OOC Note: NSFW | Graphic Content in this post, in case you missed it in the header.
Sounsyy had scarcely slept a wink that night, the anticipation for the next day consuming her entirely. She tossed and turned until finally she withdrew herself from her bundle, exposing her bare shoulders to the winter air. Goosebumps erected down her arms and across her stomach as she pulled herself entirely from the protective covers. She slid her tunic over her head and pulled it down by the fringe so that it concealed everything above mid-thigh. Her bare feet slipped quietly into her boots, a pair she had gotten in Gridania. They had all but lost their warmth after just a few hours of disuse.
She looked up at the open sky above, dark still, overcast. It must still be late in the evening. She knew Nathaniel would still be on watch at this hour, so she went in search of him. Her pace was slow and uneven, her thin legs wobbly from cold and fatigue. A twig snapped underfoot and Sounsyy bit her lip hard as if that would make a difference. No one stirred, the other men and women fast asleep in their bundles. She stood in silence for a few moments more, before pressing on through the thicket.
Up ahead lay a small clearing, bathed in the flickering light of a dying fire. When she pressed her face into the light, the Highlander sitting watch looked up at her in surprise.
"I began to think you weren't going to come!" Nathaniel said quietly, his breath obscuring his face like cold smoke. She shook her head, teeth chattering. "C-c-cold," she breathed. Nathaniel went and embraced her, wrapping his own blanket over her shoulders.
"This was a bad idea," he said. Sounsyy shook her head and rested her hands upon his warm chest, easing him back down to his seated position against the tree. Her knees pressed into the frozen dirt and she swayed gently in his lap, her forehead resting against his. Nathaniel said nothing more. He was tight lipped by nature, a quality which had initially annoyed Sounsyy. But as they had spent more time together over the years, she began to consider it one of his many pleasurable qualities. She talked more than enough for the both of them anyroad.
She kissed him and he combed her long, blonde hair with his fingers. For a moon this had become their routine. Sounsyy would sneak out on Nathaniel's watch, they would make love, Sounsyy would return unnoticed, and in the morning say nothing to anyone. He made her feel warm and alive. Even in the dead of winter as her bare legs turned blue. Sounsyy's moaning could scarcely be heard over the last crackles of the night watch fire.
Sounsyy tried to focus on this moment, but it was soon over.
She awoke the next morning in her bundle of blankets as if she'd never left the night before. Her friend, Cambre, offered her a warm bowl of crushed wheat when she'd noticed Sounsyy had awakened. Sounsyy thanked her and accepted the bowl, which she tipped into her mouth. It wasn't much, but there was little point wasting rations on the day's fodder. At least that's what she assumed the reasoning was.
She turned her head at the sound of raised voices coming from the Resistance Leaders' pavilion several yalms away. It wasn't much of a pavilion really, just a tarp strung between a few trees at an angle to lessen the sleeper's exposure to the elements. The rest of the soldiers had just found a bushy enough tree and wrapped their blankets close. Sounsyy rubbed her toes with her fingers to warm them as she tried to make out the voices.
"We could just go around!" One of them said.
"It's a deathtrap!" Answered another.
"We march around, we'll be seen, and we'll be caught between a Garlean legion and that outpost," said a third voice, this one Sounsyy recognized as Romheld's, one of the Resistance's most veteran tacticians and generals. "That hill is heavily fortified, but if we push we can take it and secure a favorable position against Garlean reinforcements. If we are caught surrounding the valley, their reinforcements will hit us from all sides and we will go from the besiegers to the besieged."
The voices fell silent, or at least lowered their volume so that Sounsyy could no longer make out what they said. Cambre was watching them as well, along with many of the nearby soldiers. "What're they saying now?" Sounsyy asked Cambre.
"They're measuring those in favor," she said quietly, her keen Duskwight ears honed in on the conversation, "Three- four in favor."
"Good, let's get them bastards," Sounsyy said through a mouthful of wheat.
Cambre nodded and set down her bowl and began dressing herself in her armor. Sounsyy pulled on warmer clothes, tunic, leggings, boots and began braiding her long hair so it stayed out of her face. Cambre admired her when she had finished and begun strapping herself into her breastplate. "You look beautiful, Souns, I think Nathaniel will approve," she teased.
Sounsyy stopped dead and turned around at her friend, her face stricken in horror. "What did you say?"
"You are taken with him! It's plain as day."
"N-no it isn't! Because we're not! Ew! Listen he's my friend, nothing more than that!"
"Souns, I hope you don't expect me to start sleeping with you just because we're friends," Cambre retorted, a broad smirk plastered across her face, "You love him!"
Sounsyy nearly screeched with embarrassment, her face flushing pinker than the cold could ever make it. "I-I do not love him! I- I- just," Sounsyy gave up in a huff of exasperation.
Cambre smirked at her and looked down to finish buckling her breastplate. When she looked back up, her smirk faded quickly. Sounsyy, already flabbergasted took note and whipped around to see who all had heard Cambre's accusation. To her dismay, Nathaniel stood behind her a few fulms, his face clearly betraying his wounded feelings. Sounsyy opened her mouth, but Nathaniel just held out a hand and stalked off into the trees.
"Now you've done it," Cambre jeered at her friend. Sounsyy looked at her with wild panic.
"I-I didn't mean that! He... he knows I didn't mean that right? H-How did you even know?!"
"You're not the only one that can't sleep at night, you know. Now go on, you've got some explaining to do."
Sounsyy didn't completely understand Cambre but she didn't have time to question it. The Resistance leaders fell out of the pavilion and began barking orders to fall into columns. So Sounsyy grabbed her spear and raced after her lover through the trees, calling for him to wait.
He had already fallen in line when she reached him and she fell into line next to him. She tried to explain herself, but Nathaniel didn't seem ready to accept her apology. So Sounsyy lowered her head and they marched in silence.
Sounsyy wanted to wake up. Things had gone so wrong.
The Ala Mhigans stood in wide columns on the edge of the tree line. From here Eastward, it was an uphill battle across the Gyr Abanian Highlands to Ala Mhigo. Ahead of them, across the field sat a lone watch tower on a hill. The Garleans had taken the position and fortified it, making their approach to Ala Mhigo impossible undetected. Their General, Romheld had insisted the position must fall if there was to be any hope of victory. Sounsyy looked up in awe at the structure, Ala Mhigan architecture, warped by Garlean steel. She wanted to grab for Nathaniel's hand, but she thought it wouldn't be appropriate now with him still mad at her.
"Ala Mhigans! The tower must fall! The climb will be dangerous, but we must prevail today to have any chance at victory tomorrow! Today, make your nation and your people proud! FORWARD!"
Sounsyy looked at Nathaniel. His deep brown eyes were locked forwards, his jaw set and skin taught. She could tell he was afraid, so much more afraid than she was. She wished she could comfort him, but he began marching forwards and ended any chance of that. Sounsyy turned and set her gaze on that distant watchtower.
No sooner had the Resistance broken the treeline did the watchtower come to life. A cannon broke the silence and a tree behind them crackled and fell. "Full charge!" was Romheld's answer, and the columns broke into a flat run across the barren field. Then the barrage began, Garlean bullets whistling overhead and the thundering boom of cannons shaking the earth on which they ran. The screams began after, as bullets ripped through their lines. Still upwards they ran as the field sloped higher.
"Push! Push forwards!"
"Heads down, pikes up! Heads down, pikes up!"
Sounsyy ran full tilt, with her spear aimed ahead of her. The Ala Mhigan in front of her fell face forward into the hard dirt, and Sounsyy dug her boot into his back as she ran over him. She had to keep up with Nathaniel, whose stride was so much longer than hers. She watched as he pulled ahead. She wanted to shout for him, but a cannon exploded nearby and she felt herself lifted from the ground and thrown sideways. She hit the dirt hard, smearing it painfully across her face. She tucked herself into a ball and held her hands over her head as the rain of dirt and debris descended.
"Nathaniel!" She screeched, "Nathaniel!"
"Get up!" Came a familiar voice in her ear. A strong hand grabbed her by her underarm and lifted her to her feet. Sounsyy looked elated at seeing Nathaniel safe. "We have to keep-" Nathaniel began, but a sharp whistling noise stopped him short. A puff of red mist speckled Sounsyy's face and she felt Nathaniel's arm go limp and fall away from her underarm. Her eyes widened in horror and her lips parted, mouth suddenly dry. Nathaniel fell backwards limply, but Sounsyy's eyes did not track his descent. Her eyes locked forward where Nathaniel had been standing not a moment before. A small sound, like a mouse being crushed underfoot might make, escaped Sounsyy's throat.
The red mist of Nathaniel's lifeblood hovered in the air before her, like some revenant haunting her. Bullets cracked overhead and cannon shell struck her brethren down, but all the noise blended into nothingness, into silence. Before Sounsyy's eyes, she saw some imaginary apparition of Nathaniel, outlined in that slow falling mist. He turned to her, and smiled sweetly. Sounsyy could feel her heart shattering as if that bullet had struck her chest, not his head.
"Nathaniel?" she whispered to the silence, hoping to hear his voice one last time.
The sound of her own voice woke Sounsyy from her troubled sleep. She lifted her head an ilm from the arm of her chair and looked around her room. Her cabin was empty. A dim light filtered in through the back window. The tip of her desk-lantern's wick still glowed orange, the fire must have only just recently gone out. Outside she could hear her crew wrestling with the heavy, waterlogged crates they were working to retrieve from Llymlaen's grasp.
All she wanted was to return to her memory-dream to see his face so vividly once more. Even now, she could barely recall his features to memory. He had truly become a revenant haunting Sounsyy's mind, hazy and imperceptible. Her slender hand reached into her leggings as she tried to recall the first part of the dream. She touched herself to the memory of how he'd felt that last night, but all she could remember was the cold and the dirt. She let out a long sigh, one of sorrow not of pleasure, and hoped for sleep to take her again.
Sounsyy had scarcely slept a wink that night, the anticipation for the next day consuming her entirely. She tossed and turned until finally she withdrew herself from her bundle, exposing her bare shoulders to the winter air. Goosebumps erected down her arms and across her stomach as she pulled herself entirely from the protective covers. She slid her tunic over her head and pulled it down by the fringe so that it concealed everything above mid-thigh. Her bare feet slipped quietly into her boots, a pair she had gotten in Gridania. They had all but lost their warmth after just a few hours of disuse.
She looked up at the open sky above, dark still, overcast. It must still be late in the evening. She knew Nathaniel would still be on watch at this hour, so she went in search of him. Her pace was slow and uneven, her thin legs wobbly from cold and fatigue. A twig snapped underfoot and Sounsyy bit her lip hard as if that would make a difference. No one stirred, the other men and women fast asleep in their bundles. She stood in silence for a few moments more, before pressing on through the thicket.
Up ahead lay a small clearing, bathed in the flickering light of a dying fire. When she pressed her face into the light, the Highlander sitting watch looked up at her in surprise.
"I began to think you weren't going to come!" Nathaniel said quietly, his breath obscuring his face like cold smoke. She shook her head, teeth chattering. "C-c-cold," she breathed. Nathaniel went and embraced her, wrapping his own blanket over her shoulders.
"This was a bad idea," he said. Sounsyy shook her head and rested her hands upon his warm chest, easing him back down to his seated position against the tree. Her knees pressed into the frozen dirt and she swayed gently in his lap, her forehead resting against his. Nathaniel said nothing more. He was tight lipped by nature, a quality which had initially annoyed Sounsyy. But as they had spent more time together over the years, she began to consider it one of his many pleasurable qualities. She talked more than enough for the both of them anyroad.
She kissed him and he combed her long, blonde hair with his fingers. For a moon this had become their routine. Sounsyy would sneak out on Nathaniel's watch, they would make love, Sounsyy would return unnoticed, and in the morning say nothing to anyone. He made her feel warm and alive. Even in the dead of winter as her bare legs turned blue. Sounsyy's moaning could scarcely be heard over the last crackles of the night watch fire.
Sounsyy tried to focus on this moment, but it was soon over.
She awoke the next morning in her bundle of blankets as if she'd never left the night before. Her friend, Cambre, offered her a warm bowl of crushed wheat when she'd noticed Sounsyy had awakened. Sounsyy thanked her and accepted the bowl, which she tipped into her mouth. It wasn't much, but there was little point wasting rations on the day's fodder. At least that's what she assumed the reasoning was.
She turned her head at the sound of raised voices coming from the Resistance Leaders' pavilion several yalms away. It wasn't much of a pavilion really, just a tarp strung between a few trees at an angle to lessen the sleeper's exposure to the elements. The rest of the soldiers had just found a bushy enough tree and wrapped their blankets close. Sounsyy rubbed her toes with her fingers to warm them as she tried to make out the voices.
"We could just go around!" One of them said.
"It's a deathtrap!" Answered another.
"We march around, we'll be seen, and we'll be caught between a Garlean legion and that outpost," said a third voice, this one Sounsyy recognized as Romheld's, one of the Resistance's most veteran tacticians and generals. "That hill is heavily fortified, but if we push we can take it and secure a favorable position against Garlean reinforcements. If we are caught surrounding the valley, their reinforcements will hit us from all sides and we will go from the besiegers to the besieged."
The voices fell silent, or at least lowered their volume so that Sounsyy could no longer make out what they said. Cambre was watching them as well, along with many of the nearby soldiers. "What're they saying now?" Sounsyy asked Cambre.
"They're measuring those in favor," she said quietly, her keen Duskwight ears honed in on the conversation, "Three- four in favor."
"Good, let's get them bastards," Sounsyy said through a mouthful of wheat.
Cambre nodded and set down her bowl and began dressing herself in her armor. Sounsyy pulled on warmer clothes, tunic, leggings, boots and began braiding her long hair so it stayed out of her face. Cambre admired her when she had finished and begun strapping herself into her breastplate. "You look beautiful, Souns, I think Nathaniel will approve," she teased.
Sounsyy stopped dead and turned around at her friend, her face stricken in horror. "What did you say?"
"You are taken with him! It's plain as day."
"N-no it isn't! Because we're not! Ew! Listen he's my friend, nothing more than that!"
"Souns, I hope you don't expect me to start sleeping with you just because we're friends," Cambre retorted, a broad smirk plastered across her face, "You love him!"
Sounsyy nearly screeched with embarrassment, her face flushing pinker than the cold could ever make it. "I-I do not love him! I- I- just," Sounsyy gave up in a huff of exasperation.
Cambre smirked at her and looked down to finish buckling her breastplate. When she looked back up, her smirk faded quickly. Sounsyy, already flabbergasted took note and whipped around to see who all had heard Cambre's accusation. To her dismay, Nathaniel stood behind her a few fulms, his face clearly betraying his wounded feelings. Sounsyy opened her mouth, but Nathaniel just held out a hand and stalked off into the trees.
"Now you've done it," Cambre jeered at her friend. Sounsyy looked at her with wild panic.
"I-I didn't mean that! He... he knows I didn't mean that right? H-How did you even know?!"
"You're not the only one that can't sleep at night, you know. Now go on, you've got some explaining to do."
Sounsyy didn't completely understand Cambre but she didn't have time to question it. The Resistance leaders fell out of the pavilion and began barking orders to fall into columns. So Sounsyy grabbed her spear and raced after her lover through the trees, calling for him to wait.
He had already fallen in line when she reached him and she fell into line next to him. She tried to explain herself, but Nathaniel didn't seem ready to accept her apology. So Sounsyy lowered her head and they marched in silence.
Sounsyy wanted to wake up. Things had gone so wrong.
The Ala Mhigans stood in wide columns on the edge of the tree line. From here Eastward, it was an uphill battle across the Gyr Abanian Highlands to Ala Mhigo. Ahead of them, across the field sat a lone watch tower on a hill. The Garleans had taken the position and fortified it, making their approach to Ala Mhigo impossible undetected. Their General, Romheld had insisted the position must fall if there was to be any hope of victory. Sounsyy looked up in awe at the structure, Ala Mhigan architecture, warped by Garlean steel. She wanted to grab for Nathaniel's hand, but she thought it wouldn't be appropriate now with him still mad at her.
"Ala Mhigans! The tower must fall! The climb will be dangerous, but we must prevail today to have any chance at victory tomorrow! Today, make your nation and your people proud! FORWARD!"
Sounsyy looked at Nathaniel. His deep brown eyes were locked forwards, his jaw set and skin taught. She could tell he was afraid, so much more afraid than she was. She wished she could comfort him, but he began marching forwards and ended any chance of that. Sounsyy turned and set her gaze on that distant watchtower.
No sooner had the Resistance broken the treeline did the watchtower come to life. A cannon broke the silence and a tree behind them crackled and fell. "Full charge!" was Romheld's answer, and the columns broke into a flat run across the barren field. Then the barrage began, Garlean bullets whistling overhead and the thundering boom of cannons shaking the earth on which they ran. The screams began after, as bullets ripped through their lines. Still upwards they ran as the field sloped higher.
"Push! Push forwards!"
"Heads down, pikes up! Heads down, pikes up!"
Sounsyy ran full tilt, with her spear aimed ahead of her. The Ala Mhigan in front of her fell face forward into the hard dirt, and Sounsyy dug her boot into his back as she ran over him. She had to keep up with Nathaniel, whose stride was so much longer than hers. She watched as he pulled ahead. She wanted to shout for him, but a cannon exploded nearby and she felt herself lifted from the ground and thrown sideways. She hit the dirt hard, smearing it painfully across her face. She tucked herself into a ball and held her hands over her head as the rain of dirt and debris descended.
"Nathaniel!" She screeched, "Nathaniel!"
"Get up!" Came a familiar voice in her ear. A strong hand grabbed her by her underarm and lifted her to her feet. Sounsyy looked elated at seeing Nathaniel safe. "We have to keep-" Nathaniel began, but a sharp whistling noise stopped him short. A puff of red mist speckled Sounsyy's face and she felt Nathaniel's arm go limp and fall away from her underarm. Her eyes widened in horror and her lips parted, mouth suddenly dry. Nathaniel fell backwards limply, but Sounsyy's eyes did not track his descent. Her eyes locked forward where Nathaniel had been standing not a moment before. A small sound, like a mouse being crushed underfoot might make, escaped Sounsyy's throat.
The red mist of Nathaniel's lifeblood hovered in the air before her, like some revenant haunting her. Bullets cracked overhead and cannon shell struck her brethren down, but all the noise blended into nothingness, into silence. Before Sounsyy's eyes, she saw some imaginary apparition of Nathaniel, outlined in that slow falling mist. He turned to her, and smiled sweetly. Sounsyy could feel her heart shattering as if that bullet had struck her chest, not his head.
"Nathaniel?" she whispered to the silence, hoping to hear his voice one last time.
The sound of her own voice woke Sounsyy from her troubled sleep. She lifted her head an ilm from the arm of her chair and looked around her room. Her cabin was empty. A dim light filtered in through the back window. The tip of her desk-lantern's wick still glowed orange, the fire must have only just recently gone out. Outside she could hear her crew wrestling with the heavy, waterlogged crates they were working to retrieve from Llymlaen's grasp.
All she wanted was to return to her memory-dream to see his face so vividly once more. Even now, she could barely recall his features to memory. He had truly become a revenant haunting Sounsyy's mind, hazy and imperceptible. Her slender hand reached into her leggings as she tried to recall the first part of the dream. She touched herself to the memory of how he'd felt that last night, but all she could remember was the cold and the dirt. She let out a long sigh, one of sorrow not of pleasure, and hoped for sleep to take her again.
