Owlknight

While they had been talking, Keisha had taken a bundle down off her dyheli, who then left them to find a hertasi to rid him of his tack. Keisha had held it clutched tensely to her chest all the time she’d been listening to Darian, and only now did she remember it. “Havens!” she said, looking down at the bundle in her hands in surprise. “I’d forgotten all about the present I got you! It doesn’t seem like much after your news - ”

But Darian was deeply touched. “I beg to differ!” he replied. “Thank you for remembering me - I’m hardly as exciting as the potential to see a brand new disease, after all!”

He saw by the gleam in her eye that she understood he was teasing her. “Oh, is that what you think, then? Well you might be right!” she teased back. “Maybe some day I’ll leave you for a nice, exciting plague!”

He caught her up in his arms, and felt a new relaxation about her that delighted him. Whatever had caused this change, he hoped it would persist; she hadn’t been this easy around him for months. “How about if I give you a fever instead?” he murmured into her ear as he nuzzled her neck.

She turned her head - and bit his ear. Not hard, but it startled him and he let her go. “You’ll have to earn it by catching me first,” she taunted, and ran into the ekele.

He ran after her, and for the next fever-warm candlemark or so, they were too busy with each other to think of anything else.

After a much more pleasant shower-bath, this time shared, and yet another change of clothing, Darian stumbled over Keisha’s bundle in the middle of the floor of the outer room. He picked it up, saw to his relief that it was undamaged, and looked for a place to put it down.

“Oh, good, I was afraid we might have trampled that,” she said, emerging from the bedroom and tying her hair back as she walked. “Here, let me.”

She held out her hands for it, and he obediently handed the bundle to her.

She sat down and began to unwrap it in her lap - first the outer square of cloth, which he realized had been her scarf. A scarf was something no modern Healer was ever without, since a scarf could be put to so many useful purposes. Inside the scarf was a bundle of soft, dark-brown furs. They looked rather like weasel or muskrat, but were much softer and the fur was more plush.

Keisha put the furs aside, and brought out something made of leather and lined with a coarser fur - she shook it out and held it up to him, beaming. “Yes, that fits - have a look, do you like it?”

He took it from her and turned it around - and almost dropped it, stepping back involuntarily.

He stared, struck dumb, as familiar patterns of embroidery branded themselves on his mind.

Keisha’s smile faded and she looked at him with uncertainty. “You - you don’t like it - I’ll - ”

“No, no, no, that’s not it - ” It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be - it was only a superficial resemblance, surely!

But he put the vest down, and went straight to the storage chest where he kept the few precious relics of his childhood that had pleasant memories attached. He opened it, reached in, and brought out a small, cloth-wrapped package of his own. This he took over to Keisha and opened, laying out the embroidered leather vest that lay inside next to the one she had brought him.

Though the colors of the second vest were faded and stained, the leather worn - though the motifs had been embroidered using wool and flax threads rather than tufts of dyed hair - and though the older vest was barely half the size of the new one - there was no doubt.

In all other ways, they were identical.

They stared at the vests, then into each other’s eyes. And finally, Keisha managed to speak.

“Havens!” She exclaimed involuntarily. “They’re the same! But how?”

“I don’t know, Keisha,” Darian breathed. “Where did you get this?”

Twelve