“Cruck’aa, I…I don’t know!”

“Gods damn it!”

Serena cringed back as Cruck’aa yelled, smashing a closed fist against the doorframe. The warm rays of the rising sun poured over him through the open door, casting him in gold; a veritable phoenix standing before her, marred only by the words that shrilled from his twisted beak. Had they not been the last to wake and eat, she might have yelled at him to stop screaming, but as it stood, the sooner he left, the better.

“I don’t know what you want from me Cruck’aa.” Serena signed. “I’m sorry.”

“I want specifics!” Cruck’aa yelled.

“And I don’t have them! It was a cut, and it started to burn. That’s it. Maybe you could go look at Nura’s family? There might –”

“And look at what?!” The feathers around his neck bristled. “You healed everything! There are no wounds left! And they’re passed out! What in the Nine Hells could they say?!”

“Cruck’aa, I don’t know, I was just offering something.”

He sighed explosively, tilting his head so he stared at the ceiling, eyes smoldering with a barely contained rage. She half expected to smell the wood above them burning.

“This,” Cruck’aa growled through clenched teeth “is utterly ridiculous. Worse than Waterdeep. How can I make a cure for something I know nothing about? She expects a miracle and refuses to listen to any semblance of reason!”

He spat the word like it was venom; Serena narrowed her eyes but didn’t push the issue. His idea of reason had been a tirade that went long into the night, keeping everyone up, but she wasn’t about to contradict him. The way his fist was clenched and the labored breaths he sucked in was warning enough. Bahamut’s Teeth, maybe it was for the best that Cruck’aa was sent out.

“Look,” Serena signed. “I get the frustration but…the sooner you go out and try, the sooner you get it over with. Then you can…explain to Jo why she was wrong, I guess.”

“Easy to say, when you’re not the one going out to harvest gods know what!”

“Yeah but you can fly. It’s –”

“What?!” Cruck’aa screeched. “Discrimination on top of it all! Just because I have wings doesn’t mean I’m the errand boy!”

“Bahamut’s Teeth, Cruck’aa, that wasn’t what –”

“You know as well as I –”

His beak snapped shut, his words drowned under the thumping of boots on the stairs; Werond, hair a mess, parchment tucked under an arm, strode into the room, looking at neither of them as she pulled a chair from the table and plopped into it. Tossing aside the parchment, she pulled towards her what remained of last night’s dinner, now a meager breakfast for the last to rise, if cold deer chunks could be called that.

How quickly the numb spread, engulfing her chest like a wave, stealing her breath. She’d thought it had bled away, mixed with her quiet tears from the night before after Werond had closed the door on her. It was foolish to believe that though, and perhaps, past that delusion, the numb returned from seeing Werond spare her no acknowledgement of the day or night before. How did she just…continue on? It was all Serena could do not to –

The scrapping of talons on wood, like teeth grinding together, nudged her from her thoughts; she glanced over, then flinched.

Nothing remained in Cruck’aa’s beady yellow eyes save a vehement hate, its flames singeing Serena where she stood. Like daggers, his glare bore a hole through Werond, his talons continuing to dig into the wood, leaving thin grooves along the frame, splinters leaping after them. Shoulders tense, he leaned forward, beak twisted at a horrific angle –

Only to whirl on his heel and storm outside, slamming the door behind him. Werond glanced up but turned back to her breakfast just as quick, unaware of the glare that had been leveled at her.

Serena remained in place, hands against her chest, eyes flicking between Werond and door. Was that what Pavel had been talking about? But that was so long ago and Cruck’aa had been fine yesterday, for the most part, so what was all that about? The only idea Serena could think of was that he’d been furious with Werond on her she’d treated Serena, but only because Werond had taken it upon herself to doctor her, splitting her from the group. Truth be told, the further apart they become, the happier he’d probably get. So it couldn’t have been that…

Her gaze traveled to Werond. Was it worth mentioning? She’d tell Pavel, yes, but with Werond, throwing that at her after everything that’d happened the other day seemed a terrible thing to do, and the numb in Serena’s chest wasn’t helping matters…

She sighed, and moved towards Werond; there were other, more important matters that demanded her attention.

“Uhm…good morning.” Serena signed, standing across from Werond.

Werond glanced up, nodded, and looked back to her breakfast. Serena fought back another sigh, the numb spreading.

“Uh…I uh…I don’t know when you wanted to leave,” Her signs faltered. “we uhm…I know Jo said uh…that we’d needed to help Nura today but…I didn’t –”

Werond had flipped open the parchment, scribbling down her response as Serena’s signs died; she didn’t bother look up as she flipped and slid the pad towards her.

“We leave after we eat,” It said. “give me a minute.”

Serena crossed her arms, fighting against the overwhelming urge to curl in on herself. Her words were so plain, and she still refused to look at her – how did Werond do it? Serena had so much to say, so much to get across, and yet Werond acted as though everything was fine, that nothing had happened between them, that were was nothing to say.

She stared at the words for far too long, pouring over them as though she could change their meaning. When she did rip her gaze away, Serena noticed that the words had been shoved into the corner of the parchment, longer messages crowding the rest of the page; the fact that it wasn’t a new page wasn’t surprising, but…

Serena squinted. Series of incomplete sentences and scribbled out thoughts seemed to dominate the page, flowing together into what seemed to be almost two paragraphs worth of writing. Werond normally didn’t write that much when using the parchment to talk. Had she been writing to herself, then? But what –

A hand shot out and snatched the parchment, crumpling the page.

Serena leapt back as Werond yanked the pad to her chest, clutching it like a mother would to her child. Yet it wasn’t a glare that met Serena’s gaze as she expected, but instead, eyes filled with a watery panic, darting away as Serena blinked.

“W-Werond?” Serena fumbled her signs. “S-sorry, was I – I didn’t see anything, I just –”

But Werond waved her off, perhaps a bit too quickly, before scarfing down the rest of her cold breakfast. Without so much as a glance, she pushed off from the table and marched towards the door, throwing it open and stepping out into the early morning light.

Heart hammering through a fog of numb, Serena hurried to follow.

_

“Well?”

Serena pulled the door shut, then leaned against it. Nura stood across from her, far too close within the tiny hallway; down the way, the sounds of a busy household drifted from up the stairs, the children’s voices mingling with Hugo’s.

“It’s…still kind of the same.” Serena signed. “I mean, their wounds are healed but…I think the poison is still in them. They’re just…not really waking up.”

Nura stared at her. “And y’all can’t do anything?”

“Me, probably not. Uhm…I know you don’t like him, but Cruck’aa might be able to do something.” She suppressed a sigh. “Just…might take a bit.”

“Trust that bird about as far as I can throw him.” Nura said.

“Right but…uhm, Jo has him going out to try and find something to cure them with. It’s…he keeps going on about it being impossible but it’s worth a shot.”

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Worth a shot to find some miracle cure out in the fields?” She squinted. “He ain’t going out in the woods, is he?”

Panic sliced through the numb within her chest, though it quickly drowned under the waves; they hadn’t discussed where Cruck’aa would be looking, but as irritating as he was, he wasn’t stupid. Much as he hated the order, Cruck’aa would stay out of the woods, if only so he could find a way to shift more blame onto the rest of them.

“I mean…hopefully not.” She signed. “He’s infuriating but he’s not stupid.”

Nura sighed and rubbed her face, that steadfast confidence she normally wore nothing but a veil for the worry that seemed to sink her shoulders and shake her head. Serena couldn’t help but feel her own anxiety at the sight. How much did she take for granted the simple ability to walk and defend oneself; she couldn’t imagine the burden of having to look out for those who could do neither.

Well…she could, but not like that.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t that much of a help. Uh…if I may ask though,” She signed. “what do you intend to do? I could talk to Jo about it…she might have something.”

Her signs fell on blind eyes; Nura chewed at her knuckle, staring into space. Just as Serena began to sign again, however, Nura muttered against her hand, “…chew it off.”

“I’m sorry?” Serena signed.

Nura glanced at her, then shook her head.

“Don’t know yet, need to think.” She pushed off the door and moved down the hallway. “No sense in doing it up here though.”

Serena frowned, questions forming in her head; she remained silent, however, as she followed Nura downstairs.

The buzz of a busy household turned to a cacophony as they stepped off the stairs; all the shutters had been thrown open, bathing the place in light and fresh air as Hugo held what looked to be a party on the floor for the children. All five sat in a half circle around him, half eaten food on plates before their crisscrossed legs, their voices blending into one as Hugo sang some song with them. Serena couldn’t help but cringe; the lyrics, while catchy, were nothing more than what the children needed to do, when everything went down. It was clever, yes, but the morbidity of it sent a chill down her spine.

Serena remained by the stairs, watching as Nura strode over and crouched beside Hugo, picking up in the middle of the song with him. Baron remained in the place he’d been when Serena and Werond arrived, leaned against the door, sword in hand, a sullen look in his gaze that he cast about the room. His eyes met hers, though he looked away as she held the stare, flicking instead to…

Where Werond sat. By herself, at the table, where…

Serena signed, numb flaring; Bahamut’s Teeth, she couldn’t do this, not here.

Ignoring the look Baron threw her way, Serena stumbled over to the family’s dinner table, where Werond sat packing. She didn’t look up at Serena as she sat down across from her, her attention fixed on the sea of supplies strewn about the table. Bundles of cloth – gauze, maybe – dried and smoked food, tiny daggers, and other things Serena didn’t recognize lay in neat piles, a stack of sacks on the far side of the table. Evidently, Nura hadn’t been lying about the amount of supplies they had, which had taken forever to begin packing for the trip. It was an easy enough task for Werond to help with, which she continued to do as Serena stared at her, a flick of her eyes Serena’s only acknowledgement.

“They’re the same.” Serena signed, unsure of what to say first. “Nothing changed.”

Werond nodded, stuffing something into the pack she was working on.

“I don’t know what Nura plans to do…I asked but she didn’t tell me.”

Werond nodded.

“Jo might know what to do but…I don’t know, I don’t think it’ll be a good decision.”

Werond nodded, and the numb flared.

Wincing, Serena looked away, covering her mouth with a hand; there was so much she wanted to say, needed to say, yet Werond worked and acted as though there wasn’t a ravine between them. Again. And when she was like this, there remained no point in trying to talk her out of it.

So she sat, watching the morbid sing along as Werond paid her no heed. It was within those minutes, however, listening to the children’s instructions, did Serena realize that a crucial piece was missing from the grand plan that had been concocted, one that needed to be discussed regardless of the distance between her and Werond.

She turned to sign, hesitating as Werond continued to ignore her, before pushing on through that trembling numb.

“I know,” She started. “you’re uhm…busy, and angry but…” Werond’s eyes flicked up at the word, though she remained packing. “I…we haven’t talked about where you’ll be during everything. I…maybe…”

Her signs trailed off as Werond grabbed her parchment from the chair next to her; scribbling out a few words, she turned back to her work after she tossed the parchment to Serena, not unkindly.

“I’ll be hiding” It said on a fresh page. “in the house.”

“R-right…” Serena signed. “But I just thought…maybe to be safe, I should be with you? Because –”

Her signs wilted under the look Werond shot at her; putting aside her bundle of gauze, she pulled the parchment back and scribbled under the first sentence, handwriting going sloppy.

“Youre needed in the ambush. Ill be fine.”

“I – I know but Cruck’aa can use magic too, it’ll be enough. A-and with Doriyah, Pavel, and Jo, there should be –”

Werond tapped her palm over her words twice.

“I know! I know, but…it’s so easy for things to go wrong, I just…I’d feel better knowing if I was next to you. Or near you.”

Their eyes met, Werond’s gaze boring a hole through Serena. She glanced away, unable to stand the scrutiny, as Werond began to write again. From across the room, Baron seemed to be staring at them, eyes narrowed, though he looked away when Serena met them.

She turned back as Werond pushed some of the supplies to the side, sliding the parchment back over to Serena.

“You need to stop obsessing over me,” The parchment read. “and focus on whats important. The fight is important. Im not. You need to see that.”

Her heart began to crumble, fragments falling into the sea of numb that slowly rose within her chest; it was a miracle she managed to keep signing.

“But you are important to me Werond.” She whispered. “I…I-I don’t know what else to do…I know w-what you said but I won’t be like Tai, I won’t, I won’t, and I just – you don’t b-believe me, a-and –”

Her fingers curled in instinctively, her hands beginning to tremble, her eyes beginning to sting. She looked away, sucking in a breath, refusing to break down in front of strangers, despite how much she wished to scream. But what good what that do, when the love of her life remained so closed off from her?

A deep sigh exploded out of Werond, loud enough to start Serena. When she looked back, Werond began to flip back through the parchment, folding multiple pages over the top before arriving at, seemingly, the page she was looking for. She stared at it with furrowed brows and a deep-seated frown, as though she didn’t like whatever was on the page. After a moment, however, amidst the shouting and singing of Nura’s family, Werond flipped the parchment around and pushed it towards Serena, tapping at a section near the bottom. When she pulled her hand away, the two paragraphs from earlier lay on the page, parchment still crumpled.

Serena frowned, leaning in; she’d been right, the writing seemed more like Werond talking to herself than anything, her thoughts transcribed on the page, all centering around…

Her.

It started with what she’d already seen. The frustration at ignoring her own safety to place Werond above her, the anxiety Werond felt each time it had happened, and the overwhelming realization that Serena – in Werond’s own words – was turning into Tai, a name written with a shaky hand atop damp parchment. And above it all lay the frustration of her written words falling upon deaf ears, and the abject terror that Werond felt knowing that one of these days would be Serena’s last. To lose Serena would be the death of her; because, despite just how frustrating and suicidal she’d been, “I still love her.”

A timid warmth blossomed behind Serena’s heart, burning away the numbness like the early morning sun to fog. That one sentence had been written, again and again, pressed into the parchment harder than everything else before, a reassurance spelled out, felt with each stroke of the charcoal, a belief that could never truly be expressed by simple words carved onto a piece of parchment, yet attempted anyways.

Below that sentence, the rest of Werond’s thoughts lay spread out like ink spilled onto parchment, running circles around themselves as Werond worked to make sense of the storm that raged through her mind. Yes, her love was there – shackled without a voice, buried under the weight of her actions, but still there, nevertheless. The embers of her love still burned, their dull heat fueling Werond’s writing, fueling her frustrations upon seeing Serena’s deadly selflessness, and fueling the horrible pain that was her inability to sit Serena down and explain everything. To pretend things were simply fine, to hold Serena close as they used to, would have only been the catalyst for the nightmare that Werond feared with every fiber of her being. So, she pushed Serena away, hoping that the distance would help, giving Werond even a small amount of time to figure out how to explain everything. And yet, her continued silence – from having no voice, from the distance she’d created – had served only to do the very thing she feared the most. Thus, she remained stuck, and with no proper way to speak…

Here they were.

And again, that line – as above, so below at the bottom of the parchment, penned in bold, dark letters, “I still love her.”

When Serena tore herself away from the parchment, her gaze fell into Werond’s, her reflection staring back at her in two shimmering pools of amber. Her heart lunged against the confines of its cage, pulling Serena with it as she leaned over the table, signs barely forming as her hands quaked.

“W-Werond, how long has this – w-why haven’t –” She whispered, voice breaking. “Werond I-I thought you’d – I just –”

Werond reached out and grasped her hands, silencing her; Serena felt herself melt under their warmth, a vibrant heat that radiated up her arms and into her chest.

For a moment, they sat there, entwined by their hands, and by the love that still coiled around them both. When Werond finally released her, despite Serena’s hope that she never would, she pulled the parchment back, flipped to a new page, and began to write. It took longer than before, Werond’s hand visibly shaking, but Serena would have waited forever, if she needed to.

“I’m sorry,” It read. “for doing this to you. I love you so much. But you have to understand my feelings. You’re hurting yourself, you shouldn’t be. I can’t pretend its okay but I cant talk to you about it. Im stuck. And I pushed you away fearing youd be like Tai. Im sorry. Im sorry Ive hurt you. But I wont let this continue not until we talk. I feel like I cant love you until then and to do otherwise would be a disservice. Im sorry.”

It wasn’t the words Serena was hoping to read, yet the numb, barely there, didn’t resurface.

“Okay,” She signed. “I-I’ll wait. I’ll try. I…I promise.”

“Thank you. Can you promise me youll stop hurting yourself for me?”

Serena stared at the parchment, signs forming, then dying. Just as she arrived at her answer, one that quickened her heart, a fist slammed onto the table.

Serena and Werond jerked in their seats as Baron lorded over them, the bags under his eyes destroying any threatening aura he thought he exuded.

“Enough!” He spat. “All y’all do is talk! And no work! Gods!” He waved an angry hand at the table. “Pack if y’all going to help!”

His bravado died as Serena glared at him; muttering something, he waved at hand at them before moving back to his perch by the door. Nura and Hugo didn’t seem to notice, however, still singing with the kids.

Serena turned away, though Werond watched the kids a moment longer; when she turned back and met Serena’s eyes, she sighed, and began to write again.

“Better get this done, I guess.” It said.

Serena stared at her words before nodding, getting up and moving around the table to sit beside Werond.