Rannok couldn't bring himself to speak, not even to ask the crow what had happened to Erean. Somewhere in the back of his head, he didn't want to know. The bird had ceased inspecting his inner thoughts like a child going through the contents of a drawer. Instead, it sat just outside their campground, staring off into the distance, as if something bothered it. Rannok could just barely sense its presence.

"It is not mine to say," the animal said, in its shadow-voice. But he did know what happened. Rannok could feel it edge the response like a dagger. He wanted to grab the bird and squeeze until the air left its lungs, because it was the bird's fault this had happened. 

"I know, and I do not know," the crow said. "It is a distant memory. It is not mine to say any more than it is yours."

Rannok tuned the animal out, for all the help it gave. Sasha poked at the fire. She'd tied the horses far off, for once, where Rannok couldn't see them. He hadn't asked when she did it, and they'd scarcely said a word to each other since they'd started traveling back out of the mountains. She kept giving him worried looks out of the corner of her eye, when she thought he wasn't looking, but at least she didn't ask questions. He didn't know if the quiet or the questions was worse.

"It's going to get cold again," she said. He nodded and held his hands out to the flames. They'd sleep under the horses' saddle blankets, like they had the night before, in addition to their bedrolls. The frost didn't bother him much. Not any more than the nightmares did, anyway.

"I understand why you're afraid of them now." Sasha's voice barely reached him over the sound of the fire. He nodded again and poked at it with a stick as his stomach growled. He wished they had something to eat. Maybe the bird would do nicely, if he could catch him. The thought was followed by a single whisper of "Try it". He disregarded the creature and scooted a bit closer to the fire, holding his wings up so they'd catch the warmth.

"Are you ever going to say anything," Sasha asked. Rannok bristled and shook his head 'no', because he didn't know what to say. Sasha scooted a bit closer to him. He folded his wings in around his body like a cloak and tried to ignore how the cold bit at his hands.

"I don't want to talk about it," he finished, though it took him a while to decide. In a lot of ways, not talking made it worse. Not talking also meant no one could pick at him. If he kept the threads close, he couldn't unravel like he constantly felt he should. Like he was a sweater someone had left in the sun too long.

It was quiet, for a long moment, before she spoke.

"It's not fair. You saw everything. I saw, what? A fireworks accident? A thing I already knew about?" She poked angrily at the fire with a stick for another long, awkwardly silent moment. 

"It's not a contest," Rannok responded. The scent of burning wood hung in the air. Suddenly it brought back things he'd rather not remember. His hands were numb, and his mind faraway, back in a place before any of this happened. Before a ship had sailed to a place even worse than the one he had left.

"Sorry. I didn't mean it like that." She hung her head and tossed the stick into the fire, then wrapped her arms around herself. "I hear you sometimes, when I'm trying to sleep. You mutter like something terrible happened...I understand now, why you're afraid of the horses. But--" She paused for a second, as if trying to think of how to phrase it. "It wasn't just the reavers, was it?"

"No," he said automatically, without having to think. He wanted to take the words back as soon as he said them because they would only lead to more questions.

"Where were we, when we were in that dark room," she asked. Rannok shuddered. He could feel the slick of the walls, and the squish as his feet sank into the floor. It had taken him a long time, before he realized it wasn't the reavers that bothered him most of all. He'd wanted to kiss the crow when the door had opened to the reavers and not to something more terrible. To the thing that was too painful even for him to think about.

"We were inside one of my nightmares," he said, and he realized all at once that his hands were trembling. His chest felt heavy and hot. He hated her, for asking. For not just leaving it alone. He closed his eyes tight and clenched his hands into fists so they wouldn't shake. "Sometimes it doesn't open to the reavers."

"What does it open to?" The light from the fire lit her green eyes ablaze, and her hair until it looked like all of her was on fire. Rannok shrank away. He tried not to look at the fire or to think of what was behind that door, on the nights it wasn't the reavers.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"You should," Sasha replied, her voice like a barn swallow's, quiet and insistent. "You can't hide from it forever."

Rannok let out a deep, shuddering breath. "We just lost a friend. We're stuck in the woods with no money and no way back home. I think we have bigger things to worry about than what happened in Terres."

Sasha shrugged. "This is the perfect time to worry about it, no one's here."

"Like your father?" The words came out with more venom than he intended, and he flinched as she shrank away. She unfolded her arms and stared at him. Her eyes smoldered, but not because of the fire. Rannok could smell the tension in the air. 

"You already saw what happened to me," Sasha said quietly. Her eyes had a sheen of water on them for only a moment before she blinked it back. "I don't have anything more to say. You do."

"It's none of your business."

"Rannok." Her voice was a hiss, like a cat's. He clenched his flight feathers in his hands, then stood up, like a whirlwind of sparks. 

"I blew someone's legs off, okay?" he spat. "Someone ordered me to do it, and I didn't have a choice. And then once I was done with that, I got to watch my best friend's mother get her throat slit. I told you I didn't want to talk about it. Are you happy now?"

He stormed into the woods without checking to see if she would follow. His eyes burned. He pinched them with his thumb and forefinger and rubbed them. Stupid smoke. Stupid fire. He'd take the horses and run if he hadn't promised.

The crow fluttered down from the treetops and rested on his shoulder, its voice a cackle.

"No you wouldn't," it said. Rannok brushed it off with his hand, and it didn't protest. He rested his back on a tree, breath all ragged gasps as the memories came flooding back. He didn't want to give the memories life again, but she'd made him. She'd breathed breath into them and made them real, just when he thought he was starting to forget.

"You can never forget. She is correct."

"Fuck off," he muttered, hoping she would not attempt to find him. Secretly he was glad the crow had stayed.