Beginnings

While Una and I have had lengthy discussions about his history and he's told me a good deal that I have found not only useful but interesting, not much of it has pertained to this. Una tends to tell a bit of his past and then he gets upset. These people he's talking about, he's lost them. no matter how happy he is in this moment, he's going to lose that person and that moment and any memories he had with them. Because they are mortal while he is immortal. So he'll tell me a couple of chapters and then get upset and wander away.

When I told him a possible ending for Aftermath he started telling me about this chapter of his life.

I think Una may have lied, back in Sequel, when he said the only person he loved was Vera. Anyways, we'll see, right?

Read, Review and Enjoy.





Noran would visit twelve more times and each time he visited he looked older. The noticeable difference was in his son, though, the boy grew into a fine young man while I remained the same, caught in time by the spells Vera had bartered from the gods. Of course, at the time I did not realise what was happening, why things were moving the way they were. When Noran died his son took over for him and once his son died, his grandson took over the group. I became friends with each generation in turn and eventually incorporated the Talen group into my troupe.

I keep them close, I cherish them and my treatment of them reflected through the villages. I treated my healers with caring and respect and so those I visited assumed, when a new, proper, healer settled in a village, that village treated the healer as I treated the healer. Presented with something new, people insist on having an example to follow.

But then, for that moment, I concentrated on the present, as any young man my age. Noshern would not speak to me again, in all the years we know one another, resolute not to show the others that he thought anything of me. Noran’s son and I became close friends as the years passed. And then his son… and his son…

At that time in my life, though, there was only the then while Noshern did not speak to me at dinner that night, or the next morning at breakfast, I did not make the connection. After breakfast the next morning I moved away from everyone else, excused myself quietly from Vera’s lesson and snuck into a supply room to do my stretches. I took off my shirt to do so.

And was found an hour later by Erit.

The man walked in as I struggled to unlock the muscles of my shoulder and back. My left arm was stuck over my head, angled towards my right shoulder blade as if I had been scratching the one with the other. My back did not hurt, my muscles felt fine so long as I did not try to move the arm from its position. Except I, being a vulnerable young man, was not about to find help elsewhere. I did not want to be found by Vera, to appear weak in her eyes.

So when Erit walked in I gave him a begging look, wanting him to help me. The man looked me up and down and let out a sound that might have been a laugh.

“If you took off your shirt one arm at a time…” Erit’s eyes moved to my shirt laying on the floor and his face fell, “You… are not tangled in your shirt, are you?”

“No,” I whined out.

“Calm,” Erit held his hands up, he had been trained to handle young men such as myself. Like a horse trainer breaking a wild animal, he approached me slowly and made it obvious that he was not about to do anything to hurt me. He looked around my side before he sighed and stepped fully into my view, “I have to touch you.”

“I understand.”

Erit’s fingers were hot compared to the cool of my own skin. His fingers touched me just above my hipbone and on my back, they trailed upward, pressing with enough pressure to feel the muscles under the skin. The pressure Erit used was more than enough to feel the muscles on people, Sidhe and myself, but it was also just the right amount of pressure that when Erit’s fingers passed over right about where my kidney was, I shivered in delightful pleasure.

He made an acknowledging sound at my shiver and worked his fingers into the muscles that connect the shoulder to the back. Fingers pressed in below my shoulder and towards the middle of my back, Erit moved over the same spot several times before he grunted.

“I can pull it down, but it will hurt.”

“I understand,” I murmured, turning my head away from him instinctually, not realising then how much I gave away. I turned my body, as best I could, away from Erit, I did not meet his eyes as I spoke. I tried so hard not to tense that it took Erit telling me to relax four times before I managed to do so. I was broken and did not trust the man who had been nothing but kind and trustworthy.

Erit’s fingers dug into the muscle of my shoulder as his other hand wrapped around my upper arm. The man yanked down without warning wrenching my shoulder out of its socket a moment before he slammed it back into place. I screamed and tried to run even as Erit wrapped an arm around me and caught me. I pulled him to the ground, for my legs gave out under me as I broke into sobs. The pain was nothing compared to having a branch yanked out from under my shoulder blade, it was a mild nuisance compared to what I have felt since then. Even then, it was not so much the pain, it was not so much that I hurt physically.

It was that I hurt. I hated that someone I liked, someone I liked the look of, was hurting me to help me. I hated that I was in such a position, I hated that I was that person, that weak person. I cried against Erit’s shoulder, I cried about the unfairness of my life, about the pent up hatred I had towards the men who had raped me. I cried because I realised my anger at Vera was misdirected. I cried because I was upset with her because I was upset with those who had actually hurt me. I cried because I never thought I would find revenge.

I still wish those bastards had had souls and could have suffered in the lowest levels of hell saved for rapists and pedophiles.

I cried until nothing was left but a hole in my chest. Erit held me as I cried, his male scent comforting me and once I calmed down, aroused me. My body was beginning to crave again, beginning to want sex again and Erit was there when I was vulnerable.

Even then I understood the significance of Erit pulling away. Of his gentle pat to my shoulder before he pulled away and put distance between us. Erit stood away and watched me for a very long time before he looked away.

“Would you like a drink?”

“Water would be nice,” I muttered, my mouth fuzzy as it became any time I cried.

“I did not mean water.” Erit scuffed one of his feet against the stone, as he often did when he was disobeying what Vera had told him to do. At the time I thought it was only an indication that I should spend a bit of time thinking.

“Oh,” I said, for I had had nothing to drink since the incident. I recalled the fuzzy, euphoric feeling I had had then and said, “that might be good, actually.”

“Come,” Erit motioned to me.

I followed because the throb in my shoulder was bad, because in my village I had learned that drinking can be fun. I learned a good deal in my village but I did not learn about strangers, about rape. I grew up, as Vera called it, virgin. People in my village did not curse or swear even. But we did drink and dance and play music. It was marvellous.

Erit led the way out of the stock room and down to the kitchen, which in the warm day was somehow cool. The cook eyed us both and growled, but poured an amber looking liquid into two wooden mugs for us. Erit sat and motioned for me to sit. I did the same and sipped my mug. I learned about the kitchen, how it worked and how the cook was. She insisted we eat and Erit insisted I drink and by the end of it all I was giggling at nothing and feeling like I was floating even as I got the creeping, creepy feeling that something was going to go terribly, horribly wrong.

The cook went through her daily work and eventually the kitchen was handed over to a servant. Erit and I stumbled from the kitchen and to his rooms where more alcohol was poured. All in all, I believe I had two drinks, but over the course of four hours I became inebriated enough to be considered drunk. Erit and I ended up sitting on his couch and I decided it was a good idea to shift closer. And closer and closer, until our legs touched, until I smiled at him and he smiled back.

Until I kissed him.

It was a stumbled mess, a slobbering, drunken thing that Erit encouraged for the briefest moments before he pulled away. Erit stood from the couch and made some excuse that I no longer remembered and he helped me to my feet, taking me back to Vera’s rooms. He settled me in the bed beside Vera and murmured something to her as I fell asleep. No doubt Erit reported to Vera exactly what I had done, what had happened between the two of us during the day.

I know I slept that night like I had not slept since before my change. For the first time in a very long time, I slept like I was dead to the world. In the morning I awoke refreshed and happy.

I got through breakfast before I recalled the kiss. Embarrassed, I excused myself from Vera’s table and rushed to Erit’s rooms. Therein, I found him in the middle of being shaved by a close servant of his. I stood, hands wringing together, trying to come up with something to say as the servant patted Erit’s chin dry. As the servant left I gathered up the little courage I had.

“I’m sorry about last night.”

“So am I,” Erit approached me slowly, hands away from his sides, “I’m sorry about my actions.”

“I was the one who kissed you, it was completely inappropriate!” I protested, “I should not have done…” when I looked at Erit he had the oddest look on his face. Puzzled annoyance played over the man’s features, “what?”

“I’m not sorry about the kiss,” Erit murmured, stepping closer, “I’m sorry that it happened while you were drinking. I’m sorry that I couldn’t react when it happened.”

“What?”

“I,” Erit sighed and ran a hand through his hair. While he had been trained to handle wild, broken young men such as myself, he had never disobeyed Vera. He was taking my life into his hands and disobeying his mistress’s strict orders for the one child Mother had ever successfully brought through the fever. “did not want us to kiss under such terms.”

“Then what terms would you want to kiss under?” I asked, puzzled, partly annoyed. I was unhappy that Erit would do such a thing, I was pissy that he would suggest that kissing me when I was drunk was out of the question.

Erit stepped up to me and wrapped his arms around me, drew me close as he bent his head just slightly and captured my lips in his. For centuries afterward Vera would call it the best disobedient act anyone had ever done.


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