The Night We Shared Warmth

“Ah — here. I’ve brought the milk.”

Dan set a cup of warmed milk down before each of us, Herman and me. In thanks, I picked a few morsels from the basket and pressed them on him. Once I’d made sure he had moved off, I cupped the pleasantly warm glass in both hands.

“This may make me seem childish for my age, but it’s my very favorite smell.”

Herman looked down at the milk without a word.

“That warm, nutty scent that rises off white milk. When I sit quietly and just breathe it in, somehow it sets my heart at ease.”

A thin film had formed across the surface of the warm milk.

“If you’d like, do try some.”

I lifted the cup, and the soft, milky scent drifted up to meet me. I took a careful sip, and before long Herman followed my lead and drank too. He gave no particular sign of liking it or disliking it, but the way he kept the warm cup clasped in his hand made it plain enough that it pleased him.

Just then, lightning struck once more. I saw the strength gather in Herman’s great hand as it gripped tight.

“…Why is this the one you love best.”

Herman asked, the words wrung out of him. A low rumble broke into a crack, the thunder arriving on schedule as ever, and yet he seemed to be straining to hold his attention on my words; his dark eyes stayed fixed, unblinking, on my lips.

A little embarrassed by that, I raised my cup and hid my lips behind it.

“As you well know, I have a twin.”

“…”

“It’s a funny thing — she and I are scarcely any different, and yet our parents each doted on only one of us apiece. Father favored me, the obedient one; Mother favored her, the warm and affectionate one.”

Speaking slowly on, I tipped the cup and swallowed a mouthful of milk. Salted, faintly savory-sweet, it spread softly over my tongue.

“When I was little, it grieved me no end — the way Mother looked after her and thought of her more than she did me.”
“That’s only natural. To be shown the lesser always stings.”
“…Sorry?”
“Child or grown, no one likes being treated as the lesser.”

Even in the midst of all this, Herman had gruffly taken my side. Whether he truly meant to or not, I couldn’t have said for certain, but that, at least, was how it felt to me.

“It wasn’t as though they showed it openly, mind you.”

Unused to having anyone wholly on my side, I hurriedly cut in.

“Yes — faintly. There are things one feels only faintly, aren’t there. Often I could just sense it, in my very bones, that Mother thought of her more than of me.”

Mother would look in on both our rooms, mine and Gloria’s, and leave each of us a goodnight kiss, fair and even; but her last stop was always Gloria’s room. For me, only a brief kiss; with Gloria she would linger at her side until she had fallen asleep. Looking back on it now, they were such small, childish things, and yet why had they grieved me so terribly at the time?

“When I was small, I even used to act up on purpose. Because I hated that Mother looked after only her. I was a foolish child.”

An awkward smile broke out of me, a clumsy disguise, perhaps, to hide my embarrassment.

“I’ve no brothers or sisters, so I can’t say I truly understand — but had I any, I’d have been worse than you.”

Herman leaned in and murmured, low.

“It’s just that I’ve a powerful greed for what’s mine.”

He had a real gift for listening, wholehearted and sincere. Now and again he’d toss in a light joke, so that unburdening myself of what lay inside never felt like too much.

“So how did you play the baby, then? Go on a hunger strike?”
“Nothing like that. Sometimes, when Mother came out of Glo—, of my twin’s room, I’d catch hold of her and make a scene. Telling her I couldn’t sleep, that she had to come and put me to sleep herself.”

Herman looked as though he were picturing something in earnest, and then a fitting little smile came to his lips.

“And then.”
“Then Mother would take me down to the kitchen and warm up white milk just like this, a pinch of salt stirred in.”

I tipped my cup and went on.

“Clinging close to watch Mother warm the milk, then sharing that fragrant milk between us and talking together—”

“…”

“—all of it felt like Mother’s love. And that quiet hour felt like a secret shared just between the two of us, one no one else knew.”

When the warm milk heated me through, I would fall into a sweet illusion that my heart had somehow been filled to the brim, as though someone were stroking my wounded insides, gentling them.

It struck me, as I spoke, that what I had wanted just then was, most likely, to comfort Herman. The presumption of it, when I didn’t even know what it was that tormented him.

“So that was the way of it.”

Herman nodded slowly and raised his cup once more. His unease did seem to have settled somewhat, more than before at least. I watched him sit there at ease, drinking his milk. We didn’t talk much after that, but in that soft, snug quiet I could feel a settled sort of peace.

By the time we’d drained our cups, the rain that had filled my ears was fading, and the lightning and thunder that had set the sky roaring were gone.

A part of me was a little sorry, somehow, that the rain had stopped. I gave my head a brisk shake. Its letting up was surely a good thing; it meant I needn’t sit face to face with Herman like this the whole night through, and that, however I looked at it, was bound to be an uncomfortable stretch of hours.

No — perhaps it wouldn’t be so uncomfortable, at that.

I thought back to the moment I’d shared the milk with Herman, in that span of not even a full hour. Looking back, it hadn’t been so uncomfortable at all, really.

“Rather absurd, isn’t it.”

All at once Herman, who had been gazing into the low, smoldering brazier, threw out a question from nowhere.

“That a navy man, of all people, should hate the rain.”

As if he found his own words a touch absurd, Herman swallowed a wry smile and scratched at his brow.

“It’s the thunder, to be precise, that I hate. Afraid of it, perhaps, even. Not often — now and then, is all. Especially when I’m on edge.”

“On edge? Do you mean that you are, now? Is it — could it be because of me?”

I thought that if Herman brought up what had passed in the carriage, I ought to apologize.

He gazed at me a moment, then opened his mouth.

“That isn’t what I meant by it, so smooth that look off your face.”
“Then…”
“I’m no longer on my own now, am I. I only meant that it strikes all the harder when there’s someone at your side you’re bound to look after.”

Herman gave a sheepish laugh and settled back deep into his chair.

“It always rained, you see — whenever my life was flung down into the muck.”

For all the ease of his posture, the words that followed were grim.

“It rained the day the fire broke out at the ducal manor in the capital, too. Too late — only after everything had been reduced to ash, so wholly that not even my parents’ remains could be found.”

“…”

“It was the same the day our ship was shelled and went down. A hard rain fell, and the thunder cracked. I shouted for my men to abandon the warship and get across to the boats, and I had to watch the soldiers who couldn’t make it off in time die where they stood.”

Herman paused a moment.

“Even now I can’t be certain it was the right call. Had we only held out there a little longer, more of them might have been saved.”

I could find nothing to lay atop his words. The weight he bore was already heavy to overflowing, and one wrong thing set upon it might bring the whole of it crashing down.

“Let it so much as rain, and I feel myself dragged back to that time. To when I could save no one, could rescue no one.”

Herman closed his eyes gently. As though he had always borne such moments alone, he drew a practiced deep breath. And yet the faint contortion of his face showed no sign of easing. Just calling that time to mind seemed enough to overwhelm him with nightmarish memories.

“Herman.”

I whispered to him, his eyes still closed.

“Open your eyes. Open your eyes and look at me.”

Slowly, Herman opened his eyes. And slowly, he met my gaze.

“You are here, right now, in this place.”

The fire in the brazier crackled and popped as it burned.

To him, lost somewhere between nightmare and guilt, I wanted to give a calm, steady sense of what was real. I wanted him to know it past all doubt: that this place where we sat was the quiet dining hall of an inn, in the Empire of Balter, mightiest of all realms.

“You are, right now, with me—”

I put weight on each word, one by one.

“—right here, Herman.”

Herman held my gaze a long while, and then, all at once, he laughed. A soft puff of air slipped out from between his teeth.

“Is that so?”

That was the moment. Herman reached out, abruptly, and folded his hand gently over mine where it clasped the cup of milk.

“It’s real.”

“…”

“You truly are here.”

His hand was warmer than the milk.

Hastily I drew my hand free of his and ducked my reddened face low.

“R-real, of course. What else would it be — false?”

Secretly swallowing a laugh, I watched Herman draw his hand back with studied nonchalance, and even began to suspect he’d feigned the whole spell just to hold my hand.

A sly old fox of a man.

As he took an unhurried sip of his milk, I was seized by an ominous premonition: that from this day on, whenever I drank warm milk, I would be sure to think of him.