Or at least, that was the proposed plan, until Oskaren protested.
“I told you,” she growled, placing a hand on Thia’s shoulder. “The Storm Crow stays with me.”
Annoyed at the presumption, Thia yanked herself away. Off balance, Oskaren stumbled forward, though she nimbly caught herself from falling. Then it was Thia’s turn to smirk. “The Storm Crow can make her own decisions.”
To her shock, Oskaren didn’t seem angry. She grinned, as she often did, but this one caught Thia off guard with its lack of bite. But then the girl looked away abruptly, and she wondered if she’d imagined the softness.
She chewed her lip. “Fine,” she said after a moment, mostly to avoid slowing them down further. “Dess and Thran will go and take Mavrel, in case they run into trouble. I’ll wait with Oskaren.”
Agreed, they set off again. It was a pleasant walk to Huckleton, through a sparse wood that was nothing like the veil of Black Forest. The foliage was thin and leafy, allowing beams of sunlight to cascade onto their heads in a haze of emerald and gold. They reached the town just as twilight fell, opting to camp for the night and enter in the morning. With birds murmuring overhead, the temperature warmer than the first leg of their journey, Thia was asleep almost instantly.
When dawn arrived, they ate a delicious breakfast of what Dess called lylaberries, which they plucked from the bushes that surrounded them. To Thia’s eye, they were akin to a burgundy blackberry, but the flavor was something like a raspberry and cherry combined.
Then Dess and Thran departed for Huckleton. Mavrel seemed happy to accompany Thran when Thia asked, nestling into the older man’s shoulder.
When they were gone, Thia reclined against the largest trunk she could find, which was just wide enough to support her back comfortably.
Oskaren, in turn, did not settle, but unbuckled her jerkin and tossed it aside. She was reaching for the hem of her shirt and had just started pulling it over her head when Thia started.
“What are you doing?”
“Relax, Faelyn, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.” But she turned her back as she yanked the garment the rest of the way off, bare from the waist up, save for the wrap covering her chest.
Thia was about to avert her gaze when she saw it. A large welt marred Oskaren’s tricep, sticky and red. Oskaren twisted, trying to inspect it to no avail.
“That looks deep,” Thia commented. She must have gotten it plummeting from the rafters.
Oskaren ignored her, scooping up her waterskin. She poured a few drops over the cut, but Thia could tell even from a distance that it would do very little to clean anything. She watched the girl struggle for a few seconds longer, then relented.
“Here.” She pushed herself to her feet. “Let me.” She rifled through her pack until she found the healer’s pouch Sorscha had provided, then crossed to Oskaren.
The girl watched her warily, running a hand through the hair across her forehead. Thia tried not to notice the way the action moved the cords of muscle over her ribs. She had inspected Oskaren’s injuries before, but outside in broad daylight, it was different somehow. And, now that they were more than strangers, it was harder to view the girl solely as a patient. She cleared her throat, reaching for the injured arm. “May I?”
Oskaren nodded, and they both sat.
Thia examined the wound, fingers pressing gingerly around the edges. It wasn’t so deep as to be concerning, and it was clotting nicely. But it had tiny bits of hay and other debris stuck in it. She opened the pouch and fished around until her fingers found what she was after. Tweezers, a little bigger than she was used to, and made of what was perhaps iron. She sanitized them with a little vial of alcohol also from the pouch, then set the items on the ground and began the painstaking task of removing the foreign materials. She targeted the largest piece of hay first, Oskaren’s fixed attention making her all too aware of her movements, and pinched the tweezers around it. It came free, along with a string of coagulated discharge, and the girl expelled a harsh breath. “Did that hurt?”
“Let’s play a game,” Oskaren said, instead of answering.
The idea was appealing, to fill the stretching silence and distract from the soft skin of Oskaren’s back where she braced her wrist for balance. “What kind of game?”
“Question for question,” Oskaren replied. “For every one of my questions you answer honestly, I’ll answer one of yours.”
Thia raised a brow. “How do I know you won’t just lie?” Oskaren shrugged, nearly sending her wound into the sharp end of Thia’s tweezers. “Argh,” she sputtered. “Stop moving.”
“Sorry.” But the grin Oskaren flashed said otherwise. She did turn away, though, so she was no longer craning her neck, and Thia had better access to the injury. “It wouldn’t be much of a game if I lied. It will be fun,” she added, when Thia still didn’t acquiesce.
Thia scoffed. “I suspect your idea of fun is different than mine.”
Oskaren huffed. “I promise. I’ll play nice.”
She let out an exaggerated sigh. “Fine.” Oskaren might have agreed not to lie, but Thia had made no such promise.
If Oskaren was surprised by Thia’s agreement, she didn’t show it. She voiced her question immediately, which made Thia wonder if she’d had it on her tongue for some time. “What’s Kansas like?”
Thia was reminded eerily of Dess, when the boy had stretched out on a log and asked nearly the same question. But while Dess had seemed like a child preparing for a bedtime story, Oskaren was still, a picture of disinterest.
Thia didn’t believe it, not when the girl prompted her with a soft hum. But why? She didn’t need a game to ask that; Thia could have just told her.
