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“They get along well, don’t they?”
Solas tilted his chin to look at Viera’vun where she rested, head slack against his chest as he pulled fingers through her hair. The broad leaves of the tree at his back cast dappled light across her face with the sun’s glow glancing off her lashes like gold thread, and he followed the line of her sight as she blinked, slow. Pausing there still tangled against her scalp, he considered the great beasts before them.
“Yes, that they do.”
Not ten paces away were their harts, nestled amongst wildflowers where they had settled within the grasses of the glade to groom one another, just as their riders had. The breeze that cast stray white wisps across his beloved’s forehead was the same that pushed the golden mane of Uila, her mount, as the hind nibbled the gray stag beside her, who in turn draped his head across her shoulder.
“I’m surprised, honestly—Uila’s mother was such an ornery thing, the halla tenders had been trying to breed her since before even I was born,” she continued, her smile not visible to him though he could see it lifting her cheeks. “She’d tolerate no sire, no matter his stock. Harts are prideful creatures that’ll suffer no fools, her least of all…we’d all but given up before Rosnirya worked her magic at the last Arlathvhen and found a mate she’d tolerate. We celebrated for days when she was born, a healthy fawn.”
“Your clan only kept one?”
“We did, it’s dangerous otherwise—they’ve strict hierarchies amongst their herds with power always shifting, keeping more than a couple risks injury, or damage to the camp.” Tarhon, Uila’s silvery complement and Solas’ own mount, chirped as he lifted to shake his head before reciprocating with a lick of his own to his companion’s cheek, as if it were a kiss. “That's why I’m so shocked. Considering her mother’s temperament, I’d expected quite a bit more biting, and maybe a little less nuzzling. Instead, she seems quite taken with him.”
“Ah,” Solas exhaled, eyes closing, “I might have had a hand in her tolerance, I’m afraid.”
Her head rocked back, looking up at him with ripples twisting her brow. “What could you possibly mean by that?”
Though her curiosity was a beautiful thing meant to be kindled, nurtured, met with sincerity and truth, he dreaded the way it made him warp reality to fit his duplicity. Such simple facts, easy enough to explain away with millennia of experiences, were dirtied every time he opened his mouth and let slip a lie, and her interest had become double-edged. Still, there was light there, in her eyes and in every question, and it made a place within his chest. He breathed deep, and looked ahead.
“You see the silk woven into Tarhon’s antlers?” Solas asked, and Viera’vun nodded. “During my travels I saw ancient elven warriors riding such steeds into battle, wreathed with blue ribbons regardless of their master’s colors,” he recalled. “I sought a spirit of learning once, one who’d studied such histories, for the answer to another question…but found a truth never asked for instead. They spoke of the sure-footed hart, steady and stubborn, and how the ribbons kept them from quarreling with their kind. I recalled it once Tarhon chose me.”
“That’s strange. Why would ribbon keep them from fighting one another?”
“I cannot say. The spirit believed the color tricked potential rivals into thinking their antlers were small or broken, maybe, and therefore an unworthy opponent.”
Viera’vun swiveled then, propping herself up to face him. “You’re telling me Uila tolerates Tarhon because she thinks he’s pitiful?”
Solas breathed a laugh barely stifled. “In a way, I suppose,” he hummed, holding onto just how it warmed his throat. “At the very least, she sees him as no threat. It seems Learning’s gift has finally been realized.”
Quiet then as she tilted her head, save the cracking of branches above and the soft grunts of the harts. Viera was thinking—he could see it in the set of her jaw, and the way she blinked twice, quick, as she studied the ridges in the bark behind his head.
Suddenly, her eyes flashed back to hold his, brazen and unwavering.
“...Do you have more?”
He hesitated. “Well, yes. But she won’t need one, so long as Tarhon has—”
“Give it to me.”
Still sat between his legs, she tucked her knees beneath her to free a hand to proffer, palm open and expectant before him. There was something in her composure that couldn’t be trusted, as if in anticipation, and yet he could find no reason to deny the request. Reluctantly, Solas flipped open the pouch at his belt, pulling from it a long blue ribbon to droop across her outstretched hand.
“It is yours.”
She considered it a moment, threading the long strip of silk through deft fingers as she was lost to thought; then, with a glint in her amber eyes, she leaned forward to ring it round his head, so close in reaching that he could smell the smoke from last night’s campfire still clinging to her leathers. Affixing it deliberately with what he could only assume was a bow, she tucked the loose tails of the ribbon behind his ears tenderly, letting her fingers trace the curve of his jawline to come to rest, cupping his cheek.
“Are you implying I’ve the qualities of a hart, vhenan?”
“I’m declaring it!” she recited, mimicking his tone with a smile so sincerely delighted, he felt a twinge in his chest. “You’re a prideful creature, who does not suffer fools. Maybe now Iloniyn will stop trying to start fights with you.”
“Yes, possibly,” he allowed, “seeing as he’ll be preoccupied, laughing at my expense.”
“Perish the thought! He’ll have one of his own, I assure you.”
Her hands wandered from his cheeks, a whisper of warmth trailing down his neck to his shoulder where she lingered, eyes pensive and full. They flicked across his face as if trying to memorize every feature, and he found himself doing the same. Unbidden he thumbed the sweep of her cheekbone to the lobe of her ear, caressing the arch of her neck, wrapping round to tangle himself again in the hair at the back of her head until, finally, she rewarded him with the press of a kiss before his ear.
“And that,” she uttered, the gentle pressure of her temple against his own enveloping him wholly, “is another implication, ma’lath. I trust you can parse its meaning on your own.”