Aodan

Even through my sleeve, the gentle pressure of her hand on my arm sends more warmth coursing through me than the family hearth ever has, fending off the nip of the fall dusk. I let her soak in the cricket-songs as we mosey to a rise in the ground. There, the gentle slope of the fields lay open before us. I release her, turning to watch her admire the view with a maiden perspective.

If I wasn't fox-nipped by the end of the festival, I am now. She’s been magnificent. She laughed with my family, allowing them to forget her social standing and agenda when she joined in the jokes, free and happy.

It didn't last. Beside me, her eyes turn purple in the pink glow of the sunset, her hair gently blowing as an evening wind plays with it. But that's not what captures my attention. It's her expression: pensive, her slim pink lips pressed together and her gaze intense. No, the waving hair only calls attention to how her soft jaw flexes. I want to reach out and smooth her tension, her worries.

“Something is bothering you,” I observe. “I’d be willing to listen, if you needed.” It’s as close as I dare to get.

She sighs and remains silent. From this angle, I can see her lashes, long and light around her eyes. They are turned downward, heavy with sadness.

“It’s just... I haven’t met a family like yours before.”

“We’re a bit rowdy,” I say apologetically. “Sorry if we’re too much. Especially Ionin. He... still lacks some boundaries.” It doesn’t seem like we offended her, but perhaps it was overwhelming.

“Not at all!” She turns to me, countenance transformed to a bright cheerfulness. “You’re all warm, like the summers, and lively like the springs. Every moment was as a song by the fire at the end of a long winter!”

A long winter. I study her, pleased that she enjoyed us, but concerned. “What winter? What is your life truly like?” I meant to say we were glad to have her and that I hope she will come again. But I think of her father, the Ceann with the eyes like daggers’ blades, and my honest question pops out. 

She looks down, her facade falling away into the breeze, an unspeakable sorrow taking its place. “It’s... very routine. I’m still in my father’s house, but it’s never warm, like this. Never jovial or overly kind. Even when I was a child, it wasn’t. It isn’t bad–was never cruel or mean–only another duty. Our priorities are elsewhere.”

Yet, the longing in her eyes as she gazes at the last rays of the sun betray other desires. I can see her heart reaching out for more. My hand itches to smooth that unraveling braid beside her ear. I don't let it. “Why can’t it be warm?”

She searches me then, and I meet her gaze, wishing and not wishing that she could see this daydream forming in my mind, to hear the way my heart pounds just thinking of it.

“It must be perfect,” she says.

“Is fire not perfect? It’s plenty warm.”

“It is beautiful, but it consumes. I must instead preserve.”

“Preserve what? Tradition?”

“Yes,” she answers. A stiffness grows over her, as though slowly she is turning to stone. “I must be firm and steadfast, etched for the ages, as our family tree. I cannot be a fire.”

I remember, then, the white willow at the Cultural Center, and I watch it take her over. “So you must be petrified and dead?” My heart twists, imagining her in a cold, joyless home, never smiling her arched smile. I step closer, and she steps back.

“I have a duty to attend to and propriety to uphold.”

I stop at the mention of propriety. I'm not too familiar with the ways of high society, but I do know they are more conservative and ordered than us. I wouldn't care, but this is Kitaryn, a Fyr-Ceann. Formalities probably matter to her. “But what does your future job have to do with your family? Your personal life?” I press.

“It’s another duty. To be executed perfectly.” That stiffness has nearly taken her last fringes. I'm losing her: the free Kitaryn who laughs with abandon, who looks back when I walk away. The one who called me a prairie grouse and revealed her hand: that she had taken our dance for romance, and even so she had been impressed.

But did the dance work? It worked on me. But she speaks of family as a duty. “Even if it were with that Trom-chew-sit guy?” I hate to ask. I hate even more to know the answer.

I thought she would look away, collapsing under the suggestion, but she is strong. She holds my gaze, barely blinking a flinch. “If, in a decade or so, my father still insists on the match.”

“Why?”

“It’s my duty. To our people. And to our lineage." There is no hesitation in her voice, not the slightest tremor. This is a fact to her.

 I shake my head. That she is strong and can stand by her convictions; it only makes my admiration grow. I yearn to know her, to learn more, and to understand what it means to be raised toward a single purpose: become the next Ceann Willowbirth of the House of Tradition. I want to know why it's so important to her beyond the word, “duty;” why she chooses it—for there's always a choice. But she either cannot or will not explain. I only know that she has chosen her path. I'm not on it.

Regardless of whether she feels the same as me, it cannot be. We can't even try.

Still, I want to know. “Kitaryn...” her name comes out low in my voice. I like the way it feels to say her name to her, no titles. I don't want to give that up. “I...”

The breeze gives her a shiver. “Oh! Your cloak! I’ve brought it back for you!” She reaches into her satchel and retrieves the brown fabric, neatly folded. She holds it out.

I grasp her hand, clasping the fabric against her palm with my thumb and the back of her hand in my fingers. I squeeze. “Kitaryn, please.”

She searches my eyes, inhaling sharply. The cloak unfolds, dangling pressed between our hands. She swallows so loudly that I can hear it, her eyes never moving from mine.

“I know you can’t...” 

Her eyes widen, glancing swiftly between my hand and face. For a moment, I think she wants to run; that I've misread her entirely; that her gaze hasn’t lingered on me when she thought I wasn’t looking. But when I step closer, this time she doesn’t move. “But I have to know...”

After this night, I may never see her again. What she wants, what she feels, doesn't have to matter when it’s not what she will choose. Or so I say in my head, but my heart berates me for an answer: Kitaryn, what do you truly want?

Her eyes flicker once to my lips, then hold my eyes, pained. A piece of her wants more than what she says. And a piece of her feels the same attraction that I do.

I close the distance with one more step forward, ducking my head ever so slightly to meet her lips. My kiss is soft, almost chaste, but definitely stolen. I want to hold her, but I don't.

I don't linger for even half a breath, but step back again, taking my cloak. I watch her face for a sign and see her lashes flicker.

Delayed, she gasps and backs away, pale as a full moon. 

I’ve erred. 

Guilt runs hot down my gut, burning me inside like molten metal. “Kitaryn, I’m so sorry.” My chest aches. I think my sternum might split open. Good if it would. My traitorous heart can fall out for all I care. I've offended her. Blights, but she might think it's very scandalous, what I just did. I have no idea what her expectations are in that regard, but I know it’s not a kiss before a relationship.

“I need to go.” She side-steps toward the path that will take her away from me.

“Kitaryn, please, I don’t–I didn’t,” I take half a step forward, and she bolts like a frightened squirrel. I wasn’t thinking straight.

She stops short of shouting-distance. “Aodan, thank your family again for me. Dinner was something truly beautiful.”

Then she disappears into the growing dusk as the sun plunges under the horizon. I will never see her again. Our story is over. And the last thing I've left her with is a complete trespass. Eighth fool.

I kick the dirt and close my eyes, letting the breeze blow away the sweat building on my brow. “Frosts take those vixens and their nipping,” I curse under my breath.

When I approach our house, I pause to steel myself. Then, with a forced smile, I take the plunge. “Kitaryn thanks us for a beautiful meal,” I announce, “but she regretfully had to go home before it grew too dark.”

“Well, may the warm sun guide her steps and bless her... her beauty!” My uncle raises a glass. The saying is meant to bless one’s crops.

“Sun’s beauty!” The rest raise either glasses or hands and answer in unison, replacing bounty for beauty.

“Sun’s beauty.” I choke on the words, hoping no one will notice. They taste bitter, like a farewell.

“And what a beauty she is!” Ionin sends his thousandth wink of the day to me. I think he's addicted.

But I have no heart for banter. While the others start a game of twenty-guesses, Mattan captures me in her keen gaze. She tilts her head to beckon me over. “What happened?” she whispers.

“You shouldn’t have encouraged me, Ma. We shouldn't have been alone.”

“What did you do?” She pokes my arm accusingly. Reading my guilty wince, she gasps. “Tell me you didn’t give chase.”

I hang my head. “She bolted.”

“Eighth fool,” she groans. “Is this going to run ‘round to bite us?”

I close my eyes and kick myself again. I didn’t even think of the investigation. “No, she has more integrity than that.”

“Do you know that?” She prods. “You’ve known her for less than a week.”