By nightfall, Calandra was convinced she had made the right choice in summoning help. Contrary to her disclaimers, Kaie showed a surplus of healing knowledge, and Adrian provided the first full meal Cal had eaten in days. The four—and the unknown girl—had found a small clearing by ruins to use for shelter. According to Kaie, she and her companions had used the worn stone wreckage as a camp before. Laughingly, she had informed "Sydha" that the local bandits thought it was haunted, so they were never bothered.
"Haunted?" Cal had asked, eying their camp warily.
"Are you scared?" Kaie had teased, before seeing Calandra's distress and adding: "Don't be. We've stayed here a myriad times before, and not a hint of the supernatural has ever bothered me."
The ancient vestige was rather small, being merely a grouping of crumbling walls of stone on the zenith of a little hill, but it was a refuge for the group. Calandra was cautious, conscious of Kaie's earlier comment, but as soon as they settled in, she felt comfortable; the site was anything but eerie, but instead, it felt quite peaceable and ancient. They set up a tent out of long sticks and a wool blanket for the "infirmary", as Flynn laughingly called it, then each set out their own blankets and things.
As darkness fell and the moon rose, night found Kaie keeping watch over the still hallucinating invalid and the rest sitting around a small fire. Calandra had learned many new things about her new companions while talking with them. All three had grown up in a small Northwestern settlement of Dúnedain and were now "trying their fortunes" in the world, in Flynn's words—or, as Adrian had quipped, "indulging the others' wish to be rid of us". The two were currently telling stories, each trying to top the other's latest, with increasing amounts of hyperbolical and exaggerated descriptions of battles and their heroic deeds, leaving Calandra in stitches and Kaie to frequently yell wry comments from the makeshift tent. Flynn had just finished his last, which contained epic temerity and man-eating giants (among other things), when Adrian looked at Calandra, smiled, and said, "What about you, Sydha? What's your story? How come you to be here, so far from hearth and home?"
Several long and painfully silent seconds stretched by before Calandra, caught quite by surprise, managed a tense laugh and said, "Oh, you know, I'm just a runaway princess."
Flynn and Adrian laughed harder than the weak joke warranted in an attempt to break the awkwardness, and asked no more questions, talking instead about the surroundings and the hunting in the area. Calandra's joviality was nevertheless quite shaken, and she excused herself before long in order to lie down.
Curled up in her blanket beneath the abundance of stars, Cal cursed to herself. She loved her good luck in encountering kind strangers—not only for helping with the poor fevered girl, but for pure camaraderie as well; she wished, however, that it would be possible to forget her previous life and start anew. She hoped they had seen her reluctance to divulge her past—if they only knew she had told the truth!—and would refrain from asking more awkward questions. How she hated keeping secrets, yet she knew it wouldn't be beneficial to share her identity with everyone she met. Calandra calmed herself slowly by picturing Aryane in her mind, and writing an imaginary letter to send. She longed to send a real note, but knew there was no way she could.
She tossed and turned in discomfort, not caused by the soft ground but from her thoughts, until she finally drifted into a deep sleep.
Kaie placed a damp cloth on the girl's burning forehead and forced more willow-bark tea down her throat before exiting the crude tent. She walked softly out to the fire where her brother and friend were conferring quietly. They motioned to her to join them. Brushing her dark hair out of her face, she sighed from exhaustion and sent them a questioning glance. "So—what do you think of our new little friend?"
"Ssh, she may still be awake. And she is hardly little," Adrian said, moving back to include her in the circle. "I guess she's older than you are, if only by a year. She's smart, too, if completely uninformed about traveling and the out-of-doors. She is fairly sociable, has a sense of humor, and is quite obviously not who she says she is."
"'Sydha'," Flynn continued, nodding agreement, "wholly froze up when we asked why she was gone from home. If she weren't such a bad liar, I would question if we should even trust her. As it is, I think she is completely guileless and kindhearted, but very unlikely to want to share her past."
"She is probably a runaway," Adrian added. "She's a bit ignorant—most likely pampered—but she will work hard, I think, if she stays with us. Besides, I like her."
Kaie answered, "That's what I thought too; and I like her as well. She seems…interesting."
"Enough about her," announced Flynn decisively. "There's nothing we can do about her for now. What about your anonymous patient?"
His sister sighed. "She has a bad fever; my guess is that it was brought on by cold or exhaustion—almost certainly both. She will be fine eventually, though it is lucky she was found when she was, or else she might not have had as good of a chance. Her fever will break tomorrow, maybe; a day after she will, in all likelihood, be sitting up and talking. Then we will have a better idea of who she may be."
Flynn shrugged. "I searched through her saddlebags—" Kaie raised her eyebrows—"and I didn't find much of interest, or any clues as to her identity."
"You went through her things?" asked Adrian contemptuously. "How will she trust us if she puzzles that out? Bad enough that she will wake in a strange place with a group of people who she has never even met—"
"Never mind it," Kaie said. "We shall cross that bridge then, I suppose, though I like it even less than you do. For now, I am enormously tired, and would dearly love to sleep. I vote that Flynn must keep watch tonight," she added, grinning, "because he was rude enough to investigate our guest's luggage."
"Fine, little sister," Flynn agreed. "I shall. Would you like me to watch over 'our guest' as well?"
"Your look is a bit too innocent, darling elder brother," Kaie observed wickedly. "Do you have some kind of interest in this mystery woman?" Adrian laughed. "She is quite good-looking when not delusional, you know."
Flynn laughed too heartily, causing Kaie and Adrian to exchange knowing looks.
"Go ahead, Flynn," Kaie said, grinning. "Wake me at dawn, or before, if her temperature has risen any. Good night."
"Good night," Flynn and Adrian assented. The three settled down.