Chapter Text
Fire hair wasn't a common sight. In fact, Erend couldn't remember the last time he had seen someone like her: pale skin, green eyes, hair as red as a forge's gut.
"Easy girl, you were just there. I've got time though... if you want to talk some more?"
"I would have noticed.” Aloy’s head moved only enough to say she knew he was somewhere behind, but where exactly didn’t matter. ”If you had been following me."
Ersa had jutted her chin, he had nudged her gently. The ranks of men watching the joke had laughed: Ersa’s hand had weaved in dismissal, and now he was in these strange lands no one seemed to know about.
The journey to Daytower hadn't been measured in days, but in the number of times Reverend Irid had clucked his tongue and read anew some passage from "Rumors of the Nora", one of those famous pamphlets by Well-Traveled Aram the Carja loved to cite to say, without excess words, that they were better than the rest. The Reverend would read without scorn, but his efforts to tame the unknown were just as futile.
Olin frowned and grunted whenever the same faint slurring breathed life into yet another warning from those few pages: mixing outlander and Nora had one certain outcome. Death. But who had seen a Nora before? There was a reason why they were just rumors after all. Erend would nod and grit his teeth and joke about this or that; Irid would tremble up to the lashes. The hours lumbered.
When time began passing through the wounds that walking made on their feet, the paths had become steeper, the air so clean and cold that it hurt the lungs, so accustomed they were to sooty or spicy air; and the regular spacing between watchtowers evident.
The ambush had made no noise, as if the Nora melted with the trees and became the pair of eyes he had felt since Avad’s letter had made them leave Mother's Crown behind with suspicious ease. Mother's Heart had welcomed them with spears and sullen looks that deepened when the tentacles of the monstrosity perched above the mountain led his eyes up. Erend preferred a good, honest fight to convoluted diplomacy, but there was no escaping it.
He was to them as they were to him: strange objects no one had seen before. The Matriarchs had teared their disdain from the royal scroll to stick them in his steel, Olin's tattooed arms, or the golden edges of Irid's clothing. Erend couldn’t tell only Teersa could read at first, and when he did, Irid was already sticking his finger under their noses and talking like they weren’t three crones, but three bright sparks.
Expectedly, the gauntest and most unpleasant one had decided to make it clear to him that she might have seemed like someone who hated by default, but it was really them what she didn’t like, and that every second they spent there without dying was grace. Olin had yawned and he had pressed his lips to force them closed. Lansra had kept snapping their heads off as Irid piled apologies for things that were hard to forgive.
The subtle process of trading pain for "improvements in the tribes' relationship" turned into a blood-colored gemstone that Teersa and Irid polished, thoroughly rubbing this or that condition in order to open or not the borders while the rest watched with complicit eyes.
Erend had stood tall behind Irid with his hammer's firm weight in his back because he did it too when Avad fought the hordes of resentful nobles, or when Ersa took the reins and found, as no one else could, her own rhythm in the midst of the two battles, that of words and that of weapons.
A few hours later Aloy had stopped in front of him instead of moving on to where the three old ladies were. Those wrinkly pairs of mean eyes had dug into his skull: the disapproving looks cast at them by roughly every Nora gathered there, waiting for the Blessing to begin, had slipped down from Aloy’s shoulders and neck to the ground as if nothing was happening.
His boots had struggled to trample on them, but the snow was slippery. They had crawled from her into him. Three failed attempts to inform her that there was time to speak after the ceremony had led to a fatal blow: he had blurted that Lansra did, in fact, sort of scare him; Aloy had opened her eyes as if she were before something incredible. Then she had smiled, squeezing out the corners of her mouth for the longest he had seen her smile that night.
Her lamp had waddled into the starry night and she had, for some reason, turned back and not changed path when he couldn’t get out of hers. Mentioning a certain lack of fireworks wasn’t the most appropriate thing to say, but his mind and those three extra ales had counted nonetheless: he had approached her once, she had done it twice. Then she had left.
She had laughed talking to Irid, tensed up as she spoke to Olin, disappeared in the mass of Nora making their way amidst laughter and hurried footsteps to the tables where the matriarchs had prepared a feast. Erend had decided to step out of the shadows where he had stayed back, dreading that Jazza or Teersa would make him sit with them. Aloy had seen him, or heard him - he didn't quite know which came first.
He had stepped on the planks of the bridge, relishing in how little was left before he could remove the thick steel chunks making his back hurt. Aloy was leaning on the one bridge that led from the ceremonial slope to the center of Mother's Heart. The one he had, too, taken to go down. She nodded in a silent greeting. They were alone, bathed by the few amber lights scattered around and the quiet of places suddenly empty.
"Ha! I still hold my Vanguard steel would give a lot of trouble to those huntress skills. But you know...we could try it out if you want to show them off that much?”
"Did I only say it'd make you slow? Because it also makes you noisy." Her shoulders relaxed. She stared, pausing at his boots as if she had no way of holding back the thought that they were largely to blame. Erend resolved to plunge: the handrail shook when he leaned on it too. "The music and the chatter are louder than anything I've heard before, and I could still hear you approaching from a hundred feet away. It's called having ears."
"Look, it might be the Nora style, but being quiet isn't the only way to win a fight. So...you know where's the fun, why be here alone? Were you waiting for me?"
Her voice hardened. Aloy cocked her head this and that way. When her eyes darted back, he knew she had decided he was lying. "They made sure you heard. I'm not welcomed here. Outcast, remember?"
Aloy leaned on her toes, rocking up and down for a second before putting her heels back on the ground and looking straight ahead. Half of what Erend said seemed to be jokes, but the purpose of it missed her. She hadn't met anyone like that before.
Nor had she met anyone who smiled with such openness after seeing her hesitate. He had approached her too quickly, she hadn’t foreseen it; how could she, when no one had ever done that? His armor has hit her leg, a brief, gentle touch that had put her on alert. Erend's shoulders had jumped more than hers. They had looked at each other, and before she could feign indifference, he had laughed.
Not at her. He had laughed without disdain, scratching one brow and rubbing his lower lip absently before apologizing and moving just enough so he could hear her over the thunderous noise of the celebration. As if there were no reason to walk away. Walk away from her.
What was wrong with him? It wasn't easy to guess, who was one of those who took every little opportunity to do harm and who didn't. Erend cleared his throat, squeezing one knuckle after another. The leather of his gloves wrinkling sounded louder than the background noise. He wouldn't survive a single day in the wilds, like things that weren’t that dangerous.
Aloy rested her face against a palm and looked at him sideways, taking care to move her eyes when he was about to stare back at her. It seemed reasonable that a man with such a strange beard would be the first and only human being to approach her first, on that day and in her whole life. The most expensive thing in the world were voices: Karst had gifted her his after a pair of hands overflowing with intact machine parts. It had cost her days of hunting, and he wouldn't talk, not until time showed him she could keep a secret.
Grata's babbling couldn’t be counted as a finished form of communication, and only Teb and Teersa completed the most recent list of the few who hadn't shunned her. It was easy, to guess a reason why they wouldn’t, just as it was hard to find one for Olin's sullenness. Olin, the outsider with a Focus, was not friendly. Why was Erend? Even Rost wasn't. In fact, in comparison, he barely smiled at all.
Rost.
How could goodbyes be a simple routine? How could he think of not seeing her again. How could he have said it then, when she needed him most. Her chest hurt. A new twinge stuck between each rib as she watched the rivers of people move under the bridge, knowing that what Rost wanted most while pretending he didn’t was to be there, in that place where every corner felt like a place she shouldn't be, bent under a tradition that had shaped his life to the core.
Mother's Heart was not as she had imagined it because she could never have imagined anything like it: there were so many people that bumping and crashing seemed to be the only way to move between bodies. The food was enough to feed a family for years, the music echoed through the earth and every cavity in her mouth, rumbling as if the whole world was telling her to move.
There were strange, new sounds: one voice was a song, but many voices came together, merging into a vibrating mass that buzzed in each nook and crook. How did one escape noise when it ruled everything? The drums beating in the distance fed her confusion: Erend was holding his answer, Aloy didn't know if thinking was something worth trying anymore.
Home, that word Rost had repeated with a mix of hope and regret over the past few weeks seemed now like a promise incapable of being fulfilled. Pretending to fit in by staying on the sidelines, warming her hands in the fire for a long time, alone, was not welcoming.
There wasn’t a lot to do before or after the Blessing. The paths had led her to a small stage where a matriarch was telling that story, the story of the origin and the curse of the metal world, the same one Rost had told her hundreds of times. Perhaps the familiarity or the soft flowing voice had deceived her, but she had liked how her fists loosened up bit by bit.
It was finally a reality, sitting among a dozen normal people like any other would. Being one more person listening to a story that belonged to us. The murmurs spread as the tale unfolded: heads turned, eyes examined her red hair, mouths moved as if it didn't matter that she saw them move. It didn't matter, and she didn't care either, not for years. But the more everyone knew who she was and why she was there, the more she missed Rost.
"Right, but food has no eyes and no mouth. Hey, I'm as hungry as you are and as unwelcome as you are. Outlander, remember? So here's the plan: we go down, grab some food, and give a damn what those knuckleheads say. Sounds good?"
"Sure you're going to be okay with Nora food? Because it has eyes. And mouth. Some of it does, at least."
She shrugged, and Erend learned she did it frequently as they moved in silence and began walking, figuring out how many inches between their steps were comfortable.
Of course they were going to be a board tied with ropes, what else could a Nora bed be than a piece of stiff wood? Erend stretched out, uncomfortable, sitting down, feeling the hairs on his eyebrows move under his tired fingers. Drinking never failed to let him know how little his head liked to be clogged with alcohol, but there was something in that yeasty Nora brew that was making his head explode.
Maybe it was the cold of the air, the heat of so many blankets piled up. The matriarchs had prepared too many, remembering or knowing there was nothing but desert and heat around Meridian, but the only Carja was the priest, and he snored whenever Olin stopped sounding like a Bellowback in the bed next to his.
Two quick movements brought the shirt he was wearing from his chest to the edge of the bed. The roof let in fine lines of pale light. It was also made -like everything they had passed to reach the "All-Mother Mountain”- of wood and rope. The shack the matriarchs had quickly set up for them had the same touch that gave everything the almost tender, limping world-view of isolation.
The Nora hadn't a second of freedom: they slept in groups, ate and worked in groups, all the basic tasks were solved with hard work. They barely sowed any seeds, and everyone toiled from dawn to dusk. It was surprising to see, considering how proud his people were of this or that machine that would lessen the load of the most repetitive tasks. But no amount of herd-thinking would make it right, the bile they had swallowed that night, he and Aloy.
Olin grunted when he smiled sourly until a noise escaped from between his teeth. The sweat on his back would freeze, so Erend let himself fall backward, regretting as his head hit the too-thin pillow and an arm pulled one of the furs back over his chest. The short, dense hairs felt good on his bare skin. It had been a long time since covering himself with such a heavy coat was more than just not wanting to stop doing the kind of things he liked to do since he was a child. He crossed one arm over his eyes to force them closed and grinned like a fool this time.
Ersa dreamed big, and among the things he never seemed to learn from her, that luckily wasn't one: they had imagined, prepared, and hammered the Mad Sun-King and all his violence until it couldn't hit back. Like it should be. It all began with a daring thought.
The Oseram or the Carja were not better than anyone, no one was, not when he knew what war was and what people did because of it. But there was something to be proud of in admiring inventiveness rather than restraint. The words of the Matriarchs, the murmurs that hung in the air, all said the same thing: don't dare, don't ask, don't question the rules of the world. Live in fear. They all seemed to give in.
Everyone except Aloy.
Aloy, as distrustful as she was proud of the trinket she wore over her ear while asking hundreds of questions about Olin's triangle, doubts he could not answer. It didn't stop her from subtly following the threads of the things he wanted to tell her and that he let hanging above them, as though knowing everything was barely enough for her. Erend moved one toe until the closest stream of light covered it. The cold was like a zing. The same as the fierceness that would slant her brows every time he teased her and she repeated, loudly, that she was going to win the Proving.
He wanted her to. She may have been just a bundle of spunk with a loose tongue, but these people needed some fun. Sharing dinner with her had been as unexpected as anything she had said that night. No words were said until the slope had become a flat path. Things had started to go well -although her answers were monosyllables, they seemed to Erend nice monosyllables- when they reached the area where the whole village was enjoying a hearty dinner.
Each next table was occupied, and when he finally found another perfect spot to sit very close to her, someone would suddenly make it disappear with this or that gesture of disdain. Getting about thirty armed Braves after you was the typical reckless thing Ersa would add to the -long- list of stupid things he’d done and that she reminded him of with some frequency, but his blood had been about to boil.
Without a word, Aloy had grabbed his shirt above his elbow before dragging him away and suggesting they follow the smokey trail of braised boar's scent. The two fingers holding him had snapped loose awkwardly, and for the first time that night, she had really stared at him wide-eyed as he cursed in frustration, surprised that he thought something could be done there. He had read it in her silence: there wasn’t, not anything worthwhile in the long run, not then.
The waves of music had steered them to a little set apart table next to a cozy fire. A few minutes in and they were discussing tricks to hunt Sawtooths with two plates full of stew steaming under their noses. The food had barely remained in his mouth while she explained how she had taken one down by herself the night before. Her first one.
Erend stretched out on the bed, feeling his fists hitting the wood on the headboard and his feet sticking out from under it. He knocked his knuckles on the headboard softly. It seemed impossible. Her story had been as hard to believe as someone her age never having heard of the Red Raids or the Derangement. He still couldn't say they were lies.
Aloy wasn't one for words, but her eyes couldn't deceive: they had shone brighter and brighter as he described machines she hadn't seen, places he had visited, a world beyond borders that weren't insurmountable as the Nora thought. Could someone be an outcast and ignore why? Not wanting to explain something like that to a stranger was fair, and the actual reason why he had insisted on wanting to see her skills was a lame attempt to get her to agree.
Spending some time together after the Proving didn't sound half bad. She never said "no", nor followed his hints. His questions about her life didn't progress far either. Their rhythm had remained the same the whole night: she had fired questions, dodged his flirting, made him sound like an ass when he was being one before making him laugh. Before laughing quietly. He wouldn't have bet a shard, but pleading had worked.
"Not even five? Okay, then just two. Two more minutes?" had become the perfect trap: "Just until I finish my drink" would get her to hesitate even more and nod. Their brew would be refilled after every discreet hill of shards he left on the edge of the table. Her cup would fill easily as he smiled. He'd smile again whenever he picked up the pitcher to add one more finger of ale to his own cup, sometimes more.
A couple of hours had passed unnoticed. He still couldn't say whether she had stayed because of him, or because when she looked to the left and saw the cabin where she had to sleep with the rest of the participants, her face would sour. He had wanted to say he'd be around if things went wrong in there, but by then he was sure she wouldn't ask for his help. Or anyone's help. He also knew she would, but part of him still wondered if she'd have broken his neck had he dared to suggest it anyway. Sharing his bed still sounded like the best way to solve each other's needs.
Counting them exactly would hurt his pride, but he had invited her to Meridian for the tenth time then - just before she had said she needed to rest early and started walking with a determined step towards the communal bedroom. Her shoulders had been too squared and her strides too long to look relaxed, but he had stared wistfully anyway, wondering why such a woman would want to stay in a place like that.
Erend sighed, letting the voice inside his head repeat that she was just another pretty girl. He couldn't wait to see her coming up to him, smiling, saying "See? I told you I was going to win." He'd have no choice but to buy her a drink. Or three.
It was hard to keep them closed. Her forehead furrowed over her eyebrows and the muscles in her face tightened. Her eyes were so closed it was impossible to rest. Aloy felt like scratching the walls. One leg moving over and over, snoring, mumbling, someone talking in his sleep. Her bed creaked with every little movement and it wasn't the same as always, and her body knew it. And yet, it wasn't that that was keeping her awake.
Watching Erend refill his cup while both pretended not to notice was so stupid. Why did she do that, and why did he? No one had ever looked at her like that, with that challenge of keeping their eyes open and their chins up, trying to keep the eyes from moving to the other’s mouth when he smiled as if there was nothing new inside the cup dangling between his fingers. Blinking shouldn't be that hard.
Outlander. Bast had insulted her for "talking to the outlanders”. Aloy wasn’t so sure about what that meant. If more rules began to emerge than the hundreds Rost had tried to teach her to follow, it would be impossible to remember them all. But Vala was nice. Teb too. She had never talked so much to anyone other than Rost, and it was a curious power, talking to someone who didn't hesitate to add more and more words to each answer if she just implied that she wanted to hear more about this or that.
In the end, things weren't too bad. But there was no time to worry about anything else. She was finally inside Mother's Heart. The Proving was in just hours. There wasn't even time to feel guilty about having forgotten about Rost for a short while.
