What to Do?

Krenen didn't see the woman kneeling over the edge of the river as he stumbled to its edge and let himself fall, sprawling, on the ground. It had been three days since he left the city behind, and three days still remained to reach the cabin of his brother up on the mountain.

The infection of the wound on his face would probably prevent him from reaching it.

Flat on the dirt, his face to the side, Krenen saw something move. A formless bulk of colors that blended in perfectly with the background suddenly shifted and rose to stand. It moved towards him, and Krenen wasn't very sure of what he was seeing, but the colors of this...specter changed to match those of whatever was behind it.

A part of him wanted to run away. Another part didn't care what happened to him. The fever had Krenen shivering, and in so much misery that it was hard to listen to the preservation instinct that wanted to kick in.

Then he saw the face of this apparition. A beautiful, fair but tanned face with hazel eyes, and white hair. It drew close to his own face, and sucked air through its teeth. Krenen closed his eyes, deciding to let whatever would happen happen. Given that beautiful face, however, nothing bad was bound to happen.

When he recovered consciousness, Krenen was lying face up, covered by a blanket. It was dark, and he could feel the warmth of a fire nearby. The orange light allowed him to see the lower branches of trees above him. The night breeze was fresh.

"How are you feeling?" said a woman nearby.

By the sound of it, she was sitting across from him, on the other side of the fire, but Krenen didn't feel like turning his head. Lying still, feeling the breeze, and merely listening to that voice gave him much comfort. He closed his eyes and answered.

"Did you treat me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"You're welcome."

"Thank you." Krenen nodded. "Yes, thank you. I realize you didn't have to bother with me. I guess I should at least be grateful for the time you spent curing me. I'm just not sure I wanted you to."

"Ah." The woman understood. "You weren't in a state to give a straight answer. I did what I thought you'd want."

"Was the wound infected?"

"Yes."

"How long have I been unconscious?"

"Half a day."

"It can't be. If you escape the death of an infection, it takes much longer to heal."

"It wasn't that bad."

Krenen thought about it. It had to be as the woman said for him to have gotten well in merely half a day. And she must have had powerful treatments that fought against the infection so quickly.

"You said you weren't sure you wanted me to treat you," said the woman. "I don't mind undoing my work, and I know how to kill quickly. Is that what you'd like?"

Krenen was so surprised by the question that he had to prop himself up on one elbow and look past the fire to look at whoever was speaking to him. It was also hard to believe a woman would speak to him that way.

But it was a woman. For whatever reason, he remembered the bulk of shifting colors that approached him when they were next to the river and looked at her clothes. They seemed to be of normal cloth. Hallucinations meant his infection must have been bad. But that contradicted what she was telling him now…

"Did you hear my question?" she asked.

Krenen realized he'd been silent for a while as he studied her. "Yes. It was just stunning to hear it because it's not something one is usually asked, and I thought you were a healer."

"I am not. But you seem like a warrior."

Krenen scoffed and lay down again, but did not close his eyes this time. "Hardly. I was a guard at Crown."

There was silence as the man remembered everything that had happened three days ago. The woman, Afena, considered him. About a year had gone by since Selen warned her she'd come across a warrior, and she was wondering if this was the person she was supposed to meet. The circumstances under which they met certainly felt curious, as it had been nothing but luck and coincidence.

"You sound like you mock yourself," she said.

"The more I think about it, the more stupid I seem for accepting lies I created for myself and believed."

"What do you mean?"

"Does it matter?" Krenen shrugged, lay down again, and put a hand under his nape. "I thought you wanted to kill me."

"I never want to kill." Afena crossed her arms. "But I understand that we did not ask to be brought to this world, and some do not live gladly."

"Have you thought about it, then? About ending it. Do you live gladly?"

"Not at all. And yes. I've thought about it more than once."

"And what stops you?"

"That I still have strength to withstand the blows of life."

"And how do you know you still have that strength?"

"Because I can still smile."

Krenen chuckled.

"And so can you, apparently," said Afena kindly.

"It would be very hard not to smile at an answer like that."

"You said you were a guard," said Afena pressing a bit. A guard could be a warrior, and she needed to know if she'd come across the one she was meant to meet. "Are you no longer one?"

He had to think about it, so he sat and turned his body towards this woman. There wasn't a single bother or pain in his body to indicate he'd ever had an infection.

"No. I am not."

"Why?"

"A guard protects folk. I came to realize there was no point in doing it."

"Why not?"

"You can't protect folk from their very selves. If they decide that they want to kill and hurt others, how are you supposed to protect them from that?"

Afena blinked. The truth was, she hadn't decided yet whether she would help the warrior she was supposed to meet or not. This conversation gave her a chance to hear someone else's thoughts, and she seized it.

"Would you forsake people, then? Is there no point in protecting them?"

"No." Krenen answered immediately. "I would not forsake them."

"Why not?"

He sighed and shook his head. "I don't know. It's not right."

Afena had to repress a vexed sigh. "He's just another idiot," she thought. "Another simpleton that goes about life repeating and enforcing the same things his forefathers taught him without giving it a second's worth of independent thought."

"Why didn't you forsake me?" he asked.

"Compassion," she said simply.

"Is compassion right or wrong?"

"I don't know anymore."

Krenen stared at the continued flow of tongues of flame leaping up from the wood. "I think you do. That's why you asked me if I wanted you to undo your work and kill me quickly. You don't want others to suffer if you can help it. And that's the whole point of it, isn't it? To help. And to do it because it's the right thing to do."

Afena was pleasantly surprised by the profundity of the man's thought. "Then why did you stop being a guard?"

"I realized it's not what I should have been doing." He drew his knees to his chest and hugged them. "It's not the best way for me to help."

"What is, then?"

"I don't know."

"Not a warrior," thought Afena. "He's aimless, purposeless, lost."

At the very least, however, he'd been able to help her decide what she would do when she did cross paths with the warrior.

She'd be compassionate. Just like she was when she saved the ursul cub years ago.