It was the middle of spring, yet the wind still sliced through Erlan's thick layers of clothing like a wraith seeking to shred everything in all its fury. She stamped her feet against the hard ground, trying to seep some warmth back into her toes, while next to her, Hida knelt behind a thick layer of bush.
"Quiet down, would you?" The older girl hissed. Erlan shoved her hands beneath her armpits.
"I can't feel my toes," she objected, giving their surroundings a piercing glare. Surrounded by sparse trees and colder chunks of boulder and rock, they were far too high in the mountains to get any sort of protection from the wind. The sun had about two hours left to linger in the sky, and Erlan wasn't confident that that would be enough time to get back to town before dark. "You still haven't told me why we're out here."
"Oh please, what else would you be doing if I didn't bring you along?"
"Reading," Erlan snapped. "Next to a fire."
Hida scrunched her nose. "You mean the thick tomes the witch has been teaching you?"
Erlan straightened. "She's not a witch!"
Hida snorted.
"She-demon, then."
The younger girl rolled her eyes, tilting her head up to gaze at the unwelcoming sigh. It had been a little over a year since the odd woman had taken Erlan under her wing, gradually teaching her the history and legend behind the world's wonders. Hida didn't like it, but at least their mother seemed to approve. "She's actually quite pleasant once you get to know her."
"Sure, up until she gives you an outcast's execution."
"She's helped Drun-"
"Yeah, yeah," Hida stood, waving her comment away. "Spare me the speech."
"'Spare me the speech'," Erlan mocked, to which Hida promptly ignored.
"He's not coming . . ." Hida murmured beneath her breath. Erlan cocked an eyebrow.
"Who's not coming?"
"A friend." Hida brushed her hands down her tunic, her bare fingers pale against the cold. Erlan eyed her sister, studying the older girl's stern features. Her lips were pressed in a frown, her cheeks colored red from what Erlan had originally assumed was the wind, but judging how her sister refused to look at her, Erlan was beginning to wonder that it was something more.
Of course. Hida never did anything with her hair besides throwing it in a quick braid. Today, however, she had it braided from the top of her head, curving around her crown before coming together at the bottom - something that took too much time than she usually bothered with.
She gasped.
"Hida," she exclaimed. "Were you going on a date?" Then, at her sister's angry frown, Erlan suddenly forgot about the cold. She gave an excited jump, barely suppressing a squeal. "Oh gods, you were actually waiting on a date! Who is it? Is it Thom?"
"Erlan," Hida hissed, but there was a faint smile trying to tug away at her frown. "No, not Thom."
"Then who?" Erlan pressed. "Is it Monty? Harold? Jemny? Wait, do you even like Jemny-"
Once again, Hida waved her away. "No, no. It's not anyone you know."
Erlan grinned. "An outsider, then? Where's he from? Did you meet him when we had the fair? Oh! Is it that big Rentic-looking guy that gave you a beige rose? Because your children would be so beautiful if they got your eyes and hair and that golden skin of his-"
"Oh, shut up, will you?" Her sister snapped - and again, there was a smile she was trying to fight. "That's not why we're up here."
Erlan raised her eyebrows. "But we were going to meet him."
"Yes, we were," Hida looked around, squinting her eyes through the brush and rock that surrounded them. "But it looks like he's not coming."
"Oh." Erlan frowned, sensing her sister's disappointment, then reached out to take her hand. "To be fair, dear sister, I'm not sure anyone's worth hiking up these wretched mountains when the wind is seeking to tear everyone's skin from their bones."
"Oh, sush," Hida punched her in the arm, and Erlan laughed.
"Do you know where he would have come from? Maybe he's lost, or he's stuck somewhere."
This seemed to nag at the older girl, and Erlan mentally kicked herself for suggesting such a thing.
"You're right," Hida agreed, staring down an old, worn path further down the slope. "Perhaps we should go look."
"Now?" Erlan exclaimed, her heart dropping. "Hida, perhaps we should go back. Have Jemny or Dax get the dogs and look for him-" But her sister was already making her way down the rocky slope, heading away from their growing town. "I'm not coming!" Erlan called after her, hoping to make her sister see a bit of reason. For good measure, Erlan even acted like she was going to walk back home.
When her sister made no objection, however, Erlan stopped. Groaning, Erlan turned back around, wincing at the sharp, chilly pain curling around her toes.
"The gods smite you if I break my neck over these rocks," she grumbled. "Hida - Hida, wait up! Hida!"
Her older sister had already disappeared around the bend.
"You are such a whale's ass, Hida," Erlan whispered, glaring down at the rocky surface beneath her feet. As if on cue, her foot slipped against loose rock and dirt, and she all but slid the rest of the way down to the path with a strangled yell. Stumbling to her feet, the girl angrily brushed off her coat, hating the sharp pains shooting up her feet.
"'Come with me to Shire's Clearing', you said," Erlan huffed. "'Get out of town for a couple hours', you said. Well you didn't say anything about standing stiff still in the wind for hours for a stupid boy!"
Erlan shook out her legs, shivering, and wiped her mittened hand across her nose to clear the snot running past her lips. It wasn't by any means the coldest weather Erlan was ever exposed to, but she was already coming down with some sort of illness as it was. Hida had been making more of an effort to spend time with her ever since Erlan started speaking more with Frenza, the runkist woman, but up until now, she hadn't wanted to go out and explore like they used to.
Erlan was thirteen years old, but she still ached for the times Hida would take her out to the woods to play. Despite good sense warning her against going out to the mountains with mucus clouding her lungs, Erlan hadn't wanted to pass the opportunity to do something like that again with her older sister.
Even if Hida was nearing twenty-two and was surely too old for games like those, anymore.
"What did you expect?" Erlan scolded herself, following the direction she'd seen her sister go in. "She's supposed to be married by now. You're just the burdensome baby sister." She glared up at the rocky walls. Not if you freeze to death out here.
"Wouldn't you be considered an old hag by now, though?" She thought out loud, hoping her sister was close enough to hear. She recalled Ansle Jorbson saying something about women who weren't married by sixteen.
Of course, Frenza assured her that that only applied to women who didn't seek higher education and special fields. She still wasn't quite sure what that meant, but so as long as she didn't have to worry about getting married within the next two and a half years, she was just fine with that.
"Hey, wait for me!" She tried calling after Hida. "I'm gonna tell Ma if you won't wait-"
She turned around the bend, stepping into a small opening that was only barely better than standing out where they were. Still no sign of Hida. Erlan's shoulders slumped. She brushed a stray strand of light blond hair from her face, scanning the trees. Did her sister fall somewhere?
A slight crack of a twig snapping behind her was all the warning Erlan got before a strong, sturdy arm wrapped around her waist, nearly pulling her straight off her feet and to the newcomer's chest. Erlan yelped just as a low, male voice whispered next to her ear,
"Didn't your mother teach you not to walk around by yourself?"
Erlan responded by throwing her head back, ramming it against the man's face. The impact forced stars to bounce around her vision, but she wasted little time scrambling for a weapon when her attacker released her with a muffled curse.
"Shit, sorry, I didn't mean-" the man stammered. Heart pounding in her throat, Erlan's desperate fingers found purchase on a small, discarded branch. Still on the ground, she swung it behind herself when a hand rested on her shoulder, dropping it briefly from the momentum of her swing - but the branch hit its target squarely in the side.
"Get off of me!" She snapped - or, at least, she tried to. With the adrenaline coursing through her veins, her voice came out at a cracked, highly unrefined squeak.
Quickly grabbing her weapon, Erlan rushed forward a couple of steps to give herself some space before turning on her would-be . . . Would-be what? It was hard to think, and all Erlan could focus on was that the chances of there being a noble person nearby were next to none.
"Hida!" She screamed, keeping her focus on the man hunched before her, grabbing his ribs with one hand while he tried to hold out the other in a gesture of peace. Any other situation, and Erlan might have thought he was a handsome young man, with dark hazel eyes and even darker, messy hair. The beginnings of a beard lined his narrow jaw, and he was nowhere near as big as the fishermen Erlan was accustomed to seeing.
But he did stand a good couple of heads above her, and the way his chest and arms filled out against his tunic and coat - followed by a sword swinging at his hip - told her that this man was a trained fighter.
A soldier, she thought numbly. All the way out here.
"You're not Hida," the young man commented.
"No, I'm not," she spat. "Where is my sister?"
He tried to stand, but when Erlan raised her weapon over her head, he stopped.
"I thought you were her," he explained, his voice far too calm for the tremors overtaking Erlan's hands.
"Liar! Tell me where she is," she demanded, taking a step forward and all too ready to wack him. She missed the way the man's muscles tensed, his eyes darting up to the branch - the way he was about to raise a hand to catch said branch - but before the conflict could carry out further, rustling from behind followed by a distinguished, "Adtro's Bells," tore Erlan's attention from her target.
Hida was running up to her, followed by two other younger boys that were around Erlan's age, if not maybe slightly older. The man in front of her made no move to disarm Erlan, instead simply opting to quickly back away.
"Hey, it's okay," Hida rushed, wrapping her hands around Erlan's shoulders. The girl had already dropped her piece of wood, but her mind was struggling to catch up as tears clogged her throat. "It's fine. He won't hurt you."
"He - he won't-" Erlan stammered, then shook herself, pulling out of Hida's embrace to glance over at the man who she thought was going to be the last face she'd ever see. Already, a bruise was forming on the side of his face from where she'd hit him with her head.
"This is the man you were waiting for," Erlan said to her sister, keeping her eyes focused on him.
"Yes - yes, he is," her sister gently explained. "His name is Savos, and these are his little brothers."
But Erlan didn't care about the boys. A swarm of too many emotions to name simply added to the adrenaline that was still racing through her veins. Mostly, she recognized the sheer relief that she wasn't about to die, but she there was something else there, too.
She balled her fists at her side.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" She swore at him. Next to her, Hida gasped.
"Erlan," she began to scold, but Erlan wasn't finished yet.
"What in the gods' forsaken pit made you think that it would ever be a good idea to grab a girl that's by herself in the middle of nowhere? Out here!" She waved her arms around their surroundings for emphasis.
"I-I thought you were Hida," the bronze-skinned man tried to explain, looking rightfully embarrassed.
"And so what if I was?" Erlan countered. "You don't do that, you don't-" The girl ran her covered hands over her hair, struggling to breathe. "And how could you think I look like her? She's a full head taller than me!"
"You look the same from behind-"
"She walked right past you!"
"I was taking a piss!"
"It doesn't matter," Erlan snarled, taking a step forward - then stopped. She couldn't breathe. Tears were already streaming down her cheeks, and Erlan could feel her eyes swell from the effort. Still, she clenched her jaw and glared at him as well as a cold, terrified young girl getting off of an initial adrenaline rush could. The man met her eyes.
"You're right," he finally said. "It was stupid. I'm sorry."
The last thing Erlan wanted was to come to an understanding with the strange man, so she tore her gaze away. Hida tried to move to move to comfort her, but Erlan shuffled further away, turning a world of hurt on her sister.
"Some boyfriend you have," she said, her anger made all the more pathetic by the snot and tears dripping past her lips.
Futility wiping the snot from her mouth, Erlan stomped past the man, ignoring her sister and the boys that awkwardly stood there, watching the whole encounter.
She was going home.
~ 2323 Words ~