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“Several of you new women did faces. Why?”
“Oh.” I blinked. In all the excitement about explaining the carving process, we hadn’t really talked about the origins of the custom. “It’s actually a tradition where I come from. Ireland. It was believed that Samhain represented a time when the barrier between our world and the spirit world was thinnest, and ghosts and ghouls could come through. Carving faces into turnips and other vegetables was supposed to keep bad spirits away. There was also a story about a bloke named Jack who tricked the devil and was cursed to wander the world with nothing but a carved-out turnip and a single coal to light his way, so it’s also related to that. The carved pumpkins are called jack-o’-lanterns.”
Dalk was quiet again for a long moment before uttering, “That is stupid.”
“Um, and that is rude,” I fired back, scowling at him.
“It is not rude. It is the truth. It is stupid to rely on a hollow vegetable to protect you against something malevolent,” Dalk said. “Especially someone as small and defenceless as you.”
Wonder if he’ll still think I’m defenceless with my boot-print stamped on his fucking backside...
“Whatever. My jack-o’-lantern turned out pretty spooky. I think it would hold up alright against a ghostie,” I huffed.
“You do not mean that.”
Dalk wasn’t looking at his vakta now but at me, his shimmering sight stars burning a fucking hole through my head.
“Well, then what do you suggest I do when I need to scare away some beastie, oh wise one?” I asked, arching a brow at him.
“You drop the pumm-kin and you run to someone who can protect you. You find a man like-”
He stopped, and I leaned forward.
“Find a man like you?”
“Well... I am a warrior,” he said. There was a new huskiness in his voice that I didn’t recognize. As if fighting it, he growled out the next part harshly. “And unlike you, I’m not foolish enough to think a vegetable with a face is a shield. And, also unlike you, my fingers actually wrap all the way around the handle of a blade.”
A deep wrinkle formed between his brows as he glared at his vakta. He huffed out a sigh, then put down his knife.
“Is it done?” I asked, trying to change the subject from the one that had gotten kind of weird a moment ago.
“Yes.”
“Can I see?”
“I assume you will not stop pestering me until you do.” The grim weariness in the words made me laugh, melting away some of the earlier awkwardness.
“Nope! It’ll be all pestering over here,” I assured him. He cast his sight stars up to the hall’s glittering ceiling as if begging some unseen force to end the misery of this new woman daring to disturb his peace by, gasp, talking to him. So fucking dramatic.
His sight stars finally descended and he spun his vakta around to me. Carved into its front was a large, painstakingly perfect flower. Just like the flowers of his homeland – the ones that dotted the hills of Fallo’s territory in the Sea Sands.
I gawked and I didn’t speak for a long moment, because it was absolutely gorgeous and not at all what I’d expected.
“A flower,” I finally said slowly, taking in the curves of the petals and the delicate line of the stem. “I didn’t take you for the sort of man who cared much for flowers.”
“I don’t... I didn’t.”
I cocked my head at him.
“Then why? If you don’t even like them...”
His sight stars pulsed, flicking down to my bare arms before he turned away without another word, carrying his vakta over to get judged alongside the others. Shaking my head in confusion, I looked down at my arms too, stretching them out in front of me to try to see what he saw.
I sucked in a breath. Because it was so fucking obvious. Anyone who looked at my arms would see the same exact thing.
Flowers. Flowers upon flowers upon flowers, permanently inked into my skin.
The contest decision was unanimous. Dalk’s beautiful flower won out over Kohka’s wave design, Errok’s braxilk, Lerokan’s bow and arrow, Oxriel’s irkdu, and Zakkar’s.... well, no one could quite figure out what Zakkar’s was.
