Rion tied Kara to his waist as he slept, in the day he tied her to the tree. If she moved too fast, she drew stinging shards of crystal, and she quickly learned to hum and not move except fluidly, which required the use of muscles she hadn't known she had. At night she ached. The cord he used was not familiar to Kara and she could never work his knots loose. Her hair was growing as well, it was uncomfortable in her eyes.

She knew that Rion considered her different from the other Searchers in Galantyne's force. He definitely didn't like the idea that she was one. Sometimes she thought he pretended that she was one of his own people. He seemed to take a special interest in making sure she healed quickly and efficiently.

He was also systematically teaching her his ways. Why? Was he a fool? Could he not see what an advantage she would have once back inside the mountain?

Or did he not care? He never intended to let her go.

Every day they camped together he examined her and then pronounced her therapy for the day to get her in shape. He constantly told her that her training was archaic. He marveled that her people had survived so long in a world that was hostile to them.

She called him exile and usurper, she worked at his mind barriers at least the better part of the day realizing that it surprised him that she could. It surprised her too, frankly. No one else in her experience could sense the mind of a Foeman. And she knew that when she projected the image of a shield he hit right up against it. When she projected other images he would turn and look at her, sometimes questioningly, sometimes knowingly. He knew her game. It didn't seem to weaken him at all, but the frequent reminders of her ability gave him such a start all the time that she kept it up.

He showed her the secret of the smokeless fire. He made her practice it every morning and evening. He was teaching her to hunt, it having been something she was completely untrained in, and any snares she'd ever laid had been the devising of her own genius, not the experience of training.

He made her set traps and check them, and his devices were clever and she memorized them easily. He made her prepare the meals for him, and his all meat diet which he forced on her was making her fat. Every animal they caught, he made her skin it and prepare the hide. He never wasted anything. And every afternoon, he took her to a low field and he taught her to sense the crystals.

Then he fought her.

He gave her a lesson each day in combat. At first, she had refused to oblige him, but he was serious that she learn to fight rather than run. He thought her training to run away was cowardly.

He did not look at it as self-preservation.

Kara had come to realize that he wanted her alive for some reason, and so she had lost her fear of him. She began to fight with him hard, enjoying the mock battles, counting the days until they were real. He knew she fantasized this way and occasionally took her down a peg with a fast cut, or a stab when she wasn't prepared.

Kara hated him for that.

The times when she paid the most attention were in the evenings when he practiced his technique, as she called it, and Zalez as he called it.

"Stand, balance, lean, hold it in there!" He would stalk around her, his blue eyes critical, causing shivers of fear to course through her, which he found amusing. He would push her, to see if she could withstand. She had taken the offering of meditation as a time to plot to get away or kill him. But he was as alert during meditation as not.

Finding her thinking time useless, she would remember everything he had taught her all day, going over it all in her mind so often that her mental barrier was down, and Rion never told her how secretly pleased he was that she was paying attention. He'd thought she would, she wasn't the least bit stupid, but it was gratifying to know for sure. He loved going into her mind then, while it was completely occupied and the greater depths were unprotected. He would ease into her culture, her fears, her dreams.

Rion tore bits of meat off a small rodent they'd trapped, with his teeth, as he knew after several attempts to do so, the thought of tearing meat from the bones of once living animals turned Kara's stomach. So he did it for her, and she accepted his food because she was hungry.

One night in companionable curiosity he asked her something that bothered him. "Why would you risk yourself to go after Jerrika?"

"She is my sister."

"I didn't know that King Taan had two daughters."

Kara glanced up at him through darkened lashes. The moonlight behind him presented his face in shadow, but the firelight flickered on his skin. "He does not. Jerrika is my... lady's maid." She wasn't about to tell him the truth. Let him believe what everyone else had been told.

Rion choked and spat out a sharp bone, grunting on a smothered laugh. "You have a lady's maid?"

He knew she had reddened, she always did when he found her culture or explanations amusing.

He slapped her thigh playfully. "Come on! What do you need a lady's maid for?"

She wouldn't answer him, she was defensive of her culture. He spit out a slimy tendon and wiped his mouth with the back of two fingers, eyeing her frankly. When she didn't turn back to him finally, he sent out the smallest of probes to see if he had really offended, or if she was simply sulking, and found her train of thought completely immersed in something else.

She sensed the sea and longed for it. Rion wondered if she were to reach it could she transform into her jellyfish kai and swim back out to her undersea home.

I would if I could.

It startled him to hear her inner mind voice and know that she had innocently cued into his thoughts.

"If you could have, why didn't you the first day I let you dress?"

"Fresh water." She shrugged. "I believe my kai to be conducive to the saltier water of the mountain and the sea."

Rion grunted. "You carry Jerrika in such high esteem that you would risk your life to enter Auditorium to find her?"

"You carry Crevan in as much esteem. Wouldn't you die for him?" He knew she had accessed some of his thoughts about the Quarso and even knew their names. It annoyed him that he couldn't keep her completely out of his core.

"Crevan is my brother. It is not the same."

Her disdainful chortle also caught him off guard. He stared up at her, now eating the tiny pieces of meat he'd left on her bare leg for her.

Kara shrugged. "There is Jayce, and Terryn too. I hear your thoughts about them. You feel about them the way I feel for Jerrika."

"They are brothers..."

Kara threw her hand out and tossed the fatty tissue away. "Brothers... they are not your brothers, they carry none of your blood. They are separate and distinct. I can feel it, Rion, don't you know by now that I can feel it?"

His eyes were intent. "I don't care what you think you can feel, you can't understand the bond between brothers."

Kara threw back her face to the moonlight. "And you once called me delusional." She scoffed. "Is this because you are a man? You deem me unable to understand your bond because I am not a man? Women in your culture must be held in very low esteem then. I for one am perfectly capable of understanding your bond with your brothers, and I do not deny it exists, as you prefer to do with my bond to Jerrika. I respect your bond with them, and I wish you could respect mine with my... sister."

Rion threw down the remaining bones, and spit on the ground, eyeing her in frustration. He stalked to the edge of the firelight and stared out at the darkened shoreline. I carry women in my culture in esteem if they deserve it.

But I sense you feel that they are beneath you in some way.

They serve their purposes.

You are an arrogant pig.

He turned to her, knelt beside her and grabbed her free arm, sliding his palm up to her neck, he yanked her ear close to his lips. "Stop calling me that!"

She had been expecting a defensive sermon about his cultural beliefs, and therefore the reversal caught her so off guard she actually burst out laughing. His hand fell away, after stroking her hair and her arm to soften his furious outburst, he moved around the fire adding a small log to it.

She didn't stop laughing, it felt good to laugh, so good...

She couldn't remember a time....

"Is laughter not a part of your culture?" Rion settled back to his place with the second larger animal they'd trapped.

That statement caused her to laugh again, louder.

Rion was secretly pleased with her loss of inhibition, and that she trusted him with her laughter. She was normally so stoic.

"You find my remarks funny?"

"You! I find you hilarious!"

"Hilarious now?" He flashed her an enigmatic grin, and grabbed her bare foot. He imprisoned it between his chest and his arm and began to tickle the bottom. "In my culture, this treatment is considered hilarious."

Kara bucked against the tree she was tied to, unable to squirm away, she screamed her laughter as he tickled her foot. "I can't breathe! Stop!"

He let her go and leaned back on an elbow, eyeing her furtively. She swung her hair out of her eyes and the giggles dropped to occasional eruptions only.

"You are a pig." She held up her hand at his defensive retort. "Let me explain. In my culture women are held in high esteem. They are the keepers of family and life."

"They don't equate to men..."

"It is you who have lost your understanding, and it is why your culture is failing. Women and men have different roles it is true, but one is not better or more valuable than the other, Rion."

He looked at the ground, lowering his eyes so she could not see them. What she said made sense, and struck a chord inside him. He had never truly approved of the way women were treated in his culture, but so much of what he'd taken for granted before was challenged now. How quickly their two cultures had drifted apart.

"I will tell you a secret, Rion." She leaned toward him, and Rion's eyes darted up to meet hers. She had never been this friendly and familiar with him, her inhibitions and reserve were utterly lacking as if she actually found his presence tolerable.

"I may not want your secret."

She shrugged again, lifting a delicate shoulder as if it didn't matter. This movement caused her hair to fall over the gentle expanse, and Rion found himself more interested in that than her secret, but he leaned forward as she had, his eyes on hers, expectantly. "I will tell it to you anyway." She placed her fingers on his leg, the exact spot on him where he had laid her meat moments before. "I believe you respect me."

*****