Some Things Never Change

Ananya almost goes back to sleep.

She lies in her bed, startled from her slumber, blinking up at the ceiling, and feeling her eyelids grow heavy. When no new noises are forthcoming, she almost lets it go, warm and comfortable as she is. Sleep beckons to her, singing its siren song, and she wants nothing more than to let the waves of unconsciousness drown her. 

But Ananya is first and foremost a survivor. Tough. Ever-vigilant. Perhaps irrationally paranoid. So though her body protests the movement and her skin prickles with goosebumps as limbs are slowly exposed to cooling air, she slowly pushes herself upright, to sitting, to standing, to shivering, alone in her room on a cold winter’s night.

The hearth is dim, all soot stained stone and charred wood, flecked with ash, but as she kneels before it she can feel the ghosts of flames warm her front. She sets the tip of a poker amidst the crumbling kindling, and deftly unearths the glowing embers hidden beneath like phoenix eggs. With a practiced hand, she takes an unburnt twig, and coaxes a fire back to life. It burns small and feeble, but it is enough for her to light the candle beside her bed and shed light across her room.

She notes absently that though her flintstone is, as it ought to be, on the small table stood by her pillow her steel is nowhere to be seen, and feels vindicated in her decision to not waste time looking for it in the dark.

The sound was short, sharp, and most likely nothing, but she cannot let it go now after all this effort, and so she makes her way to the window she thinks it must have come from. She pushes back one of the wooden shutters and it swings out. A frosted breeze bites at her face and she takes a step back, takes a moment to compose herself before leaning out into the cold to study the moonlit view before her.

The night is still for once, the sky cloudless, and she lets her eyes drift while her mind stays focused, pausing on the distant silhouettes of trees, the glint of a crystal lake, and then passing over each in turn.

Her gaze catches on the panels of the still-closed shutter.

There is a dent in the wood.

It's small. More easily detected as an absence of matter than a presence. A puckered shadow. She reaches out and runs her thumb over the grain, as if to smooth away a blemish; it dips just barely into the hollow, and her nail drags over the edge. 

She is certain it wasn’t there when she’d last pulled the shutters shut.

The dent is about the size of the pad of her littlest finger, and misshapes the wood without splintering it.

Something blunt then, she determines, fired at some velocity to leave such an impression. A stone, projected from the shadowy earth below.

She considers the problem for a moment. The mark is positioned somewhat crudely - slightly off centre, the depth skewed, as though the shot was glancing. Not too impressive in and of itself, but her room is some distance from the ground, and the bright moon is thin in the sky, casting a watery light that shows large structures whilst leaving the details shrouded in darkness. To hit her window at all, in such conditions, requires a great deal of skill and precision. Not to mention, a powerful thrust.

Perhaps an instrument of some kind. A ballista, or perhaps a sling.

A skilled marksman, proficient with a sling, firing rocks at Ananya’s window in the dead of night.

She looks down and waits for her eyes to adjust, to focus on the different depths of black beneath her. And only now, as her pupils dilate, can she make out a figure stood there, suddenly so obvious that it feels impossible they could have been there undetected for so long.

The figure moves suddenly, takes two long steps to stand outside of the shadows and look up at Ananya. A trembling hand raises itself and waves.

“Good Lord,” Ananya breathes, on a long, low exhale. 

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“Most people would just knock.”

She means for it to come out dry and witty, but instead panting breaths punctuate her words awkwardly. Her palms sting from clenching so tightly around the rope, and her whole body burns from the exertion of trying to support the figures ascent up the outside wall.

The woman finally reaches the lip of Ananya’s window, and pauses, hands spread against stone and leaning forwards, neither inside nor out. Her face now illuminated by candlelight, she grins down at Ananya on the floor, wide and crooked and rakish.

“I did,” she replies, and pulls both feet up to perch on the sill. Ananya rolls her eyes but reaches up with one hand - now that it is finally safe to release the rope - to help her down. They both know it is unnecessary, but the woman takes the aid any way, fingers and calluses interlocking, and hops down, deftly avoiding Ananya’s legs where they’re braced against the wall beneath her.

Ananya takes a moment to gather the rope still trailing down the outer wall, winding it back around her bedpost and undoing the knot at her waist. She returns the coil to its space beneath her bed, and only then turns to face the visitor standing in her room.

The woman is still smiling, but there is an edge of hesitancy present now that wasn’t there before. She seems almost shy, Ananya thinks, though the idea feels absurd.

Jane Cobbol, best known around these parts as little Jenny, who left town a four years ago and has not been seen since; best known everywhere else as the Cobbler, masked bandit and horror of the highways.

The most sought after highwayman in the Northern lands is standing a foot away from her bed, fiddling with the fabric sling in her hands, and sneaking glances at Ananya from under lidded eyes.

“I, uh, brought you something,” Jane says at last, pulling a glittering green gem out from her cloak.

Ananya takes it, tentatively, uncertain. The stone is set in a golden ring, and it glints coolly in the flickering candlelight.

“Hope it’s worth more than the bounty I’m passing up right now,” she says, working to keep her tone light. It’s a weak joke, and she regrets it at once. Jane’s cheeks, red from the cold when she first came in, had slowly returned to her usual pale complexion, but now the flush has returned in full force, and she averts her gaze, twitching the collar of her cloak.

Now that she looks more closely, Ananya can see her shoulders shivering beneath the fabric, and she makes a decision.

“Bad joke,” she says, slipping the ring under her pillow. “Look, just, come here.” She beckons with a finger, but gives Jane no time to react, walking over and enveloping her in her arms. Slowly, shakily, Jane brings her arms up around her, and they stand together for a long, long moment.

Eventually Ananya pulls back, with a long shuddering breath. “You must be freezing.” 

Jane shrugs, but her smile is warm now, her eyes brighter with confidence. “I’ve been out all night. Didn’t know where else to go.”

Ananya raises an eyebrow, but she’s already trading Jane’s cloak for a spare of her own, not so chilled by the cold air.

Jane winces, and amends, “Didn’t want to go anywhere else.” And then, emboldened by Ananya’s turned back, adds “I missed you.”

Ananya pauses, halfway around the bed. “Me too,” she says, quietly, before continuing to the opposite side, pulling back the covers. “Alright, come on.” 

Jane looks incredulous, but bends down to unlace her boots anyway. “Really? No questions, no nothing?”

Ananya is already lying back down, slowly returning to her state of comfort before the knock roused her. “Questions can wait until morning. Just, rest. You look like you need it.”

Jane hums, non-committal. She makes her way over and settles on the edge of the bed, before abruptly standing up again. “Ouch.” She reaches a hand behind her, and pulls out Ananya’s striking steel. 

“Oh, there it is.”

Jane chuckles, already setting it aside. “Some things never change, huh?” She slowly settles back down on the straw mattress, and reaches over to pinch out the candle flame.

Ananya smiles to herself in the dark. “No, I guess not.”