I hadn’t ever considered that Hyraj would want me to go with her when she finally left. I’d thought about asking her if I could, but didn’t want to remind her she was travelling, so, if I did ask to go with, it would have been when she was leaving.

Something distant that I kept at the edge of my mind.

Until now.

The question coming out of nowhere for me, I took a moment to answer. “Go where?” I asked, almost hoping I had misunderstood, hoping I hadn’t.

“Go travels,” she said. I thought she said. The same word she’d used that stormy day when telling me about how she left her parents.

I couldn’t put to words the flood of relief I felt, knowing I wouldn’t be alone. “Yes,” I said, trying to keep my voice level.

We didn’t leave that instant, didn’t even start planning to leave right then. Instead, we carried on the day like it was any other, including the magic lesson. Sat by the spring, she put her hands on top of mine, warm, prickling, and summoned a ball of magic.

Except that she didn’t take her hands away. Confused by that, it took me a moment to realise it was water magic today.

“Take the thread and make it into a ring.” As she spoke, a watery thread appeared in the ball, but it didn’t wriggle, pulled taut. Then it began to bend, making a perfect circle as it went. The moment both ends touched, it was like the whole ball turned into water, already falling, landing on the ground between us in a splash.

I stared at the wet patch, stunned. A blink and I would have missed the magic. So many thoughts, all trying to be thought at the same time.

“Louise try.”

Before I was ready, she summoned another ball of magic, leaving me flustered as I checked my hands still made a ring. Letting out a long breath, I stared at the magic. She had made it look so easy. Without even shrinking the ring, she had made a thread appear and held it straight and then made a perfect circle out of it.

Well, she had probably practised a lot more than me, maybe had a tutor. Not that I thought her teaching was bad, just that….

Pushing away those pointless thoughts, I focused on the magic, tried again and again to do anything. So another evening passed without me making any progress.

As if her asking me to go with her was a hypothetical question, she didn’t mention it at all the next day either, or the next, almost a week passing like normal.

After finishing the daily chores and having lunch, we sat under the big tree. She flattened reeds and I wove them. Something I’d had in mind since she arrived, spurred on by her question, I wanted to make a squarish “pot” to carry on my back. So I tied together a frame with sticks and thin rope and had some thicker rope ready for the straps, the weaving all that was left.

Well, I wanted to reinforce it with more thread on the outside, especially the bottom. Once we were travelling, I didn’t want it to break and annoy Hyraj. Not that I had anything worth carrying with us. Food, I guessed. Her rations had been long finished, the dried meat something she had sometimes stewed after taking the mushy vegetables out for me.

I didn’t know how long the vegetables lasted, but I guessed they would be fine for a few days, not to mention we could forage as we went.

Went where, I didn’t know. No clue how long it would take. If I thought she knew, I might have asked her, but I doubted she did. Something about what she had told me made it seem like she was just wandering. After all, my camp wasn’t exactly along a road, was it?

So I tried not to worry about things like that, instead focused on what I could do. Magic, not so much, but weaving, yes.

As we busied ourselves with this work, we talked, how she kept teaching me words these days. Nothing exciting. “This stone is heavy,” she said, holding it in one hand, a reed seed in the other. “This seed is light.” I dutifully repeated the new words, swapping “this” for “that”, a smile on my face. Like she was reading a book for babies. I didn’t mind, not really much better than a toddler.

After putting down the stone and seed, she sort of stopped, not flattening another reed or teaching me something else. I wondered if she needed the toilet, the only reason she usually ever stopped.

“We should leave when the next rain comes,” she said, then carried on her work.

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My turn to pause, sorting through her sentence and the wave of emotions that followed. Not as many as I had expected, though, barely reaching me. This life I had loved now so empty without her that it wasn’t even worth missing.

To wake up alone, eat alone, work alone, sleep alone, then do it all again, day after day, nothing but silence for company….

“Okay,” I said.

Always ready to teach, she taught me words for the weather, explained that this was the “summer” season where the rain usually fell heavily once a week, dry in-between. After she finished, I realised it was kind of weird for her to tell me that much. Our calendars were different, but, if I was from this world, I would have known what the seasons were like….

Well, she probably hadn’t thought about it and just kept talking. No way she knew I was from another world.

Come evening, rather than another magic lesson, we harvested all the wheat and left it to dry out. I had been growing a lot to use the straw for kindling, but her magic had meant I didn’t need to do that, so a lot of wheat had been waiting, fully-grown.

In the morning, we harvested a lot of beans too. My idea. Sprouting wasn’t the only thing to do with them, but we probably didn’t have time for them to dry out naturally. Fortunately, we had fire, so we just needed a way to make it not cooking-hot. Rocks were what I came up with. We heated up a huge rock and then flipped it upside down, leaving the peas in her metal pan and bowls on top of the rock. Once it cooled down, we heated it again, in the end a couple hours enough time to make the batch of peas look dried.

I chewed one to make sure and we gave it some more time, the next one I tried feeling dried through. Her pot and bowls only so big, we blanched and dried a couple more batches over the rest of the day—as well as doing other chores. Not like we had to watch it the whole time.

As for the other stuff, I wasn’t sure if it could be dried, except for the fruit, but fruit was easy enough to spot walking through the forest.

The next couple days, we kept an eye on the sky for rain clouds. None yet. It felt like ages since the last rain, “about every week” maybe a very loose time. Still, it gave the wheat time to dry out, so we threshed it and separated out the chaff—to keep. We needed to keep the beans and wheat dry, so I thought the chaff would make good “sawdust” to soak up moisture.

It was as that night fell that clouds loomed and distant thunder rumbled. We emptied out the larder, leaving only my reed backpack inside with the dried beans and wheat seeds and chaff. Everything else, we cooked or buried—didn’t want to attract animals even if it was our last night here.

A feast before we left. Thankfully, I was in charge of it, so we had roasted carrots and “grilled” asparagus, onions, and bell peppers, mustard leaves for flavour. The charring and caramelising something I tried to remember, knowing it would be a lot of pea stews and porridge and boiled “forage” from now on.

With a carrot on her fork, Hyraj said, “Louise is good at cooking,” and took a bite.

I covered my mouth, afraid the smile stretching it would let some food out. Carefully chewing, I finished and swallowed, only then replying. “Thanks.”

The fire crackled, our cutlery clinked, blowing wind rustling leaves and almost howling, dragging clouds up the mountain to where we sat. A cold wind, fire hot, warm with her at my side. Something so nice about having company when the weather was like this.

We ate until we were full and then a bit more, or at least I did. Still hated wasting food. Rain not yet here, she washed up and I stacked up the fire with more reeds. We were going to take some dried reeds with us, but the rest could burn, no point leaving them there.

Having such a large fire felt strange, wasteful. However, once I got over that feeling, I liked it. The days were warm, especially with my layers of clothes, but it was kind of only warm, not hot. Even in the sunshine, it wasn’t the same as sitting by the fire and feeling my skin prickle from the heat.

Similar, but different, to the prickle of magic.

Overflowing with warm feelings, I hummed the beautiful tune of twinkle twinkle little star. Better still, now knowing it well, she hummed along, a quiet duet amongst the growing wind and the fire that crackled and spat more than usual and the dinging of water on metal as she washed up.

Eventually, the rain began to fall. Just spitting, there was no need to rush, Hyraj unhurried as she took her things back to her backpack. I started walking to my room, expecting her to come join me there.

It was only when I saw her take out her mattress thing that I realised we hadn’t actually agreed on sleeping together. After all, since that storm, the other rainy nights weren’t that bad, so she had slept under the tree for them.

I hesitated, still very much afraid of upsetting her. The little courage I’d found since meeting her had been focused on trying to cook more so she cooked less. Now… I thought we were closer, that her wanting me to travel with her meant something.

Using up the last of my courage, I took the first step towards her and let momentum do the rest. Step after step until I happened to end up in front of her.

Of course, she had noticed me coming at some point, probably the second I started walking her way. She sat there, blanket in her arms, staring up at me with narrowed eyes and thin lips that didn’t look quite so scary as they had.

No, her expressions hadn’t ever really scared me. Maybe because it had been so long since I’d seen someone, I had always found her beautiful, hard to put into words. Like a model, that aloof expression.

Anyway, I had never been scared of her, only scared of upsetting her. Now was no different.

“Sleep with me,” I said, holding out my hand.

She kept staring at me, her eyes narrowing. “I will sleep here. The rain will be light,” she said.

I went to shake my head, but caught myself, instead doing the kind of shooing gesture. “You and me eat. You and me work. Now you and me travel and you and me sleep.”

Awkward, but I didn’t know how else to put it, had pushed myself here before I lost my nerve, the rain only going to get heavier. To hide my embarrassment, I shook my hand like it was obvious she should take it.

One second, two, ten, she kept me waiting and waiting until finally giving an answer.

Reaching up, she held my hand and said, “Very well.”

The start of our travels together.