Born in the Flame

Chapter Fifteen

When I awoke, I had almost forgotten where I was. It wasn't until the light dew and smell of soft decay hit my senses that I realized where I was. I still had a light throbbing ache, but the magic seemed to have done its job.

Sitting up, I looked over to where Birch slept. At first, I was surprised to see him sleep; but then I remember that he drained himself to heal me. I felt weird staring at the dawn elf, but I couldn't seem to pull my eyes away from him. The finer details of his face screamed at me. Birch had long sweeping eyelashes and light speckled freckles. Even though he was a pretty male, he still had a masculine appearance; he had a chiseled jaw, high cheekbones and a prominent nose. When I looked closer, his lips had light touches of freckles on them.

Not trying to look crazy when he woke up, I shifted away from him. For a moment, I was worried about my belongings, but looked to the right of me. There, neatly placed and leaning against the withering wood, was my axe and satchel. I breathed a sigh of relief and thanked myself for being smart enough to pack my items. For a moment, I thought about food and seeing if I could hunt; but then I remembered that I had no wilderness survival instincts and could not hunt. In fact, if I tried I would end up eaten instead.

In reality, there were creatures far larger than me out in the forest. Creatures as mundane as a bear or as ferocious as a dragon hunted in the forests. Even if it was a mere earth dragon with no capabilities to breathe fire, it still could eat me in one bite. Birch on the other hand seemed familiar with hunting. I suppose my hunger could wait until he woke up.

It felt like hours that I sat there and waited for Birch to open his eyes. The moving sunlight through the cracks in the wood were the only indication of passing time. Time moved from dawn to morning and into the afternoon. Yet, when I looked over to the dawn elf, he was still slumped over, passed out. Once, I did check to make sure he was breathing. For a moment, I was scared he was going to wake up and be frightened by how close I was to him, but nothing seemed to wake him. His chest moved up and down in a steady rhythm. It was startling to see the dawn elf be so... still. Yes, he was a stiff dawn elf with a constant expression of apathy, but he moved. If I was of a simpler mind, I would have buried him for being deathly still. Unfortunately for me, I knew the stillness that came with death. It was sunken and damn near depressing. Yeah, he was asleep alright.

So, instead of trying to make very unsubtle loud noises to wake him up, I started to read the journal instead. Yet again, the journal consisted nothing of value to the mission at hand. Still, I did not want to skip any pages or miss any words my father had written. Honestly, I'd probably waste more time skimming the pages than actually reading. I didn't want to skip anything even if it was just the ramblings of a young, angry dwarf. Gods, I just hoped that it didn't take my father a majority of his lifetime translating the damn book. I hoped that just reading his thoughts made it seem far longer than it actually was.

Before I realized it, dusk fell over us again. Yet, I still waited. Stars started to blink into the sky and brighten as the sun fell in the western sky. When darkness was casted over us, I illuminated a small flame to keep as a light in an attempt to keep reading. Even though I ignored the small whoosh the flame made, Birch awoke with a gasp.

"How long have I been asleep?" He asked me with wide eyes.

"Pretty much the whole day, and I assume for all of last night." I said looking at the dawn elf, "You seemed drained, so I let you sleep."

"You didn't try to wake me up?" He asked, an inkling of incredulousness coated his tongue.

"You haven't properly slept in days and you drained yourself yesterday saving my life." I raised my eyebrow at him, "The least I could do for you was let you rest. Besides, I can't hunt or anything, so it's not like I had much to do besides keep watch."

"We should be leaving." He said, stretching out his stiff back. Gods, this was more annoying than I had anticipated.

"With what energy?" I scoffed.

"Fine, I'll go find us some food."

"Awesome, I'm starving." I gave the dawn elf a toothy grin before he exited the log.

For a moment, as I watched him leave, I thought about the fact that he didn't carry much of a weapon with him to hunt with. Nor had he carried a single blade this entire trip besides a small dagger at his hip. Was he going to hunt with just a dagger? Well, he was the professional survivalist; not me. Who was I to judge the obviously poor decision he was making?

Of course, I just had to be proven wrong when he walked back up, not an hour later, with a large deer thrown over his shoulder. A knife wound lay at the nape of the creature's neck. Gods, the male must have tackled the creature and stabbed it. I winced a bit at the scene I conjured in my imagination. The idea he was actively chasing a deer and lunged for it, dagger in hand, was slightly entertaining.

My eyes tore away from the journal as I watched him carefully skin the deer and slice off bits of its meat. Some were obviously for us, but the rest of the carcass was given to the drake. Aingidh's yellow eyes darted to the creature and began to devour the beast. Three rows of razor-like teeth shredded the flesh as Birch staked our meat with sticks he had sharpened to a point.

"Can you start a fire for me?" He asked, still carefully staking our food. Without hesitation I obliged. I'm ashamed to say that the sight of food had me drooling, even if it was going to be the plainest slab of meat I've had in awhile. Birch twisted the meat over the fire I made. Once he finished he handed me the stake and continued on with his.

"I didn't realize deer meat actually tasted this good." I said through a mouthful of food.

"It doesn't, you're just really hungry." He gave a slight smile. He pulled his own slab of meat from the fire and began biting into it.

"Every time I learn something new about you, the more confused I am." I said.

"How so?" Birch eyed me as I continued to eat.

"You hunt with only a dagger and your magic. You can run off of little to no sleep. You seem to sleep better outside, yet you're the son of a noble. I don't know, you don't make sense to me."

"It's not that strange." He said plainly, taking another bite.

"To you, maybe." I said, tossing the stick aside that held the meat. "For me, you are probably the most unique person I've met."

The two of us sat in silence. Birch didn't seem to have any idea how to respond and I didn't know how to follow up with anything after what I said. Instead of trying to make conversation, I went back to my journal. I scoured all the pages I could before I inevitably fell asleep. Even though I was sleeping, I could have sworn something had been placed over me to keep me warm.