Another boy came to stand beside the first. “Will you show us?”
One of the men admonished them quietly, but Aurin smiled widely. “I can. When Salem shows you, if it’s all right with your elders....” Aurin wasn’t sure about the parent situation. “If they say yes, then it’s okay with me.”
The boys’ eyes grew wide with excitement, as if Aurin had told them the best news ever, and they ran over to the men, asking over and over. “Is it okay? Is it okay? Can we? Can we?”
Cern quietened them with just the slightest rise of his hand, but his eyes were on Salem. “You are still weak,” he said. “You should be resting still.”
Salem nodded. “I might wash in the stream, if that’s all right.” He looked down at the dried paste covering him. “Downstream, of course.”
“Of course,” Cern replied. “Pax can take you, if you need.”
“Not necessary,” Aurin replied with a gracious nod. “I remember the way.”
He didn’t want Pax to supervise them or watch them. Or be anywhere near them, if he was being honest.
“I think it best if I go bathe now,” Salem said, slowly getting to his feet. “Then I can rest again before the festivities tonight.”
Aurin was quick to support Salem’s weight, slotting in under his arm where he fit so perfectly. Salem was slower to walk now, so Aurin could safely assume he was tired. But Aurin was happy to go at his pace, if not a little concerned for his health.
“I could fetch some water for a sponge bath if you’d rather go back to bed,” Aurin suggested.
Salem stopped walking. “While a sponge bath by you sounds delightful, I need running water, and so do you.”
“Are you doing this for me?”
He smiled and began his slow walk again. “No. Selfishly, this is for me. Though I’d like to take a raincheck on that sponge bath.”
Aurin smiled as they began walking along the path to the stream. The camp was at a convenient distance, as most villages were, from their water source. They’d be afforded some privacy, but Aurin didn’t think for one minute they’d be entirely alone.
He knew better than to say anything should he not want it to be common knowledge.
This forest was quiet. Perhaps too quiet, though Aurin wasn’t intimately familiar with forests. Not like he was with water, or the cove. His home. He didn’t feel threatened in the forest at all, but he was reminded that he was merely a guest here. A guest who was tolerated only because he was with Salem.
They loved Salem.
They knew who he was. What he was.
Yet Aurin had no idea who they were. Or what they were. He had some wild ideas, and given Cern’s position here, and how they revered him, Aurin had an inkling...
“This forest is a special place,” Salem said, a little breathless, as they ambled along.
“You’ll have to tell me all about it one day,” Aurin whispered. Then he pointed to the ground. “Watch your step here.”
The path to the stream was little more than a memory pressed into the earth—an uneven ribbon of trampled leaves winding through the forest. Sunlight filtered down in fractured beams, caught and scattered by layers of canopy above the moss-covered trees, and ferns.
The air was warmer as they neared the stream, but it still carried the scent of earth and leaf rot, rich and heavy. It was cloying and unfamiliar to Aurin, and he longed for the freezing cold water of home.
They heard the stream before it came into view. It curved through a shallow bed lined with smooth rocks, its surface broken by ripples where it passed over submerged stones. The afternoon’s fading sunlight filtered through gaps in the canopy, scattering shifting patterns across the water. Ferns and moss crowded the banks, vivid green against the darker tones of wet rock and soil.
He never thought he’d miss the overcast, drizzling mists of Tenebrae so keenly?—
“You can morph here,” Salem said.
“It's fresh water,” Aurin noted. “Fine to hydrate me, okay to morph in, but...” He didn't want to sound ungrateful.
Salem grinned at him. “But you're a saltwater creature.”
Aurin blushed. “I am. Though you were right. I needed this too.”
