Petrichor

[Millijana]

She sits there with her eyes closed, just smelling her surroundings.
As a child, she had done this after each rain in the summer. She had loved the smell in those moments.
And she still does. But it is different now. She can tell herself as often as she wants that this will change someday, but now after years in the Free Marches nothing has changed.
It still doesn’t feel like home. It isn’t so much about the things she really can smell in the air. It is more about the things she knows won‘t be there when she opens her eyes.
The trees that surrounded their small, but comfortable house. Her brother with his wooden sword hitting something with fierce determination. Her Father, watching his son and giving him a piece of advice here and there. Her sister sitting beside her father, a book in her lap, trying to make sense out of the words on the pages, while she waited that her father brought his attention back to her.
Her mother would have been in the house, preparing the dinner for the family.

When she opens her eyes now, she sees the roofs of an entire city below her. She can smell the flowers in the gardens of Hightown, the rain evaporating from the shingles around her. She feels her clothes slowly drying in the heat of the summer. Her hair is still sticking to her head, but the first dry hairs are tickling her nose.
She feels lonely right now. All of them have gone for good. They are nothing more than memories of better days. Bittersweet pictures that make her heart grow and ache at the same time.
She keeps her eyes closed. She wants to keep those memories, wants to see their faces for one more moment. Memorize them until the next rain.
There is not only her family. There are more faces she wishes to remember. There are more situations that rush past her inner eye. She smiles while she remembers how they had stolen the clothes of the boys while they had taken a bath in the nearby lake. They had been sitting in the undergrowth, laughing, while the boys were searching for their things. The fight for those clothes was even funnier. In the end all of them had landed up in the lake, only that the girls had been fully dressed. She had swallowed so much water during that bickering that she had nearly vomited.
It had been Maru who had ducked her over and over again under water. But she hadn’t begged for his mercy.
She smiles. At that time, she already had a crush on him, without knowing that he had felt the same way. It took them months to discover that there was more than friendship between them.

Aljena sighs silently. It had been a good time. Probably her best. There hadn’t been life threatening dangers all around her that everyone expects her to fight for them.
Sometimes she doesn’t know how to live up to those expectations. How she should handle all this, with just one head and two hands. They can call her champion as long as they like, but she still doesn’t feel like one. There have been so many times she failed. Her family, the other women killed by her mother’s murderer, the viscount’s son, just to name the most important situations.
She hears the first raindrops on the shingles, before she gets hit by one. She hears rolling thunder behind her. The rain becomes heavier fast. And everything that has started to get dry is soon soaked again.
She hears him coming up the roof. His footfalls are barely noticeable, but she can hear the sound of the raindrops hitting his body.
He doesn't say anything; he simply sits down beside her, so close that their thighs touch.
He lays down beside her, while she still has her arms wrapped around her knees.
After a moment she feels his hand on her back; softly caressing her spine, her tensed muscles. It takes a while until she finally can let her memories go and lay down as well and rest her head against his chest.
They exchange a glance before she closes her eyes again. She breathes slowly and deeply to take in his scent. This is what feels like home these days. Fenris.
The only thing that gives her stability and reassurance. The only person that is allowed to be that close to her. The only person that knows when he is needed and when to stay away; when to speak and when to just be there, all quiet. Always at her side, like he had promised.

She puts her arm around his waist and presses herself against him.
He pulls her a bit tighter in his embrace; kisses her head.
“I miss them,” she says.
“I know,” he answers gently. His face is still buried in her hair. His free hand clutches her hand; fingers intertwined. “It’s not your fault, nothing of this.”
She sighs once more. He knows her too well; always had, since the day they met. He also knows that she will blame herself for what happened, no matter what he says. But he tries each time.
She lifts herself a bit; enough to look at his face. He returns the glance. “I love you.” It’s that simple.
He cannot return those words. Not now, maybe never, but his eyes say so much more than these three words could express. He is grateful that she never forces him to say it. That she has been patient with him during those months where he had to find out who he is and what he wants.
He is all that is left of the people she really loved.
She kisses him once on his soft lips then lays her head back against his chest.
The rain has stopped again. There is once again this scent in the air. That special one that you can only after a summer rain. But this time it isn’t linked to her past. It smells of the future; of him.