Ch3: The colors of the Night

The Quest. The Brothers. The Whispers.

The search was over. We had found what we were looking for… well…what he was looking for anyways... I wasn’t too sure about my feelings. I lacked the dedication that my brother had; the only thing I felt was the admiration for my older brother. He of course kept telling me about the dreams, about the glory they would share…yet I couldn’t simply obey such a command without having my doubts… what was asked of me was immense…
The village lay just a day’s travel ahead and my doubt kept growing… I kept looking over my back as I felt…almost watched, as if some magi farsighted me… but that was ridiculous of course thanks to our necklaces.  My brother obviously noticed it, yet said nothing to ease my discomfort.
As we closed in on the village, we stopped for the night in a nearby glade. We could have traveled through the night, but we had decided not to. We both agreed that it would be a more dramatic entrance if there already was rumors about them, and if they arrived mid-day and not mid-night.

The feeling that had been growing inside of me during the day was by this point so intense that it blurred all other thoughts into a desperate paranoia…  Not only that, but I found myself hearing quiet whispers all around me… at first it was like a mere whisper, something that easily could have been the subtle natural whispers of the wind, yet it was growing into something you could not ignore… I could sometimes catch a word or even a fragment of a phrase, but nothing more. As I lay awake that night, I could hear the voice getting lauder and incredibly enough, more sensual, like the caress of a lover. After realizing that sleep was out of the question, I got up, took a quick glance at my brother. who was already deep asleep, I wandered off into the forest.  The whispers grew as I walked further and further away from my older brother, it was almost as if the whispers had grown to a full-out scream within my head.
The forest thinned out to a riverbank, I sat down on one of the rocks and looked across the river.  I saw lights in the distance, torches and such, none of the non-burning lights which I and my brother had seen in some of the mayor cities on our travels. This place was so far off; I’d be surprised if they even knew of them.
The torches belonged to a smaller farm as far as I could tell, and I was struck with a weird case of homesickness, although I had no house to go back to, and the only family was my brother. It felt strange; looking at the farm on the other side of the river, knowing that I would never be able to settle down, have a family… The thought of the farm was as unreachable as the actual house was now, the river could not be crossed.
A darker shade of the rocks on the other side caught my eye and I swore under my breath for not noticing earlier, had it been an archer I would surely be dead by now… Fortunately it wasn’t, and the being had not seen me yet. From this distance I couldn’t tell the gender, but it was definitely a human. It appeared to be looking at the stars, which I now noticed was clearly visible. I didn’t know why, but I wanted to get its attention… I whispered that I must be mad while picking up a few rocks from the beach and started to throw them into the water. Soon enough the human rose from the rock it was sitting on, that’s when I could determine the gender, since I don’t think any male in his rightful mind would be wearing a dress, and certainly not at this hour! She went as close to the river as she dared. I could see her more clearly now, we weren’t that far away from each other now. Dark hair which reached as far down as her waist, a slender body from what I could tell from what the dress uncovered, she couldn’t be older than 18.
Simply put; she was the most beautiful woman I had ever met.
I waved to her from where I was sitting on the protruding stone, she waved back but I noticed that she was slightly uneasy… yet who wouldn’t be to see a waving man in the middle of the forest , at midnight.
“Do not fear, young maiden, I’m not to hurt you in any way. “ I said as clearly as I could in the tongue used in this part of the world, and found that the voice carried over the waters with ease. It was a silent night.
“You speak fair, stranger, yet Marles is a distant little town, and we do not see strangers often. I have myself not seen more than a few strangers in all my life, therefor I hope you beg me pardon if I seem apprehensive.”
She sat down on the opposite side of the river as I was struck speechless by the whole situation, her beauty combined with her alluring voice made her into the very face of all that I loved.
She continued.
“You are not from around here, are you? And I don’t mean Marles, I would have known your face if you were, but not from this part of the world even? “ The curiosity was obvious, yet I found it invigorating… too long had I been stuck with only my brother. He had no interest in any of what intrigued me the most; it had damped my natural eagerness for knowledge.
I bowed my head as I answered.
“Right you are, my lady. What betrayed me? My clothes? My foreign looks? Maybe my speech even? Or was it simply my dazzling smile?” I regretted my words even before I even finished, it was a stupid comment, so stupid, yet I kept the smile I had put on for the sake of the comment, it would otherwise reveal my stupidity even more.
I was amazed when I saw her turn her head from me and even more when I noticed a small change of color on her cheeks. Amazing…
“None of it. Your clothes may be strange for us, but there are many hunters even here, your looks might have revealed it if I were to study them more closely, yet from this range it’s hard to tell. Your speech is as perfect as your smile.”  I was more than dazed from her words, and even more so when I realized that my heart had skipped a few beats, what was happening to me?
“You see, I have a small gift, a gift I’ve had for as long as I can remember, I can sense men and women around me, sense their minds, their mood, mostly. It’s like seeing the purest color of the person. Yours is different from any I’ve ever touched, all we who live here have a certain tint which is easily recognized. You don’t have it.” She said it, and I was deeply moved by how easily she opened up to me.
“What color am I then?”
She tilted her head slightly and looked at me intensely…
“You’re very odd… your color is a bright red…yet it has been altered with… it looks like it’s getting darker by the minute… I’ve never seen anything like it!”
I was astonished… The words felt like they described me like nothing else… I was yet again speechless.

We talked for hours, about all, about nothing; we laughed at times, yet were close to tears at others. I told her parts of my life, far from everything… She revealed about her mother’s demise, her father who had buried himself in his profession after his wife had died… it seemed like she revealed everything to me.
As I realized that the sun would shatter the horizon in just minutes, we took our farewell, but before she went her way I asked her one last thing.
“Later today, me and my brother will be arriving in your town, please don’t ask me why, but I will need you to promise me to greet me like this night never happened. My brother shall not know of us!”
She nodded and funny enough, she laughed. I gave her a confused glance and as she stopped, she explained.
“You used the word: us. Not you and I, but us. I liked it, don’t you dare to think otherwise, but you don’t seem like the man who would use the word “us” expect when it’s serious.”
I blushed, I had not even noticed! She had really grown on me this night, and it pained me to leave.
“I like to see it as us, and we might see what Fate has in store for us…”
“So we shall, but we both should be going, dawn is at hand and we both have places to be.”
“Farewell, my lady.”
“Farewell, stranger.”

As I ran back to camp, I realized too different things: the whispers hadn’t been heard all night which I was relieved to find out. Yet the second thing pained me greatly…
I did not even know her name…