In Kuroinu

The trail of flowers had faded by the time we rejoined the group, but Tianne's hands were still pulsing faint gold at the fingertips and she was walking like a woman trying very hard to look like she hadn't been doing anything.

Mila noticed first.

Her ears rotated toward Tianne the second we came through the underbrush. Her nose twitched. Her tail, which had been wagging low while she sorted through the pack, went still.

She looked at Tianne. Looked at me. Her tail started again, slower. One ear flat, one up.

"You smell like the forest," she said to Tianne. Then, quieter: "And him."

Tianne's ears went red. "We were walking. By the stream. It's a shared environment so naturally the scents would-"

"Her hands are glowing," Llusse said from where she was restringing her bow. She didn't look up.

"They've been doing that," Tianne said. Too fast.

"They're doing it more."

Filia walked over and looked at Tianne's hands. Looked at Tianne's face. Looked at the gold rings in her irises that had been faint brown two hours ago.

"Report," Filia said.

"My healing has improved."

"How much?"

Tianne hesitated. Then she reached for Filia's forearm, where a bramble scratch from the morning's travel was still raised and red. Her fingers touched the skin and the gold flared once, brief and bright, and the scratch was gone. The skin underneath was clean and new like the scratch had never existed.

Filia stared at her arm.

"Instant healing," she said.

"The forest amplified my magic beyond what I thought was-"

"Your magic or the Blessing?"

Tianne's mouth closed. Opened. Closed again.

"Both," she said.

Leonora had been sharpening her sword on a stone near the fire pit. She stood. The scrape of the blade stopping was loud in the quiet.

"Show me," she said.

She drew her belt knife and nicked her own thumb without hesitating. A line of red on the pad. She held it out.

Tianne touched it. The gold flared. The cut sealed.

Leonora looked at her thumb. Flexed it. No scar. No mark. She looked at Tianne the way she looked at weapons she hadn't evaluated yet.

"How many times can you do that?"

"I don't know. I haven't found the limit."

"We should find the limit."

"Please don't cut yourself again."

Mila was watching Tianne's glowing fingertips. Her tail doing the short irregular wag that meant she was working through something, ears rotating.

"Does it hurt?" she asked.

"No." Tianne flexed her fingers. The gold pulsed with the movement. "It feels warm. Like sunlight in my palms."

Mila reached out and touched one of Tianne's glowing fingertips with the pad of her own index finger. The gold rippled at the contact. Mila's ears went up.

"It's tingly," she said. Her tail thumped once, hard.

We packed camp and moved. The forest was denser here and the canopy was lower and the bioluminescent fungi were thicker on the roots, blue-green light at the same slow rhythm as a heartbeat. The air was warm and wet and the magic pressed on my skin like standing in front of an open oven.

Llusse was on point. She'd been tenser since we'd entered the deep forest. Her ears hadn't stopped moving, tracking sounds the rest of us couldn't hear, and she'd stopped talking almost entirely. Her hand kept drifting to her ear and pulling away, a tic that surfaced when she heard things she didn't want to hear.

The watchers were still above us. Warm spots in the canopy that moved when we moved, registering through the Blessing. More of them now. We'd had two our first day in the forest. Today there were six.

Filia walked beside me. Her hand was on her sword hilt, which was her resting state in unfamiliar territory.

"How deep does this forest go?" I asked.

"The maps stop about a league behind us."

"The maps stop."

"Lesdea doesn't map this region. Nobody comes here. The forest's been off-limits since before the kingdom was founded."

"Why?"

"Because the people who go in don't come out." She said it the way she said everything tactical. Flat, factual. "At least, that's what the histories say. Nobody's been foolish enough to test it in generations."

"Until us."

"We had intelligence suggesting a passage through the forest to the northern approach. And we have Llusse."

Llusse's ears flicked backward at her name but she didn't turn around.

I looked up. The canopy was so thick the light coming through was filtered to a dim green-grey. Shapes moved up there, fast and silent, jumping between branches like they'd never touched the ground.

The singing started around midday.

I didn't register it at first. The forest had been full of sounds since we'd entered, birds and insects and the creak of branches and a low vibration I'd started to think was the trees themselves. The new sound layered in underneath all of it, faint, a woman's voice carrying a melody that rose and fell with the movement of the canopy.

Mila heard it second. Her ears snapped forward and she stopped walking.

"What is that?"

Tianne stopped too. Her glowing hands dimmed as she listened. "Singing? From ahead?"

The melody was clear now. High and sustained, in a language I didn't recognize. The syllables were long and vowel-heavy and the singer held each note like she had more breath than a person should. There was no accompaniment. Just the voice, rising and falling, weaving between the trees.

Llusse had stopped dead.

She was standing in the middle of the trail with her bow half-drawn and her ears pointed straight ahead and her whole body locked rigid. She looked like she'd walked into a wall.

"Llusse?" Filia's hand tightened on her sword.

"That's Old Elvish." Llusse's voice was strange. Flat and tight, coming from deeper in her chest than normal. "That language hasn't been spoken in-" She swallowed. "That shouldn't exist anymore."

The melody continued. Distant but getting closer, or we were getting closer to it. The trees seemed to lean toward the sound. The bioluminescent fungi were brighter along the path ahead, blue-green giving way to a softer gold-tinged white.

"You understand it?" I asked.

"Pieces. My mother sang some of the old songs when I was small." Her jaw was working. "Nobody speaks fluent Old Elvish. It died out centuries before I was born. The southern communities lost it when we lost-" She stopped herself. Her ears laid flat. "When we lost the forests."

The muscle below her eye was twitching. Her fingers on the bowstring were white.

Leonora moved to the front, hand on her blade. "Threat assessment."

"I don't know." Llusse was still staring ahead. "I don't know what this is."

"Then we approach carefully."

We followed the singing. The forest opened as we went, the undergrowth thinning, the trees spacing wider, the canopy lifting. More light reached the ground and the fungi gave way to actual growing things: ferns, mosses, ground-cover flowers in pale blue and white. The air smelled different. Cleaner. Rain and honey and growing things.

Mila's nose was twitching nonstop. "It smells like spring," she said. "Like everything is growing at once."

The path curved around a massive root system and opened into a clearing.

Sunlight. Actual, unfiltered sunlight, breaking through a gap in the canopy and pouring down like someone had punched a hole in the roof. A stream cut through the center of the clearing, clear water over white stones, and wildflowers grew in thick carpets along both banks. Blues and whites and pale purples, and the gold of the sunlight on all of it.

A woman was kneeling at the edge of the stream.

Long hair, blonde, falling past her waist. Green at the lower ends like she'd dipped it in moss. Pointed ears. A pink flower tucked behind one of them. She was wearing a simple dress, white, thin enough that the sunlight through it showed the shape of her body underneath, and her body was generous. Full breasts, wide hips, the kind of figure that looked soft everywhere and probably was.

She had her hands on a deer. The deer was lying on its side in the grass and one of its forelegs was bent at an angle that said broken. Her hands were glowing. Green light, pale and warm, sinking into the deer's leg, and the bone was straightening under her palms. The deer's eye was rolling but it wasn't struggling. Her voice held it still. The singing.

Birds were on her shoulders. Two of them, small, brown, sitting on either side of her neck like they'd grown there. More birds in the branches above, all silent, all watching her.

Blonde hair with green tips. Blue eyes. Flowers. Birds on her shoulders. A healer in the forest clearing.

Lucie Menelumia.

I knew her. The way I knew Filia's sword stance and Tianne's healing light and the exact pitch of Llusse's irritation. From pages and screens and a life that was getting harder to remember clearly. The gentle elf who raised birds and flowers and never had a mean thought in eighteen hundred years. Main heroine of the light elf faction. The one everyone fell in love with first.

She was real. Kneeling in the grass with a deer under her hands and sunlight in her hair and she was real.

She finished the melody. The deer's leg straightened fully under her hands. The glow faded. She lifted her palms and the deer lurched to its feet and bounded into the undergrowth without looking back.

She watched it go. Smiled. Her whole face moved when she smiled.

Then she saw us.

The birds scattered. All of them, the two on her shoulders and the dozen in the branches, a burst of wings and panicked chirping that lasted two seconds and left silence. The deer was already gone.

She didn't run.

She stood. Slowly. Grass stains on her knees. Her hands still faintly green at the tips. Her blue eyes wide and fixed on us, moving from face to face.

Filia. Leonora. Tianne. Mila.

Llusse.

Me.

Her eyes stopped on me. Her lips parted. Her head tilted. Her ears moved forward.

She walked toward us. No hesitation. Straight across the clearing through the wildflowers with the sunlight on her hair and her bare feet leaving prints in the grass. Filia's hand went to her sword. Leonora shifted her weight. Llusse's bowstring creaked.

The elf woman stopped in front of me. She was shorter than me by a head. She had to tilt her face up to look at mine and the sunlight caught her eyes and they were very blue and very close.

She reached up with both hands and touched my jaw.

Her fingers were warm. She traced the line of my jawbone from my ear to my chin, slow. Her thumbs moved to the bridge of my nose. My cheekbones. The rough line of stubble along my jaw that I hadn't been able to shave properly since we'd entered the forest.

"You're male," she said.

Her voice was like the singing. The same register, the same sustained quality, like every word had more air behind it than it needed. She said "male" the way a naturalist would say the name of a species she'd only read about.

Her fingers traced my eyebrows. My temples. The corner of my mouth. She was cataloging me with her hands, her head tilted, her lips slightly parted, her blue eyes moving from feature to feature.

"The bone structure is different." She pressed her thumb against my brow ridge. "Heavier here. And here." Jawline. "The skin is rougher." Cheek. "Is this hair?" She rubbed her thumb across my stubble. "It IS hair. Growing from the face."

"That's enough." Llusse's voice was edged and her hand was already between us, slapping the elf woman's hands away from my jaw. "Hands OFF."

The woman blinked. Looked at Llusse. Looked at her hand. Looked back at me. Back at Llusse.

"Oh." She folded her hands in front of her. "I'm sorry. I've never-"

"I KNOW."

"I've only seen illustrations in Elder Nol's books and they didn't capture the-" Her eyes drifted back to my face. "-the texture."

Llusse stepped between us. Her back was to me and her ears were flushed red from tip to base and she had one hand flat on my chest pushing me backward.

"He has a name," Llusse said. "And personal space. Both of which exist."

The woman looked at Llusse. Really looked at her for the first time. Her gaze tracked down Llusse's body, across her face, settled on her ears.

"You're an elf," she said.

"Obviously."

"A southern elf." Her mouth softened. Her brow drew in. "I didn't know any survived outside the forest."

Llusse's hand on my chest curled into a fist. The fabric of my shirt bunched in her grip. She didn't say anything for a long moment and the clearing was quiet except for the stream and the wind in the high branches.

"Some of us managed," she said. Each word placed down separately.

The elf woman stepped closer to Llusse. Not past her, not around her, directly to her. She lifted one hand, stopped, seemed to think about it, and placed it on Llusse's shoulder.

"You're welcome here," she said. "All of you are."

Llusse's jaw was so tight I could see the tendons in her neck.

The woman turned to the group. "My name is Lucie Menelumia. I tend the stream and the southern groves." She looked at each of them in turn, her head tilting, her eyes open and bright. She looked like she'd never locked a door.

Her hand was still on Llusse's shoulder. Llusse hadn't removed it.

Filia stepped forward. "I'm Filia Shiora. We're traveling north through the forest. We don't mean to trespass."

"You aren't trespassing. Not exactly. The watchers have been tracking you since the edge. If you were a threat, you'd have been turned away at the border." Lucie said it without concern. She was looking at me again. "They reported a male in the party. I thought they were confused."

"They weren't confused," I said.

"No." Her eyes moved over my face again. Her fingers twitched at her sides. "You're very-" She stopped herself. Her cheeks went pink. "Elder Nol should meet you. Come."

She reached out and took my hand.

Llusse's ear twitched. One hand shot out and grabbed Lucie's wrist.

"What," Llusse said carefully, "are you doing."

"Taking him to the settlement?" Lucie looked genuinely confused. "It's this way."

"You can lead without holding his hand."

"I could." Lucie paused. Looked at my hand in hers. Looked at Llusse. "But the path is narrow and the roots can be tricky and he might fall."

"He's not going to fall."

"The roots are very tricky."

Llusse's ear was twitching at the tip. The rapid pulse that came right before she hit things or said things she'd regret.

"Llusse," I said.

She looked at me. Green eyes burning.

"The roots might be tricky," I said.

Her mouth opened. Closed. She released Lucie's wrist, crossed her arms over her chest, and walked ahead of us down the path.

"I'll scout," she said. To nobody.

Lucie watched her go. Turned to me. "Is she always like that?"

"Yes."

"She's lovely."

Llusse's ears, fifteen feet ahead, went redder.

Lucie led us into the trees. The path was narrow and the roots were, in fairness, a genuine hazard, knuckled ridges of ancient wood that crossed the trail at ankle height. Her hand was warm in mine and she walked with the easy confidence of someone who'd traveled this path ten thousand times. She stepped over roots without looking.

Her fingers kept moving against my palm. Small exploratory touches, the pad of her thumb tracing the lines of my hand, her fingertips testing the texture of my skin. She was doing it absently. Thinking about other things while her fingers learned his.

Behind us, Leonora's low voice: "Threat assessment?"

Filia: "Unclear. She healed a deer."

"People who heal deer can also choose not to heal people."

"Noted."

Tianne was looking at the trees. Her glowing hands had dimmed to a faint pulse but her eyes were wide and her head was turning slowly, taking in the forest. "The magic here," she said softly. "It's everywhere. In the roots. In the soil. I've never felt anything like this."

Mila walked beside Tianne. Her tail going at a steady medium wag, her nose working nonstop since we'd entered the clearing.

"She smells like rain and flowers," Mila said, nodding toward Lucie. "And green things. Growing things." She sniffed again. "And bread? No. Honey."

"The stream-keeper's grove produces clover honey year-round," Lucie called back without turning around. "The bees nest in my hair sometimes."

Mila's tail sped up.

The forest was changing around us. The wild overgrowth was giving way to tended growth, subtle but visible, trees with lower branches cleared, pathways maintained, the fungi arranged along the roots in patterns that were too regular to be natural. Flowers grew in clusters that followed the trail. The bioluminescence shifted from blue-green to a warmer gold-white.

"I have a question," Lucie said. She was still holding my hand. Still exploring my fingers.

"Go ahead."

"The elf girl. The southern one."

"Llusse."

"Llusse." She said the name carefully. "She's very protective of you."

"She'd disagree."

"She put her hand on your chest and moved you behind her body. That's protective." Lucie glanced up at me. "Are you... mated?"

Ahead of us on the trail, Llusse stumbled on a root she'd navigated perfectly on the approach.

"It's complicated," I said.

"How complicated?"

"Several women complicated."

Lucie's eyebrows went up. She looked at Filia behind us. At Tianne. At Mila. At Llusse, who was walking very fast and not looking back.

"Oh," she said. Her grip on my hand didn't loosen. If anything, her fingers interlaced more firmly with mine.

"Several," she repeated. "All of them?"

"Some."

"Which some?"

Llusse's voice came from ahead, tight and carrying: "You don't need to answer that."

Lucie looked at me. Looked ahead at Llusse. Smiled.

"She answered for you," she said.

The trail opened and the settlement appeared and Lucie kept my hand and the trees sang in a language that had been dead for centuries and I was walking into Alfheim holding hands with an elf woman who'd never seen a man and behind me Llusse was furious and Tianne's hands were glowing and Mila's tail was going and Filia had her hand on her sword and Leonora was cataloging exits.

Standard day.

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