Title: Shelter
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: PG
Length: 1,800 words
Content notes: One broken leg?
Author notes: Medieval!au
Summary: The three girls meet a stranger in the forest...

oOo


Fuu tried to keep herself awake and aware, as they rode on into the seemingly endless gloom of the forest. The rain was heavy even through the canopy, and their cloaks might be waxed - or perhaps oiled, she did not know precisely how people in this place convinced cloth to repel water. It did not make any difference whether it was oil or wax or something else which had failed them; that her mind was caught on puzzling it out was yet one more indication that they needed to stop and rest, soon. Preferably somewhere with shelter from the elements of some kind. She was aching, chilled through and exhausted, damp down to her bones.

Catching a fever and expiring in the middle of some forest, hiding from the people they had some small wish to help... that was no plan she was about to agree to. But it was so hard to keep her mind on what faced them, with the slow trudge of their horses and the endless drip-drip-drip from the half-seen leaves as the gloom gathered over their heads.

Hikaru's shout startled her out of a half-doze; Fuu's legs clutched at the sides of the poor mare she rode hard enough that the creature started sideways, and one low-slung branch caught a stinging blow across her arm before she pulled them back out onto the faintly-suggested path. By that time, Hikaru was off her horse and vanishing into the brush, Umi yelling after her and nearly startling her own mount into bolting, but somehow managing instead to swerve them sideways and catch the bridle of Hikaru's abandoned horse before it could decide it wanted distance from all this shouting more than it wanted the company of the others.

"This person is hurt!" Hikaru called back, voice half lost under the rain, and Fuu came up beside Umi at the moment Umi managed to straighten in her saddle, two sets of reins in her hands.

"There is someone in there?" She asked Umi, softly, very aware it was only this morning that they had wondered how they were going to trust someone enough to approach them, and ask for news. Their flight into the forest had been one away from a hamlet whose inhabitants had decided they were members of an invading army- they were so obviously out of place here, the Cephiran language still heavy and unwieldy on their tongues, the strange clothing sitting unfamiliar on their skin, that Lord Eleru's predictions had proven true: they were being taken for spies from Fahren.

Umi pulled a face, even as she managed to hook the reins of Hikaru's horse about one nearby branch, and slide down from her saddle. "It seems so." She muttered back, also in Nihongo. "Trust Hikaru to find a stranger in need..."

Fuu nodded, but slowly, as her mind started to wake. "Yes, but perhaps..."

"...Yes?"

"We might have something worth offering to someone who is injured. Information for assistance..."

"As long as they aren't waiting for the rest of their gang of thieves to come back and collect them!" Umi muttered, and Fuu slid to the ground beside her.

They left the horses, and made their way cautiously over ground slick with mud and damp leaves. The skirts of this 'gown' she wore were clinging unpleasantly to the hose covering her legs, all of it saturated with rain, and now gathering dirt and leaves and who knew what as they walked through knee-deep bracken, following the trail Hikaru had left and completely unable to see what had drawn her from the path. Umi had her hand on her sword, and was carefully keeping just in front of Fuu - Fuu smiled, just a little, at the protectiveness in that action.

Could it really be such a short time since they had come to know each other?

"Over here!" Hikaru called, certain that they would be following her, and Fuu swallowed down another smile. This was not the time to be distracted, not though it made the rain easier to bear.

They came out into a small glade, and found Hikaru knelt next to a young man who was sat on a fallen tree, shoulders hunched against the rain, his clothes a uniform murky green, where they were not stained with mud. His leg was stretched out in front of him, Hikaru leaning over it... seemingly unmindful of the large sword lying in easy reach of the man's hand, close to her head. But his head came up a little too quickly when they stepped into view, and the smile he gave them did not reach his eyes. "Good day to you." He called.

"And to you, as well." Fuu said, politely, the words still strangely round on her tongue. She took in the slight, unnatural bend of his lower leg. "...Though we seem to be having a better day than you are?"

"Well, all of us are soaked through and miles from any hearth - but making a new acquaintance can make any day better. Don't you agree?" He asked, with a quick grin which did seem real. Until Hikaru lay one soft hand on his leg, at which point it vanished behind a grimace of pain.

"His leg is broken wrong." Hikaru called, looking back to Fuu, her eyes pleading. Fuu winced a little, at that expression.

Umi was sterner. In Nihongo, she said "come away, Hikaru. We don't know who this man is."

"But he's hurt!" Hikaru replied, in the same tongue, and Fuu's attention was on the way the man's brow creased as he listened to them talking - and then creased further still.

As if he was unhappily expecting to recognise their language, and was disturbed further when he could not.

"We don't know anything about him!" Umi was saying, urgently, and there was no chance that the man had missed seeing Umi's hand on the hilt of her sword. Still, however, he kept his hands away from his own. In fact, he lifted them in up to his shoulders, open palms towards them.

"Well, you might be, at that." He said, to Fuu, as if the other conversation wasn't going on. "But I reckon you aren't who I thought you might be, and even if you were, well, why should that stop us helping each other?"

"Why indeed?" Fuu agreed, and she wanted to see his face closer. There was a scar across his nose, two more crossed on his cheek, but they both looked old - the bloody lip and the bruise on the other side of the face, however, could only be a few hours old. "How did you come to be in need of our help?"

"...I fell from my horse."

"Oh?" She smiled at him, as politely as she knew. The kind of smile she had learned from watching visiting officials from the court who used their intricate manners as weapons.

He winced. "I... perhaps had a little help." He admitted. "But that was hours ago, and I know this forest better than anyone else save the charcoal-burners, and it's far too wet for them to be stirring. I... borrowed a horse, and it decided that it was going home when I was paying less attention than I should have been. No one will be able to follow it back this far, however."

"I see-"

"Oh!" Hikaru said, suddenly, reaching forwards: the man flinched back, but aside from clenching his hands, they stayed where they were. "He's wearing Clef's fish!"

Pushing back one fold of the man's cloak, she exposed the silver-and-enamel of the flying fish which had been emblazoned everywhere at Eleru. It was up near his shoulder, where normally it would have been well concealed by that cloak. He looked at Umi, who had taken one involuntary step forward - looked at her hand, at the sword she gripped so naturally. He couldn't understand most of Hikaru's words - she had reverted to Nihongo again in the rush of her discovery - but 'Clef' was recognisable enough.

In fact, he looked... resigned.

Fuu walked across to them, ignoring Umi's hiss. "You said that you could help us. What do you mean to offer, if we help you?"

"I- yes." He blinked, looking up at her, visibly gathering himself. His skin was tinged with grey, and this close, she could see his hands were shaking a little. "I do know these woods. We all need somewhere to shelter from this weather, at least for the night. I know where there is a large cave, dry and large enough for us and several horses. But I cannot get there. You could get there - but do not know where to go. Take me, and I'll show you."

"...Very well." Fuu nodded, firmly. "We accept."

"You do?"

"Yes. In return for your guidance, we will take you with us - and I shall see if I can help with your leg, too. ...What should we call you?" She asked, suddenly, feeling unable to keep talking without some kind of a name for him, real or not.

He hesitated again, then, before a smaller smile pulled his lips up. "Call me Ferio. And yourselves?"

"I am - Fuu." She said, stumbling a little over the rest of her name, which would mean nothing to him. "My friends are Hikaru and Umi."

"Pleased to meet you, Fuu. And your friends."

Fuu looked away from that smile, back across the glade. "Umi?"

Umi walked across quickly, each motion sharp. "...You're sure?" She asked, again in their own language, never turning away from him. "Just because he has that badge-"

"Do you think Clef would have given one to someone he didn't trust?" Fuu asked her, softly, and Umi frowned.

"Maybe not, but how do we know he didn't steal it?"

"Even if he did, he is too weak to pose much of a threat. And we do need somewhere to get out of the rain. I do not propose we trust him... but we can still help him."

Umi sighed, but finally let go of her sword. "Fine." She snapped, reaching down to help the man up.

Umi and Hikaru got him back to the horses, stumbling between them, and Fuu walked behind - noticing the way he checked when he got close enough to see the crest which adorned saddle and bridle both. He didn't say anything, but he seemed to relax a fraction, letting Umi take his sword away as they got him up on horseback.

It was a damp walk to the place where a ragged cliff grew from the forest floor, a cave hidden there between the roots of a small mountain, with space enough for the horses, themselves, and even a fire - just as Ferio had promised.