5. Sirin
Chapter five
Sirin
IN WHICH OUR HEROINE IS EXCEEDINGLY ANGRY AT HER OWN CONFUSION, THE PEOPLE AROUND HER, AND LIFE IN GENERAL
Sirin woke to near darkness and pain. Her head throbbed and her whole body seemed to ache.
Of all the types of pain there were, she was lucky to experience several of them at once.
Joy. She blinked, wondering why her tent was so cold.
Shifting to turn on her little portable stove, she hissed as pain shot through her shoulder.
Immediately, she attempted to repair the area but found her lunula stores almost depleted.
Had she fallen asleep without drinking more lunula, again?
The cold seemed to increase as she slowly became aware of her surroundings.
She was not in her bed at all, but in a cave.
Next to her a sputtering fire provided some small measure of warmth and light.
What little she could see of the cave did not seem the least bit familiar, nor did she remember camping here for the night.
How had she gotten here? Sirin tried to recall where she'd been and what she'd been doing, but her thoughts kept slipping from her mind.
Last she could remember, she'd snuck out from the Citadel earlier than she'd planned.
Perhaps she'd camped here for the night and somehow forgot?
No, camping here for the night did not account for any of her injuries or why she didn't seem to be wearing footwear at all.
She could only surmise she'd somehow injured herself and had been rescued by a group sent by the Citadel.
Dammit, this is not what I need. A wave of panic washed over her, making her feel like she'd been dunked in ice. The consequences for going against the Lord Lunologist could be dire, and she had no interest in finding out what hers might be.
Sirin turned her head, trying to see if she could get any more oriented while being completely horizontal.
From her limited view, she couldn't see her pack or any other supplies the other scholars might have left.
She realized she couldn't smell other humans either.
Her sense of smell was heightened, but she hadn't the faintest idea why.
She could smell something, though. What she couldn't understand was why she was having a hard time identifying the scent.
It didn't match any animal she'd ever smelled, but also, somehow, it felt familiar.
It wasn't human, but it was close, and it also reminded her of a bear, her bear specifically.
The scent had faded, so he wasn't here with her now, but she'd guess he'd been here recently.
It must be the scent of my human rescuer over that of a bear who lived here at one point. She sat with the thought for a minute, but it felt wrong. Except it was only one smell, and it was fresh.
I suppose it could be possible for another lunologist to change their scent.1 Perhaps they were trying to blend into nature and are using bear pheromones as a model. That must be it. Smart, I hadn't ever considered it, but it seems like it would be handy.
She thought about how she might go about synthesizing bear pheromones, but she couldn't seem to recall how she'd indexed her books on pheromones. This would not do. How was she meant to get herself out of this situation if she couldn't even pull information out of her brain?
Sirin tapped the small amount of lunula she had left in her blood and checked her injuries.
Her head wound seemed to be mostly a concussion with a small laceration.
She'd broken several bones in her left arm, but it did seem to be a single impact fracture across both, so she'd had worse.
Her right forearm had sustained some bruising and several puncture wounds which might indicate an animal bite of some sort, which was odd.
Her right shoulder was also dislocated, but that seemed the extent of her injuries.
She spent the last bit of her lunula attempting to heal the hematoma in her brain, but she ran out before her body could repair all the damage.
A body could only be pushed so far, so fast, on such a small amount of magic. 2
With a sigh, she allowed her head to gently rest back onto her hat, which she was surprised to find under her head, cushioning it.
As soon as she allowed herself to relax, Sirin felt her eyelids droop.
She shook her head to keep herself awake, and spikes of pain jolted through her skull.
With a groan, she allowed her eyes to shut.
She knew she shouldn't sleep, concussed as she was, but the lure of rest was too strong to resist.
She woke up to distant noises. Keeping her eyes closed to concentrate, she could make out several distinct footfalls and at least three voices. The conversation sounded tense, though she couldn't quite make out the words.
She shivered. The fire was completely out at this point.
Hopefully, they would restart it when they arrived.
She tried to match the voices to any of her colleagues, but none seemed to fit.
There was one grumbly deep voice, a curt one that spoke quickly, and a high feathery voice she could barely make out.
After a few moments, their footsteps stalled, and they stopped speaking. Sirin strained to hear them but was met with only silence. Seconds passed with nary a sound and her heart rate increased.
Why aren't they coming? Have they decided its better to just be rid of me? They can't just leave me here!
Her heart sped as she considered being stranded for any significant length of time. Surely she wouldn't live long, as vulnerable as she was. She had absolutely nothing to eat, no wood for a fire, and no way of fixing that.
She pitched her voice as loud as she was able and called, ''Hello? Help! I am over here! Please! I need help!''
The volume made her wince, but Sirin knew it could be her only chance at living.
She quieted to listen for a response and was rewarded with the curt voice saying a few words before footsteps resumed in her direction.
Sirin's throat clenched and her vision blurred with tears.
A shuddering sob left her as she waited.
She didn't know who these people were, but they were clearly at least curious enough to investigate, for which she was extremely grateful.
She instinctively reached up to dash the tears from her eyes and groaned at the pain in her shoulder.
Outside, a deep voice called ''Coming!'' and the footsteps picked up as they switched to another language.
It seemed odd to Sirin that she didn't recognize it.
She spoke a fair few and could at least identify many others.
The cadence sounded familiar to her, it rolled and lilted, but her head wasn't as clear as it should be yet, so she stopped trying to identify it.
They stopped speaking entirely as they approached her until the curt voice called out a heavily accented ''Halloo? What's the craic? We're here to assess your injuries.''
''I'm in here,'' Sirin called. A wave of gratitude washed over her, threatening to make her cry once more.
She squinted as a tall, rangy woman with close-cropped white hair entered and rushed to kneel at Sirin's side, a lantern near blinding her after the dark.
The woman's skin was deeper than Sirin's, surprising in these northern latitudes, but Sirin didn't recognize her face.
There were hundreds of lunologists at the Citadel, so Sirin came to the conclusion that she just hadn't met this woman.
Her clothing was a style Sirin didn't recognize either, which was odd.
There were plenty of cultures represented in the styles of dress at the Citadel, as lunologists came from across the continent, but the fabrics this woman wore didn't seem made of any fiber Sirin knew either.
The woman dropped a bag on the ground next to Sirin and began assessing her injuries, her eyes searching and hands lightly probing.
''I'm Arndis. I'm a healer,'' she said.
Ah, this is the curt voice. Arndis spoke in a way that barely tickled the edges of Sirin's knowledge, but the name of the language corresponding to the accent continued to elude her3.
''I'm Sirin,'' she gasped as Arndis probed a particularly tender spot.
A grumble near the entrance drew her eyes.
Another woman and a man stood there, both paler of skin and hair than Sirin, as she might expect this far north.
It surprised Sirin that the man was vaguely familiar, though surely she'd remember someone so…
big? He was broad-shouldered and towered over the wisp of a woman next to him.
He had solidness, a thickness to him she found quite appealing.
The woman stood with her arms crossed firmly and the man with his fists clenched at his side.
It struck her as odd that they all shared starkly white hair even though these other two were pale and of the three, only the woman by the door looked old enough for hair of that color.
4 Sirin trawled through her mind to see if she could place their faces but again came up blank.
She should be able to remember someone as remarkable as that absolute beast of a man, surely?
Curse this concussion, I should at least recognize them, or that fabric they are wearing!
Sirin looked back at Arndis, willing her brain to remember anything about this woman, but nothing she wore gave Sirin any clues.
The embroidery at her cuffs didn't remind Sirin of any culture she could remember.
The cut of her shirt and trousers was unfamiliar too. Sirin wanted to scream.