Savages

15: Resonances

It was so dark that Judit had to shuffle through the woods, arms stretched in front of her face, to avoid walking into trees. It only half worked. Her shoulders, legs and hands were bruised from sudden branches, the flesh of her face bloodied by close-springing thorns.

The grazes on her face and hands stung and the bruises on her legs and arms smarted and she was blind and so, so cold she was shivering, her shivers were shivering, like she was a newborn puppy, abandoned and mother-hungry on a 3am pavement.

All she could think about was him.

It was summer in her thoughts of Brock, always summer. It was summer, and his dark curls were sun-kissed with streaks of chestnut, and she watched over a bronzed, energy-rich shoulder as he made hard things look easy, skilfully working green wood.

It was summer, and she looked gratefully up at his dirty, kind face when he praised her hunting, pointed out the skill in a missed shot immediately after Gaen had ripped her technique to pieces.

It was summer, and he comforted her with easy, gentle words when she got upset about something so stupid she didn't even remember it now. But she remembered him.

She knew it was wrong, but it had felt inevitable. Each step on the path of wrongs was arguably individually innocent, but naturally led to another wrong that was consequent of and bigger than the last, until she wasn't quite sure when exactly she'd crossed the line. But there was a line, and she definitely had crossed it.

She'd spent a lot of time thinking about when that was. Perhaps when she noticed—and couldn't stop noticing—how physically attractive he was. How tall. How good the glow of the sun looked on his skin.

Perhaps when her heart began to loop into itself when she caught a glimpse of how long his lashes were, the way he closed one eye slightly when he smiled. No, not then. People recognise other people as good looking all the time. Hegri was good looking. So was Lintie. It was just a fact.

So maybe it was when she hungrily sought out his company. They'd take long summer days hunting when the sun barely set. They climbed, and they ran, and they explored the island, and the animals, the foods they found, were an afterthought at most. Lintie never came–she was an ex-vegetarian, and still squeamish about blood–and Judit had to admit that she liked that.

But no, that was innocent, too.

Yes, his company on those long summer days, every meeting of eyes, every laughing word, made her feel alive, and like a good person, exactly who she wanted to be. But they weren't alone on those trips. Gaen was always there, and often Merle too.

Judit gasped as a thorny branch lunged from nowhere in the night, ripping into her chin and neck, not letting go of her skin as she jerked away. It took her a while to disentangle it from her hair, face sore, fingers numb.

It seemed impossible that those summer hunting trips, when the world held her gently in its warm hands and said, eat from me, sleep on me, everything here is designed for you, happened in the same place as this hostile, life-abandoned wintertime.

She was so cold it was like her clothes didn't exist. She tripped on a root as she pulled free of the thorns, then one hand out, the other to her sore face, set off on her painful journey again.

Yes, she'd thought he was good looking, right from first meeting him. And he was skilled, and older too, and of course that was sharp. But with all that, her feelings were still under control. It was just a meaningless crush.