Posting this because I'm procrastinating.

Final exams WHY YOU GOTTA BE LIKE THIS?

Also, just wanted to add that we're from Australia so some spelling we use will be somewhat different to the way Americans spell things, such as using s instead of z, e.g. organising instead of organizing or adding a u to o, e.g. armour instead of armor. Just letting you know!

Chapter 4

As he collapsed on top of her, Raven's head fell with a thump onto Rena's chest and she could feel strands of his hair fall across her face. She had expected it to be bristly with its stiff, spiky appearance but it was surprisingly soft and actually rather pleasant to touch. Not that she had touched it yet but…

She tentatively reached out with one hand and paused to glance at his face. It looked so unperturbed and innocent unlike the tortured and agonised man she had seen just seconds ago. He seemed completely at peace, unmoving, his chest rising and falling with each soft sigh. Rena held her breath as she leaned in to gently brush back the loose hair that was draped over his closed eyes, smiling at how he murmured incoherently like a young child. There was a little black tuft sticking out just above his ear that she twirled around her finger and, getting a little too bold for her own good, tugged on experimentally.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Rena yelped. "Raven! I-I was, I was um-"

Her attempt to scramble away in panic was hindered by Raven grabbing her wrist and not letting her move from where she was. She involuntarily let out a gasp.

"Calm down, it's not like I'm going to attack you again", the man said in an amused tone.

"Good..then...well…" Rena regained her composure and huffed, "Yes yes, come on, Raven. We've got a long day ahead of us."

He groaned, clutching his head as he slowly pushed himself off Rena, wordlessly reaching out a hand to help her up.

"Thanks. You feeling better?" she asked in a concerned tone while shaking off some leaves that had collected on her skirt.

Raven shrugged, "Better, but not great."

"Well I'd rather that than nothing at all. Ready to go?"

"Not yet. There's something I need to ask you", he said as he eyed her uncertainly, "Why did you-"

"Let's talk while we walk!"

With that, Rena hauled him onto his feet and threw a woven basket in his hands. Once it was clear that she expected him to follow, he had no choice but to plod behind with his leaden legs. It took a while for him to get used to the feel of controlling his own body again and having untainted blood pumping through his veins which left him feeling significantly weaker, but eventually he was only treading a few footsteps behind her. The forest itself seemed to work some kind of magic on Raven; he felt a little more renewed with each breath of fresh air and the sun's warm rays on his skin seemed to even thaw the cold front that he had maintained until now.

"Rena. I know you didn't mean it when you said that you loved me."

Relieved that his words didn't come out awkward or hurtful, he lifted his head to see her reaction. The lady didn't even so much as glance at him as she jumped onto a log, landing lightly, so she could hop onto another moss-covered one that seemed of interest to her. He coughed.

"I...", her lips pursed slightly in thought. Before standing up to face him, she made sure that her usual soft smile had returned. "I didn't wish to alarm you, Raven. In hindsight it was probably wrong of me to exploit my likeness to this Seris of yours but I was about to die and it was just a chance I needed to take."

"Of course."

Rena stepped down from the log and turned to face him. "I thought that if I said something that was once very important to you and if you were blinded enough to mistake me for someone-"

"I know."

"Seris is your lover."

"Was."

She gazed at him for a long time, almost as if she was trying convey her empathy through that very stare.

Raven looked down. "She was murdered."

The very weight of those words seemed to stifle them and even the sunny environment was unable to stop their moods from taking a turn. Rena had never experienced what it was like to be in love but she knew from the tales the elders used to tell when she was a child that it was a feeling so powerful, it could either give someone a new purpose to live or destroy it entirely. The man standing before her was teetering dangerously towards the latter but there was something about him that she liked, even admired, and so Rena was determined to prevent the worst from happening.

She let her hand rest on his chest fleetingly as she floated past him. "Come, Raven. Don't you want to eat for the next few days?"

He rolled his eyes as Rena winked playfully at him and grabbed the handle of his basket to tow him behind her, but went along willingly with a barely audible chuckle.

"So this is mugwort yes?" he questioned, pulling at the spotted leaves and sniffing them cautiously.

Rena stifled a giggle. "Unless you want a steady stream out your nether regions for a week I suggest you toss them away."

Raven groaned and pointed at some lighter-coloured leaves. "Mugwort?"

"Dandelion leaves, actually. But hey, those do work!" the lady smiled encouragingly. "That being said, I'd like to live to see the next sunrise so why don't you stick to picking some acorns?" Clearly Rena was somewhere between amused and disappointed in his foraging abilities, hopefully more amused, he thought, and so Raven huffed comically as he backed far, far away from most of the foliage.

"With luck", they both thought, "we won't end up killing ourselves."

The afternoon was spent foraging for what would be their food that day and the next. They didn't talk much as they did so, but the quiet was one of companionship rather than awkwardness. Raven would occasionally steal glances at Rena, his eyes still convincing him that the beautiful figure before him, humming and looking completely content as streaks of her hair shimmered light green and gold in the sun, was an echoing remnant of his former lover. Unbeknownst to him, Rena would notice whenever he laid his eyes on her, and she would smile to herself a little each time.

Later in the afternoon, she decided to break the silence.

"Hey Raven?"

He grunted, which Rena took as a reply.

"How are you feeling?"

"I've had better days", he answered gruffly.

"Because you've been staring murderously at those acorns for the past ten minutes and I'm beginning to wonder if they said anything particularly insulting to garner that kind of reaction."

Raven suppressed a smile and shook his head, "I was just deep in thought". He went back to picking the acorns off the ground, scuffing the rotten and broken ones into the dirt.

Rena decided to throw away her tentativeness on questioning his past. "Is it Seris?"

The man suddenly tensed and she almost regretted asking before he once again relaxed and turned to look at her over his shoulder. "Well, her and...other things."

"What kind of things?"

He hesitated; Rena already knew more about his painful history than he'd usually care to reveal. Up until now she had seemed more careful about approaching the subject, but at present her eyes were questioning, yet still gentle, and in them they held more concern for him than he had felt from anyone in a while.

"Well...there was this guy called Alex-"

Rena briefly recalled him calling her Alex when he had attacked her.

"And he was a brother to me. But after he and a group of other nobles from Velder kicked me out of my position as a Captain of the Crow Mercenary Knights-"

"The Crow Mercenary Knights? As in the elite soldiers of Velder?"

Raven nodded slowly, his expression unreadable, "They aided me in escaping the cell I was imprisoned in, but we were discovered. I was tied up and I had to watch every one of my trusted comrades die."

"Alex and his associates killed them", Rena inferenced.

The man's face had now twisted into one of intense vehemence and it was only until Rena motioned for him to take deep breaths did he start to calm down. Raven losing his temper would place them both at risk.

She decided to save her other questions for later as a result of this, and they almost fell back into a strained kind of halt in the conversation when Raven surprisingly decided to speak up.

"You seem to know a lot about this..." he gestured to their surroundings "whole flora business."

"Well it's an elven tradition, although I suppose my centuries of living could account for that too."

"You're over a hundred years old?" Raven attempted to hide the disbelief in his exclamation.
"I'm older than I look, silly human. In any case, it's good that I have that experience. You'd kill yourself in a day Raven, you've hardly been successful so far, though the acorns were...somewhat satisfactory."

"I was a military-trained mercenary - I could take down and cook a large phoru if I didn't have to stick to your vegetarian torture."

Rena visibly cringed. "You'd kill a lovely, innocent phoru? They're as much a part of Elrios nature as you are!"

A nearby bush shook and rustled.

"Like the one over-"

The forest breeze became still.

The bush moved again.

She immediately shifted into a defensive position, "That's not a phoru, is it?"

Raven answered by mimicking her stance.

Within a second a band of soldiers had them surrounded.

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