20th of Edrinios, light time

To try to turn my mind to lighter matters than it's been on of late, and in keeping with my resolve to throw Mae at Rhun's head, so to speak, I invited her to supper and to spend the night with me last night, hoping she'd drop any helpful information. It certainly isn't difficult to get her talking about Rhun, although some of the awkwardness over our respective situations seemed to crop up again now that he's returning and she kept looking sideways at me and fiddling with her tableware at supper.

I was beginning to despair over her reticence, and then hit on the idea that if I began talking of Taran it would remind her how little she has to fear any rivalry from me, and all the better if I could make her laugh. So I challenged her to tell her most embarrassing moment involving Rhun if I'd do the same involving Taran. She agreed, and I related the following:

It was sometime during my last summer at Caer Dallben, a couple of months before I was sent here – just before Dallben made the announcement that I was to go, in fact. One day I was fetching water from the well back to the scullery, and my path happened to take me by the smithy where Taran and Coll were working, though Coll was elsewhere at that particular moment. It was their habit while smithing, particularly in warm weather, to strip to the waist to save their sleeves from getting charred, while they donned leather aprons to protect themselves in front. It was nothing I hadn't seen before and I had never given the matter a second thought.

So I wasn't exactly sure why, after a casual glance into the dim smithy as I went by, I should find the sight worth a second look and then a pause, and before I knew it I was standing there in the yard with my attention locked and the bucket of water dangling forgotten at my side. Taran was working alone, facing away from me, pounding at something on the anvil. I found myself riveted watching the muscles tense and release in his back, mysteriously fascinated by the fluid strength in his movements as the hammer rose and fell, by the way the curve of his shoulder turned and planed itself into his shoulder blade, like the smooth liquid slide of swift water over a stone. In a sudden burst of astonishment, I realized I was contemplating a desire to touch that bare shoulder. Shocked at myself, I tried to push the thought away, but it wouldn't be pushed. So I stopped trying and just stood there staring, feeling oppressively warm and a little lightheaded.

It was sheer fated devilment that made him at that moment turn around to lay his finished work aside, and he caught sight of me at the very instant I realized he would. I broke into a startled walk, trying to look as though I had never stopped, an illusion I'm sure must have failed utterly. He called my name and came hurrying from the forge, and it was too late to pretend I couldn't hear him or was in too much of a hurry, though the thought of doing both made me waver and hesitate enough to look and feel idiotic.

Trying to regain my self-composure despite a face I could feel was crimson, I made myself turn and look at him. Fortunately, from the front, the battered leather apron was a state of dress far less distracting than the view from the rear. Seeming not to notice my consternation, he passed his grimy forearm over his brow, pointed at what seemed to be my midsection and asked, "Can I have some?"

I was still so flustered I didn't comprehend, and blurted out, "What?"

With an expression of baffled amusement he pointed again. "Water."

I looked down and realized I had unknowingly clasped the wooden pail to my chest with both arms, as though in need of some inanimate thing between us, and exclaimed, "Oh!" Well, it was one of my responsibilities to bring water to the men while they worked, but it wasn't what I'd gone after just then and I hadn't the proper accessories. "Er…"I stammered, "I…don't have the dipper or a cup."

He stepped up to me, his eyes on the water. "Never mind that; I'm dying." And both his hands reached out with the obvious intention of scooping up his own drink.

I gave a little shriek of indignation, and jerked back so hard that I sloshed water out of the bucket down the front of my gown. My skin crawling under its cold bite, I gasped out, "Don't you dare! This is clean water for cooking. Just look at your hands. I'd have to go back to the well."

He examined his filthy, sooty hands in annoyance. "Well, blast it all, why didn't you bring the dipper?"

I was exasperated now on top of being flustered and embarrassed - with him, with myself, with the whole silly situation, and such a combination disposes me to rash and impulsive behavior. I can think of no other reason for the truly mad thing I did next, which was, with an exclamation of "Oh, for goodness' sake" to plunk the bucket of water upon the ground and plunge my own clean hands into it, bringing them up cupped brimful and dripping and raising them toward him. "Here, then."

At the very moment I'd done it I realized what a brazen thing it was, or at least felt like. All the blood came rushing to my face again. I couldn't back down – that would make it worse. It was too late to do anything other than pretend nothing was extraordinary about the thing and carry on as nonchalantly as possible. But it wasn't very possible.

Taran's surprise and consternation were evident. He looked from my cupped hands to my face and back again helplessly. It occurred to me that until that moment he really had thought of nothing but his drink, and I could have escaped the situation with only my own embarrassment to plague me. Now he seemed, for the first time, to really look at my face, to notice my agitation. He glanced back at the forge, down at his leather apron, and cleared his throat. His hesitancy, and the thought that he might be contemplating what I had been doing there before he turned around made me so wildly uncomfortable I wanted to shove him, punch him, berate him, as though it were somehow his fault for being so…for attracting my attention in the first place. "Well, go on," I snapped. "You said you were thirsty, didn't you?"

Without a word he lowered his face to my hands. Belin knows how I kept them from shaking like leaves. His hair fell forward, grazing my wrists, and I screwed my eyes shut and tried to think very banal ordinary thoughts, without much success. He drank until his lips grazed my palm, and then straightened up abruptly, looking rather thirstier than before. His eyes glowed like emeralds in his soot-darkened face.

I checked myself from the insanity of asking if he wanted more.

Without another word I picked up the bucket and marched past him, back to the nice cool scullery where I pondered whether the relief of dumping the whole blasted pail over my own head would be worth the second trip to the well.

It does make a good story, now, though I flushed a little in the telling, and even, truth be told, in the writing – mostly at how I could have been so foolish, my first mistake having been to stop and watch at all – but really, it's not as though that had been my intention going out. Mae loved it though, pretended to fan herself, and hooted over my blushes. She asked if he'd ever mentioned it again, and of course he didn't…neither of us did; we simply pretended it never happened, rather like that moment on the ship.

Mae wondered aloud, a bit petulantly, why fate never threw her into such situations. I told her fate favors the reckless, foolish, and uneducated, while courtly etiquette and a good upbringing stifle its best efforts.

Anyway, the trick worked – Mae relaxed and waxed eloquent on all things Rhun. But just now it is late and I am sleepy, so I shall have to mull it over for a while before writing it out.

*ahem*

After the last three serious chapters, I figured we could all use some amusement. Even if it's a trifle risque. They are teenagers, after all.