#tulkar

Fluff - 11. “I’m so proud of you.”

"Well?" Yelkha asks after the second day.

She's not nervous, not at this point, not now that Urtha has warned Bryn, and wrestled her, and grinned at her after. Or at least she's not nervous about Urtha's opinion of Bryn. But this is the first time they've been alone since they met up, Bryn off fetching water while the two of them get wood, and if there's anything Urtha might think it was better to say alone… now's the time to say it.

With her arms full of wood, Urtha can't thump her like she normally does, but she elbows Yelkha hard in the shoulder and grins down at her when Yelkha looks up. "Your own shaman! You did good, little Bull Mother."

"Bryn's great," Yelkha agrees, grinning back up at her. But then she hesitates, the true worry that's been preying on her continuing to stir. "No children with her, though, unless she finds some magic like her mothers did. And I'm not taking a man to bed for them while I'm with her," she adds fiercely, because she's determined on that point.

Urtha comes to a stop, and when Yelkha stops and turns towards her, shifts her load enough to lean in and elbow Yelkha again. This time she leaves her elbow resting there on Yelkha's shoulder and leans forward, bending down so that her long dark grey-streaked-hair falls around her face and brushes against Yelkha's cheek.

"Hey. Bull Mother, listen," she says, low and rumbling and serious, her eyes fixed on Yelkha's. "What Luthic's shamans told us? That was bullshit. Worse. At least you can light fires with what aurochs shit out. Agshru's why I left, but those priestesses are why I didn't come back. Real glad you figured it out in time to make good."

Yelkha sighs, feeling a weight lift off her chest. Then she nods at Urtha, shrugs her elbow off, and ducks out from under her, starting back towards the fireplace again. "I did make good, hey?"

"You did. I always knew you could, Bull Mother. And I'm real proud of you for it."

Her stride stutters at that, at the grin she catches a glimpse of on Urtha's tooth-scarred face when she glances back at it. Yelkha feels her cheeks heating, but she grins, too. She didn't need to know that. But it feels good to hear, all the same.

***

Fluff - 31. “I’m never going to leave you. I promise.”

Almost as soon as the sun has set, the desert grows cold. Saffron Kite is used to this, has been used to this for a very long time. That doesn't mean she likes it. Especially when she's out in it alone.

She'd thought about starting a fire, but then she'd thought about someone coming, strangers or bandits or the giant scorpions that roam the sand, and she hadn't been able to bring herself to do it. Not alone. Maybe once Faush comes. Faush is going to come, they said so. They just have to finish their business in town and then they'll be along.

Except that it's dark, and late, and getting later, and they're still not back. What if something happened to them? What if they were attacked, or hurt, or put in jail again? Or what if- they want a new pack, lots of people. What if they found people they like better than Kite? People they're going to stay with? What if they leave Kite alone out here and never come back?

Kite rises from where she'd been huddled under their blanket, peering out of their tent. She throws the blanket off and begins to pace, nervous energy running through her, making her lash her tail and flex her claws. She wants a tree to scratch against, or a wooden wall, or even a stone, something she can dig into like she can't with sand. She know Faush won't leave her like that, when she thinks about it rationally, but she's cold and she's alone and it's so hard to think with the jitters running through her until all she wants to do is dig her claws into something and-

She sniffs the air and catches a whiff of gnoll-smell, friend-smell. Tailtip twitching with delight, she turns and bounds over the dunes. There's Faush, trudging over the sand towards her, a bag slung over their shoulder that should have their new equipment inside. Kite flings herself at the gnoll with enough force to nearly topple them, purring as loud as her voicebox will allow. Faush yelps, then steadies themself and hugs back, laughing.

"Did you miss me?"

"I did. I got wound up," Kite confesses, shamefaced. "I started thinking maybe something had happened in town, or you were hurt somewhere, or- or you found people you liked better, and you were going to leave with them, without me, and I know you wouldn't, but- you know how I get when I get wound up."

"I know." Faush is patting her on the back, long gentle slow strokes down her spine, in line with the direction of her fur. The shivering anxiety drains out of Kite bit by bit at their touch. "I'd never leave you like that. I promise."

"I know," Kite echoes, rubbing the side of her face against Faush's shoulder, reinforcing her scent-marks from the night before. "Thank you for saying it anyway."

"Any time," Faush promises her.

They let Kite rub her face all over them, and then they push her gently away, and take her hand, and walk hand-in-hand with her back to the camp to light a fire.

***

Fluff - 50. “Stay.”

Yelkha awakens to the sound of rain on the roof. They're on the top floor of the inn, shoved into a tiny room just below the eaves, not by any unkindness on the part of the proprietor but because the inn is full to bursting. She and Bryn had been two of the last to straggle in last night out of the wet, and this is the only inn anywhere along this stretch of road. She's grateful that they had a room at all.

More grateful still that they had a run-in shed--the innkeeper had apologized for not having a stall free for Gurgiu, but he's never been fond of stalls, so it's just as well to have him out in the pasture instead of trapped inside where he might kick his way out. The shed will keep him out of the worst of the weather. And if he wants to frolic in the mud, as he sometimes does, that's a problem for tomorrow. The rain is due to last all through the day.

Somewhere far below Yelkha can hear the intermittent sounds of the staff and other visitors waking up and beginning to fill the taproom. Up here it's almost too far to smell breakfast cooking, but she catches a snatch of bacon and rolls, reluctantly, out of Bryn's arms. She'll collect up food from downstairs and bring it up for Bryn to eat in bed. Even Yelkha doesn't have the heart to bully her out of the sheets in this weather.

Before she can leave the bed entirely, though, Bryn grabs at her, hand settling on her hip, and whines a protest. "Nnnnno. It's too early to get up. Stay."

Yelkha chuckles at her and reaches down to pat her hand. "I'm just getting breakfast. You don't have to get up."

"Stay," Bryn says again, stubbornly, her grip tightening. She tries to pull Yelkha back into bed, but has absolutely no leverage at this angle, so it's just an impatient tug against Yelkha's hip that almost makes her fingers slip off. "It's too early for breakfast."

"Too early for breakfast?"

"If you have to get up for it."

Yelkha doesn't think there is such a thing, but Bryn is peering just far enough out of the nest of blankets for one yellow eye to gleam in the dark, and her pouting mouth to be visible. Looking at her pursed lips makes Yelkha's resolve slip as she imagines what else she might do with themm if Yelkha stays. Her stomach isn't growling, not yet, but perhaps….

"How about I stay a little while longer, then go down and get breakfast once you're more woken up?" Yelkha is already sliding back into the bed and under the covers, reaching out to wrap an arm around Bryn and tug her close.

"Good," Bryn says, sleepily, moving to nestle her head into Yelkha's shoulder.

Yelkha intercepts her, catching those lips with her own and pulling her into a kiss. Bryn makes a startled noise, but leans enthusiastically into it as soon as she's realized what's happening. Yelkha breaks away long enough to grin at her. "I only said I was going to stay, hey? I didn't say I was going to let you go back to sleep."

***

Angst - 15. “What gives you the right to just waltz back into my life after all the pain you’ve caused."

"What gives you the right?" Itherai demands, glaring up at the bugbear towering over her.

There's a broad grin on that shaggy, idiot face, spotted arm reaching down to offer Itherai a hand up. She ignores it, pushing herself slowly and laboriously off the ground, almost falling when she puts weight on her left knee and pain pierces through it. Gritting her teeth, she powers through and rises, swaying, to her feet. A touch against the silver star at her throat sends a belated pulse of power through her, soothing away the worst of the hurt, though there's not enough moonlight left gathered in it to restore her as fully as she needs. At least it's strength enough to glare up at Kolya again without toppling.

Seeing her touch the star, Kolya thumps her hand against her own chest, where the golden star that's twin to Itherai's own still hangs. "You are finally doing as the gods wish, and not what you wish, and so the gods wished me to save you. That makes me right."

"Do you not even understand the words I'm saying? After all the trouble you've caused, after everything you've done, what gives you the right to come back here? You ignited this spark, you reinvigorated the rebellion, you gave them a cause and a name and a champion to unite around, and then you just- just left! Do you know how much pain you've created? How much turmoil? How many have died, because you could neither let the ashes settle nor stay to support what you roused?"

"But I am back now," Kolya says. She doesn't even have the grace to sound wounded; she just grins even more broadly at Itherai, showing all those sharp shining teeth, like that should make up for everything. "We will work together, and my band will help, and the priests will find out what the gods really think of them."

Oh, no. She has more people with her. Just as undisciplined and stupid, Itherai is uncertain, and just as disasterous to the delicate work of shifting society without throwing it further into disarray. Itherai shakes her head and turns on her heel, ignoring how it makes her head spin. Kolya's fingers brush against her shoulder, but don't grip to catch her as she starts to walk away.

"No," she says coldly, not looking back. "You threw away that chance when you left the first time. I will not be working with you."

***

Angst - 29. “You deserve better.” (I, um, forgot that this one was supposed to be angst >>)

The forge is small, and dark, and dusty, and half the tools are broken. Finding it had taken far too long, even with directions, because Ryxtlin hadn't expected it to be tucked so far into the back of an alley in the artisan district, despite what Scrape had said. She stomps inside when she finds it at last, guided by the sound of hammering and a kenku's off-key whistle, and looks around with obstinate displeasure.

"Ugh," she says, and then, when that doesn't feel like expression enough, "Not worth two gold. Not worth two copper. Smith-friend deserves better."

Scrape, who had set her hammer aside when Ryxtlin came banging in, shrugs. "A forge is a forge. Scrape has tools and metal. There is an anvil, and light."

That sentence comes out all in one piece, the same voice all through, something mammalian--human, Ryxtlin thinks, or deep-voiced halfling--and far too condescending. Ryxtlin only bristles more. Especially when she looks at the anvil and sees that the horn is broken off on it. Scrape can fix it, probably. But she shouldn't have to.

"Who rented to Scrape?" she asks. "Ryxtlin is paying them visit."

***

General - 3. “I love you.” “You shouldn’t.” (and then I made this one angsty, so it balances out!)

There are words that Tulkar has been careful not to say. He's aware of the ephemeral nature of their relationship; he's aware, also, that it weighs on Sudryal on a way that it doesn't on him. Someday Tulkar will have to return to his forest and his duties there, and Sudryal will have to return to his own. For Tulkar, it will only be a pleasant interlude in what he very much hopes will be a long and fruitful life, but whether it's because he's an elf, or because of his hermitage's solitude, or because of his own inner nature, he can tell that it weighs on Sudryal far more.

So he tries not to make it worse by saying things that Sudryal will have to remember and regret. It's not easy, especially after a certain point. He's used to being open in his affections. But he keeps the words to himself and expresses his feelings through gesture, instead, which Sudryal seems to appreciate, even if he blushes and squirms and grumbles at him when Tulkar pulls him into a hug or leans down to kiss his forehead or his cheek.

But he forgets himself now and then in the morning, or more often if Sudryal stirs in the middle of the night, when he's still a bit sleep-blurred. Fortunately, he forgets himself in his native language. Sudryal, it seems, doesn't know Orcish. There's no reason why he should. And so if Tulkar murmurs to him, "Shhh, I love you, go back to sleep," it's just noise to him, a comforting sound to go with Tulkar's arm around his chest and a kiss against the tip of his ear or the back of his head. He still stiffens or squirms, because that's what Sudryal does, but it's simply grumpiness and not a more heartfelt complaint.

If Grai is awake, sometimes she'll looks over in recognition, but Tulkar never thinks anything of it. She won't give him away. He doesn't think about Gul, who is never awake for those quiet interludes, or that Tulkar talks to them now and then about things he wouldn't mention to anyone else. Not until the long, restless night when Sudryal wakes screaming into Tulkar's hand and tries to pull out of his arms and Tulkar, unwilling to let go, murmurs calming nonsense into his ear. "No, stay, go back to sleep, I love you and I'll keep you safe…."

Sudryal goes stiff in a way entirely different from the rigidness of embarrassment. He stops fighting, but doesn't relax into Tulkar's grip like usual. "You shouldn't," he mutters, so quietly that Tulkar might think that he wasn't supposed to hear, except that it was in Common, not Elvish.

Tulkar goes still too, holding him, though he doesn't risk letting go. He opens his mouth, then closes it again, churning through all the possible answers. Sudryal likely didn't mean that to sting like rejection, but it does, hurting the way the elf's self-loathing so often does whether he means it to or not. Tulkar wants to argue with that self-loathing, make the case, as always, for why Sudryal deserves his affection and he deserves to be allowed to give it. But he can never win that argument against the implacable black creep of self-hatred flowing through Sudryal, and he's even less likely to do so now, in the dark of night, with Sudryal still shaking from the memory of his dreams.

"Maybe," Tulkar says instead, as much as he hates making even that concession. "But I do, and you can't stop me."

When he tugs Sudryal a little closer, nestling him close to his chest, Sudryal lets him do it. He relaxes only slowly, but eventually the iron goes out of his spine and the tension out of his muscles, and he settles, however annoyed, back into Tulkar's embrace.

***

General - 7. “Is that blood?” “Yes but that doesn’t matter right now, what does matter is-” “You are literally bleeding.”

Isgrac stumbles forward towards the body of the one bandit who hadn't run. She feels absurdly tired for the amount of magic she'd used; she's practiced Mind Spike with Filgrun before, so she knows she has the spellpower for it, but she's weak and shaky nonetheless, an odd chill spreading upward from her fingertips and toes. The woman is dead, now, but her face swims in front of Isgrac's eyes still, white with terror, blood streaming from her nose and trickling from her ears.

Her chin and cheek are streaked with it when Isgrac reaches her body, already darkening as it dries. The flow has slowed to a bare dribble, if that. Right. Once the heart stops beating, blood stops spurting from wounds, it just drains slowly. Isgrac has read about that.

The blood had gotten to her collar before it slowed, though, and there's more blood on her shirt around the arrow-wound where Kanti had gotten her in the chest. Isgrac thinks that might have been the killing blow; it's around where the heart would be for a hobgoblin, and humans aren't built that differently. But she's not sure if it was. Maybe her spell was, instead. In the chaos of the battle, it's hard to be certain of anything. She's only grateful that the rest broke and ran when this one fell.

Doing her best not to touch the bloodied cloth, Isgrac fumbles for the pouches at the woman's belt. She'd seen one that looked like a scroll case. When she opens it up, it's not a magic scroll rolled up inside, but it's something almost as useful. Her hands are strangely shaky as she spreads out the map.

"Is that blood?" Kanti says from behind her, sounding alarmed. Maybe she's in shock. It was the first time Isgrac has killed someone, it's probably Kanti's first time, too, unless something happened at the circle that she hasn't told Isgrac about.

"Um, yes?" Isgrac says, not sure if she should be gentle with her or not. Probably she should. It's Kanti, after all. She tries to stand up with her prize and stumbles as she rises, but Kanti catches her arm from behind and hauls her the rest of the way up. Swaying a little, with her head spinning for some reason, Isgrac turns to show her the map. "That's not important right now. Look what I found, now we can-"

"Isgrac, you're bleeding," Kanti interrupts her. She puts a hand against Isgrac's chest and there's a sudden cool rush much more welcome than the numbing cold in her limbs, a feeling like an autumn breeze through the mountains. Isgrac can almost smell the pines. The world stops spinning quite so badly, and the chill in her limbs fades, replaced by the warmth of Kanti so close.

Then the faint sensation of nausea that Isgrac had been ignoring rolls through with sudden, surprising force. She shoves the map roughly into Kanti's hands and doubles over, emptying the morning's ration onto the dust of the road. Out of the corner of her eye she catches sight of the bandit woman's wide, staring empty eyes, and white face streaked with blood, and a second wrenching wave passes through her as she vomits up more bile. She closes her eyes and takes a few deep breaths, then rises again, shaky but less so.

"We can, um. Find the main road again. With the map," she proposes weakly, not quite looking at Kanti.

"Yeah," Kanti says, sounding a bit faint. She puts an arm around Isgrac's shoulders. "Let's sit down somewhere for a while first though. Off the road."

Isgrac

3. is your character more articulate in their thoughts than their words? if yes, do they do anything about that? do they care?

Oh, ABSOLUTELY, Isgrac is way more articulate in her thoughts. Although she's not actually an in-words thinker--her thought processes are more like a cloud diagram, "tagging" various information in a more visual form, so part of her problems with speaking coherently under stress is basically that she's converting visual to verbal. That said, one of the two circumstances in which she speaks particularly articulately is when she's allowed some time beforehand to prepare her remarks in her head, which is why I'd say her thoughts are more articulate. (The other circumstance, of course, is when she's allowed to infodump while not under pressure and is just Havin' Fun.)

7. how would they react to eating something that was spicier than they expected it to be?

First an immediate physical reaction--coughing, probably, and grabbing for a drink--and then, embarrassed by that reaction, some mumbling about how she hadn't expected that! I'll note that Isgrac's spice tolerance is actually fairly high, but it's higher with allyl isothiocyanate (the wasabi/horseradish chemical) than capsaicin (the pepper chemical). She likes horseradish in particular a LOT.

19. do they see patterns in the world around them? do they point them out to people?

I mean, the world's full of patterns already, isn't it? When she notices them, she does point them out if she thinks people will be interested! (Mostly Kanti, whom she knows will.) But they're everywhere if you know how to look, and she's sure she misses a lot because she doesn't know how to say those.

22. when they speak, do they have a default tone of voice? if yes, do they try to change it? why?

Isgrac's default tone of voice is slightly questioning, which comes off uncertain even when she isn't, but she's decent at putting what Ma'am calls "some spine into it" when she's reminded to do so. She can also put on a very neutral effect when under stress or when neither her default nor that trained reaction are appropriate (this is. not always voluntary, though).

***

Hallifax

11. how do they feel about casual endearments? (babe, etc)

So long as they're not diminuitives, they're fine. Anything that suggests she's small or weak (baby, little one, etc.), or is cutesy (like "Hallie," which her rival used to call her specifically to annoy her) is a no-go. Something like "darling" or "dear," though, would probably make her all squishy inside, since she's got that secret soft streak.

12. what color would they paint their room? would there be a design on the ceiling?

She'd probably paint it in neutral colors, tbh. Hallifax doesn't tend to spend a lot of time indoors that isn't for a practical purpose, so she doesn't care much about what it looks like. If she was sharing the room permanently with someone, she'd bow to their wishes, because she just doesn't care, but otherwise the walls are cream and the ceiling is untouched.

23. do they wrap their arms around their stomach when it hurts?

She tries very hard not to, but sometimes when it's bad enough.... She thinks of it as displaying weakness, though, so if she realizes she is she'll make herself stop immediately.

33. where are they in a group hug? (dead center, outside, etc)

Usually on the inside just by dint of size, but if they're close enough to something she can climb up on, like some crates or a railing or whatever, she'll squirm to the outside and be outside AND on top.

***

Yelkha

13. what helps them fall asleep when they’re having trouble doing so?

Before Bryn, usually bedding down with Gurgiu! Once Bryn comes into the picture, usually curling up with her does it, especially if she can bury her nose in Bryn's neck. Yelkha doesn't struggle a lot with insomnia, though.

20. do they like to keep plants/growing things in their space?

Not before Bryn, because it just never occurred to her, given her old lifestyle. After Bryn shows up, though, whenever they're parted for a while Yelkha ends up collecting flowering plants because they're a nice reminder (whether those plants survive once she has her flowering druid back honestly depends on whether Bryn takes care of them, though, Yelkha was just using them as a substitute).

35. do they sing with their head voice or their chest voice?

Given Bea's research on the subject and that most of her singing is battle dirges, I'm going to say chest voice!

40. if their mattress became uncomfortable as time passed, would they notice it? would they do anything about it?

No and no! Yelkha doesn't suffer from insomnia much (as mentioned above) in large part because she can sleep just about any time and any where, and that includes on any surface. Comfort is nice, but not enough of a consideration to consciously notice subtle mattress degradation for SURE.

***

Kolya

4. would your character sing along to a vaguely familiar song, even if they messed up the lyrics as they went?

I am somewhat torn on this! She would not want to be EMBARRASSED about messing up the lyrics, but on the other hand, she does usually do what she does with confidence even if it's wrong. So I'd say that she would do it so long as she's not in front of someone she thinks would criticize her about it?

8. are their hands steady?

As a rock! Except they move more than a rock. But yes--if they are shaking, you know it's a BIG fucking deal, because t hey almost never do.

22. when they speak, do they have a default tone of voice? if yes, do they try to change it? why?

Kolya is a little too used to the arena, and she automatically projects, so 'loud and confident', if that's a tone. She will try to gentle it when she realizes she's echoing or if she notices it making smaller/weaker people around her nervous, though!

36. (if they have hair that needs to be brushed) how often do they do so? do they do it gently?

Unless an emergency wake-up or other circumstances make it impossible, Kolya brushes her hair every morning, and she tries to do it every evening before bed if circumstances allow, too. She's very gentle with it--gotta keep it silky!--and it probably takes up most of her hour-long selfcare routine at both ends of the day. (Yes, she spends two hours a day minimum on selfcare. And doesn't she deserve it? She IS 'the Splendid,' after all.)

***

Felicity

6. do they usually sleep in a certain pose? does it change?

She has a couple poses she rotates through! In optimum conditions, in a bed with pillows, she sleeps either on her side with her knees pulled up and a pillow between them, or on her back with a pillow under her knees, depending on exactly how she hurts that evening. In less-optimum conditions, it's whatever position hurts the least when she's falling asleep (that she doesn't think is going to hurt MORE in the morning), though she also has a bad habit of overindulging in some substance or another (usually alcohol or weed, though it depends on the threat level of where the party is sleeping) to help her fall asleep in bad conditions in the first place, and then passing out in a position she will REALLY not like the next day.

15. what’s a sound they can’t stand?

Creaking, groaning metal, for PTSD reasons, and higher-pitched grinding just for wince-y ones.

16. would they draw patterns in frosted windows/fogged up mirrors? what would they draw?

If she's bored, yes! Felicity doesn't hold still well, so if she's forced to do so, she does lots of fidgets, and in the right situation that could definitely be one of them. She'd just doodle little balloon-animal shapes, probably.

41. what’s the silliest thing they’ve used magic to do? if they don’t have magic, what’s something silly they’d use it for if they did?

Hmmm. She's been messing around with magic so much that I'm sure she's done lots of silly stuff I can't think of, and she doesn't think of anything she's done in-game as silly even if it might appear that way to an observer. (She doesn't think of much of it as "silly" in general, honestly.) I'd say... probably pranking her brothers with harmless area-of-effect stuff like Entangle and Fog Cloud?

***

Tulkar

1. what kind of clothing does your character like to wear? do they have a style? anything they avoid wearing?

When he's not armored up like a good paladin... Tulkar likes soft, fluffy, fur-lined clothing, big puffy jackets over and loose baggy pants and shirts, with lots of layers. Part of that's just what the common and practical wear of his homeland is, but he does genuinely enjoy the styles. Porcupine-quill decoration is common at home, and he does like that, but having come down out of the mountains, he's discovered and very much likes beading as well.

5. if they wear any, how does your character go about applying makeup? (methodically, nervously, messily, etc)

Calmly and confidently--he's been doing his particular setup for a while, and he's got it down to a routine. No mirror needed, just muscle memory. It's not casual, though, because there's spiritual and cultural significance to some of it, so he always treats it with appropriate solemnity.

18. would they sing a lullaby, if the opportunity arose?

Oh, definitely! He's taken care of kids before, as a teen (it's kind of a general duty for adolescents in the clan) and has no shame about singing to them, though he'd probably ask adults if they wanted to hear one before doing the same.

31. did they climb all over/onto things as a kid?

(Once the innkeeper had been convinced that things shouldn't be in some other order entirely, because, like most humans Tulkar had met, he didn't have any clue how to read anyone's presentation not from his own culture. Tulkar had gotten used to giving southerners some grace on that. He still didn't know how to read theirs, after all, and he'd learned fast that for some reason they considered it rude to ask about it.)

But for all Sudryal's arguments, the innkeeper had stuck fast on what seemed to be, for him, an unbreakable custom: if they weren't married to each other, men and women couldn't sleep in the same room. So here they were. Tulkar didn't know what the problem was, really.

...Well, that wasn't true. He could guess what the problem was. Sudryal wasn't as subtle as he thought he was. But Tulkar didn't know what to do about it, if Sudryal wasn't willing to admit anything, except carry on as if they weren't both glancing at each other when they thought the other wasn't looking.

"Bet you wish you'd let them go ahead and think Grai and I were together, right?" he teased gently, smiling over his shoulder at Sudryal.

"Don't be ridiculous," Sudryal snapped, his cheeks yellowing, and then turned sharply away. In a lower mutter as he started unstrapping his bedroll, he added, "The two of you in one bed would've broken it, and then we'd have had to pay damages on top of the regular price."

"I'd hope they aren't that flimsy," Tulkar said, glancing at the bed.

It was a bit wider than some of the tinier cots he'd slept in in the past, at least--not quite a double bed, certainly not large enough to fit an orc couple, but of a size that two humans would fit fine without either falling off the edge. He was pretty hefty, but Sudryal was pretty small, so he thought it would balance out.

"I can sleep on the floor," Sudryal said, and started to unroll his bedding. "It'll save us both having to try to squeeze into that bed."

"What? You don't need to do that," Tulkar protested. He wasn't surprised by the stab of disappointment that lanced through him, but he tried to keep it out of his voice. "We paid for a room for a reason. You were complaining that the ground was wearing on your back. If someone needs to sleep on the floor, I should."

"I was complaining because I'm a cranky old man," Sudryal said. "And because everyone's tired, and needs rest. Josephine's been drooping like an overwatered flower the past few days. But you don't need to sleep on the floor. I can tell you're sore. I've been sleeping on hard surfaces for two hundred years or so, another night's not going to kill me."

"Everyone's tired and sore," Tulkar said. "And that means everyone needs rest. You included. Try the bed, and if it doesn't work out, we can rearrange ourselves later on. But I'd feel terrible if you were on the floor the whole night."

Sudryal hesitated, and Tulkar wondered if they were going to be arguing for the next half hour about this. Then he sighed, shoulders slumping. "Fine," he muttered. "But I don't cuddle."

"I didn't expect you to," Tulkar said, truthfully, and since both of them were busy with their own unpacking at the moment, he didn't have to worry about Sudryal seeing the expression on his face. Sudryal could use some cuddling, and Tulkar would've been happy to provide it.

Sudryal could use a lot of things he wasn't getting, in Tulkar's opinion. But he didn't seem interested in letting anyone provide them.

At least it wasn't personal, Tulkar comforted himself.

Getting ready for bed was a quick affair--both of them spent a bit of time tending to their armor, and then to their personal hygiene, for which the inn considerately provided a pitcher of water and a large bowl. Tulkar left that to Sudryal, and went out to the inn behind the stables to use the water pump there, instead, because his face-paint would have taken most of the pitcher to remove. By the time he'd got back, Sudryal had changed entirely into nightclothes, which was about what Sudryal had expected, and was sitting looking over his bow with his back pointedly to the rest of the room. Tulkar took the opportunity to change himself.

He climbed into bed first, because he was fairly certain that if he tried to put himself between Sudryal and the door, like his instincts told him to, Sudryal's own instincts would react like he was being trapped instead of protected. And if he realized what Tulkar was doing, his pride would erupt, instead. Laying deliberately on his back, he closed his eyes and started to wind his thoughts down.

It took a while for Sudryal to finish with his bow. Longer than it usually did, but Tulkar wasn't going to comment. Eventually, there was a rustle of blankets and a dip in the bed as Sudryal climbed in. Tulkar, scrunched up as far against the wall as he could, kept his eyes closed and his breathing steady and didn't move.

Sudryal's shoulder bumped his a couple of times as the elf arranged himself, but despite the amount of bedspace that Tulkar's breadth was taking up, he managed to keep a good inch or so of space between him. Tulkar could feel his presence, the slight warmth along his left side and the slight dip of the bed from his weight, but he resisted the urge to shift his arm out and close the distance. No cuddling.

He practiced his breathing exercises, instead, cycling through the slower and slower ones until he was so calm and detached that he was floating. It was an easy state to fall into sleep from, especially when he was already tired. Sudryal's breathing hadn't softened or slowed at all beside him by the time sleep carried him away.

It must have at some point, because Tulkar was woken by it speeding up, suddenly, going harsh and frantic at his side. Sudryal wasn't thrashing, exactly, but even without touching him Tulkar could feel by the reverberations in the bed that he was stiff-limbed and trembling. He looked over to see Sudryal's eyes closed, his face drawn, mouth clamped tight on any cry that would otherwise escape.

No cuddling, Sudryal had asked, and Tulkar wanted to respect that, but--he knew a nightmare when he saw it. And he couldn't not do anything about it. Rolling over onto his side, he threw an arm over Sudryal's taut shoulders, intending to shake him awake.

As soon as his arm landed, though, Sudryal curled over onto his side, clutching onto it, pulling himself into the crook of Tulkar's elbow. He was still asleep, as far as Tulkar could tell, but he nestled close, keeping Tulkar's wrist and forearm in a death-grip and pressing his face into it. He broke into ragged gasps, doubled over under Tulkar's arm like a man who had just outrun death and was overwhelmed by the sudden knowledge that he was going to live after all.

(Which was something Tulkar had seen, a time or two. The spirits of the forest might care for the tribes within, but that didn't mean they protected every individual from bears and cold and moose and river rapids, not if an orc was foolish.)

Tulkar tugged just a little, to pull Sudryal closer, the elf's back flush against his chest. He knew Sudryal had said he didn't want any cuddling, but that gasping was already leveling out, the tension in him easing, except for the death-grip he had on Tulkar's arm. Maybe his pride didn't want it, but his body did. Tulkar would apologize in the morning.

And if it made his heart beat a little faster to have Sudryal so close, if feeling Sudryal relax against him and settle down out of his nightmare made pride pulse in Tulkar's chest, well. He was supposed to be a protector and a caretaker. He could be a little proud. Even if he was also being a little selfish.

He faded off to sleep with Sudryal still holding his arm like a life-line, and woke in almost the exact same position. There were no windows in the room, but there was enough sunlight shining through cracks in the one outside wall that he could tell the sun had risen a fair distance. Normally he was awake by now. And normally Sudryal was awake before him, but his breathing was still in the slow steady rhythms of sleep.

Tulkar scooted backwards a little bit, giving Sudryal an inch or so of space, which was as much as both the small bed and the capture of his arm allowed. Then he propped himself up on his elbow and watched the elf sleep in the faint sunlight, studying the way all the stress and ire had vanished in the night. His face was almost soft, right now, his lips slack and slightly parted, his temple for once smooth, one thin cheek pillowed against the back of Tulkar's hand. Though his high, pointy cheekbone dug in just enough to remind Tulkar that he was still perfectly sharp.

Sudryal woke slowly, blinking sleep out of his eyes, and then went tense abruptly as he realized where he was and what he was doing. He let go of Tulkar's arm like it was on fire, scrambling up and out of the bed so fast that he tipped over the edge and hit the floor.

Leaning over the edge, Tulkar couldn't resist the urge to smile down at him. "Sleep well?"

"Fine," Sudryal said, blushing so hard that his yellow-green skin was inching towards orange, not quite meeting Tulkar's eyes. "I slept fine."

He was so clearly biting back an angry reaction from the fear of further embarrassment that Tulkar nearly choked holding in his laugh. "So did I," he said instead of laughing, still smiling down at Sudryal. "Let's hope that Grai and Josephine had as good a rest."

Sudryal made a sound like a goat being strangled and looked firmly away from Tulkar. "I'm sure they did," he said, through gritted teeth, and rose to begin rummaging through his pack.

"We'll ask at breakfast," Tulkar agreed, and then, knowing that he should probably give Sudryal some space, added, "I'll be a little longer, to get my paint on, so go ahead down without me."

"I'll do that," Sudryal said, pulling clothing out, and Tulkar got out of bed and politely turned to his own pack while Sudryal started undressing. Then, much more quietly, Sudryal added, "My back does feel a lot better than it would have if I'd slept on the floor."

---

The problem was, Sudryal was used to having safe passage as a healer. And, in the few cases where that had been the complication--desperate people, panicking too hard to consider making a non-violent request--he had instead managed safe passage as someone who could call wolves up from the underbrush.

But these human soldiers had decided not to respect his healer's status, the way every other one of the at least half-dozen petty armies involved in the conflict had. And calling for animal help had only made it worse, not better. Sudryal saw no choice but to send the wolves away before they could be slaughtered.

"Enough!" he called to them, pointing sternly at one that had a man's arm in her jaws. "Go back to your den and lick your wounds. I will be well," he added, in exasperation, when she released the soldier to growl out a response that came through, by the blessing of Fenmarel's magic, as a protest that she would not leave the Lone Wolf's servant to die.

A heavy hand seized his shoulder, jerking him back, and a blade pressed against his neck. "As long as you and your beasts don't make any sudden moves, leaf-ear," the soldier growled in his ear.

Sudryal couldn't help but roll his eyes. "They're going already," he said, because surely the soldier could see as well as he could that the wolves were disengaging and making for the underbrush. Some of them were limping, more bleeding, and he regretted having asked more of them than they'd been capable of. He wasn't used to gauging the strength of armed men, only of beasts, but that was no excuse. "But if you shoot after them, they'll be angered enough to return."

That was a lie, but it served its purpose. "Bows down!" the man holding him shouted. "We have the elf. Karin, help me bind him. The rest of you, bandage what you need to, and then we'll be on the way."

"I can help with the healing," Sudryal said, as his hands were yanked roughly behind his back. "I am a healer. As I've told you three times before."

"And leave your hands free so you can call up more magic?" The man punctuated his comment by cruelly tightening the loop of rope he'd wrapped around Sudryal's wrist. "You must think I'm a fool."

"I do think you're a fool. A fool who will let his subordinates suffer because he doesn't know how to admit a mistake."

The man growled and wrapped the rope in more loops up his forearms, pulling Sudryal's shoulders back far enough that it hurt. "I don't care what a spy thinks of me."

"A spy?" Sudryal asked. "And who do you think I'm spying for? The wolves? The trees?"

"The high dwarves, or the low dwarves, or the Duke of Brackenwood, or anyone else with forces to the north," the man growled. "Or to the south, if you decided to sneak through the forest with your beast friends to throw off suspicion. You think we wouldn't notice the questions you were asking around the encampments, while pretending to be a healer? We'll figure out who exactly it is you're working for, don't you doubt that."

"I wasn't pretending to be a healer, I am a healer," Sudryal said, aggrieved. "Do you think septic wounds mend and ill people stand back up through fakery? Even if I was a spy, it wouldn't do any good to pretend. All these people injured and sick and cut off from aid by your stupid, petty war are happy to tell what they know to the healer, once they're back on their feet."

"Clever," the man said. "A healer-spy. Whoever employs you is cunning, I'll give them that. Now move."

Holding Sudryal's bound wrists, he shoved Sudryal in front of him, making him stumble over the man's feet a few times before he found his rhythm. The rest of the soldiers seemed to have gathered themselves together, more or less, though Sudryal saw more than one leaning on the shoulders of their companions as they moved. It pained him on a professional level.

"You could at least let me heal her foot," he said, nodding to the worst-wounded. "She's likely to lose part of it, otherwise. I don't even need my hands for that, I just need to be a few feet closer."

"Karin, gag him," his captor snapped. "I don't want him casting anything on our people."

"She could lose some of that foot." Sudryal couldn't believe this man's idiocy. "I'm not planning to- mmph!"

The other soldier had shoved a wad of fabric into his mouth while he was speaking. It tasted foul, and the length she tied over it smelled even worse; he didn't want to know what kind of filth was on them. At least some blood and pus, which he regretted being able to identify, and human sweat, which was much more pungent than elvish, and he didn't want to think about the rest.

Bound, gagged, and disgusted, Sudryal put his head down and trudged along the road, trying not to trip too often over the human's great clunking feet. Once he got to talk to someone higher and wiser, everything should get sorted out.

***

Everything did not get sorted out. It was his own fault, Sudryal decided, for thinking that humans would have the good sense to put older and wiser people in higher positions. The man that his captor reported to was clearly younger than he was, though Sudryal was bad at gauging the ages of shorter-lived races, and he about burst with enthusiasm at the thought that his people had caught a spy.

"Do you know who he's working for yet?" the human pup asked, bounding eagerly up from his desk and circling around it to peer more closely at Sudryal. "Is it the Duke of Brackenwood? Or the high dwarves?"

"We haven't interrogated him yet, sir," his captor said, standing stiffly to attention. "He used magic of some kind to call wolves out of the bushes, and after we beat them back, he told us that he could do some of his magic with just his voice. I decided it was safer to gag him and bring him back here, so you could decide how we want to proceed."

The pup reached down and touched the tip of Sudryal's ear. Sudryal glared at him.

"Good choice, Valn. If he can cast spells just by speaking, I'll write to General Arish that we have a spy in custody, and need a wizard's assistance for the interrogation." He paused, though, and a conflicted look came across his face. "Of course, it would be better if we could at least tell her who he was a spy for, so she can decide how valuable... and it doesn't look like I'm just kicking the problem upstairs...."

"Or she could take it as a sign of prudence, sir. I have heard her say that she hates captains without it."

"Maybe, but she doesn't speak well of cowards, either." The pup chewed on his lip for a moment, then nodded decisively. "Just rough him up a bit, see if you can get an employer out of him. Then we can wait on General Arish's answer. She may want to us hand him to a more experienced interrogator if he's from one of the big players."

"Sir," Valn said, and Sudryal could feel his tension from how tightly he was gripping Sudryal's arm. "I'll see what we can get, but I can't promise-"

"Oh, no, I understand. Don't break him before we get instructions from the General. Just, you know, soften him up."  The pup waved a hand dismissively, gave Sudryal one last curious look, and then circled back around to his seat.

"Right. Come on, leaf-ear," Valn growled, and dragged Sudryal out of the command tent. "Karin, Dolm, with me."

Sudryal was dragged away to a storage tent. Someone had found a chair, sitting alone in the middle of a circle of hastily-rearranged supplies, and Valn shoved him down into it, with the woman who'd gagged him earlier quickly tying him to the back. He suspected that he could get himself out of that hasty binding if he really wanted to, but not while they were watching.

Karin pulled the gag out, and the musclebound man who must be Dolm stepped forward at Valn's gesture. All three of them stared down at Sudryal expectantly.

"Now's your chance to tell us who you're working for," Valm said, crossing his arms. "It's up to you whether we actually have to have a beating."

"I told you. I'm not a spy, I'm just a healer. I've been asking questions about everyone in this petty, stupid war, because if I can, I want to put a stop it."

Valn's brows knitted. "So you're a freelancer, then? Ready to sell your information to whoever you think has the best chance of winning?"

"No. I don't want anyone to win this, you idiot, I want you all to go home and stop causing trouble for innocent people and animals who just happen to live on your battleground."

"Trying to hide behind the healer thing again, are you?" Valn nodded at Dolm. "Go ahead."

Dolm pulled his fist back and swung. Sudryal's head snapped back as it connected; the chair rocked under him, and he could taste blood inside his mouth where his teeth had closed on his cheek. The whole side of his face ached, and it was definitely going to bruise.

"Fine," he said in exasperation, glaring at the soldiers. He wouldn't speak his god's name among non-elves, but he cared less about honesty than about tweaking them, since they had already proven themselves unwilling to listen to truth. "I do work for someone. I work for the wolves. The greatest of them. You saw them defend me, didn't you?"

"So that's how you're going to be," Valn said. Sudryal could see his patience fraying, and he nodded at Dolm again. "The captain said to soften him up."

This time, the force of the punch made the chair rock all the way over, and the musclebound man didn't bother to pick it up again. All the air went out of Sudryal's lungs as a booted foot slammed into his stomach.

"That's how hard you hit when you're trying?" he wheezed, once he'd sucked in enough air to speak with again. "You didn't even crack a rib. I've taken harder blows from a panicking fawn."

Dolm kicked him again, more viciously, and Karin stepped over the legs of the chair to join in. Sudryal braced himself.

They were easy to wind up with the simplest insults. It wasn't smart to goad them, Sudryal knew, but it was beyond him to stay silent while he was being pummeled, so he might as well leave a few bruises on their egos in return. With every gasped mockery, they hit harder, until Sudryal ran out of breath entirely and had to keep himself busy by cataloguing the injuries they were inflicting--he was healer enough to know it when his ribs cracked, and again when his cheekbone did, and to feel it when something ruptured in or around his stomach. At that point, he regretted the goading, but by then it was too late to take back.

The next blow cracked his head back again, this time against the back of the chair, and the world went fuzzy and dark for a second, which probably meant at least a minor concussion. Something had shifted alarmingly in his neck, too. His ears rang, but not enough to block out Valn's bellow of, "Enough!"

He tried to take a deep breath, felt blood in his throat, and snorted it out before trying again.

"We won't get anything useful out of him," Valn snapped. "And he needs to still be alive in the morning. He's beaten enough to show the captain we tried, so gag him again, and we'll let him stew overnight."

"You figured that out a little late," Sudryal told him. "By my best guess, I'm already-"

Karin, once again quick with the gag, cut him off before he could get out '-bleeding internally.' That was going to turn into a problem.

Instead of tipping the chair back up, the soldiers untied him from it, then bound his feet together with the rope and left him there on the ground. They stomped away into the night, their boots thudding heavily against the packed earth, and left Sudryal alone in the dark.

A bit of wriggling made it clear that he wasn't going to get out of his bindings any time soon. They were already cutting off the circulation in his arms, and any movement made it worse, so he fell still and, glumly, considered his situation. All he could do at this point was pray to Fenmarel Mestarine, and there was very little he could see his god doing to help. Especially since it was Sudryal's fault that he'd gotten himself so badly battered.

He lay there, feeling bruises blossom across his skin and blood pool in his abdomen, and apologized, silently, to his god for his failure. He hadn't even accomplished anything yet, and now the shrine would need another guardian hermit.

***

The world started to fuzz in and out, which could have been the crash from the adrenaline, or the internal bleeding, or even an effect of the concussion. Though probably not the last one. A mix of the first two, Sudryal decided. If he wasn't going into shock at this point, he'd eat his leathers.

When he first heard the scuffling at the back of the tent, he disregarded it as an animal, some rodent scavenger here to take advantage of the loose bags of grain. Then he heard a distinctly canine whine, followed by a frustrated huff, and the canvas rustled more loudly. Something large scrambled over the disordered supplies, and a cold, wet nose snuffled against his temple.

The wolf, for it had to be a wolf, whined again.

Someone responded to it, in a deep hushed voice and a language that sounded like gargling gravel. Sudryal tensed, because he might not know the words, but he recognized the cadence. Who in these godforsaken farmlands spoke Orcish?

There was more shuffling and scraping, as another large body climbed over to Sudryal, and then he felt a big hand settle on his shoulder. It moved up to his neck, and he realized that the stranger was taking his pulse. He held still long enough for them to get a good count, then twisted about to try and get a look at them.

In the dimness, lit only by a sliver of light coming through a crack in the tent-flap, he couldn't make out colors or fine details. But he could see a broad face, with dark hair pulled up away from it into a bun, and a tusked, underslung lower jaw.

"Shhhh," the orc hissed, ducking close. Sudryal made a muffled noise of irritation through the gag, just to emphasize how pointless that was, and the orc smiled sheepishly and nodded.

The wolf whined again, and Sudryal looked over. He recognized the mother of the pack, the one who had tried to refuse to leave him before. She'd found someone else who could speak with beasts, he assumed, unless the orc was so lacking in woodcraft as to respond to a purposeful wolf like one might a vocal dog. And he didn't get that sense from the orc.

The opposite, in fact. There was green in this orc's veins, the same as there was in his, Sudryal would swear to it.

Sliding both hands under Sudryal, the orc looked down at him in concern, mouthing what Sudryal took to be a question. He gave the orc a short nod. In theory, with whatever had gone wrong in his neck, he should be moved more carefully. But if he'd survived being tossed around with it, he could survive being lifted, too.

Gently, without any apparent effort, the orc hoisted him up and began to knee-crawl back to the rear of the tent. The fabric was pulled loose there, Sudryal realized when the orc bent lower. The wolf came up beside them, ducking her head up and squirming halfway through, then pausing to hold the gap open for the orc to slide through without letting go of Sudryal.

As soon as they were through, the orc was up and running, surprisingly light-footed for such a hefty person. The wolf and three others ran alongside, silent shadows in the night, and the light of the human outpost faded away behind them.

***

Once they were well away from the light, the orc stopped, lowering gently Sudryal to the ground. They pulled out a knife from a sheath on their thigh, and Sudryal couldn't help the flinch, but they paused and put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"I'm going to cut you loose now," they said, in accented Common. "The gag first, so that you can tell me if I'm hurting you when I cut the ropes. Is that all right?"

Sudryal nodded, then made himself hold very still as the orc slid the knife under the fabric of the outer gag, the flat of the blade pressing against his cheek. It was sharp, and the fabric parted easily; as soon as it fell away, Sudryal spat the disgusting lump of the inner gag from his mouth. He spent a moment more spitting, summoning as much saliva as he could, which was very little, to try and clear the awful taste.

"Here," the orc said, and the spout of a waterskin touched the corner of his mouth. Cool water trickled down and through, rinsing the worst of it away. "You do speak Common, right?"

"I do," Sudryal said. Even with the water his voice was raspy and weak. In shock, he reminded himself. "Get my hands free next. I have to heal myself."

He only had a couple of spells left in him, he knew, and weak ones; he'd spent most of Fenmarel's gifts that morning, before the soldiers had run across him. But he could deal with the shock. Or the internal bleeding. Or the neck, maybe that would be best.

"I can help with that," the orc said,  already examining the ropes up and down Sudryal's forearms. "I'm going to have to roll you over onto your stomach for a minute. Speak up if I do something that hurts."

It was going to hurt no matter what, so Sudryal just gritted his teeth and let himself be manhandled, his shoulders screaming as the orc used their grip on his arms to roll him and then his stomach screaming as his weight settled on top of it. Then the pain in his shoulders eased, as the bindings loosened. The orc pulled the last loop of rope away and freed Sudryal's arms.

He reached up to the back of his neck and sent a pulse of healing energy into the vertebrae there to fuse them together again. It prickled, like it always did, the usual pins-and-needles feeling all the more unpleasant for being bone that was knitting, and so close to the nerves it protected.

"What else needs it? The most pressing," the orc said. "I can lay on hands now, but I don't think I should spend more magic until we're safe, in case I need it to get us free."

"I'm in shock," Sudryal said, because that's what kept ringing through his head, the loud certainty of that. "And bleeding somewhere around my stomach, which is probably why, so treat that first."

"All right."

The orc rolled him back onto his side slid a hand under Sudryal's shirt. A rush of soothing coolness washed against Sudryal's skin at the point of contact, then passed through it, spreading out into the bruised and ruptured tissues underneath. He couldn't tell how much actual healing it did, but most of the pain eased under that ice-water chill.

"Anything else?" the orc asked.

"I could give you a whole list," Sudryal said. "But we'd better move."

Nodding, the orc moved down to Sudryal's feet, slashing the last of his bonds. They tucked the knife away, then reached down and hefted Sudryal again, just as easily as last time, as if he weighed nothing. They cradled him like a sleeping child; his appreciation grated against his resentment, and resentment won, at least enough for him to struggle into a sitting position and fling an arm over the orc's neck.

"I can hang on myself," he told them.

"All right. Hold on tight," the orc said, adjusting their grip, and then broke into a swift, still light-footed run.

The wolves moved to flank them again, one before, one behind, and one to either side, and escorted them onward through the dark.

***

Somewhere in their journey, Sudryal must have lost some time, because the moon was in a different position when they slowed to a stop. He straightened up, tightening his lax grip on the orc's neck, and tried to hold himself up while they fiddled with a latch on a door.

The door opened into a large, dark building, with high rafters and stacks of hay against the wall, smelling of fur and dung. A barn, then. Sudryal glanced around, and saw a couple of cows, held away from both the hay and the door by some boards hanging from support beams, watching them placidly as they entered.

Across from the cows was a variety of camping gear, spread out over a thin layer of hay across the floor. The orc laid Sudryal down upon a downy bedroll, then turned to light a lantern hanging from a tripod in the middle of the indoor camp.

Once it had flared to life, its light casting flickering shadows across the inside of the barn but brightening it to the point where Sudryal could make out color, the orc turned back to him. "What other healing do you need? I'm afraid I'm not as skilled in medicine as a shaman, but the spirits have blessed me with some magic for it."

"Nature spirits?" Sudryal asked, because he could still feel the faint sense of recognition and kinship, the wild power in him seeing an echo in the orc.

"Yes." The orc nodded, smiling again. "I'm the protector that my tribe dedicated to them. Or I will be, when I'm finished training. You're connected to some too, aren't you?"

"I am," Sudryal said. "Through my god. Who is more a god of solitude and lonely places, but those are often wild ones."

"The wolves said you served the Lone Wolf," the orc said. "I take it that's what they call your god. But you haven't answered my question. Where should I direct the healing? Or should I spread it out? You are bruised all over."

"Ah," Sudryal said, forcing his attention back to his aching body again. "I don't know if your laying-on hands stopped the internal bleeding or just slowed it, and I have a cracked rib. But there's also my head. I may be concussed. I'm not sure."

The orc leaned closer, looking Sudryal in the eye. As the tusked face hovered low over his own, Sudryal had to make an effort not to close his eyes or jerk away. He assumed the orc was checking his pupils, which was the smart thing to do. The orc's forehead was painted in abstract patterns, and there was a line slashed with two others down their cheek in the same brown paint.

"A bit concussed, probably," the orc agreed. "Some for your head, and the rest for your ribs and stomach. I'll have to touch you again."

"Right." Sudryal did close his eyes this time.

One hand came down to rest against his forehead, and the other pushed his shirt up again to press against his lowermost ribs. The healing wasn't the same ice-water rush as last time, the orc's magic filtered by the words they murmured in Orcish and the patterns their fingertips drew on Sudryal's skin. This time it flowed gently, like water from a jug, with an earthy, soothing feeling as if herbs had steeped in that water.

The throbbing in his skull faded, and the twinge in his side, and the orc lifted their hands away and tugged Sudryal's shirt back down.

"The wolves brought your armor and your bow, and some other things," the orc said. "Anything that smelled like you, I think. I don't know if you have extra clothes, or if you want to change into them."

"Not right now," Sudryal said. Now that the worst of the pain had been swept away, he could barely open his eyes against the exhaustion pressing down upon him. "I should have a bedroll, though."

"Oh, you can use my blanket," the orc said, lightly, and Sudryal felt something soft and heavy settle over him. "Don't worry about moving. Rest will help the healing take."

It was so close to what Sudryal told the anxious, snarling beasts that came to him for help at the shrine that Sudryal almost wanted to laugh. But laughing would have been more effort than he was willing to spend right now.

***

By the time he woke, there was some natural light filtering through the eaves of the barn's roof, and the cows were gone, one of the boards that had penned them in lying on the ground. The orc was out of armor, wearing a soft buckskin shirt instead, and redrawing their paint from a jar.

"What does your paint mean?" Sudryal asked. "If it's something you can tell me."

The orc turned towards him, face lighting up. "You actually asked! You wouldn't believe how many people around here assume it's just decoration. And then they make so many strange assumptions that I could have answered for them if they'd just asked."

"No one puts something on their face for no reason. Even if it's not a reason they're aware of when they do it. But I'm not surprised that the people around here don't think that critically." Sudryal rolled his eyes.

"I think it all goes unspoken, for them, so they don't know that they're reading it." The orc shrugged, apparently willing to give the humans and dwarves and hobgoblins who were busy quarreling over the valley more credit than Sudryal did. "Once I compare it to beard braiding, the dwarves do usually understand right away. But this shows my tribe, the High Lake, and my lodge, Splashing Otter, and that I'm a man, and in an apprenticeship, and that I'll be a Warrior of the Woods when I'm finished. And I've had two kills worth taking trophies from."

Sudryal watched closely as the orc pointed to each indicator in turn. That answered one question, at least; he didn't know enough about orcs to read their gender, the way he was slowly learning for the other peoples outside the forest. "I can see why the dwarves would come to understand so easily."

"Right, they're the only people who seem to be as deliberate as mine about it," the orc agreed. "But I could be wrong, I'm not very familiar with people around here yet, and the others might just think I'm being rude by asking. So, and I'm hoping I'm not being rude asking you, but aside from being a shaman, what do you want to share?"

'Shaman' was a fair enough word, Sudryal decided, and closer to what he was than 'priest.' But one with connotations, here where all these petty idiots were obsessed with seeming civilized.

"Around here they'd call me a cleric, which is one of their words for people who carry a god's power. I'm too old to be apprenticed, so I suppose I'm whatever you'd call one beyond that, and-" and he hesitated here, because no one had ever asked him this, straight-out. "I'm accustomed to being called a man, but I'm not attached to it. We don't have lodges, and my clan no longer claims me. I am a pariah, as my people see it."

He'd tensed when he admitted that, though he'd tried not to, but the orc just nodded and returned to his work. "My name is Tulkar. I haven't won an epithet yet, so everyone around here just writes it down as Tulkar High-Lake."

"They do badly want a clan name," Sudryal said. "My name is Sudryal. I give them Wolf-Mender or Twice-Bitten, depending."

Tulkar, capping his jar, nodded. "How are you feeling this morning? I wanted to take a look at your injuries, if you don't mind. I'm sure you'll do a better job evaluating them, but there might be something you can't see."

"I won't bite, if that's what you're asking," Sudryal said. He sat up slowly, taking in his own body's reactions. "And given that I got kicked in the head, I might not be all here yet. I doubt I was last night."

"You did a good job of faking it." Tulkar straightened up and crawled the short distance to the bedroll on his knees. "Let me look at your eyes again first. Not dizzy or nauseous?"

"No," Sudryal said. "But I could eat, if there's anything here but hay."

"The farmer brought some porridge," Tulkar said, leaning in to study Sudryal's pupils. "It's probably cooled by now, but food is food. And I have dried meat to go with it."

His eyes were grey, Sudryal noticed. A deep dark grey, in contrast to his light gray skin, which had a mossy greenish tint. His hair had come loose from the bun while he slept, half of it falling down in loops around his neck and the other half tangled around its tie; it was not quite black, more a dark steel-gray, though that looked to be solid through-and-through, not black tinted with white.

In fact, without the armor, and under the paint, Tulkar looked surprisingly young. Sudryal wasn't sure how quickly orcs aged, aside from knowing that it was much faster than elves, but if he'd been an elf, Sudryal wouldn't have placed him much older than a hundred. Certainly not two hundred yet, at the most. The easy smile he wore might be making him look younger, but he had said he was still in an apprenticeship.

"Your pupils are fine. What about your head, is there any pain there? Or in your neck?"

Sudryal tilted his head and turned it back and forth experimentally, then shook his head, mostly to see if there would be any pain or vertigo. Neither, fortunately, occurred. "I think that's recovered, more or less."

"Good." Tulkar smiled all the more brightly. "Can you take your shirt off? And, ah, I'd like to check the rest of you, but if you have privacy taboos-"

"It's fine," Sudryal said, interrupting him, though it was too late to keep the tips of his ears from heating. "It all just feels sore, now, but another pair of eyes is always wise."

He stripped quickly, though he left his loincloth on--they hadn't had the angle to do him any injury there. His stomach only had some bruising, wide yellow blotches fading the way that magic-healed bruises tended to, but his thighs and shins were mottled in dark shades of green and blue, and his arms weren't much better.

Tulkar still focused on his torso first, and Sudryal let him, holding himself still while huge orcish fingers pressed against his stomach, felt their way up his ribs, and then circled around to travel back down his spine, checking for lumps and breaks and deep bruises. He couldn't help shivering under the touch. Tulkar was just a bit too careful for it to seem impersonal, didn't have Sudryal's practice in staying business-like and professional, and Sudryal was hyper-aware of how close the orc warrior was hovering. Tulkar had breadth and bulk, as well as height and muscle; he put off heat like a furnace, enough so that Sudryal could feel it even with the length of Tulkar's forearm between them.

And it had been a long, long time since Sudryal had been touched so intimately. Two hundred years, at least, since the last time he'd hugged his sister; more than another century since someone had put hands on his bare skin in such a deliberate way. He knew it wasn't healthy, in the same way that he knew that an imbalanced diet weakened those who ate it. But he hadn't expected, that need being momentarily fed, to want to lean into it so badly, to arch into Tulkar's hands like a cat being petted, or, worse, to lean back against the warm, padded bulk of him and nestle in.

He didn't do either, of course. It would only have embarrassed them both. Sudryal just set his jaw and stared straight ahead and remembered himself enough to hiss, a second after he should have, when Tulkar did push against a painful spot on his back. Tulkar stopped his hand there for a moment and poured in some of his raw healing magic, the cooling ice-water rush, then continued down to the base of Sudryal's spine.

"I think we got the worst of it last night," he said cheerfully, when he was finished. "But I asked the spirits for plenty of healing powers this morning, so we can clear off some of those bruises."

"Use too much in the morning, and you won't have anything left for the road," Sudryal warned.

"I already told the farmer we weren't going anywhere today. And she's not going to let anyone know we're here, so we're safe to rest up," Tulkar said. He patted Sudryal on the shoulder. "Though if your god gives you any healing this morning, we can spread the load."

"True," Sudryal said. "I'll have to pray first. And he doesn't always give me what I ask for."

"Sometimes the spirits know better than me, too," Tulkar said knowingly. "Here, I'll get those bruises off your legs, so you can sit comfortably, and then you can do your prayers and take care of your arms. Does that seem fair?"

At Sudryal's nod, he reached down and put a hand over each thigh, his fingers moving in the same patterns as the night before as he intoned his Orcish prayer. The bruises browned, then yellowed, until they were as faint and blotchy as those on Sudryal's stomach, and he felt something in one of his knees twinge like a plucked string, then stop aching as it fell back into place.

Tulkar's hands were heavier here than they'd been on his ribs and back, but the scrape of his callused fingertips on Sudryal's thighs was just light enough to make Sudryal shiver. Finishing the healing, Tulkar lifted his hands away and frowned.

"That didn't hurt, did it?"

"No," Sudryal said, having to swallow before he could find his voice. Tulkar still looked sincerely concerned, so he fumbled for an explanation. "Your magic feels very different from mine."

"They do come from different sources, even if they're close ones," Tulkar said, with a smile and a shrug.

"They do," Sudryal agreed, words still an effort, and started pulling his pants back on. "I should go pray. It will have to be outside."

"Use the side door," Tulkar said, pointing. "The farmer left it unlatched for us. She says we can go where we like as long as we don't trouble the cows or damage the fields or garden. I don't know if the wolves are still around. I didn't want to let them in with the cows here, so I asked them to leave your things outside for me last night, and they were lurking in the underbrush across the pasture when I came out again."

"They'll probably be gone," Sudryal said. "When I spoke to them before, they told me they were lying low. All these soldiers seem to think that killing a wolf is some kind of triumph, even when they're not posing any danger. And the farmers take offense if the wolves take even one or two of their beasts."

"I don't think the people around here have much love for their nature spirits," Tulkar agreed, shaking his head sadly. "All the gods they've told me about care mostly about people alone, and their fighting and farming and crafting. But if the wolves are still around, they'll be glad to know you're safe."

Sudryal nodded and pushed through the small, unlatched door into the bright morning sunlight outside. The tips of his ears were still burning.

***

The wolves were gone, as he'd expected. They'd have been able to sense the green in Tulkar's blood even more easily than Sudryal had, and would have known he was in safe hands. It was doubtless for the best that they'd left before the cows were let out.

Open ground and pasture surrounded the barn, but there was a single oak tree spreading its branches over the watering trough, and Sudryal headed there rather than trek across the pasture to the line of brush beyond. Kneeling in front of it, he fished his bone icon out from under his shirt and held it in one hand. The other he pressed against the bark.

Fenmarel Mestarine cared little for words; he spoke only when he wanted there to be no possible question of his meaning, and when he listened to prayers it was only the intent behind them that he heard, not what was spoken. But Sudryal was in the habit of talking to the god, as he had to the beasts. For a long time, they'd been the only ones about to listen.

"Lone Wolf of the deep forest, I recognize your mercy," he said, speaking in Elvish, for that was the only language that Fenmarel would allow. "I am aware that I am not worthy of the aid that you sent me, and that I made it more necessary in my foolishness. I am grateful that, in your grace, you sent it anyway."

He stopped, breathed in deeply. It did float in the back of his mind that Fenmarel might have acted as much from practicality as from mercy--Sudryal was the only hermit of his shrine available to protect it. But he dismissed that thought immediately. Sudryal had hardly done a brilliant job of carrying out his god's instructions so far. The Lone Wolf might have a dozen other holy hermits, elsewhere in the secret, tangled places of the forest, who could do it better.

"I ask you once again for your power, swearing to use it for your purposes before all others, and for the benefit of others before my own. You will give me what you will give me, and I will not dispute it with you. But it would ease the burden of the one who aids me if your blessings today include healing among them."

Sudryal rarely did not ask for healing, though Fenmarel didn't always give it to him. That was the right and nature of a god; there was no point in resenting its lack when he didn't have it. But he knew that he walked upon especially uncertain ground to ask for it when he intended to use some of it upon himself. He was keenly aware that he might be denied it, as penance for his idiocy.

In which case he would have to keep his sleeves down and lie to Tulkar. The young orc couldn't spend any more of his spirits' power on Sudryal's minor hurts.

When his god's power did come over him, though, it came with some of the uncomfortable prickling that to Sudryal meant healing. He knelt motionless as it sank into his bones, the magic buzzing and aching as it spread through him and then at last fell still within, waiting to be called upon and used.

"I am grateful," he said again, to the silence under the spread branches of the oak.

Then he settled back on his heels and put each hand to the other arm, as if he was hugging himself. He whispered the words of the spell, pinching his own skin to make the sigils, and felt the pins-and-needles sensation twinge its way through his flesh for a moment before fading, taking the worst of the bruising with it.

He'd been told, by one or two of his more recent patients, that his healing didn't feel like that of any other cleric they'd known. Sudryal was not surprised. Fenmarel Mestarine was a god of outcasts, and the elves did not cast out their own without good reason. He did not give out comfort. Those who served him did not deserve it, and Sudryal, at least, wasn't adept enough to give it to those more deserving, either.

But it was one thing to be told that others could heal without discomfort. It was another to have at last experienced it. The prickling of his spell was all the more unpleasant, having felt the cool, soothing touch of Tulkar's hands. He imagined that his own touch, rough and impersonal, trained on direwolves and owlbears that had to be held tightly and pushed about, was similarly unpleasant compared to the gentle restraint of Tulkar's careful gestures. The orc was at least as strong as was said of his people, Sudryal could see it in every movement he made, but never once had his hands been hard.

That was, Sudryal thought, not an appropriate thing to think about.

He had no idea why he was thinking about it, anyway. Other people's bodies had only twice stirred him, in his youth, and even then in the grip of adolescence it hadn't been their flesh he'd particularly hungered for. Not that he'd been unable to respond, when touched--though he and the one boy he'd tried it with, before he'd driven any would-be lovers away for good, had never gotten further than taking off each other's shirts. But it hadn't been hands he'd fallen for, or hips or shoulders, or even the flash of smile or movement that showed the spirit within the flesh. It had been little kindnesses, secret gestures that had made him look again and again, until he could see the beauty in their forms and make himself feel something for it.

...And Tulkar had laid those strong, gentle hands on him with nothing but kindness in his heart. Join that with the centuries it had been since he had been caressed at all by another thinking being, rather than a grateful wolf or maternal owlbear, and it was no wonder that Sudryal wanted to lean into his touch. That the thought of those hands pulling him close, pressing him against Tulkar's soft, warm chest, lingered near the surface of his mind, begging to be dredged up and examined.

Not that he was going to do that. Sudryal pushed the thought down, firmly, and stood by the oak tree and thought of his forest. Of the dark under the trees, the brambles between them, the stark, cold beauty of snow settling on their bare branches at the height of the winter freeze.

Once the heat in his face had subsided, he stepped back inside.

***

Tulkar had the porridge waiting for him--cold, as promised, but Sudryal forced down the lumpy, congealing mess of it without complaint. He accepted some of the jerky, too, because meat would help strengthen his blood.

Bits and pieces of him still throbbed, but they were minor pains. A toe, probably with blood under the nail, but not injured enough to need attention. His shoulders, still sore from yesterday's wrenching about and his long time with his arms pulled back. His cracked cheekbone, which hurt the worst, but was not broken so far as to damage his face further, and thus could be left to heal alone. He certainly wouldn't be spending more of his god's magic on it.

Everything could have been so much worse. Should have been, in all fairness. Sudryal was painfully aware of that.

"I had food in my pack," Sudryal said, coming back inside from scrubbing out his porridge bowl. "I don't know if they had the wit to search it, or if it's still there if they did. But if it is still there, I can cover lunch."

Tulkar nodded. "I haven't looked at your things. I wasn't sure if there was anything private in them. But everything the wolves brought is over there."

Sudryal went to check over his belongings. Atop the rest was Shaexi's longbow, unstrung. He picked it up and examined it first; there were some smears of blood and mud on it, which he rubbed away with his shirt, but thankfully the humans hadn't damaged his sister's weapon. Setting it carefully aside, he went through the rest. They had opened his bag, and unrolled his bedroll, and he was missing several things that he should have had, his rations and his coinpurse both among them. But nothing essential or irreplaceable, just things that were irritating not to have.

"I won't be able to cover lunch after all," he said, sitting back on his heels and picking up his quiver. The catch had come undone, but none of the arrows had fallen out, and only a couple seemed to have had their fletching damaged to the point where he'd have to replace it. "Unless this farmer said anything about allowing hunting."

"I didn't ask, since I had rations," Tulkar said. "I would have this morning, since you were here, except she saw you and offered the porridge. And there's little enough game here that I'd hate to take a rabbit or a bird that her family could use to fill their pot."

Sudryal nodded. "That's fair enough. She's doing us a kindness already. Is this generosity on her part, or a favor returned?"

"She strikes me as someone who would be generous anyway, but yes, this is in return for my help. One of these warring bands tried to claim her cows, and I stepped in. She told me I was welcome to stay as long as I needed, so long as I dealt with any other soldiers who showed up while I was here."

Glancing over at Tulkar's armor, spread over a bale of hay, Sudryal wondered what form of intervention the orc had chosen. There was a battleaxe, rough orcish steel, leaning against the same bale. It looked well-tended. He seemed friendly enough to want to talk people down, but just as there was muscle behind his fat, Sudryal suspected that the axe and the armor lay behind his smile. No power of nature would choose someone who was soft through-and-through as a guardian.

"I didn't tell her where you came from, just that I found you wounded," Tulkar went on. "I don't think the humans will be able to track us, but I didn't want to worry her. If you don't mind me asking, though, what did they capture you for?"

"They thought I was a spy." Sudryal grimaced down at his quiver, replacing the arrows he'd removed to inspect. "A spy for who, they hadn't decided yet. I'd been asking the people I healed around here questions, what this war was about, who started it, all of that. And they heard of it and took it as spying. As if someone couldn't have any other reason for trying to figure out where the root of this tangle is."

"And they thought beating you to death was going to get them answers?"

"That part was my fault." Sudryal put the quiver aside with the bow. "They were commanded by some stupid young pup who wanted to impress his superiors, if I was understanding him right. He told them to rough me up and see if I'd give up who I was spying for. I was aggravated that they didn't believe me, so went out of my way to aggravate them, too. And they weren't aware of how much damage they'd done."

"I'd noticed that you have light bones," Tulkar said. "I'd wondered if they were hollow."

"Not like a bird's are. But they are lighter than a human's, or a wolf's. I'm a wood elf, and we have light bones and lean muscles, to move quietly in the forest." Sudryal pulled out his spare set of clothing from his disordered bag. "I'm going to change and clean myself up. I can't imagine what my hair's like by now."

"I wasn't going to say," Tulkar said, and Sudryal glanced over his shoulder to see him smiling. "But I have a brush, if you need to borrow it."

"I could use it," Sudryal said. "Mine's missing. And my fingers aren't going to cut it. But I'll clean off first, unless you want your brush fouled."

Finding a bucket, Sudryal stepped outside and scooped some water from the trough, then went around to the most isolated side of the barn to clean himself off and change into cleaner clothing. He scrubbed his hair and his fouled clothes, hanging the latter over the branches of the oak tree to dry, and then returned to the barn to address his tangled hair.

Tulkar had laid out a brush and comb, both carved from bone, though the brush's bristles had come from some kind of animal. Sudryal picked up the brush and paused when he saw a carving on the back: a sea-shore, he thought, though he'd never seen one in person, only read of them and seen drawings in books. There was a wave, at least, rising up against some rocks, and a cliff beyond them with trees atop it, and a river running down to the water.

"Is this the coast?"

"Yes, it is," Tulkar said, smiling over at him. He seemed pleased to have been asked the question. "At the place where the River's End tribe sets off for their whaling trip every year. They carved that set from whalebone, and it was part of a trade to my tribe a few years back."

"You come from far west of here, then."

"Not that far west. High Lake is the easternmost and southernmost of the tribes. The people around here call us the Orcish Confederacy, but we don't deal with outsiders enough to call ourselves something more than the tribes, because the nature spirits don't like anyone but us in the mountain forests. That whole stretch of forested mountains along the coast to the northwest, where it curves inward, that's where we live."

Sudryal had heard of orcs to the west and north, in the forests and grasslands and mountains, all the way to the coasts. The way people here, or even his own village, had spoken of them, the mountain orcs were the most savage and unfriendly, disinterested in trade and ruthless with intruders into their already-forbidding domain. But Tulkar didn't strike him as savage.

And much the same things could be said of his own people, who dealt with the other villages in the forest only a few times a year and the people outside of it as little as possible. They eschewed confrontation, but he knew that the rangers of his village had gone out of the way to make the forest unpleasant for anyone travelling through it, and he had done the same a time or two around the shrine as its hermit. Was it any less hostile to harass strangers from the shadows than it was to confront them directly and in force?

The cooling rush of Tulkar's healing made more sense now, too. The mountains to the northwest were where most of the rivers across this land came from, and the lodge he'd mentioned he was in was named after the otter; there must be as much snowmelt and water in his pact as there was loam and wood.

He started brushing, working slowly and carefully through the tangles. "And your people's pact with the nature spirits involves guarding the forest for them?"

"That's part of it, yes. My part of it, once I finish my training. The current Warrior of the Woods for my tribe is teaching me to follow in her footsteps, and part of that is going out into the world, so that I can know what it's like among other races and understand what I'm defending the forest from."

Sudryal hummed acknowledgement. He finished with the brush, laid it aside, and took up the comb. "It would be nice if my people had been as wise about that. I suspect I'm the only one of them who's dared to step outside the forest and see what's going on with this war since it started. We're not so far away that we can expect to stay out of it if it expands."

"I was wondering," Tulkar said. "Are you from the closed forest east of here? You feel similar to it, but I wasn't sure if that was because you were tied to it, or because you're both inclined to sting."

"And when have I stung you?" Sudryal demanded, pausing with a hank of hair in his hand to frown at Tulkar.

"You haven't," Tulkar said, holding up his hands. He was still smiling, and his eyes crinkled with amusement, though at least he didn't laugh. "But you're tense like you're ready to. And the magic in you is all sharp, like it wants to come out of you in spines and thorns."

That was an accurate enough description of the power lying in wait within him this morning that Sudryal couldn't argue it. He turned away to pull his hair back, tying it into a ponytail and wrapping his headband to hold back the shorter, wispier strands that threatened to fall over his forehead.

Behind him, he could hear Tulkar shift uneasily. "I'm sorry. I didn't-"

"You didn't offend me," Sudryal interrupted. "You're right. There are closed places in that forest, they're guarded by brambles and thorns, as well as darker things, and it's my god who has marked them forbidden."

Wiping the comb dry on his shirt, he turned back around, and held it and the brush out to Tulkar. Tulkar took them, smiling at him with unguarded relief, and tucked them into a small leather case that he put back in his bag. Then he shifted forward on his knees towards Sudryal, reaching out towards his face.

Sudryal went still.

Tulkar froze immediately. "We missed a bruise," he said, gesturing to Sudryal's cheekbone. "I thought the color was from blushing earlier, but now that you're cleaned up and calmer, it's still there and getting darker. I was going to heal it, if that's all right with you."

Now Sudryal was hot in the face again. "That's not necessary."

"No," Tulkar said, patient and smiling and warm. His eyes were crinkling again, and Sudryal tried not to focus unduly on the dimples the smile brought out in his cheeks. "But it's not going to do any harm. Can I?"

Sudryal opened his mouth to say no. "Yes."

Tulkar leaned in the last few inches, his hand settling over Sudryal's face. He cupped Sudryal's jaw with his palm, holding him still, and his fingers curled, delicately, around Sudryal's ear, just brushing the edge of it. Sudryal held his breath as Tulkar's thumb brushed over his cracked cheekbone, so soft that he could barely feel it, and the ice-water numbness spread through the bruise and bone and washed the pain away.

Pulling his hand away, Tulkar beamed at Sudryal, oblivious to how rigid and still he sat. He'd had to stiffen his spine and set his teeth to keep from leaning into Tulkar's hand, and the flush in his cheeks and ears was stubbornly refusing to fade.

"That's better," Tulkar said, still smiling wide and bright. "Now, let me go through my rations, and we'll figure out what to have for lunch."

***

Sudryal slept through most of the day, rousing only briefly to take the hard bread and harder cheese that Tulkar pushed into his hands for lunch and dinner. It was about what he'd expected. Healing, even magical healing, was hard on the body, and it needed to recover from all the mending it had been rushed through at speed.

The next morning was porridge, again, and then Tulkar began to gather his things, and Sudryal silently packed his own. It made sense; they'd imposed on the farmer long enough. And all his hurts were healed more than well enough for him to take to the road.

"Which way are you going?" Tulkar asked, as Sudryal pulled the drawstring of his bag tight and fastened the last clasp that held his unstrung bow against it.

"I'm not sure," Sudryal said. "I had been moving west, but I think that will take me further into the land this batch of humans is holding, at the moment. And I can't count on some other, saner group shoving them over in a timely fashion. The way my luck is going, if anyone does, they'll push their lines in the wrong direction to be any help to me."

"You could come with me," Tulkar said. "At least until we're out of the territory they're patrolling. I'm heading south, and if what the farmer told me is right, there's a goblin legion down there making inroads."

Goblins weren't kind to elves, traditionally speaking. Nor elves to goblins. On the other hand, the same could be said of orcs. And Sudryal wouldn't mind another couple days' travel with this one.

"Until we get clear of this batch of humans, at least," Sudryal agreed. "There's worse things than travelling with someone who won't panic if wolves visit our camp."

"Have you had that problem? I upset a halfling village early on by going to talk to a moose walking through, in case he was a spirit, or sent by the spirits. I did end up having to wrestle him, though, so the halflings weren't wrong about it. Those wolves seemed much friendlier."

"This close to my native forest, the wolves either know me, or know of me. We're close enough for them to howl regularly with the forest packs. The further I go, the less I'll be able to rely on that." Sudryal stood and shouldered his bag. "But I was handling them before I became part enough of their landscape to trust me, and I'm still handling the less pack-minded beasts who will never trust me. I can handle strange wolves, whenever it comes to that."

Tulkar had finished buckling his armor, and now he took up his pack, too, pulling it on and tightening the straps. "You'll have to tell me about how you won them over, if it's not too private. Most of the wolves we see are winter wolves and direwolves, and my mentor's told me that even we have to be wary of them."

"I don't know winter wolves, but direwolves are less willing to be companionable with other creatures than the regular kind. Or even with each other. They form smaller packs, and differently. But I can tell you more on the road."

"And I'll tell you what my mentor's said, and we can see how they match up," Tulkar said eagerly. "Maybe we'll both learn something."

He looked the barn over one last time, then went to the door and held it open for Sudryal, giving a little bow and laughing to himself when Sudryal stepped through. Sudryal rolled his eyes, but that only made Tulkar laugh louder.

They stayed off the main road as they made their way southward, both that day and the next. It slowed their progress, but not as much as it would have for the people less woodswise, and no self-important human patrols troubled their journey. Instead, they talked.

Or rather, Tulkar talked, expounding with great cheer on the ways and customs of his people, and the ways and customs that he'd seen of the people whose communities he'd passed through on his journey, and his understanding and theories of why both his people and other people lived as they did. Sometimes he asked questions of Sudryal, and Sudryal mostly answered them, though Tulkar seemed unbothered by any rebuff and would just change the conversation to another tack.

Had Sudryal been imagining this scenario on his own, he would have predicted that he would be annoyed and exhausted by it by noon on the first day. But Tulkar was easier to listen to than he ever could have expected. His enthusiasm was charming, not exhausting; his curiosity was structured and sensible, not prying. And he seemed to easily read Sudryal's mood as he talked, steering quickly away from any subject that made Sudryal stiffen or flinch, moving smoothly off any that bored him. He spoke for long stretches without looking for a response, but it never seemed like he was talking to himself, or to hear his own voice, or just to fill the silence with chattering.

He cared about what he talked about, that was the thing. And he wanted to make sure that Sudryal cared to hear it.

The first night they had to camp at the edge of another farmer's field, and forewent a fire to avoid drawing the farmer's attention. Tulkar still had more bread and cheese and jerky, none of it yet molded. But by the second night they had reached wilder lands--no true forest, but a fringe of woodland that, bordering a bog, had by Tulkar's farmer's report become an informal barrier between one warring group and the other--and Tulkar announced his intention to hunt.

"I'll see what I can gather in the swamp, while you're doing that," Sudryal said.

He had no particular qualms about hunting, and he reckoned his bow at least as useful as the javelins that Tulkar carried. But he had always preferred to accept meat from others, when possible, even if those others had previously mostly been owlbears and wolves, and he would have a better knowledge of the plant life around here than Tulkar did. It was late enough in spring for fiddlehead ferns, in particular, and this was the right terrain for them.

By the time he returned, Tulkar had built a low fire and hung a pot over it. The water didn't seem to have been boiling for long, but the rabbit-bones were at the very edge of the fire, to roast the marrow in them, so he must have already sectioned off the meat. Sudryal laid his findings, bundled together in a broad leaf, beside the fire as well.

Tulkar had filled a bucket with water, as well as the pot, and was cleaning up now that the butchering was done. He smiled up at Sudryal.

"That's going to take an hour or so, but it was an old enough rabbit that roasting it would make it tough," he said apologetically. "And I have more bread if we're hungry in the meantime."

"I don't mind waiting," Sudryal said.

He was trying not to look too closely at Tulkar's bared torso, the shine of water on his wet skin and the way loose curls of hair fell damply over his face. Tulkar's smile widened when he saw Sudryal watching him, and he focused on that, instead, which might not be safer, but at least made him feel less lascivious. Tulkar was just trying to clean off, for goodness sake. He didn't need a broody elven hermit ogling him while he did it.

And he did have a nice smile. There was no artifice to the orc that Sudryal had detected, and Sudryal was usually good at telling when people were trying to show him a false front; Tulkar was open, and honest, in such an innocent and unthinking way that Sudryal suspected that dishonesty would be an outright struggle for him. He had a good heart, a clean clear conscience to fit with the clean clear purity of his magic and his calling.

Nothing like Sudryal, with his thorny secrets and his knotted heart, curled up tight around his old shames and stinging, as Tulkar had guessed, whenever someone tried to come too close to him. Even his healing had a bite to it.

Would Tulkar still be as innocent, in three hundred years' time? But no, he wouldn't live that long. Thirty years' time, then, long since past his apprenticeship and a full Warrior of the Woods. Thirty years of defending his land and the nature spirits within from those who would offend it. Maybe in time the struggle of it, the deceptions of invaders, the bloody claws and bared teeth of nature all around him, would turn the crinkles around his eyes to frown-lines, erase the dimples from his cheeks and darken his smiles.

Sudryal found himself recoiling from the notion. It hovered like a threat, one he wanted to throw himself in front of and defend the orc against. Tulkar's bright cheerfulness, his easy kindness, was worth preserving.

"Are you all right?"

Realizing that he'd lost himself in contemplation, Sudryal started at how close Tulkar had come. He was still bare to the waist, looking at Sudryal with concern that turned to a smile again when Sudryal refocused.

"I was lost in thought," Sudryal said shortly.

It seemed somehow improper to focus on Tulkar's smile when he'd just been thinking so deeply about it, but he couldn't let his gaze wander too far down, either, so he ended up looking at the orc's broad shoulders. The muscle he bore was most obvious there, without layers of fat obscuring the definition, and looking at it, Sudryal could more than imagine Tulkar wrestling a bull moose. Perhaps not winning, but then, Tulkar had never claimed he'd won the match.

"Not a thought you liked?" Tulkar asked. "You looked upset."

"That's just what my face looks like," Sudryal said, as deadpan as he could muster, and was rewarded when Tulkar doubled over in a burst of laughter.

He took a moment to come up again, still grinning and chuckling to himself. "You're not wrong. It's been three days and I don't think I've seen you smile."

"I'm centuries out of practice," Sudryal admitted, not sure why he was doing so. "There's not much to smile at, as a holy hermit."

"No charming animals? Not even their cubs? Or sweet berries, or spring flowers?"

"I can enjoy something without grinning about it. And even before I was cast out, my kin always told me I had too serious a face."

"Fair, fair," Tulkar said. "But I'll have to find something that can make you smile. Just to see what it looks like."

Tulkar seemed so excited for the project that Sudryal couldn't mistake it as teasing. He looked away, and seeing the pot on the boil walked over to poke it with the ladle to see if the rabbit was cooked enough to add the ferns.

"What kind of jokes do you like?" Tulkar asked, following him. "You seem like someone who would like puns."

Sudryal groaned. "No. Not puns. I'll beg if you want, just spare me."

Tulkar grinned at him, crouched so close over the fire that they were almost shoulder-to-shoulder, and something in Sudryal's heart twinged, fond and yearning.

***

His sleep that night was troubled. Sudryal's nightmares were regular, and varied, but they always came back around to the same two themes: beasts that he thought he commanded tearing those around him apart, and the anger of the victims, fairly and furiously leveled in his direction. Tonight Tulkar joined them, flesh sagging in strips from the bone, his smiling face twisted almost to unrecognizability by his pain and rage.

Sudryal woke panting, as he often did, but without the shouts that he sometimes gave voice to. He could be sure of that, because Tulkar hadn't woken. That was the first thing he checked. Up on his elbow, looking at the orc first, before even checking the perimeter to see if his restlessness had drawn hostile attention, he felt bitter bile rise in his throat.

This wasn't tenable. He'd become infatuated, that was obvious enough--rescue, and touch, and kindness enough between them to manufacture fond feelings, after he'd been self-sufficient and isolated for so long. And Tulkar seemed to like him now, but how long would that last? He deserved a better companion than a sullen hermit, at least ten times his age and less than a tenth as friendly.

Continuing on with him would only make Sudryal's infatuation worse, until at last it soured. He knew himself too well to think that he wouldn't lash out eventually at the continual temptation. And that was assuming that he didn't try Tulkar's tolerance himself before then. He had no intention of making any kind of move, he wasn't that selfish, but he was aware that he had no talent for dissembling.

It would be better if they parted ways, and Sudryal fell back asleep with that thought echoing his mind like the ominous baying of a direwolf not nearly far enough distant.

He woke with it there still, and his resolve only hardened when he found that Tulkar had woken before him, and was already roasting some kind of bird on the fire.

"I found it in a trap, wing and legs broken. It had been there three days, at that point, so I decided the trapper had forfeited it if they weren't going to put it out of its mercy," Tulkar said, bright-eyed, his hands up and gesturing as he explained the bird's provenance. "It's a year-old male, so putting it back into the wild wouldn't be to the flock's benefit at this point."

"A lucky find for us, at any rate," Sudryal said. "I need to pray, but I'll be back by the time it's finished."

He walked out into the woods until he was out of range for Tulkar to see or overhear him--it didn't take as long as it had yesterday, when he'd had only fields and hedgerows to hide in. Choosing another great, old tree, Sudryal knelt in front of it with his palm against the bark.

"If the bird, or the meal before it, were in any part your doing, then I thank you," he said in Elven. "You are kind to your servant, Fenmarel Mestarine, and I will not assign what might be your kindness to mere chance. I ask you once again for your power, swearing to use it for your purposes before all others, and for the benefit of others before my own."

Healing came to him, and protection, and the speech with animals that he was never without. Sudryal kept his eyes closed and breathed deeply as the magic sank into him, harsh as always as it came upon him.

Then he added one last request, hoping he didn't overstep his bounds. "I have not forgotten my duty to you, Lone Wolf. But I know that I might have somewhere stepped off of its path. Consider me corrected, if I have, and if you are inclined to mercy, show me how I might find it again."

As he opened his eyes, pulling back, a wind whistled between to the trees, far lower to the ground than a breeze should be in such an overgrown area. It blew over him for a moment, whipping at his clothes and hair. As it passed, Sudryal turned in it, looking to see which way it blew.

North, then. Away from the goblins or towards a possible answer to his quest, Sudryal didn't know. If Fenmarel hadn't spoken, it would be impudent to ask.

He returned to the camp to find Tulkar dividing the roast bird, and took his plate with thanks. "My god gave me a message," he said, as he started in on his half of the fowl. "I need to head north, so we'll be parting ways."

Tulkar frowned. "There's nothing important in the south, except that I haven't been that way yet. I could come with you, at least until you're in safer territory again."

Sudryal shook his head. "Don't worry about me. I'll go east far enough to circle around this particular group, and then get back on the road once I'm north of them. There's forest eastward, even if it isn't my forest along this stretch. It will look after me."

"Are you sure? It really doesn't bother me at all, even if I end up backtracking to a place I've already been. And I haven't gotten you to smile yet," Tulkar added, as if that was the greatest disappointment. "Never mind made you laugh. Which was the next thing I was going to work on."

"You'll have to live without it," Sudryal told him. "My god prefers that I travel alone. He's not a friend of those who aren't elves."

Still frowning, Tulkar examined his face thoughtfully. Sudryal looked down and focused on his meal. It wasn't a lie, after all; Fenmarel was called the Lone Wolf for a reason, and he gathered outcasts on purpose. He very likely did frown on Sudryal's continued association with an orc.

"I understand that," he said at last, reluctantly. "You have to do what you're called to do. But I'll ask the spirits to give you their blessing. And if they're kind, maybe we'll meet again, once the tasks at hand are finished."

"If they're kind," Sudryal agreed. To him, they had no reason to be, and to Tulkar, if they were indeed kind, they would show it by ushering him well away, towards people who could easily answer his smile. But there was no reason to say that aloud.

"Well," Tulkar said, smiling again, if less broadly, as he cast his bones into the fire and moved to start scrubbing his bowl. "I'm glad I could feed you well before you set out on your own."

"It was a good meal," Sudryal said, doing the same. "I'll go far on it."

"Probably farther than me," Tulkar said cheerfully. "I need to stock back up on bread. It's not something we have back in the tribes, and I don't think we could grow the grain for it in the forest, but I'm enjoying it while I can."

Cleaning up took a scant amount of time; they put out the fire, buried what was left of the bird, and kicked dirt and leaves over the remains of the camp so their habitation wouldn't be too immediately obvious. Then Sudryal took up his bag, and Tulkar shouldered his.

"Good luck heading north," Tulkar said. "If you do get caught again by those soldiers, try not to aggravate them as badly."

"I wish you luck too," Sudryal said. "Be careful of the hobgoblins. I've heard that they keep strict order in the lands they've taken, and they aren't kind to people they think are disrupting it."

"I'll be careful," Tulkar said, with another bright smile. "I've learned how to mind my manners with the people around here."

"Good," Sudryal said, and racked his brain for any other parting words to offer. He fell back, after a moment, on tradition. "May you walk safely in dark places, and be the moonlight in the dark for others."

Tulkar brightened even further. "Row your races against the current, but hunt your food with the wind before you. That one's not easy to translate, but-"

"I understand it," Sudryal said, before Tulkar could launch into an explanation. "Goodbye."

"Right," Tulkar said, brightly. "Goodbye."

Sudryal turned before he had to pry any more words out of his chest. It had gone tight, unexpectedly.

He walked in silence, heading east and north, mentally reviewing the rough maps people had drawn him of the area. Finding the forest wouldn't be difficult, this was probably an offshoot of it right here, and it would be simple enough to move through it until he was back to the rockier lands that the dwarves held. Dwarves, at least, could be relied upon to be sensible about healers.

He wondered what reception Tulkar would have to the south, and if he'd deal with the hobgoblins as easily as he claimed. Sudryal couldn't imagine that at least some of the people he dealt with wouldn't be charmed by his ready smile. He would miss it, himself. He wondered what kind of jokes Tulkar had been readying, to try and win a smile from him.

Wrenching his mind away from that line of thought before it could turn too gloomy, Sudryal started going over what he'd heard and been told of the north. Past the dwarves there were a few more human lands, and one elven, but as far as he knew they weren't entangled in this mess of a war. Not yet, anyway; maybe Fenmarel Mestarine knew what he did not. And beyond them were the orcs, living spread across all the lands that couldn't support grain.

But that doesn’t stop Tulkar from making friends! He loves people, and he loves learning new things, and so he’s very friendly and curious and always asking questions, and he assumes that everyone else wants to learn just as much and so is constantly explaining things to them, both from his own culture and from other cultures he’s seen. (The one that comes up a lot is that if you look up at his forehead you can see that he’s clearly a man, and he’s sorry if he’s inadvertently giving off local cultural signals that would suggest otherwise!)

And the other main feature of his culture, the bit I spent the most time on and drew a picture just to demonstrate, is their face paint! The forehead is basically the information spot--the center bit is gender (zig-zag for male, straight line for female, wavy line for neither) and, sort of, age (you get one dot upon your naming ceremony, which is when you become an adult, three dots after your first big accomplishment or movement in life, five after the next, seven after that, and you don’t go higher from seven, you just start marking your accomplishments elsewhere on your face). Below that, on the bridge of the nose, is tribe (I have not named Tulkar’s tribe yet so that’s just a random symbol), and above it is any ranks they have, political or spiritual (Tulkar is a trainee Warrior of the Wood--the curve for a shamanistic position, the straight horizontal line for a fighting position, the straight vertical line for a trainee, with a fully-trained person getting an X instead). At the ends of that central line between gender/age and tribe are the twinned markings of the totem lodge, which is 50% a spiritual thing, 50% a support/insurance thing, and 100% a requisite adulthood thing (you get your naming ceremony from the shaman of the lodge you choose); Tulkar’s lodge is the Splashing/Swift-Swimming Otter.

I’ve put two other examples below: on the left is a non-binary orc of the Red-Fletched Arrow Lodge who has only just been named, but also is a shaman-trainee (that’s my mistake, starting training under someone should get you up to three dots), and on the right is an experienced warrior-woman of the Tent-Pole Pine Lodge, a leader of warriors, who also has borne two children. Not everyone has a rank/role mark up top, for the record, and it’s not any kind of shameful not to have one! Being in a tribe and a lodge is enough to be respected as a valued adult.

(Children, for the record, only get the tribe paint, so that if they get lost in the woods, those who find them will know where to bring them, or if necessary their bodies, home. There’s a whole little genre of scare-the-littles stories about the wild powers of nature, which are said to respect the tribe paint, seeing children in the woods without it and mistaking them for intruding outsiders, with consequent horrible results.)

Other honors, accomplishments, etc., go elsewhere on the face--the lines on Tulkar’s left cheek are for significant kills, being a child’s sponsor for their naming ceremony gets you some sweet tats on your chin, etc.--but are always painted on, not tattooed, unless they are inescapably permanent. That would pretty much be a fully trained and dedicated shaman (and associated things; when he finishes his training and takes his final oaths, Tulkar’s status as a Warrior of the Wood will be tattooed on), someone who has borne children (though getting those dots tattooed is optional), or what the orcs call “sacred honors,” which is when some omen occurs that a shaman divines to mean that an orc has done some significant service to a nature spirit, and is being honored for it. Sacred honors are tattooed in a hidden place on your body, and then you choose whether to show them in your face paint or to keep them secret.