As Levani watched Kallo diligently clean the filth and scabbed muck from the leather pieces of his clothing, she had quickly realized that she had forgotten the chest of her own back near the fire, where she’d removed it at his behest. The observation gave her a moment’s pause, only to watch him, to witness him work in palpable silence, a thoughtful seriousness dominating the lines of his face, an expression that made her uncertain, that drew her desire to soothe. She didn’t know why, but it troubled her. Something in her told her that it was the repressed conversation, that he had wanted to discuss it despite his diversion, the proffered chance for her to leave it. Leave it she had, and the result was such, and she grappled with the peculiarities and the complexities of the heart that she didn’t yet understand. Not that she blamed him or his heart, but her own. When he picked up the plates of his armor, she blinked the thoughts from her mind, grateful for the carving from the barrage. It was decided, in the end, that she would let her top be, determining to wash it later. They would have time. Possibly only spared in moments, but they would have time nonetheless. She wanted to say as much to him, to still those busy hands and pull him to rest, but she figured it was for the better if she didn’t. She felt, intrinsically, that he needed it.<br/><br/>“Yes,” Levani confirmed his question of the Ineasi, thinking only for seconds of the tribespeople that lived beneath the earth, their village vast and incredible. One of the few that had managed to dodge and keep the black well at bay. But her attention continuously strayed to Kallo, watching him strain himself to wash, the enormous bruises devouring his flesh belittling the pain the body beneath must have felt. She winced herself, once or twice, before he did, if only by watching him move. She had even taken a step, however small, to take the patch of moss from him and wash him on her own, to ease that much of a burden, but she shook her head to stay herself. Instead, she knelt in the brook to keep herself from further folly, positioned so that he was to her side and she gazed over the lip of the waters into the forest, which danced on a malachite breeze filled with whispers of the wood. “Rest for the day if you must,<i>sul’ima</i>. The bounties of Asdenni will not regress back into their seeds while you soak,” she chided lightly, though she felt the impatience running even through her veins, as though a devil had sunk into her bones and she’d lost the ability to appreciate the beauty of the moment.<br/><br/>Pulling herself from her pause, she began to wash her arms and shoulders, moving slower than Kallo had, though she did glance at him, saw the way that the lines along his forehead had slowly melted, the desolation, the pain, no longer so clearly apparent on his handsome face. The crystal waters licked against his cheeks, sparkling in the ribbons of sunlight patchworked through the canopy, draping him in a veil of unwarranted peace. She wondered what he was thinking, what daylight dreams found and grounded him. Leaning forward, Levani pressed her forehead near her knees, allowing lengths of copper and black hair to sink into the water as though bleeding ink. She ran her fingers through the tresses until all was soaked and she could feel the matts of dirt loosen. Had managed to pull free a small twig, even, entwined possessively, possibly from her excursion amidst the tree branches.<br/><br/>Ears still above the brook’s surface, Levani could hear Kallo’s admission, spoken ardently with that melodic tenor, calm but no less profound. Simple, lacking frivolities, but poignant. The confession caused her to slowly lift her head from the water, pushing wet tendrils of hair back from her face, clearing the droplets from her eyes to see that his expression was still serene, his gaze closed. She had parted her lips for a moment, perhaps in a thought to deny him, to notion the vast extension of his strength, his perseverance. The hits that he would take, emotionally or otherwise, and the recovery that he would suffer through with a powerful dignity - but she knew better than to refute such words spoken from the heart. Though she couldn’t understand how she could pull him back, why he’d felt so lost, she worked to accept the words for what they were, naked and sentimental.<br/><br/>Instead, Levani reached over, placing an outstretched hand on the center of Kallo’s chest, dipped beneath the cool waters. Even there, she could feel the warmth of his heart, radiating, remarkable. “I feel that you would have found it. There is something powerful guiding you, Kallo. It is right here.” She pressed her hand slightly, reassuring, swearing she could feel each strong beat. A sobering thought occurred to her and her golden gaze sharpened, almost distant. “And if you had not been here for me,<i>sul’ima</i>, I do not know what would have happened to me when I found that…” Beast, she wanted to say. Beast, she had thought, since she’d seen it corrupted, since she’d considered it profane and profuse in its wretchedness. Stripping it of its name, its identity, everything that she had known it as, for she had so feared what she may become. Would Kallo feel as much for her, if such a time came? Or would he see her and give her that much? “Kimough. His name was Kimough. I may have lost myself to him if you had not been there to pull me back,” she offered him, eyes softening, affectionate.<br/><br/>A deep sigh and she retracted her hand, rocking back onto her butt, knees up, arms wrapped around them, leaning against the opposite bank that Kallo had laid his head on, all done with only a slight growl of pain. “I did not know loneliness upon your arrival only a few days ago, but I have a feeling that if you left, I would know it now,” she admitted with a rough laugh, watching the beryl shadows where mated songbirds flitted from branch to branch. “That is a strange thing, is it not?” She recognized as she watched them and they called fervently to one another. She looked down then to her own body, at bruises - smaller than her companion’s - that were slowly becoming apparent, mottled hues of violet and ebony in a tapestry across her skin.<br/><br/>“Oh!” The idea came to her suddenly, as she surveyed her body. “Here,” she said and she reached around the back of her neck. From her plethora of necklaces, she expertly began to untie two. Laying them in her palm, she checked to make sure that they were the ones that she had intended. On each was a symbol dented carefully into a hard metal - one of silver, the other of a dark grey. The former was flanked by several abyssal emerald beads of an opaque gem and the latter was coupled with onyx that appeared to have been shaped into a short feather. Moving closer to him, Levani reached down and leaned close, pushing resistance aside should it arise, and she tied them around his neck, fingers deft even beneath the water. She may have lasted a moment too long, so close, and she sat up to fix the short distance. “There. Now not everything that you have left is in that pile,” she announced, lips plying him with a soft smile.