This chapter is short. Just a bit of filler.

I want to say to anyone following the story, I have made an important change. Brady's death is now different. This is how it was before I changed it to the drug idea, but it just didn't flow in the future chapters. So I suggest reading chapter five over again, or at least part of it, perhaps.

Thanks for the reviews!


The others had roused, and prepared to continue on the trek. As Ardeth helped Rick and Evie to sit their camels, he was surprised to find Drostan approaching latter's beast, swollen mouthed and expectant.

Ardeth eyed the man wearily. Having discovered the man's intentions the previous night and tonight, he felt a little more than uncomfortable facing him. "Is there a problem, son?" The patronizing tone of his voice was not lost on Drostan, although that was surprising, considering his condition.

"I need to get on Evie's camel," he said, his words slurred and muffled by his aching gums.

"What happened to Boann's horse?" Evie asked, unsure of inviting him to ride with her the last day and a half.

Drostan looked pained at having to attempt to explain, and Ardeth quickly decided to go the sourc.

"She's Gone," Boann said, still not looking him in the eye as she strapped on her belt. She hadn't looked him in the eye all morning. His breath was crackling and catching like a net in his chest every time he saw her and she wouldn't even look him in the eye.

"Gone? I saw her just this morning..."

"She ran off." She said, non-chalant.

"Ran off?"

"Ardeth," She turned, cool anger bursting through her sun-burnt nose. "Ye 'eard me the first time and ye'd 'ear me a second. She ran off about and hour ago, dunno where she gone." And after a few seconds, she added, "She ain't my horse, after all."

"Then how shall you ride?"

"Adil offered to take me."

Softly surprised and amazingly frustrated, Ardeth walked off without another word.

And indeed, Drostan rode silently on the back of Evie's camel, even helped her in steering it a bit (though she was most likely pretending she needed the help to cheer him up). Before they had left, Ardeth had given the man some salts for his gums and a clean piece of cotton cloth, explaining that some antibiotics might be beneficial upon his return. Drostan seemed to understand, but Ardeth wasn't sure, trusting the man's intelligence less and less each day. In all honesty, the man's affection for Boann had mustered some jealousy within Ardeth as well. He assumed that the fresher the feeling the fiercer the envy – He honestly could say that he shared Boann's first instinct the night before, he simply felt that it would have been best not to act on it. And never one to easily give into preconceived judgement, was quick to help him as much as possible with his injury.

But not just Drostan's emotions were effecting Ardeth, even Boann's riding so close to Adil was creating some reaction from him. She rode in back of him, her face completely veiled again, as if she were figuratively shutting him back out of her. She was certainly still angry. Ardeth had no true talent with the temperaments of women. He could understand them at times, but rarely could he find a fitting counter to them.

Even though it felt nice to see the old man smile so brightly, his dull brown eyes sparkling with a new sense of endearment and amusement, it was still disheartening to see earned in a few hours what took him two days to earn from the woman; trust.

Night fell on the quiet travel of the seven companions. Ardeth had spoken little; a bit to the O'Connell's, but nothing much of substance. He had thought of Boann much, unable to help himself. Hot and cold images flooded his head, sometimes returning to his dream two nights ago, other times drawing him to her face. He found himself several times attempting to render her face whole again inside of his head, but every time found it seeming far too awkward in it's symmetry, finding her incompleteness to be a much more natural picture.

As they set up camp once more, only a good four miles from the dig site, Ardeth found that it was Drostan with whom he conversed most of the evening with, rather than Boann.

In truth, he was not a bad man. A bit off center, perhaps, but not bad. Ardeth was reasonably sure that he thought the same about him, and that their hatred for each other was completely impersonal. Just over a woman, was all.

"I had wanted to apologize, about last night. Boann was right to hit me for what I'd did." Drostan was not unaware of Ardeth's eyes, fast held by the back of Boann's head as she sat several meters away from the dying fire. The others had already retired for the night, and Ardeth was keeping watch, though his watch was mostly over her.

"No, she did not have that right. But thank you for the apology."

"You know," he began, lighting up a cigarette. "She gets nervous about things like that. I guess growin' up the way she 'ad to, ye'd expect it, right? But, uh, we do, eh, love each other. She's just not in the like to be touched is all."

Ardeth said nothing. Drostan smirked slightly, assuming that he may have scratched a surface fo the leader's interior.

"You know, we aren't engaged, but we've always sort of agreed that we'd be married. I mean, we're all that we've got," he said, echoing her earlier words. Ardeth gave a somber nod, not entirely believing this. Like Boann had said, Drostan liked to think he was needed. And, he could expect, he must have been in a way. He was the only one not to have left Boann, thus far.

Drostan brought to voice what Ardeth was, at that moment, thinking, "I've been with her about her whole life. I mean, you know, through all the shit with her folks and my folks and all." He tapped his ashes off of his leg where they had fallen. "And I was there, when it happened." He pointed to his eye with a quick cutting jut of his finger. "I'm the only one 'oo can understand."

He meant to brag, Ardeth knew. He meant to show off that he was more equipped to handle Boann's conspicuous troubles. But what he had really done was give Ardeth another piece of her, bring him a bit closer, simply by knowing that she hadn't been alone when it happened. She hadn't been alone, and she was in Egypt. She must have been twelve, around, once he'd done up the math. That was all he knew. That, and that it had been cut.

But Drostan continued: "And when something awful like that happens, and another person's there, it kinda brings the two of ye t'gether, I guess, a bit. Brady'd married her, but he din love 'er. Not like I will, when we get married. I know no one else will, just me." He stated confidently. But Ardeth was numbing to his boasting, instead intent on drawing out of him as much as possible given the opportunity.

"You had said before, though, that it was so awful. Why do you now say it was?"

Drostan, who's head was still a bit tight and mouth slack, thought hard to remember having said this. Upon remembering having said it, he then thought hard to remember why. Once this was established, the numbers totaled with his thinking on what he should say next.

"I guess what I meant is that... for me, it was the most terrible thing to happen in my life," and Ardeth was slightly touched that he would reveal this tender confession, his face maintaining it's stony composure while his heart squished a little. "But for Boann, it really wasn't. I mean, she'd do it again, I think. Maybe. I dunno, maybe it was the worst, but I dunno if anyone else but her'd think it was. You know, other's say other stuff was the worst. And maybe she'd agree." He paused a moment, his thoughts deepening within his swollen mouth. "I think Kell dying was the worst. Maybe Boann being born was the worst. I dunno. I couldn't tell you how far back the worst one goes.

"But I'll tell ye this. Diarmuid used to say that a lass's face was the much less ugly arrow pointin' to 'er loins. If ye asked Boann she'd say that was true, even fer'er."

At that Drostan stood and walked off to his tent. Ardeth was unsure of what the last comment had to do with the high point of Boann's pain. The pieces were still far to jumbled to put together at this point.

Ardeth settled down to an uneasy shift at the watch. He hd hoped to see Boann pray, and then sleep. Perhaps approach her sleep-limp body, stroke the soft hairs on her arms, the circumference of the bulge of her chin. But instead, she just sat there, a few meters away, every now and again moving her head slightly. And when he awoke the next morning she was no longer there, having risen before sunrise, as usual.