CHAPTER 35

Lanri and Mara made good time in the forest, despite the state of the trail. Slick mud that seemed like it wanted nothing more than to pull her feet out from under her and swallow her cane whole blocked their path several times, forcing them to cut through the underbrush to get around it.

Under the thick canopy of trees, the forest floor seemed to exist in a perpetual state of twilight, with only the occasional gap letting sunlight through to form a shaft of yellow from the sunlight catching the pollen and spores floating in the air.

“I miss the winter in Cerene already,” Lanri complained before sneezing.

Mara looked back at her, and cocked her head. “You’re joking, right? The cold and starving peasants?”

Lanri sneezed again, and held up her hand so Mara would wait until she got it out of her system. “The firm frozen ground or cobbled streets, and the breathable air.”

“You really do have the constitution of a scholar,” Mara said with a snicker. “Didn’t you say you grew up on a farm? How did you ever survive?”

“Reluctantly,” Lanri huffed, which provoked a giggle from Mara. It wasn’t quite a sincere sound, the mirth of the moment spoiled by her worry for Ithella. “It’s only this bad for a few days. I’ll probably be f–” She trailed off for a moment, anticipating another sneeze. Frustratingly, it never came. “I’ll probably be fine after the next rainfall.”

She glanced up for a moment, looking through the trees. Judging by the color of the sky, that would not be anytime soon. Ahead, Mara started to increase the pace, much to Lanri’s chagrin. “Please don’t speed up,” she asked the blonde.

Mara looked back at her again. “I did ask you if you could handle coming with me.”

“And I can!” Lanri said, indignantly. “But speeding up isn’t smart. You don’t know this trail. You’ll trip and break something if you’re not careful.”

“Oh, do forgive me for being in a rush, mother,”

“I’m nobody’s mother,” Lanri told Mara. “Especially not yours. I’m probably not even ten years older than you are.”

“I’m twenty,” Mara simply answered, and that answer sounded about right to Lanri. “You’re looking at the youngest person ever to be allowed into the Cerene city guard.”

“Really?” Lanri cocked her head at the girl. She definitely was younger than most of the guards she’d ever seen, and if she’d been working there for any length of time, she supposed that could be true. “You must have been something special to earn that.”

“Nope, it was just nepotism,” Mara casually said. “Dad did the dishes at the barracks, and after my eyes started to linger on the statue outside of the monastery when we walked past, he called in some favors and got me conscripted.”

“Really? Conscripted?”

Mara nodded as she ducked under a branch, then held it up for Lanri. She’d led them into a small clearing that was covered in a thick layer of moss, with a big boulder at the center. “Oh, yeah! Just a few months before I turned fifteen. At first Sergeant Dathan wouldn’t even let me carry a glaive, and called me too immature for one. After a while I figured out he joined when he was nineteen, though, and–”

Lanri giggled. “And that made him younger than you when he joined, by elven standards.”

“Exactly. And suddenly I was allowed to carry a glaive and was transferred to a different unit as quickly as possible, and as far away from the monastery as possible.”

As they crossed the clearing, Lanri noticed Mara was leaving deep tracks in the moss, crushing the moss she stepped on which quickly turned an ugly shade of brown as the juices inside reacted to the air and sunlight.

“I think I saw you looking at that statue the first time we met,” Lanri said as the memory came to her. “Why didn’t you go back to the monastery on your own? Once you were old enough, I mean?”

Mara shrugged. “What was the point? Should I have just knocked and said hey, I had a few very memorable dreams about your statue once and they taught me a lot about myself, can I come in? Dad told me all they did there was fuck and pretend it was worship.”

“Oh, gods, no!” Lanri said. “I mean, they flirt and make out a lot, but I don’t think I ever saw anyone else have sex the entire time Seeker and I were staying there. Didn’t you learn about Ishara in school?”

“No,” Mara said. “My conscription happened the moment I realized how pretty a woman’s hips can be. That was years before Miss Methander said the priest of Ishara would visit us.”

Lanri couldn’t help but feel some pity for the girl. “The Baron can spend as much of his own treasure on basic education as he wants, and it won’t help when kids’ parents rob them of the chance to go to school.”

“He’s not without blame,” Mara huffed. “He saw me in the ranks a few times. Hells, I even did a stint in the palace guard. One drunk night he went on and on about how awful you were for stealing his son, but never bothered asking why I wasn’t in the school he so magnanimously paid for.”

“I’m sorry,” Lanri said.

Mara shrugged. “Don’t be. I still learned my letters and numbers before this all went down, and I didn’t exactly make a fuss about earning a Silver Dragon’s Claw per day instead of learning geology. And Ithella’s been making me catch up on the god stuff.”

“She has? Why haven’t you asked Seeker about it? I’m sure she’d love to teach you about these things.” Mara gave her an uncertain look. An expression that spoke of hesitation and uncertainty. “What is it?” Lanri asked.

“Well, it’s lots of reasons,” Mara said. “No real opportunity to ask, for one.”

Lanri forced herself not to scoff. “We’ve been traveling for most of a month. You’ve had plenty of opportunities to ask her.”

“No I haven’t! Not really, anyways. I don’t really want to ask my stupid questions with an audience, and I’ve never been alone with her. With either of you, before today.”

Lanri considered that. Instinctively, she tried to contradict Mara, to give an example of when Mara might have been alone with Seeker. But she couldn’t, and she quickly realized that she shouldn’t. “That’s fair,” she conceded. “I can ask her to make some time for you, if you’d like.”

Mara raised her hands in surrender. “Oh, no, no, no. She’s way too scary.”

“You’re scared of Seeker?”

“Of course I–” She started, but paused and shook her head. “Well, no. But she’s very intimidating. Ithella is, too. But… I’ve seen her drop the act, and I’ve seen her naked. So that’s different.”

“Seeker is a sweetheart, I promise. If you have questions about Ishara, she–”

“Can’t you just answer them?”

Lanri blinked. “You want… me to… explain Ishara to you?” The idea had a primal appeal to Lanri, she had to admit. But she wasn’t the most gifted teacher in the world, even when it came to Remeran history. And that had been her life’s work! Did she know enough about the goddess to explain her to someone else? Was she even allowed to?

“Uh–huh,” mumbled Mara with a nod, and a slight blush. “Like, for example, what’s that little symbol her priests wear supposed to be? I understand the other ones. Kukaro’s is the Mask of Comedy, Huin’s is a bundle of grain, and Shala’s is the Rune of Mercy. But hers just looks like–”

Lanri giggled, and put a hand on Mara’s shoulder. “Let me stop you right there. It’s exactly what you think it is.”

Mara considered that for a moment, and then her blush only deepened.

________________

“Come on, Lanri!” Huffed Mara. “We won’t be halfway until we get there.”

Lanri rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know how distance works.”

“And it’ll be uphill on the way back. So that will take even longer.”

Lanri grimaced. Mara’s slightly infantile rushing her was annoying, but at least somewhat endearing. She cared for and was worried about Ithella. That was a good thing, even if it made her impatient right now.

It was a stark contrast from the big red stain that had soaked through the bandage she’d been wearing for the last few days, and straight into the underwear Seeker had made for her. That was completely devoid of charm.

“Did you bring any bandages?” She asked, looking at the bush beyond which Mara was waiting for her, deliberately out of sight. “More than you think we’ll need, I mean. I could use one.”

Traveling with Seeker, Mara, and Ihella had been lovely, truly. She’d enjoyed every day of it so far, except for this one. But she wouldn’t pretend the monastery wasn’t a more comfortable place to deal with… this.

A moment later, Mara rounded the corner created by the bush, holding a roll of white fabric. She gave her a sympathetic look, then pulled a small knife from her belt and cut it in half. “Are you sure you don’t need to go back?” She asked, as she turned around.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Lanri said. “You’d just think that the gods would be willing to fudge the timing a little just this once, considering the company we keep.” She regarded the bloodied bandage for a while. Then, realizing she had nowhere to put it, tossed it to the side and replaced it with the fresh one Mara had given her.

________________

They’d only barely gotten back into a good cadence when they came upon the small lake Thomas had said was once home to the frightwasps’ nest. It was perhaps seventy meters across at the center, though its many offshoots and meandering shoreline meant there were a lot of places that the hive could have been while still being by the lake.

Weeping willows grew close to the edge, obscuring what lay beyond. They also provided what Lanri assumed was a sensible place for a wasp to want to live. Occasional patches of flowers, too, grew along the shore. Big, vibrant bunches of them, which Lanri was very eager to avoid rather than fall into a sneezing fit.

“So… How did you and Seeker meet?” Mara asked, clearly trying to fill the silence.

“Oh, that’s not a nice story,” Lanri said with a dismissive wave, as she squinted, and tried to spot the… She realized she had no idea what a frightwasp nest looked like. “What are we looking for?”

Mara held her hands about a foot apart. “A dark orange, reddish ball, about yea big, with yellow goop inside. The goop’s probably crystalized by now, though.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard to spot,” noted Lanri. Against the green plants and light brown dirt, any of those colors should stand out quite nicely.

“What’s not nice about the story?” Mara asked, as they started to patrol the lake’s perimeter.

“Most of it,” Lanri said. “It obviously had a happy ending, but none of what came the last three months before you and I met was nice. I’d rather not talk about it.”

Mara considered that for a moment. “Well, okay… but… Could you at least tell me about why Ithella respects you so much? Don’t get me wrong, you’re great, but something obviously happened between you two that I wasn’t a part of.”

“I suppose,” agreed Lanri, reluctantly. That was only very narrowly the second worst day of her life, but try as she might, she couldn’t bring herself to think Mara didn’t deserve to know why she’d been roped into traveling to Adampor with her. “A demon took me hostage just after I met Seeker. He was a profoundly arrogant bastard; and he wanted the prestige of not only bringing a Heartwarden to heel, but to actually be able to claim he’d sold one and gotten away with it.”

“Uh–huh,” said Mara, nodding as they walked around a big boulder by the water.

“Well, he organized a big auction. He invited the biggest scum on Eitheris to it, and let me tell you, that’s a surprisingly diverse bunch. Fae, other demons, some people of some kind of spider cult, the pixie that made the sleep charms for the militia, a mage with a pinkette priestess in tow, and, most importantly, an Abanian Inquisitor with a certain dark-skinned elf sedated in chains behind him.”

“Ithella was in chains?” Mara asked, sounding as horrified as she did surprised.

Lanri nodded, severely. “She was in an awful way. Bruised, tired, hateful, and hopeless looking. Until she saw Seeker, that is. Once she noticed her, there was that same spark of hope I felt when I first saw her. That day dragged on seemingly forever, with the demon insisting Seeker and I talk to most of the people he’d invited. He bragged to everyone that I was the perfect yoke around Seeker’s neck. That she’d do anything as long as I was alive.”

“I see a very big flaw in that plan,” Mara noted.

“So did I. That’s why, when that same Abanian that had Ithella in chains won the auction, I drove Seeker’s sword into the demon’s gut. Because I was not going to be a slave, tortured at a whim to scare Seeker into dancing to someone else’s tune.”

“Seeker let you do that?” Asked Mara.

Lanri groaned inwardly. Maybe she should have started on the day she found the dress, after all. That was probably a better way to tell this story. “No, because… Well, she wasn’t really awake to stop me. But that’s not important. What’s important is that when the demon was dealt with, the Abanian’s entourage tried to take me and Seeker by force. And they were going to succeed unless I did something drastic.”

“Drastic?”

Lanri nodded again, and drew her wand, showing it to her. “This was a solid piece of wood, before. I thought my life was over. I thought I was going to be gagged and chained by one of those bastards, if they didn’t just kill me outright. So, I decided to beat them to the punch.”

Lanri paused for a moment as she recalled that moment of true, all-consuming hopelessness, when she decided to destroy the wand and herself with it. “I threw it on the ground just as Seeker was waking up, and I chopped into it with her sword. It exploded. Everyone closest to me was vaporized, and almost everyone else was either killed or wounded by the shrapnel. Ithella made it through unharmed, and… had her revenge on the Inquisitor.”

“Oh,” said Mara, quietly.

“It’s how I lost the foot, and that was with Seeker doing everything she could to protect me. It’s a miracle Ithella didn’t get hurt.”

The pair walked in silence for a while, both scanning the area for the remains of the hive, and seemingly both making a point of not looking at the other. Telling Mara about that had been surprisingly easy, all things considered. The guilt of killing those people, of killing Sheep in particular, still ate away at her slightly, and the grief of her foot was definitely there, too. But… While having her wand back didn’t make it okay, it certainly made it easier to parse.

“You’re amazing,” Mara quietly said.

Lanri blinked. “What?”

“You’re amazing,” repeated the woman. “Y–You lost a fucking foot when you saved Ithella before, and yet you’re here following me on a hike through the woods to save her again.”

Lanri wasn’t sure what to say to that. Telling her she hadn’t meant to save Ithella last time wouldn’t help. Ithella had still expressed her gratitude despite knowing that, and followed them on their pilgrimage to repay that phantom debt. Besides, this time she was doing it to help Ithella. She knew that was a noble thing to do. She knew she would respect another for doing it. But getting credit for it made her uncomfortable.

“Please. I’m just helping a friend. Like I said, she would have done the same for me.” That part was true. Lanri was fairly confident Ithella would subject herself to any danger to protect Lanri. Before they’d left, it probably would have been out of a sense of obligation. But by now, she liked to think she would have done it because they were all friends, like she thought they were.

Silence fell upon them again, and Lanri looked at Mara, trying to gauge how the younger woman felt. Surprisingly, she wasn’t looking at her. It didn’t look like she was even thinking about her, in fact. She was squinting at something ahead of them. That focused expression melted after just a moment, and she started to run ahead.

“What is it?!” Asked Lanri, as she used her cane and did her best to match the pace.

“What do you think?!” Asked Mara, turning around to show the elation and relief on her face before she pointed at a blob of dark red, on soil that had been stained yellow.

“The hive!” Lanri excitedly said, as she followed Mara. The younger woman was literally jumping for joy at the sight, and quickly dropped to her knees beside it. She produced a small flask, and offered it to Lanri.

“Thirsty?” She asked, before sheepishly adding “I forgot to bring a container, so it needs to be emptied.”

Lanri found she was quite thirsty from the hike, so she eagerly accepted it. She unsealed the stopper, and took a big swig–

She spat it out as soon as it was in her mouth. “What the fuck is that?!” Lanri demanded. The contents had been sour and pungent, and smelled vaguely like wine. “Is that… vinegar?!”

Mara cocked her head as she considered it. “I guess I did put it in there a while ago. Just dump it out.”

Lanri did so, and rinsed the flask out in the lake several times for good measure. That water, still cold from the winter, was probably drinkable. It was clear as could be and was and a decent distance from even the tiny hamlet on the hill’s top. But she decided against it. Instead, she simply doused herself in the water, splashing it on her face to rinse away the sweat of the hike as she watched Mara examine the wasps’ hive.

“How come you know so much about these bugs?” Lanri asked.

Mara shrugged. “Five years guarding the farms around Cerene meant I saw lots of things. Including a frightwasp infestation in the orchards in the southern valleys.”

“Would you like to learn more about them? Bugs in general, I mean?”

Mara dug out her knife again, and pressed to the hive’s wall before she looked up at Lanri. “What’s there to learn about bugs?”

“I don’t know. How many legs they have, I suppose? But the First University studies and teaches entomology. If you want to learn more about bugs, or anything at all, really, I could write you a letter of sponsorship. You could go to school. Make up for what you missed because of the conscription.”

It wouldn’t be too difficult to convince the university to let Mara in, if she had the ambition. Lanri had only written two sponsorship letters while she taught, and if she appended one for Mara to the end of the resignation letter she was increasingly certain she should send them, there was no way they would reject it.

“I might take you up on that,” Mara told her with a smile. “But after traveling with all of you, I’m far more interested in learning more about the gods than about bees and beetles.”

Lanri let out a short laugh. “I’m sure Seeker can pull more strings to let you study theology than I ever could for a mundane field. Ithella too, now that I think about it.”

The two remained in silence for a while as Mara poked and prodded at the nest. It was a soft but vaguely springy material, a little like a suede shoe. There weren’t any wasps around that either of them could see, though. So it was probably safe to cut it open. Still, as Mara lined up her knife to drive into the nest, Lanri instinctively drew her wand, and aimed it at it.

It dawned on her relatively quickly that a wand hurling a wad of slag at a swarm of wasps probably wouldn’t help the situation much, but gods damn it, she felt better when holding it. She held her breath, and watched as Mara put her weight on the knife, and drove it into the nest. For a moment, the young woman looked at it with a peculiar expression, studying the blade which was buried almost completely to the hilt into the thick material.

“It almost feels like–”

With a hiss, gas escaped through the cut, and the pressure within quickly pushed the blade back out before it started to spew the yellow ichor they’d come all this way to find. It covered Mara’s face and chest almost instantly, and even from several paces away, Lanri could smell the saccharine and putrid smell of rot and decay. She could only imagine being in Mara’s position.

No wasps seemed to be pouring out of the hive, which was a relief to Lanri, even as the young woman retched, and without hesitating, crawled away and started to wash herself off in the frigid lake water. The water around her ran yellow almost immediately, milky and opaque. Lanri quickly ran to her side, helping her get the stuff out of her eyes and away from her nose and mouth as quickly as possible.

It only took a few moments of washing in the cold water before they both started to shiver despite the sun warming their skins. Lanri guided Mara away from the water, and to a flat and dry patch of ground, where she aimed her wand and intoned ”leudach lasag.”

The pink and gold flame of Seeker’s making quickly sprouted to life, basking them in a pleasant, hot glow. Mara slowly looked at it, seemingly stunned from the ordeal. “Are you okay?” Lanri asked. Another shiver rolled across Mara. She subtly nodded, and when she didn’t say anything else, Lanri took that as meaning she needed a few moments to recover. “I’ll fill the flask with that… stuff, and we can go back once you’ve had a moment to catch your breath.”

Reluctantly, Lanri moved towards the hive. It had been torn open, blown apart by the pressure, starting at where Mara had cut into it. The viscous, foul smelling ichor slowly seeped out of the gaps, and onto the soil. The knife Mara had used had been blown a few feet away, and Lanri used it to scoop, scrape, and wipe the stuff into the flask until it was as full as she could manage.

The fact that this yellow goop could be of some use, let alone save Ithella from a life threatening insect bite was several kinds of confusing to Lanri. This stuff looked and smelled like poison, not medicine. “So, once we get back to Ithella, what are we…” Lanri trailed off.

Mara was still sitting by the magic fire, but she was staring into it, slack-jawed with eyes half shut, and an oblivious smile on her face. The sight was unsettling, and as she looked down at the flask and knife in her hands, all stained yellow by the wasps’ secretions, Lanri had a strong urge to wash as much of it off of her as quickly as possible. She quickly moved back to the nearby water, and scrubbed herself and the outside of the flask clean.

Once she was done, she was shivering anew. She moved back to Mara and the magic fire, and warmed her hands by it as she looked at the young woman. Her eyes had turned bloodshot in the few minutes since she’d been sprayed with the ichor, and she was taking slow, deep breaths. “Mara?” Lanri quietly asked.

The blonde swallowed and blinked, then slowly met Lanri’s gaze. She gave her a lopsided grin, asymmetrical like the smile Ithella had used to put on a brave face, but contrastingly sincere. “I feel… funny,” she whispered.

Lanri nodded. “I can tell. Come on, we should get out of here.”

Mara ignored the remark, instead looking down as she picked up a handful of dirt before giggling when she dropped it. “I feel good,” she added. Lanri got to her feet, and offered a hand to Mara. She seemed to consider that for a moment, going cross eyed as she tried to focus on it. “You’ve got… lots o’ fingers,” she said. “They’re really… pretty.”

Lanri smiled and patiently continued holding her hand out for Mara. She’d coached Faron through a few episodes like this, when his alembic blew up and he got a face full of the potion he was working on. Doing it for Mara might actually be kind of nostalgic. “We can talk about my fingers as much as you want, once we’re back at the inn.”

“Deal!” Mara said, entirely too loudly. She struggled to her feet with Lanri’s help, and after a moment spent showing her to use her glaive as a walking stick, they set off.

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“Y’know who I like?” Mara asked with the intonation of someone who kept getting interrupted, despite Lanri having not gotten a single word in edgewise for the last mile.

“Ithella?” Lanri guessed.

“Ithella,” Mara agreed. “She’s so… so fucking gorgeous. And she’s terrifying. And I love her. I love how strong she is, and how skilled, and how she can just make my toes curl in bed.”

“I bet she can,” Lanri said. The elf had spent longer than she and Mara combined had been alive learning how to defeat humanoids in battle. It made sense to her she’d be adept at making them feel good, too.

“Sex with her is the best, Lanri. Ishara, you have no idea how good she can make me feel. I’d have to study at the monastery in Cerene for years just to be able to return the favor.”

Lanri giggled and suppressed the urge to point out that she, a woman with an angel of love and lust fawning over her, probably had a fairly good grasp on how good her friends’ sex was. “Do you actually want that, then? To study with the priests of Ishara?”

Mara giggled and nodded, before leaning into Lanri a little more as they walked. She was pleasantly surprised by just how much of Mara’s weight she could stand to support. The prosthetic foot still felt different, and she wouldn’t feel comfortable going anywhere without the mysterious cane, but it was clear that it was doing its job.

“It might be nice, yeah,” sighed Mara. “If there’s a temple of Ishara close to one of Daray’s somewhere.”

“If there is, I’m sure Seeker kn–”

“Oh, Seeker! She’s even scarier than Ithella!” Mara interrupted.

“So you’ve said. You’re wrong, though.” Lanri said. Seeker was many things: dashing, brave, beautiful, powerful, and smart. But she wasn’t scary.

“No, I’m not!” Mara said with a chortle. “She’s a Heartwarden, but she chose to train with the Valkyries, didn’t she?” Lanri nodded. “And she was so good at it that they gave her one of their swords! That’s scary! I saw her during the battle of Bodrin. She was unstoppable!”

Lanri considered that. “I don’t see how that makes her scary. She can be ruthless sometimes, but only when she has to be. She doesn’t even lay a finger on most of her enemies.”

Mara shrugged, as if she was certain she was right, and Lanri was wrong. “I’d hate to be on her bad side, is all.”

They ducked under a branch, and emerged back into the mossy clearing from before. Their footprints were still there, though they’d turned completely black by now, like a layer of char.

Or, at least some of them had.

Parallel to the tracks she and Mara had made, Lanri saw a series of new prints. Four-toed and bird-like, they were spaced far apart from each other, and sank far deeper into the ground than theirs had. These were made by big animals, and they had been in a hurry to get to the lake.

“Mara, I think we should pick up the pace,” Lanri nervously said as she started to urge the addled woman across the clearing. From down here, Lanri could see the village that was their destination, still far ahead and steeply uphill.

Mara only giggled. “What’s the rush? Ithella’s a big, strong elf. She won’t be hurt by having to wait for a few more minutes.”

Lanri groaned. “The rush is that it’s dangerous out here, and that I’m cold from helping you wash that shit that’s got you acting like this off of your face.”

Mara’s giggles grew into a manic laugh, and she suddenly lurched to the side, pulling both of them down into the soggy moss.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Lanri demanded as she landed on it, and Mara then landed on top of her.

“Well, if you’re cold, I can think of a few ways to warm you up,” Mara said with that same unsettling, lopsided grin. Her eyes were still bloodshot, but her pupils had opened up far more than they had any right to at this time of day. The blonde leaned down, and placed a sloppy kiss on Lanri’s cheek. “I should thank you for helping me save Ithella, shouldn’t I?”

Lanri thought about what she should say, what she could say to someone who so obviously wasn’t thinking straight. She wanted to say something to snap her out of this, or at least to keep her from trying this before they were safely inside.

Lanri brought her hands up to try and gently push Mara off of her. It was to no avail as Mara simply giggled and pinned her arms above her head, wrists held by a single hand. She tried to wiggle herself free, but couldn’t. Mara was a soldier, and her grip had the strength to prove it. The woman straddled her legs to fully pin her in place, and fumbled for something around Lanri’s belt with her free hand. Lanri’s eyes went wide, and she was gripped by worry and fear about what Mara might do in this state.

“Y’r so… serious looking,” Mara mumbled, as her free hand emerged into view holding the bottle of Ichor. Then she started to pull the stopper free with her teeth.

A dagger of icy panic consumed her at the sight. It was an awful feeling. It took her back to being pinned to the forest floor by Mick, flooding her whole being with the certainty that Mara was about to obliviously do the same thing to her. “M–MARA, STOP!” She managed to cry. It was shrill, and frightened sounding, and… it worked.

The lopsided grin faded from her friend’s face, and melted into an expression of sympathy and concern as the vice-like grip on Lanri’s wrists loosened. “Huh?” The woman asked, dumbly. Lanri forced herself to take deliberate, deep breaths that tickled the back of her throat as Mara got off of her, and instead very gently took one of Lanri’s hands into both of hers. “What’s wrong?”

“N–nothing,” Lanri lied. She instinctively scampered back a bit, until she got to the boulder, and could lean against that. “You just… You really scared me,” she said as she hugged her legs and tried her very best to not think about Mick’s hateful gaze.

Mara cautiously came closer, as if approaching a wounded animal. “I’m not sure that’s true, Lanri,” she quietly said. “That was… That was real panic. That was the kind of fear I felt the first time I met Ithella. What was that?”

Lanri swallowed, an unpleasant and dry feeling in the thick, pollen-and-spore-laden air of the forest. “You asked me how I met Seeker before, a–and I didn’t tell you.”

Mara nodded sympathetically. Her eyes were still bloodshot, but the manic, delirious edge they’d held was gone. “You said it’s not a nice story.”

“It’s not,” said Lanri, quietly. She still didn’t want to tell Mara, not really. But the emotional whiplash seemed to be waking her up a little. “I had a group I was traveling with for work. Mick, Tallah, and Jolus, and… I thought they were my friends. But when that work actually paid off, and I found an artifact, it… drove two of them crazy. Mick and Tallah started getting touchy, started flirting, and looking at me in ways I didn’t want them to. They made it clear they wouldn’t take no for an answer to their advances, and when Jolus confronted them about it, they…” Lanri cleared her throat. “They killed him, then held me down and forced me to chew dazeweed. They’d already taken my pants off by the time Seeker showed up and put a stop to it.”

“Fuck,” whispered Mara. She looked ashamed, crushed, even, by the realization that was surely dawning on her. “I must have–”

“Yeah,” Lanri said, quietly but firmly cutting Mara off. She didn’t need to hear her scolding herself over this. Mara had scared her, but she hadn’t done anything wrong, not of her own volition and sound of mind, at least. Neither had Mick and Tallah, when Lanri thought about it.

“I’m… so, so sorry,” Mara whispered as she came closer. “I… that yellow shit, it–”

“I know,” Lanri assured her with a nod. “You still stopped before it went too far. That’s all I care about.”

Mara nodded, then sat down next to Lanri. “Then… let’s just catch our breaths for a moment, and get this stuff to Ithella.”

The two remained like that for a while, lapsing into a silence neither of them seemed inclined to try to fill. Lanri considered using her wand to start another fire and get the chill out of their bones, but getting too comfortable seemed unwise. She sneezed a few times as they sat there, when the wind blew in the right direction and carried the wrong pollen to her. After a while, every time it happened, Mara laughed a little louder. Soon, Lanri started laughing along as well.

When a cloud rolled in and blocked the sunlight that was the only thing keeping them even a little warm, Lanri decided they’d been waiting long enough. With a grunt and the help of her cane, she struggled to her feet, and she soon started to tell Mara she should do the same.

A vicious sound cut her off. It was a warbling rumble, like an eagle’s cry and a crocodile’s growl mixed together. It sounded hateful, angry, hungry…

And close.