"Take it easy now. Slowly! Oi...! Why do you have to be so bloody big and heavy?" The young woman grunted out a rough chuckle as she braced her boots against the earth. Her arms were encircled around the waist of the tall, lumbering man, with her shoulder pressed into his armpit.
"One might ask why you have to be so small and slight," he countered, and his voice was deep, touched with a cool, subtle mirth. The sound of it made her think of the river that lay just a few dozen yards away, its waters dazzling in the afternoon sunshine. If a voice could be a tangible thing, she thought, his would be the bottom of the river; cold and smooth and dark.
"Ask my Pa and Ma," she laughed, panting as they limped clumsily together to a fallen tree that lay halfway in the water, but would provide a suitable seat. "Neither of them are small."
The man gave his own chuckle as he landed heavily on the makeshift perch, and his ragged, dark hair tumbled forward over his brow. He leaned over, setting his hands on his knees while he caught his breath. "Perhaps I will," he said, grinning despite the pale pallor of his face. "Do they live in Bree?"
Narys' hands were still clinging to his torso as he sat down with a thud. She froze briefly, then very slowly withdrew and straightened up. "No. Sorry, I...I should have mentioned, I guess. They're dead." She felt the light-hearted mood seeping out of her, as if it were draining down and out through her toes. Her head lowered, and the corners of her smiling mouth turned down.
A thick quiet followed, and then the man spoke again. "I'm sorry to hear it. I was going to ask at some point, what a young woman is doing out in the forest by herself. But I suppose that provides the answer."
Her face lifted at this. "Oh. No. I've been in the wilds since I was little." The sorrowful light vanished now, replaced with a proud little jut of her chin and a glimmer in her turquoise eyes. "My Pa taught me to hunt and shoot soon as I could walk."
"Did he now?" the man breathed, still winded from his trek to the fallen tree. He patted the spot beside him, inviting her to sit. "Odd thing for a man to do with his daughter. Ah, but then I suppose you'll tell me next that you had no brothers for him to teach such things to?"
Narys took the spot beside him, tilting her face to see his, as he still towered over her, even when sitting down. "Nay, no brothers. No sisters, either. Just me."
The man pursed his lips in thought, making his beard bristle around them. “Your mother was accepting of this? Having her only daughter raised into a huntress instead of a lady?” He turned his earth-colored eyes down to her, and in them she saw no scorn or mockery; only curiosity.
She gave a sheepish little shrug of her right shoulder, and her freckled cheeks dimpled as she grinned. “I don’t think she was thrilled about it at first.” Her eyes strayed away slightly as her thoughts turned to the past. “But by the time I was old enough to notice anything, she didn’t fuss about it much. Of course, she always told us to be careful, and sometimes she’d be standing on the stoop, looking for us when we came back.” The smile softened while her mind was filled with the memory.
“Was he a hunter himself, then? Your father?” The man leaned over to pluck up a small branch from the leaf litter. He began to idly strip away the smaller twigs and leaves.
“Aye, when he was younger,” Narys replied with a little nod, still gazing away into the misty green veil beneath the towering trees. “By the time I came along, he was a farmer.”
“And what made him give up the hunting trail?” her companion asked quietly, tossing a broken twig to the forest floor.
“He got old.”
The man let go a deep-chested and jovial laugh. By the end of it, his breath was rasping and he coughed sharply. Narys reached over to thump him soundly on the back a few times, which only made him laugh all the more.
“Ah,” he chortled, his broad shoulders twitching with the remnants of his amusement. “Time is a relentless and merciless master, is it not?” He fell silent then, and when she looked at him again, his tongue was sitting between his lips, and he turned his face to stare across the river.
Narys watched him in quiet pensiveness for a few minutes before speaking gently. “Lots of things are relentless and merciless masters.”
The man remained silent. His thick fingers worked idly at the branch, peeling bits of bark from it, letting them fall to the ground like odd snowflakes.
The young woman beside him did not seem bothered by the stillness. The forest filled the gap with its own sounds of life; the gentle thunder of the river, the chattering of birds in a nearby thicket.
“That is why you’re out here, is it not?” he murmured at length, so quietly that at first, she wasn’t sure he’d spoken at all. But then he swiveled his face to her, and his dark eyes were poignant and searching beneath the bushy brows.
“Hmm?” she hummed questioningly, lifting her copper-colored brows as she gazed at him.
“Here in the wild, you are mastered by nothing. And by no one.” His eyes bored into hers, to a point that it began to feel unnerving, but she could do nothing but stare back into the muddy depths. “You are the mistress of your own little kingdom here in the forest, are you not?” he murmured, as if speaking to himself rather than to her.
Narys’ eyes went round as his words sank into her mind. Her lips parted, but it took several long seconds before she could find her voice again. “...I never thought about it like that before.”
The man gave a slow, weary nod, but did not press her further. He turned back to the river, contenting himself with studying its ever-changing, churning patterns of ripples and sunlight. “I owe you my life, you know,” he said lowly. “I do not enjoy being in debt on the whole. But there is a peculiar sort of feeling that comes with owing you a debt, Narys.” His jaw twitched as he came close to smiling. “I have the notion that the gods seek to humble me in this way.”
His young companion was squirming beside him on the fallen tree, having found the conversation was not especially to her liking. “You don’t owe me anyth-”
“I do,” he interrupted, though his tone was gentle. “Whether you like it or not, I do. I would have died alone in the wild. A fairly unpleasant death it would have been, too.” He shifted a little, sitting up straighter, rolling his shoulders. “One lesson after another. That is what my life has become.” A deep sigh filled his broad chest, and was slowly hissed out through his nostrils. With it, his shoulders drooped, and he looked once again to be the exhausted, ailing patient.
Narys hesitated, before reaching over to lay a hand against his back. She patted the spot softly, while her eyes lingered on his downturned face.
The touch seemed to draw him away from whatever thoughts had threatened to brood over him. He turned to look at her again, and offered a weary grin. “I will miss your company.” A large hand was extended, and calloused fingertips brushed lightly along the freckled landscape of her cheek, before dropping back to his knee.
She smiled brightly, though her eyes faltered for a moment at the touch. And while her cheeks betrayed her with a soft flush of color, she calmly replied, “I’ll miss yours, too.”
