Wychling

Chapter 48

Tal awoke to bright sunlight. She blinked, feeling groggy. Everything was fuzzy and warm. The sunlight hurt her eyes and she blinked again trying to clear it. She tried to bring her hands up to cover her face, but they were caught in something warm.

She yanked her hand free of Suma's leg and felt the sharp sting as blood rushed back into her hand. She tried to wriggle her fingers, but they just wouldn't respond. She knew how it felt. With all the aches and pains she had, she was half empty herself. Still, it was as nothing to the leaden lump in her stomach.

She wriggled free of Suma, who huffed at the discomfort and dislodged her to the floor, roughly, before stretching out and returning to his sleep with such contentment she felt like kicking him. She felt prickling in her hands as she pushed herself to her feet and up to her full height, before taking a deep breath of the cold air. She could smell herself. It was not pleasant.

She stormed towards their camp, the incandescent rage that had formed last night now burning slow and sure. She could see Corby on the morning watch, staring at her, mouth open, clearly uncertain how to reconcile this storming young woman with the crying girl from the night before.

He started to ask her something, but she swept right past, spotting some water boiling by the fire. She snatched the wooden handle of the bucket and stormed towards the river, stopping by her tent and grabbing her towel, a simple roll of wool that wasn't quite big enough to cover even her small frame.

It had been cut from the longer roll of Ulrich's. Everything they had had to be carried on their backs. She could already tell how she would struggle to dry it out on rainy days. No doubt it would take priority over her clothes.

She looked back over her shoulder seeing Corby still staring at her, mouth opening and closing, unsure of what to do. She turned back around as he darted into her tent and shook Ulrich, who vaguely waved a hand to acknowledge her return.

Clearly, he had been fraught with concern. Bastard. Not that she had wanted anyone to chase her. Even the prospect of talking to them was terrifying as it was awkward. Better to rage. Anger was good, it burned all else away, and fuelled your legs to step one after the other. It was powerful, and fierce, and anything but the crushing darkness that had consumed her last night. She hated being weak. Especially in front of men!

She turned around chin held high. Best to act as if nothing had happened. She slowed her pace as she walked to the river, ambushed by memories of splashing in the fountain with Rodney and confronted by the endless Rodney-less future ahead. Despair threatened for a second and nearly checked her pace, but the anger flared, and suddenly she was strong again.

She wasn't going back. There was nothing left to go back to, and she absolutely would not have them thinking that she was weak. None of them! Not that weasel of a man that called her daughter, not the neighbours, not even Shimon, or Corby or Ulrich!

They would learn she was thrice as fierce as any of them! Even Shimon with his axe. She had fought off the ambushers in the tunnel, not they. She had used lightning and magic like a goddess of old, and she was going to walk best foot forward today and may the God's help anyone who got in her way! First things first though...as well as walking like one, she was going to smell like a goddess too.

When she returned to camp, hair standing on end as she rubbed her towel through it, she sat at the fire matter-of-factly, as if she had just gone for a morning stroll and hadn't spent the night in the woods. Shimon looked like he was going to say something, but she imperiously held out her hand for the breakfast bowl he offered and fell to it with a wild hunger. He looked at her with sympathetic eyes, but they couldn't penetrate her hard-clenched anger.

She had no time for his sympathy and ignored it completely, lest she turn to despair again. Her rage was no longer the roaring fire it had been, but a slowly fed bed of simmering coals, quietly nursed. A slumbering anger, ready to be stoked at any moment. The kind that would last for a long, long time; she needed it to. That didn't mean that it was weak though, she could feel it burning away her tiredness, as she stoked it for the day ahead. Filling her with strength, making her mind clear.

"Let's break the tents up and get going. It's a hard way ahead...and we need to get there before anyone else does." Ulrich said ominously, from one side.

She stood, cleaned her bowl of the porridge she had left, and marched to her bag. She packed her tent without a word to any of them. Ulrich didn't try to speak to her, unlike the other two. She was glad. She was the first ready and didn't wait for her companions.

Somewhere Suma turned over in his sleep, completely content in the small ray of sunshine that had found him. It was the first time all morning she had felt something within her soften, but she immediately caught it, and turned her heart back to stone.

Careful to think of nothing, she scanned the horizon to their left, pumping her legs without thought, driving herself uphill through the cold. Suma would catch them later. For now, she had some feelings to work through on the trail. She heard the others catching up behind her with their lanky legs and sure strides. The irritation of that helped feed her slowly burning anger. She paced faster, maintaining her position at the front of the group. Today was going to be a good day.