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Even as the hour gathers closer to Dawning than Sunset, the streets of Meridian are never empty.
They’re never quiet, either. The collective thrumming of countless conversations and city-sounds is constant enough to turn true silence into a cause for question. It changes form in the late marks, though, fading into something more loose-threaded than the discordant rabble of the daytime markets. Voices become breathy and mellow, carefree and intimate. Usually slurred, too, doused with drink or exhaustion or both. Indistinction huddles in a mass, like revelers sharing stories and a bottle around a fire, punctuated with raucous laughter and underscored by the pluck of a kunabass or strike of an iron pendulum. By all rights it should be a nuisance—instead, it soothes, like a familiar meandering song meant to hush a child.
The late-night hum drifts in through the open window of Talanah’s apartment. She departed from the Lodge hours ago, relieved of her armor and finery, but still beholden to duty: a stack of reportage and commentary from the hunting grounds waiting for her reply and inscription. Wearing the title of Sunhawk has meant taking on busy days that spill into busy nights, full of managing kiss-ass noble chuffs and ledger leaves while her bow begs to be taken down from its rack.
Tonight is no different. This piled-up task has kept her trapped at her desk, hand-cramped and bleary-eyed and missing out on the enjoyment being had elsewhere. And while she’s blazed through a number of them, her responses have grown shorter and shorter in succession (—but what if we had more Glinthawks, the Greatrun keeper had scrawled in suggestion; No, Talanah had written back, without elaboration). Maybe a break is warranted. Disinclined to argue with the impulse, she drops her reed pen and sits back, closing her eyes, letting Meridian’s murmuring pulse clear out her work-weary head.
Single strands of speech tend not to disentangle themselves from the whole, especially for an idle listener. But some voices carry farther than others. Some voices Talanah would be able to pull out of the densest ravel. Some voices she would know anywhere.
There’s one voice she listens for more closely than others.
Talanah’s eyes open as that voice rises from the street directly below her window.
Seems that the night’s taken a turn.
“Okay, this is it. I’m ready. I’ll do it. Like it’s nothing, right? I’m going to tell her.”
Oh, she’s drunk, Talanah realizes at once. And quite so. Rare, if not altogether novel. There’s a strange and messy softness dulling the edges of her speech, bleeding the words together. Still, she sounds like she does when she mutters to herself during a hunt, all adamant persuasion—even though it’s abundantly clear that she handles her bow and spear better than she handles her spirits.
She’s also not muttering to herself at all.
“You’re damn right you’re gonna tell her!” a second voice pipes up in enthusiastic affirmation, deep and easy, both as unmistakable and thoroughly stewed as its companion. “You’re gonna sit her down, look her right in her pretty face, and say: Sunhawk, you’re the heat in my furnace, you’re the hammer in my ribs, I wanna melt down and blend with you like—”
“Shhh! Look, the window’s open and you’re being so loud,” Aloy says, loudly.
Talanah should probably call down to let them know that any hope of subtlety is already long-gone, and that they’ve probably been heard in Ban-Ur. She doesn’t, though, because it’s much more entertaining to listen in on the now marginally-quieter discussion. But before long, it turns into an inarticulate sort of struggle—alternating interrupted phrases and noises of effort that reach Talanah’s ears as one confusing jumble.
(Come on, a little help—you want me to—no, you ass, not like that—I thought this was, like, your thing, couldn’t you just—yes, obviously, but I want my hands free so I can get a better grip when—heh, oh, of course you do—I think I can reach if you let me get all the way—OW, by fire and spit, you’re all knees and elbows!—and you’re so sweaty, ugh, why?!—it’s hot and we’ve been drinking, that’s what happens when a big guy like me drinks, also watch the hair!—stop whining, you barely even have any—I’ve got enough that it hurts when it gets yanked!)
The weird ruckus tips Talanah’s amusement into vague concern, enough to make her approach the window to investigate—and she nearly jumps out of her skin when Aloy’s head and shoulders pop up from below before she can lean out. It must surprise Aloy, too; for a moment she just stares, shocked, as though the idea of Talanah being present in her own home was some far-fetched potential instead of a reality until she observed it.
“Hi,” she says, finally, with the anticlimax of further dazed gawking.
“By the Sun.” Talanah shakes her head as she takes inventory of Aloy’s swaying gaze, crooked armor, and cheeks flushed deeply enough to mask her freckles. Moving closer, palms flat on the window’s inner sill, she says, “Thought you’d just hoist yourself into my apartment?”
“...yeah, that was the plan.” At least she’s an honest drunk. And Talanah would be lying if she claimed it wasn’t endearing.
“That’s not the easiest feat after so much fun, Aloy. You smell like a fresh-stripped gearwheel. It’s coming out of your pores already.”
“I get around pretty well like this.” Aloy gives her a self-assured shrug and a half-grin that’s more lopsided than usual. “I’m plenty steady.”
Then, not steady at all, her whole torso pitches to the left and she flails out her arms to regain her balance. Clued in by the lack of grip and the muffled curse from below, Talanah leans farther out, peers down. Erend is there with boots on the ground, ruddy-cheeked and indeed sweat-soaked—he has Aloy bolstered all the way up on his shoulders, his gauntleted hands holding her knees as her legs dangle in front of his chest armor. Adjusting her weight like she’s a light but still ungainly sack of maize, he blinks up at Talanah.
“Pretend I’m not here,” he tells her in a false whisper, then offers her an exaggerated wink.
Blatantly ignoring his hint, calm of voice: “Did you get my Thrush drunk, Captain?”
“Hey, she got herself drunk.” The retort comes too quickly, like he had prepared it far ahead of the question. He holds his hands up in a gesture of defensive innocence—then remembers himself and secures Aloy’s knees against his shoulders again. “I just promised her that the Scrappersap would taste better if she kept drinking.”
“I see.” Talanah could easily interrogate the situation—not out of crossness or disappointment, just curiosity. She could question aloud what steered Aloy’s categorically uncharacteristic choice to partake—to dive so deep into her cups that the act of clambering onto her friend’s shoulders to reach Talanah’s window progressed from an impulsive idea to an absolute night’s-end imperative. But this was bound to happen on one of the evenings she joins up with the likes of Erend or Petra Forgewoman—both of whom have hollow legs and a perpetual thirst to slake.
But she’s here now. That’s what matters. And apparently, Aloy inebriated is just Aloy amplified: all determination and Charger-headed stubbornness, less the climbing prowess. So instead, Talanah does her best to keep her mouth from twitching into a smirk as she asks Aloy, “How did that work out?”
“It didn’t.” Aloy shakes her head no and cringes. “It just stopped tasting like anything at all.”
Talanah’s ready to ask how many empty flagons it took to get there (though she’s not sure she’d trust the answer she’d get) when Aloy’s eyes ignite with abrupt clarity of purpose, golden-green flaring in the warm sparkerlamp glow. Smoldering, catching flame, burning through. The look that comes over her when she draws back her bowstring, taking lethal aim. Flicker and glare, solar in spite of its size—remnants of daylight gleaming in her irises—warmth on Talanah’s skin, in her throat, through her marrow.
Pulling closer (thereby urging her sturdy Vanguard base face-first into the exterior wall), Aloy braces her hands on the windowsill and sets her jaw.
“Talanah,” she says with careful gravity, enunciating each syllable like she’s only just met her tongue, “there’s something I need to tell you.”
Smirk, smile, and sigh alike brim at the border of Talanah’s control. She keeps her mouth in check by trapping her lower lip between her teeth, relishing the way Aloy’s gaze is drawn to the tiny motion.
“Okay, I’m listening.”
Eyes still ablaze, Aloy goes to speak. But the boldness wilts just as suddenly as it appeared when the words—any words, any sound—fail to arrange, and rust away in crumbling, silent hesitation. Brow wrinkling and frowning in something one degree beyond contemplation, Aloy reconsiders—like trying to tether a shapeless thought to something solid, forcing a piece of unfamiliarity through the pane of something that carries tangible meaning. This takes enough effort to make her rub at her temple when she’s up to her back teeth in some Alewife’s special brew. After a long moment of consideration she nods, once and with enthusiasm, settling on:
“A Longleg shriek.” It’s simple and triumphant—and altogether unhelpful, but Aloy’s no less satisfied for it. Talanah, though, just squints.
“You’re, uh, gonna have to give me a little more than that, sorry.”
“You,” Aloy says, head bobbing again. “Being around you. It feels like a Longleg shriek.”
Silence. Even the street-sound shudders in lapse. At first, the statement is too baffling to even be offensive. Talanah blinks, blindsided, and from below, Erend breaks his own rule of nonexistence in a disbelieving, dismayed tone: “Oh no…”
The implication of the comparison registers slowly, but when it strikes, it strikes all at once—pounces like the most agitated but also most lethargic Sawtooth. And while Aloy’s ears go as red as her drunk-blush cheeks, her expression is more disgruntled than embarrassed, like it’s absurd that there could’ve been a misinterpretation of such a clear meaning.
“No! Not like that.” As she goes on, her words form slowly enough to keep from slurring, but there would likely be far fewer of them if she was sober. “I just mean that I get...stunned? Punched in the jaw and skull and everywhere else—fuzzy, like an echo you can hear but not understand, and so loud but not in my ears—until it’s impossible to concentrate or fight back.”
“Let me make sure I’m following you,” Talanah says, deadpan. “Being around me is like...getting punched senseless?” (Again, muttered from out of sight: “Boot to my balls, Aloy, I gave you my best lines—”)
“You didn’t let me finish! Impossible to concentrate on anything but you.” A beat, a breath. Aloy grimaces, eyes squeezed shut, scrubbing at her forehead with the heels of her palms. Her speech collapses into clumsy fits and starts, unmoored from the familiar context of violent machine attacks and avoiding the (cringe-making, sorry Erend) Oseram come-ons. “Even when I’m away, I think about you all the—I feel like I’m more than your—thought it’d be suffocating before but now I do think it could be worth it to be—ah, I mean—”
Everything works its way into a seething clutter. Aloy bites off the phrase and then bares her teeth, nostrils flared. A clipped snarl of sheer frustration rends from her throat before she can spit more out—clench-jawed, glare-gazed, naked candor all but shouted in exasperation so discordant with the words:
“I have feelings for you, okay?”
In the standstill moment that follows, there’s so much Talanah could say. To sweep up all of the choked-off fragments and furnish them with conclusions, to smooth out the creases that break across Aloy’s brow when her bottled-dazed mind catches up with what her mouth just spilled. But Talanah’s learned that actions are a more potent means of conviction. Sudden movements are a risk, but sometimes they’re necessary.
So instead, and without preamble, she gets her fists in the fur at Aloy’s collar—pulls her in—and kisses her.
Kisses her softly, but without inhibition. Kisses her to disrupt and disarm, to calm, to relieve any doubt. To quench Aloy’s mouth in a way the evening hasn’t yet. There’s a muffled croak of astonishment before Aloy softens into the contact, one restless hand finding the back of Talanah’s neck, the other her jaw. Below, Erend grunts as all the forward motion compels another quick headbutt into stone. But he said to disregard him, after all, so Talanah does. Just immerses herself in Aloy’s reaction: how her fingers twitch, how the act of returning the kiss changes from question to claim. And it comes with the secondhand bite of Scrappersap: smooth burn from tongue to throat to chest, with a sweetness mingling through it—peaches—peaches, Aloy’s favorite, no wonder she was able to swallow down this much. But her mouth also tastes sharp and silken, bright and wild—like midsummer held loosely and distilled into affection, like coming back together, like Aloy, like every time Talanah has kissed her and every time she will.
Talanah withdraws, satisfied, only granting the narrowest space as Aloy reels from more than drink alone.
“You’d better have feelings for me, you bunghead,” she murmurs, tracing Aloy’s lower lip and chin with the pad of her thumb. “We have been courting for months, after all.”
It takes a few heartbeats for the words to register. And when the drowned-away recollection hits, it does so like a hardpoint arrow slicing through fog and finding resounding purchase in spite of it. Aloy’s eyes flare again—but this time, cast into stars instead of deep intensity. Their corners crinkle as she grins, asymmetrical, wide enough to bare the charming crookedness of her bottom teeth.
“That’s...that’s definitely good, then,” she breathes, pure relief. Like she could hear it repeated again and again, whether she’s drunk or sober, and be bewildered every time.
“Yeah. It is.”
(“Courting the Sunhawk, Aloy!” from below, equal measures proud and awed at information that should be new to exactly nobody, especially nobody within earshot; again, it’s probably for the best that Talanah doesn’t know how much Scrappersap they put away.)
“Guess I shouldn’t have called you a Longleg shriek,” Aloy says, her smile lingering through a hopeful wince, “or a fight gone bad?”
Talanah meets the bid for reassurance by rolling her eyes and kissing her again, lips parted to let tongue slip through—tame, just enough to make a subtle point—earning a hitched breath from Aloy and a “heh, nice” from Erend.
“No, I’ll take either. Or both. Coming from you, I suppose they’re compliments.” Talanah shrugs, then pats Aloy’s cheek with an open palm. “Now, please get off of Erend and come inside. It’s late and you’ve already doomed yourself to a rough morning. Think you can track down the door in your condition? Or do I need to haul your ass in through the window?”
Aloy considers the question, briefly, before her expression shifts—heavy-lidded eyes glinting like a blade brandished under the midday Sun, mouth tight and curving, wicked. Talanah’s pulse coils, spine buzzes.
“I don’t need you to hold my hand.” Old words, tumbling out with loose inflection, turned around and echoing back. Old words to be believed, even when they’re soft around the edges.
A flurry of movement, then: somewhere in the vicinity of nimble, downright impressive for inebriation. Aloy frees her legs from Erend’s hold, gets her feet on his shoulders, and leaps off of them like an unsuspecting but convenient foothold. Ignoring his startled wheeze, she careens through the window and into Talanah. Untempered momentum sends them tangling together and staggering until their bodies negotiate mutual steadiness. Aloy’s hands, emboldened by the remembering, settle like habit—waist, then hip, shoulder blade. Everything breaks into flashes of sensation. Submerged, overcome, delighted, breathless. Space between, rendered senseless. Seeking out its opposite instead. Finding it with ease. Talanah’s head swims, stone-sober but losing coherence, in the eager pressure and body heat and the wispy scent of peaches.
“Hey!” Erend hollers from the street, voice booming with feigned frustration, betraying obvious laughter. “You’re welcome!”
But Aloy’s gratitude remains unspoken—her mouth is already occupied. Talanah meets her to quench the haste. Hands, too, distracted. Roaming, splaying, intentional despite the haze—fists bunching in silk—tugging closer, untwisting, slipping underneath—
The streets of Meridian continue to thrum, waiting for the Sun-Priests’ voices to meld in with the song of Dawning. For a time, it goes unnoticed, lost in another closer rhythm.
The Captain of the Sun-King’s Vanguard stumbles home, laughing so hard he could keel over.