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chapter one. along the coast
"Look at you, scribbling away."
Fallon shut the book abruptly and shoved it beneath her crossed legs.
Early daylight filtered through the canopy above, casting soft the shadows beneath her eyes. Her night had been yet another sleepless one.
This was not a peculiarity for the half-elf. A lifetime of sleeping rough hardly endeared a woman to the bedroll. Indeed, despite earnest attempts in roadside inns, tender meadows, beside another, alone with herself, Fallon had never succeeded in a good night's sleep. Days spent skulking in the shadows meant a certain restlessness when forced inert. It was usually exhaustion that took her. Fallon preferred it that way. All the better to keep the dreams at bay.
She did, however, scorn the weight of ill-rest on her mental acuity. She should have heard Marth from a mile away, or else sensed the subtle shift of the air around her. Perhaps she should have even smelled him, for he still carried the scent of campfire ash in his mess of ebony curls. Marth was least adept in the art of whispered footwork, making her folly all the more embarrassing.
She shoved the poisonous self-criticism aside in place of a more immediate annoyance: interruption. Her scowl was unbridled but Marth parried with a grin and a hum of good humor.
"The upper hand for once!" He exclaimed, taking a seat beside her. "Just wait until the others hear of this."
"Har har. You'd be lucky if either of them believed you," she retorted. "Only yesterday you mistook a boar for a rock. And need I remind you of the misstep in Wyrm's Crossing?"
"Oh don't, would you? It's too early for me to nurse a migraine."
"One might say it'd be deserved."
"Yes. One might say. I tend to disagree with one."
"More's the folly. Last man who disagreed with me met the end of my blade. After I pilfered his pockets, of course."
"That'd be the same one who lost his life savings at cards? The same who you bedded and fled at the altar? Your stories, Fallon. You ought to have been a bard."
A smile bent Fallon's lips, like a thin ray of light breaking the overcast. The silver scar that slashed from brow to cheek wrinkled. For all her vexing, she couldn't deny a spot of joy, no matter how fleeting. Such opportunities were growing thinner by the day. They were on borrowed time.
