Luminous

59 - Bated Breath

One might assume the absent Heloise could have beaten her to the task, but that wouldn't explain how Arinel hadn't heard her leaving despite having been awake for the good part of an hour, and why darkness still seeped out unmitigated from the gap under the door. Like Arinel, the Greeneye lady had probably woken long before the bell, sleepless from the astounding revelations about her dragon nature.

 A sudden inspiration lit up in Arinel's head at the thought. 

Greeneyes...Dragons—Meya.

Of course. Arinel doesn't know. But Lady Crosset would know. 

I should go ask Lady Crosset.

Arinel planted her stiff arms on the yielding mattress and edged to the side. Her numb legs fell to the carpeted stones like lead planks as she swung them off the bed. She hobbled towards the side door, wiggling her hand behind her at the half-risen Fione.

"Rest, Fione. I'll take care of it."

"Thank you, m'lady." 

Fione gave a melodic yawn, falling back to her hay sheet with a grateful flump as Arinel turned the icy metal knob. The solid black of night engulfed her as she stepped over the threshold, blemished only by a sliver of milky white moonlight slashing a slanted path down the foot of the bed. She could just make out Coris's bare toes sticking up behind the lumps of Meya's blanketed feet. 

In the fireplace, pinpricks of orange light peeked from among shambles of ash and blackened timber. The suffocating cold of a desert night would have jolted a regular sleeper from his slumber—but not Coris, who would sleep through an earthquake even without an urging from laudanum—and Meya, who was impervious to the cold due to her inner body furnace.

Hands outstretched, Arinel grasped and groped in the darkness for firewood—but her foot found them first. The resulting thuds of rolling timber was followed by rustling from the bed. Arinel glanced sharply up, just in time to catch Meya's silhouette swaying upright, barely discernable against the backdrop of pitch darkness. She turned around, her glowing green eyes blinking blearily, eerily seeming to hang suspended in mid-air.

"Sorry. Looks like I let the fire die again." 

She mumbled as she slid down the bed, landing with two dull thuds on the carpet. She shuffled drunkenly—though not blindly—towards the fireplace, knelt down to gather the scattered logs, laid them one by one inside the grate, then topped them with kindling. After about a minute of striking flint, a hatchling fire clawed its way out to open air, flickering within Meya's glowing eyes, now narrowed in worry at Arinel. 

"Lady, how come you're here? You been sleepwalking? Thank Freda we weren't shagging tonight."

Arinel reckoned Meya was still too drowsy for modesty. After throwing a furtive glance at Coris, who hadn't wiggled a toe, Meya tossed in a pinch of twigs to coax the fire out further, then turned back to her,

"I'd been meaning to talk to you, actually. You've been acting strange since you came back from the alchemist's. What happened?"

Out of habit more than conviction, Arinel shook her head listlessly. Though she had decided to let Meya in on her mother's murder and follow her lead on the matter, now that Meya was right before her, she was again too dazed to speak.