Seoyeon was absolutely exhausted the next morning, and she had absolutely no idea why.  To her absolute shock, Captain Park told her to roll over and go back to sleep when he ducked back into the shelter, holding what looked to be some type of (dead) bird by the neck.  He didn’t look at all happy that she wasn’t in a condition to get moving, but Seoyeon was supremely grateful that she didn’t even have to say anything that time.  She was even more grateful when he shook her awake about an hour later to hand her a skewer with piping hot, just cooked meat from the bird he’d shot for breakfast.

The previous evening, Captain Park had mentioned that apart from the previous couple of days, when they’d stopped early, they’d usually been covering a distance of between thirteen and seventeen miles a day.  Today, they’d be doing around ten.

He set a pace that was obviously slower than he would have liked, but Seoyeon was happy with that.  It helped that they were starting downhill, too.  It wasn’t too steep, even if there was lots of loose stone and Seoyeon found herself stumbling and scrambling to regain her balance.

That did take a toll on her ankle, and she was limping badly again by the time they stopped for lunch.

Captain Park actually did something about it for the first time.

“Come here,” he ordered once he’d finished eating, beckoning to her with one hand as he the fingers of his other one clean.  Seoyeon blinked at him from over her skewer of meat and vegetables.  Unwilling to get up, she shuffled the few feet between them still in a sitting position, chewing at the food.  Without asking for permission, he slipped his hand under her calf and pulled her leg round.  Seoyeon put out a hand to steady herself as her entire body rotated, but she was still gnawing too much at her food to object.

Once he had her foot in his lap, Captain Park unlooped her satchel from around her shoulder.

“Sorry,” he said, sounding completely unapologetic, before searching through it for the bandage.  It was beginning to look a little depleted, Seoyeon noticed — probably around a quarter of it had been used.  He set it in his lap beside her foot, eased off her shoe, and then started rummaging about in her satchel again.

“Do you have any herbs to help with swelling?” he asked, pulling a couple out before putting them back again.  “Wait, where did you find whirtlewort?”

He held up the herb Seoyeon had initially thought might be carrot tops.

She hastily swallowed her mouthful.  “A couple of nights ago.  The clearing we were in had quite a lot.”

He broke a couple of sprigs off and started crushing them in his fingers.  “Pick it if you see more.  It’s incredibly useful.”

Seoyeon remembered the book in the library saying as much, particularly when it came to antidotes.  “Is it a good anti-inflammatory?”

“It’s not the best, but I don’t recognise most of your herbs.  Not my field of expertise.”

“Oh.”  Seoyeon watched as he reached for his water flask.  “I think there’s still some white willow bark.  That’s pretty good.”

He was able to identify that pretty easily, and Seoyeon sat back, a little bewildered at the care and attention she was getting, as he made a quick paste from the bark and water and whirtlewort before applying it to her re-swelling ankle.  The coolness was so blissful she nearly embarrassed herself by groaning.  Once he had rubbed it all in, Captain Park cut off a length of bandage with a dagger and wrapped it around her ankle to give it proper support.

“You’d really do better to walk this off,” he said as he tied it, “but in this terrain, it can’t really be helped.  Better this than breaking it.”  He checked the knot was secure before gesturing for her to stand up.

Seoyeon had bandaged her ankle up before, but this really did make a difference to how much pressure she could put on her foot.

“Thank you,” she mumbled as he packed everything away.

“Huh?”  He looked up at her as he put her shoe down in front of her.  Seoyeon cleared , and her face suddenly blazed with a blush that came out of absolutely nowhere.  Embarrassed at herself, she turned away.

With her ankle bandaged up, Seoyeon didn’t have so much trouble keeping up with Captain Park when they started off again.  He’d upped the pace a little bit, presumably impatient with how slowly they had been walking before, though he still wasn’t pushing as hard as he had done on previous days, and he did look around once or twice in concern when he heard her stumbling over the rocks.

The silence as they walked began to feel awkward, too.  Seoyeon didn’t know why, since they didn’t normally speak, and she found herself mulling over things to say to ease the atmosphere.

“Captain,” she piped up eventually.  Her voice broke nervously.  He grunted as he glanced around at her, and she very nearly chickened out.  “Why did you become a soldier?”

They trudged on several steps before he replied.  Initially, Seoyeon thought he was trying to find the right words, but when he did answer, she realised it was actually more likely he was wondering whether or not it was worth his while to give one.

“I’m a Borderlander.”

Encouraged that he was actually responding, Seoyeon quickened her pace a little to try to catch up with him.  He noticed, and a muscle in his face twitched before he relented and slowed.

“But what is that?” she asked.  “Isn’t everybody at Ximo a Borderlander?  You’re all soldiers in the Borderlands.”

He sighed.  “Do you know what the Borderlands are?”

Seoyeon very nearly retorted “the edge of the empire, of course”, but something about the weariness in his tone stopped her, and she took a couple of moments to rephrase.

“In the capital,” she said, “we were always told they were the dead area between the edge of our empire and beyond.  Because, well.  They’re the lands at the border.”

“God, they teach you nothing,” he muttered.

Seoyeon felt herself bristling defensively.  It was oddly upsetting that he thought so little of her education.  “Well, it makes sense.”

“Sure,” he said dismissively.  “It explains how ignorant you and your father both were when you arrived, I suppose—”

Seoyeon opened to object at that, but he cut her off.

“Miss Han, they’re the Borderlands because they’re the area where the spiritual realm is closest to the human world,” he explained, “but nobody believes in the spiritual realm anymore because they’re smart and they believe in science.  Your father had picked up some absolutely insane idea that the fires all over the Borderlands were the result of some kind of combination of phosphorous and peat that only occurred around Ximo Judian and he was adamant that he was right.  It wasn’t until we told him you’d probably been eaten by wild animals that night we were going to send search parties out for you that he finally stopped trying to lift the dusk curfew.  The ghost fires stop anything dangerous coming through by day but as you so cleverly discovered, ma’am, some of the slier creatures of the Neuma can slip through the ghost-fire shadows into the human world and wreak havoc at night, especially if they find a human that will allow them out of the shadows.”  He shook his head.  “At least you didn’t end up doing that, but that was probably what the gratchin wanted you to do for it until I interrupted.”

“Gratchin,” Seoyeon repeated, trying to remember if she’d read about any gratchins in the books she’d found in the library.  “That’s what brought us through?”

His mouth twitched as though he either wanted to say obviously, you idiot or was tempted for some odd reason to smile.  Seoyeon brushed her hands against her thighs, trying to rid them of nervous sweat, and decided it was best to change the subject.

“Captain Park,” she said, “your name’s Chan…”  Her voice caught on a frog in and she cleared it quickly.  “Chanyeol, right?”

He glanced around at her and frowned.  “Correct.”  And then he looked away again.  “Why do you ask?”

He sounded a bit ticked off, though Seoyeon wasn’t sure why.

“Can I call you Chanyeol?”

He stopped walking, and Seoyeon, having once again dropped behind a couple of steps, nearly walked into him.

“You can call me Seoyeon,” she offered hastily as she tried to step round him and nearly tripped.  It was an idea that actually appealed.  His voice was deep and smooth and she wondered idly what it would sound like if he called her by her name.  She imagined it would be rather nice.

Captain Park turned so sharply that Seoyeon skittered back, alarmed.  The look on his face was dark, though his tone was neutral when he spoke.

“I would have thought that was beneath your dignity, ma’am.”

The manner he said it in was very even, very matter of fact, but it still would have hurt less if he’d punched her in the gut.  Almost winded, Seoyeon stood there in shock as he started walking again, the odd feeling that she’d somehow really offended him settling over her.  She wondered what she’d done wrong.  Her intention had only been to ease the atmosphere between them, to reach out and thaw the ice.  Even if they were only going to be in the Neuma for another couple of days, she didn’t see what was so bad about that.  It wasn’t like the trip had been pleasant (or wanted) and as gruff and irritable as he was, Captain Park had looked after her, and she was aware that she owed him a large debt of gratitude — one that might, she realised with a sinking heart, be quite difficult to explain to her father after the outburst she’d had about Captain Park on the morning of her birthday, especially if he thought everything to do with the Neuma was nonsense.

Seoyeon resolved that she’d probably have to try again with more tact once they were out of the Neuma — not necessarily to give him permission to ignore formalities of address, because on second thoughts her father would probably be horrified if he found out about that, but to find some way of letting Captain Park know that she did actually appreciate him protecting her.  But she didn’t dare try to start another conversation that day.

They were still very high up when they finally came out of the woods the next day.  The morning had started dramatically with Captain Park stepping out of the shelter to find a small flock of biddiyaras and Seoyeon had awoken to a cacophony of screeches and the smell of fire.  Captain Park had been cleaning off blood from his sword when she mustered up the courage to poke her head out, and he’d commented absently that her face looked like it might possibly have gone green at the sight of the blood, but that it was difficult to tell when it was so dark.  Seoyeon refused to eat breakfast in the carnage and so they’d walked for about fifteen minutes before getting out the food and sitting down.

Seoyeon couldn’t help looking anxiously up at the sky as they stepped out from the treas.

“Do you think the dragons will find us?” she asked nervously.

“We’ve probably lost them.”  Captain Park held out an arm, stopping her in her tracks.  It was abrupt enough for Seoyeon to freeze and then start looking twitchily around for danger.

She saw it when he took his arm away.  They were standing just in front of what looked to be a sheer drop, though it was too dark to see just how far down it went.  Captain Park was tucking something away into the front of his tunic.  He extended the arm he’d held her back with and pointed towards what Seoyeon assumed was the horizon.

“See that?” he asked.

She squinted.  She could see stars, and then blackness where the sky presumably met the ground, but not much beyond that.  It looked like there might be a moon hidden behind some very thick clouds, though that didn’t really help.

“No?” she said nervously.  He was silent for a couple of moments.  Something bright flared in the middle-distance, briefly illuminating what appeared to be a large hill in the middle of a plain.

“There,” he said.  “That’s where we’re going.”

Seoyeon blanched.  “But it’s miles away.”

He glanced down at her.  “Only eight.  Once we’re off this cliff.”

Seoyeon looked dubiously at the foot of ground in front of her feet.  “Are you sure there’s a way down?”

“There will be.”

The brightness flared again, several times in quick succession.  Seoyeon frowned.  It looked disturbingly familiar, though she wasn’t quite sure why.

Captain Park placed a hand on her arm and turned her away from the cliff edge.

“Come on,” he said.

They walked for some time before they found a small track that descended the cliff.  It was extremely narrow and probably hadn’t been made by humans, and Seoyeon was almost glad for the darkness because she didn’t have to see the drop to her side as they zigzagged down.  Stone skittered all over the place under their feet, which didn’t do her ankle or her healing blisters any good, and the nearly-healed injury on her hand was beginning to hurt again because she had to steady herself or sometimes outright cling on to protruding rocks or branches as she followed Captain Park down the steep, uneven path.  He’d insisted on leading, and Seoyeon could see his silhouette clearly because he was holding flames in his hand to be sure of the way.  Sometimes, where there were gaps in the path or it was too narrow to put down more than one foot, he turned back to warn her and to hold up the flames so that she could see where she was going.

Seoyeon told herself that at such places she would not have objected to him touching her so that he could help her across, but the truth was that she would actually have preferred him to do so.  Her only pain-free, fully functioning limb was her left arm, and the cliff face was definitely a climb rather than a walk down.  Two weeks ago, she would never even have dared do such a thing — well, perhaps she would have done if Jongdae had to