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There’s a burning in Aloy’s throat, and she’s already decided it’s not from the Scrappersap.
It won’t swallow down as she drinks, either—and even though she hates the way it tastes, tonight, she’s finding herself gulping more of the vaguely-unpleasant stuff from her flagon than she usually would. No, it’s definitely not helping. Might be making it worse. Might be making her glare. She tries to force her face to go slack, to hide it, all-too-aware of the eyes on her. It’s like she can feel the tense crease in her brow defying her, staying put, stubborn.
She takes another drink and grimaces into the vessel’s rim as she listens to the tale being told. Tries to listen, rather, pushing hard against the rush in her ears and the thorny heat blooming on her cheeks. She hasn’t stopped trying yet, even though she’s slowly realizing she’d rather fight every last damned Glinthawk in the Sundom, all at once, in a flash of pouring rain, on a moonless night, with a broken bow and exactly four arrows to work with, than continue.
(And still she continues.)
There’s a burning in Aloy’s throat. Deep, heavy, like claws. Like talons. Like corruption-venom. And there’s no reason for it to be there. It makes no sense. It’s unfamiliar. Maybe it’s not unfamiliar. Not altogether—one shade off of the much more understandable instances that have made her throat burn before. Not the thrill at the peak of the hunt, not righteous anger at injustice or narrow-minded foolishness, not a depthless sadness for herself or for seeing the bone-chilling end of an entire world unfold before her, too many lifetimes after it happened.
It reminds her most of the choking feeling that would come over her when she was small—berries in a basket, a touch on a cheek never granted to her. But those were a child’s problems. Her shoulders carry a much heavier burden now, a purpose with no hope for bargain: mending the broken, chaotic shatter of life’s hope created once by her hands—a version of them, at least, indistinguishable but more extraordinary than Aloy can think to match—long before they were actually hers.
The ghost of that disembodied voice rattles into her skull, the one that told her to shape up. She wonders where that arrogant bastard is now, when all of his jarring words might actually be helpful.
Because this throat-burn has no worthy, or even lucid, reason for being. It’s new, and distracting, and downright infuriating. It only steals in when Aloy sojourns to Meridian, visits Talanah at the Lodge, shares a drink with her, and heeds her tales of letters arriving from the Forbidden West.
Though, to be honest, Aloy would rather hear about the correspondence exchanged than be held hostage by some of the other offhand comments.
...could use either a tie-up or a good shearing, his hair’s a little long to flow free, but he does have a strikingly handsome face...more handsome if he didn’t spend most of his waking hours brooding.
Another drink, then. Brooding suddenly sounds nice. Maybe she already is brooding. Is this burning a kind of brooding? Answer unknown. She should check her Focus for a clear definition. A joke. A half-joke. Maybe not a joke at all. Her fingers give a reflexive twitch, wanting to reach for it. Forcible stop to impulse. Ah, too much Scrappersap.
There’s a burning in Aloy’s throat. And it must be coming from her. But she doesn’t understand it, and this makes her hate it even more. Add it to the ever-growing list of unknowns she finds when gazing into her own shadowed corners.
There’s a burning in Aloy’s throat, but she can speak around it when she’s expected to.
“...says you can’t travel for even a day without coming across yet another new machine, or other beasts of all kinds. I can only imagine the sort of—”
Then, with the abruptness of a decisive spear thrust, Talanah pauses. Her excited demeanor— eyes alight, hands gesturing—wilts. And then she frowns at Aloy, just in the slightest way, head tilting.
“Hey. Everything alright? I thought this part would interest you.”
“Hm? I’m fine. Just listening. I’m interested.” Degrees of truth in there. If she could relax her damned face, maybe Talanah will believe her in full—though the brittle edges of her voice might still give away whatever the hell this is. “He sounds like a decent hunter.”
Talanah blinks at the tangential remark (because, true, Aloy was only half-engaged for that last bit of infernal gushing) as she takes a draw from her own flagon of brew. In the stiff moment of quiet between them, the sounds of the Lodge sneak into their stolen privacy—upper level, a shared divan snug behind panel dividers. Legs, tired from a long day’s hunt, stripped of armor and tucked up in comfort. Knees angled together in a way that compels Aloy to glance down at them when she’s not too preoccupied with the other strange agitation. As Talanah drapes one arm along the back of the seat, her hand floats almost-close to Aloy’s shoulder before it comes to rest without touching. And Aloy watches it. Awareness, caught. Neck, prickle. She sits up a little straighter and then questions her spine like it doesn’t belong to her.
“Amadis? More than decent.” Talanah nods, choosing to answer rather than prod. “Stealthy, resourceful. Conscientious. Efficient and thorough without flamboyance. A departure from what’s become the standard here, to be sure. He’s the kind of hunter I’d like to have rearing the fledglings. Honestly, some of the senior members could use a lesson or two from him as well.”
The burn surges, broadens. Furious enough to cost Aloy a wince if she wasn’t already knuckling at self-control. Her grip tightens on her tankard’s handle. Better fist than face, if any part of her has to react at all. She shouldn’t need to react. This is nothing she hasn’t heard before, in any amount of eager detail—the hunting contract with Rising Light for the black-armored Clawstrider. How Talanah had been injured just after they parted ways in the wilds—the scar across her midsection, a constant worn-proud reminder never covered by silk. How Amadis tended to her wounds, tracked with her, fought alongside her: a space Aloy could have filled if she had just stayed.
The rest of the world doesn’t stop in her absence. Aloy should be happy for Talanah, and this new bond her Hawk has formed. Aloy should be grateful that Amadis was there to help when she wasn’t.
Aloy is neither of these things; she’s searing instead.
“Think he’ll join when—if he comes back?” The correction doesn’t seem to draw Talanah’s attention, but something about it felt necessary.
“I’ll admit, I’m not sure if he’d want to.” Talanah shrugs. “But if he did, I’d be delighted to have him as soon as he earned his Suns.”
“Immediate Hawkhood, then, for all of his talents.” Trying to smirk along with it—like she normally would—just makes her mouth feel ungainly, wooden. Bitter. Her words taste like wild ember stem on the back of her tongue. Aloy hears a small noise come from her own throat, a tight-wrung threat, and immediately she knows she should just bite it back, keep her mouth shut, she knows this but says anyway: “The bylaws are pretty flexible nowadays.”
Unrefined impulsivity ruins. She could pin it on the Scrappersap clouding her head, but that wouldn’t be true. Any insobriety is moot among the other messy foolishness seething all through her. The promised regret rolls in right away as Talanah narrows her eyes.
“Yes, that’s the point,” she says, steady-measured, caught somewhere between curiosity and affront. “Alright. This time I’m not asking: tell me what’s gotten into you. You’re acting surlier than a Ravager caught without its cannon.”
“Come on,” Aloy huffs in defense, her frustration only flaring into double under scrutiny, twisting up her guts. “Talanah, I was only teasing—”
She’s interrupted by Talanah’s expression falling all at once from annoyed suspicion to something much milder. A muted sort of apology takes quick claim of her golden-brown gaze, intent on Aloy.
“Aloy—is this about Milu?”
“No,” Aloy responds before she can even finish asking, backed by a rush of embarrassed guilt that mixes in with all the rest. Upsetting Talanah hadn’t been her intention. Receiving pity, even less. This is stupid. “Of course it isn’t about her. I like her. You already know that.”
Really, it had been a...somewhat uncomfortable moment during her first visit to Meridian after the Battle of the Alight, when Talanah introduced the Utaru girl to Aloy as her Thrush. But any sting Aloy might (might) have felt was quickly blotted out by the logic of the situation. It was a rational decision. The Sunhawk should have a Thrush by her side in Meridian—Talanah is too remarkable not to share her gifts closely with another. If the Lodge is to continue growing and thriving alongside Talanah’s vision, the ranks need to come open ever-wider. More Thrushes apprenticed means more competent hunters for the Sundom. It’s simple, it makes sense, it doesn’t make Aloy burn inside and out.
And—a nagging, grating also that scrapes at her aching throat—when Talanah speaks of Milu, it’s only ever in terms of her progress and burgeoning skills. Not with stars bursting in her eyes. Not like she’s speaking now.
Talanah raises an eyebrow, unsatisfied with the answer. “So it’s not about Milu, but it is about something.”
It’s entirely unsurprising that Talanah honed in enough on Aloy’s exact phrasing to use it against her. She misses nothing. She’s the Sunhawk for a reason. Her stare doesn't let up, and heat creeps to Aloy’s ears. No more excuses or sidestepping.
“It’s—I don’t know.” Aloy lets out a sharp sigh, rolling her eyes at something she can neither identify nor blame. With more cautious deliberation this time, she tries to force something articulate out of the snarled-up, absurd soreness in her mind. It takes what feels like an eternity, with Talanah studying her the whole time—Aloy grunts when something coherent finally stitches itself together. “I’m realizing that I miss out on a lot when I’m not here. And I can’t always be here, but…”
“...but you want to be here?” Talanah offers after Aloy’s thought trails off. She tries a smile, just the corner of her mouth pulling up, and nudges Aloy’s knee with her own. The contact is fleeting, gentle, casual: a little fond afterthought channeled into a gesture that should hardly matter. But it might as well have been a kick from a particularly-aggravated Charger. The sensation of it crashes into Aloy, soft but adamant, fluttering at her belly and tying her tongue in knots.
“I can’t,” is the repetitive half-answer she manages to fumble out over her unruly heartbeat. Because it’s true. She can’t always stay, even if she wanted to. Not when all of these worthy and dire matters, so incredibly far from her control, loom over her like a stormcloud. Sometimes this lack of choice is something akin to comfort. Sometimes (like right now, as Talanah’s knee grazes hers again—an accidental bit of insignificance that jolts Aloy’s composure) this lack of choice suffocates.
Talanah’s smile winnows away, replaced by careful solemnity.
“I know,” she says, after a breath. It’s quiet, barely over the swirling music and the much more raucous voices rising from below. It’s also teeming with understanding, nearly disarming with its bare candor—like this response has already been examined and rehearsed, over and over. “You’re missed here when you’re gone. By everyone, not just me. But as much as I’d love to convince you otherwise, I have to remember that you still don’t owe me or Meridian anything. I respect your path and the way you walk it.”
It’s not a question of owing, Aloy could argue. It’s a question of wanting, and all of the cumbersome and complicated feelings that follow on its heels. The restlessness, the cluelessness. While an outcast’s solitude was never easy to bear, life made her an expert. But when the borders of her world dissolved, the boundaries that kept her separate from it also began to blur and then fade, obliterated by the sudden presence of others—by connection, rich and bewilderingly visceral, rooted deep, forming across lands, across tribes, across vast stretches of time itself.
And now when Aloy sets off on her own, it’s no longer the accustomed reliance of aloneness that settles between her ribs. It’s only the blistering lack of what she had been allowed to taste. Now there’s always somewhere to look back instead of blind ahead. She thinks of them now, all of them, far more than she thought she would. More than she thought she could, or would even want to.
More often than the rest, in the silence of travel, turning over on her bedroll under the stars, she finds herself thinking of Talanah—just another unknown that tangles up in her head and irritates until she has to bare her teeth.
It’s a lightness that chases her everywhere. It’s the way their hunts never feel long enough anymore when Aloy comes by Meridian—how they’ve become a reason for the two of them to share enthusiasm and satisfaction, to simply enjoy being together, rather than a means for either of them to prove some bold point. It’s in the way she becomes aware of Talanah’s eyes on her as they follow her through the Jewel’s leafy fronds, follow her across a loud and crowded room. How Talanah’s eyes make her feel seen. How they’ve made her feel seen, reaching back to the first time.
And to be seen is to be taken apart and then forged into new shapes of vulnerability. Being seen is exhausting, how it cracks at her skin and all the piecemeal armor she’s managed to pile up around herself. It all leaves her feeling exposed and wild like a live wire in a machine carcass, ready to lash and spark. It’s a mark of dismantling, but one she just keeps craving, and Talanah’s looking at her now, here, sitting together, alone and apart together in their own shared segment of space, close enough to almost-touch. Maybe Talanah’s hands would help ease the commotion her eyes have caused. They can’t dissipate the threatening storm—but they could gather up these little pieces that keep falling away from her and cradle them, rearrange them, make them make sense, sweep away these last scraps of separation. Aloy’s craving it, now, with a clamoring in her chest that doesn’t care about the rawness it knows will follow.
Yet a shadow hovers above, around, and all throughout. There’s a third, here—a phantom presence that cuts the ever-shrinking space between them. And the idea of Talanah looking at Amadis like this makes Aloy want to cast away her flagon, stand up, and spit fire.
“I should have stayed with you all the way to Rising Light,” she blurts in place of flame, uncontrolled, face hot, head dizzy, words so rushed their sounds are barely divided. In a flurry of directionless energy, she all but slams her mostly-empty tankard on the table in front of them. Then she balls up her fists on her knees to keep her hands from reaching, not daring to look away from the whitening knuckles. Her tongue keeps up its rebellion despite her every attempt to stop it. “It—it wasn’t enough to just hand you those arrows and leave. I knew what that hunter-killer was capable of, and I should have tracked it by your side. Nothing stops them except for us, you said. I remember that. You meant it and now I regret parting ways. I wish it had been me there with you, for all of it, instead of him.”
Once it’s been choked out, the rough-voiced admission can’t be yanked from the air and shoved back into the deep, deep pocket of oblivion from which it came. All Aloy can do is cringe in and try not to let the silence that follows crush her—try not to look like she wants to be swallowed bodily by the divan’s cushion. She keeps her eyes shut because she doesn’t trust herself not to steal a glance at Talanah’s reaction, at the look that’s probably colored by surprise or scorn or something else she doesn’t have the language to name.
Too bad her other senses aren’t as cooperative.
First, Aloy hears the faint clatter of Talanah’s mug against the table, placed there much more delicately than her own. Then she feels Talanah grasp her shoulder and then squeeze, grounding her through the embarrassed fit, dragging her out of her retreat. Aloy draws a breath into tight lungs, grapples with the reluctance to open her eyes, and lets them search for and then find the amber match they’ve been so recklessly seeking. And when they find them, she ignites, she freezes, all over.
“You think I don’t wish it had been you, too?” The question is soft and direct, but there’s also a ripple of hesitance underneath the words. Talanah furrows her brow and leans in. “I think about it too. A lot. The blame isn’t yours—it’s on both of us. I wanted you to stay, Aloy, but I didn’t let myself ask. Sometimes I don’t know how far to tread with you without risking…” And she must think better of what she’s saying, because Talanah swallows the words instead, pulling her lower lip between her teeth in such a small way that Aloy wouldn’t notice if she wasn’t staring. After a few pulsebeats of consideration, she says, “It would have been better with you.”
Aloy should believe her. There’s no reason not to. But that bristling in the base of her skull reaches for her jaw, making her speak before she can think or understand.
“Seems like you had a fine enough time with Amadis, though. You’ve been exchanging letters for months and you talk about him like he’s the Sun.”
Great. Great. She definitely just mentioned the damned Sun. It’d be a highly convenient time for a Rockbreaker to come barreling through the foundation of the Lodge, but of course, none appears. She wouldn’t be that lucky. Aloy sighs, and its end carries an irritated grunt. Talanah squints, but it’s more confused than angered, trying to parse all this senseless and pathetic verbal thrashing into coherence.
“His letters excite me because I get to eventually share them with you, bunghead,” she says with warm exasperation, like it’s completely and blindingly obvious. She smiles again, much broader this time, and she squeezes Aloy’s shoulder once more before letting go. “You always come back with the best stories of adventure. I just figured you’d enjoy hearing some, too—I like seeing your eyes light up.” A nod. “Amadis is a good man, a brave man. A worthy friend. And while we correspond fondly, it’s not as though he’s asking to court me.”
And then, at the apparently ridiculous thought, Talanah laughs.
Aloy does not.
The burning in her throat, jabbed in its center, turns to numb. Her blood goes like Chillwater. Her breath hitches on the inhale.
Oh.
This time neither sinking away into the cushion nor a rogue Rockbreaker will do. All Aloy can conceive of is making an absolute full-out mad dash for the balcony, and she curses the fact that her grappling hook isn’t at hand. Because at precisely the same moment Aloy realizes the pith of it, so does Talanah, eyes widening.
“Wait. Wait. You’re all worked up because you’re convinced Amadis...is going to propose a courtship?”
Even a headlong, ropeless plummet of a dive won’t deliver Aloy from the way her mouth sputters.
“I don’t know, you make him sound like a match! Brave, good, expert hunter…” Defensive, then, nostrils flaring: “And besides. Isn’t that what noble Carja do? Go on hunts and sigh about the Sun and court one another and trade around your excessively-wordy names?”
Talanah lets out another laugh. But this one is markedly uncomfortable, just one incredulous exhalation before she says, “You’re actually serious.”
And this is actually mortifying. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Talanah blinks a few more times and then narrows her eyes at Aloy, mouth opening wordlessly and then closing again. She swallows and then rubs at the back of her neck, taking the time to gather her explanation more completely. Aloy holds her breath, torn between two courses of action: wait for it, or dodge-roll to the staircase and all the way out the door. She could make the Daybrink by sunrise if she tried. Then the Daunt by the next twilight, and straight into the Forbidden West. That might be far enough. Might.
“It’s a...misguided concern,” Talanah finally says, stripping the decision from Aloy’s hands. “Even if Amadis did ask to court me, I’d refuse. Listen. I guess I didn’t lay this bare for you because I thought it was already perfectly clear.” A beat. Then, earnest, low of voice: “Aloy—I prefer the company of women.”
Oh.
Oh.
“Oh.” It’s close to a yelp, gathered up in whiplash, and her voice cracks right in half over the syllable. Talanah’s straightforward revelation somehow loosens her grasp of how phrases fit together, how they need to actually be complete to carry any meaning. She tries to say everything and manages to say nothing, all at once. “I see—that makes—I just thought—how—”
Small mercy: the clumsy trickle of nonsense stops itself before she needs to holler for one of the outlanders downstairs to lob something at her head hard enough to knock her out. When she tries to realign her composure with a pinched swallow, she finds that her throat is so dry, but no longer burning. Instead, the smolder is in her belly, a churning tremble that makes her fingers throb, makes her heart bang against her ribs. It’s that persistent lightness finally running her down, demanding for her to join it, daring her to float outside of her body. And it’s new, and it’s bewildering, and it’s foolish, and it frightens her but she wants to wrap herself in all of it.
Talanah, however, takes Aloy’s stunned-silent fluster for something bleaker.
“I—ah.” The stammer seems so out of place. Her mouth twitches, and though it’s aiming at a smile, the creases in her forehead render her visibly uneasy. “I understand cultures are different, but I really hope I didn’t just stumble over another Nora taboo.”
“No,” Aloy answers so hastily it’s almost harsh. “Not at all. And even if it was, it wouldn’t matter. Despite the Nora, remember? I’m just—” (she takes a breath, a deep one, realizing she barely has for too long, everything around her buzzes with some nameless relief) “—I’m glad you told me.”
Talanah’s nervous, tight-lipped expression breaks into a satisfied grin.
“Then I guess I’m glad as well. Though I’m shocked I had to.”
Her golden-brown eyes flicker, glitter. Stars, bursting there—subtle, straight in. And as Aloy looks, she catches a glimpse of her reflection in the meticulous polish of Talanah’s headpiece—and sees the same in her own. Something inside of her twists. There’s no urge to tear it out. It’s hard to mind. The hushed-up tension between them pulls itself taut and then swells until it ruptures, like a fire arrow to a barrel of blaze, casting off fragments of spark and heat that are enough to send Aloy reeling.
But after the flash of shared breathlessness, Aloy realizes this quivering lightness also comes with that same undeniable impulse to speak. To ask, while turning her face away and falling inward. It’s still a whole problem, an annoying one, but in some way it feels a little bit less horrible than before.
“Is there—anyone you would like to court?”
She’s talking nonsense. Her voice echoes back over the braumdrum below with a half-shade twinge of tense hope. A hope that has no place among everything else she’s heavied by—but still manages to exist, like a bright new bloom through frost. And now that it’s been perceived, it suddenly won’t stay still.
Talanah balks, first, and then laughs again, taken aback. “By the Sun, Thrush. That’s not exactly a question you ask a woman outright.”
After a pause, Aloy furrows her brow in contemplation. And as she does, for once, for just this stolen-away moment—she’s not thinking of an old world ravaged and left to rust, or of this world dwindling into chaos. Or whether or not her hands will remember what they were before, or if they will be enough. She’s not thinking of black-armored machines or scruffy-haired handsome nobles roaming past the Daunt.
She’s thinking of this. She’s thinking about whether or not it's possible to be willing prey for the lightness. Thinking of all the ways in which one can be seen and survive it.
She’s thinking of what question she can ask.
It’s a simple one, really.
“Fair. But...how does one woman court another, in your noble Carja fashion?”
Elusive but exacting change. Talanah smirks down at the floor, eyes heavy, chin tucked, and even glimpsed indirectly it’s enough to lance through Aloy straight to the marrow. Slowly, deliberately, Talanah’s gaze flickers to hers. She picks up her tankard and drains the rest of her Scrappersap, making sure their eyes stay locked. Awareness, caught. Neck, prickle. Burn, low. All raw. Aloy’s spine might be gone altogether. In this fresh openness between them, she wouldn’t even notice.
The smirk singes bold and tender as Talanah nods her chin at Aloy’s abandoned mug of brew. She answers with a statement dressed as another question—a tentative chance at treading.
“I can tell you all about it, if you’ll stay for another drink with me?”
Aloy can’t always stay. They both know that. But that’s not what Talanah’s asking. Maybe considering how sometimes-staying might look isn’t the worst thing she could do.
This time, Aloy does.