Orange

The night was incredibly dark without stars. The embers of a campfire gleamed, and aside from the breath and sounds of nature, it was quiet. It felt like a long time since he and Nine had spoken.

When last he'd seen her, it was before Rohan, Boltin's death, the night terrors, violence or waking in sweat. Now, those flashbacks had worsened so much he lost himself for an entire hour most mornings. Winnie had told him he needed to talk about them, to search for the underlying cause. He had gone to Bryn, of all people, before the Siege. Intending to try. But ... Bryn was in a worse state, and the meeting became Ryheric bolstering the Gondorian scholar, instead. He needed it more.

Then Eirik's falter, and avid revival. The Siege. Aeldiet. Laney. Emmie. Sicarra. Dandy. Winnie. Bryn, after the additional suffering he had gone through.

Everything else kept overtaking. More important. More urgent. More pressing.

Ryheric had grown up on the streets, without pride. He'd kept himself in the background and moved others to the fore, to survive. Normal. Something he'd recently learned to experiment around and challenge. And it was easily dropped when necessity struck.

Like everything else in his life until so very recently. Possessions, places, people.

As he sat by the fire with Nine, something about the woman's voice drew him back to that dark night in Gondor, when he had first been upon Son of Mouse, Kacis, as was Ryheric's secret name for the black colt. "Escape". A time when he had shut his heart, a time before he'd returned to the sickly khaki of Bree and all it brought with it.

They spoke in a familiar, foreign tongue, tones of the desert and the far, far south. Hushed and close. There were no prying eyes there to judge. 

Ryheric was in that attentive state. The mindset where he was avid; learning. Willing to take deeply to heart all of what was said. The chaos, the rebellious anarchy laid aside like a peace-bound weapon.

"Do you have what you need?" She asked him, softly. Her tone burred.

"... What I need?"

"Yes. An equal or greater amount coming in than going out. What you need that prevents you from your version of running away - plunging headlong into danger. You put out. You’re a leader, you wrangle people. That takes a lot - I can’t wrangle a group. Do you have a source that refills that in you?"

He considered her words closely. Not avoidant, but curious. Intent.

"...What do you think I need?"

When she answered, there was almost no pause. No hesitation, the words danced free.

"A space you don’t have to pretend or hold back."

There was an invisible, profound impact in being looked at. Properly looked at, properly seen.

He was silent for a long few moments. He looked at her, then, in the light of the embers. She gazed back at him, knowing. Gentle and challenging him both at once.

"How do I get that?"