Quite a distance away from Beirut, the two women were eating in the checkered shade of an abandoned olive grove, resting against the forgotten trees. It was quiet; a warm breeze faintly ruffled their hair and rustled the remaining leaves.
Although she kept it well hidden, Eden had been observing the bard's behavior towards her closely, fearful it would change awkwardly or even hurtfully now that she knew that Eden was a guardian. Yet, the bard surprised her pleasantly by treating the warrior exactly the same as before.
"I was thinking about what you said about your sword..." Eden started quietly, referring to the blond's comment from the day before, "I thought that maybe... maybe you could... or maybe I could... teach you... to use it..."
"Oh, I see. Now that I know that you're a guardian, you thought that it would be a good idea if I could at least give the impression that I can defend myself, right? We wouldn't want me to bring you any shame now, would we?" Arielle asked with a slight twinkle in her eye and her hands on her hips.
Eden gave her a slightly flustered look, knotting her brows a little and about to protest.
"Oh, Eden," the bard said with a giggle, "I know just as much about weapons and fighting as I do about metal farming. I really do realize that."
"You... you can't farm metal..." Eden observed warily.
"Which just goes to show you how much I know about it." the bard replied cheerily and then lifted an eyebrow, trying to mimic her companion, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't I ask you to teach me fighting weeks ago already?"
The corner of Eden's mouth mischievously twitched as she rose silently, drew her sword, and looked at her with fake menace.
"Oh, alright, alright, calm down," Arielle soothed playfully, raising her hands up in front of her, "I get the point. You were busy. I understand."
A small grin appeared on Eden's face and she shook her head slightly. The warrior let the bard finish eating and then they walked a few paces off to a place with more space to practice. Eden taught Arielle some basic things about the sword, focusing on holding it, balancing it, and different defensive moves. The warrior noticed the intensity with which the bard listened and then practiced, that same intensity that she invested in all the things the warrior had showed her. Eden was used to seeing bloodthirsty men sword training; hacking away with deranged looks on their faces and blood lust in their eyes. The bard followed the warrior's patient instruction and practiced with an element of playfulness and innocent wonder that found its way under all the warrior's armor and tugged at her heart, bringing a stubborn little smile to her face.
"So, how is this move now?" Arielle asked, turning to the warrior, "Am I holding... Are you smiling?!"
"Start from the beginning!" Eden called out, the smile automatically disappearing into her usual sour look.
After Arielle had practiced with the air a little, Eden became her opponent. Arielle convinced the warrior to at least try and that it would be much more helpful than fighting air unless, of course, she ever had to battle a very angry breeze. Eden shrugged and reluctantly agreed. The bard saw the features in the warrior grow very tense and for a moment she almost regretted talking her into sparring with her. But it went smoothly and gently, the warrior putting just enough pressure on her to force her to focus and work, but not enough to strain her senseless. Eden was most focused on controlling herself, especially her anger. She knew that she was potentially dangerous and that she could easily shift from a sparring partner to an authentic threat in a second. Yet, it wasn't as difficult as Eden was afraid it might be. The bard's sporadic giggles, smiles, and happy shouts when she got something right somehow seemed to calm the warrior, a sense of comfort sinking down to her frazzled nerves and soothing them slowly.
They finished their sparring once Arielle finally felt pleasantly tired.
"I have to say," Arielle observed, breathing a little hard, "I really don't know how you can do this all the time. I'm tired... and hungry."
"You just ate!" Eden exclaimed, her arms flying up to the sides and then falling back down, landing loudly on her thighs.
"Yes, well, I used it all up with all that parrying, guarding, and trapping." the bard explained with a sheepish grin.
Eden let out an exasperated sigh and rolled her eyes.
"It's a good thing Thomas took a liking to you." Eden said, tossing her a bag of dried fruit and nuts that the gray guardian had insisted the bard on taking.
"He was a very nice man." Arielle noted thoughtfully, catching the bag and starting to eat from it.
They sat down on the ground, the bard happily munching, the warrior absently pulling on semi-dry blades of grass. The bard silently observed Eden from the corner of her eye as the warrior twisted the grass with her fingers and swept the land with her alert gaze. She wondered over all the things that had happened to them since they first met. Most of it had been tense or unpleasant; Arielle had witnessed things she would have never wanted to. Yet, she also noticed that Eden was beside her the entire time and now, well, now it seemed to the bard that the warrior was just starting to let a different, more gentle side peek through. It trickled out through the cracks of her constant gloomy warrior stance and Arielle basked in a certain pride that she had helped chip away some of that formidable wall around Eden's heart and hoped that one day, the wall would come crumbling down. And there, now, with the sun shining on her face and a light breeze brushing away the hair from her forehead, the warrior was taking a second to do nothing else but observe the grass in her hand, turning it in fingers, oblivious to the blond's gaze. There was no blood, no hate, no violence, no anger and Arielle found herself lacking words. She is... She is... fascinating.
They finally rose when Arielle had finished eating and resting, mounted their horses, and returned to the road, trotting rather leisurely and enjoying the nice day and quiet.
"Eden, can I ask you something?" Arielle asked tentatively and Eden turned to look at her, her brows furrowed slightly.
"You can ask me anything. Whether I'll answer... What is it?"
"What did Thomas mean... and what did you mean... when you spoke of warriors not reaching Thomas's years?"
"Ah..." Eden replied as quietly as the bard had asked, turning her gaze forward again with a slow, single nod.
The question had a simple answer, but Eden noticed the strange apprehension with which it was asked and tried to find a way to at least be slightly more gentle than she was accustomed to being.
"Well," Eden started, slowly and quietly, "some guardians are healers like Thomas, some are seers, others warriors... Warriors are most often in harm's way... Things happen..."
"Can you choose a different way? Change it somehow?"
"No. It's not something imposed upon us; we find it ourselves. It's our choice." Eden replied matter-of-factly.
Eden kept her gaze pinned ahead of her in order not to see the bard's somewhat sad stare that the warrior could feel resting upon her. Eden wouldn't know how to react to it. Why do you seem to care? Of what use am I? There would be no loss for the world with my absence. Yet, then Eden realized that the very fact that she was asking those questions in her head was strange; she had been so sure of the answers before that she wouldn't have bothered to ask. And again she found herself wondering over the influence the bard was starting to have over her. On the one hand, Eden realistically knew that they hadn't known each other all that long, yet she could not escape a peculiar feeling that they actually knew each other well and had now been simply reunited after a very long time. The bard seemed to pick at her every lock, pry open her every hinge, open her every gate as if it was nothing at all. Men, families, and even kingdoms had succumbed to Eden, but never being able to pierce her armor. But this young, little bard could and with nothing more than a smile. And Eden began to realize that the thought began to nurture a feeling deep inside her chest which wasn't fear.
"Not every warrior is doomed..." Eden tried to comfort, yet keeping a stoic presence, "We go when our time comes, no matter who we are."
Arielle found that the comment actually made her feel a little better and the sadness slowly disappeared from her face. She wondered quietly over her reaction. She had always been considered an emotional woman, but the feelings that Eden began to evoke within her were different from the rest. Each of them, from happiness to sadness, carried with them a growing sense of attachment. Her emotions came from deeper and deeper within her spirit and began to have a growing influence on her thoughts and decisions. The warrior occupied the bard's thoughts more and more often and Arielle noticed that each new thing that she learned about Eden didn't really satisfy her curiosity, but only made it amplify. It was almost like she couldn't know enough, hear or see enough, or even be close enough and it was as exciting a feeling as it was frightening.
Some time later, Eden stopped abruptly and then a moment later Arielle also noticed the smoke rising up from a village in the distance. Without a word, they both had decided to ride up and investigate. They nudged their horses into a canter and not long after found themselves near the outskirts of the village. Eden stopped again and studied the scene closely. The stinging smell of smoke and dust invaded her nose and caused her jaw to tense and eyebrows to furrow.
"Keep close and no arguments." Eden said to Arielle.
They carefully continued towards the village. Arielle noticed that all the signs of good humor disappear from the warrior who instead turned gloomy and on edge. They rode through the village solemnly alert. The eerie quiet informed them that Death had claimed dominion over the area and that Eden and Arielle were not welcome. Smoke snaked through opened doors, up burned through roofs, along charred walls, off of still smoldering bodies. Broken belongings lay carelessly strewn around along with those whose life had been violently taken away. Arielle could hardly believe her eyes; men run through, children cut down, women with their dresses flung over their faces and heads. Their blood crept out along the dusty village paths, mixing with the churned dirt, soot, and shattered pieces of things and it all looked like a hellish mosaic put together by the Devil himself. They meandered between the maimed and the charred and Arielle felt her stomach begin to churn at the sight and stench of it all. Eden turned to see a man hanging off a hovel wall, a spear run through him, his eyes scooped out. The two women dismounted in a grim quiet and Eden walked up to the man and pulled the spear out, letting him drop to the ground. Arielle suddenly grabbed her stomach, ran to the nearest wall, and vomited. Eden heard the bard's body violently rejecting all the things that it was experiencing; she knew that reaction all too well. The warrior looked around and saw a bloodied warrior's body lying on the ground and approached it. Eden stood over the corpse belonging to one of those who had raided the village, three deep holes in him which fit the pitchfork lying next to him. Eden bent down on one knee and peered into the dead man's face.
"Damned be you, Saracen." she hissed with loathing, cursing mostly what she saw of herself in him.
Eden got back up and turned towards Arielle. The bard was sitting on the ground, her back up against the wall, holding her stomach and looking around in a horrified disgust. She caught the warrior's gaze as she approached her. A sickening feeling entered Eden as she saw the blond's reaction to the destruction that surrounded them. It troubled her to the core because she knew that it was close to the same destruction she herself had taken part in not all that long ago. The blood, the fire, the chaos; it had all been an intricate part of her and she had relished drowning in it. For so long Eden had judged herself by the fear she saw in other people's eyes, but she suddenly realized that fear was the last thing she wanted to see in the green eyes of the bard. The warrior felt disgusted with herself, the carnage around them resurrecting shallowly buried images of her own trials and sins, swirling inside her like a tempest. Eden walked up to her apprehensively, expecting to be judged, condemned, and executed by the young blond through the horror and revolt she most undeniably felt now. She crouched down in front of Arielle, one woman just as pale as the other.
Eden looked into the bard's eyes; the usual, bright forest green had now somehow faded to the shade of dying grass. But Eden saw the true green somewhere deeper and she peered into it intensely, feeling as if she was to be shown her irrevocable fate there.
Arielle looked at her in a complete lack of comprehension. She had seen things in her life, but never such senseless and utter slaughter. No one was spared, no one was safe.
"Why do things like this happen?" the bard asked, her eyebrows furrowed, her voice quiet, "Why does God allow for this?"
"God has nothing to do with it." Eden answered solemnly, shaking her head lightly, "We do it to ourselves."
"But... a benevolent God should protect... God could stop this..."
"This is the thanks we give for free will... In the end, God has little to say if no one listens." Eden replied and sighed heavily, a glimpse of compassion for the bard peering through her grim look, "There's nothing we can do here now."
Arielle said nothing, her horror still etched deep into her eyes. Eden let out a deep breath and raised herself to her feet.
"Let's get out of this forsaken place." she announced, looking down at Arielle.
The warrior extended her hand down to the bard as Arielle looked up. The horror seemed to dull at the kind gesture and a fleeting thought entered the bard's mind that even amidst the carnage they were in, the warrior's sole presence evoked a feeling of safety within her. Arielle gave a small nod, took Eden's hand, and got to her feet.
They mounted their horses and solemnly left the village to whatever fate lay before it. They rode in silence for a long while, the warrior glancing at the bard from time to time from under her brows, observing her expression. Arielle was lost in thought, turning the experience over in her mind, trying to understand the point of it, trying to see the gain in it. And then there was also the feeling of helplessness. Before, they had always somehow arrived in time to do something, influence and change events and usually for the better. But here they were too late. A human stood in the wake of another's actions and realized that there was absolutely nothing that could be done to change it. Yet, despite all of that, within all that chaos and calamity, Arielle noticed that the presence of the warrior calmed her. She somehow felt that even if she found herself in the very center of a whirlwind of war, Eden would keep her grounded, would keep her stable. She wouldn't ever let me fall... would she?
Eden wasn't ever one to be easy upon herself. Though she expected from others exactly what she expected from herself, she soon learned that there was no real sense in expecting much of anything at all from anyone. But her self-expectations remained unchanged. They were practically unreachable, but Eden held fast to them all the same. And so Eden saw herself in the dead Turkish warrior, released from his life with something as dishonorable as a pitchfork. She saw the same senseless bloodshed, the same meaningless existence, the same pitiful end. A great and engaging ideology could be created behind every action, annihilation in the name of something all powerful, all encompassing, eternal. Yet, deep down within, Eden wanted nothing more than a peaceful life. Even if what she did was done in the name of God, she was still the one who had to do it and live with the weight and consequences. In the whirl of battle, in the cyclone of aggression, she would kill if she had to, if there was no other choice, yet in the quiet of solitary nights, the weight of all the judgment she had passed grew sometimes too much to bear. And then there were the things she did that had nothing to do with God, their weight the most tremendous and unyielding. She simply never wanted any of this and struggled to find the larger purpose in it. A purpose would bind it all together, it would make Eden and her fate become a whole. Yet, it remained concealed from her. So she would escape with her tattered sanity to her dream of a little house somewhere amongst the trees of Europe, near the water that always seemed calmed her, amongst the animals that never did her wrong, in the peace of decisions to simply breathe and be.
When the evening finally covered them, they stopped and made camp. Eden arranged some dead logs around in a wide circle, making a fire in the center and letting the horses graze nearby. The two women moved around each other and did their tasks in silence, Eden lost in her guilt, Arielle wandering in her apprehension. They sat and ate slowly, quietly, and each almost seemed to be scared to be the one to break the silence. Arielle raised her head finally and took a breath, but then let it slowly escape when she caught sight of Eden. The warrior was staring into the fire as if it was slowly engulfing her. Arielle peered at her curiously, watching the orange flames flickering in Eden's blue eyes like a dance of fire and ice. The bard thought that if she gazed closely and intensely enough, she could see the dark clouds of the guardian's past racing across her eyes, troubling her deeply, continuing to leave havoc behind. The bard took out her bedroll, placed it on the ground, took off her armor, and lay down to sleep.
"I'll take a look around." Eden said shortly, getting up and walking off outside of the fire's glow.
Eden returned some time later, thinking the bard asleep and sat back down on the log, taking off her armor down to her gambeson. But she made no move to lie down, knowing that she wouldn't sleep. Instead, she stuck her sword into the ground in front of her and leaned against it. She was tired, but her mind was racing, running circles around the raided village that they had seen. Eden could easily see that there was nothing there to take nor was there any good reason for any kind of retaliation. It was simply bloodlust, the power in taking what others couldn't defend, the senseless logic of war, all fed by an unquenchable hate. Eden knew it all too well. What makes me any different from that Saracen?... Nothing...
Arielle had been silently observing the warrior that entire time. Her sturdy frame looked suddenly feeble and fragile. Her shoulders slumped, her hands wrapped around the hilt of her upright sword, propped up on it. She was known as the terror of the desert, but now she looked like a feather falling on her shoulders would break her back. Arielle sighed, got up, and walked over to the warrior.
"It's late." the bard said simply and quietly.
"I know. Go back to sleep." Eden replied gently.
Instead, Arielle braved a decision she suddenly made and sat beside the warrior on the log.
"You're not like them." the bard said after some silence.
"You don't know that."
"Yes, I do."
Eden snorted lightly and shook her head.
"Eden," Arielle began, turning towards the warrior, "you... might have been. But no matter what you did in the past, you decided to change, you decided to become someone better than you were. And that's what you have to always remember."
"I don't know if I'm any better." Eden said doubtfully.
"Well, you haven't slit my throat, cut out my tongue, or left me in the desert yet." the bard replied with a little grin and a compassionate twinkle in her eye.
Eden turned to look at her and a sudden, curious hurt appeared in her eyes. She saw a light ray of faith beaming from the young bard; faith in her. And although Eden was almost convinced that all that faith was ridiculously misplaced, she accepted it for that moment.
"I'm sorry for all those things I said to you." Eden confessed abruptly, slightly surprising them both.
"It's alright." Arielle replied after a few moments with a small smile, "I know that you didn't really mean them."
Eden gave a slight, shy smile and ducked her head, unable to receive the warm words nor understand the bard's belief in her. The fire crackled lightly, making shadows dance across the faces of the two women.
"I think that everyday that you chose to be better just turns that choice more into a conviction until one day, you won't even have to think about it anymore. You're not an evil person, Eden..."
Eden said nothing, turning her gaze back to the campfire. In this little span of time and space, she felt something massive jolt. She felt and heard the gears of the world begin to creak and groan as they began to turn in a different direction and the weightlessness of everything that could not be seen begin to shift. She lifted her eyes up into the sky as if someone had just called her name. And with a long, drawn out breath, almost as if she had picked an answer out of the heavens, Eden eyes floated back down to the fire and let the flames dance within them again.
"There was a time I was just like them." Eden admitted quietly.
Arielle said nothing, but held her face turned towards the warrior, somehow knowing that there was something profound in what Eden was now saying.
"There was a time when I just wandered the sands like an abandoned sandstorm. I was... empty... forsaken... Then I joined Karas... He was the only one who was as mad and wild as I was... He quickly saw my abilities... He called me his 'death angel'..."
Eden's gaze fell to the ground beneath her and she laced her fingers together around her sword while shaking her head and Arielle could see a growing tension in her.
"One day I took a poisoned arrow in the shoulder," she continued, "I became very sick... I had strange visions... and even after I got better, I couldn't erase the images from my mind..."
"What did you see?" Arielle finally asked gently.
"Parts of things... Flashes of light, swords, dark forests, sands, wings, crosses and clouds... I can even remember hearing low trumpets and ringing bells. They formed no whole picture... they troubled me. After that I grew more distant and less battle hungry... I kept to myself... Karas began to grow frustrated... and he wanted to go to Antioch, to see... someone; he wanted his war machine back... I had a completely different plan in mind..." Eden recalled, her voice growing quiet at the end.
Arielle drew in a breath as the warrior's voice dissipated. Eden sighed and flicked one hand up in the air and let it drop heavily.
"I was so... angry and... lost. I wanted to lash out, to have my revenge for... everything... And I wanted to punish myself... for all I did... for all that I didn't do..." Eden admitted quietly, her words coming stumbling out in tribulation, "But, in the end, it just never stopped. The rivers of blood, the waves of screams, the mountains of gold... and I just felt even more empty... and I hated myself more for it..."
Arielle took a chance to express what she felt without any words. She gently placed her hand on the warrior's shoulder and was pleased when Eden didn't flinch or push her away. The bard felt a strange significance in that gesture. Where she thought the warrior would brush her off like an annoying fly, Eden's shoulders instead seemed to slump under the weight of the bard's hand. And Eden noticed the same thing too, but it was a pleasant pressure. The load was gentle, almost like a feather resting on her shoulder, yet it also seemed to have the strength to crush her armor, crumpling it up like a little ball of paper with the greatest of ease.
"What is done is done." Arielle stated, "All that matters now is that you never go back there. Never become that desert shadow again."
"I can never be just good... be full of light... like you..." Eden replied, whispering the last words.
"No one is full of only light... but that doesn't mean that you have to be full of dark either. You can control it... balance it."
"But there can always be something that will upset the balance..." Eden mentioned absently.
"I think that remains your choice... Eden, you've changed just from the day that I first saw you. And there is still so much ahead of you. Just think of the person you can still become..." Arielle said adamantly and then her voice dropped and grew hesitant, "If I could choose, I would never want to see that black marauder again... I like the warrior better..."
Eden quickly glanced at her and saw the bard smiling gently at her, full of hope and faith, though Eden had no idea where it came from. A small, honest smile crept over Eden lips, a smile that hadn't appeared there for so long that its sudden appearance shocked the warrior and she abruptly turned and hung her head. And then a wave of emotion began to surge over her as she realized that the smile came from the fact that for the first time in too long of a time, someone was being nice to her and seemed to genuinely and simply like her. Arielle wasn't sitting next to her because she had been ordered to, or was scared, or wanted something. The bard was there for Eden and the warrior couldn't remember the last time someone had done something for her without wanting something, usually much more valuable, in return. Selflessness was something so rare that Eden often caught herself wondering if it even existed at all. And it was such an elemental thing in all that she was taught and all she knew deep down inside her. Yet, it was so inexplicably hard to find beyond all the books, prayers, and preaching that praised it. And now, in the middle of the night, in the Levant, with the sand beneath her and the stars overhead, she had seen it and she was in awe.
"Go on and sleep," Eden mumbled gently, feeling slightly hesitant, "I'm sure you're tired; it's late."
"Well," Arielle answered, after some thought and with an amused look on her face, "I think I like it over here better."
Eden began to fidget, propping her elbows on her knees and hiding her face in her hands, taking a deep breath and blowing it out hard. It made no sense to her. Why now? Why the bard? They'll reach Jerusalem and it'll all be over. Eden didn't know whether to be happy she had found a friend or to be angry that it was given to her only to shortly be taken away. It seemed like such a cruel trick to her. Arielle saw her agitation and although she couldn't understand fully what brought it on, she wondered if she could calm it. She wanted to calm it. She drew in a slightly shaky breath and cautiously slid her hand around the warrior's shoulders. Eden fidgeted under her arm, but not in a way that told the bard to draw back.
They stayed like that for a while, neither knowing what to do next. The bard looked at Eden who was continually staring at the ground and smiled. She rested her chin on the guardian's shoulder and felt Eden's muscles tense abruptly and then slowly relax again.
"So..." Arielle said quietly, half confident and half scared witless, "can you walk through walls?"
Eden let out a loud snort and chuckled, the bard laughed, and the tension immediately disappeared.