Red Rivers and Nightmares

13. Crows

We had left Erranson a little over an hour after dawn but are not as far as we should be if we had kept our progress from yesterday. All because of me. Iien had tried to claim it was to make sure we did not exhaust the horses but I know better.

I ended up developing blisters from all the walking and movement over the past few days because of my pampered life had left my feet unable to handle walking such long distances. I was planning on keeping the knowledge to myself but not long after we started walking the horses for the second time yesterday I tripped in my attempt to not step on them as hard and one of them burst.

It did not matter that I attempted to keep my pained noise to myself because Akun heard me and smelt blood seconds after. What followed would have been annoying but a little funny before we left but now I can only feel amused and strangely heartbroken as I remember all of them being overly concerned about my extremely minor wound. I have attempted to not think much about my latter feeling.

That is why I am currently sitting atop of Ro and we are going at a slow walk. Thankfully, it appears the marauders, and Nyra, have decided that they need Weret as we get ever closer to it. I wonder why they made such an arc away from Weret as the weather is quite hot and humid and most people would take advantage of a river's coolness, but I cannot know their mind.

I try to keep from yawning as the past few nights of not sleeping well is starting to catch up to me. I am thankful that when my vague nightmare of Fia and faceless others woke me up that it was Rion who was on watch. He did try to get me to describe my nightmare to him but I did not want to share. Instead he told me about hunting with his siblings and the joy all of them felt when Willow, his youngest sibling, was born safely. I ended up dozing off to him rubbing salve into my feet while I listened to his happy stories.

When I next woke up I was back in the tent and dawn was upon us. My brothers seemed none the wiser about me escaping the tent or that I had spent alone time with Rion, again. Part of that might be due to the fact that Akun fed off of Iien last night so we could have made much more noise and not had to worry about waking them. At that thought I grip Ro's reins tighter and I look at the saddle in embarrassment. It is not like we are even doing anything scandalous. It has just been comforting touches and talking. Nothing else. But... his voice really is lovely.

Iien calls a halt to our forward movement and my tiredness is shoved back as dread has me looking around and the fear of what else he could have found has my heart pounding. I see nothing, and at the curious, if slightly annoyed, expression on Akun's face is anything to go by then he does not smell anything either. Our horses stop and Rion comes running back from his position ahead of us.

My brother nods to Rion, "You should shift back and get into Akun's saddle. We still need to eat. You can be our scout again once you have finished eating."

I am not the only one who sighs in relief at the prospect of food while continuing our forward momentum. I am only sightly embarrassed when my stomach growls loudly at the thought of food. I had completely forgotten until he mentioned. Fortunately, Rion's own stomach makes noise of his own hunger as he finishes his shift from wolf to human. As my gaze is brought to him I notice that he has some dark circles under his eyes. I feel guilty until I remind myself that he had watch last night, my nightmare did not keep him up.

A traitorous thought brings up the night in Erranson where I did keep him up. I try to ignore it as I dig through one of my saddlebags for the preserved food we had brought.

This time Iien is sharing his food with Rion as he guides Snow to stand by Oaken. Rion is quick to settle in the saddle behind Akun so that he can take the food Iien is offering him. For whatever reason it seems that all three have agreed to not have me share as much as me. I do not know if there was a discussion I was not privy to or that there is some silent understanding on how I could not handle having less food. It makes me feel tightness in my gut that I try ignore as I gratefully chew and swallow my food.