I suppose it could be possible for another lunologist to change their scent.1Perhaps 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 wouldnotdo. 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.
Shewokeuptodistant 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 leastidentifymany 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, whichwasodd. There were plenty of cultures represented in the styles of dress at the Citadel, as lunologists came from across the continent, but thefabricsthis 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.4Sirin trawled through her mind to see if she could place their faces but again came up blank. Sheshouldbe able to remember someone as remarkable as that absolute beast of a man, surely?
Curse this brain injury, I should at leastrecognizethem, or that fabric they are wearing!Sirin looked back at Arndis, willing her brain to rememberanythingabout 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 toscream.
She’d sacrificed so much, and spent all her time, lunula, and effort in building the perfect brain for research. Others had used lunula to modify their bodies, to be better at fighting, or become more graceful. But not Sirin. No, she had enhanced her mind so she could keep entire texts of books stored for reference, like a maze of bookshelves, organized as intricately as the library of the Citadel was. Her photographic memory and excellent drawing hand had only augmented her mental library. And now she couldn’t even look up the provenance of a type of fabric or embroidery pattern? This horrible, sluggish thinking made her want to pull out her hair in chunks.
Arndis interrupted her mental tirade. “Ach, can yeh tell me how yeh feel?”
“Oh,I have a concussion with a small hematoma, a fracture on both my ulna and radium in my left arm, and the other shoulder is dislocated, well actually it’s subluxated. I have a few small lacerations on my head and right arm, but that’s all. But, more importantly, did the Citadel send you?“ Sirin asked. Hopefully, she’d get a clue who these people might be.
“They did not,” said the smaller woman by the door, which helped Sirin confirm her as the one with the feathery voice. She had an aquiline nose and sharp eyes, putting Sirin in mind of a raptor. Her movements were remarkably fluid until she would suddenly jerk her head or eyes to look at something with intense focus.
Sirin blinked in confusion, therewereno civilizations north of the Citadel as far as she knew. Were they traveling as well? She couldn’t think why anyone else might be this far north. Not that she knew how far North she’d traveled yet.
“Berne here found yeh and came to get aid,” the bird-like woman said, waving her hand to the man beside her as if it explained everything. Sirin frowned; the woman had the air of a person who didn’t like to explain herself, but Sirinneededanswers. She opened her mouth to ask more questions, but Arndis chose that moment to reset her shoulder with a hard press that had Sirin yelping. Her vision blacked out as the pain blocked out the rest of the room, her heart immediately racing. Blessedly, it didn’t last long, the pain melting into a dull ache as Arndis put a strong arm behind her to help her sit up.
“We will assess your injuries and then decide what we are to do with you,” said the small woman by the door.
Dowith her? She was a grown woman; she didn’t need anyone todoanything with her. Sirin fumed. Flicking her eyes back and forth between the two women was requiringconsciousthought which only made her more frustrated.
Near the door, the man, Berne, moved as if he would speak, but the smaller woman silenced him with a sweep of her hand and commanding look. Brow furrowed, he cocked his head to the side and crossed his arms, clearly annoyed.5
It was fascinating to see such a big man silenced so immediately by the slight woman. He was at least a foot taller than her, likely a head taller than Sirin herself, but the woman was clearly in charge, even if he didn’t seem to like it. At Sirin’s side, Arndis was splinting her arm.
The tiny bird woman crossed to squat next to Sirin, squinting at her in a way that made her feel like she was being measured.
“Why are yeh here?” she asked Sirin, sharpness clipping her lilting accent.
