F+E: Snowblind

“Birds aren't made for the cold,” Fen complained bitterly. Wrapped in a heavy wool shawl beneath a heavier blanket, her three shrikes shivered in the tent she created for them. The weak fire before them did little more than offer a bit of light in the dark of the forest night.

Emma shook her fire gem and pointed it at the fire. It flared, offering a flash of heat, and then shrunk down pathetically once more. “Hm. You were the one who insisted they come, allow me to remind you.”

“They insisted, and I'm not about to leave them behind.”

“It's not to be a very long journey. We're very nearly through the northern territories—”

“You mean yrachaask territories,” helpfully reminded Fen.

Emma leveled a flat glare at her from across the fire. “Yes. We're nearly through their land, and then it shall be a matter of days until we are there. The trip back shall be much faster.”

“Why are we avoiding them again? I mean, why such a roundabout route? It'd be faster to sneak through directly,” the little girl asked.

“It's not as if we'd be unprepared for sneaking,” Souza chirped angrily, coming out a bit muffled due to the layers between them.

“Yes, we're good at sneaking,” Fen added.

“Stealth is not the issue,” Emma replied. She turned from them and pulled on her mittens again, then began pulling up snow around them. More snow than she actually touched moved within her grasp; the birds twittered from their warm cocoon at the blatant magic use. Fen agreed with the sentiment and narrowed her eyes.

“You talk about keeping your skills a secret. No one who sees this camp would think this was all handmade,” she told her and Emma tossed a glare over her shoulder for it.

“No one should see this site while we inhabit it. Moreover, the wind is picking up, and I'd prefer to sleep without it whistling in my ears all night. If you'd help, it would go faster.”

“Shouldn't we have started this earlier?” she asked but shrugged off the blanket all the same. Her birds cried at her to stay, but she left them within the blanket, and set about to trying to create a snow wall on her side. Emma didn't answer her, anyway.

The elder girl ended up doing most of the work, but they soon had dug into the snow and raised slight walls around them, which would be well enough for keeping the wind directly off of them during the night. It would do; they were only there for one night. And they had already spent several miserable nights in worse conditions.

It took Fen some time to warm the birds up until they felt comfortable enough to sleep, and during that time, as she had ever since they reached snowy lands, Emma asked if they'd like to share her bedroll. And again, Fen declined. She—and more vocally, her shrikes—had her pride. They wriggled as close as was safe to the fire, her poor little birds pressed up against her neck and chest, and Emma waved her fire gem over the fire once more. It died down to something smaller but stabler. They couldn't afford to completely put it out.

Her heavy lids drooped and she eventually closed her eyes. It felt like moments later when Emma was shaking her awake again.

“What are you—don't roll me onto the birds!”

“Shh,” Emma hissed, cutting across Fen's indignation. She started unwrapping her and the birds, and as the cold bit into their relative warmth, Fen realized that their site had been destroyed. The wall was trampled, the fire was half-covered embers, and Emma's portion was strewn about like it had been the victim of a fight.

“What is it?” she breathed as she placed a hand against the shrikes to quiet them. One of them, she couldn't see which, wormed its way up towards her chin.

“Let us fly.” It was Fiskaal. And he still didn't understand the human concept of whispering.

“It's still snowing,” Fen replied and Emma shot a glare down at them again.

“Silence your birds or they will be silenced for you. Now, Fen, you are an actress, correct?”

“Yes?”

“We can fly!” Lanir whistled as she hopped up onto Emma's knee. Fen realized that she was missing most of her outer layers, including her coat.

“Keep them quiet!” Emma snapped and kicked snow over the rest of the fire. “Tell them to stay high in the trees above us and keep watch. But they need to stay out of sight. Fen, you, I need you to be an excellent and grand actress for me right now.”

The shrikes needed little further permission and darted into the air, despite its frigid bite. Two went straight to the nearest branch; Fiskaal circled once to make sure Fen saw where they perched. Emma pulled Fen out of her blankets and threw them around camp in a haphazard manner.

And then Fen saw lantern light in the distance. Getting closer, and several of them. The winter storm diminished their already poor visibility in the forest, so their unexpected guests were all too close. They had recognized that maintaining a fire had been a risk, but they were so far removed from any known settlements that Emma had deemed it safe.

“Do you trust me?” Emma whispered, drawing Fen back into the urgency of their situation.

“What?” she asked blankly in return.

“I need you to trust me and go along with my plan,” she said and that was the end of their conversation; voices were carried to them on the wind. Mostly male and definitely yrachaask. Fen felt a stab of cold fear that wasn't from the snow and ice around them.

Emma ripped part of her shirt open and kicked one of her boots off. She then ran her fingers through Fen's long hair, tangling it and pulling it free of her hat. Fen almost asked what she was doing—but she had to believe in Emma's plan. She pulled her hat off entirely and shrugged off her shawl.

“Take it off,” Emma whispered faintly and she had a knife in her hand. Her pants and shirt were both tattered and shredded, as was one of her blankets. It was looking more and more like an actual battle had taken place.

The sandy-haired girl plunged the blade into her stomach and ripped it back out. The snow was immediately streaked with brilliant red as she hacked away at herself. Fen heard a bird's shriek from above them and a feral sounding dog howled, “Blood!” just a moment later.

She caught sight of white out of the corner of her eye and it all snapped into place. Emma knelt in front of her, a bloody mess—missing a hand, no less!—and leaned down to kiss Fen. The girl reeled back, especially as the elder bit viciously onto her bottom lip, and then she tasted the blood. Emma leaned back out and Fen regretfully smeared the bit of blood all over her mouth. At least she had that much consideration.

Fen dipped her fingers into the bloody snow and wiped it all around her jaw, mindful of her mouth, and Emma flopped onto the snow near the remains of their fire. The others neared and the loud, repeated bark of, “Blood! Here! Here!” only added to her panic.

Fen barely had time to crouch over Emma as the yrachaask warriors came upon them. The scene froze from urgency and frenzy to something horrified and still. Even the dog, a large, furry thing that hardly deserved to be called a hound, balked from the sight of the white-haired creature bowed low over a corpse.

It took all her willpower to break the tension and reach down. Unsure of what else to do, Fen held down Emma's leg and buried her face in the scarlet mess of her stomach. She felt Emma suck in a breath and she kept her own mouth clamped tightly closed, but it seemed to be enough. One of the men screamed.

Fen looked back up at them, and tried to appear unafraid of half a dozen armed warriors. Their hound in particular caught her eye. She had a special fear of animals and she was terrified it would be the one to ruin their charade.

A woman shrieked and the dog leapt to press up against her leg. “Bad blood, let's run!”

“Antrablons! Rago, rago, vristch!” A chorus of “antrablons!” followed the initial command and half of them scattered. The leader grabbed a terror-frozen comrade and another grabbed the dog, and they were all running away, more or less in the direction they had come from. Fen could feel her pulse in her throat and she glimpsed one of the shrikes following the yrachaak to make sure they were departing.

They all waited until the forest was silent once more. As soon as it was, Lanir and Fiskaal pelted into Fen, tweeting their worries and concerns, and Fen herself was reeling back and spitting blood.

Emma sat up and rubbed her handless arm against her cheek. “I had thought for sure they would have seen through that...” She turned and cast a critical eye over the still shaken Fen. “I didn't have time to make your skin any whiter, so I suppose we should be grateful it's dark out. I doubt they will be back in this forest any time within the next three moons, so we may as well sleep the rest of the night.”

“You... As far as plans go, that was pretty terrible! And—your hand!” Fen cried and pointed at where the limb should have been.

“Yes, do you see it anywhere?”

“It's off!”

“Yes,” Emma repeated patiently. “I hadn't the time to pretty it up, but I figured they ought to see something more than blood, just in case.”

She finally found the hand herself, thrown across camp, and set about bandaging it to her wrist. Fen watched with hooded eyes and wine-colored hair once more. She had known for some time that Emma worked under different rules, but she hadn't needed to see a hand lopped off to prove it. And yet the elder was carrying on like no wrongs had been committed.

Her three shrikes pressed up against her neck and chest again, watching Emma with similar guarded expressions. Fiskaal had confirmed that the yrachaak weren't returning. Their bedroll would take some time to warm again, especially with no fire and melting snow inside it.

“Are you going to ask me any further questions?” asked Emma coolly after she was done tying herself back together, like a broken toy.

“I may not be terribly smart, but I do know that people don't tie back together like that,” Fen snapped back.

“Maybe she's not human,” Souza muttered. Lanir chirped in rebellious agreement.

“Maybe she's wearing a human disguise,” she added.

“It's complicated,” Emma fielded and frowned at the red soaking through the bandages. “And it's not as simple as tying back together, though I wish it were.”

“You seem to think it is.”

“Eventually, it will work. It will merely be excruciating until that point, I assure you.”

“Tell me what you are,” Fen demanded.

Emma fixed her with a cold look. “I'm human. And I'm the one who just saved our lives.”

They went to sleep without further discussion. Fen dreamt of white-haired monsters and towering silhouettes carrying Emma off. She woke up feeling the barest amount of sympathy for how Emma winced as she stretched. Her birds were far less gracious. Fen did not like being put in the situation of having to repeatedly defend Emma, but there she was, and she was not happy. By mid-morning she was in a foul mood.

“What does 'antrablons' mean?” she asked, the silence between the girls finally wearing her to a breaking point.

“It is their word for the tysvadi. The yrachaask are a horrifically superstitious people, and due to their year-round cold climate, they have a particular fear of them. They have a habit of blending in,” Emma responded. Her tone was polite, but not overly friendly.

“Do tysvid really exist?” Fen had to ask. She still privately called them the white children, but since the proper term was further spread, she was trying to get used to it. Emma had told her that behaving like a noble was learning the right language, and Fen had seen firsthand how useful that specific disguise could be.

“Yes.”

They passed awhile in silence, save for the crunching of the snow beneath their boots. The day was bright, with sunlight reflecting upon all of the white surrounding them, but the weather was clear and her birds could fly for periods of time. It soothed their nerves.

“Thanks for not putting your blood on me,” Fen blurted out during their noon meal.

Emma looked up from her bowl with a comically stupefied expression on her face. “Why would I have—We may have been rushed, but there was no point in further endangering ourselves,” she said and looked away. After a beat, she quietly added, “Thank you for your wonderful acting. I had feared the disguise would not have worked without additional support.”

“I was afraid of that too,” she admitted and they lapsed into another silence, one borne of unease rather than awkwardness. Fen didn't like it. “Have you dealt with the yrachaask before?”

“Yes,” Emma responded in her normal curt manner when discussing personal matters. Fen gave a huff. Emma seemingly caught herself, for she amended, “A long time ago. They've likely forgotten about me, and I only met a small number of their people, but I do not wish to repeat the encounter.”

“What happened?” It was so rare that Emma willingly talked about herself that Fen had to press. If it was meant as some sort of apology, the girl was not above digging further.

The sandy-haired girl stared down at the bracelet peeking out over her mitten. She was quiet for a long while, so long that Fen was afraid she wasn't going to respond at all. But then she said, “I was younger, more brash in my actions. I believed I could win against any foe or numbers. I'm not much of a fighter, mind, but I was reckless and wished to find something specific. Something I needed.”

“What was it?”

“This bracelet,” Emma replied and held up her unhurt arm.

Fen had long since noticed the other's penchant for quite a bit of jewelry, but she hardly thought a single trinket, no matter how valuable, was worth that long or dangerous of a journey. However, she knew better than to press on that issue. “Why did they have it?” she asked instead.

“A trader had sold it to the husband of one of their leaders, and most women like pretty things, no matter what sort of creature they are. I needed it back, so I decided I would simply get it myself, instead of utilizing wiser routes. Fen, do try to use wiser routes when trying to obtain valuable things,” Emma said dryly.

“I will,” she said and almost completely meant it.

“Anyway, they caught me, and they did not take kindly to an unannounced visitor, especially one not of their race, in their midst. I was beaten and tortured, and humorously enough, it was only the appearance of something they feared that allowed me to escape with my prize at all.”

“Something they feared?” Fen echoed.

“A warrior's daughter had lured in a unicorn,” Emma said calmly. Fen flinched.

“I didn't know they traveled this far north.”

“Oh, they usually don't. In special circumstances, they may, and that was a special circumstance. It devoured the daughter before I had even escaped. I don't know how long it stayed, or even how it all ended. Maybe they managed to kill it. Maybe they fled from that, too.”

“What kind of special circumstance was it?” Fen had to ask.

“The daughter could speak with it.”

She regretted asking.