Of Gods & Champions: Book I: Fate

VII. Kindred Spirits

THE MOON SHINES THROUGH THE TOPS OF THE green forest before me, casting it's light across the shadowy snow and cutting the chilly wind swiftly.

I hold my rifle tighter when a shadow appears close to mine, but it's just Bailan stepping closer, stretching his bright lantern out far.

"How come you get the lantern?" I say, speaking for the first time since Ronin placed us third in the guard rotation. She had started out with herself, followed by Jeggar and Eleia for a few hours, and then Bailan and I for the period of time that marks the transition from night to day, dark to the light of dawn.

"Because Ronin gave it to me to ensure that you had your hands free to take out anything that threatens us," Bailan responds calmly, shifting away from me and circling the lantern forth, here and there, checking for a presence in the ever-present shadows. "You're our best shot."

I look down at the toe of my leather boot. "I'm lucky is all."

He shrugs, and offers me a grin, his pearly sharp incisors glinting in the lantern light.

"You've got a pretty good aim," says he.

I realize that I don't really know how to accept a compliment. No one has ever really been eager to give them, and so I've never learned to take them. The feeling that I'm acting like a fool rises in me like panic as I try to convince him he's wrong.

"I can't even shoot a bow and arrow," I tell him pointedly. "Not without the arrow ricocheting off a roof and flying back towards me like a sharpened boomerang."

Bailan's smile has disappeared, and he's cocked his head at me, studying me... taking me in. I feel very awkward, and I turn my head away, though I still feel his amber gaze piercing the back of my head.

"Have you ever noticed," he says conversationally, "that the moon makes your hair glow, as if every fiber of it is made of some little particle of stardust? The blackness of it then is endless, like looking into a churning sea that you can get lost in. I could stare at it all night."

Self-consciously, my hand floats up to my hair, brushing a few strands that have escaped my ponytail back behind my ear, but they continually fall forth again, frustrating me as they slip my fingers. Suddenly a warm, large hand brushes them away, and ever so gently strokes and coaxes my hair behind my ear in one smooth motion.

I glance up at Bailan's face, close to mine, his gaze intense as he stares at me, hand poised next to my face still.

It's an oddly tender moment, and the look on his face is of admiration, I believe. I am unsure of what to do. I've never been the best with people, particularly men... and a man Bailan is. I can feel it, feel the energy of it as he stand so close, his broad shoulders and chest making him larger than me, his arms, strong sinewy. Romance, or whatever is happening right now, is not coming to me easily, and though I wish to, there's no stopping what comes out of my mouth next.

"So far all we've established is that you're oddly fixated on my hair," I say, and instantly regret it, biting the very tip of my tongue so hard my mouth is flooded with the tangy taste of blood.

Bailan throws his head back and laughs, a deep, warm laugh that I feel inside of me, spreading to every inch of me and making me feel alive, making me feel a lot better about what I have said.

"You seem to have something on your mind, other than guarding," he comments, briefly touching my shoulder before leaning against the swell of the hill, lantern hanging low.

"We do march against a full army of gigantic monsters that can swallow us whole and leave devastation in their wake," I point out. "Wouldn't you?"

"If you put it like that," he admits sheepishly, "I suppose I should have a lot on my mind as well."