THE BRIGHTEST BLUE
It was a most pleasant day in the Midlands - fresh and bright, and warm and everything was so beautiful that it looked as Paradise might.
The tender leaves were bursting out of their sheaths, and covering all the trees with a fresh mantle of green; and amongst the carpet of moss beneath their feet, yellow primroses and starry anemones were turning up their delicate faces to the afternoon sky.
Kahlan felt so happy with the gladness of it all that she threw herself down at the root of a tree, watching the living things around her.
Cara was, however, feeling the increasing need to punch someone.
It was taking them twice as long to get back to Aydindril because the Confessor felt the exponential need to play with some Gars and injure herself in the process. It didn't exactly quicken their pace to stop and admire the scenery every damned hour. At this rate, Cara wasn't entirely reluctant to fling Kahlan over her shoulder and carry her back to her equally irritating boyfriend.
She glanced over at Kahlan, seeing her lost in thought, her blue eyes suddenly clouded with pain. With a heavy sigh, accompanied by a roll of her eyes, Cara spoke. "We'll set up camp here," setting her pack down beside Kahlan's.
Kahlan hobbled to her feet then, using the trunk of the tree as a crutch. "It's still light out. Why should we stop this early?"
The blonde gestured towards the taller woman's thigh and her blatant wariness on her legs. "There is no sense in making it worse with walking any further."
As she watched Cara closely, Kahlan responded. "I've had worse and managed perfectly well." She leaned down to retrieve her pack. "We can continue."
Cara huffed in annoyance, Spirits! She's relentless, she thought before approaching the brunette, removing the pack from her hands, all the while making an effort to glare at the Confessor, intent on having her way. She found that intense eye contact seemed to register far clearer with Kahlan than words: whether it be her Seeker's lovesick gazes or Cara's solemn scowls, she seemed to hearken the imparted message loud and clear.
On the verge of collapse as she truly was, Kahlan sighed in defeat. Cara grinned, pleased with herself for having managed to have the mighty Mother Confessor do as she was told. She doubts even Richard would've been successful, but of course, no man's abilities were superior to those of a Mord'Sith, not even that of the Lord Rahl.
Lost in her pride, Cara momentarily forgot her next point. "I clocked a wayward pine a mile back; we'll make shelter there instead."
Kahlan agrees with a nod. "We must make haste, the sky darkens with a coming storm," she adds, and Cara cannot prevent herself from noticing the sapphire orbs brighten as they turn up towards the last of the day's light.
At first, they walked significantly faster than before but as Cara detects Kahlan favouring one of her legs, their pace begins to slow considerably.
Eventually, they reach their destination and fortunately, avoid being drenched.
Making their way inside the hollow interior of the tree, Cara throws their packs down together for her injured companion to lean back against. Taking the hint, Kahlan limps over to the spot on her good leg, waiting for Cara to return with kindling for a fire.
The Mord'Sith wanders for a while longer than she should; trying to find something to aid the healing of Kahlan's wounded leg. She convinced herself it was for her own sanity's sake and nothing whatsoever pertaining concern for the Confessor. Nope. Absolutely not.
Perhaps the more frequent the thought became, the less her heart bellowed the dishonesty in it.
Suddenly, if not so sudden, Cara comes across a path: it rises by a natural stair to the top of some precipices. She follows as it continues to ascend until it reaches a spring of limpid water, which gushes out of a bank covered with moss and white petals - and which she recognises from a book of the Midlands' history Kahlan had shoved at her upon arrival in Aydindril months prior - for more than a century it had been known to the inhabitants of the New World by the name of "Rowan's Well".
Its waters are said to be medicinal, and there is a pretty tradition still extant of the circumstance through which their virtues were first discovered, and the white petals floating atop its surface, to which the spring owes its name.
Revelling in her change of luck, Cara empties her own water skin, filling it up with the remedial fluid and rushing back to the wayward pine, and… to Kahlan.
Upon her return, Cara, to her surprise, finds Kahlan has decided it's too warm to sleep in anything but Richard's blue shirt. Richard's shirt that only covers his girlfriend mid-thigh; his shirt that has an excruciatingly low cut and reveals more of her chest and torso than Cara can ever hope to see; his shirt that matches the blue of her eyes: eyes brighter than the cloudless summer sky; the sky Cara was born under.
She stands there, at the tree's opening, her mind considering whether the sight is real or if she is slumbering, dreaming of the forbidden fruit she so longs to taste.
Kahlan's voice interrupts her innermost turmoil. "Did you kill something or were you admiring the view?"
Cara's heart leaps at the sound and chortles. "A bit of both, really." Truer words have never been uttered.
After a while, a fire burns steadily between them, the flames hiding part of Kahlan's body from her gaze as she works on a makeshift gauze for the incision. A few winces later, Cara kneels in front of the Confessor, ushering her leg closer for inspection. It was beginning to swell and bruise, a clear sign of infection.
With a sigh, the blonde pulls Kahlan's left leg between her right arm and side, her shoulder resting on the Confessor's knee. Kahlan was now leaning up on her elbows, watching Cara's ministrations curiously. Once the water was added carefully to the wound, she felt the pain subside instantly.
"What is that?" Kahlan inquires wonderingly.
Cara continued tending her wound, "It's water from Rowan's Well."
"You found it?" A spark of awe in her voice.
"I did," she nods, nonchalantly.
Kahlan holds the gauze in place as per Cara's silent request, ready to seal it with a needle from the pine's willowing branches. "I only know what I've read in books. Is it as enchanting as they say?"
Lifting her head up to Kahlan then, losing herself in those eyes, the rest of the world slipping away, leaving only blue. "I've met it's rival." Cara replies, her gaze never faltering.
With those words, Cara knew, the axe had fallen with Kahlan's silent tears.
Neither thought to speak afterwards, there are no words to quell the ache inside both women; to change what they are and what they will remain.
And as the sun crawls down the mountains: the world waiting, for it knows the moon is nigh, Cara lay beside her friend, thinking of her tears and wondering if they'll make a stone.