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Jasper pressed her palm against the corner of the blanket and smoothed it down for the third time in just as many minutes. The fabric lay flat over the grass, the edges squared as neatly as she could manage. The small pack consisting of a thermos, hot chocolate, and two tin mugs she had brought with her was already arranged beside it.
Rum had been considered as an addition to the drink, but given March's general disposition when he got so much as a ounce in him, it was thought better of. The last thing she wanted was him slipping off the fallen pillar that made up the bridge leading to this particular part of the Narrows and landing in the river.
The blanket was moved over again, before Jasper reached over to scoot the lantern a few inches farther from it before deciding it had been fine where it was.
With the lantern moved back, she glanced toward the path winding back through the trees, then immediately looked away – lest she be caught staring.
He had said yes.
That was the part she still had not quite managed to settle in her mind. When Jasper had asked March if he wanted to come up here with her and watch the stars, she had expected one of several things. Scoffing at her and telling her he had better things to do, or given her one of those looks that made it abundantly clear he thought she was being ridiculous were highest on the list.
She had asked mostly because Olric had mentioned in passing that March liked coming out to watch the stars at night and this was technically the starriest night of the year.
Besides, the hardware needed to fix up the general store had been made because of him, after all. Jasper had been helping with the repairs in town, and March had spent his time getting the pieces made that they needed rather than making her chase down orders to the Capital. He hadn't exactly been pleasant about it, but pleasant had never really been March's strongest quality.
Jasper rubbed her thumb against the edge of the blanket and stared out over the trees. She had thought inviting him up here might be a nice way to thank him without making a huge deal out of it. A quiet evening. Some stars. Nothing that required either of them to say anything particularly meaningful.
She sat cross legged on the quilt, only to immediately lean forward and straighten the pack beside her. She caught herself halfway through the motion and let out a quiet breath through her nose, settling back onto her hands.
There was something ridiculous about being nervous over March. She had faced men twice her size with blood on their knuckles and worse intentions behind their eyes without feeling this strange fluttering uncertainty. She had walked into places where she had known, before the first step through the door, that somebody was going to try to kill her or someone she was with.
Delving into mines and clearing out monsters, guarding caravans and research teams from bandits, escorting the wealthy through the rougher parts of the Capital – all of that was child's play but this? A moment alone with a blacksmith whose ears turned pink when she proposed the idea and wouldn't make eye contact with her the whole time? That's what made her palms sweat?
He had blushed in the same way when they were working on the shield for Adeline's mother. March had put his calloused hand on top of her own and curled it around the edge of the metal to rest where he deemed acceptable. He took pride in his work, yes and the shield was important to him but he had made more than one comment making sure she wouldn't have a finger too close to something sharp that could slip while he was engraving.
March wouldn't have been that kind with her a month ago.
The thought drew a reluctant smile from her, though it faded when a twig snapped in the tree line.
Jasper was on her feet before she had time to think about it.
Her hand went instinctively toward the sword at her back before realizing it was left behind on the farm.
Cursing inwardly, her eyes fixed on the dark line of the forest. There were still only the distant sounds of the night, the rustle of wind through branches and the chirping of insects hidden in the grass. Her weight shifted subtly onto the balls of her feet, ready to move if she needed to.
Then a brown rabbit stepped out between the trees.
For several seconds neither of them moved. Its nose twitched, ears standing straight up as it regarded her from the edge of the clearing.
"Go on, I don't have any treats for you little one." She huffed a quiet laugh, shaking her head as the animal turned and hopped farther into the woods.
Jasper remained standing for another few seconds before finally sitting down. She drew one knee up and rested her arm across it, watching the place where the rabbit had vanished. Her heart was still beating a little harder than it had been before, though whether that was from the sudden movement or the embarrassment of seeing a rabbit as a threat, she couldn't decide.
Probably both.
She looked toward the sky.
The trees opened enough at the summit to leave a wide stretch of darkness above her, unobstructed by roofs, chimneys, or the glow of Mistria's lanterns. The stars were already bright despite the lingering warmth of summer sun, scattered across the sky in numbers she could never have dreamed of in the city.
Tonight they were supposed to be even better. The meteor shower had drawn the whole of the town's attention upward. An annual celebration for the people of Mistria to lay down their work for a night and enjoy the beauty the countryside provided.
Jasper wondered how long it would take before she stopped expecting somebody to ruin it.
She had spent too many years learning that quiet was temporary. In the Capital, especially in the part she had grown up in, safety had never been something that simply existed. You made your own. You kept one eye open while you slept. You learned which streets were worth taking and which ones were not, which faces meant trouble and which ones could be trusted for the length of a conversation. If you needed something, you took it, and if someone tried to take something from you, you fought hard enough to make them reconsider.
These people here left their doors unlocked at night – hell, she wasn't even sure half of them had locks on their doors to begin with. They walked home after dark alone. Children wandered through town without someone following close behind them, and nobody seemed particularly concerned about what might be waiting beyond the edge of the fields.
There was no mercenary guild tucked away somewhere in the town, no organized group of guards waiting for the first sign of trouble. If a pack of wolves came too close to Hayden's livestock, someone would have to deal with them. If bandits came down from the roads, someone would have to stand between them and the people who lived here.
Terithia and Errol were certainly capable of taking care of themselves, but neither of them was getting any younger. They had spent years keeping the town running in ways that had nothing to do with swinging a sword or a pickaxe. Jasper had no intention of pretending otherwise.
Balor could hold his own in a one-on-one altercation sure and Olric had the brawn to be able to fight but that didn't mean he knew how. If something came through the woods in the dead of the night, she knew exactly who would be expected to step forward.
Her.
The thought should have felt familiar. Instead, it left a weight somewhere beneath her ribs.
She had come to Mistria because she wanted a life that did not revolve around the work her Guild was known for. A farm was supposed to be simple. Plant something, water it, watch it grow. Repair what broke. Help where she could. Wake up in the morning knowing that the biggest problem waiting for her might be an overgrown field or a crop that needed harvesting before the rain came.
It was strange how difficult it was to believe that kind of life could actually belong to her.
Jasper looked back up at the stars, letting herself sink farther into the blanket. The night was warm against her skin, and the breeze carried the scent of pine and summer grass through the clearing. Somewhere farther down the mountain, Mistria carried on without her, its lanterns glowing beneath the trees.
For a little while, she allowed herself to stop thinking about what could go wrong.
The first streaks of the meteor shower came quietly. A thin line of silver cut across the darkness above the treetops before vanishing, and a few moments later another followed, brighter and longer this time.
Jasper leaned forward and watch it disappear, her eyes tracking the empty stretch of sky where it had been. For a moment, the nervousness that had been sitting beneath her ribs eased into something softer, and she found herself smiling despite herself.
It didn't last.
She glanced toward the path again, fingers returning to the edge of the blanket. She had already straightened it enough that there was no reason to touch it anymore, but she found herself smoothing the same section between her fingertips anyway.
Maybe March had changed his mind.
He had been caught off guard when she asked, and while the faint flush that had crept across his ears had been gratifying in a way, she wasn't entirely sure she should examine the reaction too closely, it didn't necessarily mean he would actually follow through.
Jasper drew her knees closer and rested her chin against them, staring toward the darkened path. It would be fine if he didn't come. She could watch the stars alone, finish the hot chocolate, and pretend she hadn't spent nearly half the evening wondering whether a blacksmith, who a season ago had been determined to run her out of town, had actually decided he wanted to spend an evening in her company.
Another meteor flashed overhead, bright enough to paint a fleeting silver sheen across the clearing. Jasper looked up just as a voice sounded behind her.
"What's the point of bringing a blanket all the way up here if you're not going to leave me any room?"
She turned, and the tension in her shoulders dissolved.
March stood at the edge of the clearing, looking mildly put out in the particular way he always seemed to manage even when he was not actually upset.
She smiled and shifted over, making more than enough room beside her. "I was starting to think you changed your mind."
March stepped onto the blanket, glancing down at the space she had made for him. "I said I'd come."
"I know but…"
His eyes narrowed slightly at that, though there was no real bite behind it. "You planning on making me regret this already?"
Jasper gave him a look that lasted half a second before her grin betrayed her. "Okay. Alright, alright. Far be it from me to push my luck."
March made a quiet sound under his breath and sat down beside her, stretching his legs out for a moment before settling into a cross-legged position.
Without thinking she shifted, sitting the same way at his side. In the process their knees brushed together. He stiffened but neither pulled away.
She glanced down at his hands, giving herself something to look at beside his eyes.
None of the usual blackened soot was worked into his knuckles or under his nails. His arms were absent of the streaks of grease that were usually permanently attach to him after a day at the forge. The roughness of his palms and the small scars across his fingers were the only indication that they belonged to someone who spent most of his days working metal.
The clean scent of sage and cedar soap was stronger this close, mingling with the cool night air and the warmth lingering in the fabric beneath them.
It was strange seeing him like this, stripped of his work, and stranger still realizing that he had apparently taken the time to wash before coming all the way out here.
Another meteor crossed the sky.
March tilted his head back to follow it and Jasper did the same. For several moments they simply watched in silence while more faint trails began to appear overhead, the darkness slowly filling with brief flashes of light.
A quiet that was comfortable and held no expectations settled between them.
He broke it first, "Didn't take you for the type to sit around staring at the sky."
"You're not the only one with layers."
That earned a small huff of amusement from him, and the corner of his mouth lifted before he seemed to realize he was smiling.
Jasper looked back toward the sky, pretending not to notice, though she couldn't quite keep the smile from returning to her own face. She had asked him to come because she thought it would be a nice way to thank him but sitting beside him now, listening to the quiet cadence of his breathing and feeling the occasional brush of their knees whenever either of them shifted, she found herself wondering whether that had ever been the whole reason.
"The stars don't look like this in the city, you know?" she gestured upwards, "Too many lanterns lit at all hours I guess."
March glanced over at her when she gestured toward the sky. The moment their eyes met, his gaze dropped away again.
He could hold his own in an argument without blinking, could stare down a customer who complained about his prices or tell Olric exactly what he thought of some half-baked idea, but sustained eye contact when the subject turned slightly personal seemed to be another matter entirely. March shifted one hand against his knee and cleared his throat, looking up at the stars.
"There a lot of people in the city?" He asked
Jasper blinked at the question before glancing back toward the dark horizon beyond the trees. "Depends where you are. In the slums, you couldn't walk ten feet without running into somebody."
"Slums?"
There was something in the way he repeated it, a slight tilt of his head accompanying the word, that made Jasper realize she had never actually told him which part of the Capital she had come from – not that there would be a reason in most casual conversation to bring it up.
She reached for the pack beside her instead of answering immediately, tugging it toward herself and undoing the clasp. "Yeah," Jasper pulled the thermos free first, setting it upright between them before taking out one of the tin mugs. "Here."
March looked at the cup she was holding toward him, then at her face, as though he wasn't quite sure what she expected him to do with it.
Jasper wiggled the cup side to side until he finally reached for it, his fingers brushing against hers in the process. The contact lasted no more than a second, but she felt the slight stiffness that went through his hand before he pulled it back and settled the cup in his palm.
She poured the hot chocolate into his mug before filling her own, the warmth of the steam curling between them in the cooling night air.
"It probably doesn't sound like it fits, does it?" She gave a quiet sigh, watching the dark surface of her drink settle. "With the way I talk about the Capital I suppose you expected someone from the upper parts of the city."
March's brows drew together slightly, but he did not immediately answer.
The silence stretched just long enough for Jasper to begin wondering whether she'd been too sharp. Maybe she should have explained herself differently. She had spent enough years having to defend where she came from that sometimes the words came out harder than she intended, especially when she was tired or caught off guard. March had only asked a question, and she'd managed to turn it into something that sounded defensive.
She took a sip of the hot chocolate and let the sweetness give her something else to concentrate on besides the quiet beside her. "Did you watch the meteor shower with your family when you were younger?"
The corner of March's mouth twitched at that. His fingers tightened slightly around the mug, and his attention shifted from the stars to somewhere farther away.
"My… family?" There was a quiet in his tone that she had never heard before.
Jasper nodded, watching him over the rim of her mug.
"Olric and I- we didn't really have time for that kind of thing growing up." He paused, his gaze dropping to the drink in his hands. "Can… can we talk about something else?"
"Sorry I didn't-"
"Its fine."
They both looked upward, the thermos and tin mugs resting between them while the sky continued to brighten and fade with each distant streak of light.
March was quiet for another few seconds, his eyes fixed somewhere above the tree branches while his thumb moved absently along the rim of the tin mug. There was something different in the set of his shoulders now, tension that had not been there when they first sat down. Jasper could see the way he kept swallowing back whatever thought had risen to the surface.
He shifted beside her and finally looked over, though his gaze only lingered for a heartbeat before dropping back to his drink. "Why'd you actually ask me to come up here?"
Jasper blinked, caught off guard, "What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean." His fingers tightened around the mug, and the defensive edge had crept back into his voice. "You don't exactly make a habit of inviting me places. So, what was this? Pity?" He gave a short, humorless huff and looked away again. "Some kind of joke?"
Jasper's brows rose. There it was. The March she'd come to know, the one who could turn a perfectly harmless question into a challenge the moment he felt himself getting too close to something he didn't know how to handle.
She set her mug down in the grass and turned a little more toward him, studying the side of his face before answering. "Newsflash March. I don't invite you to shit because you're mean to me all the time. And yet, despite the fact that you don't like me, I still enjoy your company."
March looked at her then, properly this time, and his eyes widened. "I don't go around intentionally jabbing at you."
She gave him a flat look. "March."
"What?"
"You absolutely do."
"I don't."
"You did when I first got here."
His jaw tightened, and for a second, she thought they were headed straight back into one of their usual rounds of bickering, the sort that ended with neither of them remembering what they had actually been annoyed about.
"Well," he mumbled, "I didn't know who you were when you first came to town."
"And that somehow made it better?"
"No. It- I mean I didn't know what to think about you." The words came faster at first, then slowed as the edge began to drain out of his voice. He looked down at his mug again, running his thumb along the metal where the paint had worn away. "You showed up out of nowhere, started fixing things, started getting involved in everyone's business, and..." He paused, searching for the rest of it. "I thought I had you figured out."
Jasper watched him quietly.
"I was wrong." The admission came softer than anything he'd said since the subject had changed. March finally looked at her again, and while his eyes still flickered away, he didn't turn his head this time. "I was wrong about you, alright?"
The meteor shower seemed to take that omission as it's queue to begin to thin until there were only occasional streaks left across the sky, each one appearing farther apart than the last.
Jasper found herself watching the empty spaces between them more than the stars themselves, waiting for another flash that didn't come. Beside her, March tipped his head back, following the final streak as it crossed the darkness and disappeared beyond the trees.
There was no irritation in his expression now, none of the flustering she had become accustomed to seeing whenever she managed to catch him off guard; instead, there was something wistful in the way he watched the place where the light had vanished, a faint sadness that made him seem younger.
March eventually exhaled and lowered his gaze, tapping his thumb once across the side of the tin mug again before setting it down between them. "You were right about the view. It almost feels like they’re drawing you in, huh?"
He looked toward the path leading away from the summit, before turning back to Jasper as the familiar practicality of his expression returned. "Alright, come on."
"Huh?"
He pushed himself up onto his feet and turned toward her and held out his hand, his palm open and waiting. "I'm going to walk you home. I mean, if you fall and hurt yourself in the dark, I know I won't hear the end of it."
Jasper looked at his hand longer than she probably should have before placing her own in it.
Without hesitation his fingers closed around hers, warm and rough against her skin. The simple contact felt strangely intimate after everything else that had passed between them that night.
March had touched her before, of course, but always incidentally or because there had been something practical to do; his hand guiding hers while they worked on Adeline's mother's shield, their shoulders brushing when they happened to stand too close, the occasional bump when they both swayed out of the way of Olric's overly excited gestures.
There was nothing to fix, nothing to carry, and no excuse hidden behind the contact.
Jasper planted her foot beneath herself and rose, only for her heel to catch in a fold of the quilt. Her balance went sideways before she could correct it.
March reacted immediately.
His free hand caught her forearm while the one holding hers tightened, steadying her between them before she could stumble properly. Jasper was close enough to feel the warmth of him through his clothes, his grip firm around her forearm and his other hand still wrapped around hers, holding more of her weight than either of them had expected.
Then March laughed.
"See?" His voice was quiet again, amusement softening the words as he looked down at her. "Already tripping, and we haven't even left the blanket."
Jasper blinked at him, much too aware of exactly how they were standing. His face was much closer than it had been when they were sitting beside one another. She could see the flush returning to the tops of his ears now that he had apparently realized he was still holding her. His eyes met hers for the longest stretch of time they had managed that evening before flickering away. Jasper could feel his thumb resting against the inside of her wrist, an absent point of warmth that made the moment feel considerably longer than it actually was.
He released her arm first, then her hand a heartbeat later, the loss of contact making the night feel colder than it had previously been. March cleared his throat and bent down to gather the mugs before she could say anything about it.
Jasper crouched beside him and began packing away the thermos and the remaining hot chocolate before March picked up the blanket, shook the last bits of grass from it, and folded it over his arm. When she reached for it, he shifted it out of her grasp with a look that suggested the matter had already been decided. "I'll carry it."
"I can carry a blanket."
"And I can be useful." He held the quilt a little tighter to his chest, "Besides, what if you didn't close the thermos all the way and you spill hot chocolate over it. I don't want to listen to you complain if that happens."
"March."
"Uh-huh?"
"That's the jabbing thing I was talking about." She smiled at him when she spoke, watching the pink creep back into the tip of his ears.
They moved to the path leading back to town, leaving the clearing behind them.
Jasper made it several paces before glancing back over her shoulder, unable to resist one last look at the place where they had spent the evening. The blanket had left a faint impression in the grass, flattened in two places where they had sat shoulder to shoulder beneath the open sky. The clearing looked smaller now that they were standing at its edge, the stars above it beginning to fade into the ordinary darkness of night.
Something moved at the treeline.
Jasper slowed.
Two rabbits sat just beyond the edge of the clearing; their small bodies nearly lost among the shadows. They watched her without moving, ears perked and dark eyes reflecting the faint light from above. One blinked slowly, then the other followed, and Jasper could not help but smile at the sight.
"Are you coming or what?" March's voice carried back through the trees, impatient enough to sound familiar but without the sharpness that normally would have accompanied it.
"Yeah, yeah." She called back, "I'm coming."
With a last look to the rabbits, she turned away from the clearing and followed him down the path.