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“So? Do you want to come along?”
Elisa’s whisper feels loud. They’re both sitting up, and Alexis glances behind herself, at Belle and Jamaica curled up with the edge of their sleeping bags pulled to their necks. The eyes of those two hunters stay shut, and they don’t so much as twitch.
“Right now?”
She tries to match Elisa’s volume. Her words seem to carry throughout the tent anyway.
The standard-issue piece isn’t big, meant for four people and their belongings, but neither takes up a lot of space. The hunters, as Alexis learned over the past three months, travel light and are quick on their feet. They settle for no more than a week, before they dismantle the entire camp into tarps, weapons and metal tins, folded into backpacks, carried and moved. Even during periods of settlement, they’re constantly out: training, gathering and hunting. They’re restless.
“When else?” Elisa prompts. “Tomorrow?”
“Aren’t we moving out by then?”
“Exactly.”
Winter’s ending, but vestiges of it remain, and Alexis feels it in her bones. Her own sleeping bag is still fully zipped up. But Elisa’s leaning in, then, her electric blanket falling past her shoulders, leaving them bare in her singlet and undone hair pooling around them.
“Come on, the last time I came here, I went all the way to the cliffside, and let me tell you, it’s worth it.”
“Right,” she says softly, wondering how many years, maybe decades, Elisa meant by ‘the last time’. She inches closer, too, as she tries to decide. “I mean, well, what about Thalia? She’s asleep by now, right? Do we need to wake her?”
She doesn't mean it as a direct agreement, but Elisa shifts, then she's pushing the blanket off her lap and kneeling, hand searching under the covers, before pulling out her jacket with a satisfied smile. “We'll just let her know later.”
Hey, wait, Alexis nearly says, but she finds herself getting out and up into a crouch, too. Her jacket's already on her, zipper pulled to her neck, since she’s still not accustomed to the changing temperatures of their travels. The blessing of their Lady helps, but perhaps some things can only be cultivated with time.
They have all the time in the world now.
Elisa pushes past the flaps of the tent's entrance, holding them out. Alexis slips out alongside her, buckling up her leather boots, crouched in the wild grasses touched by frost. It’s dark, but under the light of the moon, she sees fine. The weight of her wooden bow presses along her spine, an added comfort.
Elisa notices her armed, and her lips quirk. “Hey, if we run into trouble, I’ll protect you.”
“Please.” Alexis’s heart warms, as they trudge away from the tent. “Not if the cold gets you before the monsters get me.”
“Then I guess you’ll just have to keep me warm,” says Elisa, then she’s trudging off towards the closest thicket of trees.
They made camp only that evening, as the sun’s tipping down, at the end of their cross-state journey. It’s downtime, Elisa told her that day. No missions from their Lady, so their lieutenant’s content to let the hunters roam. Elisa also dragged the backpack with their tent’s materials off of Belle and dumped it by the fringes of the clearing, close to the pine trees bordering them. Jamaica got to setting it up, while Belle grumbled about it being too far from the campfire at the centre of the camp. Elisa teased her about being lazy and refused to budge.
Now, Elisa’s humming as she's leading them, soles crunching on twigs, following a trail Alexis doesn’t see. The towering trees offer them cover for their slip-away.
“Did you plan this?” The question blurts out of her.
“Did I?” Elisa slings her jacket around her own neck, sleeves knotted and tossed over her chest like it's a scarf. “What, would you rather everyone else follow us?”
“We go to places as a group all the time.” She pauses. “As a… Hunt.”
“Yeah, but the Hunt is family.” Elisa stresses the last word, but Alexis frowns, considering it, before Elisa bumps her shoulder. "Come on, back before we found you, did you want to be with your parents and brothers twenty-four seven?"
Alexis doesn’t like thinking about them. Her nose scrunches. “Not really.”
“Same thing here, isn’t it?”
“Really?”
“I’d say so.”
Alexis scrutinises the ridges along a tree trunk they pass, as if it’d give her clarity. She remembers her first day at camp clearly. It was marked by confusion, that the Greek pantheon exists, that a complete alteration of her reality is possible for someone like her. For weeks afterwards, each day felt like a movie, its unforeseeable end looming.
Only, Lady Artemis remains a constant. Even when called away to Olympus, her blessing of immortality glimmers wispy silverish on their skin. Only, the hunters look out for her as she trains, studies and fights. Even when she messes up, they treat her with familiarity and care. That must be what a family is supposed to be.
But Elisa... Alexis used to watch her from the sidelines, flitting from group to group of hunters during dinner, chatting them up in different tongues. She tried to do the same with Alexis once, at the end of her first week, plopping down by her before the crackling fire, asking how she's settling in, but all Alexis remembers doing is stammering. A day later, Elisa strode into the midst of Jamaica and Belle playing cards – with Alexis attempting and learning – and declared her new status as their fourth tentmate.
They’ve talked since then. Elisa isn’t scary at all. She’s generous with knife-fighting lessons. And she steals extra venison jerky for her.
“Then what about you?” Alexis asks. “I’ve been following you wherever you go all these months.”
“You're asking if I'm tired of you?” Alexis doesn't answer, because that’s technically what she is asking, isn’t it? But Elisa continues. “Nah, I like you.” She turns to her and winks, eyes glittering. “And you like me.”
Before Alexis can respond, Elisa slides a hand under her elbow and quickens her pace, pulling her along.
“Okay, come on. It’s right ahead. Golden hour won’t wait.”
Alexis grips her bow to stop it from bouncing as they’re almost speed-walking. She remembers the way back. Sort of. The pine trees look sparser here and she's trained with picking out different scents, so perhaps they won’t get lost.
Alexis cranes her neck back to check. On the frosty grass are their footprints, the trail of them their sole path back to camp. But save for it, the trees and leaf litter pretty much look the same.
Wincing, she faces forward again and eyes the lightening, purpling sky.
“So what are we looking for?” she asks. “There’s nothing but… you know, plants.”
Elisa’s eyes are narrowed as her gaze roves over the surroundings. “You think they all look the same?”
“Um... No.”
“No is correct.”
But Elisa doesn’t explain. Alexis sighs. They’re slowing down, though she can’t see what they could possibly be looking for. This place isn’t a field, and there’s no water body, no alternative biodiversity she can identify with her naked eye. There’s just trees, so tall their peaks aren’t visible from the ground, their trunks and crowns criss-crossing, blocking out the dusky sky.
Elisa stops before one of them. She touches the bark, palm pressed against its shallow ridges. Her other hand slips down Alexis's arm, as if it forgets what it’s holding, before she grasps her wrist.
Elisa’s palm is cool on her skin. Alexis lets her empty hand dangle from her grip.
“Yes,” Elisa murmurs. “This one.”
“This one what?”
“It’s the right one.” Elisa points up. “This way.”
Alexis has so many questions, because her fellow hunter is being circumventive, but Elisa’s already got a foot on the bark and two hands planted on the trunk. With an exhale, she hefts herself up.
“Hurry,” she calls, and up she goes.
Alexis follows suit.
Tree climbing would have never been a past-time she considered pursuing in her old life. The ones along the coast back home don’t offer many footholds, and her parents would’ve been aghast at what she’s doing, sneaking off in the night without supervision and clambering around in forests she doesn’t even know. Act like an adult, they would say, even though she wasn’t, isn’t, and will never be one now.
The thought trails after the like the clinging of smoke from the dinner's fire, and she navigates upwards, fingers digging into bark, sides of her soles finding footholds, with ease. Prior to joining the Hunt, this body of hers wouldn’t have been able to do this. Now, it can. Alexis doesn’t know how to feel about that. This body is still hers, just enhanced, like the protagonists of the superhero comics she liked. Their origin stories involved a lot more tragedy and accidents and a lot less discovering ancient religious pantheons still existed and governed the laws of the world, though.
And they certainly never involved someone like Elisa.
A hand thrusts out in front of her, fingers long and thin. Alexis takes it. “Woah,” escapes her, as Elisa heaves her up onto the thick branch. Elisa’s forearm is secure behind her back, as Alexis settles in the nook from which the branch protruded out from the trunk – wide and old, comfortingly capable of holding their weight.
“Good?”
This close, Elisa speaks next to her ear.
“Yeah.” Elisa doesn’t seem to be shivering, but Alexis presses her shoulders to hers, and slips her own arm around the hunter, a little cautious. When Elisa snuggles close, Alexis lets her fingers brush the skin of Elisa’s arm. “Are you… sure you aren’t cold?”
Elisa looks pleased. “Not anymore. Now,” she says, nodding at what’s before them, “you gonna appreciate the view we snuck out here for or what?”
“I just thought– oh. Wow.”
“Right?”
They aren’t that near the edge of a cliff, but it doesn’t matter. They’re high up enough that the peaks of trees stretch out before them, before dropping off into rolling plains of grass, sea-like under the starlight. The moon’s full today, its luminance spilling out of its roundness, as if their Lady herself is with them tonight.
Alexis shivers.
They fall quiet, legs dangling and the back of their shins against bark. Their thighs press together. The sounds and smells of the forest trickle into her senses, now that Alexis is focused on more than just trotting after Elisa and her unspoken plans, her quirks and her words. Wind rustles the leaves, a gentle woosh curling around them. Crickets sing. Far away, an owl hoots. Here, Alexis can believe that one day she’ll be familiar enough with these sensations that she could be just like Elisa, capable of identifying creatures by their calls, both the natural and the supernatural.
She once asked if that was a power that came with Lady Artemis’ blessing. No, her fellow hunter told her, that’s not from power. That’s knowledge that comes with experience and education, and with time.
How old are you, really? Alexis opens her mouth to ask, wondering if Elisa will give her a straight answer, but Elisa beats her first:
“How far do you think we can get?”
“I– Get?”
Elisa’s watching the horizon. They aren’t at the top of the tree they’ve chosen, though now it occurs to Alexis she doesn’t know why. A canopy covers them, preventing her from seeing the vast expanse of the night sky immediately above them, except for hints of dark from which stars glimmer. The dappled light on Elisa casts shadows beneath her eyes, underneath her bangs.
“Get where?” Alexis asks again.
Elisa shifts, raising one of her thighs until it’s laid across Alexis’s lap. Alexis nudges her hard, but Elisa’s hooked her knee over hers and man, her leg’s heavy.
“Elisa,” she begins, but her companion cuts her off.
“Just indulge me, will you?” Her voice is low-toned and is too controlled, none of that impulsivity and airiness Alexis has come to associate with her. “Down this tree, down the rocks, across this field of grass. Guided by the shining light of our Lady’s moon.”
Alexis tries to make sense of it. “Like… what, if we race right now?”
“Yeah.” Elisa’s arm still brackets Alexis’s back, and she has no idea how that position is comfortable. “Yeah, like a race.”
“Where’s this coming from? And why are you whispering?”
“Come on, just tell me. Do you think we could make it? Or hey, easier question: Which one of us would win?”
“Um… You?”
“Me. You mean that, right? Me?”
“Elisa.” Alexis takes her by the shoulders and pushes her away. Her leg stays, and Alexis can feel warmth on her cheeks from the proximity. Save for the parents she left behind, the brothers she used to share a room with, and the hunters she sparred with during training, she doesn’t get this close to people.
Elisa peers up from beneath her bangs, bared skin tinged – blessed – silver, just like her. Just like the rest of the Hunt, each of its followers sound asleep, twin paths of footprints away.
“You’ve always been quicker than I am,” Alexis begins, pulling together her words, her thoughts. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but yes, you’d beat me if we raced.”
Elisa has her lips parted, as if she wants to say something. Alexis waits, uncertain.
“Would I get a prize if I win?” is what Elisa finally asks. When Alexis doesn’t respond, she insists. “Come on, would I?”
A part of Alexis feels disappointed, but she can’t verbalise that, because she doesn’t know why. So she indulges her fellow hunter and shrugs. “I don’t know what you’d want. You’re so old, you must have experienced most things mere mortals have wanted to experience a few lifetimes over, right?”
“That’s probably right,” Elisa says, but she’s staring out towards the expanse of grassy field again.
Alexis drops her arms, until they rest on their laps. The silence sits.
“What if I asked you what you wanted, instead?” Elisa looks back up at her. “Say you catch up to me one day, when we race. What do you want most, Alexis?”
Elisa seldom says her name, unless she’s calling out for her to give her a task – or extra food, it’s always a toss-up. And for a moment, another answer’s on the tip of Alexis’s tongue.
Then it returns to her, why she took the oath of the Hunters of Artemis those months ago. The third full moon she’s seen since then hangs over them now, a millennium constant, ever watchful, guardful.
“A home,” Alexis says. “A family to go to.”
She knows what she wants. Always has. Elisa must know, too, after all the time they’ve spent together, with Alexis being free with her secrets and her gratitude towards Lady Artemis for taking her in, and indeed, Elisa gives her a smile. And much like many things else about the hunter herself, Alexis wonders why it looks a touch wistful.