**Future Event **
"Apologies for keeping you waiting," the handsome greyed haired man stepped back from the door, revealing a large chamber filled with a heavy wooden table and chairs carved like small thrones. "Won"t you come in?"
The guards pushed us forth, so the invite wasn"t an option.
Inside the room, I could see a figure collapsed in the corner, like a broken doll, wrists bound behind his back as ours were. Bloody and beaten, hair in a disarray and stuck to his face with gore, eyes swollen shut... I cried out in distress and pulled against the guard that detained me, an instinctual response to go to him.
"Thorn. What have you done to him? Thorn!"
"Who is he? What is this, Briar?" Lark exclaimed to me, over my cries, surprised by my alarm, by the situation, suspicion and betrayal crossed her face.
"Not now," Eris cautioned her, his voice sharp, his focus on the grey man.
"Well now," the grey man walked away and lounged back in his throne like chair with an expression of amusement, critiquing our reactions. "This is getting interesting. Take the other two away again, but keep the little one," he told our guards.
"Briar," Eris tried to resist. The guards dealt him a blow that sent him into the door frame. "Briar, be smart!" He yelled over his shoulder before the door closed on him.
I did not know what he meant to convey by such a thing, a warning, a caution. Be smart? What was the smart thing to do in this situation? I looked from the door, to Thorn, to the grey man on his throne...
How did we get to this point?
** Future Event**
"Someone is here," Lark whispered urgently, pushing the door shut behind her. Thorn, I thought immediately. "Coming through the forest into our land, now. Several people." Her grey eyes turned inward. "They"re from the village. Children, mostly." She shook her head, then frowned. "There"s been trouble. They"re scared. Eris is with them."
We could hear the voices coming, the shrieking of more than one unhappy baby amongst them.
We opened the door and stepped out onto the porch as they came through the final vegetable beds, led by our cousin Rose, Calla"s eldest child: "I remembered the way," she said, crying, falling into Lark"s arms. "I did not think I had, I thought I had lost us in the forest, but then we saw the smoke."
"Here," Eris was bleeding from somewhere, his face showed the drying tide of blood flow from forehead to the strong line of his jaw, along with the sheen of sweat and shadows of dirt. He thrust a screaming bundle at me: "I don"t know whose child this is."
Crying children seemed to be everywhere and the stench of dirty nappies was strong. Some of the elder children began rummaging through the kitchen for food and drink. Lark held Rose, who wailed incomprehensively in her arms. "What has happened?" I asked in wonderment. "And how is it that you are all here?"
"The village was attacked," Eris collapsed in a chair. There was straw in his dark hair. He swore profusely and gripped his face in his hands. Swore again.
Or maybe it began here...
**Future Event**
He moved slowly, his eyes on mine, gauging my reaction, until I could feel his breath against my lips. The kiss began gentle, him holding back, testing my reaction, and me inexperienced, shy, and then, he increased pressure, his tongue sliding along the seam of my lips so that I opened for him as he pulled me closer to him, his armour an unyielding surface frustrating to us both.
I wanted to feel his body against mine. As if sensing or sharing my desire, he reached between us, tugging at the front of his armour, so that it parted down a central seam. I thrust my hands beneath, where a fine, black cloth was pressed close to his skin.
There was no softness to him, beneath the armour he was heavily muscled. The texture of his body was fascinatingly alien to me – I had never been so close to a man as to lay my hands upon him in such a bold way.
He groaned, a sound my body recognised instinctually and reacted to, the ache of desire becoming a ferocious, ravenous beast that knew exactly how to quench its appetite.
No, no, it began before that...
** Future Event**
He was not a monster beneath the helmet - I was relieved instantly. Just a man, but not an ordinary man, by any means. His was a face that would set the village girl"s hearts fluttering, possessing the square, strong boned regularity of features that people called handsome, but also an arresting dynamic complication to his expression - wise, wary and, somehow, dangerous.
There was an air that he had seen more, and been more, than I currently even fathomed as possible; but there was no menace towards me, rather a hesitation as if he were not sure how to proceed.
His hair added another confusing dimension to his face – it was like silver metal spun to silk, neither the white nor grey of age but something that could be mistaken as such from a distance, because that was how I was accustomed to seeing it worn. But this silver was something brighter and more foreign, and his eyebrows, eyelashes, and the stubble on his cheeks were of the same tint.
His eyes were so pale a blue as to be almost colourless, the iris ringed in black, and each fleck crystal-like.
The contrast of his colouring against his black armour was a drama I was unaccustomed to seeing; our cloth tended to be more muted, our dyes sourced from nature, too subject to fade to hold the colour true or boldly.
"Well, that answers some questions, but asks others," I commented, with more aplomb than I felt, for my heart raced, and desire curled unfamiliar within me. I broke off a segment of the citrus and bit into it.
He smiled cheerfully, not at all concerned, and copied me; biting into the fruit with bright white teeth that somehow seemed sharper than my own.
"Do you understand me?" I asked him.
He said something back, in a language that was definitely not my own, in a voice that was pleasantly deep.
"Very well," I decided. There were only so many directions one could take from there. "I am Briar," I gestured to myself. "Briar."
"Briar," he repeated, still smiling as if greatly amused by our conversation, and ate another segment of the citrus.
"You?" I asked, gesturing to him.
He considered me as he chewed his fruit, and I thought with sudden canniness: the answer I receive here will be no answer at all. "Thorn," he replied. "Briar," gestured to me, "Thorn," himself.
"Hello Thorn," I said.
