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They could let themselves starve and resurrect hungry, but Saint has no taste for suffering. Instead, when the red sun dips in the west, he starts gathering wood for a fire. "This wood is wet," he tells Osiris as he dumps an armload of branches onto the mossy ground. "There must have been rain. That means there will be mushrooms!"
Osiris, sitting with his back braced against his Sparrow, looks up from his research notes. "You're free to hunt for them, if you like." He glances back down at the book open on his lap, where the data from London lies half-digested in longhand. When Saint doesn't answer at once, Osiris takes up his pen again and rounds his shoulders over his work.
"Join me," says Saint. He's aware that he's half-pleading, one hand outstretched to help Osiris to his feet. "You've had your head in that book since we left the City."
"The City needs what's in this book," Osiris retorts. "All our intelligence on Fallen movements will mean nothing if the Darkness returns. We fail to understand the Collapse at our peril."
"Yes, yes, I am not questioning our research," Saint replies, throwing up his hands. "But it has been two days since we ate a good meal. I am tired of ration bars, Osiris. Come with me. There will be mushrooms. Acorns, maybe. Small animals we can hunt."
Osiris lifts his chin until he can look Saint in the eyes. "You want me to hunt rabbits with you," he says—slowly, as though he might have misheard. As though the prospect is too bewildering to consider.
"I want you to put down your book and spend an hour with me," Saint answers. A note of frustration has crept into his voice that he cannot bring himself to gentle.
But it must have been the right thing to say, because Osiris offers his hand and lets Saint draw him to his feet. He is lighter than Saint remembers; even in his armor, Osiris is bird-boned and slim. "Mushrooms and acorns, you say," Osiris repeats. His voice is warm, and surprisingly kind.
"I do not know what else is good to eat in these woods," Saint admits. "Some kind of plants. Little fish in the streams."
"There are all kinds of edible plants," Sagira says brightly. "Some of them aren't even poisonous."
Between the four of them, they fill Saint's helm with the fruits of the land—wild mushrooms, acorns and walnuts, dandelion greens and sorrel and tufted yarrow leaves. Quick-fingered Osiris gathers up late bilberries by the handful, and Sagira and Geppetto steer them away from hemlock and nightshade and the tempting cream-white caps of le calice de la mort.
They speak only a little, pointing out a fallen tree overgrown with mushrooms or drawing one another's attention to unfamiliar birdsong. Once, Saint whistles the low, mournful melody of a dove, and soon enough the forest echoes with answering songs.
It's healing to share this almost-silence, and to know that for the space of an hour, Saint has Osiris's full attention.
By the time they return to their Sparrows, the sunlight is almost gone, and Geppetto lights their way with the beam of her single eye. While Saint digs through his pack for their cooking pan and some oil, Osiris takes the still-wet wood and pulses Solar Light through it until it dries and kindles.
They cook the mushrooms with the nuts and sorrel over the fire, eating bilberries in the warm red light as the mushrooms go brown and sweet around the edges. "Careful not to burn it," Osiris says, with a tilt of his lips that isn't quite a smile.
"Will you never let me forget that?" Saint groans. "I had just met the most beautiful man I had ever seen."
Osiris raises a brow. "Surely not."
"It's the truth! I looked at you and forgot I was cooking. You should be glad I did not burn my hands." Even so, he shifts the pan out of the fire and seasons their supper with a pinch of salt. They have little salt, and less pepper; he will have to ration them carefully, if Osiris truly means to gather data across all of Europe.
Before he had left the Last City, Vell Tarlowe had come to him at the foot of the Wall. The steel scaffolding around it had gleamed like bone beneath the moon, and Vell's dark face had been edged with silver. We still need Titans for the Pilgrim Guard, he'd said. You've been to more of the solar system's dark places than anyone else I know. There's no one I trust more to help guide people into the light.
When I return, I will stand beside you, Saint had answered. But this time, brother, I must follow a light of my own.
Saint divides the mushrooms between two plates, along with the dandelion greens and the yarrow and the last of the bilberries. Osiris takes his plate with quiet thanks, then settles in with his book before the fire. The click of fork on metal and the scratch of Osiris's pen are a quiet accompaniment to the doves' songs and the pop of burning bark.
In those moments, when the firelight softens the hard edges of Osiris's face and draws out the green flecks in his eyes, Saint remembers what it is to be dazzled by him. He feels his heart swelling in his chest, although it has been many lifetimes since he has had a heart.
"I've missed this," Saint says, low. Osiris looks up from an idle sketch of a pyramid ship, looming over the London skyline. "In the City, there is so much to do—so many things to build, so many people who need our help. And I am glad to help them. But ..."
"But?"
He shakes his head, chuckling. "Ah, maybe sometimes I only want to be Saint-14, and not their hero."
"Is there a difference?" Osiris asks. His tone is deceptively light; he knows the weight of what he asks.
Saint slides around the fire until he can stretch out on his bedroll and rest his head in Osiris's lap. Osiris's fingertips graze his jaw, his neck, the sculpted curve of his eye socket. His hands smell sharply of yarrow. For a while, Saint lets himself give in to the idle tenderness of the touch, and he does not think on how to answer.
At last, as the fire fades to embers, Saint heaves himself up to sitting. His face is still hot from the fire. He feels lax and lazy, warm and unformed, as though he is a crucible full of metal waiting to be cast.
Osiris regards him across the fire, his face awash in its low red glow. "Well?" he asks, as though their conversation has suffered only a momentary pause.
"I do not know," Saint answers at last. "But sometimes I forget that I need a good meal, and to walk in the forest and hear the birds. And with you—with you, I remember."