They were both tired. Matner suggested she get some early sleep. She still agreed that keeping watches in the city would be a wise move.
"What about on the road?" she asked. "All that time traveling. Are we going to have to keep taking turns through all of that?"
"I think in several areas we'll be remote enough that a good fire should keep trouble away," he suggested. "But this city I just don't know about. We might even want to get a couple days out before we relax too much. We still don't know if we might be followed."
She agreed that it was a good point, and she climbed up into the wagon. She was pretty, he thought, and he wondered whether if things had been different if they might have gotten involved somehow.
He spent the rest of the evening thinking about her, and how for at the very least the next several months they would be together. Just the two of them and Ahriender. He decided it would not be a bad thing. She did not seem to still regard him the way she had at first, and she had stopped behaving the way she had then, as well.
He tried to decide if her being an elf was a problem. Obviously there was a physical compatibility. Ahriender was proof of that. Were they that different? They had different gods, but that would give them something more to talk about.
He concluded that he did not have to decide anything just then. There would be more than enough time to work it all out later. When they left in the morning he would have a good chance to ask her about her gods. The whole time she had said next to nothing about them.
Lately he had not been feeling convinced of his loyalty to his own gods. He did not see that they had really helped him so far. His faith in them had not specifically helped him. He knew that was not supposed to be the entire point, but he felt it should count for something. He just did not know how much.
By the time it was well past dark he had tallied more questions for later than answers. As much as his mind raced with things he wanted to remember to talk about, he knew none of it had to happen right away. He also had not slept since...he was having trouble remembering. His mind was a little fuzzy. He crawled up and in and gently woke Sharnellynn. Ahriender was sleeping peacefully. She woke easily and thanked him for letting her. He was asleep in no time.
