“Sash, did you remember to bring glasses?” Legon asked, looking around for them.
“Oh…” she said, looking perplexed, “I suppose those would be handy wouldn’t they?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, they would. Oh well. We can just drink out of the bottle. Mom doesn’t need to know.”
“That she doesn’t.”
Sasha had been right to wrap the pocket pies. It was chilly this morning and the cloth and towel had kept the pies hot. Legon looked down at the four pies. Three of them were made with eggs, bacon, onion, and cheese, and he knew the fourth would be fruit-filled.
“Sash, did you make enough? There’s only three breakfast ones here.”
She looked down at the food. “Yes, I think so… there are two for you, one for me, and a strawberry one that we can split.”
“You’re just going to have one? I can split the third with you, I don’t mind,” he said sincerely.
“No, that’s fine. I only need one.”
“Oh come on, you’ll be hungry by ten if you just have one,” he said as if he were pointing out the obvious, which he was. One pie was nowhere near enough.
Sasha laughed. “I’m not a bottomless pit like you, brother. I can eat one and be full, whereas I don’t think I could make enough to ever sate your appetite.”
A smile crossed his face. When he thought about it, he had to admit that he did eat a lot. He was big to be sure, but not fat. He was all muscle, but even for his size he ate a ton. He remembered once going over to Kovos’ house for dinner. Kovos’ older brother was supposed to be visiting with his wife, but had been unable to make it. By the time the family found out that their oldest son was not going to be there, Kovos’ mom had already made a huge dinner. Legon remembered with some satisfaction the looks on their faces as he went for a fourth helping.
Now, sitting on the top of the hill with his sister, he thought that maybe he did eat too much. Or perhaps the rest of the world didn’t eat enough. That sounded right.
Sasha and Legon sat enjoying the pies and cedar together as they watched the sun rise. The pies were incredible. It seemed that everything Sasha touched tasted good. Legon had finished both of his by the time Sasha was done with her pie. They drank from the bottle of cold cedar, which was sweet and good with the pies. Sasha leaned over the basket and uncovered the last one.
She had saved the best for last. It was filled with sliced strawberries in sticky syrup, which covered their fingers with sugary goodness. Legon wished there was another when he finished his half of the pie. He was sure to tell Sasha what an amazing cook she was, and that it was possible that no one in Airmelia could compare to her, which made her smile.
They talked about how much they liked the early spring and how beautiful all the new life was in the reddish orange sunlight. There were thin clouds in the sky that were turning from dark blues and purples to pink and orange. They looked out over the small town where they lived. It looked peaceful and serene, bathed in soft colors. The town sat in a valley with tall mountains on all sides. There was no town wall, which was strange for a town in Airmelia; most towns had large stone walls and keeps in the center of town. This was done for many reasons, the most important of which was to discourage bands of robbers from trying to loot the town, and to give the people a general feeling of safety. There hadn’t been a full-on war since the queen took control, and that was almost fifty years ago, but many towns still kept the walls intact. Most towns could not withstand an attack from a large force, but even small villages would have stockade fences surrounding the village proper. However, this was not the case for Salmont.
The town’s people were not amazing fighters, but Salmont was remote and the people lazy. Salmont was in the middle of the Empire and was surrounded by mountains; most people didn’t even know that it existed. The town had no exports and was not a center of trade. This meant that robbers were not apt to come because the pickings were too slim and the mountain passes restricted the routes they could take.
Legon once thought that he lived in the most boring and uneventful town in all of Airmelia. “Even the name of our town is boring,” he told Sasha one day. “We live in the Salez territory so we get ‘Sal’, and in a mountain valley so we get ‘mont’-Salmont,” he said with a shrug.
Now they could see the town from above. It was disorganized, and from on high the streets looked like a big maze. In the center were the old remains of a stockade fence where the town had started. The only strong building was the keep.
The keep was two stories high and made of dingy grey stone. It was a large building and looked almost like a warehouse. Above it flew a black banner with a silver crescent moon curling around a many-pointed star, beside which were three long waving lines. The moon and star were the symbol of the Iumenta Lord Sodomis who was over Salez; the three lines represented Regent Kooth, who was the human in charge of this part of Lord Sodomis’s territory. Kooth was over five towns and ten villages. The town hadn’t been visited in years by either Kooth or Sodomis, but their tax collectors were sure to visit every year, along with the occasional soldier patrol that kept the passes and roads safe from robbers, so the townspeople flew the banner.
They were enjoying the warm sunlight on their faces, when all of a sudden Legon noticed that there was something wrong with Sasha. Her eyes rolled up into the back of her head, her face contorted, and her whole body became ridged. “She’s having an episode!” he thought, panicked.
One moment Sasha was lying on the blanket thrashing and twitching, then the next she was off the blanket on the bare turf convulsing. He ran around behind her and wrapped his arms around her so she would not roll away and get hurt in the bushes or brambles. He was used to these episodes, but that did not make them any less scary. Fear was tearing through him as he struggled to hold on to her.
“Come on, you’re okay, you’re okay Sash, come back to me, you’re okay,” he said again and again, trying to keep his voice soft and reassuring.
She was making a horrible gurgling noise and he was worried that she was going to throw up, which sometimes happened. After a few minutes that seemed like hours, Sasha began to calm. Her breathing became steady and her body relaxed, and she soon fell asleep. Legon was still lying behind her with his arms wrapped tight around her; they both were covered in sweat and trembling. There was a slight metallic taste in his mouth and he realized that he had bitten his tongue.
He had done this many times before; some of his first memories were of Sasha’s episodes. He could remember as a boy sitting next to her bed holding her hand as she slept after having a particularly bad one. This was one of the things that made them so close; Legon never left her side, and caring for her made him love her more.
He held her, willing her to wake. Her hair tickled his noise. He sniffed back a sneeze and breathed in the scent of her hair, which calmed him. The trivial problem of a wanting to sneeze and noticing what her hair smelled like was welcome; it meant that the episode was over. He wasn’t sure how, but he knew when they were over, knew when no more tremors would rock her body. He always noticed something mundane like the scent of her hair or that one of his socks had a hole in it. After a bit Sasha’s eyes opened.
“Where… where am I?” she asked. It was common for her to have a hard time remembering what she had just been doing after an episode.
When he spoke he tried to speak softly, tried not to show the overwhelming relief that he felt. “On top of the hill having a picnic.”
She was silent for a bit, almost like her mind was catching itself up to the present.