The traveler awoke to a cold shower soaking his body yet again. Did this land ever go more than a few days without damnable rain? He sputtered, wiped a hand across his eyes and rolled to his side to seek his torn cloak. It was not where he remembered leaving it. Muttering quiet oaths as he pulled himself up on his elbow, he scanned the sopping ground around him, still not finding it. His eyes landed on Kitten stoking a very weak fire, still oddly burning despite the downpour. Frustrated, he ran his roughened fingers through his dripping hair, pushing it out of his grimy face futilely.
Kitten leaned forward then, and lifted up his neatly folded cloak from somewhere near her. With a bashful smile she offered it back to him, and he thanked her for keeping it dry as he retrieved it from her grasp. As he opened the cloak to throw around himself, he saw that there were now crudely sewn seams where the rips had been. The thread was overly thick and did not match the cloth, but the girl had thoughtfully mended his cloak while he slept.
With a look of genuine surprise, he spun the cloak around to look over her resourceful handiwork and with a softened tone of gratefulness, he thanked her for her unexpected act of kindness. Especially for an item most decent folk would have tossed into the rag pile.
He wrapped the cloak around himself, letting the deep hood slide over his face, obscuring his features with shadow. Then he joined Kitten under the nearby tree to escape the brunt of the sky's deluge, leaning back against the lichen-covered bark of its wide trunk, rucksack lying across his lap.
They sat quietly together for a time, watching the grey mist rise from the tepid bog as the chilled rainfall assailed its surface. Playing with the ties of his battered rucksack, the traveler asked her if she had enjoyed her meal the previous night, remembering his own poor opinion of frog meat. She nodded, saying it was better than she had expected, and that such creatures did not live where she was from. She had eaten moose mainly, in childhood, prepared in as many ways as a crafty cook could manage.
That surprised him, as moose were sizable prey not easily taken. He asked whether her father had hunted their meat, but she shook her head. Their meat had been traded for, and her father had been an apothecary of sorts dealing in medicines and tonics. And that she too had learnt a bit of the art and could make burn ointments and anti-poisons. He teased her then and asked if she made love potions, because that would guarantee her a fine manner of living in a place such as Bree. With a playful smirk, Kitten replied that she did not, but would he buy one if she did?
The traveler's voice deadpanned then, and he answered that he would be interested in a potion with the opposite effect – one that made you forget. His hand slipped inside his rucksack and he retrieved his smokes as she asked the inevitable why, and somehow lit it in the wet air surrounding them. He answered that the sting of love could be unbearable.
He took a long, deep draw and released the line of smoke in a steady stream as she turned to him, and in her naive way, said that she thought the good outweighed the bad in love. He took a while to answer, mulling old memories, and then agreed. It was true, but once love was gone away, a heart was not so easily mended as a cloak.
Kitten told him she believed it was a good thing, even still.
He choked on his pipe-weed.
Flicking away the remains of his smoke, he asked if she had chosen a new destination for them. Kitten immediately countered with asking him what she had said wrong, because he always changed the subject when she said something wrong. The traveler shifted his sitting position, clearly uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation.
She asked him about things he preferred not to speak of, he replied.
But how would she know what things he does not want to talk about if she does not ask, she countered again.
Do you not know enough?
No.
You left Bree with me when you knew me less.
You've asked me questions, and I've answered them...
He sighed, both his mind and his heart racing furiously. His carefully constructed stony walls, now openly challenged by a nosy waif he hardly knew just weeks before. He rubbed his temple in agitation, and thankfully the girl did not press much harder.
She pulled out her map and opened it wide, studying the illustrated landscape, and as she did so, the traveler noticed a series of small sketches on the back of the parchment. Apples, mushrooms, the pipe-weed hut they camped in one night, her bear in a stream... and several portraits of them. He traced a fingertip over the closest sketch. He had not seen Kitten draw during their travels and they were impressively detailed.
She folded her map hastily and explained that she often sketched at night; she had once illustrated her father's apothecary notes. He asked if she had planned to return home eventually, but she said that there was no home to go back to – her father was likely dead, their house probably burnt. And that was why she chose him in Bree to accompany her, as he seemed to have no home either.
The traveler nodded once, but did not elaborate on what he was agreeing with.
