Chain Mail and Butterfly Wings

“Okay, okay, so…you…are telling me. That you have never once been kissed?” Aiden mocked with a grin in my direction.

It was only mid-morning and don’t even ask, I have no idea how we got on this topic, nor do I remember how he got the answer out of me.

“I…just…you should shut up.” I ordered, avoiding his cheesy grin with utmost diligence.

“This is just too funny, so if I had succeeded in kissing you that first time we met, then that would have been your first kiss?” Aiden scratched the back of his head. “Hmm, I guess that explains why you head butted me, not a girl’s sought after first kiss scenario, is it?” He looked at me for an answer but I was still avoiding his gaze, this topic was one of the most embarrassing for me and I sure as hell didn’t want to be having it with him.

Aiden continued to say, “Quite honestly Angel, I would be honored to robs your lips of their virginity.” My face flushed at his choice of words. “I mean, really, if you want to, I would kiss you right now.”

He cast a glance in my direction finally and Aiden’s grin widened suddenly. “Oh, my, god…am I embarrassing you?” he asked with complete glee in his tone.

“Shut up, no you’re not. This dirt is just…really…interesting,” I lied horribly, still not looking at him.

“Look, Angel, I’m just surprised. I mean come on, you’re eighteen,” he waited to see if his guess was right and then continued, “beautiful and completely adorable, and yet you haven’t found one guy chasing after you? I find that hard to believe.”

My blush only got worse as he continued complimenting me and I bit my lip and tried to lock away every compliment before looking at him with a slightly cooler face. “Well believe it ‘cause it’s true. Why are we even talking about this? Tell me this, how do we always end up talking about romance?”

Aiden shrugged and scoffed, “I’m just a romantic person.”

“Yeah, about as romantic as a dead mouse,” I retorted with a snicker.

“Hey, if you’re comparing me to a dead mouse, it better be a very romantic dead mouse, other wise I might be insulted,” Aiden stated in mock distress in his voice.

I snorted at that, being that lady that I am. “Alright, a romantic dead mouse it is,” I agreed and then added, “So how much longer until we get to this castle anyway?”

“I’d say about…three or four days, depending how long we sleep in and how late we walk,” Aiden replied with a shrug. He paused as if a thought struck him then he stopped altogether and set down everything he was carrying. “You know what? I think you should get better at healing,” he stated when I gazed at him, puzzled.

“What? Why?”

“Why not? It’s a helpful skill and rare, so why not be able to use it well?” Aiden reasoned with a shrug.

“Well, I want to be known as a great guard or a great soldier some sort of warrior, not a healer. That seems kind of counterproductive doesn’t it? Getting good at healing when I should be getting better at killing,” I pointed out.

Aiden scowled “I don’t care if it seems ‘counterproductive’, I don’t want you passing out during a battle because you had to heal a scratch.” Aiden’s eyes lit up suddenly, “Here, I’ll help,” he pulled out a dagger--my dagger, I realized--and drug it across the skin of his palm with a grimace.

“H-hey! What the hell?” I almost shouted, dropping what I was holding and rushing over to him. “Stupid, what do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, ripping part of my sleeve to put over the wound.

But, before I could place the cloth over the wound Aiden pulled his hand away. “Nope, you gotta heal it,” he said stubbornly although he was holding his palm open, I imagined it stung if he tried to open or close his hand. I suppose it was too much trouble for him to tell me that before I had torn my sleeve.

“Are you--?” I began to say but shook my head. “Never mind, just give me your damn hand.” By now I realized it would be much simpler if I just went along with his insanity. With Aiden I would just have to choose my battles. I grabbed his wrist before he could pull away again and tried to ignore the smell of blood as I took a deep breath.

The interesting thing that I had found out about my healing when I was young, was that I could emit it from several parts of my body, hands, feet…lips. I closed my eyes carefully, let out the breath I had held in and then took another breath, with this one I held until the swirling in my chest moved up my throat and to my mouth. Slowly I let the breath out, opening my eyes as a green-like mist flowed my from my parted lips and encased Aiden’s hand. I felt his wrist tighten in my hand and let it go, the healing would finish up and then disappear, like it always did.

“Amazing…” Aiden murmured, flexing his hand absently as he examined it, there wasn’t even a scar, although it wasn’t a particularly deep wound.

“Happy now?” I asked sarcastically, stalking over to the things I had dropped--which consisted mostly of blankets and some of Aiden’s clothes that he had bought for himself--and picked them up, stacking them in a completely unorganized manner.

I dropped a shirt with a small curse and tried to squat and pick it up, but almost dropped everything else I was carrying. I frowned and reached for it again, but Aiden got to it first, stacking it on top of the pile. “Sort of,” he answered with a shrug and then went to pick up his own pile of blankets, pillows and clothing as well as his bag.

“So why is it that you have extra clothes but I don’t?” I asked as we began walking, switching from a main road and following a smaller trail that paralleled the main road.

“Do you have money?” Aiden asked, although he knew the answer, so I didn’t reply, “That’s why,” he stated cheerily. “You’re more than welcome to borrow one of my shirts…that guard shirt of yours looks rather ratty.”

He was right of course, considering I had ripped it in several places and it was missing a sleeve from when Aiden had found my dagger and then another rip in the other sleeve from when I had just tried to cover his wound. It was also covered in dirt, grime and some sort of yellow substance that I couldn’t identify.

“I…thanks.” I said, almost refusing, but the yellow substance changed my mind while almost triggering my gag reflex at the same time. “Which shirt?” I asked knowing I had at least three somewhere in my pile.

Aiden walked over to me and picked up the shirt that I had dropped from the top of my pile, which was a cotton long-sleeved shirt that was dark red the sleeves seemed a little too poofy for my taste, but I needed a new shirt. I imagined it looked great on him but kept the thought to myself. “How about this one?” He offered, holding it out in front of him so I could look at it.

I shrugged, a shirt was a shirt. “Sure.” I set down my pile again and grabbed the shirt, I gently pulled out a particular blanket of mine and carefully unfolded it, revealing my chain mail from when I first joined the guards. This was one reason that my stack was so heavy but I didn’t mind, I wasn’t sure when I’d need my chain mail, but it was better to have it then be stabbed without it.

I heard Aiden ask, “You’ve been carrying that around with you?”

I nodded once and quickly pulled it on over my guard shirt, grunting as it rolled down to its full length, stopping just above my belt. I absently set it straight, patting it so that it was perfect before pulling Aiden’s shirt over it. I examined myself carefully and then asked Aiden, “Is it noticeable?”

He shook his head and reached out to poke my stomach, which I recoiled from, glaring at him. “What? I’ve never touched chain mail before,” Aiden said innocently with a shrug and a charming smirk, of which I chose to ignore to the best of my abilities.

“If you really want to touch chain mail, then I suggest you buy your own,” I scoffed, my chin jutting out defiantly.

There was a moment of silence and then Aiden asked, “What about that there?”

I blinked once and followed his finger to a separate blanket I had been carrying and my second suit of chain mail. I frowned and quickly refolded the chain mail and hid it back in the blanket. “That’s not chain mail for battle,” I replied stubbornly, picking up my pile once more. “Are we going or not?” I asked, quickly changing the subject.

“Not for--?” Aiden began to scoff but shook his head, and stalked over to his own pile of traveling supplies, mumbling to himself.

Truthfully, the chain mail had been my father’s from when he was a soldier. I couldn’t wear it if I wanted to, it was much too large and old enough to be useless in a fight other than weighing me down. It was one of the few things I had left to remind me of my father, and I wasn’t about to trigger another of Aiden’s strange face-your-problems-and-cry-them-out moments by telling him about the chain mail. That was uncomfortable enough the first time around, and I was more than certain that I didn’t need another unnecessary comfort hug.

We walked no more than a few minutes and the climate began to change, replacing the green bird infested scenery of the forest with the quiet, gray and brown scenery of the mountains. I was already huffing by the time we reached the base of the mountains. Guard or not, I wasn’t accustomed to the climate change and the thickening of the air as we continued to follow the trail up to the mountain pass.

We stopped a short ways away from the mountain pass, since my lungs were protesting about as much as Aiden when it came to the physical effort of pushing myself further. So we set down our burdens and sat for a short break.

For once in a strange while, there was silence between Aiden and me, a silence where I thought of inconvenient things, while Aiden thought of whatever it was that ran through his head. Judging by the iridescent gleam in his eyes, girls probably. Tch, the typical male. Or maybe he was thinking about himself, he seemed conceded enough to think about himself in his spare time.

Ack! What was I doing? I was thinking about what Aiden was thinking about. That’s enough of that for one day. I turned my mind to other matters, which just bored me and I ended up looking over at Aiden again. There was a concentrated crease in his brow that made me frown. I had only seen him look serious one other time in the entire time that I’d known him and that was when he was plotting his escape, while I played the part of stupid female guard who gives him an opening.

This rose an important question: What was he planning?

Aiden noticed me staring at him and looked up curiously as if I had done something odd. “What?” he asked innocently. I glared at him without realizing it, which only made his confusion more complete.

“Why are you glaring at me now?” he wondered aloud with a somewhat amused smirk on his face.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked, ignoring his questions.

“Why does it--?”

I cut into his sentence by saying, “You’re planning something. Otherwise you wouldn’t look so serious.”

Aiden chuckled a little unobtrusively to himself. “Very observant, not only are you beautiful but you’re smart too.” He winked at me, but I ignored him, waiting for him to answer my question. Aiden scooted closer to me so that he was sitting right beside me, rather than a few feet away. I was about to scoot away and glare at him, maybe wave a rule or two in front of his face, but the serious look in his eyes kept me from moving. I waited impatiently for him to speak.

And speak he did, through unmoving lips, “We’re being watched.” His voice was a low whisper, barely audible even to me. I didn’t respond except for sitting up a little straighter and straining my hearing a bit more to understand him better. Aiden expected my follow up question and answered before I could ask, “There are at least fifteen of them. Bandits, I believe. They’ve been following us for about five hours. No doubt they recognized me…looking for a reward maybe,” he muttered the last part of his sentence more to himself than to me.

I stiffened even more in my sitting position, my back must have seemed like it was against a wall. Fifteen? Fifteen bandits? Oh, perfect, that was exactly what we needed. Me, a renegade guard, following Aiden, an escaped criminal who just-so-happened to be an assassin and therefore a murderer. Yeah, this was going to look absolutely remarkable in the bandit’s report to the nearest authorities.

Sure, bandits were known to pillage villages here and there, but why shouldn’t they be able to turn in two wanderers who the Castle Burdock guard happened to be looking for? I could just as easily point to the nearest destroyed village and pin the blame on these bandits. Except I didn’t know of any destroyed villages.

I exhaled in annoyance and then asked Aiden in a low whisper, “So, what do we do now? Is there a way to lose them?” I picked absently at the dirt as if I wasn’t even paying attention to Aiden in the least.

“I was thinking about it. And I’ve decided…” Aiden trailed off, rising to his feet and dusting off his hands absently. I stared at him in confusion, what ever his plan had been he wasn’t doing a great job of relaying it to me.

I bit back a swear when Aiden yanked me to my feet by my wrist and started sprinting toward a nearby mound of rocks. “To run!” he finished in a huff of air. With a strange bit of agility that I didn’t know he had, he ran up the rocks, dragging me with him and hopped down behind a much larger boulder. I considered stomping on his foot when he pulled me flat against him while his back was against the boulder, but the sound of foot steps stopped me in my tracks.

“Sir!” A man’s voice shouted in alarm.

“Follow them!” A deeper voice barked.

More footsteps this time, a lot more.

“Not all of you!” The deep voice all but yelled in frustration.

There was grumbling, more feet shuffling and then the footsteps approached again, this time with about six pairs of feet rather than fifteen.

There was a pause and I held my breath when a tall lanky bandit stopped beside the boulder Aiden and I were hiding behind. The lanky bandit squinted in one direction and then another, then he squinted right at me, it seemed and then back in another direction. “They went this way lads!” he called and then gestured further down the trail that went passed our boulder. The lanky bandit led the way while five others followed him at a slow jog. I had to be thankful that it was pitch black out that night.

“Everyone else, search the camp, take anything of use.” The deep voice commanded in a bored tone. From pillaging villages, to ransacking camps, how pitiful.

Aiden wasn’t concerned with the command, since he could replace anything that was taken. I on the other hand thought of something extremely important that I couldn’t replace with all of the gold in the entire world.

“Hey, Boss, there’s some chain mail here…it looks pretty worn though,” an uncertain voice commented and I heard my father’s chain mail roll against itself.

A lump formed in my throat. Leave it, leave it, leave it, I chanted in my head. It’s crappy and worn and probably couldn’t stop a practice sword. That was unlikely, since even old chain mail had its uses, but hey, what did bandits know? Pillage, rape and repeat, they didn’t know shit about equipment.

There was a moment of silence in which the lead bandit thought and then he finally said, “Take it. Old or not, we can still sell it for a small bit of silver at least.” He still sounded bored, which made me want to punch him in the face.

I opened my mouth to swear and jump up and down, stomp my feet and throw a good Ol’ fashioned fit, but Aiden’s hand clapped over my mouth and muffled any sound I had been prepared to make. What was more distracting was his smell--was he wearing cologne? Gah, focus, I ordered myself and whimpered quietly, trying to explain to Aiden the importance of my crappy chain mail in this simple sound. However, he only glanced down at me and shook his head, mouthing the words “new chain mail”.

I wanted to punch him in the gut for his stupidity, but couldn’t quite get to him, and the footsteps of the men in our camp kept me from doing much of anything besides breathing.

“Hmm--den!” I mumbled fiercely against his palm, the first half of his name being muffled by his hand.

Aiden had his lips against my ear when his whispered reply came, “Quiet ‘til they leave. I’ll even buy you the new chain mail myself,” he promised.

Having his warm breath on my ear made me cringe at the feeling and I tried to pull away, but he kept me firmly against him as two more bandits left to check on the other six. If my math skills were up to date, that left seven bandits at our camp including the leader.

…I was a guard with excellent training in hand to hand combat and Aiden was an assassin…we could take them.

Or at least that was my plan.