It was sweet of her to assume that she’d be safer with him than with a woman. Perhaps she was, in a way. He was taller, for one thing. His shoulders broader, his limbs more powerful simply by nature’s design. But all of that was in comparison with a woman, who was soft and less equipped than even he. Against a real foe? The outcome might be the same as if Mazel was here. With thieves, who’d no doubt gotten into many scrapes and escaped many violent encounters, Amiti would be no asset. He was a prayerful man. A man of great learning and careful study. His time was spent indoors with either books or lessons or in the temple or with the other Mahnheegs. He wasn’t a shepherd, used to fighting off wolves. He wasn’t a street rat who’d had to claw his way through life. He was privileged and an asset in a council - a force to be reckoned with when it came to reason and plans...but out here? The fire was about the best he could offer her.

He thanked her when she thought to bring the blankets over. His gratitude was limited, however. It was already cold but the sweat of the camels clung to the fabric, making it reek and making it chilly, too. He had half a mind to stand next to the fire and hold up his blanket to it, except that one wrong move and the blanket would go up in flames. So too would his ability to keep warm. The ground was cold and stole heat, never giving in return. People died sleeping on open ground.

Amarissa settled on the other side of the fire and he found a very slight disappointment when she did, though it was tempered by relief. He’d assumed they would need to huddle together but he hadn’t said it. Now, with her decision to maintain distance, he kept his mouth shut about it. Perhaps if the night grew too cold, he’d suggest it then. This was better for the time being. She was confoundingly hard to stop looking at. He couldn’t imagine the discomfort he’d be faced with if he had to actually touch her.

She was free of his notice for the time being, however. He busied himself with flipping over rocks with the toe of his sandal, then skittering them away altogether with his foot in order to make a good enough place to curl up. Once he had the ground as near to clear as he could get it, he finally let the blanket fall. It landed in a plume of dirt and sand cloud, causing the flame to flicker dangerously. He grimaced, waiting to see if he’d just undone their only source of warmth but the flame survived. He exhaled hard and sank down on the blanket.

“You should too,” Amarissa said and followed up with “We could take shifts.”

He considered that. It was a good idea and he was mildly perturbed and embarrassed he hadn’t thought of it. “Yes, I think that would be best,” he finally agreed, not liking that she’d come up with something so sensible and he had not. His perceptions dictated that she should be eagerly awaiting anything he had to say with the same reverence she’d show her father. Or God. That was a lot of pressure, though, and he knew full well he wasn’t equal to that task. The worst of it was that she knew it too.

He stroked his beard, listening to the fire and the random ‘chirrups’ from somewhere unseen. He didn’t jump at those sounds. They were harmless and either from a bird or a rodent. He’d move at howls and he’d move at rocks shifting over one another, or the crunch of footsteps. Until then, he was content enough with the relative silence. Silence that Amarassia broke after a time. “Father loves the stars. He says the stars are Yahweh's stories, painted on the sky so that all may know them.”

Amiti looked up, scrunching his face a little. The sky was a vast, endless sea of purple black, netted and dripping with starlight. “Huh,” he said helpfully as he looked up at the constellations. Stars were not his area of study. They were far away and relatively meaningless unless he was traveling somewhere and needed them for guidance. That reminded him...He followed the network of guiding lights with his finger, leading him just above her head.

“That way,” he said. “That is where we will go tomorrow. That will take us back to Damascus.” He shifted on his blanket, drawing his knees up to his chest. “Your family must be worried about you,” he commented. “You will be sorely missed.” Her father talked of her sometimes. It was embarrassing now to admit that he’d never paid all that much attention before. But he couldn’t quite remember why. The splashes of golden light across her face and coils of vivid orange playing in her hair made her quite difficult to look away from. He studied her features with the freedom that came from darkness and solitude.

“Father says there is wild blood in my veins. Like a desert fox” Amarissa’s tone was nearly bragging and Amiti didn’t know what to think about that. He didn’t personally like wild things. They were unpredictable and there was nothing so horrible as not knowing what was going to happen. He liked things to be calm, sedate, and...well...predictable. Wild women meant trouble. They generally did not do as they ought to do, finding any and all kinds of mischief. His mother had. She’d taken a man into her bed who was not his father and made a mockery of them all. Who knew if it was only the one? How blind they’d all been not to even notice. It had proved to him, though, that no matter how much you might love someone, they could and would wound you. It was why he was now absolutely certain that he wouldn’t marry for love. He’d marry for duty and then if something went wrong, well, that was to be expected, wasn’t it?

“Not sure what he expected. He always took me and mother on trading trips. Always showed me the wonders of new places...” Amiti shifted on his pallet so that he could lay down as he listened to her. Well. Obviously he wouldn’t make the same mistake with his daughter. A son could obviously handle such things but not a daughter. She got her head filled with ideas that were not good. Amarissa should have been more protected from evil influences. She was too pretty to be led astray like that and it was such a shame.

“I'm sure your family is worried to. You're probably far less prone to wandering off,” she said finally, and a smile did ghost Amiti’s lips as he stared up at the sky.

“I doubt that. They might worry a very little, but if my father has looked up from his books, I’m sure he’s placed all his trust in Yahweh for our safe return. Though,” he pillowed one arm under his head and glanced through the fire at her. “My younger brother, Thaddeus, he might be beside himself. He’s prone to excitement, I suppose.”

He wasn’t particularly troubled about whether or not his brothers or father would worry. The Jaffe men didn’t speak to each other all that often. They mostly existed in each other’s spheres. There was affection there, of course there was, but it was tempered by the sort of life single males tended to lead; silence. Especially the kind of family Amiti came from. There were secrets and sometimes it was best just to ignore those secrets, or be crushed by the weight of them.

“You know-” he began but whatever he’d been about to say was lost forever. Rocks shifted and he sat bolt upright, staring into the darkness. More rocks shifted and he thought he heard a whisper. Without a word, he came around the fire and nearly sat straight on Amarissa but he wasn’t looking at what he was doing. He was putting an arm around her, though whether to protect her or because she was another living soul was unclear. All his attention was on the darkness, just beyond the band of light they couldn’t see.

He waited like that for a long time. Sometimes he thought he sensed movement out there. Sometimes he thought he might be mistaking wind for whispers.

They remained crouched like that for a long, long time. Amiti, too, didn’t want to name his concerns. What if bandits materialized out of the darkness? Or wolves? Or even some of spirit. Though Amiti didn’t actually believe in spirits, he believed well enough in demons and was trying not to remember the sorts of tales that he and other boys liked to try to scare each other with in his younger days. They were tales told outside the temple when adults weren’t listening; tales about possession and savage, foaming men and women who wandered the deserts, looking for new prey to destroy.

Wisps of Amarissa’s hair kept brushing his cheek intermittently and getting stuck on his beard. After a long while, when she fidgeted, he swiped the hairs away but accidentally touched her shoulder. Oops. It may not have been that but she shifted more and whispered, “I think it's gone.” He nodded and glanced over to find her face turned towards him. Their closeness was not lost on him but Amarissa turned quickly away, obviously trying to maintain a discrete distance and he realized that he wasn’t allowing her to do that.

Clearing his throat, he inched away, a little shocked with himself that he didn’t want to. He wanted to remain as close to her as possible and that was a little frightening. “I think our fears are unwarranted,” he said, keeping his voice low. Their fire was nothing but embers now and Amiti had nothing to stir it back to life with. He brought his bed pallet closer to hers and flipped over so that she could press her back to his when he lay down, with the explanation that they’d of course remain back to back and that it was only for warmth.
If she didn’t snuggle with him, his next plan was to snuggle one of the camels to keep warm but Amarissa was far and away the first choice.

Night passed without them being murdered or eaten by wild animals. Amiti woke to the crisp cold of a desert morning and found himself looking out at the endless flat horizon where the first golden rays peeked up over the rim of the world. He sat up. Every muscle in his body complained of a night’s sleep on hard, rocky ground but they were alive and now was the best time to start for home; before mid morning had them thirsty and sweating.

“Amarissa,” he murmured. “Let’s go. I think we can make it back to town and hopefully before everyone notices…”

The camels were shockingly compliant today and thought Amiti was no camel expert, the animals were ready to go. He and Amarissa found themselves riding along at a nice pace, heading back towards Damascus. He didn’t speak much during their ride. There wasn’t much to say that he wanted to admit. Though once the walls were in view, they were met by the camel owner, her father, and his own.

”Amiti!” Tzephaniah, his father was waving in frantic motions. ”Thank Yahweh. Will you please tell this man you did not steal his camels?”

What a welcome home...