The Soldier’s Candle

Part 2 of A Hellrider’s Fond Musings

It had been a year since that night on the ledge. It felt like so much longer. I began visiting Ena and her sister at their cabin near Reithwin Town thanks to a suggestion from Halsin. He knew the door was open while I myself did not. Convention and Ena did not go together, I struggled to realize, yet that first time I showed up on her doorstep there was no hint of surprise about it to her. She welcomed me in and gave me the respite I sorely needed.

Visits quickly took on their own form of regularity. When my mind and body grew weary from invisible battles I still fought it was to that door and to her company I came. I rode an old destrier who, like myself, was well retired from war. He would kick into a pleased trot as the scent of the cabin’s gardens reached his nostrils. I could not blame him. I was as relieved and pleased to be going there as he was.

There was something magical about that little building. It was just a stone structure, old but rebuilt and fitted with a fresh thatch roof. Fresh windows had been hung in the frames and fresh whitewash was applied to the inside walls with a careful but inexperienced hand. It was surrounded by garden beds woven through with whimsical paths laid with thoughtfully chosen stones that fit together like fae themselves had conferred on how to create beauty from such simple things. Wildflowers, fruit, vegetables, it was all planted in a manner I could not sort the rhyme nor reason of yet they thrived. The back yard had stretches of grass and clover, plush and pleasing underfoot, the scents of it all filling the air with vitality and beauty. One could close their eyes here and bathe in just that: a vibrant beauty that gave someone a chance to remember how good it could be to be alive.

Sometimes Raya was there. These twin sisters could at one moment be perfect mirrors of one another and then the next complete opposites. They never seemed to move out of sync however, strange as that may seem. The sound of them speaking their native tongue, the lyrical language of sylvan elves, was unexpectedly beautiful. It was not a language I had encountered before. High elf rang more imperious and distant. This sounded like birdsong drifting through glades. I could not hope to translate a single word of it but I could have listened to them speak for hours.

While Raya was often the domestic one Ena seemed content to live on whatever she happened across. This may sound simple enough for a druidess who can change her form from human to cat, or to a bear, or what have you on a whim but it is not at all practical in the long run. The longer Raya stayed in the city with her beloved, the more Ena had to fend for herself. Her shocking lack of domesticity did not shock me. My surprising talent for domesticity did .

Now, the Hellriders knew I could organize them and give them orders. They knew I could teach and discipline. They did not know I could cook, or manage a household in any way. Why would they know such things? That was not the life I led. I had never pictured ever having a home to worry about, never mind the skills to care for it. One evening as I prepared supper for us I told her about where I learned such skills. There is a strange awkwardness in telling the woman who you are cooking for about the last woman you had any significant relationship with. That awkwardness bothered me and gave me pause, another thing to add to my ever growing list of things to think about in the quiet hours. I pushed through it then and she listened with her usual patience and care. She wanted to know and truly, it felt good to speak.

You see, Beryl had been a powerful part of my early years as a Hellrider. She owned a tavern and inn near the barracks, a popular place for us to unwind and have a good home cooked meal. Not one of us ever wanted to openly admit to missing the comforts of home and hearth but we all found it there, for the most part. Enough to fill the need, anyway. She was a tall woman, almost as tall as myself, strong shouldered and featured. Her dark eyes missed nothing and her expressions were powerful. One glare could send a lad running with his tail between his legs while a smile made you hope you could find what it would take to earn another.

We could talk for hours, she and I. I found myself lingering longer and longer after most had taken themselves home to sleep off what they had drunk. She would gently rebuff me and I persisted. I was rewarded, eventually. She thought I was too young. I thought she was too stubborn. It somehow worked, for exactly how we needed it to work. I would always be tethered first to the Hellriders with no room for a wife or family. She had no want of any such thing, too in love with her business and freedom. We became whatever it was we were and we enjoyed that until, one day, it simply was over. No animosity, no anger, just the realization life was moving on. We stayed beloved friends until…

It took Ena’s hand on my arm and her brow against my shoulder to draw me back from where my mind was at the thoughts of what might have happened. The last I had heard after the fall of Elturel was that she had survived but little more. We were run out of the city so fast. I know she would have tried to help but I’d like to hope she respected that I needed to help my own to safety, wherever that might lead.

The tears that fell as I told that story had been a long time in coming. A raw piece of my soul finally felt opened to air and allowed to breathe and begin to heal. A little more weight left my aching shoulders.

“Why do you listen to the ramblings of an old man?” I asked Ena as we sat by the fire after supper.

“When am I doing that?”

“You know what I mean, little bird.”

She shook her head at me and put her tea aside. “I have more years than you do.”

“As an elf,” I countered, relaxed as I studied her features in the firelight. The blue of her eyes always seemed too easy to get lost in, the same blue I imagine the deep sea might hold and all its beauty too. She deprived me of a clear look at them when she glanced away and shook her head.

“It is still so. You speak like you are older than Halsin, or my parents, or our elders. You are far from. Are you young? No. You have lived, and lived hard. Why do you speak like you wish your twilight to fall so quickly?”

There was such a solemnity to how she spoke, a tinge of pain in her words that made me sit up. I could not answer so easily. My brows drew together as I finished my tea and put the cup aside with hers.

“I have nothing left to offer, I suppose. I feel like that, at least. There is so much to make amends for and so much to recover from… It is my twilight. I will be spending what years I have left in repentance.”

“Says who?” She asked the question without pause and without shame and met my gaze straight on.

“Me? The gods? Some one among those two, at least,” I waffled, unsure how to answer her.

“You will sacrifice the chance at enjoying the world you create because you think you do not deserve it? Why?”

The more she questioned, the more emotion I saw. My calm, steady friend was hurting and I could not fathom why. All I knew was I would have given so much to take that pain away. “Ena, what have I done wrong? Please tell me.”

“You bring me, Raya, others, you brought us all out of the colony and back to life. You saved us. You saved others. You were called to battle with Aleida and you went. You did not care if you died, you were a warrior once more to save the city. You found the tieflings you fell on the road beside, the ones who were hurt, and you give all you have in apology. You beg forgiveness from those who have forgiven you already but never once did you see if you forgave yourself enough to allow yourself life. Joy.”

I watched in wide eyed silence when she went silent, keenly aware of how hard it was for her to gather so many words at once. Something had happened when she and Raya had been captured and moments like this showed it clearly. It was never that she did not want to speak. It was that she struggled producing the words to express what went on in her mind at times. I watched as she stood up and made a frustrated gesture. Part of me thought she might hurl one of the cups against the hearth in aggravation but I just remained still. She needed patience and it was the least I could give.

“You walk through life in this darkness, this heavy heavy darkness. It is a night with no moon, no candles, no hope. It is bleak. It makes every feature of your face shadowed and the stoop of your shoulders deep. Yet sometimes, I see you catch a tiny bit of light. It will come in watching the garden, or tasting what you cook, or in the laughter of the children at Halsin’s keep, so many tiny things and every time that light sparks, you start to turn toward it just to run away. You run away from it. You run away from me.”

A feather could have knocked me over as she finished speaking. I saw the tears on her cheeks and my heart lurched. What had I done?!

“Run away from you? Oh Ena, never. I run to you. To you and this place. I don’t even know why. I just..,”

I floundered, not sure what I thought or what I wanted to say as I looked at her. I closed the distance between us and brushed the tears from her cheeks with the back of my fingers. “Please don’t cry, little bird. Not for me. Especially not for me,” I pleaded quietly. I drew her against me and tucked her head against my shoulder. Her arms wrapped around me in kind and I sagged with relief, not realizing until that moment how scared I had been I was losing her.

We stood there for a while, my cheek against her silky hair as I gently rocked her back and forth. It was hard for me to tell who I was soothing then: me, her or both of us.

“Joy is scary when for too long you have known fear, horror and sorrow. When I see light, I see shadow too, moving to squelch it before I can savor it. You start to believe you deserve to live in darkness,” I confessed at long last.

“Stay with me?”

Her voice sounded small and far away. I felt like I did not understand. “I hadn’t planned on going back for a few days like usual.”

“No… Stay, with me. Here. Don’t go back.”

I let her go, a little shocked. I held her shoulders and studied her face, not sure what I searched for there. This was insane, why would she want me here more than I already was?

“Please,” she went on, those irresistible eyes set in such a strange expression. Sorrowful yet pleading, wistful yet fearful… it was so much of what I myself felt.

“People will talk, Ena…”

“So?”

I sighed but I did not let her shoulders go, my hold loose and familiar as one of my thumbs traced her bare skin. “You deserve better than a washed up warrior.”

“It is good that it is not one of them I asked.”

I let her go as I made a soft sound of frustration. I wasn’t cross with her, how could I be? But I could not ruin her life, either. My head spun and my heart ached as I turned away. I felt her hand catch my wrist and looked back as she lifted my hand to press my palm over her heart. She held it there with both hands as she looked up at me again.

“Stay with me?”

The feel of her heartbeat, strong and steady under our hands, left me silent. I let my breathing slow as I closed my eyes and simply breathed in the scent of her skin, of the herbs and flowers that dangled from the rafters above us, of the wood smoke from the hearth nearby. I drank it all in, this sanctuary that would be nothing were it not for the woman clutching my hand so fast now. I opened my eyes slowly and said the words that would start me on one of the scariest journeys of my life.

“I’ll stay.”

Her heart fluttered as I spoke the words, strong enough that I could feel it anyway. Her hands fell from mine so she could throw her arms around me again. The strength of that embrace made me wobble but I held her fast in turn and buried my face against her hair. “I can’t promise you I’ll be perfect but I will do my best while I’m here,” I murmured.

“That’s all I want,” she answered, her breath warm against the hollow of my throat.

I did not know what the future might hold then. It did not matter. That night all that mattered was being beside someone who knew I needed a candle in the night and was willing to be it, against all odds.