A/N: This little beastie emerged and I felt it needed to stand alone as an interlude between the big chapters either side. It's a little of the internal workings of their minds during the travel from the Palace to Trebond.

Chapter 10: Reveries: An interlude

The next four days would have seemed, to outside eyes, to pass in very similar a manner to the previous two: the five assorted travellers rode, ate, camped and slept, seemingly assuming the familiar and jovial relationships between them.

Except, Daine knew that something was wrong.

Perhaps it was the way he looked at her; or rather, didn't look at her. Of course, Numair always looked down when in the saddle, as if he expected his faithful Spots to either disappear or rear up from between his thighs at any moment; so perhaps he wasn't really avoiding her, when she rode next to him and looked up into his dark, shadowed face and he would not meet her gaze.

But she could feel the peculiar distance of him, as if a string pulled taut between them had somehow become rigid and drove them apart rather than drawing them together.

Daine was used to feeling connected to him; they had travelled so often together, worked so long at each other's sides, that even in companionable silence she was aware of him beside her, almost as if they had their own inexorable connection that required neither speech nor touch.

Except, right now she couldn't feel it.

It was if she had somehow cut the thread. Or he had.

Tamalt knew in his heart of hearts that there was discord between teacher and student.

Examining it, and them, he wondered how he knew. He had not been privy to their relationship before this last week, so he could he know how they usually behaved? There were no dramas, no theatrical outcries, no tears; no sparks flew, at least in public. But the loss, the absence of something he couldn't grasp, surrounded them both like a bleak fog.

He observed at a distance, seeing Daine occasionally draw Numair into conversation, which was always civil. They rarely spoke for longer than was absolutely necessary, though Tamalt noticed that Daine usually managed to draw him out on the subject of her magic. A few times they discussed her healing of the fawn, and a previous creature they called 'Maisie', and it was only then that Numair came alive, his light baritone lifting in these moments of intellectual curiosity.

It was only then that Numair engaged with his student in a way to belie the possibility of disharmony between them.

Tamalt was not surprised. It seemed to him that magic, for Numair, always sat on the edge of his horizon, an ever-present sanctuary he could withdraw to even when the world threatened to collapse around him, which Tamalt imagined it had on occasion, as it did to all powerful mages.

And so, when Tamalt observed Numair and his student during their few academic discussions in those four days, he did not fail to notice that the man did not meet her eyes, but kept his own gaze fixed firmly on that magical horizon. His sanctuary. His home.

Tamalt himself was happy to command Daine's attention, which he did more and more easily as Daine accepted the unsteady silence between Numair and herself. They often rode together on those four days, and he amused her with stories of the Maren court, which was decidedly more formal and less peculiar than her Tortallan home; and with tales of his youth, which had been a flurry of magical experiments and explosions.

If these stories made her think of Numair, both knew better than to mention it.

For Numair, the four days passed immeasurably slowly.

He was not used to being with her and yet not being with her. Had she withdrawn from him?

In all honesty, he knew that he held her at bay. Until he could exorcise the image of her from his mind, barefoot and beautiful on the beach, naked but for another man's shirt, Numair was not sure he could smile and make small-talk as she perhaps wished that he would.

And in even more brutal honesty, Numair was not sure he wanted to lose that image of her, which played out on his eyelids when they were closed, and in his dreams.

In his dreams, she ran before him on the beach wearing his shirt.

In his dreams, the musical laugh sprang between them on the sand, and he chased after her retreating form.

Sometimes, in his dreams, he caught up to her, until they were locked in a tight and salty embrace. When he woke it was as if he could still taste her on his lips.

Sometimes, the more he ran, the further away she seemed to be, until she was no longer on his shore but on the other side of the straits.

Then he called her name, but she could not hear him.