Mercedes Lackey - Wintermoon

The flame flicked before the statue of the goddess. Her green eyes blinked, or it was only a trick of the light.

Clirando broke the wax seal on the second letter, her mind blank as a paper never written on.

And read this:

They will have told you I’m dead. But I did not drown when the Lion sank. The waves and wind dragged me to shore with two or three others from the ship, and washed us up senseless at a little fisher village. Most of a year I stayed there, making a slow recovery, but a complete one. At last I set out and reached Sippini. From the port there I write to you now. I am in good health and strong again, and have engaged with a warrior band to fight honorably for the town. My former disgrace I confessed, but they have overlooked it, saying both you, and the gods, had given me a beating and let me off. Now I might turn to better things.

Clirando, be aware that I acknowledge now the miserable wrong I did you. I hadn’t any need to lie down with Thestus, and should have resisted myself and him. For this mean act I lost your friendship always. Nor do I plead that you will change your mind, for I deserve nothing else. But the other crime I worked against you— Oh, Clirando, I regret that almost worse. To curse you—you that I wronged. At least I know that such a petty thing would never stick—it can never have harmed you, you are so strong. But I am ashamed. Forgive me, Clirando, if you are ever able, for both my faults. And think sometimes one kind thought, in tribute to our happier past, of me—

Once your sister and comrade,

Araitha

The letter fluttered from Clirando’s fingers. The motion reminded her of a dove’s wings.

Araitha lived. Araitha lived and was herself again. A hot blameless joy burned through Clirando. Standing up, she cried aloud, there in the shrine, naming the gods. It was not blasphemy, but a paean of gratitude. As such, it seemed, the goddess Parna at least received it.

When she went out to the fountain courtyard, she had all her money left from the market wrapped ready in a cloth to tip the captain. He had brought her such news.

The man was standing by the little fountain, looking down at the golden fish swimming about in the tank. For a ship’s captain he was well dressed and very well groomed, his blond hair gleaming with cleanness in the spring sunshine.

When he looked up, she saw that he had grown as pale as she had.

Clirando mastered herself.

“So, you’re a liar after all.”

“No lies. By the gods, Cliro, trance or waking, I never lied to you once. And if I never wrote any love words upon the moon, I scarcely had time, did I? Or are you angry I delayed in finding you? For a while I could hardly even be certain you were real. By the hour I’d convinced myself, winter had closed the seas.”

“I mean, Zem,” she said, “you lied today, when you told them you were the captain of a ship.”

“But I am. I’d sold my father’s house, remember, and given up my legion. So. I bought a ship. What better means to come here? I’ve worked on ships before in my soldier’s travels, I know them well enough. This one’s a fine one. She’s called the Brown Warrior. I named her after you with your tan skin and your acorn hair.”

Clirando felt the yard, the town and the world draw far off from her. She stood in space, somewhere between sky and earth, and he stood facing her there, and they were alone together.

“Well,” he said, “you helped save my mind and my soul on the Isle. But if I only dreamed you liked me, you must tell me to go. I warn you though—”

“You’ll get drunk. Stay sober, Zemetrios. Stay with me.”

He crossed the court in three strides and took her in his arms as she took him in hers.

They muttered into each other’s mouths and necks and hair what lovers mutter at such times.

It had been an irony, he said, that as he set off to seek her in Amnos, being one of the first ships out, it was he who ended up carrying with him the report of his own letter of her healing skills. As for her letter from Araitha, he was amazed when Clirando told him what it was.

He did not ask if she would ever seek for Araitha in the future. Nor did Clirando ask herself. The gods who had, it seemed, allowed all this, might one day advise her by some sign.

Four giggling novice priestesses, coming to feed the fish, dislodged the couple in the court.

So then they walked to her house down the winding streets.

Eshti showed great approval at the houseguest.

“We shall have the best candles,” she told them, “and the glass goblets from the chest.”

“Eshti decides these things,” said Clirando.

“So I see. That’s good. It will leave you more time to concentrate on me.”

“But when must you sail?”

“When I want. I’m my own man.”

She thought, He’ll ride his ship across those treacherous seas, those waters of gales and drowning. She thought, We are both fighters. Neither can curb the other’s life. The gods brought us together. Perhaps they will keep us together, now .

The spring dusk came early. Up in the yard trees, the house doves were already arranging their nests. Which signified it would be a forward spring and summer. When the candles were lit, the polished glasses filled, she sat with him and they ate supper as if they had done so for twenty years. Tonight they would share the bed in her chamber. Where she had watched, sleepless, the unsleeping moon, now she would see him, and herself reflected in his gaze. Now she would see a future.

The sea wind tapped at the shutters, and the lamps before the household shrines dimmed and brightened. All the jewel-eyed gods there winked at Clirando and Zemetrios.

A trick of the light?

C.E. Murphy

Sunday March 20th, 2:55 p.m.

Cell phones are the most detestable objects on the face of the earth. Worse than those ocean-variety pill bugs that grow bigger than your head, which were on my personal top ten list of Things To Avoid.

My life had been a lovely, cell-free zone until nine weeks, six days, and four hours ago. Not that I was counting. On that fateful day I got an official business phone to go with my bulletproof vest and billy stick. I’d even been given a gun to go with my shiny new badge.

I wanted those things about as much as I’d wanted to bonk my head on the engine block I’d sat up beneath when the phone rang. I rubbed my forehead and glared at the engine, then felt horribly guilty. It wasn’t Petite’s fault I’d hurt myself, and she’d been through enough lately that she didn’t need me scowling on top of it all.