OoOoO

It had been hours since Lhara and Jath had set out from Trosk. In that time, not a single word had passed between them. Lhara led the way along the ridgeline, the strong wind coming up from the south pulling at her plait and the corners of her rough brown cloak. Jath followed a short distance behind, although with every passing half hour he lost about a stride off Lhara's pace. Lhara kept glancing back, expecting the pale Factionist to have finally toppled to one side of the trail. If he were to lose his footing and fall to either side, she doubted she would be able to reach him before he went tumbling all the way down the sheer faces of the mountainside. With that in mind, Lhara slowed her steps just slightly.

The clouds which had threatened rain that morning still hung close overhead, in some places drifting across the ridgeline in foggy tendrils. Every time Lhara stepped through one of these a chill instantly enveloped her, plastering her clothes damply to her skin and making her shiver. The world felt small inside the clouds though, hiding even the nearest of The Teeth from view. Short, sharp cries from nesting golden eagles below on the cliffs reached her ears, even muffled as they were by the fog. No doubt the mothers would happily make a meal for their chicks out of any hapless creature which were to fall and break themselves on the rocks far below.

To Lhara's surprise, Jath never lost his footing, nor complained. He stuck dead center to the middle of the trail, picking his way along the gravely ridge so cautiously Lhara thought he might actually be trying to follow in her exact footsteps. The sound of his labored breathing echoed dully in the fog though, as obvious as if he were right next to her chilly ears. That was why Lhara called a halt long before true sundown. If she were on her own, she would have kept walking long into the night, with or without the moonlight to see by.

They set up a makeshift camp in the elbow between the ridgeline and another mountain's face. The wet stone dripped rivulets of condensed water down alongside them, and so Lhara dug out a hole for their fire as far out from the wall as she could. When the wind nipped at the tender sparks of her first attempts to start a fire, she edged around the hollow to crouch with her back to the wind. There was no wind for kindling this high up in The Teeth, but lichen could be found everywhere. Jath caught on as he watched her piling scraps of lichen torn from nearby rocks together for the fire, and went without asking in search of more.

He did not go far. The dark silhouette of his hooded cloak moved like a shadow through the mist, dipping here and stretching there. When he returned with a good bundle of fungi stripped from its rocky beds, Lhara did not miss the dark shadows beneath his eyes. They were so dramatic, they looked as though the man had smudged his pallid face with ash. Lhara was reminded of the Factionists' and the single dark circles which they had marked their brows with. 'Ash heads' was what Tarun had said the Factionists were called amongst the Gorian army. She hadn't seen any such mark on Jath's face, but a Factionist he was. Lhara imagined she felt bitter about that fact, but it was hard to blame Jath for much when he looked so utterly worn out.

"I brought some food," she offered, settling back on her heels as their infant campfire took hold. "We'll have to forage later on, but for now there's bread and cheese." It was the first she'd spoken in hours, and her voice hung unnaturally in the gloom.

"May I?"

"Unless you brought food of your own...?" When Jath looked away from the question, Lhara pulled a slice of bread and chunk of cheese from her pack and tossed them across the fire to him. "I didn't expect you would have, don't worry about it."

Silence returned as they both sat chewing and swallowing without really tasting anything. The burning lichen spread a thick, acrid scent through the air, quickly dulling even the sharp flavor of argali cheese. They had been walking since before midday, but still Lhara had no appetite and she ate without enthusiasm. Jath meanwhile seemed subtly anxious; his white gaze sought out the jagged peaks of The Teeth where they occasionally managed to tear through the clouds which surrounded them, eyeing them up as a vole would the bared teeth of a fox.

Night fell quickly, turning the haze around their ridge-top campsite from downy grey to thick, smothering dark. It reminded Lhara of crawling under a wool blanket and pressing it around her head. The little campfire ate through lichen quickly. Soon the flames began to sputter and burn low between the stone. It would be a cold, wet night for certain.

That was why, when Jath tucked himself against the rocky wall at their backs a short distance away, Lhara was too tired to even hesitate before closing the gap between them. She felt the Factionist stiffen in surprise when she slid down to lean firmly into his shoulder.

"I'm a whole lot warmer than the stones are," Lhara said by way of explanation. A gust of cold wind came whistling through The Teeth, further proving her point. "The fire won't be able to help us for much longer."

"Of course..." Jath did not sound very at ease. He remained tensed beside Lhara. Then he shifted himself upright as if trying to accommodate her and her comfort, meager as it was.

Lhara sighed in exasperation, looking up. "It's not my head that was nearly split open like an egg, you know." When Jath didn't seem to understand, she huffed again. "Here, let me."

A little bit of rearranging ended up with Lhara's shoulder more even with Jath's, their cloaks tightly tucked about their arms and their heads meeting somewhat in the middle. Lhara could already feel the knot threatening to tighten on one side of her neck, but at least they both could prop each other up instead of relying on the hard rock. And, most importantly, she could feel the Factionist's body heat against her own. Even summer nights in the highest reaches of The Teeth could be as cold as early winter.

Jath remained rigid, if warm. Even as Lhara watched her breath begin to even out in long puffs of fog through her nose he did not relax. It made her yearn for Marden's broad, comfortable arms. The resulting lump in her throat made her foggy breath hitch abruptly. She struggled not to cry over her brothers yet again. It was one thing to huddle next to a traveler for warmth on the road...quite another to start sniffling on a stranger's shoulder. With some effort, Lhara let out a long, slow breath through parted lips and tried to sleep.

OoOoO

Some time later Lhara was awakened by screaming. Half-shrill, half-growling, the din echoed off the faces of The Teeth all around. It was a horrible sound, but not one Lhara was unaccustomed to; a catamount, or mountain cat, yowling for its mate somewhere off in the distance. Her first instinct was to go check that the sheep were secure. Then Lhara remembered where she was, and that there was no flock to guard.

Something clamped down hard on her forearm, startling a yelp out of Lhara. A leather glove creaked, and she realized that Jath had her arm in a death-grip.

"What is that?" A whisper came from the darkness beside her head. Jath sounded petrified.

"You've never heard a catamount's cry before?" Lhara asked.

"I have."

"Then why such a panic?" Lhara flexed her hand. Seeming to realize how tight his grip was, Jath immediately let go. "The red cats are shy creatures; they won't bother us."

The catamount screamed again, and this time it was answered. The pair's wailing growls could have been either a single league or twenty away from where they sat, the mountains made it impossible to guess. It was too dark to see Jath's face, if his face could have been glimpsed past the hood of his cloak. Lhara could hear his quick, shallow breathing though.

"Get some rest. You'll be in no shape to travel tomorrow if you don't."

At first Lhara thought that Jath was going to take her advice. He said nothing, even when the catamounts' continued their ghastly duet. She was just about to start drifting off to sleep again despite the racket when his soft, hoarse voice broke the night.

"Can an animal be an omen of death?"

It was a strange question, more the sort of thing Lhara would have expected from a discussion with Magda. Not that she had been learning from the Wise Woman long enough to be any sort of authority on omens and the like. Still, she felt how stray hairs escaping her braid tickled the Ættartré tattooed on the back of her neck. And she was one of the mountainfolk, who were nothing if not aware of the deeper meanings of things.

"My people believe that ravens carry the spirits of the dead up into the sky, there to become stars. Why?" The memory of ravens perched on the guardian statues outside the crypts came to her unbidden.

"Surely the catamounts must foretell of death then. At least, they have done for me," said Jath quietly. "These mountains are killers."

Lhara's first thought was to indignantly defend her home from this Factionist's accusation. He was right though, in a way. Her own da had fallen to his death down a ravine halfway between Trosk and where they now sat. Before turning her head and going back to sleep, she found a rebuke which would serve well enough.

"Only to strangers."

OoOoO

Jath had not slept at all come dawn, if the darkness beneath his eyes and the lethargy dragging at his movements was any proof. Breaking camp took no time at all, and within minutes of Lhara waking they were on their way south along the ridgeline again. Lhara insisted on checking the bandage around Jath's head first though. The stitches were dry and clean, and a quick smudge of garlic paste was enough for Lhara to pronounce him fit to continue. Jath submitted patiently, although the way he stretched his gaze to the south gave away how anxious he was to get on with the trek to Falerik.

The day was fresh and pale. The sunlight gleamed pink in the eastern sky as it rose, lining the clouds accompanying it with hems of gold and making the dew drops on every surface sparkle. Even Lhara's breath caught the light and danced like crystals of frost in midair. Unseen insects struck up a chorus from within the rocks, and the wind played gently around the mountaintops like wind through a set of pipes, adding beautiful, eerie sounds to the morning melody. Lhara's clothes clung to every inch of her skin and chilled her, as did her damp hair, but she paid them no mind. The late summer sun had some strength left in it, and soon it both dried and warmed her as they walked.

They stopped once mid-morning to pick some black huckleberries growing alongside the trail, which Lhara snacked on at a leisurely pace. The berries stained her fingers, and so she licked those clean too. Jath for his part still didn't seem to have much appetite, and when pressed he admitted that the pain in his head was keeping his stomach tight and unsettled. When Lhara made it clear that her fee for guiding him to Falerik did not include nursing him back to health if he should collapse from hunger though, he did make an effort to both eat a drink a little.

For much of the morning they simply followed the spine of the world as it stretched on before them. The towering peak of Hollowtop Mountain drew closer and closer the further south they went, and for a time Lhara was content enough simply to watch The Teeth awaken. After a while with only the wind and the sky to busy her mind though, Lhara inevitably found her thoughts trying to follow the clouds back toward Trosk. Flashes of Marden and Yelaina, grey and still on the straw and the groan of burning timber kept returning to her. She tried to keep her mind away from such things, but they kept creeping back into the emptiness. When she almost missed her footing on a particularly narrow stretch of trail, at last Lhara turned to call back to Jath.

"Do you know any word games?" she asked.

The question seemed to catch Jath off his guard. "I beg your pardon?" He frowned slightly, white brows knitting together when his boot slid on a flat, dew-slicked stone.

"Word games, riddle contests, spoken sparring-matches, however they're called where you come from. Do you know any?"

"Well...there is one I know of. Folk in west Goran call it 'A Tale of Tales'."

"How do you play?"

Apparently tired of half-shouting, Jath jogged a few steps until he was only an arm's length behind Lhara. The mid-morning sunlight passed through his hair, defying Lhara's previous imaginings that perhaps it was not completely white, but white-blonde. Even his eyelashes and the stubble across his cheeks rejected all suggestions of color. He seemed a little otherworldly to Lhara.

"One player begins with an opening sentence, setting the stage of a story. Rather than continue though, they pass the story along to the next player, who adds to it however they would like. The aim of the game is to remember all of the previous lines of the growing story when it reaches you, and to add to it in either the most clever or most amusing way you can manage before passing it along."

Relieved to have a distraction from her dark and brooding thoughts, Lhara listened eagerly. "And does the story have to end eventually, or can it continue on forever?"

"Forever?" Jath raised his eyebrows. "There are no rules dictating when the story ends, so I suppose it very well could. No one ever cares to play 'A Tale of Tales' for that long though."

"Well, we have plenty of time. You start the story, and I'll continue it."

"You truly want to play?" Jath sounded surprised. When Lhara only glanced back at him over her shoulder, waiting, he recovered himself and thought for a moment. "Alright...perhaps...Once upon a time, there lived a butterfly."

Lhara's mind immediately filled with all kinds of imaginings of yellow-winged butterflies covering the wildflowers on the mountainside in the spring. As a child she had often wondered about the lives of the butterflies, and so it wasn't a hard thought to follow.

"Once upon a time, there lived a butterfly. This butterfly was strange though, because it was in love with a moth."

"A moth, hmmm," Jath hummed. "Once upon a time, there lived a butterfly. This butterfly was strange though, because it was in love with a moth. The moth and the butterfly met on a starry summer evening while searching for sweet flowers to drink."

They continued on like that for some time. The leagues passed slowly but smoothly beneath their boots. It was difficult at times to remember every line of the growing story, but with nothing else to distract her Lhara was pleased to find the words becoming a sort of chant. Like the unknown words of the Croning Song, they fell into place in Lhara's memory, taking on a cadence and rhythm which became easier and easier to recall. By the time they stopped at sundown, Jath's previously slack expression was tinged with respect while he listened to her latest addition.

"...and so the moth flew away to hide, ashamed that the butterflies had laughed at how it tried to paint its wings."

"You could rival some of the best minstrels in The Bardic College with a memory like that. That must be at least fifty lines that you just retold almost perfectly," he told her.

That pricked Lhara's interest. "The Bardic College? Where is that?" Tarun had always been 'the smart one' in the family, and it felt oddly gratifying to be praised for such things.

Unfortunately though, that seemed to have been the wrong question to ask. Jath face immediately went blank, his spirit almost visibly turning inward.

"In the west," was all that he would say. She wondered if Jath had ever attended this Bardic College. Tarun had dreamed of going to The Academy in Amenthere. Lhara wondered if, wherever he was, Tarun still dreamed of seeking a capital education. She hoped he did.

OoOoO

That night was less cold and damp than the night before, but still chilly. So high up in The Teeth, the air grew thin and lost the sun's heat almost as quickly as it set. This time Jath did not protest when Lhara folded her legs beneath her and settled in against his shoulder. Silently they watched as the first stars blinked themselves open. Lhara scanned the sky, wishing she could see them all clearly. Perhaps then she would be able to pick out any new stars, and know that Marden and Yelaina had found their place in the heavens.

Straining to see beneath the hood of her cloak, Lhara squinted as hard as she could up into the rich blue-blackness above. She didn't realize that a tear had squeezed its way out the corner of one eye until it dripped from her chin.

"I'm sorry."

Scrubbing her cheek with the cuff of her sleeve, Lhara cleared her throat before daring to glance in Jath's direction.

"For what?" she asked.

"For what happened to Trosk," said Jath. His pale eyes glowed not unlike silver in the gathering starlight. He sounded sadder than usual. "When Nadathan and Sula decided we were going to Trosk, we did not know that the Fourth Company was tracking us. If they had known...I'm sure they never would have come to your village."

Lhara didn't know how to answer that. Part of her wanted to snap and rage out every ripple of anger and hurt in her body at the Factionist sitting next to her. Part of her wanted to burst into tears. Another part of her still wanted to cling to her dignity and accept the offered apology.

Instead, Lhara chose a fourth path; she spoke. She spoke of Marden, and how he and Yelaina were finally going to be married after so many years of waiting. She spoke of how Tarun would read the same handful of books over and over again, committing them all to memory. Sparing no detail, Lhara described Marden's reliability, Tarun's cleverness, Yelaina's generosity. She told Jath how she and Yelaina had become friends after fighting, how Marden never used his place as eldest to lord over his younger siblings, and how Tarun would help her around the house with domestic tasks. If today they had played at building a story, now Lhara poured out the story of her broken family to Jath, an utter stranger. He was the only one there to listen though, and Lhara needed to tell it.

When at last she finished, her voice was shaking and her heart was racing. If only through her words, her heart's own had lived again, and Lhara grasped at their presences even as they faded away like mist. Now at least she did not feel so alone, if only because someone near understand just what she had lost.

Jath for his part had said nothing the entire time. He sat in silence, letting Lhara pour out her grief and heartache without looking away to let her know that he was listening. Now he bowed his head and repeated his apology, and every word hung heavy with empathy.

"I am sorry, Lhara. Truly, I'm sorry."

Rubbing at the salty tracks on her cheeks with her sleeve, Lhara let out a long breath. The ache of grief was still there, but it felt like a wound that had been tended and bound now, rather than left open to bleed.

"Thank you," was all she said, but she meant it.

They sat in silence in the gathering dark, listening to the distant chiming of crickets further down the mountainside. The large outcrop of rock against which they were sheltering wasn't much in the way of cover, but the night air actually felt rather soothing as it whispered around them. The stars were wide awake now, and Lhara was able to pick out some of her favorite constellations.

"I had a sister, once."

That took Lhara aback. After Jath's refusal to even talk about The Bardic College earlier, the last thing she would have expected was to learn anything about his own personal history.

"Where is she?" Lhara asked, but really she already knew the answer.

Jath stretched his neck up toward the sky, a dark silhouette against a backdrop of stars.

"What was she like?"

"She was a moth...the most beautiful, brave and rare of moths."

When there was no further answer forthcoming, Lhara settled back and thought of trying to sleep. Jath was unmoving but pliant next to her, his warm shoulder flush with hers. There was a sense of unspoken relief in the air, as if each had been holding in a painful breath and at long last was able to breathe freely. Not for the first time Lhara wondered at the wider world. What awaited her in west Goran? How had the conflict between the crown and the Factionists begun? How would this story end?

When at last Lhara did drift off to sleep, she dreamed of a mountainside covered with a hundred-thousand butterflies. One-by-one they took flight, each shedding their bejeweled wings in turn and rising, glittering white as stars in the night sky.

OoOoO