Flame and Snow

Chapter 4: Talfryn

Chapter 4: Talfryn

They stumbled into the back area of the apothecary where he and Glenna mixed potions and spells, laughing and stinking of blood and sweat and smoke. Talfryn felt high, his mood soaring. His night had gone from hoping to bed this traveler to all the action he’d heard in tales from his various lovers. He’d never gotten to be part of something like that before, and that only made him more desirous of the man grinning stupidly at him now.

“That was amazing,” he said, blinking at Talfryn. “How did you manage all that fire?”

Talfryn reached a hand into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of amber liquid—the doe urine he’d spent most of the afternoon collecting. He tilted it slightly and then set it down on the table in front of them, thinking quickly. Although this man was a shifter also, Glenna would kill Talfryn if he spoke of his own nature—or the powers it gave him. A lie was in order.

“I happened to have some spells on me that did the trick,” he said.

“s**t, why do you look so…good…” said the traveler, then pulled a hand away from his side, blood making it shine. Talfryn’s smile faded and he felt immediately guilty for not paying attention. The traveler had been injured before this entire thing happened and Talfryn had known it.

“You’re hurt,” he said, trying to coax him over to a cot under a window. The traveler went with him and groaned as he laid down, but swatted Talfryn’s hand away when he tried to pull his clothes off.

“Don’t take advantage of me.”

“I just want to treat your wounds,” said Talfryn. “I’m an apothecary.”

The traveler grinned and pushed away Talfryn’s hand again.

“You’re going to undress me…without a kiss first?”

Talfryn tried to fix him with a firm expression, thinking he had to need treatment if blood loss was making him this odd.

“Tal?” asked a voice from behind him. His mother. Talfryn didn’t think he’d be happy to see her—it was always better when she didn’t interrupt his nighttime ventures—but she’d be able to set this injured man right.

“Good, you’re up,” he said, turning and motioning to her. Glenna was nearly fifty and not Talfryn’s biological mother, her skin white and beginning to wrinkle in earnest now. Her eyes flicked to the blood on his hands and she moved over. “Guess who I brought home tonight?”

“Maybe someday someone you can marry?” she asked, moving past him to examine the traveler, who was either dozing or passed out now. “Bring the patching-up kit.”

Talfryn moved to grab the leather-bound selection of items they used to stitch someone up, not wanting to get into this again. Glenna desperately wanted to see him settle down, even as he wished for something more than simply living in Teorg his entire life. While every lover he brought home was a taste of life to him, to her they were missed opportunities.

By the time he’d turned back she had the man stripped down to the waist, the tattered clothes on the floor. Talfryn could see cuts from what had to be shattered glass—had he jumped through that window?—as well as a gash that looked to be older. It was wrapped and Glenna began to unroll it. Talfryn moved to get salves and spells.

Glenna patched him up without speaking, although she did roll her eyes whenever she caught Talfryn looking at him. He shrugged. The sword was accurate—the traveler was in shape, and that drew Talfryn’s eye. And anyone who brought shifters to town had to have a few good stories.

“So,” she said when she was washing her hands in the basin. Talfryn grinned.

“Thanks,” he said. She shook her head.

“I worry about you more every year.”

“Why?” asked a voice from the bed, and they both looked over at the traveler, awake now. “He’s a bloody fire wizard.”

He sat up on the cot and examined his stitches. Talfryn winced as his mother glared at him. It was better to change the subject and hope that putting off her lecture would mean she’d forget it.

“You’re up,” he said to the traveler instead. “Did you jump through that window?”

The man shrugged and flinched, then grinned.

“There were five of them.”

Glenna rolled her eyes, thinking they were discussing some bar fight. Talfryn supposed it was, in a way, but he was never going to hear about it if his mother didn’t get to bed and let him stay up talking to this man. Five people wanting to kill him? This had to be good. And for once, this was part Talfryn’s story, too. He wanted to know how it started.

“I’m going to bed,” said Glenna, just what Talfryn wanted to hear. She fixed him with a meaningful look first. “Don’t do anything too rough or you’ll pop those stitches.”

“Night,” he said to her, but when she’d left and he’d turned back to the traveler the man was pulling on his tattered clothes and standing. “Wait. You have to rest.”

“And I’ll get it,” he said, shrugging Talfryn’s hand off when he touched the man’s arm. “Thanks for your help.”

Talfryn was so stunned and dismayed he could only stand there and stare as the traveler took up his things and left. So much for the story.