The prince quirked one dark brow. “Do you always bring a fire starter on mission?” he asked with a significant look at the man’s bag.

“No, and I didn’t this time, either,” Anders admitted, which immediately made Nysid’s other brow shoot up to match the first.

Seeing his skepticism, Anders shooed the prince off and said, “Just go find some wood, small stuff too, I’ll take care of the rest.”

The man had cut a sizable piece of wood in half length-wise for a flat surface then carved a groove into it, near one edge, along with a notch further in. “It’s an old trick I learned from my dad when I was a kid; before─ y’know, I figured out the whole magic thing. We used to go hunting sometimes and he’d teach me things for just in case I ever got lost, I guess.”

“And did you?” Nysid asked.

“Hm?” Anders replied distractedly as he tied his boot lace to either end of one stick, creating a sort of bow, then looped the center of the lace around a second bit of stick that he slotted into the center notch in the first, flat piece of wood.

“Get lost,” the prince clarified as he watched, mystified by his mate’s actions.

“Take my helmet and bring back some water?” the blond puffed as he worked and nodded at the bit of armor in question where it’d been left next to his pack.

Nysid nearly made a comment, but decided against it and made his way towards the stream after picking up the helmet. The prince had always been the fastidiously clean sort, so, once he was certain he was out of immediate view, he stripped, un-braided his hair, and waded into the water. It only came up to his waist, but that was more than enough for Nysid to duck his head under the surface and relish the relief the chill water afforded after suffering the curiously dead air of the woods all day. He surfaced when his lungs began to protest, but remained low in the water, absently running his fingers through the long, dark strands of his hair until a sudden cry from the direction of the camp rang out through the quiet.

“Anders?” Nysid called, immediately concerned as he lunged to his feet, on the verge of charging out of the water to grab his things and rush back the way he’d come.

“I did it!” the other man shouted and charged over, a ball of smoking moss clutched excitedly in one hand. “Told you I could do it!”

Realizing there was nothing amiss after all, relief flooded Nysid’s system, followed immediately by embarrassment. “Don’t come over here!” he protested, slapping his hand across the surface of the stream and sending a wave of it towards Anders, who immediately stopped dead in his tracks and twisted to protect his prize from the unexpected onslaught.

“Watch it!” he cried, then grumbled, “Like you’ve got anything I haven’t seen before.”

Nysid raised his hand to strike the water again and Anders hurried back the way he’d come, ears noticeably redder than they’d been when he’d arrived, but the prince pretended not to have seen. When he finished, he returned to the camp with Anders’ helmet as full of water as he could manage to find the man crouched in front of a small, but steadily growing fire.

“Set it aside for now,” the man instructed, making no mention of what he may or may not have seen at the stream. “Keep feeding this while I go clean up?” he asked after a moment, fixing Nysid with a look that could only be described as ‘hopeful puppy’.

The prince sighed a little, any irritation at the man inexplicably fading under the onslaught. “Yes, just go,” he said and waved the man away as he seated himself by the blaze and took over the task of building it up. Anders beamed at him from across the fire then sprang eagerly to his feet and disappeared off into the growing darkness to take his turn bathing.

The man was gone for some time— so long that Nysid considered calling out to Anders once he’d boiled the helmet of water and set it aside to cool without seeing hide nor hair of him. Before he could, Anders loomed up out of the shadows from the opposite direction that he’d left, half-naked with his shirt folded into a makeshift basket to hold an armful of something. The prince barely bit back a yelp of surprise at his sudden reappearance; for a man accustomed to stomping about in heavy plate armor, Anders had a surprisingly light step.

“Well, there may not be a single animal worth eating around here, but at least the same can’t be said for the plants,” the blond proclaimed cheerfully as he came around the fire and dropped into a crouch next to Nysid. “Here, look,” he said proudly and presented the apparent bounty he’d found.

The other man had clearly already been to the stream and back again as not only was his hair still damp, but so were the contents of his shirt when Nysid leaned in to examine them. There were mushrooms, some manner of root vegetable, and several other things the prince was unfamiliar with. “You’re certain all this is edible?” he asked skeptically. The last thing he needed to be, on top of lost and dragonless, was sick.

Anders cut him an amused, but sympathetic look. “Promise. This is all really common stuff here in Marilderland, which is good news as far as divining our approximate location. It’ll taste better than more hard tack, I promise,” he said with a smile.

It was a nice smile, Nysid thought as he responded with one of his own in spite of himself. “Alright,” the prince acquiesced. “What do you need me to do?”

Anders made a soft considering sound and said, “Well, some of this needs to be prepped before it can be cooked, so I’ll do that if you want to cut some spruce branches and fern leaves to make something for us to sleep on.”

Anders hummed as he drew his belt knife again and set to work peeling one of the root vegetables. “Well, yeah. We’re out in the open, it’d be best if we only slept one at a time.”

Relief flooded Nysid’s system again, but he pointedly ignored the brief flash of disappointment that accompanied it. “Yes, of course.”

“Though, I mean, I’m happy to cuddle if you are.”

Anders wound up combining all the ingredients he’d managed to find into a sort of rough stew that turned out pretty good, considering it was cooked in his own helmet and they didn’t even have any salt. Better than plain hard tack by a long shot, in any case. They did, at least, have a rough spoon thanks to some deft knife-work on Nysid’s part once he’d finished gathering branches while Anders cooked.

Nysid certainly didn’t complain about the taste, which pleased the captain. Anders had opted to eat first, recalling the prince’s concern about the safety of some of the unfamiliar plants he’d gathered, just to prove it was alright before passing the rest off to his companion. Nysid had accepted with only a brief moment’s hesitation then tucked in, dark hair spilling down his back as he sat cross-legged next to the fire while he ate. The prince caught Anders looking and said, “Not bad.”

The captain chuckled and dropped his chin to rest on his palm, elbow on his knee. “Thanks. At least we won’t starve if we run out of hard tack.”

Nysid hummed thoughtfully, gaze dropping back to his food for a moment before he said, “Hopefully we’ll be out of here before that.”

“Yeah,” Anders agreed, good mood fading as his thoughts strayed to Ghain. He’d been trying not to think too hard on his partner, not when fretting wouldn’t do him any good. The best thing he could do in the present circumstances was just keep putting one foot in front of the other until he finally found the dragon again; Ephinea too. The man found himself hoping that, wherever Ghain had been spirited off too, he at least had his mate to keep him company like Anders did; it made the separation a little easier to bear.

Hoping to distract himself from dwelling on currently insurmountable problems, Anders asked, “So, what brought you to Marilderland in the first place?”

Nysid stared at him, seeming baffled by the question. “If I recall,” he drawled blandly between bites, “we were there to attack one of your ports.”

Anders rolled his eyes and jabbed absently at the dirt with the stick he’d been using to stoke the fire. “Obviously. But why Portistown? Doesn’t make a lick of sense, strategically speaking.” Nysid didn’t answer, so the captain rambled on in hopes he’d say something if he persisted with the topic long enough. “It’s Marilderland’s biggest port, yeah, but it’s far from a vital supply line. Most of our stuff comes from the interior, or over land trade routes from other countries. All we really get out of Portistown in any kind of quantity is fish and some luxury goods. Some southern produce.” He drew a few runes in the dirt while he talked. “It’d be a tragic loss of lives if you destroyed it, obviously, but if you were going for shock and awe, there were bigger cities closer to the border that you could have hit and then disappeared long before the legions could arrive.”

“What are you doing?” Nysid asked sharply, drawing Anders’ gaze up from the ground to meet his piercing gray gaze. Even when he was mad he was gorgeous, the captain thought absently, though he suspected the prince would have thrown his helmet at him if he’d said the words aloud. “You think I’ll divulge Rodshyom’s secrets because we’re— we’re mates?” the man bit out.