A party raged into the night, celebrating mostly that there was so much booze and not a lot to do. Ostensibly, they were welcoming and celebrating a visitor to town; a warrior helped a party of hunters out of a dangerous situation in Beras' Wood, and everyone was retelling the stories of the adventure and the trek back all night, some more flatteringly than others. He was a Waren, sons of that famed cursed island were well known across the Western Plain, travelling on what they called Passion's Journey. He lived up to the stereotypes from the rumours, which meant he could read minds and had a penchant for collecting the names of his lovers on his back. The town's consensus was that the warrior was easy going, brave, and handsome, and most people seemed to like him. A certain few were making things hard for him to increase his score.
Khei observed from the outside, tired and tired of watching. Everyone else was having such a good time. The children were so cute as they were carried or guided off to bed, and she felt irrational jealousy over it. She couldn't help thinking about her life, the quest she had taken, the love she had found. As a warrior, she'd been disappointed she hadn't won the tournament, but as a woman the last twenty years with her husband had been the best consolation prize she could have wished for, and they were lacking just that one thing.
Telling herself she should just go to bed too, she held her breath when the guest of honour sat next to her. She had never spoken to him or even, as far as she knew, been pointed out to him.
"I'm Evan," he said.
She glanced at him incredulously. "Yes, I... I know that."
"Is it fame or infamy?" he said, smirking.
"This party is in your honour, isn't it?" she said to be polite, "I'm Khei." A silence endured wherein she began to panic a little. She considered what she'd heard of this stranger, the infamy he mentioned, making her breath come faster. "Why are you talking to me?"
He laughed. "It's nice to meet you, Khei, but I couldn't help notice that you're sad at my party."
"Sorry, I'll go," she said.
He waved his hand. "I don't object to the 'at my party' bit. What's the matter?" He looked earnest, like he wanted to know, but he also looked barely more than a boy to her thirty-nine-year-old eyes. "I could just guess."
The warrior nodded slowly as he studied her. He was very good-looking in a masculine way, dark, wavy hair tied back in a tail, piercing bronze eyes peering down from his six-and-a-half-foot frame, he was mysterious and imposing. Her eyes lingered on his chest muscles a moment, bare beneath a hunter-style vest.
"You were curious about why I'm not wearing a shirt?" he guessed.
"No, I... well, a little bit."
"You were sitting here, wondering sadly to yourself why I chose not to completely cover my upper body with cloth?"
Khei laughed, she couldn't help it. "No, I wasn't."
Evan shifted a little closer on the bench. "Did one of those kids do something that offended you?"
"That was a terrible guess. I don't really want to talk about it, okay?"
"Everyone likes talking about their problems. Sometimes just that much helps."
Khei looked around, sure a joke was being played on her. "It's... personal. You of all people should understand that."
Evan raised his hands in surrender and put his elbows on the table as he leaned back. "I understand that. The things people say about me are... well, some is complimentary, but all of it's bullshit."
"All of it? How many women have you slept with?"
Evan tipped his head in a scandalized look. "You can ask that, but not tell me why you're so sad, watching the party from this table with tears in your eyes?"
Khei glanced at him, and the tears were back, but she shook her head. "Ashamed of it? I saw you over there, showing your score."
"That's not what's bothering you either, you're just deflecting. You've been sitting here all night, being sad, and I have a feeling you've been sad a lot longer than that. You need to address it to find a solution."
"It's not really... I can't explain it to..."
"I'm a warrior," he said. "I have a sacred duty to help people. Just tell me what the problem is, I'm sure I can help."
"Give me a break, kid," she said, grinding her teeth. "I was a warrior, too, and upholding the Law..."
"It's all in the interpretation, baby," he replied, smiling in the face of her anger. "The Law is all for helping each other out. There must be something I can do."
"You can help me have a baby?" she snapped. Khei shook her head, scanning the crowd for her husband, but she couldn't spot him. "How would you propose to do that?"
"We could try the usual way," he said.
She looked at him again, and it was impossible to tell if he was serious. The bizarre mix of playfulness and earnest on his face only served to highlight his youthful innocence, and yet there was his reputation to consider. Either way, he had a brash arrogance that usually took a full lifetime to achieve. "How old are you, exactly?"
"I don't exactly know," Evan admitted, his voice tightening a little. "But I've been on the mainland about three years, which makes me about twenty. I do know I'm a warrior, able to take full responsibility for my own life, so my age is irrelevant."
"I was just wondering how long it took you to develop an ego like that, and it seems impressively quick, so congratulations," Khei said, her voice as thin as her patience. "It's irrelevant because that very idea is ludicrous. I want my husband to help me."
Evan smiled at her, coy and playful again. "What if he did? What if he does right now?"
She took a moment to think about what he meant, and by then, she had spotted her husband approaching from around the crowd. "He sent you over here to...?"
"He didn't send me," Evan assured her. "He was just sitting there, as sad as you, listening to his buddies talk about adorable tyke antics. When I asked him, he told me about your quest together. How you saved his life."
Khei blushed, her throat tightening. He spoke of the incident that left her lover scarred and, according to the attendant medic, unlikely to father children. Just his survival had, at the time, been joyous enough to make that prognosis seem insignificant, but she should have saved him better than that. She could remember having hope, but that seemed long ago now.