A Companion
The air was cool, and mild. It felt dry, but fresh and… Summery? Springy?
Oh, forget it, Waker thought to herself, turning in her sheets as she lay on her uncomfortable mat. She didn’t know the first thing about the seasons this far inland. There were no monsoons, no lunar cycles to worry about. It was all so unfamiliar and uncomfortable, like those sheets she’d lain in. She could hear the sounds of what she assumed were insects and small animals chittering off in the night’s sky, and while she imagined some would find it a soothing melody, to her it was all just noise.
All just noise. Yeah. A lot of things started to sound like just noise to her. The animal sounds, the gentle whispers of the forest night’s breeze through the thick grass, the obnoxious snoring emanating from her wilder companion’s gullet. All of it was just noise.
All the arguments. All the stupid, thick, dense logic that made no sense at all. All the idiotic false connections and stupid relationship nonsense.
All these thoughts that kept repeating their figure eight loop through her head. All just noise. It was all a static-inducing blur that kept pissing her off every time it made a lap in her mind. She’d thought it all before, a thousand times and she was going to think it a thousand more, and it frustrated her and annoyed her that she just couldn’t stop thinking about it.
It was all so stupid! Here they were in a stupid abandoned town because a stupid scientist couldn’t get over her stupid mother, and here she was sleeping in a room across town from half of her team because a stupid other stupid idiot was bending so far over backwards for dear old daddy that he was halfway up his own newly-minted scrotum.
And here she was, hundreds of kilometers from home, because her stupid….
She allowed the thought to perish, awkwardly and slowly. The less thought she paid to that hulking pile of idiocy, the better, as far as she was concerned.
But even as she suppressed that thought, the others started popping back up before she could even notice, and she was right back to glaring daggers through the wall, across the town, right into that stupid eyeball-wearing rouge-coloured prick. And then she denied that thought, and the others of home cropped up. And then she denied those thoughts, and thoughts of her previous arguments cropped up.
The cycle was so tiring, she complained to herself as her eyes laid uselessly shut. It was annoying, and none of it amounted to anything because she was too chicken-shit to act any further than the occasional outburst.
But the truth was, she’d rather complain, and she’d rather scream and yell and toss and turn anxiously in her bed, because the alternative was to accept that… she was feeling far worse than she let on.
She wasn’t just angry, although that emotion was definitely there in spades. And she wasn’t just annoyed, or frustrated, or numb or anything. The truth was, when she finally couldn’t bring herself to be angry anymore, a more sinister creeping sensation trawled up her veins, lessened the gravity beneath her, made her feel weak and floaty and helpless.
With her eyes desperately shut and trying to get some sleep, and with naught but the careless snoring of an uncivilized stranger by her side and what she once considered her only friend of the group all the way on the other side of the city and probably rightfully reconsidering their relationship, Waker was face to face with the quieter fears that had developed over this adventure. The ones that didn’t need to shout in her thoughts to catch her attention. Ones that she had to get angry just to be able to avoid.
There’d been four of them, she noted. Four adventurers – heroes! Real. Heroes. – that had fallen to Reina’s terror. Farla, Naveena, Darsey, and Drake. Even if she hadn’t memorized them out of respect, their status rang too uncomfortably close to home to forget. They were a band, just like she and her companions were, and they’d not only failed to stop Reina’s onslaught, they’d become a part of it against their will. They’d been dead for at least a week or two and the Benefactors had been none the wiser.
Nobody had known. Nobody had received word of their deaths, nor could anyone have. They died, together sure, but alone and separate from the world until her party came along. And it’d happened despite their best efforts. Despite years of experience the group apparently had. They failed.
And they died. And nobody knew.
Would that happen to her?
Fuck, she sharply chastised herself, turning again in her sheets and angrily swiping at the tears that welled in her eyes without her permission. Ugly dead green stains of ink streaked on her sleeve, which was fine because the sleeves were gross and torn and unclean anyways and there was no way in hell she was going to ask resident Dickweed to mend them. But it didn’t matter because even if he mended them, even if he apologized and fixed her clothes and danced with her and held her close while the twinkling lights of chandeliers blurred around them in the background of that gorgeous manor’s ballroom, none of it would matter if they all died tomorrow to some inky abomination straight from the cold dead womb of that shriveled old bitch.
That’s what got her. That’s what kept her up hours and hours after the moon hit its peak in the sky. That all of her adventures and all of her songs, and all the inspiration and love, hate, struggles, trials and triumphs that she and her companions experienced would mean fuck all if they died. Because at the end of the day, that’s what was on the line.
She had no life line. No famous songs or plays written about her. No notoriety, no eternal spirit in the arts.
She was alone. Solitary and defenseless and naked in the midst of strangers that she nevertheless bonded with and one sentimental jackass that she still wanted to see happy for some reason. Nobody who would miss her (that she wasn’t disgusted to be missed by), no one who would remember her in a mournful song or a cheerful memoir. She had no family who would--
She thrust herself up and out of her sheets. She hated herself now more than ever, but even that hatred was nothing compared to the anger that swelled in her stomach, pounded against her head and forced her to scrunch her brow in the dark of night. She was so sick of these wasted hours spent pummeling herself. She was so sick of wanting anyone to talk to here in the dead of night when she should have been sleeping. And more than that, more than any of that, she was so. Sick. Of crying herself to sleep.
“Where’s my violin…” She mumbled to herself, blindly scrabbling along the floor to find her knapsack.
“Shut the fuck up.” She heard directed back at her, causing her to leap in a start and bang her head on an errant drawer. She moved to quickly apologize to her friend despite the pain, but her partner’s sleepy mumbles seemed to continue with a “before I… slit your throat…’n shit...”, which set Waker’s panic at ease. With a sigh of relief, she quickly picked her instrument up and carefully made her way past her sleeping team mate and stole away from the town, far and as out of sight as she could.
---
She’d taken to the most picturesque of trees she could find in the sparse woods that were only a few minutes’ walk from the town. She probably hadn’t gotten very far, but she liked to imagine that the others were all hours away, safe and sound, but away. The night was dancing with stars, though none brighter than the crescent moon that afforded her just enough light to see the strings upon her valiant instrument glimmer like diamond chords.
She laid back against the trunk of the tree, letting her violin rest upon her knee as her free hand placed the bow upon a string and pause. She could think of a handful of melodies that would put her at ease. Perhaps a shanty, drunkenly spouted from Rum’s mouth and poorly followed by the others to remind her of the sea. Or maybe, a more luxurious ambient tune that she’d painstakingly converted from a piano sheet when the group was staying within the annals of the upper class. Perhaps she could recreate that elusive tune she swore she’d heard in her youth, but that evaded her the moment she pondered too hard for it. But even if the tune offered her inn and meal, she would have to refuse.
Tonight, she decided, she wanted to do something different. Tonight, she wished to produce.
Waker shifted the bow in her hand so she could test a chord on the violin, just to see if the note would inspire anything within her. If she was going to constantly fear her death and disappearance, then she was also going to force herself to fight that fate and develop a melody to be remembered. One that would be looked upon for eons with glee and cheer, that would brandish her name and her glories through the ages.
Or, failing that, she would at least get like, a groundwork complete. That would be enough for her.
With a strum, she let the notes linger in the air for a bit, listening to see which ones caught her fancy. Another strum, and she could begin to feel the beginnings of something emerging. With a touch, she halted her strings, then adjusted her bow and held it professionally against the strings.
At that moment, she wasn’t quite sure what possessed her. She’d played many a tune off-the-cuff, and so it was to no major surprise that she found a strong stride in her melody that evening. Her bow flicked back and forth across the different strings, filling the air with an ephemeral song that reverberated across the thinly-inhabited woods. Every pull and push simply felt right, every strike and even the occasional slap of the hollow on her violin came to her thoughtlessly. Her haunting tune danced, and if she’d thought to bring her blade, it would surely be dancing too, following the notes together as they encircled the trees and billowed to the sky. Her eyes shut, her heart pounded, but the music continued to channel through her. All at once, she felt her insecurities and her fears and her anger reaching a breaking point, one after another slamming against her heart, but her spirit refused to be extinguished.
Enveloped in both passion and muse, her song continued unflinchingly as she stood from her seat, arm flawlessly conducting the bow which seemed to conduct her in kind. Her mint-tinted blood flushed at her cheeks as her fears seemed to flow, and all the anger she’d cultivated melted away into pure, unadulterated fear that she couldn’t beat back.
She didn’t want Geze to die. She didn’t want Ferem to die. She didn’t want Nalivka to die. And perhaps most pathetically of all, she herself didn’t want to die.
She didn’t want them to become nameless fallen soldiers in an unmarked grave of a battleground for someone else’s battle. She refused to be lost, to be forgotten. She didn’t want any of their efforts, their strife and struggles, to be wiped away. She wouldn’t let them all be ignored. She wouldn’t let her friends disappear!
Because despite their disagreements and arguments, they’d been there for each other. When thieves and dissent and the face of death and betrayal had stared them down, when the opportunity to leave and let die presented itself, they’d banded together, they’d faced the odds and they’d held hands and spat upon the prick face of death because--!!
Her chest had been building, to that point, but as she pulled the last few strokes of the bow across her violin, she let it sink as her mind finally accepted one searingly-bright thought with absolute clarity.
They were her only family. And that was why she felt so betrayed.
She fell to her knees, the breath taken from her lungs as she crested. It’d passed by her senses, but the breeze around her had picked up throughout her melody. It was calm now, but in its place shone a warm, gentle light that bathed her and revealed her ever-streaming tears all across her cheeks. She stared upon the light, not in fear or incredulity, but in awe as it descended all around her. In a moment, she was engulfed, but in the next, she was accompanied.
“Wh…at….” She breathlessly uttered.
A stallion’s muzzle pressed gingerly against her cheek and shoulder, and she felt her head groove against it soothingly. The creature’s breathing felt calming, reassuring, and the light it bathed was welcomed by her strained eyes in such a pitch evening. Her hand reached forth and caressed the horse’s neck, feeling the fur as smooth and silky as a fine stolen rug aboard her old home.
She wanted to do something – anything – more, but as the steed found its place under her, beckoning her to rest upon it’s comfortable warmth, and as she nestled comfortably with it under the starry night sky and felt it’s warm breath blow across her hand, it was all she could do to move her violin aside, lest it be damaged by the drop of her tensed muscles as she soundly fell asleep.