Precipices

***************************************

"What do you think?"

"I think not."

Laughter rang abruptly through the small glade, scaring off a pair of nesting birds and making a stray squirrel lift its flame-topped head from its search for a mate in nervous curiosity. The trees, bare some five weeks since, were now crowned in the promised flutter of pink and white spattered blossoms. They rustled in the soft gusts of wind that found their way between the tight-spaced bushes and branches, dropping petals on the pair seated at their foot.

"But it looks cute on you! Come on, Tay, it's not a big bow..." The elder Kindred's mouth eased itself into a well-practiced puppy pout, slight tremble and all. A corner of the only other mouth in sight curled up into an unwilling smile.

"You look silly, Cour!" he chided as punishment for making him express his amusement. "I told you, no bow!"

"Just once? Please?"

Taydren sighed. "You already did it once." Snatching the offending piece of grass in question, he planted it firmly on his head for less than three seconds flat and threw it promptly back into Cour's lap. "Happy now? What started you on that thing anyway?"

"I don't know," Cour told him, considering the ribbon bow of woven grass he had constructed. "I just thought you'd look cute in one."

"I am not cute," Tay objected, flushing at the grin this was received with.

"Who says? I think you're cute. And beautiful. And nice, and good company, and-"

"Cour, quit it!" the cub-bearer pleaded, squirming. "Don't be weird."

"But I'm not being weird," Cour claimed innocently. He shifted enough to set the bow in a hollow of the ground between the tree roots before scooting closer to the other Kindred. "Hey, do you think Cub would like some cute stuff when he comes along?"

"His name's not Cub," Tay complained, showing his usual brief hesitation, then snuggling into his companion's arms. "If you go on calling him that all the time, it'll stick."

"So give me something else to stick to him," Cour suggested, quirking a smile. Tay only hmphed at him.

"I told you, I can't think of anything yet."

"Well, what do I call him then? I can't just say 'it', that's rude," Cour reasoned. "And if I just say 'him' all the time, how're you to know which him I'm talking of? I could be talking of Kelper, or the twins-"

"No, not Kelper and the twins," he was corrected. "That's 'them'. They aren't individual."

"Wonder what their mates will say about that," Cour mused, flopping backwards into the cool, dry grass and taking his bundle with him. After a short fuss and a squeak, Tay decided that he didn't mind too much and settled back in, the branches and their burden of pastel petals casting light, moving shadows across his face. A comfortable half-quiet settled over them. Birds cried, small animals went about their business, but the very atmosphere seemed to have descended into a lethargy that only nature can have.

Thin strands of late afternoon sunlight drifted down, warming the two, and it was not very long at all before they had both fallen asleep.

***************************************

Tay woke up first. The shadows had lengthened into twisted, stretched ribbons of pale darkness on the grass, the breeze calmed into a lull as afternoon disappeared into evening. The birds had begun to settle down in groups; Tay could no longer hear them twittering madly among the branches in games of chase with insects. Cour was a warm, quiet weight on his side.

He thought nothing of his waking until the sound that was responsible for it repeated. A crunch of dead leaves under feet, the snap of a small twig breaking, and he started to sit up, thinking only to get away from Cour before whoever it was stumbled upon them. Everybody in the tribe knew about their courtship, but he still felt strange about showing his affections in public, and Cour had not complained about the secrecy. He pushed himself to his knees and untangled his left arm from Cour's grip, meaning to sit back against the tree's bole.

That was before he caught the scent.

The memory of flames leapt into his head before he could stop it. He pushed it back with practiced speed, but he couldn't push back the fear that came with it when the reality felt almost as bad as the images. Hastily he reached out a hand for Cour, painfully aware that it was shaking uncontrollably all the way up his arm.

"Cour," he whispered, tugging at the shoulder he had gotten hold of, and the end of the word broke off like a shard of frail, dry straw. He tried again, a little louder this time, his heart picking up more with every syllable.

"Cour! Wake up!"

It wasn't a moment before Cour was awake and listening, but it felt like hours with the shifting of movement in his ears. Humans were rarely quiet in the woods, Tay remembered. He was almost crying.

"What?" Cour asked, blinking off sleep, and Taydren all but saw his ears prick up. He rushed to whisper an explanation, sparing a prayer that his voice would stop quivering and stay soft.

"A human, I can smell him. Cour, please, let's go quietly!" he begged. "We-we can tell the others-"

"Shh." Cour dipping his head in impatient consent. "Come on then." He was up and off without any further thought, and there was no sound to mark that he was there. Kindred were born to roam nature, and Cour's tribe had made an art of walking the forest ways. Tay was not and might never be as good as Cour, but he noted with relief as he followed that he could hardly hear his own footsteps, even in the still air.

Even so, he didn't feel safe until they had made it over the cupped hill, down into the valley, and Cour was shutting Denen's front door behind them. The walls seemed for a moment like a blanket over the head of a small child fearful of creatures in the darkness-a barrier to keep out everything evil, harmful, or frightening.

Denen's was not a typical house. He had rows upon rows of dried and half-dried herbs hanging from walls and ceiling, shelves lined with pottery jars of powdered mixes, and several more rooms than were generally needed in a Kindred's home. The greeting-room was not centered: Tay, standing in the doorway, had a small collection of chairs and a well-worn but sturdy table on his left and nothing but a clean expanse of wall leading into a hallway on his right. The hallway went down into a fork, with a room split into two bedrooms on one side, a washing-room on the other, and a sort of greenhouse at the end. Denen had a certain fascination with plants and all growing things-he kept the small indoor winter sanctuary for many of his garden herbs, and spent much of his time there, tending to them himself. If the small sounds were any indication, he was there now.

"What are you doing home so early?" the elder corolaith called out as soon as the front door had clicked shut. "I thought you two were going to stay out all afternoon?"

"Tay smelled a human in the woods," Cour called back shortly.

There was a brief clatter of instruments, a few rapid footfalls, and Cour's teacher was standing in the doorway with a flat look on his face.

"Already," he said, and for once Tay knew what he meant without asking. Ten years, a mere decade, since Tay's tribe had been obliterated, their home and all their belongings destroyed by fire in the hands of superstitious humans, and already they had been forgotten by some if not all. There had been agreements made: this was Kindred land. Simple fear should have kept them away, if they had no respect for the old contracts.

Ten years of no contact, and already the humans were scoffing at their existance. Tay wasn't sure whether to be glad or terrified. Humans had a way of fearing things that they were ignorant of, and he had seen what fear could become.

"An old scent, or just now?" Denen asked, turning to Tay, who repressed the urge to burst into tears at the gentleness in his face. He shook his head hard, tossing strands of brown hair in every direction.

"I heard him, and Cour. I mean, Cour heard him too. Up around the apple trees," he tried to explain, stuttering over the details. "Over the hi-Oh, no, Cour! Where's the twins?"

"They're fine," Denen soothed quickly, before he could make himself more panicked than he already was. "They're playing in the yard around the well, making dust-roads with Kelper. You can see them out the back windows," he added, moving up the hall to the room where the washing basins and the barrel of new water were kept to rinse his hands. Constant cleanliness was a necessity in the practice of healing, and eventually a habit.

He turned back to the pair still standing by the doorway as he dried off. "Are you all right?" he asked the younger of the two.

The tears were trying to escape again; Tay had the awful feeling that he was making a fool of himself. The rational part of him knew that it was very unlikely that a human man would just take it into his head to come and kill off a few Kindred, but the part of him that had been cemented as a six-year-old cub could not think anything else. He more than anyone knew what humans were capable of, how dangerous they were when they wanted to be, and it was impossible to forget.

"I'm... okay," he managed around the lump in his throat. "Maybe I better go home."

"No, I think you need to sit down a while. Cour, you sit with him," Denen instructed his apprentice, snagging a stool from about the small table and setting it up against the wall for support before pressing the cub-bearer into it. "I'll go get some of the others so we can go see what's to be done."

"If you can catch the twins and Kelper, they'll run fast," Cour pointed out quietly. "Vayrsila'll want to know. You could see to the ones in town."

"I'll do that. It will keep them out of trouble, at the very least." The corolaith planted a warm hand on the top of Tay's head. "You just stay here and rest a while. You think you can stand it if I send the terrors back here after they're done with running messages?"

Tension began slowly to release with the calm tone. Tay felt his head begin to even again, his thoughts collecting while the tears receded. "Yes. I'd feel better... if I could keep an eye on them," he told his host tentatively. "They get into trouble so much."

"I'll send them along then," he was answered. Then Denen smiled, and leaned forward to whisper into his ear.

"And by the way-congratulations."

He pulled back and had started toward the door by the time Tay's preoccupied mind realised what he had said. The cub-bearer started to scramble out of his chair, his newly calmed heart pounding once more. "You-"

"I won't tell," the older Kindred assured him over his shoulder, and closed the door behind him.

"Cour," Tay reproached tearily into the silence that was left. His companion hugged him apologetically.

"I'm so sorry, Tay, I forgot! This was the closest place I could think of, and I needed to get you inside. I'm sorry."

Everything seemed too much all of a sudden, and Tay just couldn't find it in himself to be angry at anyone, much less Cour. "It's okay," he sighed wearily. "He wouldn't lie, would he?"

"No," Cour agreed, rather too quickly, then hopefully, "You're not mad at me?"

"No."

More gently Cour asked, "You want me to talk to him?"

"'S okay," Tay repeated hoarsely, rubbing awkwardly at his eyes. It was getting awfully hard to hold himself up in the chair. "I'm just really tired. Hold me a minute?"

"Of course." Warm arms slid around him, but they did not stop there. Instead, he found himself swung gently up, carried down the hall and deposited on Cour's bed before he could protest. Once he was on the bed, it was just too comfortable, so he gave up.

Cour settled down next to him and spooned.

"Is that better?"

Warm and feeling as close to safe as he could under the circumstances, Tay was sure that it was. He nodded into Cour's chest, listening to the calm, steady beat of the other Kindred's heart and letting it drown out the last of the panic, if not the fear, that had been rampaging through his own.

They lay like that for a long time: still and quiet, Cour's left arm wrapped around Tay's shoulder and his right draped lightly on the top of Tay's head, his hand stroking a constant rhythm across the younger teen's cheek. Tay would have dozed off, but for the nagging awareness of nightmares waiting for him just beyond the canopy that hid sleep from him.

"Tay," Cour asked suddenly, "you need to talk about it. Tell me what happened, please? Why did you come to us?"

So used to refusing explanations, Tay almost said no. He realised abruptly at the last moment that Cour was right. He needed to talk about it-he wanted to talk about it. Hundreds of secret prayers had gone up when he was a cub of six, of seven, of eight, that someone, anyone, would make him do what he refused to. That someone would make him tell.

He took a deep breath and started talking.

***************************************