The hospital is silent, but that’s probably a good thing.
When Elchanan lands, it is not as soft nor as graceful as he’d like; the ground is startlingly soft underfoot, and he slips through the peat for a brief second in a way that punches a gasp of surprise from him. Mud splashes. Moss flies. A frog lets out a bizarre wet croak and goes hopping away in alarm, narrowly evading the tyranny of Elchanan’s hooves as he quickly regains his footing and straightens his posture.
Thankfully, there’s no one around to laugh.
The trees here are nestled so close together that hardly any sunlight breaks through. For that, Elchanan is grateful—it’s barely sunrise, and the little bit of light that did find him on the way here has left his skin smarting with an uncomfortable, prickling burn. The shade of the swamp is a balm, cool and dark and soft like velvet, and it settles his heart into a slower beat. For a moment, he closes his eyes, breathes, and listens.
A rustle of wind. The chirping of birds. The movement-sound of animals exchanging places, frogs clicking and croaking. It is peaceful in the simplistic, peasant way that Elchanan has come to expect of this court, and it is the kind of thing that would turn him away from Terrastella completely if he didn’t have someone to visit, a mission to complete. (The smells don’t help, either.) With an abrupt sigh the priest blinks his eyes open and trudges through the dirt and moss toward the hospital, a low, clean brick building whose windows are only just beginning to fill with light.
He knows Samaira will be here. Not because she’s said anything but because he knows her, or knows her enough: she wants to help these people, who really have given her nothing. She is the poorly-raised kind of girl who will give herself up in service to a goodness that does not exist. The kind that can very easily be taken advantage of. He’ll have to warn her of that, sometime soon: watch out. There are worse men than me.
Maybe she’ll even believe it.
Elchanan stretches out each wing, in turn, to shake off the collected mud and rain and plant matter; then he folds them neatly against his back and steps into the dawn-lit hospital.
touch me, it's so easy to leave me all alone with the memory of my days in the sun
It’s early. Any patients staying at the hospital are still fast asleep in their beds, and the other doctors and medics are tucked away inside, away from the murky dawn light filtering through the canopy of trees above. The air is filled with mistiness, the memory of rain, and it clings to her feathers and the swath of dark lashes framing her moon silver eyes.
Samaira stands on one of the balconies overlooking the swamp. It is still dark, beneath the trees—wan, veiled almost. There is too much silence, too much empty space to allow for thought and loneliness to come peeking through.
How well they fill the emptiness.
She blinks them away, turns away from the railing and back toward the hospital’s familiar halls. It is brighter inside, no corner left for the shadows to hide. The dampness sloughs away from her feathers as they might a swan’s, though it clings stubbornly to her skin. She smells like earth and rain, like peat and flowers. It clings to her lashes like stars.
Alaunus is there for her, waiting for her. He is always there for her, with too much knowing in his eyes and willingness in his heart. Samaira offers her bonded a smile, as her steps echo longingly down the barren hallway. “Perhaps it will be an easy day,” he suggests, “the hospital is quiet, aside from a few patients.”
“Perhaps,” the pegasus responds, somewhat distantly, as though she is not quite there. She preferred the busier days of winter, when there was always something for her to do. Always something to keep her distracted.
She doesn’t see him, at first. Doesn’t see the splash of his pale skin against the hospital’s dark floors, but when her eyes fall upon him, stepping into the waiting area her heart skips a beat. Her wretched, wretched heart, still betraying her. And yet, it is difficult for Samaira to forget their dance upon the lake the last they had seen each other.
Her legs stop moving, though her lips part. “Elchanan,” he is pristine in the light, his wings the softest shade of blue, his eyes still so deep and burnished. She cannot help her heart, cannot help its foolishness.
It was as she told Asterion, that her heart is always wanting for the things it cannot have.
As nothing has, there is no way this will end any differently.
“What are you doing here?” But then why, why, can she not stop it from hoping, and aching, and wanting? She blinks, one, twice, thrice, and then manages to get her legs moving again. “Are you injured?” If only it would be so simple, Samaira thinks. An injury is something she can handle.
This place is unimpressive. In the few moments that Elchanan is left to stand in silence in the high-ceilinged halls, that is the thought that crosses his mind—it’s not much—and wonders, not for the first time, how anyone can be happy in a place like this. Not just Samaira. Any nurse, any doctor, who volunteers to live in an oppressive swamp filled with sickly people, must be a little sick themselves. Why anyone would choose a life like this when there are lovers to meet, dances to attend, spells to be woven—well, there’s no reason good enough.
Sunlight filters in through the slimmest of cracks in the stone ceiling. The watery yellow glow tumbles down from above and splashes onto the floor, lighting up patches of still-damp moss that cling to the cobblestones and the droplets of dew that quiver on top of them. The black ring of hoofprints marks a well-worn path from the doorway deeper into the building; it would be easy to follow. But instead the priest waits patiently in the arched entrance, ears pricked forward as the sound of footfalls fills the hallway, and a tall, slender shadow descends from the staircase.
Elchanan smiles, and it is nearly genuine. The sharp edges of his teeth flash brighter than ivory as he looks at her.
There is a brief moment, a heartbeat, in which Elchanan could swear the doctor’s step falters and her eyes widen in surprise. It sends something through him, a bolt of electricity, a visceral spear of pleasure—a blood-satisfaction without blood (so far). He tries to wrest the smile from his lips, tries to keep his dark eyes somber. Perhaps it works; perhaps it doesn’t. But still he meets her gaze with uncanny ease, dropping his head to his chest in a quick kind of bow and blinking those dark eyes with dark sincerity, voice calm and soft as silk when he says: “Ah. Samaira.”
She looks the same as ever—mystical, of-the-earth, crowned in flowers. The silver of her eyes seems to glow in the dim light, and the tattoos on her cheek stand especially bright against the brown of her skin. For a moment the distance between them is frozen, insurmountable, for Samaira has stopped walking halfway down the hall. Elchanan wants to move but won’t. He straightens his posture and blinks calmly. It is like hunting something. Like trying not to startle the deer away from the path of the arrow.
Stay still and they will come to you instead.
Are you injured? she asks, and Elchanan shakes his head instantly, confidently. “Not at all,” he assures her. “I came to find you.” Then a smile—wide and unselfconscious, waiting patiently for her to draw forward. They have all the time in the world.
touch me, it's so easy to leave me all alone with the memory of my days in the sun
This is the first Alaunus is seeing of the man, Elchanan, as he had not been present during their dance upon the lake in Denocte. Samaira had told him of it afterwards, but looking at him now the heron only feels uneasy. It reminds him of the way he had felt the day Samaira had met Anandi, but everything about that woman had so clearly been saying predator. This one, however, this one is like a yew berry. Innocent enough on the outside, but inside…
The great heron glances up at his bonded, but she is already moving down the hall again and toward the winged man. Samaira is relieved when Elchanan declares he is not injured, but her heart is already picking up speed again. If he is not here for an ailment, then, “I came to find you,” he says.
“Me?” her voice is both shocked and pleased, her skin warming under his dark gaze and charming smile. The Terrastellan doctor comes to a stop before him, even though a part of her wants to turn and disappear down another hallway. Can he hear the racing of her heart? How it betrays her at every step, how it remembers fondly the way their skin had pressed together, the way his breath had played across her neck.
Unlike his bondmate, Alaunus does not get closer. He lingers partway down the hall, observing with bright, keen eyes. Even as Samaira turns her attention to the other pegasus. “I can’t believe you would come all this way for me,” she admits, silver eyes bright in the dim, “It’s been... awhile.” Since she had decided to stay with him instead of return to a party. Since she had told him that she no longer wanted to be hurt.
Her foolish heart might not be thinking it, but she still is. Why is he here, and what if he disappears for months again? They all go, don’t they? “Why did you come?” Samaira says, as she wonders how long he will stay for. As she hopes, above all, for him to take her away from here, to make her forget about the thoughts and loneliness trying to fill the emptiness around her.
El has always had an excess of confidence, but he is not entirely a fool. He knows he is at a disadvantage here; the hospital is Samaira’s territory, not the even plane of that dance upon the lake. He knows that he should be watching his back and that to let his guard down completely would be a mistake, even if he does not quite believe Sam could ever be angry with him—after all, there must be other Terrastellans here.
It is this prickling sense of watchfulness that turns his head to the hallway behind her. And there—caught half in the shadows—is the sight that he has been waiting for and dreading.
A scowling, feathered face, and the glint of two beady animal eyes, staring back at him from a half-darkness. Elchanan’s eyes widen briefly, then narrow, scrutinizing the heron as closely as he can without bringing attention to his discomfort.
She has a companion. But of course; bondeds are for those too delicate the handle the world on their own, or that’s what the archpriest has always thought. Complications abound. What does a man have to do for a sip of blood around here?
Elchanan licks his teeth without thinking, and feels the brief, sharp sting of a canine against his tongue; its bright pain plunges him back to the world of the living. He drags his gaze away from the heron, thinking: watchfulness means nothing.
The nagging feeling of caution finally subsides. And in the next heartbeat, the priest is back to his old self again—meeting Samaira’s shining gaze with ease, pricking his ears forward as though he is really listening, smiling with all the grace and charm of an actor on the silver screen.
Behind that mask of enthusiasm, he soothes himself with a silent laugh. It’s a bird. If I needed to, I could step on it.
“A while,” El repeats grandly, “is far too long to go without you.”The fine planes of his face split into an easy, warm grin, and gently he reaches out to brush his mouth against Samaira’s dark cheek, where her skin smells like rich soil and flowers. “I only came to rectify that. Would you show me around? I would like to see this place as you do.”
And he is careful—oh so careful—to keep his expression sincere, even as the iron smell of blood so close threatens to overwhelm him.
![[Image: 13481303_KpOIcOG7drxHK9U.png?1556314753]](https://file.toyhou.se/images/13481303_KpOIcOG7drxHK9U.png?1556314753)
