In Kuroinu

Tianne was already gone when I woke up. The cot was warm where she'd been and the pillow smelled like lavender and there was a cup of tea on the small table beside the bed, still steaming. She must have left minutes ago.

I sat up and the welts on my back dragged across the sheet and I sucked air through my teeth. Parallel lines from my shoulder blades to my lower back, raw and stinging, where a priestess who'd never raised her voice in nineteen years had clawed me like she was trying to climb out of her own skin. I twisted to look over my shoulder. Couldn't see them. Didn't need to. Every one of them burned.

I put on a shirt. Carefully.

Outside, the village was doing its morning. Smoke from cookfires. A rooster that had been going since before dawn and showed no signs of quitting. Someone's laundry was already hung on the line between two houses, dripping onto the packed earth. A kid ran past me chasing a chicken and neither of them looked like they were winning.

Filia was at the well, filling canteens. She'd already been up long enough to have her armor on and her hair tied back and her sword at her hip. She looked at me when I came out.

"Morning."

"Morning." I stretched. My back pulled and I stopped stretching.

Filia watched that. Her eyes caught where I cut the motion short and her chin tilted and she didn't say anything about it but her mouth pressed flat for half a second before she went back to the canteens.

Mila was helping an older woman carry a basket of vegetables from a cart. Her tail was going at its usual frequency and her dog ears swiveled toward me when I stepped outside, even though she was facing away. She turned, saw me, and her tail sped up.

"Good morning, Haruto!"

"Morning, Mila."

She beamed. Went back to the vegetables. Her ears stayed pointed at me for a while before slowly rotating back toward the conversation she was having with the old woman.

Llusse was at the archery range behind the inn. Her bowstring carried from the courtyard. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Steady and fast and she'd been at it long enough that the rhythm had gone mechanical.

Tianne was at the village center.

I almost didn't see what happened because I was drinking the tea she'd left me and walking toward the well to help Filia with the canteens, but there was a commotion near the healer's hut and I looked up. A man was being carried in by two others, his arm bent at a wrong angle below the elbow, his face gray with pain. One of the bones was pressing against the skin from underneath. Bad break. The village healer was already coming out, wiping her hands, and Tianne was there too. She'd been inside the hut, probably praying or helping with supplies, and she stepped forward when she saw the arm.

"May I?"

The village healer looked at her, looked at the break, and nodded.

Tianne put both hands around the man's forearm. She closed her eyes. Her lips moved in the first syllable of a prayer.

The golden light came on like a lamp.

It flowed from her palms and wrapped around the broken arm and the man made a choking sound and his face changed from gray to pink and the bone shifted under his skin, visibly, like watching a film in reverse. The wrong angle straightened. The bulge where the bone had been pushing from inside smoothed out. The swelling went down. The bruising faded from purple to yellow to nothing.

Tianne opened her eyes and let go.

The man moved his arm. Bent it. Straightened it. Bent it again. He stared at Tianne and his mouth was open and the village healer was standing behind him with the same expression and neither of them said anything for a long time.

"How does it feel?" Tianne asked. Her voice was steady but her cheeks were flushed and she was looking at her own hands like they belonged to someone else.

"It's..." The man flexed his fingers. "It doesn't hurt."

"Good." She clasped her hands in front of her like always. The golden light was gone but the faintest shimmer still sat at her fingertips, like heat rising off pavement. "You should rest it today. Just to be sure."

Filia had stopped filling canteens. She was standing at the well with a canteen in each hand and water dripping from the one she'd forgotten to cap, watching Tianne with her jaw set. Before last night that arm would have taken Tianne an hour of focused prayer and a splint. The village healer would have had to set the bone manually first.

That had taken seconds.

"That's incredible, Tianne!" Mila had appeared from somewhere, vegetables forgotten, her tail going at a rate that suggested she might actually achieve liftoff. "You healed it so fast! Did you learn a new prayer? Was it a special technique? Your hands were GLOWING."

Tianne's blush went from her cheeks to her ears and down her neck and she opened her mouth to answer and nothing came out and she looked at me across the village square and her lips pressed together and I knew exactly what she was remembering because I was remembering it too and every person in this square was between us and none of them needed to see the look on my face right now.

I raised my tea cup to her. She covered her face with both hands.

The sound from the archery range had gotten louder. Thwack. Thwack. THWACK. The intervals were shorter. Llusse was firing faster than she'd been firing five minutes ago and each impact sounded heavier.

I walked around the back of the inn. She was standing twenty paces from the target, pulling and releasing, pulling and releasing. Every arrow was dead center. The cluster at the bullseye was so tight that the shafts were pressing against each other and there wasn't room for another one and she was still firing into the same spot. Her last arrow hit the one before it and split the shaft down the middle and buried itself where the first arrow had been.

She stared at the target.

"Lucky shot," she said. To nobody. Her back was to me and her voice was flat.

She nocked another arrow. Drew. The string was vibrating at a frequency I could hear and her shoulders were bunched and her ears were pressed flat against her skull and she wasn't breathing right. Too fast. Too shallow.

The bowstring snapped.

The broken ends whipped and one of them caught her across the inside of her forearm and she hissed and looked down at the red line rising on her skin and she stood there for a second holding a bow with no string and a welt on her arm and then she threw the bow. It hit the fence and bounced into the dirt.

"DAMN IT."

She walked off. Past the archery range, past the fence, into the tree line at the edge of the village. She didn't look at me when she passed even though she had to know I was standing there. Her ears were flat and her jaw was locked and her hands were balled into fists at her sides and the welt on her forearm was already swelling.

I picked up her bow. Checked it. The frame was fine. Just the string. I leaned it against the fence post and followed her.

She'd gone far enough into the trees that the village sounds were muffled. I found her sitting against an old oak with her arms crossed over her knees and her forehead on her arms and her blonde hair hanging over her face. Her ears were invisible under the curtain of hair.

I sat down next to her. Close enough that my shoulder was a few inches from hers. The ground was cool and damp and there were acorns everywhere and a beetle was making its way across one of them like it had somewhere important to be.

"Go away," she said into her arms.

"No."

Silence. The beetle reached the edge of the acorn and fell off and started climbing the next one.

"Filia was first." Her voice was muffled. She still hadn't lifted her head. "Tianne was second. I know how numbers work."

I didn't say anything.

"I'm not jealous."

"Okay."

"I'm NOT."

"I said okay."

Her head came up. Her eyes were red at the edges and her jaw was tight and she looked like she was about to punch me and cry at the same time and hadn't picked one yet.

She shoved my shoulder. Hard. My back hit the tree trunk and the welts from last night sang and I managed to keep the wince off my face but only barely.

Her hand stayed on my shoulder. Fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt. She wasn't looking at me anymore. She was looking at her own hand on my shoulder like she was trying to figure out how it had gotten there.

I covered it with mine.

Her ears emerged from her hair. They were scarlet. The tips were almost trembling. Elven ears were the worst liars I'd ever encountered. She could control her voice and her face and her posture but her ears did whatever they wanted.

She didn't pull away.

We sat like that. Her hand on my shoulder, my hand on hers, both of us looking at the trees ahead. A bird was doing its call somewhere up in the canopy and the beetle had made it to a third acorn and the morning sun was coming through the branches in bright patches that moved when the wind did.

"Llusse."

"What." Still not looking at me.

"Whenever you're ready. No rush."

I squeezed her hand once. Let go. Stood up.

She didn't move. Didn't look up. Her hand stayed where it was for a second after mine left, hovering over her own shoulder, and then it dropped to her lap.

I walked back toward the village. Halfway there I heard a sound behind me that might have been a word but was too quiet to make out. I kept walking.

When I got back, Filia was sharpening her sword on a new whetstone. She looked up when I came through the tree line and her eyes went past me to the forest and then back to me.

"Is she alright?"

"She will be."

Filia studied me for a second. Her hand paused on the whetstone. "You're collecting us."

She said it flat. Factual. The look on her face was the one she wore when she was assessing a tactical situation and hadn't decided if the outcome was good or bad.

"I'm not collecting anyone."

"Two of three. That's a pattern." She went back to sharpening. The sound of steel on stone was rhythmic and steady. "The power works. Tianne's proof. I'm not arguing that."

"But?"

"No but." She tested the edge with her thumb. "Just noticing." She looked up at me and her blue eyes were clear and direct and she didn't blink. "She's going to need a new bowstring."

"I know. I'll find one."

"The market opens at noon." She went back to her sword. Conversation over.

Mila found me an hour later with a plate of bread and dried meat and fruit and she'd arranged it in a way that suggested she'd spent actual time on the presentation. She held it out with both hands and her tail was wagging and her ears were perked forward.

"You haven't eaten."

"I was going to."

"When?"

That was a fair question. I took the plate. The bread was warm and the meat was sliced thin and there was a small yellow flower tucked between two pieces of apple. I looked at it.

"That was already there," Mila said quickly. "It fell in while I was carrying the plate. From a bush."

"Uh huh."

"It did."

"I believe you."

Her tail stopped wagging. Went rigid. Then started again at double speed. She turned and walked back toward the inn and the tips of her ears were pink and she bumped into the doorframe on the way in and pretended she hadn't.

I ate the bread. It was good. The flower stayed on the plate.

In the distance, through the trees, a bowstring was going again. Llusse had found a spare string somewhere and the rhythm had started over. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

Every shot center.

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