Chapter 2

"Oh," she replied simply, allowing him to lead her toward the tallest building in the village. "How long do we have to hide?"

"Until the all-clear is sounded," he answered. "That took almost a week last time, and the villagers kidded me about smelling like milret for a long time."

"Milret?"

"A very stinky root."

"Ah. Well, I hope it's not very long this time, because the last thing I need is a Jaffa patrol finding my ship."

"Yeah, that would suck," he answered. He licked his lower lip. "May I ask you a question, Vala Mal Doran?"

"Just Vala, please," she smiled. "Go ahead."

He opened the door to the travelers' hall and ushered her inside the surprisingly cool building, grabbing a lantern from the entryway. Flipping back the woven rug on the floor, he dug his fingers into a groove and lifted a cleverly-disguised trapdoor. "Do you know what 'release your burden' means?"

Vala shook her head. "Sell all your loot?" His grimace spoke all-too-clearly what he thought of her guess as he cautiously climbed down the long ladder into the pitch-black cellar. After he reached the bottom and lit his lantern, she quickly followed after, guessing the villagers would see to concealing the entrance. They were perhaps twice her own height below-ground, long rows of hanging herbs bringing the already-close ceiling almost uncomfortably low. She guessed the space between the building's floor and the cellar's ceiling was likely filled with earth to muffle the sound.

If she was uncomfortable with the head-room, Theadan was miserable. He'd removed the silly straw hat and was bent over, hunching his shoulders as he passed through the dangling roots to a small living area closed off from the main chamber by wooden partitions. There was a table, two cots, and even a small fire place. She guessed the curtained-off corner was for personal needs.

"'Sell all my loot'?" Theadan repeated, flopping heavily onto one of the two cots. "No, that can't be it."

"Why do you ask?"

"Well, it's one of the few things I remember from... before. There's a woman's voice, and she says 'release your burden'."

"Ex-girlfriend? I've gone with a few guys who couldn't release their burdens."

"No, I get a sense of... maternal encouragement." His thick brows knitted.

"Well, in my experience," Vala grinned, depositing herself on the cot beside him, "their mothers were usually the burden they needed to release!"

Theadan shot her an amused look. "Got a thing for Momma's Boys?"

"Why? Are you one?" As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted them. "Oh, sorry... I didn't mean--"

"It's okay," he smiled in that sad, self-deprecating way of his. "To be honest, I get the impression I was stubbornly independent."

"Was?"

"Am. I figure some things never change, right?"

Vala laughed, then stifled the noise. "I guess we need to be quiet while we're stuck down here?"

"Nobody's come to close up the trapdoor yet, but yeah," he replied.

"Damn, that means we can't pass the time by having sex." When his face flamed, she had to smother another laugh. "You're not a prude are you, Theadan?"

"Uh... not exactly, no... but I don't think I was ever used to women being very... um, blatant?" He'd shifted the distance of a few fingers away as he spoke.

"Well, the women of your world must be blind if they weren't chasing you like hiel'nas in heat."

"Um... funny you should say that, when my vision's not really all that great."

Vala blinked. "You can't see?"

"I can't see clearly," Theadan corrected. "I'm fine by day, for the most part, but I have to get pretty close to stuff in the dark. I get... distracted by bright sources of light. If someone's walking toward me with a torch, I won't see his face until he's about two arm-spans away."

"All the more reason for us to stick very close together," she teased, laying a hand on his upper thigh. He yelped, jumping straight up and banging his head on a low beam. With a pained moan, he fell back on the mattress, clutching his head. "Sorry, Theadan!" While his reactions to her advances were quite amusing, she hadn't meant for him to get hurt.

"Dan," he whispered after a long moment, uncurling his body a little.

Caught up as she was in admiring what seemed to be solid muscle beneath the rough cloth of his shirt and trousers, she missed what he said. Hmm?"

"Dan," he repeated, peeking at her with one lash-filtered eye. "I don't know what my real name is, but 'Dan' is better than 'Theadan'."

"I thought 'Theadan'--"

"--Is the name the people who found me gave me when they discovered I couldn't remember my own name. It means 'god given', since they say I fell from the sky." He squinted up at her. "Actually, that's what they were laughing about earlier. I appeared in a flash of lightning, and the sound of your ship crashing was similar to thunder. Atrus joked that he was waiting for it to start raining sky-eyed children."

She trilled her tongue in a purring sound. "We could give it a good start..." It was her turn to yelp, as he suddenly surged off the bed, scooping her up under the knees and shoulders and dropping her on the other cot unceremoniously. "You caveman, you!"

"Just knock it off," he moaned, returning to his own bed and wrapping his arms around his head.

"Sure, Dan." She sprawled out on her stomach, propping her chin up on her palm as she stared at him. "You don't strike me as a 'Dan'."

"Yeah, well 'Theadan' sounds like a king or something... and I'm sure I wasn't a king."

"Maybe you just judge yourself too harshly."

He frowned. "Well, obviously somebody else judged me pretty harshly, too. Why else would I have had my memory stripped and dumped naked on some planet in the middle of nowhere?"

"Naked?"

"Forget I said that part."

Vala grinned. "Not on your life." He heaved a sigh in response. "Where my people come from, we call variants of the language the locals of this world speak 'Tethysian', after the Queen Goa'uld who spawned the gods of the region."

"You don't say."

"Where I come from, the native language is called 'Atiratu', after the Queen of that particular family. Anyway, my name in that language means 'woman of god', which is a quite ironic name if you knew the whole story."

"Which I'm sure I'm going to get to hear, huh?" he replied sarcastically, now massaging his temples.

"Not this time," Vala promised. "As I was saying, there's a name in Atiratu which suits you: Dana'en. It means 'I am judged'."

He snorted. "Funny. And I suppose you--" Suddenly, he bolted upright, a look of intense introspection on his face. "God is my judge."

"No, 'I am judged'. You may be the hotshot at the local lingo, but--"

He shook his head. "That's not what I meant. My real name means 'God is my judge'. My real name is Daniel."


Author's Notes:
...But you knew that already. Ha!