Serala wanted to ask more questions, but the warm bowl in her hands was pulling her attention away.
It looked to be some sort of soup, chunks of meat and roots floating in a broth that had been seasoned with herbs she didn’t recognize. Leaves of something green and faintly luminescent drifted on the surface, releasing an aroma that made her stomach clench with sudden hunger.
When had she last eaten?
Her stomach churned with demands that her dignity tried to suppress, and it failed spectacularly.
Before she knew it, she brought the bowl to her lips!
The stone was rough against her hands, unpolished and unshaped. She should have asked for a spoon or something to eat with properly. She should have maintained the composure expected of someone of her station.
Instead, she began to drink as if she had been starving for weeks.
The broth was hot and rich and surprisingly complex. The chunks of meat were tender. The roots added an earthy sweetness. The luminescent leaves tingled against her tongue with traces of Mana that she could feel seeping into her exhausted reserves.
And oh...
Why did it taste so good?
She had eaten meals prepared by the finest cooks in the Covenant, delicacies that required ingredients gathered from across the Lands of Stone.
This was just soup made in a Dross village.
It shouldn’t compare.
And yet her body disagreed with everything her mind insisted, demanding more and more until she had consumed half the bowl without pausing for breath.
Only then did she stop, lowering the rough stone vessel from her lips as she breathed out with something close to satisfaction.
Broth glistened on her chin.
She wiped it away with the back of her hand, a gesture so common that it would have earned her a sharp rebuke from any of her etiquette instructors.
But there were no instructors here!
There was only survival.
She looked at Grandmother Essun again, and this time her gaze held more composure. The grace and brilliance that she had always carried slowly returned to her posture and expression.
She set the bowl and pitcher aside with deliberate care.
She sat properly upon the rough sleeping platform.
Back straight. Hands folded. Chin lifted.
The Holy Daughter of Stone had returned!
"What...happened since then?"
Her voice was calm now, measured, carrying a sense of command that came naturally to someone raised to rule.
"Has anyone come here? Any powerful Warriors?"
She began asking questions with authority woven through each word.
The wise woman raised her brows at the sudden shift, then she waved her hands dismissively.
"Nobody has come here and you are safe. As safe as anyone can be in the Lands of Stone anyway."
She settled her weight on her staff.
"The whole day has gone by. It’s nearly nighttime now, and the monstrous things that were fighting in the skies have not returned."
Her yellow teeth showed again.
"So you were lucky to have Tokoloshe save you. Very lucky."
She tilted her head.
"Wherever you come from and whatever he fully saw must have worried him though, because he has been up that mountain since morning until now, and..."
Grandmother Essun stopped mid-sentence.
She smiled shrewdly.
And Serala sensed it as well!
A billowing surge of Mana was coming in their direction, an aura she couldn’t quite place because it didn’t conform to any Circle she knew.
But the nature of that power was strange.
The presence stopped briefly outside the hut. She could hear voices exchanging words she couldn’t make out.
It should be that Tokoloshe!
The one who saved her.
The young man with blue flames who caught her from the sky.
Serala became incredibly calm and composed as if she was facing a great challenge.
She watched the hide-covered entrance with an intensity she couldn’t explain.
The hide covering was pushed aside.
And there he stood.
...!
He was lean in the way of those who had known labor rather than luxury, his frame carrying wiry strength beneath light white and bronze skin that had been weathered by years of sun and wind. His shoulders were broader than his thin torso suggested.
His hair was dark, nearly black, falling past his ears in waves that were currently disheveled and pushed back from his face. No Dust and dirt clung to his body as concentrated tendrils of manna seemed to hum beneath his skin as it caused him to have an otherworldly glow
But it was his face that made her pause.
Sharp features that did not belong to the Dross. High cheekbones beneath eyes that held depths they shouldn’t possess. A straight nose and a jaw that could have been cut from the same rock that built palace walls.
He was handsome! Well, maybe just above average.
And his eyes...
Those dark blue eyes met hers, and for a moment, neither of them spoke.
An awkwardness filled the room as Grandmother Essun watched on as if she wasn’t here with jittery anticipation!
Two Anointed Ones looked at each other inside a Dross tribe.
Neither one found themselves speaking toward the other during what should be their second meeting, and not their first when one of them was nearly split in half.
When Damian looked at the young woman in front of him, she represented an identity of beings he had run away from eight summers ago.
He knew that she was not even from the same empire as him. She was apparently the Holy Daughter of the Covenant of the First Stone, someone from the western reaches where the great plains met the endless seas.
But for some reason, when he looked at her, he couldn’t help but remember the Lugals who had always looked at him with their chins raised high.
Those young nobles with their immense sense of pride.
Because they had Land and Sky Physiques that made them unfathomably powerful.
While he, the heir apparent, had nothing.
This feeling wasn’t for nothing because she was currently raising her chin just like this, sitting in the proper stance that Anointed Ones were supposed to sit and portray themselves as larger than life.
He did not like that.
As for Serala, she was looking at him as someone she did not understand.
Her values told her that this was someone who had made a move to save her, and she needed to give her thanks. But at the same time, this young man who should be younger than her...
He was looking at her with a gaze that nobody her age or younger had ever looked at her with.
He was looking at her as if she was nobody special.
It wasn’t that she was arrogant and prideful and wanted to be looked at as someone special. It was just that for her, it was unsettling!
Because nobody else her age had ever looked at her like this before.
The meeting between the two of them began with awkwardness as nobody here in this Purple Stone Tribe, or even across the nearby hundreds of miles of the Lands of Stone, knew what was happening.
Nobody knew that one of the most pivotal meetings of this generation was occurring at this moment in time.
In the future, shamanic historians seeking records and history would look back to this event as the starting point to where everything... went absolutely wrong.