Bard and His Lia

CHAPTER SEVEN: ACCEPTANCE

        That especially cold night, he knew she would watch for him to come home, and though he had stayed out late on the barge, and though he had finally sneaked in the back way at the bottom of his house and ghosted through his rooms in the dark to fetch a crust of bread for his dinner, still she must have known, for still she came.  When the inevitable knock sounded on his door, he closed his eyes, dropping his head in defeat.  He sighed long and heavily.  Feeling a thousand years old, immensely weighed down with sorrow and torment, he made his way to the door and opened it to face her.

            She stood in silence in the moonlight, looking like a perfect, though sad, statue, but for the red welt at the corner of her mouth where Blaine had struck her.  The sight of her was a hot blade through Bard's ribs.  She searched his face for a few seconds, opened her mouth as if she would speak, paused, closing it, then finally said, in a low and quiet voice, “I. . .wanted to see that you were all right, and to. . .thank you, again.”

            Bard stood silently in his doorway, his breath a cloud in the cold night, the only proof that he himself was not a grim stone statue.

            “Will you not speak?” she asked him quietly.

            Bard shifted his weight painfully from one foot to the other and fought a wince, for he was much battered from the previous night.  “You've no need to thank me,” he told her with a sigh, and fell silent again as the power to speak left him once more.

            “Are you all right?” Lia breathed after a moment, watching him intently. 

            He kept himself carefully still. 

            “I'll be fine,” he told her gently. 

            Lia blinked at him, clutching her shawl about her and shivered - or maybe trembled - he wasn't sure which.  “Will you come and have dinner with me?” she asked. 

            He looked away from her, shifting his weight again with a sigh, a heavy frown on his brow.

            “Please,” she added in a whisper, clutching her shawl again with another shiver, this one stronger.  He met her eyes, which stared imploringly into his.

            “Lia,” he sighed, but could not continue, merely shaking his head slowly.  For he had not the strength to tell her all that was in his heart and mind.

            “You look like you could use a good meal and a warm fire, poet,” Lia said, and Bard could see her work hard to muster one of her playful grins.  “Come with me,” she breathed, reaching out a hand toward his. 

            Bard would not move.  “No, Lia,” he told her, his face anguished.

            “Why?” she whispered, and Bard looked away, glowering into the distance.  In his periphery, he could see her tremble again, and shift restlessly.  Then, to his utter surprise, she blurted, “Oh, for heaven's sake, Bard!  Don't be such a melancholy, stubborn fool!  After the night you had last night, you need a hot meal and a warm hearth, not to creep about in the dark here and go to bed hungry; and if you won't come, mark my words - I shall knock you low, and, big as you are, I'll find a way to carry you over there and up all those stairs myself!”

            Bard turned to look at her at once with wide eyes and high brows of amazement.  Despite the desperate situation of his heart, despite the aches and pains in his body, despite the bitter cold in which they stood, Lia's passionate, frowning little face, with her flashing eyes and steaming, angry breath, in the heat of her caring-driven task-taking of him, caught him so perfectly off guard and struck him so funny and endearing that he could not help but grin in genuine amusement.  She was a fierce and fiery spirit, and his admiration of that was the last weight that tipped his resolve.