"Why does it stink like onion in here?"
Taite heard her brother's voice echoing through the small house. The front door thudded closed next, and heavy steps plodded across the living room.
"Taitey?" he called uselessly, for it was only a breath later that his large shadow blotted out the weak light coming through the bedroom doorway. "Where are y...oh."
"Not many places I could hide in two rooms." She offered the joke to him in a sweet, placating voice from where she was reclined on her bed, which was little more than a thin, straw mattress.
"Why are you laying like that?" he asked, stepping into the bedroom, a bushy, dark brow arching upward. "Why does it smell funny in here?"
The raven-haired young woman let loose a long sigh. Her fingers reached down and began to draw up the hem of her dress. A pale calf was revealed, and then a knee, though the round swell of flesh itself wasn't visible. A thick, lumpy object lay over it, covered with a thin strip of cotton. "I fell," she murmured.
Even in the dim light cast by a solitary candle on her bedside table, she could see the instant change in his countenance, like a wave sweeping over a stone. "What?" he breathed, rushing over and carefully lowering himself down beside her. "Where? How?"
Her deep, green eyes watched his face closely, studying his movements, noting the tone of his voice. There was no anger. Not yet, anyway. "Just in the street. A drunkard...got too close, and I moved too fast, and tripped."
Emory's hand hovered over the hidden knee. "What'd you put on it? It reeks." He chuckled roughly through his nose.
Taite allowed herself to grin in return. "An onion poultice. Sorry for the smell."
"Does it hurt bad?"
"Not too bad. Morning will tell more. It hurt like the blazes trying to get home, though." She braced her hands on the mattress, shifting her weight a little to get comfortable.
Emory's eyes shot to her face. "You had to walk home alone with this?"
"Well, I... there weren't anyone I could ask to help, Emory. They don't keep helpful folk on every corner like apple carts." She tried to smile, to lighten the mood, to disperse the tension she felt prickling in the air now. "I mean, the drunkard offered, but he could hardly stay upright himself."
Now it was her brother's turn to sigh. His face glowered, his eyes set on her injured leg.
"Emory, I'm all right," she said gently, leaning forward, trying to find his eyes. "I'm going to fall sometimes. I'm just...I just am. You can't put me in a cart and wheel me through my life." Again, she smiled, hoping to ease his displeasure.
"I don't like it," he grumbled, carefully pulling her dress back down to her ankle. "You need to be with someone who's going to look after you and keep you safe. I can't be here all the time."
"I know," she replied softly, reaching over to lay her hand on his arm. "I have friends, though. Real friends now! And...well, they may not be able to glue themselves to my side every moment of the day and night, but it's better than nothing, aye?"
Emory sighed again, his wide shoulders shrugging heavily. "Taite, what if someone truly bad comes along, and I'm not there? And your friends aren't there?" His brown eyes locked onto her face. "What are you going to do? You can't run." He waved a hand jerkily towards her leg. "You can't even...walk fast."
Her eyes had dropped to her hands, which were now entangled in her lap. A long and uncomfortable silence began. Words swelled in her throat, asking to be spoken. Words about brothers who drank too much, and sisters who woke up with black and purple bruises, and why "truly bad" people were worse than brothers with violent tempers.
The quiet dragged on. Emory became restless and fidgety. She waited for some kind of proclamation, some commandment that she wasn't to leave the house without him or his permission. She began to formulate her argument inside her mind, thinking of the words she could use that would declare her own freedom without stirring his fury.
He surprised her then, by simply pushing to his feet with a loud huff, and walking out of the room. She watched the doorway, bewildered, expecting a return, a last word, a threat of some kind, veiled under the guise of brotherly concern.
Nothing happened.
She heard the heavy creak of the rocking chair, but beyond this, he remained silent. There was no argument, no ultimatum, no tirade of guilt and frustration. She kept still, sitting up slightly, holding her breath. Waiting to see if this surprising turn of fate would hold, or whether it would shatter suddenly with a raised voice or a thrown object. She had gone out on her own, and come home injured, after all. A most intolerable situation.
But there was nothing.
It felt like a victory. Tiny and inconsequential to everyone else in the world, perhaps. But still, a victory.
Smiling faintly to herself, she settled back against the wall, laced her hands over her stomach, and closed her eyes.
