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Had Fiora been born in a privileged time, she might have liked to organize and plan for the future. Without war and famine, hunger and debt, she would carefully, painstakingly craft a calendar with lunch meetings inked in on Tuesdays for Farina and Florina, and she would gleefully block off Saturday evenings for an imaginary gentleman caller. In-between would be time for work and business, and if there was space, she might even like to track her spending.
But in times of unrest and of uncertainty, plans often fell through, so Fiora shoved her fanciful timetable to the back of her mind and continued on with her life, a life where she never set expectations for the morning, in case it never came.
Some of the more idealistic of her acquaintance hoped for—or perhaps expected—things of the morrow. Fiora felt this was neither unwise nor unfounded, for hope could be both a wonderful and dangerous thing, but she herself refrained. It was better for her to refuse to allow acquaintances to become more than that, to keep relationships professional and never let them turn personal. It was too much to hope for the safety of the people she already cared for, like her sisters, but to add more to her list of worry and despair and dread, and deliberately—it would be too much. To dream of more faces and fates and to scramble, shaking and trembling, after a battle to find and account for the lives of even more people… It was unthinkable.
“How can you?” she asked Sain as she attended to Makar and he to his little brown mare. “How can you hope that you will be able to follow through? I dare not plan something as simple as lunch with Florina tomorrow. Who am I to assume the future, to believe she will be here to dine with me then, or I with her?”
“My dear,” said Sain in reply, his hazel eyes void of the humor that often shimmered there, “one such as I may not hope to predict the future, nay, know it, but when the light wanes ‘tis better to love and be loved, and even to have lost, than to feel nothing at all.”
She shook her head.
“Is there harm in caring for another?” he asked. “In feeling worry for my brother-in-arms, Kent? In choosing to ensure the safety of the beauteous heir of Caelin? In thinking of you when a battle eases and I’ve yet to assure myself of your well-being?”
She remembered the Isle, the blood-soaked flanks and wings of pegasi, and her attempt to find survivors. “There is only hurt,” she whispered, voice trembling. “Hurt and despair when your beloved brother cannot be roused after the fighting ends, or when your liege cries out in her sleep from the pain of her wounds and you know she is not long for this world.”
With the edge of his index finger he touched her cheek, just once, just enough, and gave her a sad smile. “Death does not lessen my love for them and it does not render it ineffectual or nonexistent.”
“But it hurts,” she said before she could stop herself. It was silly to admit to the obvious in the midst of a war. “It hurts if you know them well and occasionally even if you don’t. People die every day. Hundreds, sometimes thousands. And,” she choked on the words, “sometimes you are left to grieve all alone.”
“Worth remembering, I think,” he said, fingers deftly braiding his mare’s tail, now, “is that when they are gone, so too is our chance to know them, to laugh and tease, to talk of the places you’ll go and the people you must someday introduce them to. So I do not think it is a waste to have truly cared for my dear companion, Kent; should he pass away this very night I shall be deep in mourning for many months, perhaps even years, but I shall also rejoice for I have never been so timid that I went a day without telling him how I feel. And if you do not believe me,” he added with a grin, “then ask him yourself. He will say, That Sain is such a fool, he is almost not worth the trouble, but you see, almost makes all the difference with him.”
He made it sound so simple, so easy. She’d witnessed many deaths in her short life; it was hard to imagine she could ever believe in living in the moment.
She thought of the campfire on the Isle, of how her wing of knights had crowded around it, laughing and making merry, and by next nightfall they were all dead. All the plans talked about in the warm glow of the fire had died with them. She remembered each one vividly even now: Naria’s plans to ask a young man she fancied if he might like to go courting, the pull-along pegasus that Pauline would buy her daughter with the money she earned, Katria’s upcoming wedding that they were all invited to, of course, and the ideal feast they discussed together, of fresh meat and so many different greens, each of them adding a new dish to the imaginary table with a round of cheers following every suggestion.
Her laughter that night by the fire echoed in her mind, mocking now.
“All we can do is care and plan,” Sain said, breaking her out of her thoughts. “We needn’t clarify if we make it through this first. If is a strong word. A lot rides on if.”
“I do not understand you.”
“Not many have taken the time.”
She stared at his earnest face and wondered aloud, “Does Sir Kent understand you?”
“I would not consider him a friend if he did not understand me at least a little.”
“I see,” she said, but doubted the mutual understanding would make it any easier if one of them perished.
He shifted, smiling. “Knowledge is the only thing in the world that, once gained, can never be taken from you. Sometimes it is better to care, and therefore, to know. If I fall on the morrow, you may forever wonder what sort of man I was, because you would not let yourself find out while there was opportunity. Today, that opportunity is present, but tomorrow…it may be long gone.”
It was true that freedom and pride and even happiness could be taken away, but at the end of the day knowledge always remained. She supposed that was the burden of a survivor, to remember those that were outlived, and keep the knowledge of them alive.
And how could she do that if she was so afraid of caring that she refused to know anyone again?
“All right,” she said, turning back to Makar’s side to brush her currycomb through his white coat, “I think I understand your point.” But she did not understand him. That would take time and effort, and the first step, however terrifying, was hers to take. “Sain,” she tried, her voice tentative, “may I ask a personal question?”
His smile was instant and bright. “Anything you wish,” he said.
She steeled her nerves and asked, glancing up at him again, “Have you any brothers or sisters?”