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“Can you explain to me again why we couldn’t tell anyone that we were coming?” Beta asks, groaning as they trudge through the Stillsands towards Hidden Ember. To not alert anyone of their arrival, Aloy had set down the Sunwing away from the settlement and the sisters were making the final trek of their journey on foot.
“Because it’s a surprise,” Aloy reminds her. “It’s Stemmur and Morlund’s first big show and we’re going to surprise them.”
“And we couldn’t tell Erend? He could’ve met us with mounts or something.”
Aloy flushes at the thought of seeing that delighted look on Erend’s face when they show up without a warning. “It’s a surprise for him, too.”
Beta gives her sister a sidelong glance, but thankfully doesn’t press her. Instead, she just sighs and takes a drink from her waterskin.
The sun’s at the horizon as they finally make it into the settlement. Beta stops in her tracks to really take in the lights of Old Las Vegas. Aloy slings an arm around her sister’s shoulders, happy to share the beautiful view with her. “See? I told you it was worth coming.”
As they make their way up the ramps, Aloy is disappointed not to see Erend casually waiting at the top. This is his spot; the place she always sees him whenever she comes down to return an ornament to Stemmur. Or check in with Morlund. Or other reasons.
Instead, it’s Abadund who waves her down. “Aloy! Erend didn’t tell us that you were coming. Are you staying for the show?”
“That’s why we’re here. Me and my sister.” She steps aside so Beta can wave to the shard counter.
At first Abadund looks shocked at the appearance of Beta, but with more important things on his mind, he shakes his head and continues. “I’ll make sure to let everyone know when I go check in with Morlund before the show starts.”
“No, let’s keep it a surprise.” Truthfully, she wants to support her friends while keeping a low profile. “Have you seen Erend?”
Abadund stops and then frowns at her. “Oh. He didn’t tell you?” Aloy just gives him a blank stare. “He’s in the show.”
“He’s in the show?” Beta asks as they head to one of the cooks to grab something to eat. “Why wouldn’t he tell you?”
Aloy shrugs, still grappling with the news herself. “Maybe he didn’t want to tell us because it isn’t exactly useful for fighting Nemesis?”
“I wonder what he’s going to do,” Beta replies idly as her eyes rake over the different food choices.
The sisters pick out a small feast and grab a table on the upper balcony to eat. Tonight Stemmur has picked the heart ornament to accompany the show. It’s a beautiful night: warm, but not hot; a breeze, but not one that whips up sand; and Aloy finds herself relaxing.
And then a shout out of “Flame hair?!” cuts through the evening air.
Aloy startles, blinking in the fading light. “Petra? What are you doing here?”
Her friend bounds over to the table with two tankards of Scrappersap in her hands. Immediately she sits herself down and sets one of the drinks in front of Aloy.
“The Oseram here commissioned some guns to help shore up the defenses of the town. I should probably thank Erend for the introduction sometime. By the forge, I didn’t know you were going to be here. And—” Petra stops, fully turning her attention to Beta. “Wait. There are two little sparks?”
“Petra, this is my sister, Beta. My much, much younger sister.” She gives Petra a warning look as she takes a gulp of the Scrappersap. The taste is growing on her, but really, she mostly enjoys it because she likes reliving the memory of sharing a drink with Erend when she sips it.
“You have been holding out on me! Why didn’t you tell me you had a sister?”
Thankfully, Aloy is spared from trying to explain that as a hush covers the crowd. Embers start to click on from a platform built halfway between the tower and Morlund’s orb. Soon after, Stemmur walks out to welcome the crowd and launch into his story. It’s a bold tale: one of a Carja soldier and a Tenakth warrior who fall in love during the Red Raids. Star-crossed lovers, he calls them.
Actors join Stemmur on stage and the story takes turns with proclamations of love and twists of tragedy. Beta keeps leaning forward, fully rapt in the performance. Aloy’s never seen anything like this either. Nora and Banuk storytelling, sure, but it didn’t have this kind of emotional resonance that just seeps into her skin.
She’s pretty sure that the performance is about to finish when Erend steps on stage. Aloy feels a familiar twisting in her gut that’s started happening when she thinks about him. She really thought that she just missed him…but her gut doesn’t twist like this when she thinks about Kotallo or Zo. It’s something more. The question is: what kind of more?
Aloy’s still trying to figure that out when Erend opens his mouth and sings.
Admittedly, her knowledge of singing is limited to the Utaru chorus, off-key Oseram drinking songs, and whatever she finds with her Focus, but she’s pretty sure that Erend is good. The melody is pleasing and his voice is deep and rich, which she supposes she should’ve guessed from the way he speaks.
“This slag can sing?” Petra asks and Beta raises her eyebrows at Aloy.
“I didn’t know,” Aloy whispers.
Aloy listens, completely awestruck, and slowly it dawns on her that he is singing a love song. She leans in, focusing on the words, when the lyrics start to shift to more specific things. Things like greenshine eyes and firegleam hair.
And she just freezes.
She hasn’t met everyone in the world, but there happen to be two people who match that description right here, and he better not be singing about her younger sister.
Beta claps her hands over her mouth. Petra lets out a cackle. Aloy can feel her face burning red. A couple other Oseram look over at their group because of Petra’s laugh, but their faces shift to knowing smirks when they see Aloy.
Okay. Mark this down as a very good reason why she should’ve told Erend that they were coming.
Aloy completely loses track of the rest of the performance. She just sits there staring into her ale. While she knew that Erend liked her in the past, he had really toned down the flirting after joining them at the Base. But hearing this? She supposes that it could be a coincidence or a joke written into the song for him, but it doesn’t feel like it. It just feels so earnest.
The applause from the audience snaps her back to attention and Aloy takes a long drink of her Scrappersap to steady herself.
Petra, now cackling louder, wipes tears from her eyes and stands. “Come on, my little sparks. Let’s go congratulate the performers.”
Beta gives her sister a concerned look before following Petra down the ladder, but Aloy takes another few minutes to drain the rest of her Scrappersap. What could she possibly say to him? Normally not having a firm plan doesn’t stop her from doing something. But right this second? She’s terrified.
In fact, part of her actually considers calling the Sunwing and heading back to the Base. But she dismisses that immediately because she can’t leave Beta, and the thought of Erend finding out that she was here and then promptly ran away? The idea of that makes her nauseous.
So she scurries down the ladder and runs into Morlund who is arm-in-arm with Abadund and talking excitedly to Beta.
Petra is nowhere to be found, which is something else that terrifies Aloy.
“Aloy!” Morlund starts. “I was just telling your sister about this amazing contraption we found in the dome. I think it would interest you both. Also, thank you for coming! What a nice surprise!”
“Not for Erend,” Beta mutters.
“Oh!” comes Petra’s booming voice from down the stairs. “Erend Vanguardsman, you will never guess who is here.”
Aloy curses before moving to the top of the staircase. There at the bottom, next to a once-again cackling Petra, is Erend. Aloy offers him a wave. The color drains from his face before he turns around and actually runs out the door.
She sighs. She can’t leave Hidden Ember with her and Erend not even on speaking terms. “Beta, can you stay here? I’ll be back soon.”
“Don’t worry about your sister,” Petra replies as she starts back up the stairs. “I’ll keep an eye on the littlest spark.”
Aloy gives her friend that warning look again before pushing through the crowd to get outside.
Erend has made incredible progress. He’s already past the stage and on his way to Morlund’s docked orb. Aloy takes a running leap off the ramps and uses the shieldwing to bring herself gently down to the sand.
“Erend!” she calls, but he’s already at the orb and lighting the igniter in preparation to launch. So Aloy pushes herself, dashing across the sands and leaping into the basket just as it pulls away from the ground.
They’re both panting, but she manages a “Hey” in between gulps of air.
“Hi,” he replies. “Good jump.”
“Yeah.” Aloy takes a look around as they head up into the sky. Despite the disaster of the last time she rode in this thing, and the awkward tension between her and Erend, it’s still such a gorgeous view of the settlement and embers. “Did Morlund teach you how to fly this thing?”
“Yeah.”
“And your plan was…?”
“To hide up here until you left? Yeah.” Erend rubs the back of his neck and desperately tries to look at anything but her.
“You know I can override Sunwings, right?”
He huffs out a laugh. “I didn’t say it was a good plan.” Finally, he looks up at her, his eyes apologetic. “I’m so sorry, Aloy. I never would’ve sung that song if I knew you were here.”
Whatever she was about to say dies in her throat. An immediate apology was not what she was expecting. Plus, as surprising as the song was, she wasn’t exactly upset by it.
“Erend, I didn’t know you could sing.”
He shrugs. “Neither did I. I was just singing with everyone over a pint after taking out a Behemoth convoy and Stemmur’s ears perked up. It didn’t take much to convince me to do it for the show.”
Aloy shifts away from the side, moving closer to Erend and trying to calm the anxiety in her stomach. While part of that definitely has to do with less-than-fond memories of a tether snap and a Stormbird, she is aware that more of it has to do with the Oseram in front of her. “You have a nice singing voice. The song was…surprising, but I liked it.”
Erend freezes before very carefully saying, “You liked the song?”
“Yeah. And I liked you singing it.” She smiles at him, attempting to diffuse the awkwardness between them. Whatever the meaning of his song—and whatever she wants it to mean—they’re still friends and she doesn’t want to lose that. She can’t lose that.
His eyes meet hers and he curses. “Aloy, don’t look at me like that.”
Her face shifts into one of confusion. “I’m…just looking at you?”
Erend groans and scrubs a hand over his face. “No, you’re not. I have seen you look at me in a lot of ways, but never like that before. That way…well, I don’t dare to hope what it means.”
“Erend, I can’t see my own face. You’re going to have to explain this one to me.”
“What if you just let me borrow that gilder and I can leave without further embarrassing myself?”
Aloy places a hand on his forearm. “Erend, please.”
The man groans again before finally looking at her, his face unreadable. “Aloy, you’re looking at me like…” He swears softly. “I can’t. I can’t do it. Let me have the glider.”
Aloy reaches forward to grab his hands with hers. He’s not wearing his Vanguard gloves so the moment their skin connects she feels a warmth flood through her body. “So you can sing a song about my firegleam hair to strangers but you can’t tell me what my face looks like?”
He stops and gently squeezes her hands. “I don’t care what those people think about how I feel about you, but I do care what you think about how I feel about you. I was hoping the song would get it out of my system. Help me move on.”
“From what?”
“Aloy.” His face drops and he tries to pull back his hands but she holds them tight. Part of her fears that if she lets him go right now, everything between them is going to fall apart and scatter across the sand.
His eyes move from her face, to their clasped hands, and back to her eyes. “Okay, I’ll say it one last time. Aloy, I’m crazy about you. Have been since we met. I’ve tried desperately to stop because you’ve never seemed interested and I didn’t want to burden you with those unwanted feelings. But you’re making that particularly hard right now looking at me with those damn greenshine eyes like you want to kiss me.”
Aloy bites at her lower lip. Is that how she’s been feeling for the last couple weeks? Like she wants to kiss him? That might explain why she hasn’t been able to figure out these feelings: she’s never had them before.
“Please say something otherwise I am taking the glider and leaving you up here,” he begs. Aloy finds it endearing that in the middle of all of this he’s still able to tease her.
She laughs before giving his hands another squeeze. “I’ve missed you, Erend. And not in the way I miss everyone who isn’t at the Base anymore. I’ve really missed you. I’ve missed you always being there when I get back, and how you’d go out of your way to make sure I ate, and…well, pretty much everything. I think about you all the time.”
Aloy’s talking as much as him right now, but she’s hoping if she does the right words will eventually fall out. “Don’t tell Stemmur, but I wanted to surprise you more than I wanted to see the show.” With most of what she needs to say out of her system, Aloy loosens her grip on his hands but still refuses to let go. “I guess I’m saying that those feelings might not be unwanted.”
Erend just stares at her. His face shifts so quickly between emotions that she can’t keep up. Eventually he replies, “Do you mean that? You’re not just saying that? You know I’m with you against Nemesis no matter how you feel.”
Aloy glares at him. “When do I ever not say what I mean?”
His features ease into his usual jovial self. “Okay, that’s better. Now you look like you want to punch me. I can work with that.”
So that’s what she does. It’s light and bounces right off his bicep—which, wow, is something else she’s going to need to process after this—but it does ease the tension between them and they start laughing.
Erend leans back against the side of the orb basket. “How about we just…forget today?”
Aloy fiddles with the wooden railing as she considers his offer. That would certainly be the easiest thing to do: forget that anything happened and just go back to their friendship. It would be simple, really. Preparing for Nemesis means that they can avoid each other, and speaking, and any kind of feeling. Maybe Erend would be able to move on.
And that—the thought of Erend moving on—stops her cold. He deserves to be with someone who cares about him, someone who adores him as much as he adores them, someone who can return all of the affection that he would certainly shower on them.
But trying to imagine him with someone else makes her feel sick.
Which makes everything so painfully clear.
“No. I don’t want to do that.” And she quickly turns towards him, pushing herself up on her toes to wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him.
Erend lets out a muffed yelp as the basket rocks from her sudden movement, but moments later he’s kissing her back and sliding his arms around her waist.
This kiss…it’s everything. It quiets her anxiety, it warms her from the inside out, it makes her feel like a freefall right before she turns on the shieldwing. Every single emotion that she has ignored or tried to box up is bursting out of her chest and threatening to overwhelm her completely.
And it’s perfect.
She only pulls away when she thinks her lungs are going to explode. Erend’s looking at her like she’s the most precious thing in the world, which is not helping her catch her breath.
“So was it the singing or…?”
Aloy cracks up and presses her face into his shoulder. His hand comes up to rub up and down her back and she thinks that this is the most that someone else has ever touched her. It feels comforting and relaxing and right.
“Fair warning,” she starts when she pulls back to look at him. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
Erend smiles at her and lifts a hand to thread into her hair. “That’s never stopped you before.”
She pokes him in the ribs and he catches her hand and squeezes it.
“I don’t have a lot of experience with this either,” he admits. “Not with someone I care about as much as you. We can figure this out together?”
“Yeah.” Aloy grins before leaning up to kiss him again.
Erend lets out a sigh when the kiss breaks. It’s actually pretty cute. “Can you stay? An extra day or something? So we can talk?”
“Maybe some more kissing, too?” she counters.
“Obviously.”
Aloy nods. “Yeah, Beta and I can stay another day.” Her eyes widen. “Beta. Erend, I left her with Petra.”
Erend mirrors the panic on her face and in seconds, he’s turning down the heat for their descent.