“Open air makes me want to fly,” Grimult confessed, trying to keep his voice as neutral as he could. There was longing there, yes, but he would not flaunt it. But perhaps Penryn could not miss what she never had, a knowing and a rightness that came with her position revealing why she should be born in a wingless state.
It seemed impertinent to ask her.
She did not answer for a long while, her hood hiding most of her features when she tilted her head just so. But it kept her sheltered from the sun, although he could see a thin line of perspiration about her temples if he ducked down enough to look.
“Would you...” she began at last, shaking her head lightly as she did so. “Would you like to?” she finished, and he could not quite make out the strangeness in her tone.
He very nearly plucked the hood from her so he might see her better, but that would be rude, and the entire purpose of this was to keep her from being annoyed with him.
He looked back up. It was early yet, their mornings beginning earlier so they might attempt to be free of the plains before the noonday sun grew too hot to tolerate. He did want to. He had complained to his mother when first his flight-feathers had come that if she did not allow him to go out and test them, his wings would fall off from lack of use. She had rolled her eyes and tugged at one of them, pulling it outward and giving it a gentle shake. “Seems pretty attached to me,” she had declared, insisting he help her with the morning meal instead.
He had huffed, he remembered, and been bitter and sore all day, though he was ashamed to think of that part of it now. Most especially since he later discovered his father had asked her to wait, as he had wanted to take him on his first lesson on flying over the sea itself, and he needed to be rested and prepared for such an attempt, not exhausted from a day’s flying on untried muscles.
“Of course I would,” Grimult answered softly, forcing himself to look back down where he belonged. For now.
But Penryn did not know that. She did not know of the draw of flight, of the taste of the wind as one escaped even the shelter of the trees, the lure to go higher, to stretch his unused muscles and simply...
Fly.
So she stared at him expectantly, awaiting his departure. “Well?” she encouraged, gesturing with her hand that he should go. A look of understanding crossed briefly across her features as she glanced behind him. “Oh. Here, let me help.” She took a step toward him, and belatedly he realised she intended to release the buckles of the pack, thinking that the impediment that kept him earthbound.
He stepped backward with a shake of his head. “That is not the problem,” he informed her, trying to keep the stiffness from his voice but finding it unsuccessful.
Her head tilted as she released a slight huff of apparent frustration. He could see her thinking, conjuring up reasons he had yet to voice, until finally she blinked. “You will not go because of me?”
There was no point in denying it. He would not go far from her, not even if the distance was merely vertical.
Did she not feel the tether as he did?
He supposed that was entirely possible. He was bound to her, not the other way around.
He worried for her reaction, but other than rolling her eyes, she did not seem overly cross with him. “I did not expect you to go away entirely, you know,” she commented as she began to walk again. “I am not that much of a fool.”
Grimult was quick to catch up to her, and there was a hint of irritation that he had hoped to avoid. It was not a subject he wished to discuss with her, not when there was much she seemed to envy about the lives of the common folk already. But evidently he was not going to be given the luxury of protecting her, at least not in that. Grimult swallowed, choosing to speak of his own failing rather than merely exult in the pull of flight itself. “I do not know if I have the self-control necessary,” he confessed, apology in his tone but not in word.
She stopped, turning her head to look at him fully. “What?”
At least she did not sound annoyed any longer, merely confused. He took a breath and continued onward. It took her a few paces to get moving, but she caught up quickly enough. “I am afraid you will have to elaborate on that, Grimult,” Penryn chided. “Because you are one of the most disciplined men I could imagine.”
Was he?
It did not escape his notice that she used imagine rather than met. Her world was full of sages, and he knew well that he could not compare in their self-governance. Had she spent a great deal of her time imagining her future Guardian? What he might be like in temperament and manner?
The thought of it made him conscious of his behaviour, worried now that he had disappointed her in some fundamental regard.
A rash, dangerous thought went through his mind briefly. Of abandoning words entirely and simply showing her.
But that would be foolish. It would mean abandoning the lantern and their supplies for even a short while.
The temptation insisted that the plains were open for miles in each direction, that he would see any danger long before a predator could sniff out the food they carried or disrupt the lantern and the precious flame inside of it.
It was mad.
And foolish.
And yet Penryn’s shoulders were beginning to slump in disappointment, and she began to step away from
