Ash and Amber: Chapter 1

The candle had burned down to a nub.

Bel noticed this before anything else – the small amber eye of it guttering on the windowsill, the room gone dim and blue with what remained of the night outside. The quality of the dark had changed. Not toward morning, not yet, but it was past the deepest part. The hours when even the wind held still.

He lay on his back with a pillow under his knees. His lower back still hummed, low and steady, not ignorable, but manageable. His right shoulder was quiet – that was nice – but his left hip still throbbed with a dull ache. After a full day, he’d hoped – even though deep down he really did know better – that the pillow would be enough to allow him to sleep through the night. 

He woke anyway, just like he did almost every night, once or twice, to recalibrate, make the routine adjustments that he was barely conscious of doing anymore and which roused him but for just a moment or two before sleep reclaimed him.  

But this time, something else had roused him.

A sound. A small, rhythmic tink, followed by a heavy wooden thud.

He didn't move immediately. That was a learned thing, the not-moving, but instead lying still and taking stock before committing to a position change that could unexpectedly make things worse. His pain was low tonight. A dull pressure at the base of his spine, which wasn’t unusual, and wasn’t anything that commanded attention. His legs were mostly unfeeling, though even that was unreliable. Tonight, only his left hip and still ached, a faint, random ache, as if his body were trying to remember what feeling felt like. He’d been this way since he was a boy. Sensation was so long gone that he barely registered the quiet in his legs, except in moments like these, when he caught himself noticing it, or when pain forced the issue. 

The sound again. Tink, then a hollow thud. 

He turned his head.

Across the room, in the shadows near the door, his sealchair was moving.

Not correctly. It lurched a few inches to the left as its front wooden legs vaulted forward, then over-corrected right with an awkward, heavy swing, then stopped. The footrests were up at an odd angle. As his eyes adjusted to the lighting he could make out a figure perched on the seat with an expression of intense concentration – brow furrowed, lower lip caught between her teeth, both palms pressed to the armrests as though grip were the missing ingredient.

Lirel.

She was sitting crooked in the chair, feet dangling down above footrests, the height of which she’d clearly tried to adjust but hadn’t adjusted correctly – a combination that wasn’t helping her control it. She had the look of someone who had taken on a puzzle she would not surrender to, which Bel recognized well enough to find both endearing and faintly alarming. 

She murmured something too low for him to make out, but he watched as the chair’s carved wooden pillars gracefully vaulted forward half a foot, landing with a muted strike, and she looked briefly triumphant.

She swiped her thumb along the left armrest again. The contraption responded, the wooden pillars tensioning as it turned slowly in a complete half-circle, carrying her away from the door and pointing her toward the wardrobe, suddenly moving at a brisk, vaulting clip, and for a brief second she looked horrified that she might smash into the furniture.

But then…Tink. The intricately drawn control seal at the base of the frame clicked as it reset, and the lever-action mechanism clambered to an abrupt stop.

Bel covered his mouth with his fist. He took a careful breath through his nose and told himself he was a person of exceptional dignity and restraint. 

He held out for another thirty seconds, which he was rather proud of.

"The resonance seals read from a centered position," he said. "You've rather thrown off the geometry."

Lirel startled so hard the chair rolled another two feet and stopped against the far wall with a small, definitive thud. She twisted to look at him – her dark brown braid half-undone, dressing gown sleep-rumpled, caught thoroughly in the act – and her expression cycled through surprise, mortification, and (attempted) recovery of dignity in a span of roughly two seconds.

"I was curious," she said with a slightly defensive upward tilt of her chin. 

"I could see that." He arched an amused eyebrow. 

"About the mechanism."

"Just the mechanism?"

“Well..." She cleared her throat. "Well – yes."

Bel reached for her pillow – cold to the touch – and shoved it under his right shoulder, propping himself slightly up, and regarded her. The chair had come to rest at a slight angle, with Lirel somewhat askew in it from the abrupt stop. Although the seat itself wasn’t big, it veritably swallowed her petite frame, constructed as it was to fit his body specifically. Her feet still dangled high above the footrests and she was swinging them. She looked, he realized, quite ridiculous. It was one of his favorite versions of her.

"You could simply have asked," he said.

"You were asleep."

A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "I'm manifestly not asleep." 

"You were. And I wasn't going to wake you." Her words were firm – almost overly, pointedly so, like she was defending a position she knew was shaky. "I was going to figure it out quietly and then ask you about it in the morning, from a position of having some preliminary understanding rather than none."

"A reasonable strategy,” he chuckled. “It almost worked."

"It would have worked," she said, with dignity, "if the sealchair were not actively contrary."

"That sealchair is many things. But contrary is not generally among them."

She slid off the chair and stood, smoothing her rumpled dressing gown with more deliberateness than the situation warranted. Then she fell silent, and he could see on her face that she was coming up with -- and then immediately discarding -- several potential defenses. 

“In any case,” she finally said, quietly, “I didn’t mean to wake you.” 

He shook his head. “Truly, you didn’t. I was already halfway there.” 

Bel started to slowly push himself upright to sit. He shifted his weight fully to his right side, because even though it felt okay at the moment, his left shoulder generally disliked bearing weight before it had adequately warmed up. Forearm under him, he used the heel of his right hand to push into the mattress and lift his upper body off the mattress. His trunk took over from his shoulder once he was halfway up, engaging the muscles that still worked like they should. 

The blanket covering his bare chest slid down, and the cool night air of the cottage found his ribs as he sat fully upright. He rested his palms on his thighs, soft and thin from years of disuse, and breathed through the sudden flare of discomfort in his lower back. As he waited for it to pass – and he knew it would – he looked at her in the dim light. 

“Besides,” he continued, a smile softening the dry edge of his voice, “you were considerably more interesting to watch than the ceiling.” 

Lirel crossed her arms and huffed. “I’m glad my humiliation was entertaining.” 

“It wasn’t humiliation.” He shook his head again. “Just the horrifying reminder that there are things on this earth that you aren’t innately and immediately magnificent at…Though I know how deeply you loathe being caught in a learning curve.” 

“It was more of a diagnostic moment.” 

“Two sides of the same coin.” The dry edge in his voice softened as he held out a hand. “Come here.” 

She crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, close enough for the dim light to catch her face. Her embarrassment was already giving way to curiosity, her gaze sliding back toward the sealchair. She simply could not leave an interesting problem alone. It was a habit he had once found exasperating, then fascinating, and now deeply familiar. It was one of a hundred things about Lirel that had become a constant in his world.

At various points, he had tried to analyze what she’d done to him. But try as he might, he’d come up with only a partial inventory. There was the way she argued, building her points like delicate architecture. There was the way she listened, making the other party feel empathetically heard without necessarily agreeing. There was the way she said Beldaruit – his full name that most people reserved for formal occasions or severe scoldings – simply because she liked how it sounded. She’d admitted as much once, with total equanimity, as if it were the most natural truth in the world.

And, of course, there way she had invaded his life in a restricted access section of an archive in Kalhn, sitting down across from him as naturally as though continuing a conversation they'd started long before.

He had compiled this inventory and then, with rare wisdom, stopped trying to make sense of it. 

"It's a marvel," she said softly, her eyes still on the chair. 

“It is,” he agreed, looking only at her.

The sealchair sat only a few paces off in the small room, but without someone in the seat to maneuver it, it might as well have been on the other side of the Zozah Peninsula. He was more than capable of transferring to the floor, shuffling on his bum across the boards, and hauling his limp lower half into the seat. It was a pain – both figuratively and literally – but it was an exercise that required no assistance from anyone else.

In Bel’s mind, that was usually enough to tip the scales in favor of execution. But as he looked at Lirel, he decided this moment called for a different approach.

“And do you know what? For you, my dear, I’ll gladly put on a show for diagnostic purposes.” 

His voice was suddenly light and playful, teetering toward theatrical, and he placed a gentle hand on the small of her back, touching her affectionately as he spoke. But then he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and leaned towards her, his upper abdominals flexing, a sharp contrast with the way his lower stomach stayed soft. “But I’ll need the chair at the bed first.”

Her countenance finally cracked, and he was rewarded with a small chuckle as she rose to retrieve the sealchair. It was a sound he coveted – and one he heard less and less with every passing day as the troubling whispers from both The Great Hall and Thristas reached their little cottage.

"Bring it alongside here," he instructed. "Angle it toward the head of the bed, so the seat faces my right hip. A little further round. Yes, right there."

She got it there with minimal mishap, by grabbing it underneath the seat and pulling it towards the bed, in the moment treating it no different than scooting an ordinary dining chair across the kitchen. In many ways that’s what it resembled most, although ordinary it was not. Crafted from richly colored dark wood, it featured four sturdy columns carved in the style of gothic arches and a cushioned seat. The left armrest was covered entirely by a singular, dense web of silver ink. The entire contraption was minimalistic and functional, yet carried an unmistakable air of fine craftsmanship. A solid back curved slightly inward at his waist for support before rising to his shoulder blades.

Now that it was within his reach, he easily leaned over and touched the middle of the intricately drawn seal on the left armrest, first pressing down firmly for a long moment, then rapidly tapping five times in a specific pattern of succession.

Two things happened. First, the armrest retracted into the back of the seat, vanishing as seamlessly as if it had never been there at all. Then, the chair made a soft settling sound and all four of its wooden pillars spread slightly further apart, creating a wider and more stable base.

“Five taps makes the armrest retract. Long pressing that part of the seal once puts it in a holding pattern and makes it nearly immoveable. It won’t shift so much as an inch until I long press on that exact spot again.” 

Lirel nodded, a small wry smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Yes…I’m well-aware of how that function works. I didn’t crash into the wardrobe, did I?” 

Bel laughed as he pushed the blanket back completely to get it out of his way. He slid his hand under his left knee and lifted. The leg came up the way a sack of grain came up: dead weight being hefted upwards only through the deliberate work of his arm. His thigh offered a fluttery spasm, visible through the thin material of his sleeping trousers, as he swung it off the edge of the bed.

He did the same with his right leg, then worked himself slowly and carefully toward the edge in small hitches, hands braced on either side, sucking in a sharp breath when he felt a twinge in his left shoulder that wasn’t quite right, until he was right on the edge. The bed stood a shade higher than the seat, which suited him. Downhill was always easier.

"Watch my left arm," he murmured. "If it looks wrong, say so."

He placed his right hand flat on the mattress. His left hand went to the far edge of the seat, elbow bent a few degrees short of straight. Even in ideal conditions locked elbows were how his shoulders ended up somewhere they did not belong – and his body already felt in not ideal condition. 

He tucked his chin to chest and shifted his weight forward over his hands at the same time. Then he pressed through his arms and shoulders. His hips came up and over in a short arc, and he landed in the seat with a thump that jarred his lower back.

Something in his left shoulder shifted with a small wet click.

He stopped. Everything stopped, including his breath. The shoulder sat half out of its socket, radiating a line of fire running down his arm. 

Between the sound of his shoulder and the look on his face, he wouldn’t have blamed her if she looked away. But Lirel didn’t avert her eyes. She never did. She didn’t stare either. At least not in the deliberate not-looking that people usually defaulted to, which was always worse than plain staring. Nor did she dissect him like a tricky seal or puzzling contraption.

She just looked at him.

And right now, her gaze settled on his face, pinched in pain and taut with resignation, framed by silvery blonde hair that was sleep-tangled and longer than any proper witch’s ought to be. 

“It does that sometimes. Just – give me a moment.”

He knew that she didn’t need or expect an explanation that this wasn’t the display he’d intended. She’d seen his joints give him similar troubles enough before to know better. But he gave her one anyway, voice clipped and carefully controlled, almost as if by speaking, he was acknowledging – and committing – to what had to happen next. 

With his other hand, he rotated the arm slowly out and back – a small circle, then an even smaller one – and the joint slid back into place with a clunk he felt in his teeth. The heat ran down to his fingers and settled into a familiar ache. 

He let all of the air out of his lungs, one long controlled breath, and muttered a wry but vehement expletive. That was all he ever allowed himself in moments like this. Although the paralysis hadn’t happened until he was eleven, the trouble with his joints had plagued him his entire life, and, despite the discomfort and difficulties associated with his condition, he’d learned long ago that self-pity was the far more painful ailment. 

A beat later and the moment he allowed himself had passed. It was time to carry on. He bent and lifted each bare foot onto the footrests with his hands, and then – finally – he was back in his sealchair. Its familiar shape was both a relief and a comfort to his back, which had taken the shoulder business with muted complaint but was now demanding to be the center of attention as it so often did.

He allowed himself just one breath more of recovery before he looked at Lirel. “Now, where were we?” 

The way Lirel simply crouched in front of the sealchair, eager as a child at a puppet show to get close to the seal and inspect it, made his heart constrict with affection. She made no fuss over him about what happened. She never did. And he knew now that wasn’t because she didn’t care – rather, that was how she’d shown him just how much she really did care.

She tipped her head sideways as she started to reach towards the seal. Bel tensed. It was an old reflex, ingrained into him through earlier sealchairs that were less perceptive to whose touch was directing it. 

But her hand drifted right past the seal and landed on his left knee instead. Her other hand she placed on top of his right foot, her fingers gently but visibly pressing into the unnatural puffiness of his skin. 

She looked away from the intricacies of the seal in the armrest of the chair, away from the distraction that was his body, and directly at him, fixing him with a gaze that made heat start to rise to the back of his neck. 

“You were going to help me contend with my ignorance of this marvel of a contraption of yours,” she said, her voice low and charged. 

Bel swallowed. “Your learning curve, you mean.” 

Her mouth quirked in amusement. The heat on the back of his neck rose as he watched her hand move from his knee to his thigh, kneading the small remnant of muscle that remained in his left leg that was misfiring in a rapid, pulsing spasm. 

He allowed himself a steadying breath and a moment. It was for an entirely different reason than it had been a few moments earlier. 

As if that were the very goal she’d been trying to achieve, she chuckled softly, and suddenly withdrew her hand. She stood up from her crouched position in front of him and shifted to the edge of the bed instead. He knew that was practical – far more practical than being in front of him as she had been – he was about to be moving about anyway as he put on his little display. 

And yet he found that he suddenly missed her proximity, her touch – even if he couldn’t feel it – as much as if she’d stood and walked right out the door of their little cottage.