Innocence

First off, tinctura hypericum is a powerful healing item in the game. Tinctura is a medicinal mixture and hypericum is a flowering plant which actually has healing properties in real life (which I know because I'm a nerd), and it tends to react badly with other pharmaceuticals. So now when Dameon does his nerd babbling thing, you will know what he's talking about. Which actually isn't necessary to understanding the story but it's nice to not be confused, yeah?

This is a story about Rhen's innocence and her trying to reconcile her really very gentle and kind nature with the violence she has seen and done. Sometimes we see these things as mutually exclusive and I think Rhen would have to work through having both in her— and because of Dameon's experiences, he would be able to help. Happens in Thais, before Aesma. RhenxDameon as always~

The problem was, he had very soft lips, like marionbells or apple blossoms, and she had very rough hands, and she didn't understand— of all the places he could have kissed, her forehead, maybe, or her cheeks, or her mouth— but instead he always chose the dirtiest, roughest part of her and it was— was—

Bewildering.

Ma had always told her to wash her hands. And she had been right, Rhen's hands were always filthy. Rhen had used them to pick apples and catch butterflies and she couldn't remember a time there hadn't been dirt under her nails.

When she was a slave she'd scrubbed walls and floors until she didn't have nails anymore. She'd smashed spiders with her palms and got their gooey guts all over her fingers, and nobody had been there to tell her to wash them. She'd rinsed the gore off in muddy streams and dried her hands on her ragged smock and wondered if she'd ever hear Ma's scolding again.

And when she'd had to she'd grabbed a stick in her hands and swung it— the splinters she got were for Eddy and she didn't regret them but she knew they weren't beautiful. Violence was never anything but monstrous.

Except, maybe—

Maybe—

She had learned how to make swords sing and she got more than splinters from that; cuts and bruises that faded away and rough calluses that didn't. And it was those which Dameon always kissed with his flower petal lips, like they meant something.

I had no idea how skilled you were with a sword.

Her skill surprised most people, nobody expected ferocity from her. They didn't know what she'd sacrificed to become like this, they didn't understand she fought because she had to, because no one else would, because somebody had to stand between the monsters and the helpless, and if that made her a monster, too, then—

She would be what she must.

Deadly and beautiful at the same time.

Deadly she had heard before. Beautiful was—

Familiar in the same way a bird's song was after a long, cold winter, something she had known once and forgotten.

It was winter now, or nearly winter. It might as well always be winter in Thais, there were no birds and the only green things were the carefully kept trees growing in straight lines in the courtyards. They didn't look much older than Rhen was herself; their branches were still spindly and they stood hardly taller than Galahad. Some stubborn gardener had planted them after the demon attack, and had fought all the elements to keep them alive.

That sort of fighting was— it wasn't really monstrous, was it? She couldn't bring herself to call it monstrous. There was another word for it. If she was Elini she might know what it was, but she was just Rhen and she didn't know, so instead she stood and watched the stupid trees swaying in the wind and wondered.

It was Dameon who finally found her. He was good at that.

"Hi, Rhen," he said softly as he came up next to her.

"Hi, Dameon." She turned to face him. "Finished shopping already?"

He smiled and swung his pack off his shoulder to show her. "We have plenty of cassia leaves now," he said, briefly touching the neat bundle he had wrapped them in, "and they had tinctura hypericum. I don't know where they got the flowers, nothing seems to grow here. We'll have to be careful not to take it with anything else, it can react badly and— Rhen?" he interrupted himself. "Is something wrong?"

She had been staring at the trees again. She forced herself to look away from them and tried to smile.

"No," she said, in a tone that was meant to be convincing but was mostly tired. "Go on, I'm listening. You were talking about flowers."

She had heard something about flowers, and nothing growing, and then she had lost track.

"Flowers…" he repeated slowly, looking at her and then at the trees and furrowing his brow. Apparently that hadn't been his main topic. "Well, I— I couldn't find any flowers, but—" he cleared his throat almost nervously, which wasn't exactly the reaction she had expected, and then, "I did find something for you."

He was rummaging around in his pack, and he pulled out something small and leather.

"I— I noticed your old gloves were wearing out, and these looked like they would fit you. They do have flowers on the ends." His ears were pink as he held them out for her to take. There were little blue asters embroidered along the wrist seams.

They were very pretty, which seemed strange for something made for a fighter, but it was sort of— nice. And she had never been eloquent, she wasn't sure what to say, but she managed to stammer out, "Er, thanks, Dameon," and then—

He smiled at her, that stupid sappy smile that made her cheeks hot, and he took one of her hands in his and gently pressed it to his stupid soft lips— which was— which was—

"Why do you do that?" she asked, searching his face. He tilted his head at her.

"Do what?"

She was very warm and probably very pink and her heart seemed to have forgotten its regular rhythm and was now inventing its own wild pulse, but she was stubborn and she managed to say, without squeaking, "Why do you kiss my hands?"

There was a pause while he thought— his silences were familiar now, his slow and careful ways were soothing, and she found her breath as he brushed her hair back behind her ear. "I guess because— your hands do so much for others— and for— me." He looked at her with those deep brown eyes and that serious little frown and she clutched at the gloves. "I just want to— take care of them."

And he took both her hands, and pressed them to his heart the same way she might have pressed a marionbell to hers when she was a small child with dirt under her nails—

Deadly and beautiful. He cherished even the parts of her that were frightening, and the word for that was—

Was—

"Well, you could kiss my mouth, you know."

And he did, so, so softly she might have thought it was spring and the flowers had grown again.