In due time. If the flickering surge that caused her steps to stutter was any indication, she knew that he was right. Beyond that, his words didn’t pry; nor did he linger on the subject. The look she gave him was one of slow consideration, the wheels within her head turning as she deliberated upon his character. Her distrust hadn’t waned even a sliver, but her curiosity fanned to life with each passing moment.
 
Beyond that, their exchange remained a welcome distraction, and Hälla wasn’t yet ready to let it go.
 
The kindly smile he passed her way was not returned, the slopes of her badger-marked face remaining marble smoothed, the scar upon her dark lips not bothering to twitch into an answering smile. Her moony eyes appraised him as he spoke, assessing his features with bewitching intensity, as a throaty laugh answered his words.
 
“If we venture out of the bounds of our Courts, are we not all wanderers and vagabonds?” She challenged, though her interruptions were otherwise scarce. He’d ventured outside of the jurisdiction of Dawn, even her waking-self knew that much, and even a blinded fool could’ve seen that the deserts of Solterra were a wild, lawless place.
 
The sand cared not for heritage when it claimed its victims. Only for the warmth, the blood, the flesh, that it could pull into its wretched arms. Hälla had only just managed to claw her way free—she knew others had not.
 
(Camaraderie was the furthest thing from her mind at present, for the selfishness of survival had mostly overridden any affection for her past companions, if she’d had any at all. She was alive, but whether faces from memory had dug their way out, too, she couldn’t say for certain.
 
Her heart knew it had been loved once. But it knew, too, that it had been hurt. Whomever had pressed a blade to her breast, she could only pray that the desert had ground their bone to dust, and that their grave lay far beyond her would-be tombstone.
 
She hoped. She hoped—)
 
Another laugh, breathy and loose, echoed his words. No, she didn’t believe differently.
 
“I would much rather wander,” her emphasis upon the word was a pointed directive, as if their definition of the word were some small conflict she sought to win. Childish, almost; but also, miraculously, playful. “Than turn to stone somewhere.”
 
The irony of her words made her lips twitch, her head turning to look ahead as she paced onwards. The desert continued to span on, and despite the overwhelming nothingness that perpetuated over the vast horizon, she couldn’t help the itching claustrophobia. They were surrounded by everything and nothing all at once, and the compulsion to bolt became a nagging itch.
 
And it coincided with his question. Was she running from something?
 
Yes, her mind heaved, a livewire spitting embers. From the past. From the dark. From the tombs. And maybe, just for now, from the desert.
 
“If you need no answer,” she said slowly. “Then why ask?”
 
His words were soft, and Hälla flicked her hoary eyes to meet his own, her chin tilted to compensate for the height that cleaved them apart. She was silent, her muscles corded with contradictory stillness, even as she continued to move.
 
Her concession was a slow, deliberate one, and she swallowed the acid that threatened to overtake her words, betraying her gradual willingness to indulge him.
 
“I’m uncertain,” which was true. She had taken no consideration as to what her destination was or where it was she was going, only that Arjun’s name beat a drum inside of her skull. Zakariah’s was a distant echo, the Betrayer just as fresh of a wound within her mind, but she knew she loathed the Liar more than the man that’d lured them to their fates.
 
It was the dreams she’d been fed—the visions that had unfurled over the span of ten, suffocating years.
 
She didn’t yet know how long it’d been, but the creeping horror of wasted time was a lingering one. The endless dark had blurred into one, perpetuating lifetime, and even now, the heat of the sand upon her soles, she wondered if she was still sleeping.
 
“I was imprisoned in magic for some time,” she divulged, but the crispness of her tone invited no pity. Although, she wondered if he would ask what her crime had been. Pride, she supposed; stupidity. “I’d rather just breathe, for the time being.”
 
She wasn’t running from anything—not yet, at least. She was running toward freedom.

IHer initial reply was a gentle hmph, barely a sound within the silence of the desert. What she eventually offered was just as vague. “Fair enough.” Were she feeling bolder, she might’ve invited him to explain why he would appreciate it—what was the novelty in unearthing the finer details of, yes, a stranger?
 
She could’ve guessed that it was the opportunity to look beyond strangeness, and to gather some sense of familiarity. No matter the case, she’d already resolved it was a discourse beyond her current realm of interest. Given the chance, she had no doubt either of them could’ve spoken their strange philosophies until the desert swallowed them whole. Her biggest would’ve been the simultaneously impermanence and infiniteness of time, as she’d learned firsthand: how the world could pass in both the blink of an eye while seeming to drag on for eternity. So much had surely left her in the dust, and yet she had done nothing but atrophy.
 
Another sharp lungful of air braced her to continue speaking, to share with him the scarce details of the shackles she wore, and to be resolutely surprised by his disinterest in further investigating.
 
It brought a slight narrow to her brow, waiting for the inevitable moment that the other shoe might drop, as her lips thinned. He spoke again, and yet still, it was not helpless curiosity that drove him forward—it was a kindly solution, one that made her unhealthy heart twitch with skepticism.
 
But his head angled in the other direction, and loathe as she was to admit it, the once-woman of Solterra knew she would mistakenly wander for days to come if she didn’t heed his offer. And truth be told, the idea of temperance within this hour of chaos with irresistible. Her cloven hooves paused as his did, her body angling in the direction he looked, and she fixed with the eyes of a hawk.
 
Slowly, she watched him—measuring the finer aspects of his posture, his expression, his intent. The misanthropy was enough to deepen the furrow of his brow, and she regarded him with mild contempt, undoubtedly berating her own helplessness to accept his offer. The invitation was harmless enough, at least.
 
I do recall you wish to get away from this ‘hellish place,’ yes?
 
A huff of laughter left her lips, though it was dry of humor.
 
“You’re full of surprises, Avallac’h,” she hummed, though the meaning of her words was no doubt ambivalent. A smile flicked the corner of her scarred lips upward, and she slowly conceded her position.
 
“Lead on.”