For Granted, part 2
Vision and hearing darkened. Zelgadis' skin felt like it was flaking away into wheat chaff—painlessly, as if in a dream. For one terrifying heartbeat Zelgadis was aware only his consciousness, spinning naked in a black void.
And then it was back—flesh, sight and sound falling back in on him like a sack of bricks—the bright white of the snows howling around them, the crackling and snarling of the monster as it brought its arms to bear, the tingling of the beginnings of the spell in his hand and he remembered what he was doing—
"Bram Blazer!"
"Visfarank!"
For a moment, there was nothing but the searing blue-white blaze of the attacks, the knife-edged grip around his ribs. Then a pained shriek pierced the wind. The grip vanished, and Zelgadis plunged to the snow fifteen feet below with a faint crunch sound as he pounded through about four feet of it. Even submerged in the deepening snow he heard a lighter, softer thump somewhere close to his head—doubtlessly Amelia. There was a mighty tremor through the ground, as if the earth itself was shuddering at the battle, and then, nothing.
For a moment, he was still. There seemed to be a big gap in the space where the monster had been, its deathly presence gone. Zelgadis scraped himself together and sat up, blinking crystals of ice from his vision.
The monster was nowhere to be seen.
He looked around, trying to ignore the whirling snowflakes trying to cram themselves down the back of his collar, the tinny whipping of his steel-wire hair tickling irritatingly against the tips of his numbed ears—it was cold. There was nothing but furious, whirling white in every direction he looked. Nothing else—except for a rare scrap of gray sky. Snow and shards of ice whirled around them with a vengeance, forcing him to squint his eyes against the onslaught.
A sudden noise, muffed by the snow brought him back.
"Amelia!" he lurched out of his snow crater and waded over to where Amelia was, half-buried under almost six inches of snow. He helped her upright, absentmindedly batting snow out of her hair and face. Her nose was red, her face pale. She sniffed loudly.
"Did we win?"
Zelgadis glanced back to where the monster had stood. Nothing but a trough, already half-filled with new snow remained. Monsters never left traces when they died. He never thought he might someday need the confirmation. He frowned.
"I think so."
"Oh, g-g-g-ood," Amelia shivered. "But what do we do now? I d-d-on't see the town anymore." She was rubbing her arms furiously, as though trying to recall the blood that had doubtlessly retreated back into the center of her body. "How will we find Ms. Lina and the others?"
Zelgadis breathed out heavily through his nose, suddenly very his breath's warmth as he realized the gravity of the situation. They couldn't see more than five feet in any direction, and the wind was only getting worse. It wouldn't matter if they were walking or flying.
"We're not going to."
"What?"
There was no way Amelia would last through the night—or probably even the storm—without some form of shelter. Even he wouldn't be able to resist total exposure in the middle of a whiteout for as long as it might take for the blizzard to die down, or for someone to find them. This was a bad situation. But…
He hefted the pack on his shoulders. At least it wasn't an unsalvageable one.
"Have you still got your shovel?"
"You mean this?" Amelia had unhooked her shovel from the back of her pack. Zelgadis nodded and reached around for his own. To his chagrin, the shaft had snapped clean in two. He considered the ice built up on the iron. He'd have to simply use the spade on its own then. It wouldn't hurt his hand, like it might someone else, but it would waste energy he didn't want to spare.
"Start digging."
For the first time since they'd been stranded out here, something wintery nudged at Zelgadis heart. A monster was one thing. This was a very different kind of battle—one against time as it was against their true enemy, this damned snowstorm. The best you could do was endure. Zelgadis was good at enduring. But Amelia…she was tough, no denying that, but…
He shook his head. But nothing. She was a warrior, she had grit, and experience. She was strong. He had to stop worrying about her and try to remember how to survive a blizzard. Both of their lives depended on it now.
No one had said anything yet, but Lina knew it was coming. Frustrated, she kicked a clump of snow. It was all perfect, wasn't it? Her face and fingers felt like they were made of rubber, and for all the protection the thin cottons of her clothes gave her she might as well be standing knee-deep in this snow butt-naked. She was absolutely lousy with goosebumps and she was pretty sure her nose was starting to run a little, too.
But more importantly, she couldn't see a damn thing, and the monster was long gone with both Zel and Amelia.
"Do you think they're…?" Sylphiel whimpered fearfully. Lina cut her off.
"No, Sylphiel. They both had some fight in them when that thing carried them off, and the monster was pretty badly wounded. They took care of it."
"How can you be so sure?" Gourry shivered from behind. "We have to keep looking for them."
"Yes, we can't just leave them out here in this snowstorm!" Sylphiel added, making a fist.
"Guys, be reasonable," Lina's exasperation was kind of undermined by the fact her voice was shivering as much as the rest of her. "We won't be of any help to them if we get lost out here, too. Besides, we didn't bring those survival packs." She blew out her breath in a white puff. "The best we'll be able to do if go look for when the snow stops."
"What if we're too late?" Sylphiel asked. Lina shook her head.
"Come on, have a little faith," Lina waggled her finger at them. "If there's one thing we can trust Zel to do, it's survive."
"And take care of Amelia."
"That too."
The thought almost made her laugh. She'd known and observed Zelgadis long enough to know he had more "camping survival" savvy than any of them put together. Lina had never really seen much to snow survival—good luck catching her freezing her ass off in some wilderness, and well, if you did, she'd figure something out. That was just who she was.
But Zelgadis' cripplingly awful self-esteem issues pushed him to hoof it out in the wilderness far more often than any of them—and his time as Rezo's brute probably served him in that regard as well. But fundamentally, Zel was way too proud and stubborn to let something as mundane as a little blizzard take him out. Or at least, Lina thought with a smirk, he thought he was. As long as he had someone who could remind him of who he wanted to be, he'd pull through. No one was better for that job than Amelia. And I'm sure Amelia wouldn't mind being stuck in some snow cave with Zelgadis for an few hours.
She was pretty sure Zelgadis knew how to make a snow cave.
"There's nothing to worry about," Lina said, turning towards the dark smudge that was the town. The others followed her. She didn't have to see them to know the looks on their faces—doubt and worry pulling their features down like putty.
She clenched her teeth. She was making the right decision. There was nothing they could do in the present right now. They couldn't go find the second monster—hell, they could barely find their own butts with both hands in this weather. Zel and Amelia would be fine, and they would go looking for them the second the wind let up.
So if that was the case, why did she still feel helpless?
She shook her head. The second the snowstorm let up. Not one moment more.
The snow shelter actually reminded him of one of those circular outdoor ovens, incongruously enough. It had come together with shockingly few setbacks, and he couldn't help but wonder when the other shoe was finally going to drop. They were shaping the entrance tunnel, now.
Amelia attacked the snow like it had committed some great act of injustice, flinging clumps of it up and over in the manner of a small, enthusiastic dog. But a small, enthusiastic dog was an apt descriptor—with the volume of the snow they had to move. She paused, panting, white puffs of breath stolen from her mouth and nose almost before they exited.
To think that a few hours ago, they'd been digging graves.
Zelgadis stilled, unsure. He started to ask if she was all right, when she looked up and gave him a weak smile. He froze. There was sweat freezing on her brow. He bit the inside of his mouth. She had to pace herself. At this rate—
Amelia's eyes suddenly widened, lit up by shock and anger.
"Look out!" In her left hand crackled the beginnings of an Elmekia Lance, and with the other—
She grabbed a fistful of his shirt and yanked. Unprepared, Zelgadis, with all the grace and balance of a one wheeled hay wagon on a switchback plunged into the snow with a stifled yelp. A rumble thundered through the ground.
"Elmekia—"
A heavy thud bit the incantation off. Dammit! There she was, doing it again, taking a hit for him. Zelgadis spat the snow that had filled his mouth from the pratfall and exploded out of the snow with a roar, fists blazing.
"Burst Flare!"
He didn't have to see the bastard to know it was there—Zelgadis could hear its hacking, growling laughter and feel the ripples running through the ground when the monster thrashed through the snow.
"Too slow!" Sadluyok raked his claws through the air, catching Zelgadis full on. Bright yellow lights burst behind his eyelids. The blow sent him flying through the air, only to land like a millstone dropped off the edge of a tower. The surface beneath him gave with a spidery crack. He sat up, pulling his stubbornly doubled vision back together as he scraped away shards of splintered ice from his face.
Ice? He stood up. He hadn't seen it from where they'd been building the snow shelter, but spread out before him was the mighty River Hysode. Ambitious snowdrifts crept and spread out over its stippled surface, as though trying to hide the water—but the strength of Hysode's current, frothing beneath the glassy ice was enough to keep it visible, if only in spotty patches.
"Tch!" he edged away from the frozen river. He was lucky. Had Sadluyok hit him any harder, he would have landed halfway out and gone straight through.
A scream brought him back to battle. Amelia had taken to the air—but the shrieking winds, strong enough to bow the trees hunched on the river's edge so that their bark cracked, batted her out of the sky. Zelgadis caught her in his arms before she could hit the ground.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm okay. We've got bigger problems!" She was bleeding from a wound on her temple, blood already frozen black to her skin. Bad, but they couldn't worry about that now.
Sadyulok's lurid red eyes emerged first from the blizzard followed by its lumbering form. Something was wrong. Its shoulders were at the wrong angle, and it kept lurching to one side. But the beast's eyes blazed with bloodlust, and a thunderous growl gargled from its ruined chest—still smoking from their last attacks. Zelgadis narrowed his eyes and leaned into a casting stance. Amelia copied him, palms outward.
"Looks like he's back for more."
Sadluyok stopped about the length of a small tree away, leaning forward as if in pain.
"Pathetic," it hacked out a laugh, leveling a scythe-like claw at him. "You let the woman took a direct hit for you, even though you're the stronger."
Physically, maybe.
"Shut up," Zelgadis retorted, "It's because of her that you've got a crater where your chest used to be."
"No matter if it's taking blows or taking bows, we do it together and for each other!" Amelia declared, her high, clear voice nearly lost to the screaming winds, "Nothing can hold a candle to the powers of love and justice, especially not a fiend like you!"
Zelgadis always felt like his aplomb faltered just that tiniest bit whenever Amelia spouted her silly nonsense in battle, but in the end, if it bolstered her power, so be it.
"Is that so? Well," Sadluyok couldn't smile, but there was a nasty grin echoing around somewhere in that rasp of a voice, "Let's put that detestable spirit of yours to the test, little girl. See how you can sing such things when I tear your man apart!"
It hissed and charged towards Zelgadis, thorny jaw hanging open, claws outstretched. Zelgadis bristled—despite its injuries, the monster was fast. He sprang into action, right hand ablaze with blue lightning.
"We'll see about that! Bram—" Before he could finish the incantation, Sadluyok aborted the charge. Instead of meeting Zelgadis, the monster burrowed into the snow for an instant before reappearing behind him and clamping down on Amelia with a triumphant roar. Zelgadis hesitated—the unfinished spell exploded in his hand, sending him tumbling back into the snow, just in time to see Sadluyok looming over him, dangling Amelia by the throat.
"Don't underestimate me, human!" With that, he turned, and hurled Amelia with the force of a ballista towards the frozen river. She plunged through with an earsplitting crack, and vanished beneath the dark water.
"Amelia!" Zelgadis leaped to his feet, heart ramming into his throat. The river's current was as strong as it was cold, and Amelia had no way to resurface, the shock would have surely prevented her from using any kind of attack to break the—
He saw Sadluyok's attack out of the corner of his eye. He barely managed to dodge as the claw punched into the ground where he'd been standing a moment before. He righted himself with a grunt, heart hammering like it was trying to bust out of his chest—he had no time for this anymore.
But Sadluyok did, which gave Zelgadis an idea. He faltered in the snow, leaving the monster an opening. Clearly flushed with its success, the monster grabbed him and brought him close to its ragged face.
Sadluyok crowed, "Your little woman is dead." Zelgadis knew what was coming next, and took a deep breath and braced himself, just as the monster's grip constricted. "I don't even have to kill you with my own claws anymore. The knowledge that you were too weak to protect her will haunt you for the remainder of your short life. I could kill you slowly and feast off of your grief and agony while your blood sinks into the snow—or, I could let you freeze to death out here, waiting to join her."
"You should have picked one instead of talking." Zelgadis hissed, freeing his left arm. He'd had the chant already prepared in his mind; all that was left were the chaos words. "RA TILT!"
He'd never tried that spell half-suspended, one-armed and out of breath before. He grunted as something in his shoulder strained and jerked—the astral blast nearly tore off his arm. Sadluyok screamed—his claws disintegrated, his body crumbled into nothing as his astral body shriveled under the Ra Tilt's flame. Zelgadis grit his teeth in ghost pain as the spiritual energy lashed at his own astral body—he was too close to the attack to escape entirely unscathed. However, even before Sadluyok disappeared entirely, Zelgadis was already running for the river, sliding out onto the ice to the hole where Amelia had disappeared. Mistake number one, but right now, it couldn't be helped.
He fell to his knees, staring wide-eyed down into the churning black water. For a heart-stopping moment, he thought she was gone, carried away entirely. But he could see something down there—just beneath the surface, holding onto something, or caught onto something, it didn't matter.
"Amelia!" he plunged his arm into the water up to his shoulder, unable to bite back a gasp at the cold, sliding against his stony skin. He still had the presence of mind to recognize that he'd grabbed a fistful of something though and dragged up it up with a groan.
Amelia splashed onto the ice in a flood of hellishly cold water that froze almost immediately on contact with the bitter wind, coughing and shivering like a leaf.
"Are you all right?"
She was shivering so hard that the moment she opened her mouth, her teeth tore into her lips. Her teeth rattled painfully—the best she could do was nod.
She'd lost her pack, but she still had all her winter clothes on. Her wet, slowly freezing winter clothes, that were obviously sucking the heat from her body as a leech did blood.
Zelgadis felt his insides turn to water.
He knew exactly what he was supposed to do now. He could already feel his face start its slow burn as all of his insides seemed to melt into a disgusting, useless goo.
"A-Amelia...you're going to have to…" he started to stammer.
And then she looked up. White as the snow around her, eyes narrowed with pain and cold, lue-lipped, bloody mouthed, wet and frozen clothes…and still she was trying to smile.
"W-w-e w-w-on," she stammered, "T-t-thank-k you f-f-or s-saving m-m-me…"
All right, Zelgadis, time to grow the hell up. Save her life, you idiot!
He lurched forward and scooped her up in his arms. "Keep talking," he instructed as he started to run as fast as he could with a soaking girl and several feet of snow. Did he dare risk the wind chill by trying to fly over to where their shelter was? Surely it was the right thing to do if she was already exposed? How was it possible to feel less in control of this situation as opposed to fighting a monster?
Zelgadis decided to risk flight, following the quickly disappearing troughs made by the battle to the amazingly undamaged snow shelter. With their party's luck he honestly half expected to find it stomped to well-packed chunks. As it was, he tried not to think too hard about this good fortune.
Had he been less panicked and more cynical, he might have considered it balanced out by what was coming.
"I'm f-f-freezing Mr. Zelgadis." For a while Amelia had been too cold to really talk at all, breath hitching in her throat as she struggled to force words out. But she had been game to at least try, and even babbling about the obvious flooded Zelgadis with a relief violently counteracted by the nauseating dread of his next instruction for her.
"I know." They'd crawled into the snow shelter. It was damn near pitch black inside, but Zelgadis's eyes drew in even the tiny glimmers of light reflecting off the snow well enough to find the spark rocks, candles and only slightly cracked lantern in the pack and spread them out.
"I'm s-s-sorry I l-l-lost the p-p-ack."
"It doesn't matter."
Now that they weren't outside scrambling for their lives, Zelgadis found himself more aware of the cold. His fingers felt fat and slippery as he fumbled for way too long with the spark rocks, finally igniting a candle. Ghostly orange light split the darkness with a feeble hiss.
The brightness and flickering shadow was playing hell with his vision, but he could see well enough to note the deathly pallor of Amelia's skin. He took a deep breath, but instead of helping, it made him feel worse. It was like there was a nest of angry grass snakes writhing around in his stomach.
"Amelia. Y—you—" This was for her own good, and to hell with his feelings on the matter. He tried to force himself to look at her, perhaps to at least convey some level of apology, anything, but in the end, the best he could do was stare directly into the candle's flame as though to pre-emptively sear his eyeballs. "You're going to have to take off those clothes."
Silence should have descended like a ton of bricks. Instead, Amelia's shivering and the painful clacking of her teeth filled it up.
"I...I…"
"It's not because—look," he forced calm into his voice. The last thing she needed to see was him acting like an idiot. He had to be reassuring and calm, right? "The freezing water is sucking the heat out of your body. If you don't take them off, your temperature will drop, you'll pass out, and you may not wake up."
Her eyes were wide—but he could swear, maybe he was imagining it?—a small blush tinting the tip of her nose and the apples of her cheeks. Wishful thinking, probably. Her blood was probably all collected around her vital organs. But still.
She continued to stare at him with those huge blue eyes, reflecting orange in the candlelight. He swallowed. He was having trouble gauging her expression. It wasn't quite fear—the thought that she might fear him for even a minute was like a punch to the gut—but something close to it. He was afraid that he might have to ask her again, but after what seemed like an age, she spoke.
"I k-k-kind of guessed t-that m-might be the only opt-t-tion…" she turned around a little. "All right, Mr. Zelgadis."
She raised her trembling hands. Her fingers, painfully white with blue veins seemed stiff and dead, and faltered at the frozen knot at her throat. Zelgadis' fingers twitched. His face burned. He watched her try and do it on her own, reluctant to intervene until it became obvious her fingers were too numb to undo the ties herself.
God knew he wasn't that cold anymore. His face alone felt like it was on god-damned fire.
"Um…" he scooted closer to her, half-expecting her to shy away or resist him.
She didn't.
He tugged the knot holding the cloak up sharply, cracking it with a hiss. The garment fell to the floor with an incongruous thudding noise. It was at this point that he dared touch her hand—stifling a gasp, even though his skin her flesh was literally ice-cold—to slide her jewelry off. Trying to keep his hands from shaking, he reached up to touch her neck, looking for the clasp that held her necklace on.
She made a small noise, skin flinching lightly. He tried to swallow. His mouth was dry as sandpaper.
"I'm sorry," he blurted, struggling with the clasp, "My fingers are probably cold." She almost certainly couldn't feel them—but anything to break this silence, even if it was stupid. His words echoed weirdly in the enclosed space, leaving him feel oddly exposed, like he was doing something wrong.
"I-it's not that."
He placed the necklace in the pile with a soft clink.
She'd managed to wrestle off her boots and socks on her own, but seemed reluctant to try and raise her arms above her shoulders. Unsurprising, she was freezing. He coughed a little.
"You're going to have to turn around."
"Hmm?"
"Well, you don't want me to see—?"
"N-no!" she shifted on the ice a little, turning her back to him in the candlelight. Candlelight, with its flickering glow and dark shadows caught and defined every little detail in her wet clothes as they clung to her body—Oh, God.
He scooted closer to her, unbuckling the belt that held the garment to her waist, and then reaching for the hem of her tunic. His hand brushed against her thigh as he peeled it upwards, slowly, in terror, as though he was afraid he might tear it in half if he breathed too hard.
"T-try to raise your arms if you can."
The heat in his face intensified, like he'd just thrown a fresh log on an already roaring fire. Everything he said now sounded suggestive to his ears. He could probably say anything right now and sound like a pervert. But this tunic wasn't going to come quietly.
It didn't. It peeled off with an odd, almost sticky sound before he could add it to the pile.
And it was at this point that he wanted to say he was done. Her pants didn't have any difficult ties—he could hear her wiggling out of those. He refused to look in her direction, but he could see them—and something else, something small and—go in the damned pile. He jerked away from it so quickly he thought he heard a crack in his neck, wishing more acutely than anything in his life that he dead monster would come back and eat him.
Then he realized he was being a selfish bastard, because Amelia was sitting behind him, almost entirely naked, and he was sitting in front of her with all his clothes on. In an ice cave. After she'd come out of the water. With that realization he practically ripped his cloak off like it was burning his skin and tossed it behind him.
"Dry off with that…"
He heard the fluttering of cloth settling, tightening. He swallowed. It was probably all right to turn around now. Everything was going to be—
His cloak was draped around her shoulders, wrapped around her middle and pooled over her legs—all well and good, he guessed, but it had fallen open around her chest, where she was struggling with—with—with…
"Um…"
Zelgadis didn't know much about ladies undergarments. Why would he? His own mother had died when he was about eight and what he knew about things like women's monthlies came from Rezo's very limited and metaphor-heavy illustration from when he was young…any supplemental material was primarily derived from the dubious exploits of Rezo's other retainers from around campfires or in taverns. He wasn't entirely ignorant—he was well aware that rich women often wore corsets or something. But the only rich woman he personally knew he had tried not to think of as a "woman", as well as doing his level best not to give thought to what she might wear under her clothes.
He knew now.
Rather, he vaguely knew. It looked kind of like a truncated corset with little straps—although at this point they were hanging off her shoulders. More importantly, it looked like the thing laced up in the front.
Makes sense, he thought numbly, trying very consciously to form cohesive sentences in his brain. She's a fighter, and something like this would help with—to hell with it. His brain didn't feel like cooperating by noticing functional details, instead noticing how the lacing accentuated the smooth curves of her breasts, the—
He couldn't have been staring for more than a second, averting his eyes as soon as his mind caught up with them and staring very fixedly at some point above her head. A sea of conflicting feelings squashed around in his guts.
"Sorry."
"It—it's okay. I'm sorry I can't—"
"It's fine."
There really wasn't much else to say. He screwed up his courage—ha, this wasn't even the most invasive thing he'd have to do tonight. Had this not been happening to him, right now, Zelgadis might have found this situation almost funny. The context for undressing a woman by candle-light was usually a little different than this.
"You're never appear as nervous as you actually are," Rodimus had told him once, "You might be afraid of something, someone, some scenario—"
"I'm not scared of anything," Zelgadis remembered piping back defiantly. Rodimus had given a tiny smile in response to that, a knowing glitter in his eyes.
"—and I'm not necessarily talking about swords." He'd looked in the direction of two women who were passing by the temple steps they were sitting on, one carrying a bucket of water, the other a bundle of linens, heavy skirts brushing against the ground. "So when you're nervous—you think your heart is pounding so loud surely the whole world can hear, or your voice is wobbling like a weathervane, the one you are facing can't tell. Remember that. It could save your life. In more ways than one, ha!"
Zelgadis hadn't responded to that, putting his chin in his hand and following Rodimus' gaze to the women's backs as they walked away. He had snorted to himself.
Women aren't frightening.
God, he'd been a brat back then. Looking at his life now, that impetuous thought was almost as embarrassing as the task at hand.
At first, he tried to unlace the thing without looking at or touching her. It was hard. Even at the best of times, his fingers weren't very sensitive, and with the cold, well…he was struggling with the thing almost as much as she had. She was trembling like a hummingbird's wings, and he knew that if he didn't get his act together she really was going to get sick. In the end, he was forced to look, concentrating fiercely on pulling the laces out of the eyelets and trying to ignore the bounce of her breasts while he did so.
"Mr. Zelgadis?" He flinched, stopped, not daring to look her in the eye, stead fixing at a point on her neck. No, that was just as bad, too. He looked higher, found her mouth—oh, dammit. In the end, she snared his gaze with her huge, cobalt eyes, glimmering in the ghostly light. He couldn't have moved past them even if he wanted to. There was a shyness there, but not shame.
"I-I'm glad…"
What! He wanted to say, but for some reason he couldn't unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth.
"I'm g-glad that if—if this had to be the situation—I'm glad it was you."
What in the hell was he supposed to say to that? A lot of things. Don't make this situation more awkward than it already is! You know exactly what that statement sounds like. Then again, you're a…well, maybe you don' know what it sounds like. Every male member of your family will want to eviscerate me if they ever find out about this. Neither of us will ever live this down.
…I'm glad, if this had to happen, that it was you, too.
But of course, he couldn't articulate any of that. A sort of strangled noise crawled out of his throat, but he swallowed it.
"D-don't mention it."
He was still looking into her eyes when the little garment finally slipped off. He clamped down on a cough, and added it to the complete pile.
Now this was where things had to get uncomfortable.
You don't appear as nervous as you actually are.
The trousers were staying on. That was an irrefutable fact. For reasons other than his dignity (although to even admit this to himself was nothing short of painful). But…
He started to talk, but the weird, glassy look in her eye told him she wasn't paying attention. Cold, shock, probably. It was one thing when he'd been up in her face, looking into her eyes, but now, well. He could talk and act at the same time, right?
He sighed, and pulled off his shirt.
"I am going to walk you through this," Zelgadis told her.
Amelia nodded, trying to keep her teeth from chattering any more. Her gums were the only parts of her she could really feel, and they were starting to ache from the clacking of her teeth, stinging all up behind her lips and the back of her jaw.
She should have been mortified by this entire scenario. She was a maiden, a princess—naked and alone with a man. No, she wasn't quite naked, but even then she was wrapped up in his cloak that smelled like him but she was so cold that she could barely even feel the ice under her, her toes hurt and it was taking most of her concentration to keep from whimpering, because even if she was freezing, she was a warrior and warriors didn't cry because of pain.
Her thoughts must have drifted off, because she realized he wasn't talking anymore and she hadn't really heard much of what he said—something about skin to skin contact and shared body heat and he was really sorry but he didn't know another way to do this.
She kind of watched him work without really taking in what he was doing. He shuffled through the pack, and pulled out the blanket, spreading it over the slightly raised shelf area of the shelter. He took the lamp, and placed it closer to that spot. Then, he took the pack, jammed it where the entrance was, and turned back to her. Even if his face hadn't been inscrutable, she wouldn't have been able to read it.
Of all the people in the world, Zelgadis was among those she considered her closest friends. It was hard to look at a person with whom you walked hundreds of miles of harsh terrain with, someone who'd shared greasy skewers of stringy rabbit meat out in the wilderness with you when the hunting was bad and there were no towns for exactly forty two standard miles, a person whom you've gotten lost with in random merchant towns and neither of you spoke the local dialect or had any of the local currency, someone who's defied brutal death at your side so many times that there was never any question of whether or not you would be willing to die for them and not think of them as one of your best friends.
She stifled a gasp when he reached out and picked her up. He was kneeling, so after an awkward shuffle, he shifted both of them over to a slightly raised area of the snow cave. At that point, he gently placed her on her side, as if he was afraid she'd shatter like the ice around them if he wasn't careful.
The space was small, barely big enough for two people. But she hardly registered that until he crawled up next to her, and after a twitch of hesitation, pulled his shirt off. For a heartbeat, he was all she could see, a dark silhouette traced in gold fire by the candlelight at his back, strangely warm blue eyes lit by something other than the flame.
Something in her quailed a little but it wasn't from any kind of fear.
Suddenly, there was coarse fabric at her feet—his shirt, balled up and still warm.
"This is going to be cold for a second."
She'd had his cloak wrapped tightly around herself like a little cocoon. But with no more warning than those words, he pried open the cocoon for one heart-stopping moment: heart stopping from the sudden re-exposure to the freezing cave, heart stopping from the fact he'd suddenly pushed his bare torso up against her cold, naked body. He quickly drew what was left of the cloak around them both again, and with a little finagling managed to close the edges of the blanket they were lying on over them as well.
He drew his arms back inside the new, bigger cocoon, and suddenly she could feel his arm, heavy, rough wrap around her waist and pulled her close in a grip that somehow managed to be vicelike and oddly gentle at the same time.
The other arm came around and encircled her shoulders, his hand resting on her ribs, and she barely noticed because he was warm, and she couldn't prevent the escape of a small groan of relief. The bitter numbness that had stiffened her flesh against all feeling dripped away, gradually replaced by two things:
Blood, having sluggishly ventured back out to her limbs quickened—and seemed to rush in a hot flood straight to her face and neck. Her gut tightened in on the butterflies whirling around. Part of her was still trying to decide if it was an unpleasant feeling or not.
No man had ever seen her without her clothes before. She was a princess—a maiden! Oh, she would never admit these thoughts out loud, but she'd harbored romantic fantasies before. A love letter, penned with an eagle's feather and fresh roses. A held hand during a misty morning walk through Seyruun's surrounding woodland. A deep embrace—a tender kiss under an indigo sky heavy with stars, eyes gleaming in full moonlight. In these dreams she was always wearing something ornate and gauzy—the sort of gown she stopped asking for when she was little upon realizing you can't wear such fare for a diplomatic event but she still wished she had anyway. But her prince, for he was always a prince, was foggy and featureless—she could never remember the color of his hair, or even his skin when she woke up. But now…Now, she would recall a bluish cast to his skin, the stiff, wiry strands of silvery hair, the odd scales that studded his face…
"I'm sorry. This probably isn't very comfortable," Zelgadis muttered. Amelia squirmed a little. The few stony scales he had on his torso dug lightly against her flesh, and while she realized they would probably leave impressions—how embarrassing!—it wasn't painful.
"It's…"
"Are you still cold?"
His skin had the texture of sun warmed sandstone, oddly rough—though not as one might expect—but not unpleasant. His breath against her neck teased a few strands of damp hair, sending an ill-timed shiver rippling down her spine.
He seemed to take that as a 'yes', because the next thing she knew, he'd pushed his knee between her legs. She stifled a yelp of surprise. He coughed lightly.
"Warming the centers of blood flow…that's what you're supposed to do in a situation like this. It's why I'm—there are a lot of blood vessels in the thighs. Normally you'd use heated rocks, but uh…"
Of course, the height of physical intimacy she'd ever achieved with him was probably that awful time he took the Demon Dragon King's sword to his back for her. He'd crushed her in a bone-breaking grip-they'd careened several feet and he'd twisted around somehow before they hit the ground. For a few seconds all she could do was pound on his chest begging him to get up, while half his life spilled red onto her palms and dribbled down her forearms, soaking the knees of her trousers and swirling across cracked yellow sandstone.
Going from that, to the occasional, casual touches of camaraderie—a weirdly heavy hand on the shoulder, a light tap, even the rough "I'm saving your life" shoves of battle—to lying naked in his arms was kind of a big jump.
"How…" She wanted to shift a little, relieve the pressure of his knee, but didn't. "How do you know this kind of thing?"
"I've done this before."
Amelia stiffened in his grip. She didn't think she could flush any redder—thankful for the darkness—but apparently she was wrong. Zelgadis twitched, made a little choking noise.
"No—not like that!" he spluttered. "I…I mean I've been caught in a snowstorm before. Before Rezo did this to me. Some bandits had stormed the town we were wintering in. They stole food supplies that the town couldn't do without, and carried off two young girls."
"How horrible." Amelia made a fist at the thought.
"I guess they didn't think we'd follow them into a snowstorm."
"The Red Priest sent you out into a blizzard?"
Zelgadis sighed. "If he did, would you be surprised?" he asked, his voice a weary growl. Amelia cast her eyes down, leaning her forehead against his chest. "In any case, no, he didn't. He didn't have to. I just chased after them. Zolf and Rodimus…"
Amelia remembered those names. Zelgadis almost never talked about his past, but one night fairly early on in their association, they'd been on sentry duty together while the other two slept. Several attempts at conversation about weather and scenery fell flat before she noticed the gleam of his sword's hilt in the moonlight before a brilliant idea struck her.
"My father was the one who taught me how to fight," she'd said proudly. "Ever since I was little. Where did you learn swords, Mr. Zelgadis?"
She'd waited with baited breath. He'd looked at her then like she had three heads. She'd deflated, only to stifle a gasp of surprise when he did finally speak, saying that he'd learned swords from a man called Rodimus.
Zelgadis' voice, rumbling lightly in his chest, snapped her back to the present. "…we'd got caught in a blizzard. That was as good a time to learn cold-weather survival as any, so Rodimus taught me. I've never had to put it into practice until now, though." He shifted his arms, unconsciously tightening his grip on Amelia. She thought, anyway. "I guess something about learning a lesson while dangling between life and death makes it stick better than others."
"Did you catch the bandits?"
"They died of their own folly. Oddly enough, both of the women managed to survive—half-buried under their bodies. One of them lost both her right hand and most of her foot to frostbite, though."
"Frostbite?" Amelia was suddenly hyperaware of the coldness in her fingers and toes. She knew she was overreacting but for a moment she could imagine her blood freezing, crystalizing and turning her extremities black and dead. She balled her fingers together and jammed them between her and Zelgadis's torsos without thinking, eliciting a small grunt of surprise from him.
"I'm sorry!" she apologized—but she couldn't bring herself to move her hands. "It's just…you're very warm. Aren't you cold at all?"
"Yes. But probably not as much as you. This body's as jealous of heat as it is of my blood…" He sounded a little bitter, like there was something more to that statement before he stopped. Jamming her fingers against his solar plexus she realized that his skin wasn't rock hard at all. There was a light give, like when you pressed down on the skin of a drum. A little gasp of surprise caught in her throat. "Your skin. It's not as…"
"What?"
Well, too late to take her foot back out of her mouth. She tried to keep her voice friendly and cheerful—and she sounded like a complete fool. "Well…rocky. As I thought."
She was an idiot. Of course it wasn't. She'd touched him before, after all, but she'd never been so close to him that she could feel his heartbeat. It seemed slower and deeper than hers—which was about as steady as a drunken bumblebee—and his heart out of sync with her own created a bizarre dizziness and disorientation if she focused on it too hard.
"Of course it's not." He didn't sound angry. Instead, his tone was an exasperated sigh, drawn out the same way that you wrung water from a wet towel. "If it was really rock, I wouldn't be able to breathe, much less move my arms or legs."
Amelia's fingers twitched. Her stomach dropped out of her body entirely, filling her with a weird giddiness—like the butterflies that inhabited her gut suddenly set loose throughout her whole body, leaving in their wake a mad boldness that she never would have been able to muster if not for the fact that at this moment, there were literally almost no barriers between them. She wriggled her arm around reached up, brushing the underside of his arm with her fingers.
"It's almost soft." She found herself looking up at him—or rather, she realized in embarrassment, his neck. This close she noticed stony shards armored his jawline and ran down the jugular veins, but his throat was smooth—and she couldn't help but wonder if it had the same texture as the skin on the inside of his elbow.
"Almost. Huh. It's not. Amelia, you couldn't cut me even if you pushed a razorblade into my throat." He growled, as if reading her mind. "Nearly nothing gets through it."
"I think it feels nice…" she ventured, scrambling for something to say.
The quality of his voice changed. The pitch rose by that tiny measure, a whisper of something guttural and wounded echoed somewhere in his timbre. "We've had this conversation before. Is it so hard to understand? Look at me! Not like the way you're used to, but the way you did when you first saw this face."
In a way, she was more curious than fearful of his anger—she'd never been invited to stare so closely at his face before. Now she could, and in that exploration, with a coldness that bloomed in her guts, began to see his point.
It was easier with the candlelight, flickering dimly across his features. There was something off, something strange about his face in the dark, the way the shadows moved and shifted across his cheekbones and forehead, even around his eyes. It took her several heartbeats to realize the unsettling nature of the problem—his skin didn't reflect the light the way she was used to seeing it in other people. The texture of his flesh seemed to absorb it, and what wasn't absorbed bounced off the glittering scales on his face.
It should have been monstrous.
But it wasn't. Perhaps it was the way that his expression was tight, even a little angry, maybe the fierce focus and vulnerability and bright, furious emotion—the kind that she was sure Zelgadis didn't realize he betrayed whenever things got bad—that didn't match his teal-gray stony skin and scales.
"I don't think I do," Amelia said in frustration. "I understand that what happened to you was wrong and I wish you haven't had to suffer for it, but your body has saved you many times and it's because of you right now I'm not frozen to death. And—you're always going on about how you're a hideous monster, but I don't think that at all! You've…you've always looked human to me, Mr. Zelgadis," she said truthfully, helplessly. "You surprised me when I first saw you, but I never thought you looked like a monster or anything—"
"I don't know what's worse, you thinking that this all because I don't like what I look like—which I don't—or the fact that in order to get through to you, I seem to have no choice. Amelia," his voice wavered, his expression pained.
"I can't feel things anymore."
As soon as the words tumbled out of his mouth, he realized how ridiculous he sounded. It sounded almost as shallow as the appearance thing, so now he had to qualify. Wonderful.
She froze, stopped, confused.
"What?" her voice was small. "Not anything? How can that…?"
"I know, that sounds stupid and petty," he muttered bitterly. "It's not that I can't feel anything. But did you think I was joking when I said earlier that nothing gets past this skin? It doesn't just stop blades, or cold."
"Then what...I mean…"
"Impact. Vibration. Pressure. Things like that, mostly. I still get pain, but it's usually secondary. Not as acute as it would normally be, unless it's a serious wound. I think."
"You think?"
He stared at her, trying to come up with an articulated description for a pain he'd internalized a long time ago.
"That lullaby you sometimes hum to yourself on long walking days. The one you said your mother used to sing to you when you were a very small child—the one you said you can't remember the words to. You were doing it earlier this afternoon."
Amelia flinched in his arms. He continued. "You can't remember the words because you haven't heard them in a long time, but you still have the melody. The lingering impression of the song. You could call it the song itself, but it's not…complete."
For a few heartbeats, there was nothing but the cold snapping and flickering of the candle.
He's said way too much. What was it to anyone if he couldn't feel pain very well? How did you say that you wished you could feel uncomfortable amounts of cold or heat, or pain, instead of encased in living armor where literally everything bounced off and everything inside was stagnant, unmoving, lukewarm?
He'd never forget the first few days. It was like being sealed in thick leather. He'd been hyperventilating, gasping for air like a beached fish while he scrabbled like deranged rat at the rocky protrusions on his face, unable to feel the texture of his skin or figure out if they were embedded in his skin or some kind of bone or what, and he'd done that until he bled. Of course, he hadn't been able to tell he was bleeding—the moisture of his own blood was lost on him until he clapped a hand to his face so hard that it should have stung but it didn't. The impact had made a strange noise, like a whump instead of a smack, and his hand had come away sticky.
He remembered the feeling of watery relief that had come with discovering it was still red.
He remembered throwing up until there was nothing left. The grass, instead of leafy and cool, had become a ghostly, infuriating tickle. He'd grabbed sword by the blade, and the edge bit, but he might as well have gasped a butter knife. He remembered his throat was hurting, but he couldn't recall the screaming. Something deep inside his ears hurt like hell.
Even talking to other people had been bizarre and disorienting. He was used to sensing proximity in a person by touch—the way all people normally did, but now, it was as though he was behind a thick glass, but he could hear so much clearer when they spoke. So clearly, in fact, that he could pick out little tiny pitch variations, vibrations, rumbles—so clearly that even the familiar timbres of Rezo, Rodimus, Zolf, even the children, had seemed garrulous and alien.
He couldn't remember what normal people heard anymore. He could just recall that it was a little less complicated.
For the first few nights, his sheets had caught in the shards on his back and forearms, shredded from the tossing and turning and more than anything, he remembered the words, reverberating in his head:
I'm trapped. I'm trapped. I'm trapped!
Then, with time, those feeling subsided. He began to forget what it had been like before. It hadn't mattered at that point, had it?
"Mr. Zelgadis…" her voice reached into the recesses of his memory and pulled him out. He had the sudden impression of a drowning man thrown a rope.
She reached up. Maybe he was too numb, too frazzled to consider what happened next, but it surprised him all the same. She pressed her small, cold palm against the plane of his face. He blinked. No one had done that since he changed.
"…not even this?"
Her touch was like that of a ghost. He knew her hand was there, but it was insubstantial, a whisper. In that second he wanted nothing more than to grab her hand and press it hard against his cheek, but he didn't. He didn't move.
"No." his voice barely seemed to squeeze itself out of his throat.
A slight crease appeared between Amelia's brows. She pushed a little harder, stroked her thumb just under his left eye. He closed them both, hating himself for even trying to relish this tiny moment, this mockery of an intimate, tender gesture. And on one level, a mockery it was—he could feel the pressure in her wrist as she pressed down, not hard, but not soft, either. But on another…
"And this?"
Zelgadis clenched his teeth. He couldn't answer her verbally. Instead, he breathed in deep, and softly, ran his hand along the dip of Amelia's waist, ghosting along the edge of her ribs to cup the side of her face, trying to imagine the texture of her skin by picturing rose petals in his mind's eye.
It didn't really work.
"Mr. Zelgadis." she was holding onto the wrist of the hand on her face, her voice quiet as butterfly wings. She stared up at him. Something was glimmering in her eyes. Embarrassment and fear made him want to interpret it as pity but Amelia didn't pity the way most people would.
She grieved. She grieved fully and completely, and that shining grief and shock with which she regarded him made him feel as naked and exposed as she was. But in this moment, that didn't seem like a terrible thing.
She wrapped her arms around him as best she could, burying her face against his collarbone. On a normal occasion, he thought she might have tried to apologize—her way of communicating sympathy, but here, she surprised him by staying silent.
There was nothing to say.
He tried to return the gesture. Amelia might be naïve, and she spoke her mind without thinking, she was true as steel and he could at least be sure that she was doing her level best, for at least a heartbeat, to understand.
It was one of those things that filled him with endless confusion. Her understanding, her ability to feel and empathize any situation to a degree that he couldn't even begin to comprehend, and while it was confusing, it was fascinating. It drew his eye when she wasn't looking, it made him wonder and mull things over in his head. But naturally, in looking, it stirred things in him he tried to regard as distractions—he had a goal, and that goal had to come first.
But even so…she shifted against him, tightening her grip around his shoulders. She glanced up at caught his eye, and he found that right now he may not be able to sense the exact texture of her skin, but he could feel the humming of her heart, and the insistent pressure of her full breasts crushed against his body. Those things were slowly turning his brain to soup, and there was a dim voice yelling at him as is from a great distance…
Zel!
Amelia!
Amelia? Someone was—
Wait. There was a thumping nose from above, and then suddenly, a triumphant shout.
Surely not.
Oh.
"Aha! Found 'em. Fireball!"
The top of the shelter blew up.
It erupted with a spectacular roar of red flame flying, fist-sized chunks of packed snow and the burning remains of emergency supplies. He was pretty sure he screamed—there was no time for any other reaction.
He and Amelia hadn't moved. They were lying in a blasted crater, and while Amelia's still wet clothes (and his shirt) rained damningly down around them, wrapped up in Zelgadis' cloak and holding each in terrified death grips they were literally too tangled up to move.
As Lina's silhouette moved through the rapidly dissipating vapor towards them, the only thing Zelgadis had time to consider is which burning piece of equipment he might use to kill himself the fastest with.
"Ha! Well that wasn't so bad. Told you we'd find them fast! Amelia, Zel, how—"
She stopped dead, having stepped on something. She glanced down.
Amelia's underwear, stiff with ice, crunched lightly beneath her boot. Even from this distance, on the ground, Zelgadis could see every evil inch of her expression. First, amber eyes, widening in shock. Then, the piercing shriek, half-mortification, half wicked glee,
"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? AHAHAHAHAHA!"
"Wait, Lina!" Zelgadis's voice cracked. "This—this isn't what it looks like!"
Sylphiel and Gourry appeared seconds later.
Sylphiel gasped, pink flooding her cheeks. "Oh my."
"What did I miss? Gah, Sylphiel, what are you doing?"
"We probably probably shouldn't see this, Gourry, dear."
"No everyone, there's a perfectly good explanation for this!" Amelia squeaked. Zelgadis cringed at the word "everyone". Oh God. "Please, Ms. Lina, put those down!"
"Zel, you sly devil." There were very few things that put the fear of hell into Zelgadis. One such thing was Ruby-Eyed Shabranigdo. The other such thing was the cruel, catlike grin that curled across Lina's face, a smile that spoke of unspeakable horror and eyes that promised one thing:
I'm going to milk this for all it's worth.
Lina later described the inside of the inn like a fresh chicken and vegetable pie—warm, full and smelling of spices. Every lamp, chandelier and candelabra had been lit regardless of whether or not it was needed, filling the room with a thick, comfortable warmth that brought to mind woolen blankets mugs of tea. Each of the tables had been shined and dusted till they gleamed, and each table was occupied to full capacity with roaring, celebrating townsfolk waving tankards of nutty beer.
"And then the vile creature attacked, with no thought to the doom that awaited him—he could not conceive of the might of the hammer of justice that struck him down…!"
Amelia was balanced on a table close to the hearth, belting out the story of the monster's defeat with the voice and skill of a professional herald. Even then, she was barely audible over the din of cheering townspeople and the clang of pots and pans from the busy kitchen.
Gourry and Sylphiel were sitting close to Amelia, cheering her on and adding in details where they felt necessary. In the back…a wry smirk tugged at Zelgadis' lips. Lina was gesticulating widely with her abacus and pointing expectantly at the hungry-looking purse looming on the table where the three councilmen who hired them cringed and counted stacks of gold coins.
She'd been particularly…well, 'energetic' was probably the kindest word, but 'crazy' was the one that came to Zelgadis' mind first. The day after the snow cave incident, Lina had tromped everyone out to the river looking for the treasure. She'd coerced Zelgadis into going in with her (Amelia point blank refused to go anywhere near the bank and it wasn't as if Gourry or Sylphiel would be of any help with regards to the actual search), each employing a Windy Shield to walk along the bottom of the river for several miles at a time, looking for the treasure. That was bad enough on its own, but in the end, they had found something.
Which was almost worse.
It was a massive, likely looking, waterlogged old chest with a grimy golden lock. When they hauled it to the surface, blasted the lock off, there was only one thing inside—a note, sealed in a waterproof envelope.
"Early bird gets the worm! Better luck next time, flatty!
Ohohohohohoho!"
It had been signed with a crude drawing of a snake. Zelgadis had no idea who was tacky or ridiculous enough to actually write out the onomatopoeia for an obnoxious laugh, but apparently, Lina had. The second Amelia had finished reading the note out loud she'd roared like a dragon and set it on fire before stomping the ashes into the snow.
In any case, she was probably demanding the councilmen reimburse her for the treasure or something.
Although, the red headed usurer had apparently been appeased. Like a cat who'd eaten the canary, she stalked over to where he was sitting, feline smirk taking up more of her face than he would have initially thought possible. She sat down next to Zelgadis with a satisfied little noise and jangled the purse. It gave the impression of a bloated frog—it was too stuffed to actually make much noise—before stowing it inside her cloak.
"I got them to reimburse me for the treasure."
Zelgadis took a sip of his tea. "Congratulations, Lina. You can now add 'master extortionist' to your colorful list of epithets."
"I prefer the term 'successful businesswoman'." She winked at him, "I thought about writing a detailed account of what happened last night to Prince Phil and threatening to send it to him."
"You wouldn't!"
Lina sighed and waved her hand nonchalantly at him. "I kid, I kid. Besides Zel," she grinned, "You haven't got any stuff I want."
He snorted.
"Come on," her playful tone changed slightly, turning genuine and serious as it was light. "No one really thinks anything happened. Everyone knows that's how you deal with someone who's fallen through ice. Even if Prince Phil ever does find out, I honestly can't see him caring too much. Still," a knowing, goofy grin returned to her face, revealing her elongated eyeteeth. "Best way to rescue a pretty girl ever, huh?"
Zelgadis leaned forward with a throaty sigh, kneading his forehead to hide his spreading blush. "Look, if you want to say something, say it. You didn't come all the way over here just to tease me, did you?"
Lina clapped a hand on his shoulder. "You make to too easy! Loosen up a little. But you're right, I do have a point." She raised a finger, smile gone. "Just…be careful. I know she's not a little kid or anything, but parts of her kind of are. I don't think it'll take much to break her heart. And you're, well, you. And don't look at me like that; you know I'm not talking about your face."
"'Be careful with her.'"
"Yeah."
"It's not like that."
Lina made an exasperated noise. "Is that really how you're going to be?"
Zelgadis pointedly flicked his eyes in Gourry's direction. "You're not one to talk. Just what are you implying?"
Lina sighed, cracked her knuckles and shrugged. "Okay Zelgadis. If you have to ask, you already know. So with that in mind," she stood up, "take care of her. You can't exactly return what she's given you."
At this Zelgadis got to his feet, bristling. "Now look—"
"Her heart, you idiot, her heart," Lina said, waving him down. "Jeez, what did you think I meant? You men have such dirty minds."
Frazzled, Zelgadis sat back down. "She's my friend, same as you and Gourry," he grumbled. "I do my duty by my friends. If you're so worried about her, then go talk to her about it."
"Zel." Lina met his eye before turning away, a small knowing smile on her lips. "I'm not telling you this stuff just for her sake." She gave a small wave before heading off to a table.
Zelgadis sighed, turning back towards the commotion at the head table. Amelia was finishing up her story. She launched into a graceful aerial maneuver off the table. At the highest point of her arc, she caught his gaze. Her eyes lit up and she flashed him a brilliant smile, just as she landed neatly on the ground.
As much as he wanted to, it was at that point he knew that he couldn't entirely write off Lina's words. Something had changed, and it would never be quite the same again. Even if he wasn't sure if he was prepared for it.
I don't know what I'm doing.
He went outside and threw out the remainder of his cold tea.
Amelia noticed Zelgadis slip out the door when she finished her bow. He was doing it again! She excused herself as politely as she could from the clamoring crowd before heading over and grabbing two new mugs of tea.
She shouldered her way out the door, into the frigid night, careful not the spill. Zelgadis was leaning against the side of the door, looking up at the sky, but he'd heard her approach. She smiled and offered the mug in her left—no, right hand—to him. He accepted it with a shy little smile of his own. Something warmed in her heart. That was one of her rarer ones.
"What are you doing out here, Amelia? It's cold." His breath misted in a silver curl.
She shrugged. "It's not so bad with all your clothes on." His throat snagged mid-sip of tea, but he didn't say anything.
Actually, thinking back to what had happened, she wasn't so sure it had been so bad with her clothes off, either. Retrospectively, at least.
Already, she could feel the freezing air numbing her face. Absentmindedly, she touched her cheek. Even now it felt strangely fuzzy and distant. She looked at the door. She could go back inside anytime, and she'd be able to feel her face again, the cold would melt away. Zelgadis couldn't do that. He might never do that. A numbness and coldness went hand in hand, and surely that had affected his heart as much as his body in some way.
"I just wanted to make sure you knew," she blurted, gripping the warm mug like it was trying to escape, "What you told me yesterday. It's not petty. It's always the things we take for granted that we miss the most. It's always those little things that remind us what it is to be human."
Suddenly, the nameless lullaby, the impression of a song that was always reverberating around in the corners of her mind started to play in her head, soft, sad, reminding. Impulsively, she reached out for Zelgadis' hand, gripping, more firmly than she would anyone else, but warmly.
He blinked at her in surprise. She met his eyes, smiled.
"I won't ever let you forget them!"
The End
A/N: When this idea first came to me, it was very simple in my mind. That was partially because I didn't know anything about winter survival beyond cliches, so when I got down to doing research for this thing, I was like, "...oh. This will probably make the characters a little more uncomfortable than I previously imagined. Hmmm. Wait, you have to what if someone falls through ice?" In any case, I was a little more embarrassed than I thought I would be, since this sort of thing is actually quite far from my comfort zone. In any case, I did have fun writing it, and I hope you all enjoyed reading it. Until next time! ^_^