Azela saw the strangeness of the sky as powerful spells were cast, and heard the distant gunshots. She didn't fully understand the peril that Catherine faced, but started running to her regardless. Instinct screamed at her to stop, to think, to remember how magic had nearly vaporized her once, but her feet refused to listen.
The forest floor was treacherous in the growing dark. Roots threatened to trip her. Branches snagged her bare arms. But she was focused. Her heart was louder than her footsteps.
"I know I said I'd give you one night, but I won't just let you die," she said along the way, slowing as the trees thinned. Easing herself into the edge of the clearing, Azela crouched, steadied her breath, and peered through the leaves.
The air here tasted wrong; burnt copper and something older, something that made the fine hairs along her arms rise and stay risen. Whatever had happened in that clearing had torn at the world somehow, and the world hadn't quite closed back up yet. She held herself very still, as though the wrongness might notice her if she moved too quickly.
Her first and only exposure to magic was when it was being used in an attempt to kill her on the beach, and she was completely helpless against it. A cold shiver ran down her spine as memories of that helplessness resurfaced, of how Shi-Yon saved her from death by taking the deadly blast in her place. She remembered the deafening sound of it. The heat that nearly melted him.
At the time, Shi-Yon reminded her of someone she couldn't remember. Now, the image reminded her of Catherine, saving her as she lay helpless in the alleyway. She wondered if her mind was trying to tell her something, or warn her.
She knew that Catherine was probably better off without her interference, so she kept her distance and stayed out of sight. However, she need not have bothered. The fight was over, and Catherine was pulling her sword from what was left of her opponent, with not a single new scratch on her elegant body.
Something loosened in Azela's chest that she hadn't realized she'd been holding tight. She watched a moment longer than she needed to, then slipped away without a sound, letting herself calm as she returned to her own camp.
The canopy above caught the last flickers of sunset, outlining the glowing leaves with additional color.
That night seemed to take forever to pass, but after the sun finally began to rise, she took extra time as she ate breakfast and bathed herself in the stream. The cold water helped. It made her feel solid, present, harder to rattle. As she exited the water, her knee banged against a rock. The pain was excessive, but she was too nervous to cry. Not long after, her hesitation turned to impatience, and after watering her garden, she went directly to Catherine's boulder.
Catherine was still asleep when Azela arrived. She lay on her side, one arm tucked beneath her head. Her expression was untroubled. Azela lingered at a distance, watching, unsure whether to speak. She looked softer like this, stripped of all the sharpness. It almost made her seem reachable.
Catherine opened one eye and glanced at her. "Yes, I'm alive," Catherine said tiredly.
"You act as if you want to be alone," Azela said. "We both know that isn't true. I don't know you, or what struggles you're going through, but we can help each other. And I don't believe you're as dangerous to me as you think you are."
Catherine sat up and said, "Then I am sorry for this." Quickly, she pulled the knife from her boot and grabbed Azela's arm.
"What are you doing?" Azela asked, but didn't pull away.
Catherine traced the knife across Azela's palm, cutting just deep enough to make the wound bleed.
The sting was sharp and immediate. Azela resisted the urge to slip free. Then Catherine lifted her already unsheathed sword and gently placed the blade against the wound. Azela stared in fascination as her blood seeped into the black metal as if it were a dry cloth. There was something deeply unsettling about it, and something, she was ashamed to admit, that was almost beautiful.
"Are you so sure that I'm not dangerous?" Catherine asked.
Azela didn't say anything.
Catherine set her sword aside and leaned closer. Her warm breath brushed Azela's skin as she lowered her mouth to the cut, hovered for a heartbeat, then let her tongue slide over the wound. She said, "If someone grabs you and starts cutting you with a knife, you're supposed to run, or at least fight back."
Azela met her gaze. "You're trying to scare me, but if anyone's afraid here, it's you."
"I think your survival instincts are a bit off," Catherine said.
"Maybe. You expect me to see you for what you really are and run away. You're terrified to let someone get close. But I'm not exactly normal, myself. Even among my own kind." Azela smiled fiendishly. "Are you so sure that I'm not dangerous?"
Catherine stared at Azela for a silent second. Then she said, "I don't understand why Rea keeps placing you in my path. And I don't understand you. At all. You've seen how violently and effortlessly I kill, and you were the one who paid the price for it. People tend to avoid me for far less than that. You're a mystery." She smiled faintly. "I kind of like mysteries."
"There are a lot of things I don't understand about you, either," Azela said, "but I'd like to learn more. Can we agree to be friends? Allies, at least?"
"The sword craves blood, and through it, so do I," Catherine said as she slid her hand over her sword's blade, slicing her own palm to match Azela’s. "Even my blood. This sword is dangerous, but it would be far more dangerous in the hands of anyone else. It needs to feed, but no amount is ever enough. Never let it touch you again."
Azela noticed that the blood from her own palm was slowing, soon to heal. She grabbed Catherine's wrist and pulled it away from the sword, then pressed her wounded hand to Catherine's.
The warmth was startling. So was the ease of it, how naturally her hand fit against another's. As the escaping blood intermingled, Azela said, "This will seal the deal, then?"
Catherine squeezed Azela's hand tightly.
Those wounds would eventually heal into scars, and serve as a reminder of a time when their two hearts bled together as one.
* * *
The rest of the day was a lot of talking. They spoke, they ate, they spoke again, long into the afternoon. They caught up on each other's entire lives, though Azela did not have much of a life to catch up on, and Catherine was reluctant to spill all of her secrets. The gaps in both their stories made the conversation feel strangely symmetrical. Two people whose lives had only really just started, the threads of their fate weaving closer over time.
Much of it was Catherine explaining this world that Azela did not remember and felt so alien to. Both of them were very easily distracted, making the conversation take strange and unpredictable turns whenever one of Catherine's interests was brought up, which would spark her excitement to speak at length about the subject. Her composure would shift in those moments, the careful distance she usually kept would slip, and some part of her, buried and almost forgotten, would take its place. It was good that Azela was such an avid listener.
"So, you knew me from the beginning, so to speak," Azela said.
"I suppose that's so," said Catherine. "That armored man… He killed you."
"And then he saved me, only to try again later," Azela said. She said it plainly, but the words still felt strange in her mouth. Her own death, spoken of like a footnote.
"He must be terrified of Ayan. We'll have to be wary of him."
Azela shifted in place on the grass. "He told me that only he had armor like that, but then you told me about Shira. Either he's a liar, or…"
"We know he's a liar," said Catherine. "We'll have to be wary of him."
"He's the one that gave me supplies to help you when I found you in the stream," said Azela.
"When did he do that?"
"Right when I found you. He threw them at my head."
"He's already found you?" Catherine exclaimed, shocked. She sat up a little straighter, and the ease that had settled over her throughout the afternoon tightened back into alertness. "Are you sure it was him?"
"Well, I didn't actually see him," Azela admitted. She changed the subject by asking, "Why were you named after a cursed object?"
"I truly do not know. I suppose my parents thought I was cursed as well, and that's why they abandoned me," said Catherine. She said it without bitterness, in the even tone of someone who has had a very long time to make peace with something they had no choice but to make peace with. Azela recognized that tone. She had heard it in her own voice, when she spoke about the things she couldn't remember.
Azela looked at the sword. "You feel a kinship with it, don't you?"
Catherine followed her gaze. A beat passed. "I suppose I do."
"So, can you control any animal with your magic?" asked Azela.
"A few, not many. It is more complex than it seems. There's a reason that spellbooks are so thick." She looked up at the insects drifting overhead. "And I don't control them. I… give them suggestions. They feel my wants as if they were their own. It's like a telepathic empathy. They could refuse me, in theory." She paused, then slid from her boulder and drew a sigil in the dirt with her finger. "Watch."
Her hands came together and she sang a few words, more breath than melody. Then she held up one of her arms and waited. A butterfly flew down and landed on her finger, as though it had always meant to. The afternoon light caught the dust on its wings and turned them briefly to stained glass. She presented it to Azela.
"That is so cool," said Azela. She looked into Catherine's eyes. "You are by far the most interesting person I've ever met."
"You've met a god and a cyborg," laughed Catherine. "I don't even know what a cyborg is."
"It's not as interesting as you," Azela insisted.
Catherine held her gaze for just a moment before looking away, letting the butterfly go. It rose in a lazy spiral and was swallowed by the afternoon light. "What do we do now, you and I? I could turn myself in, clear your name."
"Absolutely not," said Azela. "They might kill you for doing the right thing. You saw how quickly they turned on me, with no evidence. I do not trust the logic of Jastrians."
"I am glad that you care for me," said Catherine. There was no deflection in it, no attempt to make the words smaller than they were. "I'm not sure how to feel about that." She looked like someone standing at the edge of an unfamiliar land, not yet willing to step in, but no longer looking for a reason to leave.
"We could combine camps. I could make you a bed."
Catherine considered this. "I like my boulder. And my solitude."
"You are literally sleeping on a rock," Azela said.
Catherine smiled. "A very comfortable rock." Then her expression settled into something more serious. "It isn't safe here. For either of us. I can teach you a few things that will help you defend yourself better in the future."
"Okay," said Azela. She thought for a moment. "And I will ask Five to smuggle us some spellbooks."
The return of Catherine's smile was immediate. "I would like that very much," she said, with wicked delight.
Catherine stood and Azela followed suit. They stretched and walked a short distance to get their blood flowing, then Catherine looked guiltily at Azela.
Azela pretended not to notice. She knew there was something that Catherine desperately wanted to say to her, but chose not to. Something that was on Catherine's mind the entire time they spoke. Her words had been sprinkled with little omissions, strategic gaps in her past.
Azela did not ask about these, about why Catherine was so mistreated by the temple, why so many of her scars seemed self-inflicted, why she had been so drawn to a stranger she had only seen at a distance.
Because Azela was holding back as well. She didn't say how much she wanted to embrace her, how happy she felt from just being in her presence, how the reason she didn't question why Catherine felt so drawn to her was because Azela felt the same. Some things were too new and too fragile to be spoken aloud.
Catherine’s gaze shifted elsewhere. "That outfit you're wearing barely exists."
Azela looked down at the only article of clothing she had, so ripped and worn that it was struggling to hold itself together. The fabric had become almost entirely purple. She still did not know why. "I, uh, don't have anything to change into."
"I believe I can figure out how to make leather," said Catherine. "We both need more clothes."
"This feels like the end of something and the beginning of something new," said Azela.
Catherine looked at the sky. The sun had begun to lean, stretching their shadows long across the grass. "It will be the end of the day, soon enough. Would you like to watch the sunset? I found an interesting rock formation while scouting that would give us a great view."
"I'd love that," said Azela, and Catherine led the way.