A Whisper to the North

Chapter XVIII ✠ A Last Relic

Una found herself awake before the sun was up again. She blinked and remembered that she was no longer in the safety of her castle. She slowly rose. The sounds of birds could be heard, so she knew it was early morning. She looked around, and a very faint glow of dawn allowed her to see out.

Una turned over to look at Frey and Yvar, peacefully asleep, so she thought. She reached over to grab her leather water canister to drink the last cup from the springs of her homeland. She will miss the taste of this water. It tastes sweet and doesn't taste faintly musty or salty like the water from this area. As soon as she drank the last drop, Una sighed.

"I see that you can't sleep either?" Yvar said, turning over.

Una flinched and looked over her shoulder at him in the tiny slivers of light.

"How did you know I was awake?" Una whispered.

"I saw you rise," Yvar mumbled as he rose.

"How long have you been awake?" Una asked faintly as she turned completely around to face him.

"Practically all night." He laughed.

"You're telling me!" Suddenly Frey sat up in a fury.

"I didn't shut my eyes, but once, and when I did, I swore I heard a troll lurking around here! He probably was looking for my gold!"

"To suggest that you definitely didn't sleep! Your gold is at the bottom of the river, from our branch coming from the Severn. The only gold you brought was the plundered Christian gold. Honestly, you probably have never slept out in the open before, no trolls, just nerves." Una suggested because Frey did look shook up.

Frey really did appear as if he did see something lurking around there. His eyes were wide, and even in the barely visible light, they were bloodshot. He had dark circles around his eyes, and the corners of them seemed to point down, instead of being slightly slanted up as they usually were. He looked like a doe who had nearly escaped a wolf's talons. Una thought maybe he was still worried about her slitting his throat open. He was clutching his knife awfully close to himself.

"You see, Frey? No trolls." Yvar laughed.

He slung his cloak away and pulled up the sleeve of his cornflower blue tunic. He exposed his forearm, and dangling at his wrist was a double wrapped golden bracelet with a circular faceted iolite gem. In the pale light of the dawn, the rock was the most beautiful thing Una had ever seen.

"If a troll had come by, surely it would have taken this," Yvar assured Frey.

"That's a water sapphire! Where on earth have you acquired such a pendant!?" Frey crawled over on his hands and knees to Yvar.

"May I see it?" He begged, holding out his hand.

Yvar hesitated, but he unraveled it from around his wrist and gently handed it to Frey. The gold chain dangling delicately as it traced over the grass when Frey pulled it to him.

"It's a necklace," Una said softly.

Una remembered seeing the necklace around Yvar's neck as a child. It hung nearly to his navel. It was so long. Una suggested that he wear it as a bracelet since it used to sling around and got caught on branches. Since Una was a princess, she was used to seeing such jewelry, and she didn't bat an eye. Una herself still occasionally wears a royal emerald pendant that her own mother gave her. The gem was a royal forest green, the same shade as Una's warm eyes. This was an uncanny similarity to how the lolite necklace was the same shade of brilliant blue as Yvar's eyes. Una jokes to herself and thinks that here before long, Frey will pull out a moonstone pendant, the same color as his blisteringly pale gray-blue eyes.