#but i havent had these two properly interact outside kai fen bartering with him over train tickets

[pitofghosts]

Campfire

1.4k words of Illarion and Kai Fen. I honestly just wanted to write these two interacting.

The night wore on thin and cold, the air sharp, and Kai Fen pulled his parka closer. Michil was off in his sleeping bag, and though there was one laid next to him for Kai Fen, he didn’t know if he’d be getting much sleep tonight. It was too frigid, and the air too still. It was like a constant cut into his skin.

It was so cold that he could almost forget that they were only a day away from the Enyese border.

Almost.

“You still up?”

He didn’t dignify Illarion with a response. Instead he just watched as he lumbered around the campfire, sat down on the other side of it. He raised his hands to warm them, the flames reflected in each of those rings he liked to decorate himself with. Most of them were fakes, painted metals, while others were plated. But a few were real. Did Illarion know? Did he care? Or was his taste simply anything gaudy?

He really was going to love Enyang.

“Don’t blame ya,” Illarion continued. “Hard to sleep, with it being freezing and all.” He glanced up. “S’why I wanna go south.”

“South,” Kai Fen repeated. He sniffled and wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. “That’s so vague.”

“Drekku.”

Kai Fen snorted. “That’s not south. Drekku’s east. Enyang, Gorra, and Nakbe are all in the south.”

“East is south.” Illarion blew air into his cupped hands, his legs bounced. He really did look cold. Did that stupid coat do nothing for him? “West is south. East is south. Anythin’ that isn’t fuckin’ rocks and snow and ice half the year is south. You got southerner brain. Directions can actually mean somethin’ to ya.”

Kai Fen rolled his eyes. It was such a Vwosi thing to say, to change all the meanings of the words just to suit himself. He sighed and slumped, shivered. There wasn’t even a wind to take refuge from. Just a steady onslaught.

A log on the fire shifted and fell into cinders. Illarion leaned back and grabbed another from the pile Michil had chopped up early, plopped it down into the flames. He jerked his hand back the second the log left his fingers. Kai Fen watched as the thick bark split away from the wood, as smoke arose from the gnarls, untileventually, it joined the others in their flame.

He’d be back in Enyang tomorrow. At that point, he’d be full traitor.

“Any Enyese you can teach me?”

Kai Fen spared him a glance. “No.”

“What d’ya mean no? You taught that Saoirse kid some phrases, huh? And he ain’t even here.”

Kai Fen scowled. “That was Saoirse,” he muttered. “I don’t have anything to teach you.”

“What’s ‘at supposed to mean?”

Kai Fen looked up. Illarion was sitting with shoulders squared, chin raised. He didn’t look angry but he looked near it. Kai Fen rolled his eyes and looked towards some of the trees. “It means that I don’t want to teach you. It’s hard. There’s tones.” Tones that Saoirse had been able to pick up on. Tones Saoirse said sounded like music, that he thought were beautiful. Tones he struggled with but tried so hard to get right every time.

Enshu, he wanted to see him again.

“They speak Bridgespeak where we’re going anyway,” he muttered. “You’ll be fine.”

“Mm. Goodie.”

It was silent for a while. Kai Fen watched the trees, watched for a sway in their branches that never came. He stole a glance back at Illarion. His knee was still bouncing, his arms pulled inside that coat of his, his head ducked down behind the collar. His eyes stayed glued to the fire, a crease between what were supposed to be eyebrows.

Illarion glanced up, and Kai Fen met his gaze.

“What are you starin’ at me for?”

“You’re the one who sat across from me.”

“Vikwo,” Illarion hissed in an amused curse. He leaned forward, pushed his hair back from his face. He wheezed out a breathy laugh and Kai Fen scowled. He hadn’t done or said anything funny.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Illarion considered him, shook his head. “I just can’t believe rich people really do act like how they say.”

Kai Fen raised his eyebrows. He leaned back on his hands, let a bit of a smirk onto his face. “What, exactly, are they saying?”

Illarion perked up, grinning that stupid toothy grin of his. It was the first time Kai Fen had seen it and not thought it looked threatening. “Uppity, bossy, never in the wrong. Always gotta have it their way, don’t got to compromise. And very bad at sharing.”

“And that’s what you think of me?”

“Well, you’re bad at sharing.”

“What? How?” He had made Kuratsa be plenty generous to him.

“You keepin’ all your language to yourself, for a start.”

Kai Fen snorted, rolled his eyes. But he half-smiled anyway. He wasn’t sure that he liked Illarion, was positive that he didn’t trust him. But he was starting to understand what it was about him that made Heila like him: they both had that knack for conversation that he just didn’t have. He could just as easily picture Illarion walking into a room and leaving with a bunch of new friends as he could Heila.

“We won’t be in Enyang very long,” Kai Fen muttered. He looked south, where the sky was covered by clouds. It looked like rain that way. “Just long enough so I can speak to Enshu. I need to be gone before my cousin realizes I crossed the border. It wouldn’t be worth it to teach you.”

“Then why’d you teach Minnet?”

“Minnet is his mother,” Kai Fen corrected. He pulled his coat sleeves down over his hands, pulled his shoulders in to his ears. “I thought we might go to Enyang some day. But you know what happened.“

“Yeah.” he raised his eyebrwos and shook his head. “Damn. Us older brothers got to clean all the messes, huh?”

“You have a brother?”

Illarion shook his head. “Sister.” He chuckled. “Though she’s never fucked up as bad as this.”

Kai Fen would have been offended if he wasn’t so terribly right. It would be hard pressed to mess up as badly as Zhihao had. He watched the flames lick their way up the log. It was half charred now. “How old is she?”

“Same as you, pretty sure.”

It was strange to picture someone his own age looking at Illarion as an older anything, let alone as family. He existed in a void in Kai Fen’s mind. He was the guy who sold them train tickets, the guy who sold them out, the guy who tried to kill them. But he had a sister somewhere. He had family.

He was pretty young, too. Seventeen, eighteen. Kai Fen wasn’t sure.

Illarion added another log to the fire, cursing when the flames jumped up to meet him. He retracted his hand, shook it, kicked some dirt at the flames like that might punish them.

Where were this guy’s parents?

Parents. Kai Fen leaned to the side. Things he didn’t have anymore, unless the emperor had been right and he wasn’t his son. He had to get in to Burning Rock Temple, had to get into the pool of water. He had to speak to find out how his mother could have been lying and telling the truth at the same time.

He never thought he’d say it but he actually missed Linast, even with the springtime allergies the snowmelt flowers had brought him. He missed getting coffee at Tikhon’s, he missed sharing a flat with Heila.

He missed Saoirse. He hoped he was doing okay.

“What’s it like? Bein’ a prince?”

Kai Fen jerked his head up. He hadn’t been sure of what Illarion said at first, but once it settled he let out a nervous, startled laugh. Of all things. He wrapped his arms around himself, rubbed his thumb over his sleeve. 

“Exhausting.”

Illarion nodded sagely. “What I thought.” He pushed off his knees with a grunt, shook out his coat and shoved his arms back through the sleeves. “Put the fire out before you sleep, yeah?”

Kai Fen blinked, sat up a bit straighter as Illarion walked passed him. “You want to freeze over night?”

“We got blankets, coats, body heat. We can survive a little cold.”

“This isn’t a little cold, it’s-”

“Put the damn fire out before you go to bed.”

Kai Fen shut his mouth. Anything else had to say died. He turned back to the flames, watched them dance. “I’ll put it out,” he muttered.

“Alright. Get a little sleep tonight, kid.”

Kai Fen hummed an acknowledgement, but he was already miles away. Tomorrow he exchanged refugee status to treasonous outlaw. Tomorrow he had to be confident enough to lie in the empire of truth, and he had an ex-soldier and an ex-enemy with him. All he had to do was pretend he was mute and communicate everything through writing. Enshu went blind there.

A flame consumed a leaf growing from one of the logs.

He’d be in Enyang tomorrow.

Kai Fen sat there until the fire burned itself out, and he shuffled into his sleeping bag next to Michil. They still had a long way to go in the morning. He should try and sleep while he could.

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