The woods are lovely, dark and deep. Eislyn breathes hungrily of the cool damp beneath the trees, smiling despite the stumble of her lungs over the air's wet heaviness with woodrot and fungal dusts.
It could not be more unlike the desert. And yet, and yet, Annen walks beside her, sword at her waist; lines on her face, now, from a life lived with a constant richness of expression, but the same despite. Annen, whose presence makes her feet fall light and her face covered in smile.
Their errand is sober; grim even, perhaps. And yet.
There was, long ago, a paladin who walked over dunes, body unmarred and face fearless, with a pit of doubt and longing within her; doubt of her own worth, and of her ability to uphold her god's purpose; of her welcome in others' lives. And now she walks on the rich carpet of leaf litter, not so hardy, not so afraid to look afraid; but within her she is a clear, still pool, and today she feels gilded with sunlight in her very soul.
Today feels like the turn of the world has brought her to an unexpected forgiveness for squandering precious chances it first brought her when she was too callow to seize them, even as she understood what she was allowing to escape her.
With Annen at her side, it's easy to feel that this time, if things fail, it won't be because she lacks the courage.
When she sleeps, tucked in her bedroll, her dreams squirm at the edges with ancient strangeness, the nearness of the Blue-Winged Land's border with realms beyond. She sees the reassuring presence of the Monarch, treading their realm, but always some way off; cresting dim blue hills, walking into doorways, glimpsed through screens of tall wild grass or rain too solid to push through.
"I trust that I am where I am meant to be," she says serenely to Annen, in waking hours, as they travel deeper into the forests.
"What's likely to happen, when they come?" Annen says, mouth tight and eyes heavy on Eislyn's face.
Eislyn spreads her hands. "The fae," she says, "are beyond understanding."
"That reassures me none, Eislyn."
"I'd not lie to you." The paladin reaches out and lightly takes her hand. "Not even to falsely lighten your heart; the fae are endless danger and mystery. I do not know. I do know that they spoke to me, on my way north; that they are willing to speak, given cause, and that they see cause in this, as we do. That is not nothing."
Annen exhales through her teeth. "Last I saw you, you lay dying," she says. "And I could do nothing. If you tell me there's nothing for me to do here, either—"
"You're not doing nothing," Eislyn says. "You're making me brave."
"Aiya!" Annen flings her hands wide, aggrieved. "Were you always like this, paladin? I don't recall quite wanting to throttle you so much—"
Eislyn laughs and catches her hand, swinging it gaily. "I'm sure I remember it," she says. "Aiya, paladin! Mercy, man! What foolishness now!"
"Oh," Annen says, trying to wrestle her hand still, "I think I recall, now—" and finds herself pulled into the paladin, Eislyn's back against an ancient tree, snug against each other and breathing fast.
Eislyn hums, low in her throat, fingers still tangled with Annen's; her other hand finds her companion's waist, settling lightly, testing its welcome.
"Eislyn," Annen says hoarsely, leaning her forehead against the paladin's, not so much meaning to as wilting from upright like warm wax.
"You're not doing nothing," the paladin murmurs against her throat. "This is never nothing."
"Eislyn," Annen mumbles. "Eislyn—" and peels herself away, to arm's length, shaking. "Don't. Don't ask me for this, then suffer watching you die again."
Eislyn closes her eyes, draws air deep in her lungs, and holds it there even as her body threatens to fold in half, choking on the cool of it. She lets her hands slide gently fron Annen, and fists them into the hem of her shirt.
She nods, and shakily lets the air out of her.
"After?" she says. "After — when I live, still?" and can't make her voice more than small and slightly pleading. "I have waited so long, Annen."
Annen inhales sharply. "Eislyn," she says. "Don't. Please. I can't — I can't hope, you understand? I — it hurts my heart. I know what it is we're about—"
The paladin breathes and nods her understanding, and holds her hands out, silently beseeching for Annen's to be placed in them.
"I'd never hurt you a-purpose," she promises, and turns Annen's warily granted hands over, palm up; pushes herself up from the tree's trunk at her back, and bends over them, courtly, to put a careful kiss in each.
Annen pulls her hands back with a groan — almost a growl — fingers flexing. "Don't," she says.
"If I'd told you," Eislyn says, "if only I'd told you, then last time, you might not have run. If I'm to make any mistake now, Annen, it will not be that one. Not again."
"My heart," Annen says hoarsely, refusing to look at her, gaze almost over her shoulder, sightless into the trees.
"I will take all care I can of it," Eislyn says softly, touches Annen's elbow, and walks around her. "Come, then — let us take care in the other ways we need. Let us sit and eat; we've a way to go before tonight."
Eislyn lies awake in her blankets for long enough that she knows not when her eyes fall closed and replace the sight of Annen's own sleeping face with dreams. In the way of the Blue-Winged Land, it does not immediately strike her that there is anything peculiar; that instead of a bedroll, Annen lies on the ground in the full armour of a knight, a station she has never held and would never seek. Her arms are folded across her chest, shield atop; field argent, a long single feather azure in pale, an anatomical heart gules in fess point. Her hair surrounds her peaceful face as if floating in water.
Eislyn smiles upon her for an uncounted time before she realises that she is tickled, in the great open wound within her own chest, by a trembling flower-bud, delicate forerunner of spring; and comes to the knowledge she is dreaming. Even as she does, something moves amid the dream of trees around them; the turn of a great head, a rack of antlers that two men hand-in-hand, arms outstretched, could not match for span, eyes like mist-haloed moons.
"I attend," she says aloud, and rises.
Annen sleeps on; and Eislyn would have it no other way, whether she is here in truth or only a shadow within Eislyn's mind. She breathes carefully, feeling the anxious tightness in her lungs; settles her hat upon her head and flute in her belt, and walks out among the dream of trees to meet with the fae.
