“The truth is,” he admitted to the flames, “I do not know if they are giving that land away. It was a rumor I had heard. Even if it is true, I’m not sure if they would give it to an orc.”
“Then I’ll go by myself to apply for it.”
“I do not know if they will give it to a woman,” he said.
She was silent for a moment, digesting this. “You did not think to explain this before?”
“No, because I wasn’t really admitting it to myself. I would think it, but then I would shove the thought away, because I didn’t want it to be true, and I wanted us to leave together.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
He put his arm around her. “We’ll figure something out. As long as we’re together, everything will be all right.”
She snuggled into him. “I feel that, too.”
But he had to admit that this had been an idea that had been more about his own ego than anything practical. He had wanted to be able to do something for her, because he had felt inadequate for so long, as if he was barely worthy of touching the hem of her skirts, and now he was realizing that this plan was badly thought out and that they were like as not to have a number of difficulties.
But her sobs subsided and the fire was warm, and they slept.
When they woke in the morning, the fire was out and the bags they’d packed with their clothes and their food was gone.
“Where is it?” she demanded. “What have you done with our food? This is not funny, Dathor!”
He assured her that he hadn’t taken it only ten times, but she just kept getting louder and more shrill and more angry,and she would not accept that he had not taken it. She clenched her little elf hands into fists and she pounded them against his chest, and she’d neverhithim before.
He grabbed her wrists, stopping her, gazing into her eyes.
“Tell me where you’ve hid them!” she said.
“You know I haven’t hid them,” he said. “You know they’ve been stolen in the night by someone who is long gone.”
She tried to pull her hands out of his grasp.
He should have let her but he tightened his grip. “I am not your servant, Aerhril,” he said. “You cannot abuse me when it pleases you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I would never hit you,” he said.
She laughed in his face. “As if it hurt, you weakling. All that talk about how I was the yellow pale thing, and it has always been you, it seems.”
He let her hands go. What had he been thinking, tying himself to this for his entire life? She was a girl playing at being in love. She did not understand true suffering, had never experienced it, and she was incapable of seeing him as an equal, as a man who should have respect. Some part of her would always see him as an orc, and nothing she did to him would ever matter.
He fumed over this, but the more pressing problem was their empty bellies.
They quarreled as they made their way over the terrain.
“What are we going to do for food, then?” she said.
“Oh, I’m supposed to come up with an answer? Me? Why don’t you make a plan yourself? Why do I have to do everything?”
“I thought you wanted to prove yourself to me,” she sneered. “You were so convinced that I thought of you as lesser than me and all of that, and you wanted to be able to have done something for me to prove just how good you would be at taking care of me, I thought.”
“I never said I wanted to be your caretaker.”
“You wanted me to need you!” she cried. “And I do, andyou are no good to me at all.”
As for food, their options were limited. What small amount of coin they’d been in possession of had been stolen along with everything else, and they could not buy anything.
