Frith shut his eyes, felt the rain on the flats and the mud beneath his feet, deep and wet- caking his legs in thick unmovable muck. He had done this many times now his sentence had been lifted, always to wake to his family’s hut, sat on the floor on woven rugs watching his mother bent over the cooking pot or standing at his father’s bedside, tanned hand clutched around a pale one. But not today.

Today when Frith opened his eyes, the scene before him was exactly as the one he saw in his mind’s eye. The beggar flats. Wretched place that it was. Frith had sworn he would not so much as look upon them when he was realised, never scan the horion for the lithe shape of Inle as he hunched over looking to make models or drag a stick through the mud to create some crude image. Inle and Elahra, how creative they once had been, how damned they were now.

But Frith needed to be here. It was fitting that he should have served his last penance here and had another one to serve in this place too.

This morning he had killed two pheasants- easy prey, the stupid things walked right into arrows usually and they swung from his arm by hooks, limp and lifeless bodies bashing together, a trail of feathers left in his wake. Tucked under his arm was tightly wrapped bundle that had been packed with care.

The dagger in his pocket felt heavy as lead, and Frith could almost feel it searing through flesh but he did not stop, could not. Though his heart was filled with trepidation he knew what had to be done, it was all he could do.

“Murron Uita!” he called, cupping his hand to his face. “Murron Uita”
His voice felt strange in this place of overwhleming silence. Beggars looked up from their wretchedness and stared at him, he felt the hate in their gaze. Frith Rair, free from the flats come back to throw it in all of their faces. He wanted to tell them that this was not the case but could not find the words, one never could in the Beggar flats.

He prayed desperatley to the gods that his eyes would not look upon the dirty, thin face of Inle, not today.

“Murron Uita!” he called again, loud. So loud it offended his ears and his throat, took him far from the man he was now back to the boy. “Elahra!” he had called so desperatley with every ounce of his strength. “Inle….she’s gone!!” It had been a lifetime ago. He was no longer skilled in this art of shouting, he was a man who had slipped into silence easily as though buttered and even now stuck to it. Even free, there was no one to converse with, no way to hunt but in silence, no way to keep his father alive without being silent for Droon.

But he would pay his penance for that today. Frith closed a hand around his dagger.

“Please, Murron Uita I must speak with you!!”

Murron, like any good doe, had been watching him well among the various others who'd gathered in the mud to make their wares. The rain offered a prime chance to get mud. The sky hauled one's water for you and there was more than plenty to go around. No one fought over resources in downpours. The rainy season was usually a time of peace among the Flats.

Murron had been gathering huge handfuls of mud to take back to her hut when Frith had come calling. The rain also meant that brick making was slowed, as the sun was essential to making though. Clay pots could still be constructed and dried by the fire, though. She'd near been ready to depart, bowl balanced on her head, when Frith had come calling.

The others seemed to be as shocked as she. Only one person ever came down from the city to the Flats, really, and that person could be heard for miles. It was no secret among the convicted that old departed Sulda's son came to visit Murron from time to time. Frith, though, he'd become as much of a fixture as the mud and the weeds, had returned. No one who was able to leave ever returned.

Carefully, Murron rose from her crouch in the mud, staff in hand, and trod forward, through the others. Brown as she appeared, she would blend in perfectly with the landscape. Her face was streaked with brown and her long hair hung in drenched and dirty strings about her shoulders. Her legs and hands were covered in the substance of the Flats. Murron had long ago been claimed by that place.

She approached him with cautious, slow steps that moved her with the fluid grace of a Roek, despite the sucking ground. Murron stopped, twenty feet off from Frith. The hand on his dagger made her tense and her eyes narrow. Murron did not raise her staff in way to attack, but it did provide subtle defense across her. She knew of his crime well.

What do you want, traitor of the Durg? What business would you have with me?

At the sight of her, Frith dropped to his knees in the mud and bowed, arms outreached, palms flat on the floor and nose to the ground. It was the position of a man who, when faced with a god, could do nothing but tremble with humility and awe. Or a man taken for excecution ready to accept his fate.

He knelt like this for a few moments before raising his head to survey her. Under all of the mud streaked about her person, he saw shades of his Elahra in her, so inncoent, so doomed and his dark eyes filled with sadness. “You will know me Murron Uita. Of the things have done and you may hate me. You are right to. More than you know.”

It was all he could bring himself to say so he set about his work, still kneeling on the ground. Unfurling the bundle he had brought with him, Frith revealed two loaves of bread and a measure of dried rice. It was more than Frith and his family had to spare, but not nearly enough. Frith laid the two pheasants along side the bundle on the sheet and placed his hands on them. A gesture of giving.

There was more though and Frith’s hands trembled at the thought, though it was a weak move for what should have been a mighty Roek warrior. He felt the dagger again, smooth and unyeilding and withdrew it from his pocket it, placing it out in front of him along with the bundle.

“What I did to be sent to the flats I deserved- my heart is too filled with darkness. But you…you are a pure light in the shadows of this place. The pheasants will keep for but a day or two. But I will bring more. I swear this to you…”

He placed his hand flat on the ground between them and clutched the knife in his other, bringing it towards the hand. Taking care to keep his breath steady, Frith with firm but trembling hands brought the knife to the flesh of one of his fingers. He pressed down and prepared himself.

“And now I offer my flesh to you as penance.”

Gritting his teeth tight together, he carved into his index finger bringing warm blood to the surface. It was slow, he made sure of it- no swift slash of razor sharpness, it would be long, drawn out and torturous- like nine years of exile in silence.

A white hot flash of pain struck him as the knife hit bone, but he did not cry out- the beggar flats were a place for silence. Face becoming paler, blood soaking into the mud of the flats with intense colour he drove the dagger in further putting all the strength he could into the act. Like cutting into the flesh of a dead animal, he told himself.

When he finished, the finger was totally severed and blood seeped from the stump in his hand where it had once belonged . The brown digit lay sad and useless in the mud next to the rest of his offering.

“You must be patient, Murron Uita,” he said, trying to keep his voice firm though the traces of pain seeped through like hot scarlet running through channels of mud and rainwater. “I pray for both of us that all this will end soon enough.” Once my father is well…or once his pain has ended for good I will do all I can to see you free from this place.

Smearing blood on to his trousers Frith fumbled into his pocket for a scrap of material and pressed it to his wound, though the crimson seeped through easily. He disposed of the rag quickly and simply let blood seep freely along his hand.

A month had passed since his exile had ended, a month that Frith could have spoken and had chosen not to. A month. A finger. It was his penance to Murron. For each month he chose silence when words were the ultimate justice he would sever for her another of his fingers. It still wasn’t enough, but it would have to do.

Waves of shock rippled through those present like a surge of emotion. Why was this person, a free person, free of the Flats, bowing before a murderess? One of the foulest creatures ever condemned to this muddy hell? However, that short wave of surprise was nothing compared to the distress that coursed through the criminals, like lighting flash. A strangled cry lodged in Murron's chest at the sight of his self-mangling and she sped forward, caution forgotten as well as the staff she dropped in the mud.

Murron dropped to her knees beside the bleeding man. She tried to inspect the wound as she ripped a length of cloth from the hem of her dress, a single bit that still remained unsullied by the day's mud. Murron reached for his bloody hand, intending to wrap it up and bind it tight to stop the bleeding.

What is wrong with you?! Her mind wailed at Frith. Why would you do this? What penitence do you owe one such as I? What must I be patient for? Thoughts burst at her mind at a pace she herself could not keep up with. She did not understand what he did or why he did it. Murron had never spoken to this man, and here he was, mangling himself for her.

Frith saw the woman drop to her knees and the worry etched into her soft face, felt her wrap the hem of her dress around his wound and dropped his dagger. It was her kindness that saw his heart tighten with an intensepain- far far more than that of his wounded hand. Shaking but a little,with his free hand he caught her’s as it wrapped material around his disfigurment.

Her hands were not that of a murderer; he could feel only healing and compassion and it stuck to the roof of his mouth like thick, sickly sweet honey. But there were bee stings in the honey and he looked on Murron Uita with sad brown eyes that seemed so much older than his twenty seven years. Hers were not so different he noticed. Beggar’s eyes. Guilty eyes.

“Please Murron Uita,” he said in a soft voice, gripping her hand in firm but strangley gentle hands- the kind that belonged to a man who sat with his father’s hands clasped in his own, who would soothe a struggling roe deer with a touch before wringing it’s neck to be used as meat. “Do not show mercy.”

There were things she longed to say, Frith could see this. Frith had lived this. And yet when blessed with speech, oftentimes Frith found himself longing for silence once more. For the rationlisation that came with sifting through thoughts unable to vocalise them the minute they entered his head, to avoid dangerous words, to say more than could be said. It was this fear kept him silent now, no explanation for his actions, no justifaction of what had just occurred for Murron. How could there be?

Relinquishing the hand from over hers, Frith fumbled into his pocket for something more. A homemade notebook was produced, scraps of rough fibre pressed together into a rudimentary attempt at paper roughly stitched together with twine along folds. It was thin though and there were clear tear marks were pages had been ripped from it. Holding it tight in his fist he put it on the ground beside Murron before producing a scrap of charcoal.

There was a rough scratch of charcoal on the paper,more like a smudge than words. But there were words all the same.

“You will have many questions. But you know as I do that some things cannot and must not be said,” Frith had written, “I may seem free from the flats but I am still bound, just as you are. The answers will come in time.”

“You must tell me,” he said firmly, “You must tell me that you accept what I have offered you.”

For his sleep, for his sanity and for his soul Frith longed to add.
And with fumbling hands and attocious handwritting he scrawled and addendum, “Please.”

Murron's hands shook as she released Frith's hand, her eyes trained on the notebook he held. Oh words, oh communication and oh to break that chain with the tip of a charcoal stick. Relief of a sort was sharp in her chest as her shaking hands gripped the notebook and the means to speak silently. Before this moment, Sabu Imani was her only way to break this chain, but for a moment she could do it again. She wrote, and wrote long and quickly.

Mercy? What mercy when I am but trying to understand why someone would cleave off his own finger to pay a due to a person he has never spoken with? What are you doing? What things must not be said? What answers? Answers to what? What must I accept? I do not even know what you have offered to me!

Murron frowned deeply as she wrote and the rain began to obscure her first words; her mouth curved bitterly. Always communication, the simple right that being and living brought most everyone, was close to being forced from her. Murron bent over the words and re-etched them, curving her body over the notebook. The rain beat against her soaked back and she cradled the paper like a child in her hands. When finally finished with her questions, she passed it back to Frith, following it carefully with a hand and moving close to him in case the paper needed more sheltering.

Though she had also written something else: If you do owe me anything, you owe me full explanation for what you do. I wish to hear everything, though only after you come to my home and allow me to treat your finger fully.

Frith read her words quickly, brown eyes skirting over desperate written ramblings. He could almost hear her voice in his head saying those words. There would be anger, but the smallest trace, a thicker strain of worry and a lump of desperation thick as mud bricks.

He opened his mouth. But found there was nothing to say. He had made up his mind about this already and Frith if anything else was a man of strength once his mind had been made up. Often these decisions were the worst imaginable- the incident with the durg sprang to mind- but once made there was usually no turning back from them.

Once again he tried to voice this, but his spoken words, how feeble they could be.

I should have come to you earlier, he scrawled. All these years. 9 years in the flats, not once did we look eachother in the eye. But I was angry, Murron Uita; I had no love for any member of my tribe. I felt as though every Roek had betrayed me.

He handed it back to her, adding in his gruff voice, “I have made many mistakes in my life, Murron. And I will not say or write any more on this.”
His eyes flickered over her offer at treatment and shook his head, folding his arm into his chest so she could not see the wound. As though she would forget it was there somehow.

“It is no worse than a scratch,” he shrugged. Roek men it seemed would call an amputated arm ‘just a flesh wound’, would try to walk off the pain of a dozen arrows to the chest and would battle through a brain anyeurism. “I do not need treatment.”

Sitting back on his heels, Frith scratched his beard as he scanned the flats. He had prayed not to see Inlé and yet, here he prayed to see him.

“Murron, will you tell me? How is my friend? You would know him as my accomplice, but he was my friend. My sentence was not one third of his, he’s still here somewhere. You must have seen him. How is Inlé?”

Murron narrowed her eyes at his obstinacy. Men. Roek men. Stubborn and insufferable and willful and...Roek. At times she abhorred them for it and at other times she adored them for their perseverant strength. Nuet had been such a man, Sabu was such a man: tenacious to the end. In truth she would always be in love with such strength. Still, that hand needed care and she would see it tended to, even if she had to knock him insensible and drag him home. For if it was the Roek man’s nature to be unbending, it was the Roek woman’s place to be ten times so. Roek women had to be more stubborn than their men, more resolute and stiff-necked if they were to keep them alive. As it was the Roek man’s place to take any wound and still fight, it was the Roek woman’s place to make him take any treatment he needed.

She gripped the notebook in her hands and began to write in response when he inquired about Inlé. No, Murron did not know him. If she had ever avoided Frith, she had certainly gone out of her way to avoid Inlé. Though…. Murron bit the corner of her lip as she considered her writings.

I will tell you of your friend when I have treated your wounded hand.

Murron’s expression was unyielding as she passed back the paper and charcoal.

“Devious woman,” said Frith, eyes crinkling in amusement. “So it is to be blackmail is it?”

Elahra was the same. These tricky Roek women. As a child she would dance around Frith, demanding to join in with the boy’s games with the promise of secrets exchanged or sticky fistfuls of honey. As it got older the games were replaced with Frith and Inle’s hunting trips and secrets and sweets with the promise of kisses. He should never have caved then, should never have let Elahra go in to the woods so many times. Should not have been surprised when it was inevitable one day she would see something, would wander out of his life for good.

The smiles in his eyes faded into that inky death in his pupils. Blackmail. He was begginging to hate the very concept, this business with Droon left such an ill taste in his mouth, like some lingering poison. How could he refuse Murron’s attempts to heal him? It was so similar and yet so different.

“I tell you now, Murron Uita, it is not necessary,” Frith sighed a conciliatory sigh. “But I will allow you to poke and prod at my hand until you see fit to stop.”

It had been so very long since he’d entered one of these makeshift mud homes in the flats. Frith could not say he missed his own. “Come, let me help you rise.”

Gathering the food as best he could, he tucked the bundle into his arm and offered his non mangled hand Murron.

As for what would become of the finger. Frith did not know. I was dead now, a part of him dying in the flats though Frith had sworn he would never die in this terrible place. And neither would Murron, he made that firm promise. No one deserved to die in such silence.

The look Murron gave Frith told him to silence himself. His hand would indeed be prodded at until she saw fit. It was still bleeding, gods preserve him.

I shall twist your arm so, if it means your health. Murron cast a long glance at the pheasants, rice, and bread. It was the least she could do at least for that feast, if he meant to give that to her. The only times she tasted anything more than flat rice flour biscuits and wild vegetables of her own gathering were the occasional instances that Sabu brought her something. He was truly too kind to her.

Murron only let his hand go when she had risen and walked a few paces off to collect her staff and bowl from the mud. The bowl she balanced on her head and the staff she took in her hand. Her other hand found Frith's once more. She would not let him loose to wander off, even if she secured him with hope of news of his friend, and she griped his hand firmly. She looked back to the Roek man and motioned for following with her staff. She would lead him through the mud and the rain to her home.

Frith did not miss this. The walk through the mud flats, it was a familiar one and yet totally alien. Murron made it alien. Those ten years, Frith had taken his solitude seriously, would never have dreamed to travel in this wretched place hand in hand with someone. There had been months when he had looked for Inle, but still grieving the loss of his sister Frith’s friend had withdrawn in the same way that they all did.

Dwelling on Murron’s hand in his he did not notice a familiar, ramshackle, shape looming on the horizon until they were past it. Stopping, Frith stared at the hut, mouth open slightly. Empty, like a gash carved into the landscape it was uninviting though not too poorly made- he was a Roek man after all. Wordlessly he pointed to the house, telling her with brown eyes that he had lived there all those lifetimes ago.

For ten years of the most endless years that had been his home. He had wanted to scream, to yell and to cry out in that home. Had felt the most intense grief and lonliness in that place. That wretched little mud hut. To even look upon it gave him a hot itch of remembrance. How, Frith wondered had the inside kept. The mud was always sliding away from the hole in the earth he had dug to sleep in, perhaps it had caved in totally. Perhaps someone else had moved in to his hut. No. Not his hut.Not his life anymore.

Though part of him was curious as to what it would look like now, he did not wish to go inside. To dredge up memories forgotten.

Frith cleared his throat as though to say something, but thought better of it. Instead he allowed Murron to lead him, allowed her to keep her thoughts on here and now while his drifted unanchored into the past. To this place ten years ago, to girls and boys together in the places they should not have been.

He needed Murron to lead him, needed her to be his eyes and ears while his senses felt clouded and so he squeezed tight and firm.

Murron had paused when he did, looked where he looked, and her muddy yellow eyes grew sad when she saw. They grew sadder still when he gestured to the hollow mud shell. She knew it was his, she'd always known where he'd lived, known well so she could avoid it. She avoided most of the other criminals, still. Most of them were broken and skittish, but others still burned on the insides. Those she avoided the most. Frith had been one who'd burned.

Now she could not say that he had cooled. He had not transformed his Roek zeal into the stagnant strength of a tree. He was still, in his way, a blazing fire while she'd made herself a deep-rooted tree. Still, in his way, he seemed to burn. His finger laid testament to that.

As he cleared his throat, she took that as a sign to continue, and she did--bowl balanced on her head and staff in her hand. Her other hand felt Frith's acutely, felt his hand tighten around hers, and she squeezed back gently in reassurance. Roek men, for all their strength, still needed Roek women in one way or another.

Upon arriving at her home--her cone of mud and bricking all of her own make--Murron did not let Frith go, instead, leading him straight to the cloth flap of her door. She motioned inward with her staff, asking him to climb through the hole and down the short ladder into her meager dwelling. She was grateful that the fire's coals still burned low from the morning.

Frith didn’t make for a particularly talkative houseguest and his silent hostess was not much better. But strange, shared as it was between two people the load of silence did not feel quite so heavy to Frith.

He laid the pheasants and the bundle in the hovel and for a moment wondered if this was what it meant to have a wife, to be the hunter gatherer. Of course he had pictured it as a younger man; of Elahra waiting at home when he brought stags and boar for her to cook, his children fussing at his ankles, begging to be taken on hunting trips and Inle, was there too- sometimes dear uncle by the fire, sometimes with a steady hand on Frith’s shoulder back from a hunting trip. But that dream had died with Elahra, it did not do to dwell on these things, only brought back those horrid feelings from the years before.

Strange, too, he realized that anything in the Flats would strike him as homey. Surely it was something to do with all the blood loss. Indeed, brown blood had cooled and crusted to his arms whilst sticky crimson also dripped afresh. And it was because of the blood loss that Murron really did look very pretty in the dying embers of her fire.

Holding his hand out for inspection, like a good soldier, Frith allowed himself to inspect Murron’s home- she’d done a good job in organizing her habitat with the meager tools available. He wondered if those reed mats he’d made for his home were still where he’d left them in the flats, it would be nice to give them to her- when the mud was at it’s dampest to tread on something not made of mud was a small luxury but one that made all of the difference.

“Perhaps,” he said finally, “after you look at my hand, we might pluck the pheasant. It can be devilishly tricky, though I suppose any good Roek woman would know how it was done,” Frith smiled.

“ My Daoa, she has a good recipe for the whole bird; feet, eyes, intestines. Not an ounce of meat is wasted. ..we couldn’t afford that and these are very good birds, come look.” He picked one of the carcasses up by the neck and patted the creature on his stomach.

“He is young you can tell because his legs are smooth and the beak and feet are still pliable,” Frith bent the pheasant legs as though to give a strange kind of puppet show, “Harder to catch, but the meat is better. Richer, will fall off the bone if you were to cook it. And the meat is good cold, and you will have leftovers.”

Whole sentences! And more than one at that, Frith blinked at his own overzealous approach and coughed, looking at a pheasant instead of Murron. “Of course, I think I have one hen and one cock…the hen serves two people and the cock, three to four….if you were planning on entertaining guests.”

His voice was so serious that there was no way to pick apart his small joke but for the smile burning in his eyes.

After climbing down the short ladder, into her dug-out home, she laid the bowl down to the side of the single rounded room and tended the fire with a short stick, gently coaxing the coals back to life. The hollow was near six feet in depth, providing plenty of room for Murron to stand. Soon after the coals began glowing hot once more, she threw on bark and other dried plants--fresh-burning, aromatic herbs known to calm nerves and ease suffering--to bring it into flickering life.

That done, she did take Frith's offered hand, smiling to him like someone might greet a well-behaved bander wolf. Give me that hand, she thought to him. You are getting blood on that pheasant. She gently peeled back the piece of her dress she'd used as a bandage as he babbled on. Murron made to nod and glance up, trying to seem engaging in this sudden string of words that came from him. She wondered if it was the herbs or the blood-loss.

The stump was still oozing crimson and however clean the cloth had been, dirt still gathered around the wound. Murron pulled to her a tall jug filled that sloshed when moved. She did not want to use much water, as the liquid would only stimulate more bleeding. Though, a rag slightly dampened did well to clean it of grit and filth. She made sure to keep the wound raised above the heart-line to slow the bleeding and made him to fold it over his chest, resting on his shoulder. The blood flow would not completely stop, but it would keep it slow enough. That done, Murron slipped her hand down his arm till she found the elbow. It did not take long to find what she searched for, the blood channel in the joint was pulsing like the jugular of a stag and it swelled against her fingers. Murron mashed it down firmly. Blood-flow had to be sufficiently halted to that finger.



Murron blinked up at him. Of all things to say, the Roek woman did not manage to fully hide the little smile that twitched at the corners of her mouth. Those herbs she'd thrown on the fire had to be taking some sort of affect. She'd never figured him for a creature of even slight humor.

"I am getting blood all over your pheasant," said Frith blinking at the bird. "My apologies"

Watching tender hands cleaning his wounds, Frith's head's tipped to one side. Her husband, he thought suddenly, would have been a lucky man to have such an attentive wife. He imagined Nuet Uita, cut up from a fight or injured by a boar receiving the same treatment, only being rewarded with a soft grazing of her lips too, to the wound, to his cheek, to his mouth.

He did not allow himself to dwell on how that might feel. He certainly did not let himself imagine the night where her husband had been killed. Did not let himself think of the blood and the wails, disturbed sheets and angry, frightened faces.

Elahra would have only grinned at his finger and told him he was fine but an idiot for mangling himself so, Frith was sure of this, his little impetuous girl who had so longed to be one of the boys. He then chastised himself for comparing his beloved Ela with Murron so unfavourably. He did so miss that smile, miss that cutting tongue.She had been perfect for the young Frith and his rage and his passions. But not for Frith now, casualty of her death and of the Beggar Flats- tired, quiet and wounded- he suddenly felt sure of this. And it shamed him.

You would not recognise me, Elahara, you may even hate what I have become. You did so disparage these staid and stoic older Roek men.

"You have done this before," said Frith quietly to Murron. The air smelt of smoky herbs, a pleasant aroma that seemed to lift his guilt and worries and let them dance on the air. He let her press his arm, flinching but a little at the pain, enjoying the touch of her- like the comfort of a coat in the winter months that he did not want to be ripped from.

The way Frith studied Murron was not lost on her. She noticed. Noticed and withdrew. Nine years experience told her to withdraw or face consequences, whether that be the back of someone's hand or a well aimed stone. It was a lesson well learned for someone who still dared to mingle among her tribe, even when they wanted nothing more than her blood. Ethia would spit at her, Kohore would snarl and snap, Roek, though—warlike creatures they were all born—Roek would not hesitate to kill a murderess if she stepped out. No matter what the Durg had seen as her rightful sentence. Murron did not pull away physically, she stayed put near to Frith—one hand keeping his hand on his shoulder, the other slowing the flow of his blood—but her eyes dropped, the simple curve of her mouth flattened into meek withdrawal. She looked only at his hand and no longer in his face.

Shame flamed across her face when she realized that she should have been the one bowing to him. He was the freed man. She was still a beggar. A criminal. She had truly been too bold in her actions and her head dipped lower to her shoulders.

Another rag she pulled from her bedroll found it's way quickly and snugly around his damaged hand. Murron's small fingers were painstakingly gentle tying the knot, smoothing the worn fabric, soothing his hand. Shallow breath kept the fragrant smoke from affecting her head as she worked.

She wondered again why he was here.

Ten years in silence had made him more attune then perhaps he would have been to the subtle and not so subtle changes of facial features. It was, after all, the only language of the flats. Allowed him to register the disgust from those petty thieves sentenced to but a few months towards himself, sometimes the pity and the absolute blankness in Inle’s face which almost seemed to say ‘you are dead to me’. He had found it useful in his new life out of exile too, when dealing with those who wore their hearts on their sleeves compared to tricksters who held their cards close to their chest. It always pained Frith to admit he was the latter. But he had to be.

It would have been almost impossible for Frith not to notice the change in Murron. That shame, fear too. He could not bear to see her ashamed so, this was his fault. He should be the only one feeling shame in this smoky hovel, shame and the pain of his finger which she was alleviating for him.
And so, like the old Frith running blindly into a murder plot, he acted for more rashly than was wise. Taking his still five fingered right hand, he placed a balled hand under Murron Uita’s chin, letting it rest on the crook between his thumb and finger and pushed her head gently upwards, until she would meet his gaze again.

“Do not be ashamed,” he said firmly. “There is no shame found among equals.”

He withdrew his hand quickly and huffed out a short breath. Equals indeed, Frith was lying if he thought that he, criminal, blackmailer and liar was an equal. If they would let me take your sentence and serve it as my own Murron Uita, I would.

“Now,” Frith said in a clear voice, suggesting that the incident was done, was forgotten, his face grew yet more serious. “You gave me your word that you would give me news of my friend. I should very much like to know.”

Chin forced up, Murron trembled against his touch. It was not exactly fear she felt, no, but it was certainly trepidation of sorts. Never did anyone—save her dear friend—really touch her with any amount of kindness. Any feel of another was met with confusion and shock.

Murron was surprised that Frith did not have the typical yellow Anhau eyes. His were murky brown but still they sparked with Roek life. She wondered if they were family eyes or if they belonged to only him.

Equals? Could they be? Thoughts of that subject flittered around her mind in a most confusing way. She did not find herself capable of solidly grabbing a hold of it. Thankfully, his next words broke her reverie, though she had trouble feeling thankful.

She had lied to him in order to make him come. She knew nothing of his friend and she bit the corner of her lip in embarrassment.

With a shaky hand, she wrote—upside-down, letters facing him—in the dirt between them: He is alive, but I know nothing more.

Alive. Well that didn’t tell him much, his father was alive for the most part- but it was hardly any kind of life at all. Inle would have known of course that Frith was free, the silence would have hit him far harder than Frith after all these years and he got no comfort from what Murron had written.

“Alive? That’s so like Inle,” said Frith, his expression utterly deadpan.
But what would have comforted him? What would he liked to have learnt? That his friend was happy, it seemed unlikely that this was true, that he was successful in this place, that he was still the boy Frith remembered- Elahra’s twin in so many ways, their spirits and natures lost. When Elahra died, Frith had lost a lover but Inle…Inle had lost himself.

He would miss Elahra like some missing limb, even after all these years. And me, thought Frith, does my friend miss me?

Frith did not want to be here any longer. The thought hit him like an arrow through the chest and he stood abruptly, hauling himself out of her dug out, not needing to use the ladder.

“I must go,” he said gruffly. These thoughts of the past, they were dragging him under again, dangerous thoughts that ended in violence and anger. “But I will come back, bring something more, but only if you do not mind it.”

Murron had followed close behind him, spry as a hind, and clamped her little hand onto his arm. He was not leaving! Not yet. That hand was—

Oh, leave me be, woman! A am no child. No Roek warrior wants a woman weeping in his ear!

Nuet's voice had come unbidden and unexpected in her mind. She even recalled how he'd looked that afternoon, coming home from the forest, bruised and bloody, nose broken, lip torn open, roaring on about that dishonorable Siah whelp. He'd been out chopping wood when Briac Siah had driven a sounder of wild boar at him. The young man claimed to be hunting. Nuet had barely escaped up the tree he'd been chopping on, and when the tree had fallen in the wake of the beasts, he's broken his nose. Treating Nuet had been twice as hard as with Frith. He was downright compliant compared to the stubborn, stubborn man Nuet had been. Stubborn and proud.

Murron turned loose of Frith as though scalded. She took a deep breath and lifted her skirt, extending a calf and pointing a toe to write in the mud: Come back any time you please, Frith Rair.

Frith already knew he hated it when she did that, after such as short time not even conversing properly- for they couldn’t of course, but the withdrawal of her hand from his arm with such fear already invoked a reaction from him, guilt mostly.

He smiled, a slow curving smile like a new moon coming into view as Murron wrote into the ground and squatted at her side so he could trace in the mud too with one of his remaining fingers. It would be an honor, Murron.

Standing up he took that hand she had withdrawn from his arm in his own, and her other with some difficulty in the bandaged hand, “Take care,” he said stiffly, loathe to leave her in this place for a minute more. That silence, he did so want to hear what she was thinking, he didn’t think he had ever heard her voice before, as a youth he’d had no time for the other sons and daughters of the tribe- Inle and Elahra had been everything to him and her voice would have been lost in a sea of others, lost now to the silence of the downs.

He withdrew his hands from hers and punched his chest, so very Roek warrior, it meant masculinity, showed that a man’s words and actions, so long as they were true, meant everything. “Goodbye Murron Uita.”

He did not stop, only continued down the road back to his absolution from exile, did not look back- what man in his right mind would do so to such a place. Only looked forward, but it was strange that Murron Uita should feel as though she were in front of him when geographically speaking she was behind.