In the heat, running water has a scent.

  It was a thought that had not occurred to her prior, in the icy marble walls of her own kingdom.

  Or maybe it was the darkness which made the smell leap out to her.

  Running water. Fresh water.

  She wandered off the gravel path in search of it. The forest had cleared some time ago, giving way to what she supposed were rolling plains. It was difficult to make out in the darkness, but she could make out a line of trees on the horizon, where she emerged, stinking and transformed now to a beast of this southern place. She had descended from the mountains days ago, these forests proved to be more difficult to navigate than the thick perimeter of highland forest meant to protect her kingdom from the prying eyes of those looking skyward.

  She felt her foot sink into mud. Water flooded her thick wool boot and she jumped back onto a prickling mound of crabgrass and clover. She felt her ankle catch against a low stone barrier.

  She looked out again, her other senses now filling in the scenes where her eyes could not. She could see now in the gentle curves of darkness, farmland. She was looking at terraced fields of barley and corn. She could now smell its gentle grassy fragrance. It was sweet. She had never seen such a large farm, but could immediately recognize the smell of what they grew. It was the same scent carried into her kitchen every week, leaking through the burlap sacks and permeating her morning porridge.

  She felt the ground in front of her, the “stone wall” was merely a small canal not more than an arm's length wide. She must have stepped right over it. The water was running but made no sound, as if hesitant to disturb the concentration of the roots of this place.

  She ran her hands in the water. They caught a web, which was quickly carried away by the current. She could feel the water striders repel at her touch, and dried leaves passing through her fingertips, but it was running, cool and clear.

  She wondered if she had ever smelled anything so good in her life. honeysuckle and plumeria felt cheap in comparison to this perfume, which she now brought to her face. For the first time she understood her people's reverence to water at the citadel. She could feel the week of her own smell being washed away, neutralized by this elixir into something pure and clean.

  Her eyes searched for more figures on the horizon and she scrubbed at her arms, suddenly self conscious about how silly the scene would seem in daylight. A hulking soldier caked in dirt and sweat, plunging desperately into this thin veil of water streaming in little paths to feed an army of grain. She held a cupped hand to the back of her neck, feeling the drips of spring water run down and disappear among the stagnant drops of her own sweat which have lived there for days. They rose out her skin like a many-headed beast, every drop wiped away brought back several more in mere moments. She couldn’t imagine calling such a humid climate home.

  She looked out into the darkness. She saw a line of horizon, but couldn’t make out a farmhouse. Perhaps they were over the hill, or maybe along the line of the forest. Or maybe there was no farmhouse, just a series of allotments for the wealthy merchants of the city to play at being farmers. Her heart sank instinctively at the realization she was still alone.

  Whose kingdom was this? Surely not her own anymore, though despite the heat, it did not look like the tropical jungle she was expecting. Her goal must still be far. There were no clear borders in land so rural as this. On the days it took to arrive, she worried they would recognize her strange attire immediately, they would see her foreign face, her aquiline nose and dark brows. Not so obviously a northern specimen, but such features, with these clothes, coming out of this particular mountain range. It would be easy to piece together, if someone saw her here. She would be at the mercy of whatever kingdom she found herself in. Would the governor of this place do with such a wayward soul? Did they even have governors? Or just warlords? She knew how unwelcomed her people were elsewhere. It's why no one left the kingdom.

  She instinctively checked the weapon on her back, securing the fastening to her belt that didn’t need to be secured, but brought her comfort none the less. She passed her hand over the laquered wood of the handle, engraved with glyphs she had no knowledge of, but trusted the magic of implicitly. She often kept it in her hands as she traveled, swinging and twirling it aimlessly, practicing the agile maneuvers her people were known for. Exiting the forest though, she wisely thought better of keeping her macana out and swinging for any citizen to see.

  She dipped her indigo-dyed scarf in the water and could feel the current pull its length down the narrow passage. She wrung it out and wrapped it again around her neck, providing a necessary cushion against her metal shoulder plate, and obscuring the weapon peeking out from behind her back.

  This was a fortuitous discovery, the water, but she must keep moving. If only there was something to eat in this farmland. The juvenile stalks of barley leaf wouldn’t cut it. She sighed, and pulled up a palmful of clover from the dry patch of ground beside her. She had rations, but they had to last her the journey back, plus one more mouth if she was successful. And she had lost three days in the forest.

  If she followed the gravel road, it would eventually take her to a town, she would still be at the mercy of this place, but more people allows for more anonymity.

  She had found the path in the forest, when the trees parted enough to see the sun, her heart leapt to be able to confirm its direction. She must keep moving south. She must make it to Tanetzlan, time was running out to save him.

  “In the heat, the forest has a scent.”

  “The forest always has a scent.”

  “Yeah, but...it’s different in the sun.”

  He could feel the back of his neck begin to burn. The sun seemed stronger than he expected. He paused from their run. “It smells like,” he looked around at the trees, somehow both shockingly verdant and gasping for moisture in the blaze of the late afternoon, “incense. Like a temple.”

  “It’s just the pine trees,” she slowed down and looked back at him. The two were wearing the same tunic, but on her it looked more correct. Or maybe just less drenched in sweat, “come on.” As they stood, others appeared from the corner wearing the same roughly woven linens, and swiftly passed them.

  “No, it’s different from wood smell. I wonder what it is…” he stared into the forest, at no plant in particular, as if the answer would present itself to him. “It smells...familiar.”

  This scent belonged in a memory vastly different from this one. Someplace cool, shaded, a place with muted autumn colors and not oversaturated greens wrestling with the glare of the sun for your attention.

  “It’s the trees. The trees smell. Let’s go,” she barked, picking her pace back up to a jog. He caught up with her. “We still have three rounds to go.”

  “I know.”

  “So hurry up, I'm hungry!” her jog turned into a run as he watched her disappear behind a cluster of pine trees. He followed after and turned the corner, revealing the edge of the forest spilling into a rocky black coastline. The wharf roaches, sunning themselves on the rocks, scattered away as his foot thumped on the dirt path. He could see the city walls on the horizon, down into a port further on. It was far lower from the cliffside that housed their own complex. Their afternoon run was the only time he saw it. For a long time he wasn’t sure if the wall was to contain the compound, or contain the city. But he knew the city was on the other side of it.

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  He lost speed, others whipped past him.

  “Pick up the pace Tamas,” one croaked as she passed.

  He searched for the scent again, but it was gone, replaced now by salt and sea spray. His eyes refocused on the path, and he recommenced his jog to head back to the monastery.

  Tamas cleaned himself off and changed into a fresh tunic, this one an earthy orange color. It still had the stain in the belt where he spilled his ink weeks ago. The material was soft and well-worn. Most recently by him, but it was clear the clothing belonged to many more before. It seemed strange at first, not having something be completely yours, but in the preceding weeks he found it easy to accept most of the ways of the monastery.

  “You have an evaluation today right?” his friend muttered as they walked down the corridor together. She tore a small orange apart with only her hands and gave him half. The decisiveness of her movements always amazed him. Whenever he tried the same, the orange turned into a juicy mess.

  “You make it sound like I have a test,” Tamas snorted, sounding more nervous than he intended.

  “I hope you studied,” she teased, nudging his side with her elbow. He wasn’t sure if it was the lightness of her step, or her bobbing movements, but her hair was always in constant motion as she walked. Today it was in a high ponytail, swishing back and forth in a large fluffy mass, like dark cotton. A few errant strands around her face were picked up by the breeze and moved along with them. His hair was longer now than when he first arrived, but still motionless, stiff curls around his face that look like they should move, but don’t. “You think you’ll be cleared to leave?”

  He nodded solemnly, “Yeah. I feel great.”

  “You still got a limp,” she gestures to his gait.

  “I broke my leg, it takes time.”

  “How's your--” she motioned broadly to her own head.

  “It’s fine,” he snapped, immediately regretting the intensity of his words. Her expression communicated what her words did not need to. He wasn’t a convincing liar.

  “Okay, well the other day you didn’t know what this was called,” she lifted the orange half in her hand. He winced as he remembered. He called it an orange and she laughed at him. She gave another name but he couldn’t remember. It just looked like an orange. He tried to alter course before she felt the need to quiz him again.

  “When’s your next evaluation?” he asserted, trying to make his expression soften.

  She seemed to accept the shift, “next week,” she responded, idly chewing her fruit, “I’m not going home though.”

  “You’re so sure?”

  She lifted her arm and pulled back her sleeve, “this look healed to you?”

  He looked over at the deep magenta striations on her arm.

  “Gods, it’s still that bad?”

  “Magic takes longer to heal,” she muttered, “you know that better than anyone.” she shoved another segment of orange in her mouth. Tamas forgot he was holding the other half. “Anyways,” her voice softened, “I still have nightmares.”

  “You think it’s because of the magic? Like someone put a root on you?”

  “A what?”

  “A curse.”

  She rolled her eyes, “I think it’s because a giant chaos beast attacked me in the forest and tried to eat my damn arm. This was a creature, not a hedgewitch.”

  “How have you been sleeping?” the doctor asked, hyper focused on the finger she had poked to draw out blood.

  “Uh, fine I think,” he muttered, fighting somewhat against her strong grip. She pulled his hand over a bowl as a few droplets fell from his index finger. She wasn’t his usual doctor, but he had seen her before. The other man seemed to belong to the monastery. He had a more gentle demeanor, but he got the impression she had more seniority. She carried herself like the person who knows the most in this particular environment. She broke away from his side and added some things to the bowl from the shelf on the far wall. It seemed as if she was mixing some kind of paste, like wall spackle. The shelf in front of her was filled with all kinds of small instruments of glass and metal, some which were utterly foreign to Tamas, and others which seemed vaguely familiar. With a small instrument she scooped the mass out of the bowl and spread it in a thin layer across a glass plate. She studied it wordlessly with a magnifying instrument.

  He watched curiously over her shoulder, finding no point of reference in his memory about what was happening.

  “Are you doing magic?”

  She snorted, “I’m a doctor. Witches can’t do shit for you here.”

  It was only a phrase he had heard in passing, he presumed it meant magic healers, so he wasn’t sure how stupid of a question it was. She turned back to him.

  “Okay, let’s take a look.” She pushed him gently on his shoulder in a reclining position on the inspection table. He undid the clasps at the side of his tunic as she opened it up to reveal his chest.

  “It's cleared up in the last week,” he immediately remarked, with an air of hopefulness. “The swelling’s gone down.” Her expression did not seem to register the comment. She hovered her hands over the wound on his chest- a deep indigo mass as its center seeping out into the veins which wrapped around his chest like insect wings. His comment would seem absurd to someone viewing the injury for the first time. She didn't say anything as she inspected it, causing Tamas to feel the need to fill the silence. “It looks bad but I really don’t feel anything anymore. I think it’s just a scar. It'll take time to fade but the effects have all run their course.”

  “Hmm. And what effects were those?”

  “The pain, the headaches, the…” he stammered a bit, feeling suddenly foolish, “the visions.”

  She turned back to the glass plate on the far desk.

  “I don’t think it is fading, it seems like it’s still active.” she said finally. She stepped back to him and took a seat on the stool next to the table. “There’s still a lot in your system. The levels in your blood have not receded. To be honest I've never seen this happen without an obvious effect on overall health. Are you sure you’re not experiencing any other side effects?”

  He felt his fingertips get cold, “no, I…” he stammered, “I feel fine. Really.”

  She studied him for a moment. He hated the idea that she didn’t trust his own claims. But he knew he wasn’t exactly convincing in his tone.

  “Well, nonetheless, I think I'm going to recommend keeping you here a little longer. This is dangerous stuff, chaos magic. If it’s not affecting you now, it could hit without warning.”

  He felt a wave of heat rush from his forehead to his ears. He knew they were probably beet red. “Well if it's as dangerous as you say, then what can any of you do about it?” His tone was soft, but for him it felt like a vicious remark, “How can a doctor handle magic?”

  She sighed, her expression softened for the first time since he entered the room. “I know you're scared. But we’ve dealt with things like this before, its what this hospital specializes in. We know what we’re doing.” He had the distinct impression that they didn’t, but he never said this aloud. She stood from the stool and walked back over to the desk at the far end of the examination room. She picked up her pen from the inkwell and jotted down a few things in a leger. “I’m scheduling another evaluation in two weeks, we’ll continue the same course of treatment, and I'm adding one more tincture.” She ripped out a page and handed it to him. “You can take this to the herbalist.” He just glanced bitterly at the paper in her hand. “Tamas,” she sighed, “this interment is voluntary. We’ve no interest in keeping you here against your will. If you want to leave you can.” She paused, but he said nothing, “But let me ask you this- if you go home and find yourself in need of healing, do you really trust to go to the same people who did this to you?”

  He reached out and ripped the paper from her hand, muttering some kind of capitulation.