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A child with both Dahnan and Renan blood…is that even possible?”
The question resurfaced in Kisara’s mind as the day wound down. They had set up camp near the Adan Ruins where a mausoleum had reportedly appeared, shared a warm meal together, and tidied up while their lively conversation continued. It was a rare opportunity for all six of them to gather together, but…
It was the even rarer sight of Nazamil, the daughter of a Renan lord and Dahnan slave, that overshadowed the ease that Kisara would normally feel in the company of her friends. She had gotten skilled at keeping her composure through feelings of worry–years of telling children everything would be okay, even as their pantry stock dwindled and illness spread through the Dahnan district. Months of masking how her brother's disappearance gave her a chronic stomachache. Weeks of concealing her grief after he died, until she opened up little by little.
She knew she wouldn't keep hiding her feelings about Nazamil for long, but she needed to do so long enough to ensure the girl felt welcomed and cared for after going her whole life without knowing such warmth. Even when Nazamil spoke of hardships in a matter-of-fact way in between mouthfuls of curry, treating abuse as normal and a home-cooked meal as a novelty, Kisara maintained her brave face.
Conversation waned and became punctuated with yawns, and soon enough, one by one, the others admitted that they needed sleep. Law first, then Shionne, Nazamil, and finally Rinwell. Kisara felt like she was witnessing a silent battle of stubbornness as neither Alphen nor Dohalim stepped away from the campfire, even as Alphen's head drooped and swung back up with a stifled snore.
“I’ll take the first watch,” Dohalim offered, finally breaking their stalemate. If he could live his life staying awake all night and sleeping during the day, he probably would.
Alphen agreed without putting up a fight, although it still took some time for him to remove the last of his armour plates before rolling out his sleeping bag.
Dohalim turned his attention to Kisara after Alphen stepped away from the campfire. “You needn't force yourself to stay awake on account of me.”
Oh, he must have thought she was participating in the battle of stubbornness too. “I just don't want to sleep yet,” she said, her gaze meeting his without wavering, hoping that he understood she needed to speak with him. He tilted his head in that curious way of his, but said nothing.
Kisara wouldn't jump right into talking, not when the others might still be awake, so his curiosity would have to wait. Once Alphen had finally disappeared into his sleeping bag, the silence that could only be appreciated at night filled the air. Every ripple of the water became as imposing as a crashing wave, every breeze like an intimate whisper in her ear.
And louder than any of it were the thoughts that crept up, memories of the time she and Dohalim had just spent travelling together between Pelegion and Niez.
“What will we do with this time we’ve been gifted with each other?”
“Let's just take it a day at a time, okay, Do?”
A day of respectable distance. A day of walking a little bit closer, backs of their hands bumping against each other until his fingers hooked around hers and she did not flinch away. A day of escaping the cold in pockets of shelter, close proximity, tempting warmth–
“Are they asleep?” she asked before the thoughts went too far.
Dohalim always claimed he could distinguish true sleep from someone who was pretending or trying to force themself to fall asleep. Something about the regularity of their breaths and pitch of their exhales, but he used musical terminology Kisara didn't understand to describe it. After closing his eyes and listening for a few drawn out seconds, he looked at Kisara again and nodded.
She stood up to change crates to sit next to Dohalim, resting her hand on the surface between them. He didn't hesitate to lay his hand over hers, thumb tracing over her knuckles as he asked, “What's on your mind?”
To hear him ask that was more of a reassurance than Kisara had expected. The man who was once the spoiled lord of Menancia–still the highest ranking person among the Renans no matter how much he tried to downplay it–showing attentiveness to her, recognizing when she needed him. It made her thoughts a little less daunting, and the possibilities that could be in their future…
“Nazamil, of course,” she answered. “The fact that someone like her can be born, and…what that means for us.”
Dohalim’s thumb paused and his fingers closed around her hand.
“I’d…like to talk to you more.” It wasn't what she meant. They had spent the last week with nothing to do but talk to each other as they traversed the distance between Pelegion and Viscint.
The truth was that she had gotten used to him sleeping so close that, in the dead of night when she woke up to uninvited worries and visions of the past, she could listen for his breathing and focus on that until she was lulled to sleep again.
“What am I saying?” Kisara tucked her hair behind her ear and let her hand linger there, hiding the blush on her face. “I'm sure you've been looking forward to sleeping in the comfort of your old room.”
Before she could take her first step to fleeing in embarrassment, Dohalim caught her wrist. “I never requested that those quarters be reserved for me to begin with,” he countered. When she lifted her stare to his face, his eyes widened and glanced away in an unusual show of bashfulness. He loosened his grip on her but didn't pull away. “...Would I be welcome to abide with you instead?”
Her heartbeat was rapid as it pounded against her ribcage as though it intended to break loose. The words they were saying were something different from surface level. Talking with each other, sleeping in the same space…they weren't new. But what they were agreeing to was something else.
“Please do.”
Dohalim looked to where Nazamil was sleeping, his voice barely above a whisper. “I suppose I never told you of the rumours that circulated on Lenegis.”
“Indeed you did not.” But they had both treated it as if it was possible. It went without saying that neither of them were in a place where they could take on the responsibility of a child. “I think I knew anyway. Dahnans and Renans have been the same all along. We know that, so why wouldn't we– they be able to have children together?”
“Still, a plausible hypothesis differs from witnessing the proof of that theory. Seeing is believing, they say.”
Not only seeing Nazamil, but seeing how the residents of Niez hated her, both Dahnan and Renan alike. And hearing the stories she shared of her upbringing, of how her own father treated her as an outcast at best, and a target of resentment at worst.
“Is it?” Kisara wondered, a knot of complicated feelings winding tighter in her chest. She turned her hand over so that she could thread her fingers between Dohalim's, squeezing his hand in some vain effort to transfer the burden of those feelings to him. “I don't like what I'm seeing, Do. I know there's still so much tension between Renans and Dahnans, but they're taking it out on a child.”
“It will be different in Menancia,” he soothed.
Would it? The realm was a paradise of coexistence only in comparison to the others. She heard the petty squabbles started by newly arrived Renans, saw how cliques still tended to form between people of the same race and, more than that, she remembered how Dahnans had treated unwanted children in years past.
The knot of feelings began to unravel, threads of disjointed thoughts spilling out of her. “I'm afraid it won't. People are kind in times of prosperity, but if there are more children like Nazamil who flock to Viscint… with no guardians, no role to fill… I know what it's like to be a child whose existence people would sooner ignore.” She tried to swallow the lump in her throat, but there was so much more to it. “When Migal and I lost our parents, we wanted help. We needed someone to show us how we were supposed to survive, but no one wanted to take on that burden–it’s why we ended up living with other orphaned children. What if that's the way these children will have to live? What if–”
“Kisara.” With just her name, Dohalim pulled her back into the present. She wasn't unwanted anymore; she was safe, surrounded by people she loved, people who would shelter her through any storm. When she looked at Dohalim, he seemed surprised at himself as he pursed his lips, saying nothing more.
Kisara breathed out a tired laugh. “You think I'm getting carried away.”
“A tad.” He shifted off of the crate and knelt down in front of her, reaching forward to gather her hands between his, not caring that the pale fabric of his pants would end up scuffed and grass-stained from his hasty action. “It will be different,” he repeated with more conviction than before. The fire flickered behind him, steadfast and warm. “Those born with both Renan and Dahnan blood in the New World won't share Nazamil’s experience. They will be born of love.”
To add flair to his point, he tugged one of her gloves off and drew her hand to his lips. The kiss he pressed to the backs of her fingers was so reverent, it felt like a promise.
“You need to leave.”
“You assured me I was welcome.”
That had been at night, when it was much too easy to be swept away by the feelings that always felt amplified in the hours when a person should be sleeping; when the dark could veil blushes and the pure silence gave a sense of total privacy, in which tentative kisses escalated into something deeper, hungrier with each touch of their lips until all they could do was clamber for more.
But now, it was morning, and Kisara had woken with her usual rational mind and a very clear picture of the line that she and Dohalim had crossed, painted by the contrast of his bare skin against hers.
She sat up to put some space between them. “I’m overwhelmed. We just made our already complicated feelings even more complicated.”
“All the more reason for me to stay,” he said as he pushed himself up, fighting his morning slothfulness to wrap his arms around her. He held her close, words rumbling through his chest with his smooth reassurance: “I share the burden that's weighing on you, and it isn't remorse, is it?”
Kisara shook her head without hesitation. “No…” she breathed, feeling herself relax into his embrace, “No, that isn't it. But this isn't the right time for us, Do.”
“Someday it will be.”
Kisara withdrew her hand and held her knuckles over her mouth. She didn't approve of Dohalim testing the boundaries of what he could get away with in the presence of their friends, but his kiss left her skin feeling warm against her lips. “I- I know. I know what you're thinking.” No matter how the treatment of Nazamil unsettled her, from the moment she heard of the girl's parentage, there was a flicker of hope within Kisara too, and Dohalim had a way of fanning the flames of such hope. “We’re not talking about that now, though.”
“We’ll have no choice if our precautions fail us.”
“Dohalim, shh!” she hissed in a whisper. “Don't joke about that!”
He chuckled at her chastisement as he returned to his seat next to her on the crate. “It's not entirely said in jest.” He leaned forward and picked up a branch to nudge aside some of the campfire’s cinders before he fed it to the fire. The flames bit into the wood with a crackle that echoed in the open space around them. “Forgive me for speaking selfishly, but my impetus in making sure Nazamil can rely on Menancia as welcoming is that it may one day be our child in need of a sanctuary.”
As much as Kisara wanted to hush him again, his words made her smile. Dohalim had grown so much more expressive in the last year, no longer reserved in sharing anything personal about himself–at least with her. No wonder she felt closer to him in their days of travelling alone than she ever had before. “That's on my mind too,” she said, a flutter in her stomach as soon as she admitted it. Anticipation and anxiety all at once. “But it's a faraway thought. Let's focus on what's in front of us for now.” There was still too much conflict between their people, too much of a role that they had to play in mediating it. For now, they could offer their protection to the child who wasn't born of love, show her what it was to have the comfort of a warm meal and the ear of a listening friend.
Dohalim took too long to say any word of agreement, so she turned to look at him, expecting him to be lost in thought with his gaze on the campfire. Instead, his gaze was unashamedly fixed on her.
“Wh-Why are you staring at me?”
The corner of his lips curved with a tight-lipped smile. “Wasn’t I told to focus on what's currently before me? The sight is quite enchanting.” He lowered himself to rest his forehead against hers, his breath tickling her face.
“Stop!” she protested unconvincingly. The word dissolved into a giggle as she braced her hand on his chest, making no actual effort to push him away. What was it about him that made her behave so differently from the stern captain of the Service Corps? She would be mortified if anyone ever witnessed her being so immature and girlish, but when it was just the two of them, truly alone together, she couldn't help herself sometimes…
There was a sudden snort from where the others were sleeping. Kisara shoved Dohalim back in earnest and held her breath, watching the bundle of bedrolls with trepidation until Law breathed in a snore and turned onto his side. He became silent again.
“Is he really asleep or was that a laugh?” she whispered in a frantic entreaty to Dohalim's skill for confirming if someone was actually sleeping.
He hesitated, inclining his ear and listening for a painfully long moment. “Genuinely sleeping, by my judgment.”
That wasn't the usual confidence he had when he assessed whether or not someone was asleep. Kisara sighed, knowing he might have been lying for her benefit but also willing to believe that lie for the sake of her sanity. “Maybe I should get to sleep too. I feel better after talking with you.”
Dohalim smiled vibrantly in that way that seemed to be reserved for her whenever she gave him words of praise. It was embarrassing and endearing all at once, and Kisara coped with those conflicting feelings by standing up before she gave in and decided to spend the night by Dohalim's side.
He reached out to grasp her hand, and her heart thrummed with the memory of when he had last held her back in such a way. “The growing depth of dusk may shroud hope, but day will break once more. We shall endure this darkest hour together, and bask in the light to follow.”
He’s so different… Dohalim had once been the one to speak with pessimism and self-deprecation in his own darkest hours, and now she was the one worried that the world had hit a wall that it would never surmount, while he kept on working towards overcoming it. Just like he conjured up vines when faced with a cliff face, he was doing all that he could to build a path beyond the hate that pervaded since the worlds merged. For the Dahnans born in this world and the Renans who were transplanted there, for their friends, and, above all, for them–for their future that was still so full of unknowns, and more possibilities than they had known even a day earlier. Kisara sat down next to him again, keeping their hands entwined.
“Ah, I don't expect you to remain with me through this literal night. My words were more of a poetic musing on our earlier conversation–”
With a soft laugh, she interrupted before he got carried away in his explanation. “You don't have to state things so plainly, Dohalim. You know I understand your poetic musings better than anyone.” She let her head droop to rest on his shoulder, inviting a comfortable silence between them. When she thought about their someday, she simply wanted to stay by his side for a little bit longer.