#i also realized theres another nilboro request in my inbox from forever ago

[sylibane]

Forgotten First Meeting Niles and Oboro (I really enjoy this pair. It’s both hilarious and oddly wholesome)

This kind of got away from me whoops

Oboro didn’t know why her parents were so worried whenever they came to these little border towns. Sure, they weren’t as neat and pretty as the villages in Hoshido, but the strange, gnarled vegetation that escaped people’s gardens and grew over walls and crumbling statues were oddly beautiful. There was less sunlight, but the flames in all the torches glowed and danced even in the day. And the people didn’t mind their manners, but Oboro had come to realize that their loudness and hands slapped onto shoulders was their attempt to be friendly, no matter how impolite. In some ways, they were less scary that when her parents sold cloth to Hoshidan nobles, where she had to remember all the etiquette that they taught her.

But even if she disagreed with her parents of the danger of these towns, she would not disobey them. When they went into those loud restaurants with customers and told her to stay with the cart, she stayed with the cart. Other children would come by and ask her to play with them and got mad and called her names when she refused. Adults would call her the little wagon guardian in a tone that she thought was a compliment and only later realized was condescending. But nothing would make her abandon her duty.

Not even the apples on the branch over the wall above her.

Oboro glared at the apples. On principle, she didn’t trust Nohrian food after she was convinced to try some and nearly threw it all up. But these were red and shiny and unblemished, and apples were always apples everywhere, weren’t they? Her parents brought what Hoshidan preserves they could fit alongside their wares, and they’d taught Oboro to be very careful about rationing food. It may have been past suppertime and they had been talking to their latest client for far too long, but she wasn’t going to open up their dwindling supplies without permission. No matter how much her stomach grumbled.

“Just grab one.”

Oboro squeaked and nearly fell off the seat. She hadn’t even noticed the boy who’d climbed up next to her. “What?” she squeaked.

“If you want one, just take one. It’s easy.” He jumped off the seat and onto the wall, scrambling up it with an ease that told her he’d done this before. At the top, he plucked an apple from the branch and held it out. “See?”

“Those aren’t yours,” Oboro said as she studied him. He was probably about her age and had the tan skin and light hair common of people in the border region, along with grayish-blue eyes. One of them looked a little swollen; Oboro was worldly enough to know what a healing black eye looked like, not worldly enough to assume it was from anything worse than tripping. His clothes had been mended several times, but if her stitches looked like that, her parents would be horrified. And his hair was a tangled mess.

The boy took a bite out of the apple. “They are now,” he said as he chewed. “C’mon, it’s easy. I bet you could do it.”

Oboro sat up very straight, chest puffed out. “I’m not a thief. I’m a merchant.”

“Then you’re gonna get robbed,” the boy said before taking another big bite. The moisture dribbled down his chin.

Oboro’s stomach turned. “I am a merchant,” she said, “so I can make a trade. If you bring me something, I’ll come your hair.”

“I don’t need that,” the boy said, but he still picked another fruit before jumping back down to her. He didn’t look at her and just kept eating his own apple as Oboro took the good comb from the box hidden beneath the cloth bales. She grimaced before she dug its teeth into his hair, and he flinched, and she flinched too, thinking he might suddenly turn on her. But as she began to pull at the tangles, he just dug his teeth into the apple again.

“I’m sorry,” she still said.

“It’s just hair,” he muttered. “Who cares about hair?”

Once she got through the worst of the tangles, it was strangely calming to keep combing. Maybe that’s why her mother insisted on combing her hair even though she was old enough to do it herself. It was so easy to close her eyes and loose herself in the strokes. She could feel his shoulders relax against hers. How long had he sat here? Did it matter?

It took her parents calling to her to snap her from her reverie. When she opened her eyes, she only caught a glimpse of the boy before he was gone.

“Oboro? Is everything alright?” her father said. “I thought I saw someone.”

Oboro realized the apple was still next to her on the seat. “It was just a local boy saying hello,” she said as she picked it up. “I think he dropped this.”

Her mother smiled. “It’s good that you’re finally making friends here.”

She realized, with a pang in her stomach, that she hadn’t asked him his name. But she knew his face now, didn’t she? Oboro promised herself that the next time they came through this town, she would find him again and ask him his name and tell him hers. His hair would need another combing by then too.

It was an easy promise for a child to make. Oboro was too young to ever imagine a day when all Nohrian faces would blur together and she would have to relearn the ability to see them as individual human beings. And she couldn’t imagine that the next time she saw him, all that youth would be gone from his face, along with one of those eyes.