Ash shot forward again, leaving a large shattered mark on the trunk he left behind.
Shiva raised both hands and a barrier formed in front of her, not thin like the one earlier at the rocks, but thick and dense like layered walls of glass, glowing bluish white in the darkness of the forest.
Ash struck it with his claws and the sound of the impact echoed among the surrounding trees, but the barrier didn't break. Ash struck again, harder, and the barrier's surface cracked at the point of impact but didn't break through.
"There we go." Shiva steadied her breathing, her hands still raised maintaining the barrier. "Now stay quiet for a moment and listen."
Ash didn't listen. His third strike made the cracks in the barrier spread wider, small fragments falling from its surface like glass beginning to give way, but the layer behind it still held.
Shiva began murmuring in a voice lower than ordinary conversation, her rhythm slow and steady, not like a spell recited in haste but more like something sung without melody.
Her words were not a language used in any city, older than that, and each syllable seemed to have its own effect in the air.
Ash struck again, the cracks in the barrier now spreading in every direction from the first point of impact, its fragments falling more and faster. But Shiva didn't stop murmuring, her eyes closed, her breathing steady following the rhythm of her words.
Ash's next strike was slower than the one before.
Not because he stopped trying, but the movement of his arm seemed to meet resistance that wasn't from the barrier, resistance that existed inside his own body. His blazing red eyes blinked once, and for a fraction of a second the cracks across his skin dimmed slightly.
Shiva opened one eye, looked at the condition of the barrier that was already cracked across nearly its entire surface, then closed it again and quickened the rhythm of her chant slightly.
Ash raised his hand to strike again, but his hand came down slower than it should have, hitting the barrier with only about a quarter of the force from before. The last fragments of the barrier's outermost layer fell and dropped, but the innermost layer still stood, thin but present.
A long low sound came from Ash's throat, not anger, more like something running out of energy to be angry.
Ash stepped back one pace, his knees bent, and he fell to a sitting position among the roots of the large tree in front of Shiva. His head slowly dropped to his chest, the fire from the cracks in his skin grew shorter, grew dimmer, until finally only thin red light remained on his skin's surface, moving very slowly like embers nearly spent.
Shiva stopped murmuring.
Two seconds passed, then Ash's body fell to the side among those roots, his breathing long and steady, his eyes closed.
"Hh ... it worked. A sleep spell for calming wild animals apparently works on you too," Shiva muttered quietly.
Shiva's barrier collapsed entirely, its fragments disappearing before touching the ground. Shiva lowered both hands slowly, and only then did she realize her entire arms were trembling.
Her knees gave out first, she fell to a sitting position on the branch she stood on, her back leaning against the tree trunk behind her. Her eyes looked at Ash lying below for several seconds, making sure his chest was still rising and falling.
Then her eyes closed on their own, her head fell to the side, and Shiva fell asleep on that tree branch in the middle of the dark forest, her long green hair hanging down and swaying in the cold night wind.
***
Morning light grew more visible through the gaps between tree branches in narrow strips, illuminating forest ground still wet from the night's dew.
Shiva opened her eyes, seeing the thick trunks and branches above her head. It took two seconds before her memory caught up with her body's condition, sitting propped against a large tree root on the ground.
She looked up, left, and right, a more open area at the river's edge, though still inside the forest.
A small cloud of smoke was visible not far from her, rising thinly with an appetite-stirring aroma. Beside her, the back of someone larger than most people she had ever known sat facing that small fire, silver hair visibly disheveled from behind.
Shiva tried to get up, moving her body that ached in every part. "Where are we now?"
Ash didn't answer. His hands turned the fish skewered on a stick beside the small embers, his eyes staring at the fire.
Shiva waited several seconds, then gave up and leaned back against that tree root. The sounds of the morning forest came in one by one, bird calls from above, the rustle of leaves blown by wind, the sound of water from a small river beside them.
"That was my doing, wasn't it?"
Ash's voice came out quietly, not a question directed at Shiva but more like a sentence he spoke while examining something in his own head.
Shiva furrowed her brow. "What do you mean?"
Ash didn't answer right away. His eyes moved slightly toward Shiva, then downward. "Your clothes."
Shiva followed his gaze downward, toward herself. The right shoulder of her shirt was torn wide open, the stitching unraveled from the base all the way to the sleeve. The lower part of her pants on the left side was also torn, the edges of the tear uneven like something forcibly pulled apart.
"This ... this is because," Shiva had only just opened her mouth but Ash was already speaking again.
"I've been through this before." His tone didn't change, just as flat as before, but there was something different behind it.
"When I came to my senses, my wife was already in a disheveled state. I never remember what happened before that night."
Shiva closed her mouth. That sentence wasn't meant to be answered, and she was smart enough to know that.
Ash pulled the fish from the embers, placed four skewers at the edge of a rock near the fire, then stood. He didn't look toward Shiva, but his voice came out clearly.
"Sorry." One word, brief, without pleasantries. "Don't follow me anymore."
***