Sirath
Iwake to the sound of her crying.
Not the noise she makes during the bites, not the noise she makes when my body is inside hers and the wanting breaks through the anger. This is the sound of a structure coming apart.
Magnelle is standing at the cave mouth, satchel on her shoulder, walking stick in her hand, and she looks at me across the cave with an expression that says it’s my turn.
“Fix your Ophidian,” she says. “Come visit when the mountain is safe.”
She walks through the gap in the rock, small, gray-haired, stubborn, the walking stick tapping against the granite on the way down.
Ruelle is at the workbench, sitting on the stone seat, her hands in her lap, her face wet. The vials and compounds are spread in front of her, the work of the night still on the shelf, the modified compound drying in its vessel.
She’s not looking at any of it. She’s looking at her hands.
I cross the cave and sit on the floor beside her, my back against the workbench, my body between her and the rest of the world. I don’t talk. I don’t ask what Magnelle said.
She slides off the seat, onto the floor beside me, against me, her face in my arm, her hands gripping the scales at my side, and the crying doesn’t stop. I put my arm around her and hold her against my chest.
She cries completely, nothing held back, nothing controlled, nothing filed or measured or written down, the way she does everything else. With her whole body.
I hold her, my chin resting on the top of her head, her hair smelling like sulfur and sleep. The fire is cold. The modified compound sits on the workbench above us, waiting.
Outside, the mountain is bright with morning, and Magnelle’s footsteps fade on the switchbacks.
Ruelle’s crying slows, her breathing evens, her grip on my scales loosening, then tightening, then loosening again.
“She said nobody knows,” Ruelle says. Her voice is raw. “Seven months. Nobody was chasing me. Nobody even knew my name.”
“I know your name.”
She makes a sound, not a laugh, not a cry, something between them.
“I know your name,” I say again. “And the door is open.”
She presses her face harder into my chest, her tears warm on my scales.
I hold her until the crying stops. Then I hold her while she breathes. Then I hold her because she needs someone to hold her, and I’m here.