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An uneasy quiet accompanied the churning gray clouds inching across the Riverland skies. Tressa paused, thumbs hitched around her bag’s straps, and glanced upward with a frown. Springtime yielded unpredictable weather; in Rippletide, she recalled five minutes of sun, followed by torrential showers pelting the poor boats bobbing in the horizon. The oceans would lash angrily against the docks, and all the merchants would scatter like frantic chickens before the slaughter to the nearest dry haven.
“Therion,” she called, rocking back on her heels, “Therion, how close did you say the nearest town was again?”
At first, there was no response. She rolled her eyes and folded her arms across her chest, toe tapping against the dirt. Moments later, he reappeared, popping more grapes in his mouth. Typical. No doubt he filched them from that poor, unaware old man who meandered by her all of five minutes prior. Honestly, of all people she could have found in her wanderings through Orsterra, she had to find the utmost disagreeable and grumpy human being the world had ever seen.
“Therion,” she repeated petulantly, “were you listening?”
He smacked his lips loudly for a few more seconds while brushing by her with a cold shoulder. His gaze shifted upward before replying with a wordless shrug. Don’t remember, in Therion-speak. Great. Peachy. Where was their map when they needed it? Oh, right. She lost it somewhere in the last cavern. An amatuer mistake, really, but everyone had their off-days. She sighed. Maybe it would be just a small storm, with any luck. The river already threatened to burst at the seams from the early thaw, lapping at banks just a bit too close for comfort.
Quarrycrest couldn’t be that far, right? But Quarrycrest resided within the Cliftlands - and all she could see were trees and tall grasses, with no traces of reddened cliff sides or creepy eggs scurrying about in the shadows. Actually, now that she thought about it, she hardly saw a single monster prowling about. Nor had she heard a single threatening growl or the lighthearted birdsongs. Even the trees remained silent, the absent breeze keeping the leaves still.
She quickened her pace to catch up to Therion. Something was wrong. She opened her mouth, ready to confide her worries, only for a deafening thunder clap to interrupt her. Her body froze as Therion’s shoulders tensed. Neither spoke nor moved as the thunder tapered out. Uh-oh. A springtime tempest? The winds kicked up to a howl, almost tearing Tressa’s hat off her head. She slapped it back down and winced.
“We have to move,” Therion shouted, his voice almost lost to the winds. Another forceful gust nearly toppled them over. He steadied himself before continuing, “Or we have to take shelter somewh--”
The skies opened, unleashing rains like disturbed River Wasps upon them. Tressa’s dress grew soaked within seconds, and Therion’s poncho adopted a darker shade of purple. Hefty branches snapped like twigs off their homes, littering their path. Tressa squeezed her eyes shut as the winds kicked up dirt spitting at her face. Fast! The unusually warm weather must have caused it to swell stronger than normal somehow. She dug her heels into the ground, steadying herself before attempting to take a step forward.
“Hey!” Therion, shielding his face with his arm, shuffled toward her. The bangle’s rusted chain links rattled like loose coins against his skin. He stretched his hand outward, extending an open palm to her. Tressa almost couldn’t believe it - Therion (the same Therion that called her names, refused to look at her half the time, shrunk away whenever they accidentally brushed hands, and only ever talked to her usually in ten words or less at a time) was trying to help her. Maybe she got struck by lightning, died, and still hadn’t realized it yet.
“Hey!” he yelled again, shaking his hand at her. Tressa snapped out of her reverie and latched onto it. Clammy. Cold. Her thumb brushed against one of the many scars painted along his knuckles. She swallowed; no wonder they couldn’t communicate properly. She lived a life where the most danger she ever encountered in her youth was leaping from rock to jagged rock in the Caves of Maiya without adult supervision. His life, if the wild tales spun at taverns were any indication, was no fairytale.
Maybe she should have never tried to convince him to join her.
(Why did he team up with her in the first place? Only the heavens knew; maybe to get her to shut up about it when she badgered him. She just couldn’t stand how lonesome he looked, and she needed a companion to help defend against more treacherous monsters.)
But now was not the time to ponder the past. Now, as she tightened her grip onto him, they needed to get somewhere safe. She squinted through the rain and whipping debris, scouting for any place they could use to wait out the storm.
Lightning flashed. Its brightness illuminated a gathering of large rocks tucked behind the treeline with a large enough gap for them to hide in.
“Wait!” She pointed wildly toward the trees. “Over there!”
He followed her line of sight and nodded in understanding. The winds peeled back the layers of bangs covering his eyes - or, rather, eye, as it turned out, as the second one was replaced by a loving gift of mangled scar tissue - and Tressa forced herself to not stare. She had so many questions, even now, and she knew he would refuse to answer any of them.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden shift in weight. Her arm strained for a second, then yanked her downward toward the river. She staggered and struggled to keep herself upright, confused, before realizing what happened.
The ground caved beneath Therion’s feet.
His nails pierced into her skin in a desperate attempt to not be carried away. Tressa gawked for half a second before falling to her knees, her free hand joining the fight. The river’s unrelenting force kept pulling Therion under, his head dipping beneath the surface several times, only to come back up coughing and spitting. Aleferic help her, she wasn’t that strong, and his slippery skin made it all the more difficult to hold on.
“Tressa,” he choked out, his eye wide with something unfamiliar. She saw the baffled, unsaid questions all over his expression: Why aren’t you letting go? What if you get pulled in? Am I really worth all this effort?
For the first time since she met him, Tressa glimpsed beneath his brash facade and stared face-to-face at a scared boy. Someone must have hurt him. Someone must have broken his trust. Why else would he think she’d ever let him drown? Resolve steeled, she mustered every ounce of strength from her years of lugging Pop’s large boxes filled to the brim with imported wine bottles around the store and pulled.
Her footing almost gave way on a mud patch. Her teeth gritted together, her brow furrowed, and her nostrils flared. She could do this. One foot back. One hard yank. Therion’s body dragged along the puddles. One foot back, another hard yank to safer pastures. He coughed and sputtered and wheezed as he recovered on stable ground. Thank the gods, he was okay.
“Thought I lost you there for a second.” She forced a laugh and swallowed hard. “Don’t scare me like that again!”
He remained silent; the thunder answered for him, loud and bellowing. Right, they needed to get to that shelter. She pulled him up to his feet and held fast to his arm as they inched away from the crumbling riverbank. The trees leered at them as they stepped over fallen logs and stones to the makeshift hiding place. He stepped under it first, and she followed; they had maybe a foot between them for free space while seated. She shivered.
“This is awful,” she complained, wringing out her dress in a fruitless effort to get it to dry. “Remind me to never come back here in the spring, okay?”
No response. Therion’s gaze stared pointedly at the ground, hands balled into tight fists. He was somewhere else, reliving an experience she could never understand. She frowned and snapped her fingers in front of his face, and he gasped, the back of his head banging against the rock.
“What?” he hissed, rubbing the newly-formed sore spot. Ah, he came back. Tressa smiled.
“Has it ever rained like this in the Cliftlands?”
His frown softened in thought. “No. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Lucky! In my hometown, we could get terrible storms that’d keep us inside for days!” She sighed. “It was doubly worse when I was a little kid. It was like trapping a baby Birdian indoors. Mum said I’d cry whenever she said I couldn’t go out.”
“Hm.” Therion’s fingers fiddled with the bangle ensnared on his wrist. “Well, you are loud enough to be mistaken for a Birdian.”
“Hey!”
A tiny inkling of a smile graced his chapped lips. His gaze shifted back to the roaring river while he rubbed his own arms. Then, a look of clarity swept across his face. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
As usual, he didn’t answer; he disappeared around the rock’s corner. Tressa leaned back, frowning. That Therion. He almost just died a few minutes ago, and he thought he could wander out into a storm so bad even the monsters refused to venture out? Anxiety prickled along her skin, urging her to follow - but by the time she resolved to do so, a mop of muddied silver hair returned to her line of vision.
In tow with sopping wet wood under his arm.
“Dry this off with your magic,” he said.
“Are you nuts? I can’t control how strong the winds I use are! I could accidentally tear us to shreds if we’re not careful!”
“Then be careful,” he deadpanned, dropping the wood to her feet. “Or else we’re in for a long, freezing night.”
Geez, what a voice of confidence. Tressa clicked her tongue and glared at the wood. She lifted her shivering hands and prayed to Bifelgan to not let her down now. She’d been good, hadn’t she? Sure, she was a little mischievous here and there, but she needed a little bit of good ol’ Bifel’s luck for this. Her hair rustled, her trademark feather fluffed, and Therion’s poncho billowed as a strong, sharp wind burst from the entrance of their hidey-hole and almost scattered the wood back into the rain.
She opened one eye once her magic died down, its influence no longer thrumming in her blood. She opened the other and clapped her hands together.
“Wow! That actually worked?”
Therion huffed as he picked up each piece and piled them together in a vague shape resembling a makeshift campfire. Then, with a snap of his fingers, red flames waltzed along the kindling, igniting it, and kissed the heavy logs to do the same. Tressa held her hands above it with great relief, chasing away the chill weighing heavy on her shoulders.
“Thanks, Therion,” she said. “Dunno what I would’ve done without you.”
A beat passed. The storm ravaging the Riverlands filled in the otherwise gaping silence with the snapping of flimsy tree branches and the earth-shuddering thunder. The fire’s heat dried the hem of her dress and her boots. She never did master fire magic; it evaded her like the frogs she tried to catch as a kid. Only the winds aided her call, but even they were as finicky as a street cat when offered food.
“Probably gotten to Quarrycrest faster,” he answered at last, tucking his chin into his scarf.
Tressa took a moment to translate his mumbled utterance from Therion-nese to Orsterran: If not for stopping by to pick me up several months back, you would have made it to your destination much faster and avoided the Riverland storms in the first place. We have different agendas, and mine are getting in the way of yours. Why do you even bother to keep me around when you hate my guts?
She tossed a stray twig into the flames.
“But it wouldn’t have been the same,” she replied.
He snorted.
“No, really! It would’ve been soooo boring, Therion! I mean, yeah, I think your, uh, skills are kind of… well, never mind that. And your personality is…” She gestured vaguely in the hopes of conveying her meaning, to which he simply blinked in placid confusion. “Ugh! What I’m saying is, I’m glad,” she looked away, “to have you here with me. That’s all! Who else is gonna make fun of me for eating spoiled rations, huh? Or tease me about losing my feather every once in a while? Or keep me on my toes when it comes to pointing out the rarest of goods? You make this whole journey much more interesting! Really, you’re the best companion I could’ve ever asked for, Therion - even if it didn’t look like it at first, the winds of misfortune were anything but that. I can’t imagine it any different!”
He stared at her, lips parted. A flush crept along her neck and ears, burning hotter than Therion’s magic. Oh, gods, what the heck was she saying! There she went again, blabbering on and on about nonsense that he didn’t even care about. She met his stare, apology ready on her lips -
“Thank you.”
It was so quiet her ears needed to strain to catch it. Thank you. Therion, a thief and a hardened heart, thanked her. Maybe she was the one who fell into the river and drowned after all. Or maybe the Therion who wandered off into the woods was kidnapped and replaced with an incredibly similar replica. She gawked, eyes wide. Did she hallucinate that, maybe?
“For saving me earlier,” he clarified, although they both knew what he actually meant. She didn’t need to translate to figure out that much. His glare returned, pointedly staring at the storm - but his cheeks appeared just a tint redder than normal.
“Um,” she stammered out, pushing her forefingers together, “no biggie.”
Her eyes never led her astray. Not now, not back then when they first glimpsed at him wandering through the many inclines comprising Bolderfall. Some part of her spotted a treasure within him - beneath the many tricky and prickly layers needing only the best locksmiths to pry open. Today, she felt as though she managed to unlock the first set of chains, letting her catch sight of the golden heart beating quietly beneath his standoffish self.
She wanted to see all of it, one day. The real Therion behind the sarcasm.
“I’ll pay you back in Quarrycrest by buying you lunch. Although,” he yawned to display feigned indifference, “knowing your appetite, I may need to line my pockets a little more than usual just to cover the expenses.”
“Wh - that’s so not true! You eat more than me!” His smirk sparked a building tit-for-tat, into familiar territory, into something indescribably warm and pleasant despite their differences. “Don’t you laugh! I take it back - you’re the worst, Therion!”
“Huh, funny. I thought for a second that a Birdian was trying to speak to me?”
“Oh, that’s it!”
And she wouldn’t stop pursuing that dream until it came true.