Strange Yuletide

from snow come ashes

Mithrigil Galtirglin

They call her Raised-Brow because the Gods tell them to.

Thirty years since the city fell, and no one calls her by her old name. Of the two who recall it and still draw breath, the one is taciturn and far away, the other mute. She does not even answer to it in dreams.

She keeps for them the story of the city, and tells it to the young—so few young, so little cause for birth—and to the fishwives in the streets, when the band dares surface. The Cardinal still chases, thirty years, two new Cardinals, and still he chases, and perhaps he has forgotten why, if ever he knew. This Cardinal was never there, never at the city, and unless his church is more corrupt than even she has imagined he has no memory of it to forget.

And so she is the last—the last who can stand on the street-corners in anonymous finery and say truly, "I was there, I saw the city fall," for those who survived were wounded, and their voices amputated, that the mind might live.

-

Her tent is her own; she has no man. The youth of the band carry her possessions when they move, so she has no shortage of these, books (sacred to the cult, for they are hers), robes, a clock, a dagger, bottles of old wine (sacred to the cult, for they are his). The cold keeps them well with no crates, and the bottles fog for their proximity to her, her breath.

He is there, and it no longer surprises her, his silence, his darkness. He is the same, this hale, brown monolith, knots and leather and the indelible reek of the hunt. His hair is still erratic, two long recalcitrant trains where the rest is shorn close, and flickers in the magick that has brought him to her.

Tools, he explains, to replace the ones that have broken.

"A strange yuletide," she mutters, "and a stranger gifting saint."

He laughs, slow, once, and soundless. Kneeling now, beside her bedroll and her books, his grey shade speaks of wolf-wildness, of cities turned jungle for their intrigue and crime. Things burn, he goes on, things decay.

His hand is thick on her cheek, and her wrinkles flatten as she leans into the touch. "I too," she admits, though she does not have to.

Again, his bristling at her wit is hollowed and silent. His hands are less skin than stone, beaten beyond sand to the ragged pocks of a rock-face. She welcomes it.

"With snow come ashes," she says, and though the words are hers she speaks as if to quote. "Fire staves off the cold and drives away the beasts, but when it is gone, the snow perseveres."

You give too many speeches, he makes plain.

She chides, "It is because I have no papers to write."

Rather than laugh, he palms her cheek, fingertips and thick, flat nails testing her graying hair. Her eyes flutter shut, and maybe there is a bit of shame in it, but still his grey shade speaks to her. That it is worse, perhaps, to be as he, and though he does not put it in these words she fills them in for him, "to burn and not decay."

"You are not immune," she reminds him, a good natured smile on her lips, the corner against his wandering thumb. "Not in body, but in sentiment at least. You, and the world."

You are the only one to think me so, his shade says clear.

His lips are cooler than his hand, and softer, though still chapped by the cold. She opens her eyes to his, but his are closed, lashes dark and close and gentle. She complies with this, the darkness to match the silence, and his kiss tips her back on her bedroll. Abandoning her book with a curt slap she reaches up to his face as well, wind-whipped and bare-cheeked, like old parchment. Her hips ache to feel him hovering over her like this.

With each knead of her fingertips to his cheeks—both hands now, warming, as is his skin—his mouth grows urgent on hers. Youth, she thinks, and then corrects the thought. And yet the force of his tongue is not meant for a man she has known for so long, whose kiss is this familiar, whose body is this perpetual.

But this silent mouth deliberate in its yearning, and these coarse hands making practiced work of her robes and his leathers, are of this other survivor of a world since burned, of this relic preserved like her bottles and books. Without, there is the one; within, there is the other, and bereft of his voice the other speaks to few. Or perhaps, she thinks past a moan at the rake of his cheek on her throat, to her alone.

As all times before, it is slow, inconsiderately slow, as much ritual as need, with only the rush of his blood and the clench of his hands to tell her of his pleasure. But he can hear her, and likely half the band can as well, and he muffles her gasps with his shoulders, his jaw, his tongue. He still quickens with her ankles behind his knees, still flexes deeper at her touch of a wrong scar. He still holds his expanse of chest aloft from hers, and she, dazedly, can see where they are joined in flickers and darkness, where he works and she writhes and where even less has changed, where they are still pale for the absence of the sun.

He brings her over and swallows her cry, his hands clamping tight on her upper arms. It is a while longer for him, and she is still agog, staring up through the shadows until he shudders thick and opens his eyes. They are black and wild, she marks, and older than ever.

Only after does he sink atop her, and his breathing nearly has a sound to it. She unwinds her legs from his, and they sink as well, heavy and leaden to the bedroll. Her mind is too clouded to read his heart here—but the thud of his chest is evening, and the press of his hands slackening, and the gentle buss of his mouth on hers thanks enough.

He does not withdraw. His back grows colder even as she strokes it absently, and still he is draped atop her and within. She can feel the magick writhing through the rood—it sends shudders through her skin and frail hairs, down to the ones on her toes—and flattens her palm against it. The skin there is raised, as it would be for any display of ink. Reverently, almost, he heaves a great sigh, and she feels it in the past.

Her mouth opens under his, but the words are not her own. "I know how things are," he says through her, and even if she was not raw from moans that never sounded she would not recognize her voice. "But is it trouble for you here?"

It takes a few pants, and the subtle allay of his presence in her mind. "Never trouble," she breathes, and still does not sound like herself. "And besides, it is too late for me to be what I was."

He disagrees, and tells her with a smile alone.

-

Morning, and the youth of the band rejoice at the gifts left for them—tools, to replace the ones that have been broken, just as he said. She listens through the slats of her tent, wrapped firm in blankets and robes, the sweat on her bedroll long chilled dry. Her joints creak for the heavy weather, the impending threat of snow.

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