we are the ones who don't slow down at all
Why not? Of course she knows: there are plenty of reasons why not. The forest is dangerous, for one, and new corpses are dug up every day. Why not? Well, monsters weave their way throughout the trees at all hours of the day and night, and this man may very well be one of them. O knows well enough why not. The list is miles long.
But some part of her is certain it will take his guard down. He will think: what a foolish girl she must be, to say why not and not hear how careless she sounds. There is power, she knows, in looking dumber than you are. Frailer. Nicer. There is power in letting people underestimate you. So she says why not? with a crooked smile, with eyes that glitter through the fog with bright enthusiasm, and the shine turns your focus away from whatever lazy darkness is beginning to rise from underneath it.
At her side, Tuchulcha whispers to be careful and the sound of it rumbles deep into her skin, like the pealing of a church bell. She waits for him a few meters ahead, in a clearing surrounded by a copse of trees, watching with quiet, focused eyes as he approaches, noting… everything. The broadness of his shoulders. The way he towers over her. The pocket in his camouflaged cloak she knows instinctively is meant to hold a knife. (Without even noting her hypocrisy, she wonders what sins, exactly, it is going to help him commit.)
Now they are shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. O walks casually at his side. Overhead, birds are trilling in their strange, bright voices, and the movement of the leaves casts down a sound like whispering: if she were a little dumber, she might feel peaceful—lulled to complacency by the babbling of the little stream and the pattern of dappled sunlight and shadow underfoot.
But instead she watches him, from the corner of her eye. Wary. Intrigued. For a moment there is only silence between them, pockmarked by the sounds of the world finally stirring awake around them. When he asks about the axe, she grins, half pleased by his interest and half amused in anticipation of his reaction to what happens next.
O pulls the hurlbat from its sheath. She hangs it in the air between them, where it twirls lazily, like a leaf in the wind, and says in a high, cheerful voice all its own: “Not like this.”
They both seem to grin at him then, sharp and certain.
