the wind's like a whetted knife; Eik

The halberd is oiled and sharpened. Eik saw to it himself, working first the whetstone over the blade, then the oiled cloth. “Know your weapon,” someone once told him (he doesn’t remember who- they’re gone now, and he can only hold so many in his mind). “Out there it’s your best friend. Your only friend.” It turned out that man was wrong. Your best friend, in life, would be your best friend on the battlefield. And the others, the men and women you travel with and train and drink with, the people with whom you spend what precious little time you have in this life, in a fight they're worth more than any tool that could be held by two hands alone.

But... it never hurts to have a sharp weapon.

So Eik cared for his weapons like he would a living child; with an overabundance of tenderness. It was an old habit, hard to unlearn, and benefited the blade just as much as himself. Simple, thoughtful work allowed his mind to unwind and drift, to sink into the fuzzy space between words and thoughts, shape and color.

When he finally returns to their room (he feels wrong every time he thinks of it as theirs-- their places do not have walls or ceilings or floors, feather beds or lamps or-) he leans the halberd on the wall next to Isra’s bow and quiver. He kicks off his boots (his first action in this room, always) and walks across the room to stand at the open window, hands on the smooth wood of the windowsill. He only looks at her in peeks and glances that are almost shy- a not insignificant part of him suspects that if he looks her straight it will be the end of everything, he'll crawl into bed and convince her to never leave. He could, he knows he could. It is a great and terrible responsibility not to. Instead he looks outside. A dark strand of trees stands between him and the horizon, which shimmers and sways, oceanic, beneath the gently flickering stars. Night sounds and smells trickle into the room; crickets and moonflower, wind and pine. As they did the night before and as they will tomorrow. The air is full of the kind of peace that knows what is to come but resists with a wise smile.

(And perhaps he has chosen to close his senses to that which he does not want to face- for beneath everything, it isn't hard at all to hear the soft hum of tension that stitches everything together. It is not smiling.)

He looks down at the palms of his hands and remembers how difficult it is to wash them of blood. It seeps into the cracks of the skin and burrows beneath the nails. In his mind’s eye he still sees all that red, still feels the warm slick of it. He turns his hands over; beneath the night’s pale light his scars are like moonshavings, silver and smooth and cold to the touch. He does not know if he hears the ocean reaching out from behind the trees, or if the sound of the waves is only in his imagination, inextricable from his own rolling thoughts.

Eik turns and takes a step toward Isra just as her voice swirls to the forefront of his attention, and all other thoughts fall away forgotten. “I’m afraid.”

Oh, of course she is afraid... this is what makes her human, and this is why he loves her. Because she would face down a den of wolves single-handedly without a sliver of terror-- but this isn’t just about her. This is about something bigger. It would be wrong to say she shouldn’t be afraid. They all should.

“Me too.” Eik smiles sadly, gaze flickering over the woman he loves so fiercely it almost-almost breaks him each morning. (Love is like that, sometimes, so grand it threatens to collapse in on itself; universes are born in the same way.) 

He beckons for Isra to follow with nothing but a look behind him when he opens the door to the terrace and steps barefoot into the night.

Nestle