The Outback had been left in a hurry, as if she could not bear another moment around something. Her heart mourned and struggled with a matter brought too close that night.

Troubled thoughts stirred and brewed until the small one felt as if she could not breathe. A few looks towards Kruger who was playing at war wih the sparring there and she had tried to leave. The girl who was in the Outback with the slave nanny startled her with a hug and detoured her. 'jira had no reason to push the tiny child away but as soon as the unexpected embrace from her was done, the small woman hurried for the doors.

Cloak drawn tight about her, she stole another look of Kruger. She could not stay and hoped he would forgive her later. With effort, she pulled one of the Outback's doors open and then made her way from the place.

The way home was a blur. Home and not to the inn. She lay in low and close to Trygg's mane as he carried her home. At times she wept and others a song half-remembred was at her lips. By the time they reached the cottage that was now hers, cold had reached flesh and bone beneath her cloak and dress.

Teeth chattered while fingerstips curled into the horse's mane and she slid down from his back. After he was put to the barn and fresh hay and feed, a blanket was drapped over him.

Then she saw to herself. From the barn to the door seemed a very long trek. Toes were numb and fingerstips hurt as she reached for the handling of the door. It was pressed open and she made her way inside. No fire in the small hearth and no candles lit, the room that was both common room and kitchen was dark as pitch.

Touch trembled. Everything trembled with the pain of cold and more. There was with her that struggle again. She thought of closing the door. It was something on the horizon of thought, but she did not manage it. Instead, she made her way through the room and for the hearth to lay down before it too weary of body and mind to do more.

Trygg was found at last, home and put away Kruger went to check on him in the darkness. The velvet nose nudged at his shoulder in recognition. He reached a hand up to the pat the horse?s neck. ?Thank you for bringing her home boy.? The horse gave him a guttural noise as if to say what else would I do silly two legged thing.Kruger left the little barn, and closed it up behind him, before moving to the house. The rope catch was unlatched, and the door swung slightly back and forth in the night. He pushed it open slowly, listening for her for anything that shouldn?t be there. He latched the door properly before moving further into the room. Kruger?s eyes had adjusted to the darkness long before arriving; he saw her lying there before a cold hearth. There was relief to find her, and something else too. He sucked in his breath but couldn?t stop the sob of worry that wouldn?t be denied its voice.
He knelt next to her, and touched her tentatively. She shivered in the cold room; he covered her over with his cloak and went to work on the fire. Tinder was placed then steel and flint scraped noise into the room. He left one eye closed to preserve his night vision. It would disorient him slightly when he needed to go out and retrieve some bigger pieces of wood, but to see with one eye was better than not to see at all. He couldn?t muster a song for the fire, only words to the elementals that live in the flames. Pleading words, said in their own language.

He spoke of his need, her need for a hot fire, and in return the little elementals laughed with glee. Burn, yes we burn bright. We burn hot. Flames leaped from the tinder, consuming fuel rapidly. Kruger worked quickly to supply the small creatures with that which the most wanted. He gave them their hearts desire; he gave them something to burn. He placed a metal screen before the hearth, to protect ?jira from any sparks that might fly out in there exuberance.

He brought in the heavier logs, and banked the fire to burn longer. Then he thanked the fire for its help. We heat, we burn, all is right.

Kruger knelt once more before the slight woman laying there, the fire revealing her tear streaked face. He went to the bed and stripped it of its covers. When he returned he felt the change in the temperature of the room. As he started to cover her, she stirred awake. Her eyes showed such pain, her face masked in heartbreak as she sat up and looked at him. He pulled her into his lap rocking her as she wept. Words were sobbed into his shoulder, some he heard most he didn?t, but all of them were felt in his core.

He held her until she grew quiet. The strength in her embrace told him she was still awake. If she was too exhausted to cry anymore it hadn?t stopped her from holding to him.

He tried to lift her face to him so that he could see her, but she gripped him tighter. ?Okay ?jira, I will hold you forever if you need. Everything I want is right here in my arms.? He felt the ragged intake of breath from her, as though she had been holding it expecting the worst from him. Had she feared he would leave her?

Kruger couldn?t help his smile at S?jira?s words about his scent. He could return her sentiment, and tell her of how the smell of the leather, and Trygg had clung to her. Her hair so close to him spoke of the soaps used to clean it, he craved the smell of it. And even now, hours after leaving the forge, he could still pick up the tinge of brimstone sulfur on her clothes. The forge was home to him, and she smelled like home.

?I like the way you smell too?? It was the best he could manage, some days he wished she could hear the thoughts that went with the simple words he gave her. He squeezed her once as he said it, a random thought pushed to the front of his mind. ?If I could, I would take you inside of me, so that we would be together always. There would be no worry then, just peace.? It was a ridiculous sentiment, and he flushed as he said the words, but he couldn?t help feeling it was true.

?I would like to tell you a story, but first I would lie down in front of the fire if you are ready to.? Kruger felt her ease away from him; she was small, and slight but solid. She spent so much time at working that the body just naturally had responded to it. The blanket was laid before the fireplace as insulation against the cool floor. Kruger lay on his back eyes towards the shadows at the ceiling, he offered her the place at his side, and was delighted as she came and rested with him. Her head was at that favorite point where shoulder met neck, and a hand was upon his chest.

He trailed that arm out, and found her free hand. A calloused tipped forefinger traced the outline of that hand. The motion stilled his thoughts, when he began, he could feel his voice vibrate in the skin of his back.
?Nyx, the primordial goddess was alone. She had been so for more time than she could easily recall. There were moments when she felt the ache of loneliness so deeply that she was driven to near madness. In times like this she created companions; first she had created the three fates. They however had already seen what had been, what was, and what would be. In their infinite vision, they left Nyx telling her that their fate and hers were not together. Nyx?s heart ached at their parting.

?Next she sought to create something that would come to everyone eventually and perhaps it would stay with her. Nyx brought Death to her world, and he did cleave to her for a time, but then Atropos, the youngest of the fates seduced him away. This is how she became the sister that determined the length of a person?s life. The betrayal caused Nyx great pain, so in turn she created pain to accompany her.? As he relayed his story, he had stopped tracing her hand; he had discovered the stray ends of some of S?jira?s hair. This he was gathering together, and creating a small bundle and teasing the brush like end with his finger.

?Pain was with Nyx, but it didn?t take long before it looked around and realized that pain existed everywhere. He told Nyx that part of him would always be with her, but that he must share himself with everyone. Nyx watched as he spread himself so thin that he could no longer think and act as a single being, and she wept at the loss of him too.

?The loss of everything made Nyx very angry. In her anger she said that if all she was allowed was strife, then that is what everyone would bare. Strife was made not to comfort her, but to burden the world. Nyx however was still alone, and feeling it worse than ever. She wished to escape these feelings, so she created sleep, and sleep worked his magic on her. Nyx fell to a deep sleep, and rested long, but Sleep grew bored there on his own, with nothing to do but watch over Nyx. He departed when it seemed that Nyx would never wake.?

More of ?jira?s hair had been gathered by that hand that would not settle. It had acquired enough of the silky locks to spread flat on the blanket. Over and over the flattened hand passed over that new distraction. ?While Nyx slept, she was happened upon by Erebus. He woke her, and was enamored of her. It was he that stayed with her. They would sup together, and walk through the universe hand in hand. Erebus wished to create some beings as well, Nyx tried to warn him. She told him of all off her failed attempts, and the dark spirits that came from them. Erebus simply smiled at her and told her that he did not wish to create them alone, he wanted to create them with her.?

?They say that Nyx nearly collapsed at his request. She was happy yet frightened of what would be. She reluctantly agreed to create with him, and together they created two new beings. Aither, and Hemera. And it was thus from night and darkness that light and day came to be. Aither and Hemera too left Nyx, but her heart was not saddened as had happened before.
Erebus remained with her almost exclusively, but you can see him out and around in the day when Sleep comes back for Nyx. He is the shadows that lay upon the ground, the darkness in the far corners of the cupboard. For he never fully sleeps, in case Nyx should need him in her dreams.?

As the words died, so did the attention that he was paying to the hair that was now fanned across the blanket behind her. Kruger listened to the silence in the room, the fire still popped once in a while. It could use a fresh log or two, but he couldn?t bring himself to break the moment he had created with S?jira. Instead he wrapped his free arm around her, and linked fingers with himself. Kruger turned his head and offered a small kiss to the top of her head, and closed his eyes.

?The head is clear, the heart is strong. You feel like home to me.? Kruger whispered the words, even though he didn?t fully understand them himself.

Kruger opened those muddy green eyes, there was a feeling to that kiss that he would have last. He forgot to wince as S?jira took his face in her hands. The heat of her palm so close to the wolf brand; he knew that she had come to see past it. Did she know that when they were together he felt as though they were stealing pieces of time? There was no way she could; he had never told her what was on his mind.

Questions were often offered to him, they made him smile. Two she had asked tonight, but he wasn?t sure which to answer first. He could do it in the order she had asked them, but the second was so much easier to answer than the first. It seemed that this was the one she had most in mind at this moment. He sat up slowly, a hand on the blanket to support him. It seemed so unfair that he had come to this point so late in life. Age seemed not to touch S?jira, she was young and beautiful. When she looked at him that particular way though, he wondered what she saw. His smile had come easily enough under that gaze of hers.

He stood wearily in his own right, his meager five foot six inch height was small for RhyDin, but the woman pouring water made him feel like a giant. At two hundred ten pounds he seemed nearly as wide as he was tall. The thought passed through his head that he was nearly two of her. In his haste to see to her, he had forgotten to take his weapons belt off. He did so now; the hammers weighed the ends of the belt down. It was a simple brown belt that he had added a pair of metal rings to hold his hammers when not in use. He rolled the slack around the handles of the hammers and laid the resulting ball on the table.

?Where did I hear that story? Would it surprise you that I made it up? There were some facts in it that were picked up all over the place. Scholars would come by every so often to educate us as though somehow they were doing us a favor.? Kruger laughed Ironically. ?I suppose that in this case they did do me a favor. For instance we travelled through meadish territory and were approached by a story teller. It was he who gave information of Nyx and Eregus. It was also he that told of the dark spirits created by Nyx, and the light ones created by them together. It was me that found the names of those spirits. I searched in books, not necessarily for that particular information.? Kruger stepped closer to her, he regarded her with a tilted head. Her hair was still slightly disheveled, it framed her head and neck thickly, yet at the outer edges it thinned and shone like gossamer.

?When I discovered their names, and how Eregus was the consort of Nyx, it seemed right to imagine the circumstances that would bring the two together.? Kruger continued, knowing that if he didn?t speak he could easily be mesmerized by the way the light played off of those errant ends of her hair.

His eyes drifted to the cloaks on the hooks, there were two there. One he recognized as having been worn by S?jira earlier that evening. His own was still on the floor near the hearth, and the one on the hook was clearly too long for him. He stepped toward the doorway, and put an examining hand to the heavy cloak. ?How does a person become a home to someone else?? His words were hushed in his inspection of that piece of her past.

He remembered Panther, knew him long before. He had been there when the cat had seemed to gather children like a wildflower bouquet. He turned away from the cloak, and stepped close to ?jira. He traced her jaw line with the side of his thumb, and met her eyes the color of ravens? wings. ?You have to make a memory.? He couldn?t read her expression, as the tip if his thumb made the turn to her chin.

He reached for the mug, and sipped at the water within, he wandered further into the dining area. He gazed down on the bundle he had deposited, on the table. The firelight danced upon the walls there. He looked up to that light, wondering if he should go, but searching for a reason to stay. The mug was laid atop the table, and his free hand had gone to the weapons belt. ?I?ve been thinking about the world we live in ?jira. I understand some of it, but you are still so much of a mystery?I would like to know the place you came from. Or perhaps you would prefer I go tonight??

He stood facing the table; he had said what was on his mind, now all he could do was breathe.

She was soft spoken; a quiet woman with wonder in her dark eyed gazes. S?jira?s arms however were something else all together. They encircled him, drawing her tight against his back. He could feel every point of contact it was forge fire to him hot enough to melt away any of his doubts. It had been long since he had been intoxicated. In truth he wasn?t sure that one could get drunk from a touch, but his head swam.

Kruger reveled in her embrace, yet to be held while his arms stood empty seemed unfair. He gathered what he could of her, forgetting the table and its contents. Finally he twisted slightly in her grasp and was able to turn fully in her arms. He joined her strength with his own, and as she looked up at him he kissed her eyes. Not because she had been saddened, or to wipe away the memory of her tears. He did so to thank her when he realized she always saw the real him. In that moment she became precious to him, the most exquisite gem ever cut. He leaned a cheek upon her hair and whispered to the air. ?Alone I am just a man, lost in the dark.?