Written for Fief Goldenlake's Autumn Bingo challenge (Wind+Moon+Change+Loss+Travel)
Thayet took the second watch, allowing poor Buri to rest. The girl was exhausted. They had been on the run four days now, travelling as fast as they could, avoiding the armies and settled areas. They knew they were being tracked by enemies of Thayet's father, who would seek to use her as a pawn in their own power struggles.
A gust of wind sighed through the trees. Thayet shivered and pulled her cloak tighter around her neck. The weather was changing, and the hills were becoming cold and barren. It wouldn't be much longer before ill-provisioned nights out in the open did them in. If the armies didn't catch them first, of course. She smiled wryly to herself.
Buri stirred beside her.
"You let me oversleep," the girl accused, scowling.
"I did not," Thayed retorted. "But now that you're awake, we should get moving."
Buri rubbed her eyes and checked her knives. She sniffed the air. "Chavi Westwind visits. Smells like rain," she muttered.
Thayet was raised enough K'mir to have already gathered this. Absurdly, she felt like the wind was talking to her.
"Then let's go west."
"I thought you wanted to go north to—"
"No," said Thayet, cutting off her young guard. "I've changed my mind. We're safer to go west," Thayet said. She stood. "We can try to make it to Rachia another way."
"There's a storm coming," Buri scowled, scrambling up after her. "I didn't come all this way to let Kalasin's daughter die from exposure."
And shame your mother and brother, Thayet finished silently, wishing again that Buri was a more complaisant kind of family servant. But she held her breath and glared back—they had both suffered loss, and now wasn't the time to fight about whose honour was most at stake.
The trees sighed again and the clouds parted to reveal a very large, full moon.
"Goddess," Thayet whispered.
From their rise, the moonlight glinted off steel and illuminated the banners of a lowland army camped several miles to the north. To their west, the light revealed a rocky path they could follow in the dark, with a promise of putting the hills between them and the army.
"I'm pretty sure you didn't come all this way to let me walk into an army camp either," Thayet observed wryly.
"West is looking pretty good right now," Buri conceded gruffly as the travelling clouds again shrouded the moon. She flexed her hands. "If they have dogs, and if they're looking for us, the rain will dampen our scent."
They turned toward the path as the first drops of the storm blew into their faces.
"To Chavi, then," Thayet agreed. "However far she takes us."