Page 14 of Thief of Roses
She almost collided with him as she rushed headlong through the bushes.She stopped just short of his impressive figure.He waited for her.The sunlight full on his face and figure did him no favors.
“Dear gods, you’re fast.”She pressed her hand to her chest, gasping for breath.
“Thou mayest perhaps have found superior cutlerie to that of thy glass shard and fancied a new skyn rug for thy cartte.”
She stared at him and blushed at the reminder of her feeble weapon.His words, still practiced and a little too articulated, no longer held the halting quality it had when they had first been introduced, but the sound still sat strangely in the ear.
“Bedclothes,”she blurted out.“You would make a better skin for the bed than a rug for the cart.”
“‘Tis truth.”
A face like that, overwhelmed by brows and snout, more animal than human, should have difficulty emoting.Yet all his emotions showed larger.She watched the wry turn of his mouth, the lift in his brow that lasted a fraction of a moment, the slight dipping of his snout and flare of nostrils.He did not fit the raging sadistic image that had been painted of the Fir’Darl.Banter, to various degrees of politeness, did not fit what she had come to expect.
She almost pursued the theme, his skinning and hide-tanning, to see how far his good humor would go but she did not wish to bandy words.
“Are you avoiding me?You left me stunned this morning and then it seemed as if you could not wait to get away.”
His mouth tightened but his eyebrows pulled down low.“Thou didst not wysh to be but a few moments yn my companie.Y woldest not burden thee wyth yt longer than necessarie.”
She made a noise of frustration, put her face in her hands, and then brought her fingertips to her temples as if to clear her mind and start afresh.
“Ah, yes, that.I apologize.I am uneasy with this.With you,”she said.
“‘Tis natural thou art afrayd.”
“I am not afraid,”she protested.
His brows twitched and his nostrils flattened as he snorted.
“Thou art masterful at coveryng thy drede wyth anger, but thou art styll afrayd.”There was no blame in his tone or his words.“Woldest thou have me cover my forme for thy comfortte?”
She groaned at the politeness and sincerity of the offer.It made her feel mean.
“No, of course not.I just....”She bit her lip wondering how gracious he would be with honesty.“I have never been in one place for an entire year.I do not know how I will fare.Weather, funds, or conveyance is not that which compels me, but instead, fantastical circumstances that I do not think I could relate to another without them thinking me one needle short of a knit.I feel as if I have deluded myself into believing in phantoms when I am alone, and the only thing that keeps me in this reality, however unbelievable, is a monster of such mythic proportions that my people go in fear of him.”
“Thy experyences art well understood.”
“So you’re not the reason I am afraid,”she said.“I mean, you are, but you aren’t.Not all of it.”She sighed.“And no, you’re not reassuring to look at, Fir’Darl, but I imagine, in the year I am to spend here, I will grow accustomed to you.”
“Thou mayest not fynd me so constant yn appearance.Bytimes, Y change.Not,”he added,“yn ways moost drastyc but with mynute alterationnes.Y may not afford thee opportunytie to grow accustomed.”
She shivered.How could he bear having an ever-changing shape?
“Notwithstanding then,”she said.“I will grow accustomed to all your changing looks.For as evil as you appear, Fir’Darl, I would be all the more discomfited by continuing to speak to the air or having to address myself to the darkness of a cloak.”
He showed no emotion regarding her unflattering description of him.“As thou wyshest thanne.”
His attention drifted somewhere off in the forest, the brows twitching and his expression darkening.Had his attention been called by the movement of prey?Or had he just grown bored with her?
When he started without any visible provocation, she jumped too, away from him, lest he no longer followed through on the charade of civility and made a good meal of an easy target.No such attack came and he did not seem to notice her reaction as he himself stumbled back a step, graceless and troubled.The lump in his throat bobbed before he snapped his attention back to her.
“Yf thou woldest excuse me.”He turned away, valiantly trying to maintain his composure as he moved into the line of trees and out of her sight.
She watched the place where he entered the forest, hearing snarls then silence only followed by a small whimper.She almost went after him but wisdom told her not to follow this time.She did not say anything or call.She kept still, knowing, although she did not know how, that there was something else in these woods, something perhaps even worse than the Fir’Darl.
