The wolf had been drawn in by the scent of cooking meat. It had been odd - she wasn’t starving, she had just caught and crunched down a small rabbit that morning.. but when had she last had a cooked meal? The days were bleeding together, consumed by silence. Absolute silence. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed since she’d come out here, how many days since she had sat silently against that tree he left her at. She’d tucked those rings into a pocket and shifted, run into the barren woodlands.. and she hadn’t come back out but for the rarest of occasions. Once had been to steal some of the supplies she needed to craft something of a pet project of hers: leather and buckles and the like, and soon enough she had something that resembled saddlebags for the wolf. She’d crafted it quickly and crudely, her hands shaking by the end with how desperately she wanted to be back in her furs.
The second time she finally ventured from the woods had been bright and early in the morning - early enough that people were leaving their homes for the day. The fruits of that trip was stored safely in one of those bags now, dark liquid sloshing in a glass bottle. Whoever she’d stolen it from wouldn’t miss it.
Day-to-day was hardly bearable sober. Silence. Silence, silence, absolute crushing silence. She had forgotten how to live without the bond, had taken that constant, steady presence for granted. She didn’t want to think about the isolation, the deep sense of nothing within. The darkness was a rising tidal wave, roaring and hungry, and it was the burn of liquid fire in her throat that kept it from cresting and crashing over her. She wasn’t so drunk that she couldn’t walk, no, not like when she’d swiped that moonshine from Dev’s farmhouse. For a moment she remembered being swung against a wall, lips fitting to hers as that moonshine drifted between her and Al-
She cut off that thought as the wolf picked her way through the underbrush, following her nose. No, it wasn’t like that night. She was functioning. She was moving. She wasn’t exactly the most alert, but she could handle herself fine.. and she was numb. Numb was good. Numb was better than the sharp ache of what she’d done, how deeply she had broken her own life. It was better than thinking about the exhaustion, about why she was exhausted. She couldn’t sleep - wouldn’t. Not when those nightly horrors woke her, launched her to her feet and forced her to empty her stomach. And then she’d run, and run, and run until her legs gave out because she would not go to anyone with this. She wouldn’t - couldn’t - speak of what was in her head… and there was no one in her head anymore to hear her, no one to answer or understand. What else was there to do?
Drink. She could drink, and she could hunt when she felt like it, and she could run. And.. apparently she could track down the smell of cooking food until she found someone she hadn’t seen or spoken to in a long while.
The wolf remained crouched in the shadows, golden eyes flashing to the fire and the food that roasted over it and then back to Kaladin. She watched him jump to his feet at the sound of a branch breaking, watched him brandish his weapon. He had changed since she last saw him. What had happened to the bright-eyed, eager royal guard she had fought alongside? They’d taken down the great stone cat together, had fought fires and saved people from explosions… she supposed she wasn’t the same as she had been back then either.
She thought about turning around and leaving. She hadn’t spoken to a single soul in… however long she had been out here. She hadn’t wanted to. Facing who and what she was, how she had driven away the one she had married and shared her very soul with… drinking was better. Running was better. Easier. But something in the way Kaladin regarded the world made her pause. And he had food. Food might have been a factor.
Ashe stepped into the firelight, the large black wolf keeping her head low as she considered him. It should be obvious that she was no wild wolf, with her harness bags strapped across her chest and around her ribs. Her golden eyes flashed as she considered Kaladin for a long moment, and then she shifted. In a smooth movement, there was a very small, raven-haired young woman standing in place of the wolf, dressed in head-to-toe black. Her scarred hands were unhooking the straps of that harness that now looped around her shoulders and over her torso, but fire-blue eyes never left the man before her. She still didn’t speak, but she slowly approached as she swung those harness bags around, reaching within them to withdraw that glass bottle that was already a third empty. The assassin glanced him over, then sat down on the other side of the fire, thunking the bottle down between where she sat and he stood. ”This stuff is better,” is all she said.
Kaladin
ashetta
it's live or die my way.
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