep.”

“Fine,” Laurance said, curling up just as he had previous nights to let Matsu curl up on top of him. With that, the two were asleep.