Beyond The Stone

Chapter 32

"Aaaaahhhh..." Tristan sighed with relief. 'Even if it takes a lot more fussing to get there, the result is just as sweet,' he remarked with satisfaction.

Ava tried to dab herself dry awkwardly with a little old moss, then stood to pull up her undies and trousers.

''Tis a curious fastening,' Tristan noted with interested as he played with her zipper a few times. 'Even this...'

'button,' Ava supplied.

'...is a somewhat ingenious design!' he marveled with approval.

Ava ignored him as her focus fell on the dried blood still covering her hands. Part of her was recoiling from the horror of that attack, trying to hide from it. Another part wouldn't stop replaying it over and over in her mind.

'Thou were swift,' Tristan noted in a clumsy effort to console her, 'and brave.'

'I wasn't brave, I was desperate!' Ava confessed.

The blood felt strange on her skin. It was somehow still sticky, despite being dry, and it smelt horribly metallic.

'I should have liked to spare thee from that,' Tristan admitted compassionately, 'Yet thy should take comfort in knowing that thy was able to defend thyself.'

'That was you,' Ava replied despondently.

'Nay. Very little of that was me, milady. Thy body be swifter under the control of thy spirit,' he told her honestly.

She understood what she meant – she'd felt the same inside his body. Still, the thought that she could have been so quick on her feet and fought so aggressively seemed beyond her grasp. She realized that somehow she'd absorbed some of Tristan's fighting skill, much the same way he'd absorbed her ability to ride a horse.

'I... I'm not a wrathful person,' she confessed on a whisper.

'Nor I,' Tristan replied. 'Wrath has not much to do with skill on the battlefield. 'Tis true that if used well, it can provide strength and fire, but when used badly, it can cloud the mind and slow the body.'

'But... you're so good at fighting,' Ava remarked.

'That be only because the dance of it speaks clearly to me,' Tristan told her.

He wrapped her arm around her again consolingly. 'Thou didst well,' he told her. 'I should hope to spare thee from ever facing such a thing again, but in the choice between life or death it is only natural and proper to choose life. Thy hast done nothing wrong.'

He set their legs in motion towards the nearby rivulet, and started washing the blood off her hands for her.

'Wrong is pretty much all I feel in this place,' Ava confessed on a whisper as she watched the blood slowly leave her skin.

'My lady doth do better than she thinks,' he told her gently as he splashed her face with some water. His fingers lingered curiously over her lips.

'Why are you being so nice to me? You're never nice to me,' she asked with sudden suspicion.

While his efforts didn't remove the horror of that experience from her completely, he really was helping her to feel a little better.

'Thy doth lie!' Tristan shot back defensively with a playful grin. 'I am, after all, naught more than my lady's humble servant,' he suggested with a pretentious bow.

A little smile played over Ava's lips. She would never have lasted without him. Somehow he made it all bearable. He was her dull, blunt rudder in that turbulent ocean.

'Blunt? I thought myself rather more like a poker...' Tristan suggested lewdly.

Ava chuckled. 'It never takes long for you to come back to that, does it?'