Not Magic Enough and Setting Boundaries - By Valerie Douglas Page 0,7
They smelled fresh and were brilliantly green against the shutters.
A tapestry hung on one wall, the stitches small and neat, depicting a little vale filled with little white wildflowers, the ones men called fairy rings, while another tapestry waited in the loom.
It was beautiful work, lovingly and patiently done.
Touching it, he knew instantly who had stitched it - who had created such beauty and allowed himself a smile here where no one could see. It was like her - a touch of brightness in the gloom of winter in the outerlands.
He sensed her presence coming down the hall and turned.
“Your room is ready,” she said, “and a bath awaits.”
Delae was grateful Dorovan couldn’t know she’d hauled the great copper bath there with Hallis’s aid and filled it, not being able to bring herself to ask Hallis to do it. She’d set him instead to filling her own bath, knowing it would be nearly tepid by the time he finished. The buckets were heavy. It was her duty to see to her guest anyway.
The room she showed Dorovan to was clean, as plain and unadorned as the rest. The ticking in the mattress was hay, but covered in thick wool and then in linen sheets so well used they were supple, clean and smelling lightly of lavender. A thick comforter topped it, offering warmth.
Steam rose from the waters of the bath where it sat close to the fire, and from a small kettle of stew set in the coals within the small hearth.
“Be welcome to my home, Dorovan,” Delae said, gently. “If you need anything, you have only to call. Else, no one here will bother you.”
He looked at her and inclined his head. “My thanks, Lady Delae,” giving her honor and title such as men did, not his own folk.
A small smile twitched at the corner of her mouth as she sighed ruefully. “I am no Lady, Dorovan - although the folk here call me so, and certainly not to you. Delae is enough. And the thanks are to you for your aid. Well I know - we wouldn’t have succeeded without you.”
It pained him - the certain knowledge in her blue eyes, shadowing them as she closed the door behind her.
She’d known she was likely to die there and yet she’d stayed, saving those she could with no sure chance at saving herself amidst the fury of the storm, yet still she would’ve tried and kept trying despite the odds. Here in this woman was one of the race of man who understood Honor as his own folk did.
For a moment he simply stood there, looking at the door through which she’d passed.
It felt good to bathe and then to take up the bowl of stew, a pleasant change from dry travel bread.
As she’d said, the food was simple but good - there was fresh bread beneath a cloth on the tray by the fire. It was all very welcome.
She’d also put herbs and lavender in the bath to sweeten the water, and oil to soothe the skin. With a grateful sigh, he stripped and sank into the heated waters - letting his head fall back against the smoothed oak of the tub, his eyes closing. He hadn’t thought to find anything like to this before he reached his Enclave.
For a time he drifted in thought, the memory of the days past returning to haunt him.
He ached for the one they’d lost - for Melis and her pain at the loss of her soul-bond - he who’d been half her soul.
If Dorovan had had his own soul-bond she would’ve been there to offer comfort and to be comforted in turn but that balm to his soul hadn’t yet been afforded him.
There was time yet and he was neither the oldest not to have found a soul-bond yet by far, nor a true-friend bond either - he’d had alliances, as he must to preserve the bloodlines and for the comfort they offered. Elon of Aerilann had gone far longer, although he had Colath for true-friend, at least. Some solace against the isolation.
Still, Dorovan longed for a bond - any bond - for the comfort it would’ve offered to his grief at the loss of one who’d been a friend, if not a true-friend.
It was his own fault - he was so far from others of his kind who would’ve offered solace; he was rare thing, a solitary elf, restless and yearning…though, for what he didn’t know.