(Backdated entry)
“Find him!” Ourna plaintively commanded. She had thought her heart wrung to numbness with weeping the night before and in the anger of the morning, but now the rips were open again. Jiulan, her constant, her twin, the other half of her soul, was gone. Her eyes clung to the deep brown of her friend's, the bearer of bad news, expecting him to hop. To Ourna's surprise, Tremaen did not.
Instead, with brow furrowed in the confusion that was only continued from the night before, Tremaen pushed a stray bit of his pine needle green hair from his forehead and studied her for a brief moment. Then, he reached out a hand to her wrist and spoke softly, “Come, not in front of the others.”
Ourna yanked her hand from his grasp easily, spitting, “We're wasting time, Trey. He's out there alone!”
“Yes, I know, and by his own choice, it seems.” This time, Tremaen grasped Ourna by her shoulders. “Come aside and tell me what this is all about. A few moments won't make any difference.”
“No, but…” An image came into Ourna's mind, Tremaen's face etched with the same distrust and disgust as Jiulan's had been, and the proud woman's shoulder's slumped. “I can't,” she eked out. She was barely aware that she was letting him lead her away.
When they stopped walking, Tremaen spoke again, face tight with his own feelings. “Please,” he pleaded, “I have to know what you could have said to him to drive him to this.”
“I can't lose you both. Don't make me do this.” Ourna looked straight into his face and knew that she could no longer avoid this. With a deep sigh and a swallow, she started, “I am…” Again, like with her brother, she could not say it, but showed him the mark of the sun at noon on her brow. With that, her tongue loosened. “Anathema. Exalted. Chosen of the Unconquered Sun. However you say it, this is what I've become…through no choice of my own, I swear it by anything and everything I hold sacred. It just came to me when I vowed to retake the Willows. Jiulan called me a demon, Trey. I don't feel like one.” She
could not look at her oldest friend while she spoke. “I'm not evil!” She found herself becoming defensive. “He called me a demon. What do you call me?”
A hundred things raced through Ourna's mind in the stretched moment that followed. She knew what was coming, the sound of horror, the repeat of rejection. She startled to feel an arm come around her shoulders.
“Ourna,” Tremaen began in a voice that spoke no few emotions, “you remember that your father once wanted to kill me and my entire family for what we are, at least run us out of the Willows.” He chuckled once. “And he might have if not for the influence of your mother upon him. Worst kept secret in the land and it took him over fifteen years to hear it. You and Jiulan as well. Master Mehtar forbade you both to have any contact with me, and Jiulan saw fit to abide by that for a time, anyway, uncertain himself.” Ourna felt soft fingers in her chin trying to guide her face to look at him, and she complied. “But not you. You never doubted me, have always trusted me. Defied your own father, so firm were those beliefs. Sure, it worked out in the end, but your faith has never wavered, no matter what might happen around me. And I am very grateful for it.”
Stepping away from Tremaen, Ourna straightened her shoulders. “I do not want you to stay out of gratitude.”
Smirking, Tremaen replied sardonically, “Your pride clogs your ears. Can you really miss what I'm saying?” He threw up his hands slightly. “Winterwind. Do you remember the day I chose her? After all the family feud was forgiven? Your father gave me the pick of the lot to buy, and I chose her, despite all of you telling me she'd be weak or blind or any number of things.”
“You got lucky.”
“My luck had nothing to do with it. I saw something in her that you didn't, I think. My heart knew it was right.”
Ourna raised one brow slightly. “Are you comparing me to your horse?”
“Well, yes. It's too bad I don't own a mule.” Ourna cast him a withering expression to show her lack of appreciation of humor at that time. Shrugging slightly, he stepped to her again. “But you see now. I'm telling you that I know you, I know you both, perhaps better than you know each other. Either that or I'm fooling myself, which is entirely possible. But either way…” He smiled faintly, warmth in a face of cool angles. “I've heard you say it to each other so much, but now it's my turn. I will not abandon you. I believe you.”
Half of Ourna plunged into renewed anguish at the words, but the other half felt a heavy weight lift from her shoulders. She only managed Tremaen's name once.
“I know I'm no replacement for Jiulan to you, and I wouldn't want to be. Too temperate.”
“We have to find him. Let's go, you and I…” She started to turn, but Tremaen grasped her wrist again.
“Unfortunately, I think I have to be in this instance.” He sighed. “I am as worried as you are, and as ready to ride off after him, but I think I understand all the situations here. Sometimes I hate clarity.”
“You think I should just let him go?” She questioned him in a sudden snap of anger.
“I think you've taken on a responsibility for these people. I'll go whichever way you decide, but I think your place is with them.”
“Trey, this is my own brother we're speaking of.” A little voice in her head that sounded just like her own tried to tell her that he was making some sense, but she wasn't quite ready to listen to it.
“I know.” Tremaen's voice was thickening. “And do you think abandoning them will speak well of you to him?” He shrugged again. “There are other choices, you know. Send someone else maybe, send me, send no one, go yourself. But you have to make one, and soon. That Albrecht is right. Daylight's wasting.”