Nothing about it is natural at first. After Trinsi steps into Seis’s embrace and hides her face in the woman's neck, they stand there listening for a significant amount of time. They listen to the fusion of music, created by the blending of the different sources below them.

Perhaps it’s because she can hear Seis’s breathing, but Trinsi becomes self conscious of her own breath. Not that she’s uncomfortable, she only wishes that expression of emotion would come easier to her.

And it would, eventually during the course of the evening.

Once the party begins to wind down in the early hours of the morning, Trinsi and Seis wander over to Trinsi’s property in town. Seis hadn’t known that the knight had a home away from the palace, but it was not entirely surprising.

“Do you need help packing?” Seis offers. They walk up the stairs to the knight’s building. There are not many folks on the street, save a happy couple walking by.

Seis watches them while Trinsi opens her door. They’re nothing like the soldiers she had spent the last couple of months with. They don’t look like the civilians from Cloakwood or Southern Falls either. They live in a different time period.

Life in Southern Falls comforted Seis. Two centuries of technological advancements had passed yet time stayed still there. Aside from modern plumbing and the occasional bands that traveled through, not one thing from the present had touched that place.

“No, I don’t own much. Most of my belongings are at the palace anyway,” the knight both brings her back from her thoughts, and answers her question.

When she opens the door, Seis discovers what she means. The home is nice and furnished lightly, but does not appear to have been lived in for long. The foyer opens out into a study room/sitting room that is a small table where Seis concludes Trinsi eats dinner. Behind the table there is a counter with a small kitchenette on the other side of it.

Seis has never seen a building laid out in such a minimalistic fashion, but the Syars were the most advanced in all technologies and fashions. Trinsi… is truly from a different world.

“When you said you didn’t own much you weren’t kidding.” Seis hangs her coat on a stool by the counter and wanders around, marveling at the sleek interior of the home. She picks up one of the few books sitting on her shelf and turns it over in her hands. “You do know that where I’m from, life is nothing like this right?” She leans back against the wall and gestures to the rest of the apartment. “We’re essentially walking into the dark ages-”

During Seis’s observations, Trinsi couldn’t find it in herself to pay attention. She walks over to where the woman stands and shuts her up with another kiss. This turns into a heated series of kisses that Seis cuts short when Trinsi makes a move to shrug off the woman’s shirt.

Bold, for her character anyway. Then again, the woman who Seis met the fateful day Lunetta and Trinsi walked into her smithery had been bold. Beautiful and bold.

“I-I’m sorry, before anything happens we need to talk about you,” Seis takes her by the shoulders and gently guides her to take a seat on the nearest couch.

“What about me?” Trinsi asks with knitted brows. Her piercing blue eyes could stop Seis heart if she willed it.

With a hard sigh, Seis tries to form what she wishes to convey in a non abrasive fashion. “You talk yourself down a lot lately… and it seems to me that you don’t have the greatest self worth right now. Trinsi do you like yourself?”

The knight doesn’t know how to answer the unexpected question. Her expression shifts from defensive to confused, “I…” don’t know….

“Trinsi, you’re the strongest and quickest of all the Knights of the Syardom. It’s beyond me how you can be so young and stronger than half the Esters I graduated with. You can’t beat yourself into a corner just because you lost one fight. When I met you, you were dauntless, what happened to that Trinsi?”

She shakes her head guardedly, “When you met me, I was arrogant. I didn’t like that version of myself.”

“Being self assured doesn’t make you arrogant, and you don’t have to be arrogant to have self worth.” Seis takes the knight’s hands into her own.

“I was self assured, but you can’t deny that I was also arrogant. I want to be a better person… but I don’t know how.” She drops her gaze to their joined hands, entwining her fingers in Seis’s.

“No one knows, all we can do is try. There is no guidebook or ‘how to’ because we are all learning together. I do know that you don’t have to put yourself down to be a good person.” The woman before her smiles meekly, and this gives Trinsi warmth.

Trinsi nods, “You’re right. But I don’t think I hate myself if that’s what you’re getting at… rather I’m irritated with the way I can be. Because of my actions I don’t believe I’ve earned… this I guess. I’ve been a real thorn in your side… and I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry that you feel that way, but you have never been a thorn in my side.” From the beginning, Trinsi’s attitude had never deterred her. Her behavior was amusing, at times even irritating, but never did Seis see her as a true nuisance. “I suppose that’s on me for being so severe. I know you think that you were a hindrance, but I never saw you that way. You were stubborn, yes. And could you have been a little more open minded? Probably. But you took your job seriously and I respected that. You are the kind of person that should be standing at the side of Daf Lunetta. You two can rebuild the Syardom, if anyone can do it, if there’s anyone I want to do it, it’s you two.”

“Two women that hardly know what they’re doing?” Trinsi asks with a sly grin, her eyes meeting those of the goddess before her.

“Two women that see the real value in the people they are protecting.” Seis returns the smile, and would disagree, Trinsi is the true goddess in her eyes.

The young woman squeezes her hand, “I do want to be general. I was on the roof thinking about what you had told me back in Cloakwood. And… I want to do it.”

Hearing this warms Seis, “You’ll be a great general.” She adds jokingly, “Do you remember what you told me on my second day in the Syardom? Outside of the archery fields?”

Trinsi flushes, her eyes widening in embarrassment, she laughs however, “I am a better general than you’ll ever be? Yeah thanks for reminding me how full of myself I was back then.”

“It was cute, and only slightly snobbish,” Seis teases.

Trinsi rolls her eyes, “Don’t make me gag.”

The eyeroll is enough for Seis, that’s her favorite version Trinsi, and the Trinsi she loves most.

---

Trinsi’s room has a large window installed on the incline of the roof. While the town’s lights were too bright to be able to see any stars, the cloud-diluted moonlight was a nice visual. Seis is sure her opinion will change in the morning, she’s never been fond of waking up to the glaring sunlight.

“Did you dream when you were asleep?”

Seis hears Trinsi’s voice besides her, she had been under the impression that the young woman had fallen asleep.

“For 200 years I mean,” the young woman clarifies.

“I don’t remember much of it, but yes.” Seis turns her head to see Trinsi laying on her side playing with strands of the Ester’s jet black hair. Seis is overdue for a haircut, she thinks, it’d had gotten rather long in her time traveling.

Trinsi doesn’t think so, she likes Seis’s hair long. “What do you remember?”

“The silence, for one. But I already mentioned that. I dreamt of home, and my youth. The soups my mother made, and the games my father played. I dreamt of my first love and the heartache that came with it. I dreamt of making Dux Bellorum upon graduation, and the happiness I thought I would never feel again.”

“How old were you when you first fell in love?”

Seis snorts, “I don’t know if I would call it that now, I was young. I thought it was love, but of course now I know better.”

Trinsi smiles, “I still want to hear about it though.”

“I was eleven, back then we didn’t have a real water system so I would walk to the well every morning to fetch water for my mother. Every morning, I would spot the baker’s daughter struggling to pick the fruit for the pies off the trees in her yard. She was older, sixteen I believe, but short. I, on the other hand have always been tall for my age.

“She had a wagon that she used to wheel the boxes of fruit back to the bakery. So I came up with a proposition, if I could borrow the wagon to wheel my water down the hill, I would pick the fruit for her. Obviously at that age I was already training to be an Ester, I didn’t need the wagon to carry the water, but I wanted to talk to her. And it worked.”

“So?” Trinsi asks wondering if there’s more to the story.

“That’s it,” Seis laughs meekly. “Nothing ever came of it.”

“You said there would be heartbreak.”

“Heartache, I said heartache. Which came from the idea that when I woke up, she would be long gone.” She speaks in good humor but Trinsi feels bad for prying now.

“Oh. Did you know you would be asleep for as long as you were?” Trinsi’s in this far already, so she might as well ask.

The dark-haired woman sits up, and shifts onto her side to face Trinsi. They both really ought to be asleep by now, considering the day they’re going to have tomorrow. “I wasn’t the best student when I was in training. The physical stuff came easy to me yes, but lectures I slept through. They did tell us, but I couldn’t remember for the life of me. I knew it would be at least a 100 years.”

“Do you prefer to be called Seis? Or Judit? Judy? Jud?”

She laughs again, “Seis is fine. For me this is a different lifetime, so a different name feels appropriate.”

“Seis is not a very creative one if you ask me.” Trinsi mutters under her breath jokingly.

“That’s saying something, coming from you.”

She closes her eyes, relaxing her expression. She wants to express the particular emotion she is feeling in the moment, but realizes that she’s at a loss. She’s solemn, not because of Trinsi, but because this is a different kind of vulnerability.

When she opens them again, she finds that Trinsi is watching her curiously. Focused on her parted mouth, Seis closes the space between them with a somber kiss. She weaves her fingers in the young woman’s light colored hair, and Trinsi responds by pressing her face against the woman’s warm and fluttering chest.

Trinsi finds comfort in knowing that the feeling is mutual. The sensation of panic brought on by the older woman’s closeness- the good panic, as Trinsi has decided to call it. As uneasy as it makes her, she finds herself intentionally seeking it. And admittingly, she enjoys causing it in the Ester.