Quickburned

Shattered

Some weeks ago...

Makan gave it her best, but so long, bleeding slow and hanging by her feet, was a little too much to be walking on after—even for a godblooded. So while she rested a bit in the late afternoon shade of scraggly trees by the side of the dry riverbed they'd been walking along, Caleb strode out to the middle of it. Evening was coming on, and there were still some miles to be made.

"Alright, Dirt, come find me, pal. We gotta catch up the demon queen, and I need yer feet t'do it," Caleb muttered, then with a smidgen of power and a lot of will, whistled through his fingers. The shrill sound echoed more strangely than it ought in the empty landscape, carrying loud and long through the air.

"What now?" Makan asked.

"Water, first off. Then we keep goin'. Gotta catch the demons up. I'll carry ya till Dirt gets here, no worries." He cast about for a good spot, then dug down through the riverbed till the water he knew was there started seeping up into the small pit. Makan watched him with glazed, exhausted eyes.

"Who is Dirt?"

"My horse. Ah, here—" The empty canteen at his belt was swiftly filled; the water a little silty but no worse. He drank, filled it some more, and tromped back up the bank to settle in the shade. He passed the canteen over to her.

"You... named your horse Dirt. Already the ballad I am composing is falling apart. My lead is a bedraggled—what are you, anyways, to be out this far? A desperado? Some kind of outlaw? —and his valiant steed is named Dirt." Makan drank and scrubbed her face with the edge of her scarf, making a face at the taste. "Please, why is the horse named Dirt?"

Caleb laughed, smothering it a little in his muddy fist. "He's named that on account of the dirty buckskin color o'him. Sorry dove. Neither of us have e'er been the dashing hero sort."

Makan took another careful swallow and passed the canteen back, then lay back, an arm flung over her eyes. "Hmph. If we survive this, you will be. Once I am done. No one wants songs about stumbling exhausted through the desert, or drinking from muddy waterholes, or nearly dying to overgrown bugs. They want shining deeds, good triumphing over evil, and all of that."

"Ain't that just life all over." Caleb's laugh was a little darker, and he shook himself to settle the stinging thoughts. He left her to fill up the canteen again, and soak whatever spare cloth they had to hang cool around necks and heads.

"C'mon, girl, up you get, hold on t'me now..." Caleb scooped her up with an arm under her knees and started walking again along the riverbed. Makan locked her fingers underneath Medicine Man's strap at his back, laid her head against his shoulder, and slipped into drowsing. "Pobrecita. Been a helluva time, hasn't it."

His shoulder ached even with Lysistrata's scarf wrapped close around it, though the bleeding had stopped. The red woman was wound through his thoughts just as tight, and her jasmine-and-firedust scent still lingered with every breath he took, making joyful warmth seep up from somewhere under his breastbone. He'd much rather it be Lys he was carrying, presuming she'd even allow him in the first place.

It'd been a long while since he'd lingered over someone so. Sure, there'd been a bevy of little loves, someone to pass a pleasurable night or three with, with nothing more to it understood by everyone. But only Sainen had ever been his true partner, the one who could keep up with him (and often surpass him) in more than just plain desire, and not since then had anyone else kept his heart in their hands.

Until the night in the Red Moon Hall with Lysistrata. They'd spent nearly more time talking than anything else, and the hours had stretched long in the dark till he could have sworn it'd been days he'd spent with her. If he could've explained what it was that drew him to the woman, what had him hanging on her words as much as she hung on his, why he loved she called him "sunshine" and "cowboy" (he'd not touched ranch work in years), what made the air between them feel full of heat and crackle and make the bitty hairs rise like a summer lightning storm—