By the time Alice and Cora awoke, Erin had gained some rest, but she remained still with eyes closed, feigning sleep, listening to the sounds of the other two women beginning their day, and dreaded doing so herself.

It all meant she was a step closer to saying goodbye.

As she lay there swaddled in the comfort of a warm bed, Erin felt she had finally made some kind of peace with what was, and what could never be. Her time with everyone here had been precious and that statement held true with what had passed between her and Uncas last night.

Being here had changed her. She was no longer a frightened shade of a girl, too scared to venture out of her darkened room into daylight. She'd confronted so many of her own inner fears in less than two weeks and she was still breathing and standing. Erin finally felt like she had found her rightful place within herself. She was ready to step back into her own life and truly begin to live it.

She consoled herself that those intense feelings in the infirmary had been propelled by the realisation that she was finally ready to feel again, to let someone in, it was just very unfortunate timing that it had been a man that was so out of her reach. She reasoned that it should give her hope for the future, hope of finding that right person one day. If she looked at it any other way, Erin felt she truly would start to fall apart, and so her resolve remained staunchly gazing into the far horizon, her little wall now fortified by sheer stubbornness and will.

Finally she rose as the smell of another mouth watering breakfast of fresh warm biscuits and bacon invaded her senses. They ate and chatted small talk about the day to come and about past days in Boston, Albany, England, and Erin's own life, told through a very filtered semi-period accurate lens. They passed little stories of everyday life between them as if they had no plans of parting today at all.

Cora styled Erin's hair into a simple crown braid, something sturdy and practical for the journey ahead. In a few days Cora and Alice would travel with Colonel Munro and Duncan to Albany, and once Nathaniel and his family made their way there, their own lives would all truly begin. Erin felt a pang of regret that she would not be there to see what would come, but she hoped it would be filled with hope and happiness, even if it came with a sting for her, just as Duncan had forewarned. The mood between the three women felt bittersweet with heavy anticipation.

Cora gave Erin a plain simple linen fichu and a hat to shade her against the sun, both begged and borrowed from women in the fort, and was currently employed in tying a ribbon under Erin's chin, in an attempt to keep the hat secured. Alice had left them some time ago, saying she wanted to continue her current artwork in the warmth and light of the morning sun.

In the stillness, Erin noticed that Cora was distracted, her eyes flicking to Erin's face as if trying to decide whether to speak.

"You are obviously bursting to ask me something." Erin raised an eyebrow in a teasing fashion, happy to play this façade of confidence, to fake it until she made it, and she was determined she would indeed make it out of this. "What is it?"

"Did you see Uncas last night?" Cora asked with a casual air, finishing the bow with deft fingers, but continued to fuss over its position.

Erin could feel a lecture coming and barbed her defences in ready for the onslaught. She felt she had found a comfortable place to exist within her own understanding of her feelings for Uncas, and didn't like the idea of anyone disrupting that with doubts and nonsense logic. "I did, and it's not anyone's concern wha-"

"How did he seem?"

"Huh?" Erin was a little off balanced by this turn of subject, it wasn't what she'd expected. "Seem?"

"Was he well?"

Erin gave a laugh of embarrassment. "He seemed... well."

Cora caught the innuendo and glanced away. "Oh. I see." She gently cleared her throat and tried in vain to keep a smile from finding her lips. She finished fiddling over the bow and set upon looking for things to tidy away.

"Why?" Erin's shield was still up.

"I saw to his injuries," Cora said, pulling the bed covers into a semi-neat fashion.

"Oh, right. Yes, you did," Erin said, relaxing just a little as she realized this was not going to turn into a lecture on safety and ladylike decorum, or a questioning session of her own complicated emotions.

"I just wanted to know how he fared."

"He was in fair spirits." Erin couldn't help letting out a small chuckle to cover her own deeper discomfort, she had no desire to go into all those overwhelming feelings with Cora, once with just her own thoughts had been more than enough.

Cora smiled too, unable to help herself. "That is good to hear, I worried because of what Alice said last night, and what I -" She caught Erin's eye and cut herself off mid-sentence.

The light easy smiles vanished and with them the comfortable atmosphere.

"What did Alice say?" Erin was now intensely curious, and as Cora continued to seem somewhat flustered, suddenly a hint of anxiety was there too. "What is it?" she pushed.

"I don't want to leap to any assumptions. Maybe I could see him again before you leave? Or perhaps I could find Mr. Dalton for his opinion? He is Fort Edward's surgeon. He seems a little stuffy but I'm sure he is knowledgeable." Cora was rambling... Cora never rambled. Erin's fine hairs pricked up, a rippling feeling of disquiet growing.

"We leave in only a few minutes, Cora! Why now? Why not yesterday? You can't just spring worries out of nowhere!" Erin knew she was being unnecessarily combative, but she couldn't stop herself. "You seemed happy with him only yesterday evening. What's changed?" For some reason Erin couldn't quite gather, she felt very defensive and prickly. Cora was wrong! Uncas was fine!

'He's fine!' her mind piped up, for once agreeing with her. She didn't need all this extra nonsense and worry after last night.

"As I said, Alice made me think of it and I debated if I should even tell you at all... it is only a pondering."

"Only a pondering?" Erin was incensed.

"Did he mention the pain had become worse?" Cora seemed distracted and oblivious to Erin's unkind tone.

"N... no."

"Did he seem feverish at all?"

Erin felt a little jolt of panic skitter across her nerves. "Feverish? Why would he?"

"Or too warm? Perhaps he was clammy?" Cora continued, ignoring her questions.

Erin remembered the press of his forehead against her bare shoulder, how hot his whole body had felt against her own cool skin. "He was maybe a little warm... but I mean that's understandable-"

Cora made a sound of displeasure, making Erin's words fall short.

Cora then touched her chin in that same anxious way Erin remembered she had in the surgery on their first night here... and at the cliffs...

"Cora, just what is it you are worried about? What did Alice say?!" Erin's voice rose in anger, but she didn't feel that emotion at all, only a growing, steady panic.

Cora hesitated for a moment and then relented, only perceptiveness gleaming from her eyes, she seemed unmoved by Erin's hostility, understanding why it was there. "It may be nothing at all, but... I am concerned. When I returned last night, Alice was half awake and, well, we spoke a little, she talked of the cliffs, and she said the blade smelled foul, and..."

Erin shuddered, the world spinning for a short moment. Alice had said those words to her too;

'That foul blade.'

"...I thought I detected something when I treated his wound at the cliffs, but I couldn't be sure, there was a breeze, but then Alice made me wonder if I had indeed been right."

"What?" Erin could only push out the single word as her heart pounded an erratic rhythm of swelling alarm. "What does that mean?!"

Cora looked at Erin directly and then away, as if speaking of what she wanted was vulgar, even for her no-nonsense personality. She took a moment to regain herself, overcoming the impulsion. "I heard... from travellers visiting at my cousin Eugenie's home, they all had stories, it's hard to pick out fact from fiction..."

"Cora?" Erin's tone held a wavering grave warning.

Cora sighed heavily. "It's said, some warriors here, smear their weapons with foul smelling poison or even... with decomposing animals... or so I have heard. I thought I could smell something unpleasant after he was wounded, but... as I said, I was unsure."

Erin's mind flashed back to the cliff tops, Uncas taking a moment too long with that damn knife before he threw it over the edge. Had she been wrong? Had that moment not been a chance for closure of a destiny overcome, but a portent of disaster?

"When I saw the wound in the infirmary, I thought it looked swollen and inflamed, but that can be normal. I am not saying any of this to panic you Erin, I am trying to be pragmatic."

Erin's mind flew back to that moment in the infirmary, how distracted she'd been by Uncas, how she'd been trying so stubbornly to do anything but look at him. Had she even seen the wound? She couldn't remember, maybe not...

"I was not positive, and I'm still not. I'm no doctor, but I have seen much in my time on my father's campaigns in Europe, good and bad, hope and despair." Cora was rambling again and Erin felt another prick of panic. "I wanted to see how he felt today and see... if I had a moment... to ask him what his thoughts were... to ease my own I suppose," Cora continued.

Erin was only half listening, she felt for a brief moment as if she had been stunned, her body and mind slowing, the world tilting just a little as she remained perfectly still. Then her thoughts crashed against her like tenacious waves. Uncas' attitude the night before, his blasé feelings to any repercussions for his forthright behaviour, his want to be alone with her at seemingly any cost, and then his reluctance to speak of any more between them... Had he known all along? Her mind was a whirl of thoughts that she could make no true sense of, and for a moment she felt as if those insistent waves were drowning her, taking away her consciousness and ability to move or speak. Her fingers spasmed uselessly by her side, her breathing becoming quick and shallow.

"Erin?" Cora's voice sounded so very far away, like an echo in a cave, like the cave behind the waterfall. "Do you need to sit a moment?" She reached out, placing a hand tenderly upon Erin's shoulder and the sudden contact shocked her back into the present.

Slowly Erin shook her head, then she leadenly turned to face Cora, doubt and fear shining clearly from her eyes. "Does he know?" Her voice was a hoarse whisper.

Cora looked uncomfortable. "I don't know. He is a man that has seen and been part of many altercations, I am sure. I cannot see how he would be without some knowledge." Cora was being diplomatic about it all but the facts stood glaring and horrifying.

"How serious are we talking here?" Erin blurted.

"I don't know." Cora reached out to touch Erin again but this time she shied away from the comforting contact.

With a ball of dread curling unpleasantly in her stomach, Erin understood. Uncas knew, he had known since the cliffs, that he had been stabbed with a tainted blade, and he understood what that could mean. Suddenly the reasons for his reckless actions made sickening sense in Erin's head. If she thought her time may be limited in this world, she would have reached out for any and all tender contact too.

With one last troubled glance to Cora, Erin tried to battle down her own anger and panic, knowing it would do her no good. It was a fight she lost all too easily, and she bolted from the room.

/

A/N

Friday, hallo all.

I leave you on a most unstable cliff hanger and, hopefully, a rather large twist of focus. If it reads as I hope it does, you, dear reader, came to realise things a long with Erin as you too will have been wrapped in the drama of feelings over the practical. I hope I was sneaky enough to pull this off and seemingly innocent things from previous chapters started to have a rather different view... or at least I hope I was able to portray this reveal in that way.

Answers, yes we wanted them but how happy are we to learn the protentional truth? I guess the only one with true answers is Uncas and Erin seems quite determined to prise them out of him... but Erin is the type to go off all half cocked and gets the wrong end of every stick, so let's see where this thread now leads.

This story certainly lead me on many merry dances and I did not know where it was truly going until it was finished. I hope I can keep you all guessing too, as I found it a rather fun ride the first time round.

More fairy paths to come, join me next time.

A warm thank you to those stopping by to read and comment.

I truly hope this story has been worth the word count so far :))))