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[Aurelia Bretane]

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Night was a living thing. Aurelia wandered quietly, consumed by the beast as it breathed shadows around her. Nightsong blanketed the ground as surely as the fog that crept slowly through the streets of Ashencrosse. It had been so long since slumber held her fast to her bed, that she scarcely remembered how it felt to be awakened by the fingers of dawn as they crept across her windowsill with quiet diligence.

Not a sound escaped her notice, no shadow went unseen, as she watched over the city – her city – with vigilant determination. Soft in the silence, she stole through the streets and made her way to the tower in front of the Bramble Rose. She knew he was there – he was always there. She could practically hear his breath as it bespoke him in vapor, then disappeared into the haze of Malas night.

Sleep was a tedious and tiresome companion. And so, instead, she would seek a friend.

“My Countess.” Arahim lowered his head slightly to her, formality having given way to necessity, as he stilled himself against the cold. The slightest movement would break the spell, wrack his body again with spasms and shivers. She had seen it all too often.

“Arahim.” She topped the ladder and clambered onto the platform. Her gaze rested on a sleeping form, rolled from head to toe in a sleeping bag in the corner -- a lump that rose and fell rhythmically with a whistling snort. Half a bottle of Scotch sat within arm's reach of the slumbering form.

“James doesn't live here.” Arahim smirked, following her gaze.

“Gods, 'e even snores cheerfully.” Aurelia laughed lightly as she, too, fought off a shiver.

“I told you to dress warmly, Countess. Autumn has teeth.” Arahim breathed the words from the stillness of his post in the corner opposite the snoring pooka. He reached for a blanket folded on the platform behind him, and tossed it to her.

“I wasn't cold when I left.” Aurelia took the blanket and wrapped it around her tightly, the rough, and scratchy texture reminiscent of some memory just beyond her reach. Perhaps some moment from her childhood, carried home asleep upon the shoulder of her father, having been kept out at the mines far later than any child should. She allowed the coarse texture to lightly scratch her cheek, and she smiled.

“Lest I forget.” Aurelia untied a small leather pouch at her waist beneath the blanket, and tossed it to Arahim. He, opening the drawstring, found an ornate silver flask as she explained. “Brandy. It'll warm ye from th' inside out.”

Arahim nodded once in thanks and uncapped the flask, tipping it up unceremoniously to drink. When he lowered it again, he'd turned back to watch the forest beyond the palisades from his perch. “I still say a lady should not walk alone at night.”

Aurelia leaned against the log wall and watched, seemingly blind, into the haze that settled among the trees. “A true lady does what needs t' be done. I would see my city safe from shadow.”

Arahim spared her a sidelong glance, and nodded. “Fair enough.”

A sound rumbled along the ground, just beyond the fortress wall. Both watchers listened as it traversed the length of the wall, then faded away into the night. There was a flash of silver, so swift and faint that one could not be sure it had been there at all.

“Drink?” Arahim lifted the flask to Aurelia, who continued to watch, long after the sound had disappeared.

The Countess shook her head. “Thank ye, I'm not thirsty.”

Arahim nodded, and spoke the words again.

"Fair enough."

[Arahim]

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The cool night fog clung to the forest's roots, and thick, aged trunks close to the leaf strewn floor. It flowed through bush, crept around the persimmons on tipped toes without any pretense of hurrying. So slight of movement was the trail of membranous mist upon the thin, inconstant breeze that it lent the wilds just past the walls of Ashencrosse an illusion of new, and ghostly growth as pale and natural seeming as the blooms on the white wood aster.

Here gossamer twigs like fingers reached over a small drinking hole before dissipating as though remembrance never quite formed. And without disturbing the water. While across a darkened field, the brume settled thickly filling the sparse spaces between with an almost eldritch vapor that seemed to breathe in tiny heaves, and send puffs of silver tinged smoke into the air. A stationary tide restless. Roiling within itself, fretful in its purpose as it smothered the underbrush, and supplanted the living greens and browns.

The moon, well risen in the empty eastern sky spread pinions of milky light across the lonely quietude. Wherever it fell, change came with it. Treetops in the dark are less than great heaped clumps of mass -- uniform, and blotted. Especially when seen in profusion, and at a distance. But in the moonlight, a drift of brown, rankled leaves sighing songlessly becomes more. Uncountable flashing fragments, sharp and white. Branches in glimmering pathways of ice, the grooves and boles in the bark wet with diamond. The wind cannot touch it, nor brush it away like fine powdered dust.

The Lamp of Night conferring a stillness to all it rained down on.

Aurelia stood silently at Arahim's side. There was a distance, slight, but noticeable, that she surely felt as courteous and prudent. As if she was a guest within these four low walls.

"Yes," he said quietly as he watched the distances, "It is like this more often than it is not."

She smiled, and nodded. Content to forget her own watch if only for this moment