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“‘He betrayed an undeserved kindness,’ he said, ‘and shall never know another word of it.’”
Jahoda blinked, straining against the haze over her eyes. The room was blurry, a canvas of greys and blues, smeared there with green–
A hand came impatiently to her eyes. Its thumb and index finger brushed over her lids, willing them shut again. Indignance rose within her at first, lulled just as quickly by the familiar warmth of calloused skin on hers. So she allowed the onset of darkness again.
“It’s like you don’t even try to sleep.”
The bed was soft, but not distractingly so; like an embrace, the cushion of lean arms. The blankets were thick and warm, pressing her comfortably into the mattress. The covers dipped next to her, giving way to the heat of a body sitting upright on the bed.
“A sandstorm swept up suddenly, and Ortba raised an arm to shield his eyes. When he lowered it again, the man was gone.”
Inexplicably, she felt safe. Her body grew heavier. and sleep soon claimed her.
It should have been just another commission. It was a rather large group of treasure hoarders to take out, but nothing she couldn’t handle if she played her cards right. And it was going well enough, until her clumsiness gave away her position.
A flurry of motion; a knife in a back here, a fist in a gut there. She moved with animalistic desperation, and the pain became a blur, as did everything else, guided by ruthless instinct alone–
There were three left, and she could take them. The ground dripped with her blood, and her knees swayed with the effort of keeping her body upright, but she had lived through straits infinitely more dire. She took a staggering step forward, her switchblade gripped tight, and–
A brilliant flash of green. Jahoda had never given much stock to belief in gods, but she figured that if any existed in Nod-Krai, this woman would be among them. She moved with an almost divine display of power, flickering in and out of view, striking faster than Jahoda’s tired eyes could keep up with. An emerald light, and two men at their knees. A blink, and a neck snapped. Nefer stood in the clearing, lean muscles coiled tight, a snake the moment before a strike. Surrounded by bodies on all sides, rapturous.
Though she would never admit it, Jahoda had spent a non-negligible amount of time at work imagining herself draped over strong arms of chiseled bronze. But Nefer, practical to a fault, turned and slung Jahoda over her shoulder.
“Mmfine, Nef, I can walk,” Jahoda protested, but as her adrenaline dripped out, she felt her consciousness steadily wrested. Still, she was nothing if not stubborn, and she clung to whatever scraps of awareness she had.
She half expected to be chided – “That’s Boss Nef to you,” she might have said – but Nefer only sighed. “Just try to stay awake.”
Jahoda was sure she was losing her mind then, because she thought she heard a slight waver in Nefer’s voice. But she couldn’t tell much, not when her sight came in blurry patches of pale green and emerald — the grass and Nefer’s billowing dress, respectively — and little else. So she chalked it up to blood loss.
Shit, she thought, I hope I’m not bleeding on her dress. Shame flowed to her lips: “Sorry for messing it up,” she slurred, her words bleeding into each other.
“You did excellently.”
“Boss-”
“Hush now.” There it was again, that waver, almost imperceptible. But it was Nefer, and Jahoda thought she would follow her into hell itself, so she fell quiet.
“We’re almost home.”
Home. There was something funny in calling it that, but Jahoda couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Dark spots flickered at the edge of her vision, and then consumed.
“Ortba’s friends scoffed in disbelief of his foolishness.”
Jahoda stirred. There was a weight on the other side of the bed. She turned over, chasing its warmth, and heard a sigh from next to her.
“The story’s almost finished. If you won’t be lulled back to sleep in the next two sentences, then you’re out of luck.”
Jahoda made a sound close to a huff. Half asleep, she couldn’t really tell, but she might have reached a hand out to that warmth next to her. A calloused hand might have found hers.
“‘I need to make more money,’ thought Ortba, ‘for the next time I see him. Gods only know how much it’ll cost to buy him back then.’”
A silence. A minute might have passed, and then the weight on the bed shifted. The woman moved to stand–
Jahoda squeezed her hand, and she sat back upon the bed.
“Another story?”
Jahoda squeezed her hand again. An exhale through a nose, sharp, and a thoughtful pause. Then, “Once, there was a young Dastur from the Akademiya, who traveled into the vast desert to investigate ancient ruins…”
Her voice was low, of softer notes than Jahoda usually knew. It became a soothing rhythm, and it carried her back off into peaceful slumber.
Jahoda jolted upright.
The bed was not her own; the sheets were much too lavish, the mattress was of too high a quality. The room smelled of incense, those warm scents of Sumeru that Jahoda couldn’t quite put a name to. Something earthy and definitely not the smell of her own house.
Embarrassment colored her cheeks crimson. Her reverence for Nefer veered towards religious at times, and so devoted was Jahoda that the thought of failing to complete a commission often kept her up at night.
So she remembered teetering on unsteady legs, being hauled away like a sack of potatoes, smearing blood over Nefer’s ornate dress… to her it was something like sacrilege. She imagined the earful she might get, or worse, the quiet, disapproving stare, and decided she might as well die.
With the guilt of a prisoner, she crept to the door. She eased it open gingerly. Through the crack of light it revealed, she found no sign of Nefer in the living room. She could run for the exit, then–
Something heavy butted against her foot. An impatient mewl ripped from Ashru’s mouth, demanding affection he already deemed overdue, and for just a heartbeat Jahoda thought she might hit the wall in frustration, it was always that goddamned cat, she swore he had the devil in him.
(“You know, that’s closer to the truth than you’d think,” Nefer said once, when Jahoda had suggested as such. Whatever that meant. She filed it away as another in the long list of mysteries about her boss that she could never really ask to unravel.)
“You’re up,” came a voice from the kitchen. That low, rich voice of crackling heat.
“What’s that scent?” Jahoda asked.
Nefer answered, “Sandalwood.”
And that was the extent of the guidance given; as always, Nefer left Jahoda to parse all that was left unspoken. A job she usually took in stride, but there was a deep shame that weighed her steps as she entered the kitchen, wrapped in bandages and clothes that weren’t hers.
She entered and she found Nefer’s knuckles tense around the handle of a mug. Her jaw was clamped tight, the muscles flared ever so slightly with the effort.
She was staring Jahoda down, calculating, her expression ever unreadable– and that was the cause for concern, this hyperfocus. A gaze that others would feel small before, yet Jahoda felt uncomfortably singular, the sole recipient of exhilarating attention. Awkwardly, she flexed her fingers at her side, then relaxed. Flex again, relax.
“How did you sleep?” Nefer hammered the silence rather than cutting it.
With a fresh wave of humiliation, Jahoda remembered seizing Nefer’s hand in her own, demanding time and stories. What work she must have been. Head lowered to the floorboards, she began, “Good, thanks. You didn’t have to–”
Nefer was quick to shut her down: “It’s already done.”
(In the first few weeks of employment, Jahoda would have cringed at words so brusque. But she prided herself on being a quick learner, and it didn’t take long to find that Nefer’s curt words were often her kindest. As if it was a great pain to bare herself in anything more than small amounts, and while Jahoda did not always share the instinct, she could respect it. It made Nefer’s small affections all the more meaningful, and every smile earned from her boss lit a fire deep in her chest.)
So Jahoda simply nodded. “I slept good. Thank you”
Nefer opened her mouth – Jahoda expected a, “Well, you slept well,” – but she asked instead, “No fever? You look flushed.”
Oh, that was worse. Jahoda scratched the back of her neck, and Nefer smirked over the rim of her mug. Graciously, though, she provided a change of subject: “Let me know if so. I have some medicine for infection. Otherwise, I’ve made tea.”
Though she would never admit it, Jahoda had imagined at length how it would be the first time she woke up in Nefer’s apartment. Something closer to sizzling bacon in a pan, arms wrapped around a waist. A slow record playing, jazz maybe, something that bubbled with warmth and was wholly unlike the music she preferred.
But there was intimacy in this, too, though it was much less obvious. There was something to be said for Nefer – who had still never uttered a word about where her scars came from, or why she knew so well how to patch wounds, or why the first pang of hunger in the morning made her so frantic – opening her home to Jahoda.
Here she was, moving to sit at the table in her pajamas. She wore a form-fitting tank top and plain shorts, more casual than Jahoda would have thought, but a mouthwatering sight in its simplicity. Just the top of her breasts were exposed, and while Jahoda’s eyes were first drawn to the peak of them, they settled upon the scar just above the left side of her chest.
Of course, Jahoda could assume all of these things – the scars, the wounds, the hunger – well enough. She had a matching scar by her collarbone, the work of a switchblade. Maybe the important part was Nefer showing it now.
With Nefer, it was always the little things that weighed the most. So Jahoda did not ask, “Why did you make me tea, I thought the rule was employees were s’posed to handle it?” and instead accepted it, let this strange attention sit unspoken. It was a great effort for her, but the warmth over the table was ever intoxicating, and she was ravenous to hold onto it.
Nefer drank half of her tea, then made eggs. Breakfast was a quiet affair, though this was not out of the ordinary. While silence so often made Jahoda restless, it was different with Nefer: it made an easy coexistence, a comforting blanket. Quite the puzzling thing.
Still, she could tell something pulled at Nefer. This was the one insurmountable difference between them; Jahoda barrelled into her problems, and Nefer preferred to grind them between her teeth until they went flat.
So Jahoda pressed, tentative, “You alright?”
“Yes.” She paused, as if she had to step over some instinct to give a better answer, then added, “You gave me a scare.”
Jahoda had (admittedly foolishly) assumed Nefer didn’t feel fear. The realization left her a little uneasy, prickling with guilt. She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair, chewing at the inside of her lip. “Sorry, Boss. I got careless.”
“I told you you did admirably. You know I wouldn’t lie to you, don’t you?”
Jahoda nodded.
“How are your wounds?”
“Good. Don’t feel a thing.”
Nefer narrowed her eyes, piercing easily through Jahoda’s lies. “Have you finished your eggs?”
A question offered more as a courtesy; both women were rather poor at shedding old habits and had practically licked their plates clean. But only after Jahoda nodded did Nefer stand and collect her plate. It was really quite strange to be the one waited on like this.
“Come into the bedroom. I’m going to take a look at them.”
Jahoda’s mind sputtered for a moment, until she remembered that Nefer had asked about her wounds. “There’s no need, I’m really fine–”
“Hush. Come here.”
Made helpless by the smooth tones of her voice, what could Jahoda do but follow her to the bedroom? Let herself be led to the bed, feel the cushion of soft blankets beneath her legs? Nefer moved to the hem of her shirt, then paused.
Jahoda smiled, a lopsided thing. “I assume you changed me last night– nothin’ under here that you haven’t seen.”
Nefer scoffed with feigned irritation. But it was a fond expression that settled on her lips, made fonder by the flush that blossomed in Jahoda’s cheeks as Nefer pulled the shirt overhead.
Bare before Nefer’s gaze, Jahoda felt acutely aware of the jut of her collarbone against skin, an old fracture long healed, and the slight crook at the bridge of her nose, a hard punch taken somewhere in her teens. The patchwork of scars over her body, the messy dusting of freckles down her forearm, the slight chip of her bottom incisor. Wholly imperfect.
But Nefer didn’t seem to care. She scanned her from head to toe, methodical, assessing the wrapped injuries. Then, satisfied, she took in the whole of Jahoda with a slight smile, fondness enough to make her heart sing.
Her finger came to Jahoda’s shoulder – a touch so soft that it burned, lit ablaze some ravenous hunger in her stomach – and traced a path between the freckles, a constellation she didn’t recognize.
Then, she moved lower. She unwrapped the bandages around Jahoda’s arm, then those over her chest. Her cheeks must have been horribly red; in the corner of the room, she swore Ashru trilled in mocking laughter.
“Fatty,” she hissed.
Nefer laughed. “You’re the one that overfeeds him.”
“When I don’t feed him, he bites!”
“You’re rewarding his behavior. Now he’s learned that if he bites, he gets fed.”
“Is he actually a vessel for the devil?”
“Not quite. Though I wouldn’t be surprised.” Nefer paused, then, to turn and scoop the cat up in her arms, to place a sweet kiss on his forehead. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Oh, aren’t you a handsome thing?”
She murmured a few words of affection to him in Sumerian – Jahoda didn’t know the language, but she understood the intent. The sight struck her with a strange sort of pride, knowing it was an intimacy reserved for her eyes alone. Nefer moved to wash her hands, and Jahoda closed her eyes, willed the image to burn to the back of her lids.
When she opened them again, Nefer had returned, a jar of salve in one hand and two washcloths in the other. She dabbed at the gash on her arm, patted it dry, and dipped two languid fingers into the ointment. Jahoda shivered at the contact as she rubbed the salve into her arm, but if Nefer noticed, she did not withdraw.
Sometimes, Jahoda teetered on reverence for Nefer. But then there were these moments, these human things: the crackle of fear upon seeing her bloodied form, the whispered affections for the cat that was effectively theirs. This tender care, the wrinkle of concern between her brows as she peered closer at Jahoda’s wounds.
“Everything alright?”
Nefer said nothing, just brushed her hands along her arm— moving, then, to trace down the ridges of her spine. There was a cut taken out of her lower back, on which Nefer repeated the application of her salve.
Nefer’s touch left fire in its wake, and the heat left Jahoda malleable. She was wholly pliant beneath her hands, more than content to let rough fingers work the pain from her skin. So lost in the feeling, it took a conscious effort for her to stifle a whine when Nefer withdrew.
“Did you give me stitches?” she asked, feeling an itch somewhere around her lower back.
Nefer nodded. Jahoda couldn’t help but imagine it: her flitting in and out of consciousness and Nefer bent at her side, lip taken between her teeth as she worked. Was there worry on her face in this image, or simply duty? Jahoda tried to parse the expression standing now before her, but fell short.
“I’ll take them out in a few days.”
“This feels a little out of the bounds of our contract.”
Nefer stepped back, lips pursed. There was an uncharacteristic hesitance as she crossed her arms. “I could send for a doctor.”
“No,” Jahoda said, a bit too quickly. “That’s not what I meant. Just, like, thanks for seeing to me is all. You didn’t have to.”
At that, Nefer waved a hand. “When the work is important, it’s hard to trust anyone else to do it.”
Important work? Jahoda was fairly sure she was supposed to be flattered, but she could never be certain.
While she squinted at the wall, lost in thought, Nefer procured a fresh roll of bandages from her nightstand. “Almost done,” she hummed, and Jahoda tried not to let her disappointment show.
Aino could build robots from the ground up, breathe life into scrap metal and discarded batteries. Construct from nothing the most deadly of weapons and the most beautiful of fireworks, indistinguishable from the stars overhead. Anything seemed within the bounds of creation, and yet nobody had found a way to extend a moment.
It drove Jahoda near insane. Feather-light touches danced along her skin as Nefer wrapped her wounds, maddeningly transitory. If only she could will them to stay, if only there was a way to express this. But she supposed she’d take what she could get: the tea, the cat, the care when it was needed. Maybe she should nearly die more often.
Nefer was kneeling, her head just slightly below the height of Jahoda’s, as she wrapped the final bandage. On the outside of Jahoda’s thigh was a small slice, one that she doubted needed covering, but Nefer insisted. Far be it from her to complain.
But when the bandages were secured around her legs, Nefer lingered for the briefest of moments. Her hand lay still on Jahoda’s thigh, her gaze somewhere distant. The contact was warm, then searing; set alight, Jahoda thrummed with want, pulsating to the very core of her being. This, too, was rather commonplace these days, but the lingering was not – it was concern that ripped Jahoda from the haze of desire.
“Y’know, you didn’t answer if you were okay.”
Nefer blinked, pulled her hand away. The air that met Jahoda’s leg was cold. “Sorry. I think I have a headache coming on.”
At once, Jahoda stood. Eager to be the one giving again, she barrelled through the kitchen to find a glass. She returned with water, three ice cubes bobbing at the surface.
What a picture Nefer painted, poise and languor at the same time, as she sat upon the bed. A bit catlike. A smile cracked the stern set of her lips when she met Jahoda’s gaze. “What would I do without you?”
“You’d do pretty good, I think. No one to keep you up at night. Anything I can do for your headache?”
Nefer dismissed her concerns with a wave of her hand. “See what I mean? I could never get by. I enjoy being tended to too much.”
Something like pride swelled in her chest, then exasperation, but then she paused. There was a weight to Nefer’s words, a dull note in her usual confidence. Like all that Nefer gave away, it was well hidden to the untrained eye, but Jahoda was finally learning to catch these things.
So Jahoda considered it: she imagined how she would regard the sight of Nefer stumbling, the hard cobble beneath her splotched with crimson. How she might hear the slur of her words, the flutter of her once-stubborn heartbeat. How she would scramble to stitch her back together, eyes welling with tears for the blood beneath her palms. How much she had already lost, and how mad it would make her to watch another world slip from her fingers.
Oh. She considered the smear of her blood on Nefer’s dress, her limp form in Nefer’s bed. She must have looked so fragile. She peered at Nefer’s hands, flexed, perhaps, to still any potential tremble.
They were two sides of the same coin, weren't they? Nefer wouldn't speak of it, but Jahoda knew-- the scars over Nefer's knuckles, the hesitance with which she spoke of anything like family, the quiet, lingering stare she once gave to a painting of a desert as they stalked past a market stall. When Nefer saw the spill of Jahoda's blood, did she think of everything once swallowed by sand, the way Jahoda thought of bodies marring the shoal?
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jahoda said, ever clumsy.
“So you aren’t.”
“I’m sorry for the scare.”
“...I know.”
“How can I fix it?”
Nefer stilled. She closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath, exhaled. But Jahoda knew her sighs of vexation, and it wasn’t quite this. Rather, she met Jahoda’s gaze again with a weary smile. “You’re sweet.”
Jahoda, not having been admonished, took this as a victory. “It’s what makes me a great employee.”
Nefer chuckled to herself. “Undoubtedly. How to fix it… I suppose you can start by making me something else to eat.”
“On it. What do you–” She paused at the sight of Nefer’s smirk. So maybe she wasn’t perfect at catching these things yet. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”
“My Jahoda, astute as ever.” With that, Nefer rose. “How do you feel about that bakery down the road?”
The elation of belonging. Her heart threatened to betray her, hammering with such ferocity that she was sure Nefer could hear its clamor. Her Jahoda. She sputtered through the words, “No, uh, no complaints.”
Still sitting on the bed, Nefer raised a hand to cover her smirk.
“Nef,” she groaned.
Nefer only offered a wink, then turned to rifle through a drawer. She withdrew a shirt and a pair of shorts, which she tossed to Jahoda, and pulled a casual button-up for herself. With that, Nefer turned around to change, facing the wall.
Jahoda drank in the sight like she was starved. Nefer’s muscles rippled beneath the skin of her back as she peeled the tank top overhead. Lean, but deceptively powerful, the tight coil of muscle earned from a lifetime of fighting with her hands. Jahoda felt a little in awe as she took in the expanse of skin, the smattering of scars over her shoulder blades.
“Stop staring,” Nefer chided, and Jahoda had never given much stock into the rumors that Nefer was all-knowing until now. But Nefer turned over her shoulder to reveal only amusement on her lips, deepened when Jahoda’s eyes inevitably flicked to her breast, then back up to her face.
Indignant, Jahoda swiveled on her heel, unwilling to bare the blush of her cheeks (though she was sure the tips of her ears betrayed her). Huffing to herself, she stepped into the provided outfit. It was a bit oversized for her, and the sleeve dangled over her right arm.
“Hey, where’d you put my arm?”
Nefer moved to the living room, then returned with the prosthesis. Jahoda had it down to a science after years of wear, but she accepted Nefer’s help in slipping it on anyway. She noticed, then, that Nefer had left the top two buttons of her shirt undone – for her? It was perhaps an egotistical thought, but still one within the realm of possibility, and it brought excitement enough that she was willing to believe it.
As they moved to leave, Nefer stilled in the doorway. Then, as if stepping over some instinct, she bent to place a kiss on Jahoda’s forehead.
Oh. A tender heat blossomed from beneath her touch. “Thank you,” said Nefer.
“I didn’t do anything,” responded Jahoda.
Nefer, as always, gave only in small amounts. She said nothing more, and turned to exit the apartment.
Well. Jahoda, for all her impatience, decided that she could relish in this.
“Will you be able to sleep?”
Jahoda had done her best to lie still and slow her breathing so as to not rouse concern. She should have known that nothing would escape Nefer’s all-knowing eyes. Still, she replied, “Yes.”
Under the blanket, Nefer took her hand. For a moment, neither said anything. There was nothing to say– the world outside had fallen still, time folded into just this moment. Nefer traced patterns onto the back of Jahoda’s hand, and Jahoda had never known that the sensation of burning could be so soothing.
“Once,” Nefer began, “a young shepherd was leading his flock through the desert. A glint in the sand caught his eye– he bent and found a silver bottle jutting from a dune…”
Lulled by the heat in the bed next to her, the soothe of Nefer’s voice, sleep found Jahoda quicker than she knew it could.