Of Knives and Depressing Talk

 

“I can't use this sword,” Katrina complained, lugging the long, shimmering saber behind her, reeling with its weight, “It's too big.”

He chuckled and took the large blade from the petite brunette. “We'll have to get you something decidedly smaller,” he teased lightly.

She cocked an eyebrow and put her hands on her hips. “You think this is funny? We're a few hours away from war, and you think this is funny?” This was meant to be sarcastic, but he sobered quickly at the mention of war.

“Alright, let's see...” he murmured to himself.

A bow? Katrina could easily handle a bow and a quiver-full of arrows, but they were meeting the enemies head on and it wouldn't be very helpful. A sword? There were no decent swords that were light enough that she could carry.

He scratched his head and thought about Katrina instead.

Katrina was quick and agile and often beat him during sparring with surprise attacks and sudden movements. Surprise was her best element against these warring men...she doesn't stand a chance otherwise against their brutal strength and powerful blows.

She'll need something small, something that could easily be concealed from her enemies...A knife! That was it!

He jumped up. There wasn't time to visit the weaponry since the war council was in a few minutes and they needed to get the horses ready for battle.

And then he remembered the knife he had strapped to his belt this morning. It was his father's knife, a long blade that his father had given to him before he went to war and never returned.

He drew the weapon from his belt and handed it to Katrina, watching her as she admired it with awe. It was a light blade, light enough, he knew, that Katrina could carry and swing it with ease. It was wicked sharp and thin, and the length from the handle to the end of the blade was the length from Katrina's elbow to her fingertips.

Katrina draped it lightly on her hand. It balanced perfectly over two fingers.

“It's really quite light,” he told her, “I was a boy when my father gave this to me. It was before he rode off to war. Come to think of it,” his head drooped, “this is the only memory that I have of him.”

“I can't possibly take this...” Katrina protested, her blue eyes wide as she tried to push it back into his hands.

“Please,” he said, “Keep it. I want you to have it.”

He smiled at her then, a soft, sad smile that didn't seem to reach his warm brown eyes like his smiles usually did, but it melted her heart nevertheless, and she didn't, or rather couldn't, not do as he said.

They sat in silence, staring at the blazing orange sun and the caramel of the rock and sand of the road. It was a peaceful silence, quiet and calm, a peace he had not felt for many years, and he was almost sad when a horn blasted into the morning air, signaling the beginning of the war council.

“Well,” she smiled at him, gently prodding him toward the gathering group of men by the tents, “Go on. The men are waiting for you.”

He stood up reluctantly. This might be the last time he'll ever see Katrina again. The troops ride after the war council, and there would be no chance that he could see her before the battle. Who knows what would happen once the battle starts? One of them could wind up dead or injured, or, very likely both of them.

It's now or never, he realized.

“Katrina, I--” He turned around to face her again. Expectant blue eyes met his gaze, but he found that he couldn't say a word. The sentences were stuck in his throat, contrasting emotions bubbling inside him, churning in turmoil and despair, wanting"no, needing"desperately to get out.

He wanted to express himself. No, no, not in words. He had never been good with words. Sure, he's communicated with words, gave orders with words and showed his friends and enemies pieces of his mind with words, but this feeling, this strange throbbing of his heart, this feeling that something substantial has finally filled that empty space just slightly beneath his left chest... It was too complex to be expressed in any worldly language.

And so he decided to take action. If he couldn't tell her how he felt, maybe he could show her.

Gently, slowly, shyly, almost as if he was afraid that she would break at the slightest touch, he cradled her face with his hands and pulled her tenderly toward him until their faces were only a few inches apart.

And then he kissed her, pressing his lips to hers.

It was a simple, chaste kiss that caught Katrina completely off guard.

“W-what w-was that f-for?” Katrina gasped when they broke apart, suddenly breathless as the rhythm of her heartbeat multiplied by ten, brushing her fingertips over her tingling lips.

He simply smiled. “Everything.”

Author's Note

I think Tolkien's rubbed off on me....serves me right for reading too much and watching too much lotr. What springs out of my head is doomsday romances and wars and people that are never named due to lack of ability for making things up. I think doomsday romances are a part of what happened in the last few paragraphs, but I also think it's the sap bunny. Sap bunnies, unlike plot bunnies, are very unuseful, as the only "use" for them is to make you squeal your booty off (phrase borrowed from Jamillet), even though you wrote it. So, this is the first fluff I've ever written. Hopefully it didn't come out to funny.

Reviews

[Archia]

That last line has got to be one of the sweetest line I've ever read. "Everything" Oh so simple, so sweet, just perfect. The whole ending was just incredibly sweet, and it wasn't too sappy actually, it was all done in a great way. You know this does stand-alone really nicely, though it could also work in a novel. It actually has a lot of establishment that would go in a novel. Really nice piece.