Skarsh Waterscale's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

Her hand stays on his, warm and steady. Skarsh keeps the pressure even on the wound, but his focus splits between the cloth and her face. She is looking at him the way she did before — not past him, not through him, but at him. He remembers that look from when he was bleeding out on the stones. He remembers her kneeling, her hands careful, her voice low and calm even though he could not speak her language then. He still cannot. But her eyes say she knows him anyway. The drake shifts closer, uneasy. Skarsh does not move. She pulls her other hand inside her coat, slow enough that he knows it is not a weapon. Her fingers emerge holding something white and delicate, embroidered with flowers. The cloth is stained dark at one corner — old blood, dried to brown. His blood. She presses it into his free hand and closes his claws around it. The fabric is impossibly soft against his scales. He stares at it, then at her. She had kept it. She had carried it with her. The question forms before he can stop it: why would she do that unless she wanted him to know? Unless she had been looking for him too. The drake hisses, a warning sound. Skarsh follows its gaze past the woman to where the mud slopes up toward the trees. Tracks press deep into the soft ground — his own tracks, left when he carried her down from the campsite she had made near the water's edge. Her small tent still stands between the pines, the fire burned low. She had been waiting there. Not wandering. Not passing through. Waiting for him to surface. She had found this place the same way he would have — by reading the signs no one else would notice. By choosing not to give up. Skarsh opens his hand and looks at the cloth again, the bloodstain proof she remembered, proof she came back. He lifts his eyes to hers and makes a choice he cannot take back. He lets go of her shoulder. The pressure releases. She does not bleed. The wound has closed enough, the drake's shimmer sunk deep into her skin. He could slip away now, vanish into the water and let her believe he was only a dream. But he stays where he is, kneeling in the mud beside her, his hand still holding what she gave him. She does not look away. Neither does he. The distance he built to keep her safe collapses, and he understands that safety was never what she wanted from him. She wanted him to stop hiding.