Chapter 24 Becoming Strangers
Becoming Strangers
Aurienne
The rain was moon splashes on their shoulders, the sea-foam wet velvet at their knees. Aurienne and Mordaunt held each other. A farewell was coming. It was normal to be sad. All farewells are a sort of death.
By mutual, unspoken agreement they decided not to call the Leyfarer back yet. This was the end. They needn’t rush it.
Thunder rumbled. Wavelets danced. They stood with eyes dreaming towards each other.
“Fairhrim, I—”
“Aurienne. You can call me Aurienne.”
“Aurienne,” he said breathlessly.
She smiled against his mouth.
He did not smile back.
“We must make what we can of what’s left to us,” said Aurienne.
The rain turned to deluge. She stood upon the tips of her toes, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him hard.
The first fork of lightning flashed across the sky.
He kissed her back with a desperate thirst, with the agonised certainty that it was the last time. His mouth found her mouth, her eyes, her forehead. His hands passed over her possessively, wretchedly. As though holding her to him could make her his.
The inevitable end pained Aurienne more than she’d thought it would; it scalded at her heart. She had protected herself so much—why did this still hurt?
She wanted to be closer to him. Whole with him. This would be the last time.
His mouth was all over her neck. He paused when her hands found his shirt buttons. He looked at her with a gaze underlit with adoration. Want. Darkling despair.
Gods, she could love him, despite despite despite.
She pulled off his shirt. It fell into the wild surf. Another lightning strike. The world flashed lurid white.
Were they going to die here? The risk was delicious; Aurienne swallowed it amid gasps of thunder-bruised air.
He pulled off her dress and fell to his knees before her.
That was what veneration was, in the end.
Wanting. Giving. She dug her hands into his hair.
His tongue was on her, tasting the salt of her and the sea.
She gasped; water fell into her eyes and on her lips; the atmosphere was almost unbreathable with rain and brine and sweat.
With every building wave of her orgasm, there was a great crash of waves and a rumble of thunder. When, panting, she reached her peak, lightning flashed in the skies and behind her eyelids.
Legs shaking, she slipped down onto him. The air was stuttering, explosive, like them. This was a failure of restraint, this was forbidden, this was the greater sin: the sky was finally falling.
She rode him under the rain, her shoulders glistening with wet, the seas curling at her thighs, her hands in his drenched hair. His fingers dug into her, bruising, memorizing. Rivulets ran down his throat, his chest, over pitted lines of scars. Her lips memorised, too. It was the last time.
Storm-hearted, trembling, they made love under a sky uncreated, groaning with its own carnage, in a sea broken and blinding. Was it them who shook, or was it the thunder rolling through them? In their veins, was it blood or lightning?
She pressed her forehead to his. The grey-black of the storm was in his eyes.
The threshold between love and hate was somewhere between them, and between wanting and giving, and holding on and letting go, all of these things two sides of a coin spinning so fast it was a sphere, a mad oscillation, everything collapsing into its opposite.
The dark sky was bifurcated by lightning.
They held each other at this convergence of black and white, of night split by light, of light choked again and again by darkness.
There was no longer a cadence to the waves or to their movements, only triumphant shakes and spumes, only life and death in the exchange of breaths.
Lightning struck.
She shattered, and so did the sky.
The storm spent itself. Aurienne and Mordaunt stumbled back to the relative dryness of the fisherman’s hut. He spread his cloak upon the sand for them to sit on, and she drew hers over them for warmth. He managed to start a fire with damp driftwood.
The fire dried salty skin, sodden skirts, and wave-roughened hair. They shared the snacks in Aurienne’s satchel: dried meat, biscuits, chocolate.
Mordaunt held a fistful of sand and let it run out of his hands, marvelling boyishly at the feeling. Every grain of sand, he said. Incredible. His torpraxia was completely gone.
He was healed.
And it was over.
They fell asleep leaning on each other, under galaxies so bright they cast shadows upon the beach.
A few hours later, an unfamiliar seith, blustery and cool, pricked at Aurienne’s tācn. It was the Leyfarer’s deofol, which took the shape of a flying fox, suspended upside down in midair over the ashes of last night’s fire.
Ruain’s deofol beat her wings until she was right way up and asked, “How’s the form? Are we still alive?”
“We are,” yawned Aurienne.
“You said a few hours,” said the deofol, narrowing her round eyes. “It’s been six. We thought Haelan knew how to count.”
“Sorry,” said Aurienne. “Things took longer than expected. Please tell Ruain we’re ready for pickup anytime.”
“Right. I’m off, then. Slán,” said Ruain’s deofol. She wrapped her wings around herself and vanished.
The Farewell appeared half an hour later, descending in her ungainly way towards the beach from a sky of pale blue.
“Success in your research endeavour?” asked Ruain as Aurienne and Mordaunt clambered aboard.
“Yes,” said Aurienne.
“Is Mr. Hungwell pleased, too?” asked Ruain.
Aurienne felt as though Ruain was baiting Mordaunt into some sort of exchange, but Mordaunt was unusually serious. He gave no answer.
They took their seats. Aurienne asked for another of those blue sweets before they entered the ley lines, for the sake of the upholstery.
It put her in a pleasant daze as the Farewell took off.
She looked down through a porthole and saw, upon the sparkling sea, foam in the shape of vast spirals.
Ruain commented to Mordaunt that there were whales feeding below; those were their bubble nets.
The spirals spun upon themselves as Aurienne faded into sleep.
Ruain dropped them off, at Aurienne’s request, at Rosefell Hall. She wanted to do one last pass with the diffractor to confirm last night’s healing.
The Farewell hovered near Rosefell’s waystone. Mordaunt clambered down the rope ladder first and helped Aurienne out.
“Thank you for the ride,” called Aurienne.
“Take care, Aurienne. And you—whoever you are,” Ruain said, jutting his chin towards Mordaunt. Just before pulling the door closed, he gave them a wink. “Give us a shout if you ever want a third.”
He shut the door.
Aurienne blinked.
The Farewell took off.
Aurienne and Mordaunt exchanged glances. Mordaunt looked as though he might consider it.
They walked towards the house. There was a chill in the morning air. It was the beginning of summer’s long retreat. They were slipping into autumn, and it felt like things were ending.
They had begun in the spring.
Aurienne had grown in those months. She had learned.
She found her footsteps slow and unwilling as they entered Rosefell Hall. This adventure with Mordaunt would soon be over. It’s only when the story comes to an end that you feel the real weight of it. Of lessons learned. Of feelings lingering past the last pages.
Mrs. Parson met them at the door to the kitchens and was delighted by the news of Mordaunt’s healing—to be confirmed by diffractor, piped in Aurienne.
Mordaunt disappeared to fetch the machine. Aurienne joined Mrs. Parson in the kitchens to help with the tea.
Mrs. Parson squeezed Aurienne’s hand in her left one, which was missing a few fingers. “Thank you for what you did for him.”
“I’m pleased he’s going to be all right,” said Aurienne.
“The Old Ways worked?”
Aurienne hesitated. “I don’t yet know how to explain what happened. I’m going to take some time to analyse it all. But I think there was something in the Old Ways.”
“And so you’ve come to the end,” said Mrs. Parson. “I don’t think Osric is ready to say goodbye to you. You must be patient with him. He’s never not been able to have what he wants.”
Aurienne made no answer. The kettle came to a boil.
“A Fyren in love with a Haelan,” said Mrs. Parson with a sigh. “Quite beautiful, in a tragic way.”
“Is ‘love’ the right word?” asked Aurienne, frightened by the specificity.
“Yes.” Amusement pulled a corner of Mrs. Parson’s lips upwards. “He’s been quite dramatic about it. He struggled against it mightily, but hasn’t conquered it. He hasn’t told you?”
“No.”
“Stupid boy,” tutted Mrs. Parson. “Do you reciprocate the feeling?”
Aurienne’s hand went to the stone at her neck. “I can’t. I don’t—I don’t want to love. Someone was once ungentle with my heart. I defend it now.”
“The same Someone who gave you that stone you’re clutching like a talisman?”
Aurienne released her reflexive grasp. “Yes.”
“There’s a great heaviness to that stone.”
“It was a present. Hagstones keep bad dreams away.”
“You’re using it to keep all dreams away.”
The bluntness left Aurienne without a response.
Pity softened Mrs. Parson’s features. She looked as though she wanted to say something else, but turned back to the crockery. “Will you come to visit him at Rosefell sometimes?”
“I think it best not to,” said Aurienne. “For both of us.”
Mrs. Parson made no comment. She peeled a root Aurienne didn’t recognise. Its fibrous insides were dark red.
“What’s that for?”
“Broken hearts. It doesn’t mend them, but it does numb the pain a little.
You’ll both need it.” Mrs. Parson added the root to the teapot.
“I am grateful you saved Osric. He’s like family to Mr. Parson and me.
Sometimes a brilliant child, sometimes an idiot boy.
Thank you, Haelan. Erce bless your path. ”
Aurienne stilled. Erce bless your path was a Hedgewitch blessing. Amagris used to use it.