Verity was in an unexpectedly good mood, which she couldn’t fully account for. She was electing not to question it too much, and to simply enjoy the day with just her and Isra together.
Verity had never hunted anything, but she was eager to learn. She hadn’t actually ever killed anything either, though she was less eager for that. When she thought of rabbits, she thought of them either as small, cuddly animals, or as cooked meat, largely without thought given to what happened in between those two forms. She vaguely recalled a lesson from one of her tutors about water shifting into ice and back again, and rabbits were not like this, having two distinct identities. That was how it was in her head though.
“It’s important to pay attention to the wind,” said Isra. “Animals will run if they catch your scent.”
“But you know where the animals are, don’t you?” asked Verity.
“I do,” said Isra. “And I could call them forward, the rabbits at least. They wouldn’t be able to sense my killing intent. Deer are more difficult. I don’t know what it is about the larger animals. I had thought that it was just a matter of nature, but now I think perhaps it’s just size. I’ll need to ask the guild.”
“Is that going well?” asked Verity. “The guild?”
Isra nodded. “There’s one druid in particular who is very thorough with his answers.”
“Good,” said Verity. “I’m glad.”
“He asked to meet up,” said Isra. “I never replied to that part of his message.”
“Ah,” said Verity. “Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know,” said Isra. “I was worried he would — that there were undertones I was misunderstanding. It’s harder when it’s just text.”
“Undertones of … attraction?” asked Verity.
“I don’t know,” said Isra. “Maybe. There’s affection in his words.” She shrugged. “I think he’s happy to have someone to share his knowledge with.”
“Mmm,” said Verity.
They walked through the woods, each thinking their own independent thoughts.
Verity had something of a mood of Xuphin. She wanted more, and much of that was, yes, in the direction of relationships. Isra seemed cagey about that sort of thing, and had refused to directly answer Verity’s questions more than once. All Verity wanted to know was whether Isra was interested in boys or girls, but Isra had so far declined to answer, even when asked — not directly, but so close to directly that it seemed to make no difference. There was clearly something in the air between them, little touches or comments, little looks. The birds had stopped watching Verity after she’d commented on them, but they had started up again, if with a bit more discretion and guilt when they got caught.
Dancing together had been magical. The shared archery lesson had been too. And now they were in the woods together, all alone, with the rest of the party occupied. Verity worried that she was taking things too quickly, that she was pushing it along when there was friction getting in the way, but that was a bit the mood of Xuphin. Many of Verity’s thoughts were lewd, particularly horny in a way that wasn’t fit for any but the most low quality pamphlets. There had been a rather famous devotee of Xuphin with thirty-two husbands, a woman who was so famous that the tale was almost certainly embellished to the point where it lost its value as truth. That was the feeling though, as if Verity could have taken on a hundred lovers, as though that would be the thing that would bring her to prominence in the eyes of Xuphin. That would, of course, never happen. Verity had no real desire for polygamy, and was far too reserved in any case. It was the feeling though, as though she wished to be rolling across a field of naked women.
The hunting lesson went disastrously, at least from the perspective of getting something to eat. Verity had only just learned how to badly use a bow, and when Isra spotted a rabbit, it took time and effort to line up the shot, only for the arrow to go wide, or for the rabbit to dart away at the last second. Verity was using Isra’s arrows, so at least there was no risk of them breaking or needing to be retrieved, but it was still a bit disheartening. There was always more walking after a miss, and a bit more talking about technique, but Verity’s arm was wearing out surprisingly quickly.
“You need to understand its strategy,” said Isra. “A rabbit will freeze, blend in, try to hide. Your eye sees movement better than anything else. You try to flush it out, and when you do, it will zig-zag, trying to shake you.”
It was a lot of information at once, too much to keep in mind while also trying to be more effective with the bow than a sack of garbage would be.
Finally Isra pointed out a rabbit that was sitting next to a mossy stump, and Verity drew back her arrow, hoping that this time it would find its target. Again, the rabbit jumped away just as the arrow was in flight, but this time it turned back, bouncing into the path of the arrow that it had very nearly escaped.
“Did you do that?” asked Verity. She was breathing heavier, and her eyes were on the rabbit, which had stopped moving from the moment that the arrow had pinned it to the stump.
“No,” said Isra. “It was all you.”
“Well, call it luck then,” said Verity. She approached the rabbit cautiously, as though it might get up and fight them. She was surprised by how nervous she was. “What do I … do?”
“Dress it,” said Isra. She’d pulled a knife from a small sheathe on her hip. “Did you want to, or can I?”
“Mmm,” said Verity. “You do it, but I’ll watch? For next time.”
Isra took the rabbit and made a slice from the throat down to the butt, then cracked the rabbit open and began ripping out what seemed to be quite a bit of the rabbit’s insides, the entrails and other things which Verity didn’t know the names of. She was a lover of words, but it had always been enough to know that a spleen and kidney were in there among the viscera. The last thing Isra did was to remove the rabbit’s skin and cut off its head, with both main parts quickly tied to her belt. The rest was left on the ground, presumably for Isra’s animal friends to eat.
“That was fast,” said Verity.
“It needs to be,” said Isra. “And we need to get it cooking fast. Once the creature dies, there’s a small window before it seizes up, and if you miss it, you need to wait two days or so before it loosens. If you eat it in that window, when the body is tense, it will be too tough to chew.”
Verity nodded. It was making her slightly queasy, but she pushed the feeling down. Again there was a feeling, as there’d been in the house, of the idealized vision of these things hitting cold reality. “Lead on.”
They made their way back to the house, and they apparently had wandered much less than Verity had thought they did, because it was a quite short walk. Along the way, Isra pulled a few roots from the ground, ones that bore a resemblance to ginger, carrots, and potatoes, though not like what Verity was most familiar with — they were stunted, wild versions, she thought. These were plucked without much seeming thought on Isra’s part, and a few leaves were torn from plants they passed by the handful.
When they got back to the house, Isra flipped up the single heater on her stove and placed a large pot on it, then took a small, unlabeled bottle from her chiller and poured an amber liquid into the pot.
“So you do cook at home?” asked Verity. “I know you said that Mizuki was treating you like an infant.”
“Not an infant,” said Isra. She was cleaning off what she’d gathered in the sink, having placed the rabbit skin off to one side. “But we’re going very slow. She’s still learning how to teach, I think.”
“Mmm,” said Verity.
The pot was hot in no time, and Isra placed the rabbit in it, which was soon searing away. She went to work with her knife, cutting up the vegetables, and she threw them in soon after, then poured some water from the tank above the sink and splashed that in as well. She covered the pot with a lid, then washed her hands.
“Now we wait, I think,” said Isra. “A month ago I wouldn’t have cooked the vegetables, or cut them.”
“And you and Mizuki are good friends?” asked Verity. “I suppose we don’t really talk about her much.”
“I’ve spent the most time with her,” said Isra. “After you. I enjoy her. She’s very cheerful.”
Verity was very aware that she was not a naturally cheerful person, and it was something that she wished were different about herself. Every time she tried to act cheerful, it felt false, like she was putting on a show for people, and putting on a show was a familiar feeling that did quite a bit to drain her mood. This was a happy day, which she was happy for, and she hoped that it would last, especially if that was what Isra wanted.
Verity was a bit bothered by the living conditions though. Animals coming in to clean up, the way that Isra handled the raw rabbit and didn’t immediately wash up, the dirt on the floor — Verity had thought that Isra lived in a picturesque little cabin in the woods, and while this was true, the reality of that little cabin was a bit sobering. Isra was a druid, and marched to the beat of her own drum when in her own realm, but it was a stark difference from how they lived at Mizuki’s, where there was some actual care taken to keep things neat and clean.
The word that Verity’s mind kept dancing around was ‘poor’, but that wasn’t even quite it.
When Verity had been ten years old, she had gone to a family retreat, which was a small affair with perhaps twenty people, on the occasion of her grandparents celebrating forty years together. They had stayed in cabins on a lake, a cluster of them that had been rented out, one for each family, and it had all been very rustic and cozy. It had informed her idea of what it was like to do without, but they hadn’t really lacked, and it had all been a matter of playing pretend.
There was, perhaps, in Verity’s mind, an image of Isra as a wild girl, and that image was starting to crumble. The bathroom was frighteningly small, the stove had only a single burner and looked like it could just barely fit the single large metal pot that Isra had, and the bed was going to be a challenge to sleep in. The wildness was unattractive, and that was okay, because Isra didn’t owe Verity attractiveness, but it was still a bit startling. When they’d been walking through the woods together, Verity had been imagining she would see the home of the Princess of the Woods, a quaint, wild, but also somewhat domestic habitat.
There were pieces of it here and there, especially the collection of things that Isra had set up against one wall, but Verity couldn’t shake the feeling that what she wanted was to sand down all the bumps and warts of the place. It felt like an awful thing to want. It felt like everything her mother had ever tried to do to her. Where was this feeling coming from? Was it something her mother had instilled in her, something that couldn’t be shaken? Or was it something else?
“Am I the first person you’ve had here?” asked Verity.
“Yes,” said Isra. “Sorry if it’s —”
“No, no,” said Verity. “It’s — I was just thinking that must limit how much can be done with the place, if you need to carry everything on your own from town, if you never hire anyone for repairs, not that you necessarily have the money for that, but — I don’t know.”
“When I was thirteen, they would have taken this home from me,” said Isra. “Or, perhaps, just put me in a new home and left all this to rot. I avoided people. I had been stolen from and — it wasn’t a good time in my life. And money … I didn’t want to put more into a home that I was thinking of leaving.”
“No?” asked Verity.
“I have the money to live better than this,” said Isra. “Even before we started the dungeons. I was saving it up, thinking that I would start over somewhere, in a place where being odd wouldn’t be as remarkable.”
“A city?” asked Verity. “That seems … not like you.”
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“It’s something that happens in stories,” said Isra. “The main character goes to some new land, and everyone understands that they’re foreign, that they need simple things explained to them. Some kind mentor takes them under their wing.”
“Ah,” said Verity. “So, not a city, just somewhere you could start fresh.”
“I don’t know,” said Isra, shaking her head. She grabbed a towel from a rack and lifted the lid of the pot. The smell was good, but Isra wrinkled her nose and began adding more things, apparently dissatisfied. Among the additions was salt from a small jar, taken out as a pinch, and a splash of dark brown liquid from a little bottle that was kept unchilled. Even in the best of circumstances, cooking was a strange alchemy to Verity, but here nothing had a label or familiar packaging.
A thought had been percolating, and Verity allowed it to rise up to her tongue. “If we keep up with the dungeons, eventually we’re going to want to move,” said Verity. “And … you know you’re welcome at Mizuki’s house. I think — and I don’t mean to pressure you — that we would all like it if you lived there with us, really lived with us.”
“I know,” said Isra. She looked around as if trying to find a place to sit, but Verity had taken the only chair in the entire place.
“Okay,” said Verity. “Then I’ll say no more. But I will say that we would help you move whatever you wanted to have moved, sell whatever you decided you didn’t need anymore, and get you properly situated.” She looked at the shelf of stuff. “Alfric would help build you a shelf, and we could get little labels made, if you’d like that.”
“I don’t know,” said Isra. “There’s something in my heart that would break if I left this place to rot.”
“Then we could also help in the opposite way,” said Verity. “If you — well, if you wanted a new chair, or a second chair, we could bring one of the ones we got from the dungeon. We could help shore up some of the sagging in the house, you could tile your floor with those tiles we picked up … I don’t know if that’s help that you would want, but I know Mizuki is arranging things with Angun on your behalf. If you wanted,” she stopped, not wanting to offend. “If you wanted me to hire someone for any kind of service, I would help you with it.”
Isra looked in the pot again, face set. She poked at the rabbit with a fork. “I’d like a haircut.”
“Okay,” nodded Verity. “I can help with that.” She was fairly sure she’d have said that no matter what Isra had asked for.
“I want to go shopping for clothes, to get things that are less,” she gestured at her outfit.
“Less … practical?” asked Verity. Isra nodded. “But you must shop for clothes already, right?”
“I don’t think I do it correctly,” said Isra. “I want clothes for when I’m in town. Clothes for temple day, if we’re going to go as a group.”
Verity frowned slightly. “You don’t tailor your own clothes though, do you?” Everything that Isra wore seemed to be well-made, most of it proper textiles, not pants made of rabbit furs or anything like that, though there was an animal-skin jacket hung up on a peg. “I mean, you must have some experience buying clothes from the market.”
“There’s a woman who comes in the spring,” said Isra. “I make sure not to miss her.”
“A woman?” asked Verity.
“From Tarbin,” said Isra. “Or … maybe her parents were. Dark-skinned, like me. She sells outfits in a style that’s comfortable to me.” Isra used the towel to take the pot off the heater and then flipped the element closed, pairing it with the chiller. There was a characteristic hiss as the frost touched the heat. “I think she knows me.”
“The woman?” asked Verity. “She knew your father?”
“No,” said Isra, shaking her head. She lifted up the lid of the pot, setting it aside. “I mean … she knows that I buy from her, and remembers me from year to year. I’ve needed new clothes every year, and though she’s never mentioned it, she always has several outfits that fit me nicely, all well-made and quite cheap.” She pursed her lips. “Suspiciously cheap.”
“Ah,” said Verity. “Well I think you look nice.”
Isra smiled. “Thank you. But would you help me look like I did at the opera?”
“I don’t think I have that level of expertise,” said Verity. Isra had been dazzling. “And I don’t think that we have that kind of budget, even if we pool our money. But yes, we can go to an atelier in Liberfell, or convince the group to make a trip into Plenarch.” Or, possibly, if Verity was going to be making regular trips to Dondrian, they could go there together. She didn’t want to think about that though.
“Good,” said Isra. “Dinner is ready.”
The chair situation had to be resolved first, and Isra went outside to grab a stump, leaving Verity all alone for a moment. When she was by herself, the house didn’t seem so small, and she could imagine Isra at home alone, reading through library books and listening to the woods around her.
The rabbit was pulled from the pot and pieces were taken off it and plated, along with some of the vegetables, which were somewhat mushy.
“I’m still learning to cook,” Isra apologized. “To cook properly, I mean.”
“It’s better than I would have done,” said Verity, which was a serious understatement. Cooking wasn’t one of the five womanly arts, and in Verity’s only foray into cooking at age thirteen, she’d learned that it was possible for a single piece of chicken to be both burned and raw.
The food was good, better than Verity had been worried it would be, though nothing like Mizuki’s cooking. The rabbit was lacking a bit of crispiness to its skin, but it was still tender, and the flavors were good. Verity had always heard that food tasted better if you hunted it yourself, but she didn’t particularly think that was true.
They talked over dinner, largely about food and what they each liked to eat in the winter months when it was harder to find something fresh, even for Isra. There were, on one of the shelves, several ceramic crocks that were filled with all kinds of pungent things, some of them from recipes, and others of Isra’s own creation. The chiller in the kitchen was rather small, not big enough to hold a winter’s worth, and there were apparently more large crocks outside, sitting under the eaves of the house, though given it was early in summer, most of them had been emptied.
“It’s very different in the winter,” said Isra. “When enough snow falls that it deadens the sound, when you can see tracks through the snow clearly … I take the chilling element off the stove and hang it outside, letting the stove heat the whole house. It gets nice and cozy.”
“It sounds nice,” said Verity. “With a little bit of — not hot chocolate, because you don’t have that, but … tea?”
“Hot tea on a cold day,” Isra nodded. “I know all the best plants for it, or at least those that grow in the area. Sometimes I have a fire outside, and revel in the smoky smell that coats my clothes.”
“‘The smoky smell that coats my clothes’,” said Verity. “‘Winter’s breath and curled up toes’.”
Isra smiled. “I would accept a post-dinner song, if you felt one coming on.”
Verity got out her lute and thought for a moment before starting in on her song. The song before, their little rhyming one, had been fun, but she wanted something soft and comfortable, like a warm sweater, a sense of being insulated from everything the outside world had to offer.
She put magic into the song. Emotional manipulation was difficult the more complex it got, and Verity was aiming for something incredibly complex, the very specific feeling of being glad to stay inside when the weather outside was bad, but generalized so that it was sitting tight and comfortable while the world was swirling around you in the distance. It was, she realized partway through, the feeling of being in a cabin with a friend while your mother was off planning concerts for you.
“Mmhmm,” said Isra when the song concluded. She swayed slightly. “That was strong.”
“Too strong?” asked Verity. “Sorry, it might have been the party link, my songs work better on you than a normal audience.”
“I think it resonated,” said Isra. “You work with what’s there.”
“I have another in me, if you’d like,” said Verity. “I brought my lute because I really do need to practice every day, but I can go do it somewhere else if you’d like.”
“No, I want to hear you play,” said Isra. “I always want to hear you play. I need to do dishes anyhow.”
Verity was tempted to do something whimsical and imaginative, something she actually felt like playing, but there was a very real chance that she was going to have professional work soon, and though she loathed the thought of it, she needed to get in time with some of the pieces that she would be expected to play in a concert. People liked the classics, the sprightly notes of Lessi and the throbbing tempo of Beruchald, and Verity needed to get back to the level of technical skill they demanded.
Isra did dishes while Verity played Beruchald. The music felt stale and boring to Verity, though Beruchald wasn’t particularly noted for being stuffy. It was nothing like playing in a dungeon, where she could alter the song to suit what was going on. When Alfric went in for a heavy swing, she could punch up the note, and when Mizuki announced that there would be some deafening explosion, the song could pause to work it in. Some of that was actually useful, but in terms of aesthetic, it couldn’t be beat. Beruchald, played properly, was like a dull, lifeless rock by comparison, and every bit of variation and interpretation she added to it felt like a breath of fresh air.
“What was that?” asked Isra once Verity was done. She’d finished all the dishes and sat back down on the stump. “It wasn’t your usual style.”
“That was Beruchald,” said Verity. “Did you like it?”
“I did,” said Isra. “I almost had to stop to listen to it. Are there more in that style?”
“Beruchald was a person, that’s not the name of the song,” said Verity. “Sorry, I forgot who I was speaking with. Beruchald was a composer who lived some hundred and fifty years ago, and that was, technically, a rendition of a transcription for solo stringed instrument of the third movement of his sixth symphony, which was done by a virtuoso lutist named Carmellia. Beruchald’s great work was a set of symphonies, which he worked on for much of his life, and his last eight symphonies were all in the theme of seasons.”
“Which one was that?” asked Isra. “And why eight?”
“There are four ‘main’ symphonies and four ‘transitional’ symphonies,” said Verity. “What you just heard was only a piece of the Summer Symphony.” She tried to weigh whether what she wanted to say would count as bragging. “Beruchald is considered one of the best composers to have ever lived, and Carmellia’s transcription for solo stringed instrument is one of the most technically demanding pieces within the entire canon of solo stringed pieces.”
“So you’re saying that it’s impressive?” asked Isra.
“It’s — yes,” said Verity. “Sorry, I don’t like to brag, but — I feel as though you won’t know me, truly know me, until you understand what it is I’ve spent my life training to do.”
“Go ahead,” said Isra. “Because I don’t understand. You make good music, but it’s more than that, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” nodded Verity. “There are professional musicians, people who spend a majority of their working life playing, who cannot play that piece to the level of perfection and polish that is demanded from a concert-level performance. I was able to play it well enough at sixteen. I’m actually really, really good with a lute. That wasn’t the best performance I’ve ever done, I’m rusty, but I was playing it from memory without sheet music, in less than ideal conditions, and — I can see now that it’s going to be nearly impossible for me to share this with you.”
“I’m sorry,” said Isra. There was a cool impassiveness to the way she apologized, as though she wasn’t actually sorry, but Verity had known her long enough to know that this was just how Isra was.
“It’s nothing to be sorry about,” said Verity. “I mean, you’re a druid, your entire perception of the world is so different from mine that I’m like a blind person, right?”
“I suppose,” said Isra. She gave a little frown. “But I never knew that I was a druid. You always knew you had a gift, didn’t you?”
“I never felt like I did,” said Verity. “I felt like I was just barely holding on, barely keeping up, training twice as hard to get half the results, always just at the limits of my abilities. And sometimes it felt like I was behind everyone else, and that there was nothing that I could do to catch up with them. I couldn’t see what I was doing wrong, couldn’t progress to the next level.”
“So how did you?” asked Isra.
“I think, in retrospect, they were just lying to me,” said Verity. “Especially when I was younger. They wanted me to feel that way so that I would push myself harder. Maybe calling it lying is wrong, but they knew that if they praised my talent, I would rest easy and not put in so much effort.”
“Your mother is awful,” said Isra.
“Okay,” Verity laughed. “Well, you do understand.”
“What was it all for?” asked Isra. “Did your mother care that much about music?”
“No,” said Verity. “It was for prestige, and I suppose the money that it could bring in, though I don’t think that was the biggest consideration until recent years.”
They were interrupted by some chatter on the party channel, mostly asking whether Verity would be home, and checking to make sure that things had gone well. Alfric was still a bit on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but his parents had given their assurance, and Verity thought that this was just extra caution.
“Did you still want to stay here?” asked Isra. “You don’t have to. There’s still light, you could warp and be in before it’s dark.”
“I still want to stay here,” Verity nodded, whatever her misgivings. “If that’s okay.”
“It is,” said Isra. “If you want to … to know me.”
“I do,” said Verity. She looked around the house. “I think that before I came here, I had the wrong idea about you. Or, a different idea.”
“And this new idea,” said Isra, eyes steady. “It’s better?”
“More true,” said Verity. “And more valuable, for that.”
They each got changed, which was done more or less in front of each other, as they’d done for quite some time. Since coming back from Dondrian, Isra had new underthings, which were quite fetching on her.
They talked a bit more, but the sun eventually set, and the single light in the house, along with the lack of proper seating, felt like it was forcing them toward bed. Isra took the top bunk, and Verity took the bottom, and they tried to talk as they normally did before falling asleep, but it was harder to hear each other, and they couldn’t see each other’s face, which made the whole thing awkward.
Eventually, Isra’s responses were slower to come, then breathing took on the characteristic slowness it had when she was sleeping, and Verity was left alone with her thoughts.
The Verity of a Thousand Conquests, who left Satisfied Lovers in her Wake would have handled things differently. She hadn’t mentioned the new underthings, nor asked to see Isra’s stomach, hadn’t made a move that would at least resolve the question of whether there might possibly be something between the two of them. There was still time, perhaps, to climb up into the top bunk and softly kiss Isra awake, but of course that could backfire horribly in a number of ways, perhaps even if Isra would normally be interested. Verity wondered whether that was how history’s greatest lovers were, if they were simply people who went for it and accepted that sometimes it would destroy friendships or cause offense or be, perhaps, a bit morally questionable. It was a nice fantasy, but not something that she would actually do.
Eventually, fantasies — perhaps untoward fantasies, if they were unwanted — ran their course, and Verity was left to think about the future. The future loomed, and her mind went to the issues that lay there, the conversations that she would have, the things she would do, and be forced to do.
And the next day, there was a dungeon waiting, which put all other thoughts to the side. She liked that about dungeons.