#soveliss

There are patches of mud now, where the snow has melted. It paints the bottoms of his shoes brown. He will have to clean them before he enters the next tavern; no need to give the poor barkeep more work. No doubt they already mop up the mess all other patrons have made. He knows they do. He has spent many a night listening to their laments, after all.

He brushes his hand against the bark of a birch tree. He can feel life returning to it as the forest wakes; a squirrel stirs from its nest, not yet awake but near to it. A seed splits beneath his feet, releasing a brand new seedling into the dirt. Cold water drips down from the tree’s branches, spattering against his hand. The water warms against his skin.

“Aiden?” A voice calls to him, quiet in the morning calm.

He turns to his companion, a smile in his eyes. He pulls his hand from the tree, instead brushing his fingers over fluffy hair. His fingers run through the strands up to a horn, the smooth surface broken only by a jagged break; a battle long past flashes in his mind’s eyes, quickly driven away when a hand not his own cups his stubbled cheek.

“Aiden, you are staring again.” Mandus is so gentle with him, their thumb rubbing small circles into his skin.

“I cannot help it. You are beautiful.” Mandus’s cheeks pinken.

Unable to form the words to reciprocate, Mandus leans down to press his forehead against Aiden’s. Their natural warmth creates a cocoon around the two of them, safe from the still-cool breeze gliding through the trees. Barren branches clack above them, a faraway birdsong echoing to their ears.

Mandus pulls away first, bringing his free hand down to cup the stub of Aiden’s left arm. In an act that is becoming increasingly familiar, he bows low to press his lips to the sensitive scarred skin. Aiden’s eyes are wet when he glances up at him through his lashes. The human pulls his tiefling up just enough to brush their lips together.

“F dajy haf.” The words are warm in Aiden’s mouth, barely louder than a breath and yet he knows his life partner heard him.

They stand there, holding onto one another, simply breathing and being. The sun has fully crested the horizon by the time they separate. Their hands find each other as they turn to continue along their path. They will take more moments like this as they journey. They always do. But for now, they have somewhere to be.

His hands never shake. He wields his rapier with a practiced precision, and his pickpocketing skills require his fingers to be still. Since he was a child, he’s been trained in the art of being steady and elegant; carrying trays filled to the brim with nearly overflowing glasses, balancing bowls of fruit upon his head, sewing the most intricate details into fine cloth.

And yet, there they are. His hands, his, his very own; they are shaking and he cannot stop them. In fact, his whole body is shaking. He isn’t cold. Or maybe he is and he simply cannot feel it. He can’t feel a lot of things right now.

Air, he needs air. Normally his lungs work just fine, pulling in the air that he requires without him having to think about it. But now, he couldn’t breathe even if he wanted to. He sucks in small lungfuls that he immediately expels as if it were the most distasteful stew he had ever tasted.

Perhaps it is the same stew Veris cooked when he was younger. Adalia was still a child, barely twenty, when most of the castle had fallen ill. Nearly every cook was bedridden, most of the servants confined to their quarters. Even his parents had been unable to get up. This left Veris to take care of the two young drow. The captain of the guard had barely touched a stove before this, and the stew had been lukewarm with chunks of fat instead of meat and all the wrong vegetables. After that, Veris practiced cooking nearly every day. It proved how much the older drow cared for them.

Why had he thought of that? Oh yes, he can’t breathe. That really is a problem, because now his chest hurts and there are spots in his vision. Maybe he should breathe. He sucks in another sharp breath, releasing it with a wheeze.

His fingers are starting to tingle, like when he and Adalia used to tie their hair ties around their wrists until their hands went numb just so they could pretend they had electric fingers and chase each other around. There are no hair ties around his wrist though, so why are his fingers going zappy? Maybe he’s dying. It sure feels like it.

He isn’t dying though. He knows he’s not, because his heart is still beating. It’s still beating, but hers isn’t.

….Oh.

Her heart isn’t beating. So that means she’s dead. She can’t be dead though, she was just walking around and laughing. The weight of the crown may have made her colder, more formal, but she was still the spitfire sister he’d watched grow up. She simply couldn’t have died from something as mundane as poisoned fruit. Especially not after Mandus had warned them of the possibility.

His fingers are still pressed to her wrist. Are hers electric too, just like his? Perhaps after this is over they can chase each other around like they used to. They could be children again.

But no, they can’t do that. Because she’s dead. His little sister is dead, gone, never to wake up. She won’t ever laugh again, or smile at him, or yell at him for yet another prank. He won’t get to hear her scolding him, she won’t drag him to their next lesson, or crawl into his bed when he has a nightmare because she always knows. Never, ever again.

Someone is screaming. There’s something wet on his cheeks, and his eyes sting. He can feel a firm hand on his shoulder, shaking him. He just wants whoever it is to go away. He wants everything to go away, everything except Adalia. Except this isn’t Adalia, this deathly still woman who had to grow up far too quickly in far too cruel of a world. His throat hurts now, and he wants that to go away too.

He gets his wish in the form of a sudden blackness. He feels like he’s falling. Then the world bursts into white. Colours fly past him in streaks of stark vibrancy against an ever-changing backdrop. White, then black, then white and black again. He’s falling, falling, falling forever with nothing to stop him. Down, then up, then sideways. He hopes when he lands, all of this will end. He’s been falling long enough that he should get his wish.

His back hits something hard. He’s very much alive, staring up at a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. He can hear a breeze and birds chirping. He knows what this is, and he doesn’t want to do it again. Can’t keep watching his little sister die.

The sound of his companion getting up spurs him into movement. He struggles to his feet, listening as Mandus rants and raves about the fruit, how they’d said it would be poisoned. He just wants to lie back down and not get up. But he can’t, because then Adalia would die for sure. So instead he trudges over the dirt path towards a castle whose walls he’s begun to despise. A home he no longer wishes to return to.