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When she was a little girl, Bronwyn would slip out of the house at night and through the darkness would run up to the top of the hill.
She’d stand there in the shadow of the mountain and look up at the stars and feel so small.
The world wasn’t kind to her - she was a girl in the Southlands, and the days were long and hard - but here in the silence of the night, she’d dream of standing under the night sky in a faraway place and looking up at the stars and being happy.
In her dreams she was always happy.
Bronwyn is still recovering when they set out for Pelargir and the road is long. Her body feels heavy and her wound pulls and throbs. At night the bandages are soaked with sweat and blood.
She walks much slower than she’d like to but she holds her head high and dares anyone to comment on it.
Arondir fusses over her. Not in an overly open way, but he is not the kind to be surreptitious about it either. He speaks frankly to her, something she’s always appreciated, and he is persistent. He brings her food and blankets and organizes a horse for her to ride on. She thinks about saying no - she does - because she’s never needed anyone to fight her battles for her. She’s never had anyone who has wanted to. But she looks into his eyes and thinks a hundred times over, in any way but words . She looks into his eyes and remembers the desperation in them in the dim light of the tavern, even as the pain clouded her vision and the world went dark around her.
She looks into his eyes and she thinks what would I not do for the ones I love?
If Bronwyn has cradled her tiny son to her chest and gone out to build herself a new home, if she’s slain orcs and demons and stood on a watchtower and called on a village to stand with her, then she can reach out and take somebody’s hand.
She can let somebody take care of her.
At night, they sleep in each other’s arms.
Beside her, Arondir breathes quietly. In, out, in, out. In the darkness of the night, she cannot make out the shape of his face, but she can feel the comforting weight of his arm, his breath on her skin, the rhythm of his heartbeat under her fingertips.
Bronwyn has never really belonged. Too fierce, too forceful, too loud. Not quiet and demure like she ought to be. She’s always stood taller than herself because she’s always needed to. She’d learned quickly what happens when you cower, when you comply and give in and she’d decided that this was not going to be her fate. If it came to it, she’d fight with fire.
Bronwyn has never really belonged. Not when she was a girl. Not when she was a young mother, alone with a child strapped to her back. A healer with wisdom beyond her years. She heard the whispers, of course she did. Of those who looked at her and saw only what she was not. All the ways in which she did not belong with them.
She’s always known what it means to be less. Less valuable, less visible.
The world did not want her and that hurt but still she didn’t back down, she didn’t acquiesce. Instead her hurt became the armour she built around herself. And she learned to use all the ways in which she could be overlooked and underestimated by those taller and stronger and louder than her. She learned when she needed to be tall and strong and loud herself and when to be quiet enough to almost disappear.
It wasn’t always enough. But sometimes it was.
Every day she went out and she treated wounds and infections and bruises that made her stomach turn violently. The world was not gentle in the Southlands, but especially not if you were a woman. She saw joy and grief, life and death, so close together, always. She delivered babies and helped bury the dead and brewed draughts that heal and those that bring luck and good fortune.
There are those that bring death, too, but she did not brew those for others, brewed them only for herself to keep hidden under a loose floorboard in her home, just in case. Something to protect her just like her sickle and the small knife she kept strapped to the inside of her leg.
She knew many of the villagers considered her odd but she also knew they respected her, her tenacity and her courage. They told her secrets because they knew they were safe with her. They asked her questions because they knew she’d have an answer.
They were not always kind to her, no. This was never a world full of kindness. But they weren’t always harsh either. It was the little things, a helping hand, new plants or a cup of tea on a cold winter night.
In her home she built her own little world, for herself and Theo, and she filled it with herbs and let as much light into it as she could. And sometimes at night when everything became too much she’d go out and she’d climb the hill and she’d look at the stars, unwaveringly bright and she’d still feel small but she’d no longer dream of being somewhere faraway or happy.
She’d no longer dream.
She had Theo and she had a home and an occupation that she loved and that would have to be enough.
Arondir’s heartbeat is steady under her fingertips. He sighs in his sleep and she leans forward and presses her lips to his skin, warm and soft under her own.
Her home, her world is long gone, buried under ash and smoke and betrayal. This is a different world now and they are headed for a different home.
Bronwyn has never really belonged anywhere. She’s never really felt safe anywhere.
But when Arondir’s arms tighten around her and he pulls her closer, she thinks that maybe she can learn to.
Bronwyn has never really been seen. She’s never wanted to be seen. Being seen means trusting and she learned too early that to trust means to be hurt.
But Arondir looks at her and he listens to her and he sees her, he really sees her. His voice is soft when he speaks and so is the touch of his hands. At first it is unsettling. She’s not accustomed to such kindness, to being cherished. She’s used to people, men, taking and not giving.
It’s different with Arondir. When he touches her it’s gentle, questioning, reverent even. When he kisses her he tastes of the forest and the earth and the promises he wants to make but cannot. There is a desperation to it. The knowledge that this is fleeting, nothing but the last ray of sunlight before an everlasting night. Soon darkness will fall and they will fall with it.
But we are still here, she thinks and pulls him closer, until there is no space between their bodies, until in the dark of the night, they are one.
We are still here, she thinks when he kisses her nose, her temple, the scar on her torso, when he pushes into her and she can feel him inside of her, surrounding her, anchoring her to him, to the earth below them. He sighs into her neck and she bites into his shoulder and it’s enough, it’s enough but it’s not.
It’s not enough but it’s all they have. Because in the end, how can you grieve if you have never lost, if you have never loved?
This is what they will lose, yes, but it’s also what they have.
In the mornings, Arondir rises before the sun. He leaves her with a kiss and whispered promises that she is starting to believe.
Bronwyn likes the dawn, when the light is soft and the day is not yet tainted. It’s still winter and it’s cold so she wraps her cloak tightly around herself before walking over to the door.
Theo is sleeping in the corner, snoring softly, his frame too big for the narrow cot. Bronwyn stops to look at him for a moment, to take him all in.
She thinks of Theo as a baby, how he was so small that she was afraid he’d break. How, in those first weeks, whenever things felt too big, too daunting, too terrifying she’d lean in and press her ear to his sternum and listen to the steady beat of his heart and feel herself settle.
He is all grown now, with a storm in his heart. He fights his own demons now. Sometimes she misses him, who he used to be. The way he’d come to her, scraped knees and bloodied knuckles and let her kiss his bruises and let her hold him and sing him lullabies that spoke of gentle times.
She could never protect him from the harshness of the world, but at least she could wrap him up in a blanket and she could hold him close and pretend for just a little while longer that this world is not dark and cruel and unforgiving.
Theo is too young to have seen as much as he has. He is too young to face down orcs and his own peers, to see his world burn.
But then again, she never taught him anything else but to stand tall. She never taught him anything else but to fight.
Theo shivers in his sleep and Bronwyn takes off her cloak and covers him with it. Her hand lingers on his shoulder, like it has done so many times before. Leaning forward, she presses a soft kiss to his cheek.
Then she straightens up and steps out into the winter sun.
The road is long and perilous. There are orc attacks and storms, disease and starvation.
It’s late spring when they reach the top of a hill and finally see it: Pelargir. Their new home. A fresh start, as Arondir had called it.
They make camp next to a small stream and a forest from which they carry wood. There is relief in the air, but also weariness. After seeing their old home burn and a journey that has taken so much, Pelargir feels like a haven, the promise of something better, brighter. But the Southlanders have seen too many clouds darken and storms take them by surprise. They know how quickly day can turn into night and light into dark. So it’s no surprise that the camp is quiet and the mood subdued.
Later, when the fires have burned out and the sky is black, Bronwyn slips away. She makes her way over to the other side of the hill, to where she can see the sky being swallowed by the sea. In the distance she can hear the waves coming in, not gently but with a roar. Above her the sky is wide open and starlit.
She whips around when she hears footsteps behind her, but she’s not surprised to see it’s Arondir. He will always follow her. He doesn’t speak but steps closer. She turns fully then and closes the distance between them, lets her head come to rest on his sternum and his arms engulf her.
Around them, the night is quiet. Maybe this is but the silence before the storm. Maybe the tide of tomorrow will bring more sorrows their way.
Maybe these lands will soon be covered by an everlasting night. Maybe this is a fight they cannot win and in the end all of their sacrifices will have been for naught.
Nobody knows what is yet to come.
But right now, they are here. Under the stars, memories of times long gone. Beside the waves that ebb and flow and never forget. In a world that is changing and building itself anew every day. Where everyone, great or small, eventually has to take a stand.
Where everything can be gained and even more can be lost.
Nobody knows what is yet to come, how it will change them and if it will eventually tear them apart. The future is hidden in the shadows, impossible to see.
But Bronwyn’s hand is warm in his and Arondir’s heartbeat is strong and steady under her ears. For now they are here, together.
Two figures in the starlight, so small.