Bumps in the Forest(Aella)

[Jaeden Kincade]

Jaeden gave a slow shrug of his shoulders as he began turning the meat over the fire, slight hisses echoing out as remnants of blood in the meat dripped down into the hot coals of the fire. “Sounds like your trying to convince yourself more than me there.” Jaeden said before sitting back in front of the fire. “I‘m sorry to hear about your husband though.”

Jaeden the slowly rose from his seat, looking over the cooking meat one more time before stepping over towards Aella. He crouched down next to her as she idly worked at food preservation with the pork. His hand slowly reached down, grasping her own lightly before turning it to look at her palms for a moment. “Why don‘t you work on setting up your tent for now, as I‘m sure Red would draw the line at you coming to sleep in mine with the two of us.” Jaeden suggested before offering her a rag to clean her hands off with. “I‘ll do this for you while you do.”

Jaeden then pulled Aella‘s preservation kit towards him, resuming the work she had started as he began wrapping the meat she had prepped before moving towards another piece, spreading salt over it lightly. “In the end though,” Jaeden then began adding as he worked, “it‘s sort of hard to know if anyone else will care about you if you refuse to meet anyone else by staying out here all the time.”

“Of course, I can‘t force you to, nor would I.” Jaeden said as he began wrapping another piece of meat. “Just a suggestion in any event.”

[Aella]

For a moment she didn’t respond to Jaeden. Her eyes, instead, had locked on Red, and she seemed to be thinking on something. She looked down to the meat that had yet to be salted, and set a piece aside. “Red,” she said calmly,“if you’d like this, you can have it.” It was perhaps the best cut she’d gotten out of the boar. Apparently it was hard for Aella to actually be mean despite her best attempts. She stood up then and left Jaeden to working on her food for her. Somehow she managed to not put up a protest to being helped. “You know, though,” she started, moving away so that she could get her tent off of her horse with a little grunt, “having to take my tent down in the morning is going to make it a lot harder for me to sneak away to never be seen again. So when I start in on that, you’re both expected to pretend you’re asleep until I’m gone.” With her back turned, they couldn’t see the smirk on her fact that gave away that she was joking. Instead she pulled out her poles. Looking over it, the amusement fell from her face. One was about to snap. A crack had formed in it, most likely due to whatever had decided to help her take it apart earlier in the day. Still she ignored this fact, hoping that the whole thing wouldn’t fall down on her in her sleep. And if it did, she sort of wanted it to smother her to death, but that was a fleeting want. “Anyway, thanks, but don’t be sorry about my husband. I just hope it was quick and painless for him. Death is the only thing we’re really promised in life, you know? I miss him, but…” She shrugged as she started to unfold her canvas. “Well, people come and go. You love while you can, and when they’re gone you have to keep on because that’s what they would have wanted you to do. I will tell you what, though, my next husband is going to be better looking than my first.” She sighed just a little as she started attempting to push the poles into the ground without hurting herself further. In reality she was a bit worried she was actually going to have to seek out a city while her leg healed. Going about it all alone was one thing, but doing so with an injury was downright stupid and dangerous. Dangerous she didn't mind, but she could do without the stupid. “And Jaeden? You’re overlooking something. I’m standing here and talking to you, aren’t I? I meet people from time-to-time. I find the groups willing to trade. Things like that. I just don’t see them every day.”

[Jaeden Kincade]

Red looked down to the meat for a moment before her gaze shifted back up towards Aella. She then, once again, looked down at the meat, inspecting it as if she though Aella might have spit in it or something. In the end, however, she threw away any feelings of reservation before eating at it whole heartedly, not offering any words of accusation towards Aella over the offering, but at the same time not offering thanks either. She wasn’t quite ready to fully embrace Aella in a hot kind of womanly cuddle, but the fact that she had caused Jaeden to just stop so far on his travels, and interact, when for days she had had none with him, was something that hadn’t gone unnoticed by her. Even if it was Ranuri playing it’s forceful hand on Jaeden after Aella’s touch didn’t matter to her. It had been the first time Jaeden had spoken to Red in close to fifteen days, and she was thankful for that at least, even if she wouldn’t voice it.

Jaeden continued to work over the remainder of the meat, moving some of hers to cook with his own. He gave a subtle roll of his shoulder as a slight itch appeared. “There’s a small chance I’ll already be up fetching breakfast anyhow.” Jaeden said as he began working over the last piece of meat Aella had cut away. “So if you feel the need to slip away, there’s a chance I won’t be aware of it until I’ve returned.”

Jaeden nodded, listening silently as she spoke of her husband and her philosophy when it came to loss and dealing with it. He, in the end, didn’t necessarily have anything to add verbally, having shared the same view himself, but at the same time he found moving on difficult, especially in the wake of Olevar’s death. Jaeden soon pushed himself into a stand again after packing up the last of Aella’s meat into her preservation kit, moving back over to his spot in front of the fire, sitting next to Red. He turned the meat some more, making sure it would be cooked evenly before he looked up to Aella, giving a tilting nod of his head. “Sure, you’re seeing people, but you’re avoiding them at the same time. Just running into them for what you need, nothing more.” Jaeden then commented, leaning back as Red suddenly laid her head along his shoulder. “I’m talking about forming connections, meeting someone more than once rather than just getting their name for a bell or two and forgetting it half a bell after walking away from them.”

Jaeden released a slow sigh, grabbing a few twigs and feeding the fire a little more. “Look, I don’t mean to push the subject, in fact I generally wouldn’t these days,” Jaeden said, leaning back into the log as he stretched his feet out a little, “and I’m not saying you have to go move into the city and take up permanent residence. It’s just that, well you said it yourself: You have to keep on because that’s what they would want you to do. Do you think your husband would want you to spend you remaining years alone, and by alone I mean eventually passing with no one to remember or grieve for you, as you did for him?”

[Aella]

“Sneaking away while you are fetching for breakfast? Who do you think I am? A novice?” She scoffed. “I don’t want it unless I have to work for it.” Never had Aella explained her entire outlook on life so succinctly before, though she was a little too offended to even notice that she did had done so. With her center-poles up, she spread the canvas over them before pulling the edges down towards the ground. The soil was particularly hard for this time of year, she decided, because it took a lot more grunting and grumbling to get her stakes pushed down into the dirt that would help support her tent walls better. “You just explained why humans are social creatures. We only get together when we need something. Some people need that connection more than others. I don’t tend to be one of them. Never mind the fact that with this lifestyle I don’t tend to take anyone for granted when I come into contact with them. I don’t forget them.” She hooked her canvas’ grommet into one of the metal stakes in the ground. This was repeated one by one. “As for what my husband would want me to do, it’s not really about him. It’s not his life I’m running – It’s mine. So I couldn’t care less what he’d want for me now that he’s gone… And no, I don’t really want anyone around that will be left grieving for me when it’s my time. Easiest way to make sure that happens? Not being around anyone. I’m not going into a city unless I can have a giant piece of cake, a steaming hot bath, a pint of a freshly opened keg, and a muscular man that doesn’t mind getting used for a night that I never have to see again.”

[Jaeden Kincade]

Jaeden leaned forward, checking over the meat once more. It wouldn’t be long now before it was done. As he leaned back once again, he watched as Aella began hammering in the tent spikes, working on the last parts to setting up her tent. His head tilted slightly as his gaze fell to the curves of her rear end, staring at it for a long moment. While his general social behavior had changed drastically over this season, some habits just died hard in the end.

His gaze then rose to meet Aella as she explained her only reasons for going into the city. Jaeden fell silent for a moment as both he and Red looked at each other almost simultaneously turning their heads before once again moving their gaze back to Aella. “Well, I would have been all those reasons rolled into one,” Jaeden said as he poked at the fire with a long stick, “but you’re about half a season late. I’ve stopped working in the city itself.”

Jaeden slowly rose from his seat, moving towards his pack as he pulled out some wooden plates and his eating knife. Moving back to the fire then, he stabbed his knife into the meat, pulling back the sliver for a moment as he checked the meat to make sure it was cooked thoroughly enough. When he was satisfied by what he saw, Jaeden the pulled the stick off from over the fire before he began sliding it off on to three separate plates.

[Aella]

“Isn’t that the way it works?” she gave a little sigh. “Oh, well, I guess I’ll just have to settle for a lecture about my social habits and you rubbing my meat out here in the woods.” The smirk she gave when she turned over her shoulder said that she was teasing instead of being nasty. She dug her waterskin out of one of her saddle bags, tossed her sleeping roll next to the flap of her tent, and headed towards the fire. About halfway there, she made a discovery that she’d been too notice while on the defense – Jaeden was, in fact, pretty good looking. Considering this a moment as she stopped to take a long drink of water, she came to the conclusion that maybe it was a bit of a shame that a city wasn’t closer by. She closed the distance between herself and him and Red. Carefully she lowered herself down, setting her water down, and moving to re-roll what was left of her pant leg. Apparently she was going to be forced to learn how to sew a bit better. Her eyes landed on Jaeden as she made the final tucks of fabric to keep her clothes from brushing against the bandage. ”So why, pray tell, did you quit working in the city if it is such a wonderful place?”

[Jaeden Kincade]

Jaeden gave a small smirk at her comment over lectures and rubbing meat, as well he would have came up with a witty banter in reply, going back and forth with the woman, but these days, he just felt like a different person. He gave a slow cut into his meat as Red simply began devouring her own, eating as though she hadn’t in well over a day. Jaeden himself ate at a casual pace, almost appearing as though he were forcing himself to eat for no other reason than his body demanding it.

His gaze soon rose as Aella made her way over towards the fire, sitting nearby as she rolled the fabric of her pants, minding her bandaging. He might have gone on about how she should go to the city, make some connections, but in the end, he couldn’t preach about it anymore, not when he didn’t have any serious conviction in it himself. He took a lean back along the log when she posed the question he saw coming when he revealed he had quite going to the city himself. The question caused Red to pause in her eating for a moment, looking to Jaeden with slight concern in her eyes.

Jaeden chewed the pork in his mouth slowly, remaining silent save for the slow exhale he let out through his nose as he stared absently down into the fire. Finally, after taking a slow swallow of the food, Jaeden’s hands remained motionless over his plate, his eating knife poking lightly at the meat. “I left to make sure those I cared for there were safe.” Jaeden simply said then. “There were many that I made a connection with over my life, but after recent events, it just seems to me that the closer one is to me, the more chance they have at being killed. Whether it’s by some bandit, or some strange creature that whips around razor sharp filaments that cut through stuff and slice mentors into even one inch slices, laying them out on display after.”

Jaeden then fell silent once again as he began to cut into the meat along his plate. His face was almost emotionless for a moment, save for the slight frown that caused the skin along his brow to form deep ridges, as though he were struggling. At that moment, despite Ranuir, despite the advice and words Jaeden had offered up to her before, despite it all, he almost seemed, broken.

[Aella]

Aella stared at Jaeden for a long moment after hearing what he’d said. A thousand snapping comments ran through her head, but she proved herself capable of keeping her mouth shut. It wasn’t that she didn’t think over informing him that the only way he could protect everyone was if he became a god – And even then it was sketchy. Now he was protecting no one. Instead he was stepping away from even trying to help those he loved who were in need. Now instead he was just saving himself from hurting… Except he wasn’t even doing that. She didn’t know what he was really doing, or if she did, she wasn’t able to say it in a nice manner. She was looking straight at him with a sort of twisted expression on her face. At that moment she wasn’t completely there. She felt the snow on her skin, the cold, the stiffness in her joints from the inability to even bring herself to build a fire. It was the day her husband disappeared. It was gone in a blink, but it left her looking at Jaeden trying to decide if that was him she sympathized with or those he cared so much about that he left behind. Or maybe it was both because in a weird way they were the same. The all-too-human need to comfort him rose up from her stomach with a growl giving away the fact she’d not eaten, well, all day. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and hug him, and maybe she wanted to find a nice way to tell him he was being an idiot. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. It would be crossing some boundary within that she didn’t allow herself. Instead she pulled her lips in tightly, squinted her green eyes, nodded and looked away. ”Oh.” She didn’t touch her food. She didn’t look at Jaeden or Red. Instead she sat there looking almost like at any second she was going to spring into some sort of action – Though even she was clueless as to what she was going to do.

[Jaeden Kincade]

Jaeden had since finished his own plate of food as silence passed over the camp. His plate set aside as he then simply leaned back and rested his arm along a bent knee. Red reached down, grabbing the plates up as she began to head for the nearby stream to wash them, humming slightly as she moved.

Jaeden’s gaze then moved back to Aella when she let out her short reply to his answer, looking away. Jeaden’s felt her desires shift, as her feeling to comfort Jaeden slowly began to rise in her. His eyes almost became soft at that, even as she didn’t move on her own to do so. In Jaeden’s state, it was a desire that greatly appealed to him.

And so, as Aella’s head was turned away, she soon felt a soft touch resting along her lap, carefully avoiding her wounded leg. Looking back down, she would see Jaeden’s head resting there, his hand gripping lightly at the fabric of her pant leg. Silence passed for another moment before she would begin to hear his muffled sobs, feeling the first signs of his tears soaking through the fabric of her pants. “They killed them, killed them all. My mother, my father, my sister.” Jaeden said, fighting a sob. “They put my family into out burning home for no other reason than they felt like it.”

Jaeden’s grip along her pant leg tightened then a little more, finally releasing a sob as his voice grew heavier. “Then the man who raised me after, who mentored me, taught me everything I knew.” Jaeden said as his voice cracked and his jaw clenched, remembering the way he found Olevar, a sight that was burned into his memory. “Dead, killed by a creature who wanted nothing more than to test him and me. To get some sick understanding of what we were capable of and to see our insides. It cut the man who essentially replaced my entire family into small one inch slices and left him for scavengers as if he were nothing more than a passing thought.”

His head rolled them, his eyes burying into Aella’s leg as his fist slammed into the ground, causing a small divot to form from the impact. “They all keep getting taken away from me.” Jaeden almost growled now, mixing a rage in with his depression and sorrow. “All of them. And for reasons that are just so petty in the end.”

[Aella]

She stiffened at his touch for a moment, and her face snapped back to look at him with wide eyes. What was he doing? What was going on? Her mouth opened to say something, but he started to cry. Aella was rather certain that she had never seen a grown man cry. Thinking harder on it, she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen anyone cry beyond simply experiencing herself do so. She realized others did, but… Crying in her home, she learned quickly, only got you punished. Once when she was younger she heard one of the slaves in her parents’ home cry in the middle of the night; she was gone the next day. Sold. Killed. She didn’t know what, though she’d guessed that, whatever had happened, hadn’t been a good fate. Even her brothers didn’t cry. Her mother. No one. For a moment she wondered exactly how screwed up her life had made her, but her attention was quick to turn back to Jaeden when he started talking. Her fingers slowly started working through his hair. The loss in her life had taught her about the pain he was feeling, though she realized she hadn’t felt the terror of watching her family perish – Not that she was sure she would have minded. Fortunately for all involved, she had at one point had someone that had shown her compassion. When she cried during his life, she knew what Imman did to make her feel better. She knew what she missed now that she was alone and scared. So she put her hand under Jaeden’s cheek to lift his head the slightest bit, wincing a little as he hit the dirt. She shifted then until she was lying on the ground next to him, small arms wrapping around his neck to hold him. He got no lecture from her, because she knew that wasn’t what he needed. Lhex had gotten bored with assigning reincarnations for the day and was conspiring against her; she was sure of it. She pulled back enough to look at Jaeden with wide eyes. The edges of them were filling with water over his pain. That was her secret. That was the answer to the puzzle of why she worked so hard to deny herself the company of others despite her want of it – Aella had a giant, empathic heart. In the wild that could be a dangerous thing to own. A warm hand pressed to his cheek, the pad of her thumb stroking at the skin. She leaned in then to kiss at his tears tenderly. First one. Then another. Then another. And yet she never moved for his mouth. She didn’t speak. Apparently she was downright sweet when she wanted to be.