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On a Dark Horse	By : TarnishedArmour Category: G through L > Jericho Views: 1536 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Jericho is wholly owned by CBS and those affiliated with & responsible for the production and creation of the show. I make no profit from the use of said fandom, except warm-fuzzies from reviews.

Chapter List
- 9
- 10
- 11
A/N: Half-remembered technical specs are used here and there.
Time frame: Bombs + 8(ish), flashbacks for more than one character.
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As Aylah worked on disassembling the locomotive engine, she thought about the Jake Green. She was sure that the darkness that seemed to engulf him now hadn't been there when they were in elementary school together. She worked another section of the cowling off the car, grateful it was the covering and not load-bearing, and thought back to the day she'd first been called Silence.
Aylah sat alone at the detention table. Once again, she hadn't done her work for the day. She hadn't misbehaved or caused any trouble, but she hadn't answered the questions about the silent reading story or coloured the hidden picture math problems sheet. She could do the math, a little, but she didn't dare let anyone know she couldn't read. She was in the third grade--she was supposed to know how by now.
Then, while she sat there, no lunch and no friends, the dark-haired boy who always finished his math first was escorted to the detention table. Mrs. Gromlin had addressed the boy as Jake and told him that he would be sitting there at the table for a week for lunch and both recesses. She didn't do more than look at Aylah with that "what am I going to do with you, child," look and walk back to keep an eye on the rest of the kids.
It was the rule of the detention table that the children there did not talk. They were allowed to eat lunch. If they simply could not keep still, they could play Othello, a game that required spatial thinking skills and careful planning, but nothing else was permitted. Ever. Given that Jake Green had just earned his first lunch detention ever, something that would become common over the next few years, and that Aylah never spoke to anyone, the teacher wasn't worried about any out-of-bounds talking.
Jake had been staring down at the table, obviously upset that his father had been called and he'd have lunch detention for the week. No one bothered to call Aylah's house anymore about lunch detention. Aylah had simply watched him sit down, then turned back to her usual lunchtime occupation--watching the time tick by too quickly. Every second that took her closer to going home was unwelcome. And today she had unwanted company, too. She hoped his parents wouldn't beat him for getting in trouble, but from the way he was acting, he was obviously afraid they would.
Solitude was her best companion. Enduring the company of others was always a difficulty for her, since she knew only too well what others could do.
"Psst," Jake had whispered. "Wanna play?"
The noise of the fifty kids in the lunchroom had easily obscured the hissed question. Aylah stared at him. No one had asked her if she wanted to play the only game available to her, and several times other kids had been at the table. They'd moved far away from her, too. Seemed like Jake wasn't afraid of the class freak.
Aylah shrugged. She couldn't bring herself to speak. Her throat hurt too much from her stepfather's idea of fun. Jake took that as a yes and set up the board. Jake read the rules to her in a quiet whisper, as if knowing that she wouldn't read them herself. The complete lack of work wasn't a secret--everyone knew Aylah didn't do her work, and she hadn't since kindergarten. No one really remembered her name, no one remarked upon her frequent absences, not since her mother had come and talked to the principal about her recurring bouts of asthma. She'd never had an asthma attack in her life. When she stayed home, it was because her face was too badly bruised to go to school, since those bruises couldn't be hidden.
He put the first four pieces down, then asked her to choose her side. Aylah chose black, the reactive side. Jake went first. He put down his white piece, flipped the captured token to show white, and waited. Aylah placed a piece, then flipped the token she took to show black. They played five games during that lunch, both messing up so badly the game was hardly recognizable. But it was something to do, and nobody was yelling at them. Over the next week, they figured out how to play the game. At the end of the week, he'd whispered, "G'Bye, Silence." And so she'd gotten her name.
When Jake got in trouble again, this time for sneaking into the janitor's closet to get something--he never had said what--they played again. That week, Jake offered her half of his peanut butter sandwich. She took it, shyly, carefully watching to see if he meant it. The concerned look in his eyes as he pushed the sandwich to her made her believe that he really didn't want to tease her with the food. She ate it quickly, in small, neat bites, then set up the Othello board, an offering to continue their games. Jake had smiled, and they'd played a fair game, but they both missed some flips that were supposed to be made.
During the next four years, Jake had become her lunch partner, sometimes because he was in trouble, sometimes because he just wanted to be left alone during lunch. He got sick of Stanley sometimes, and Emily was just a pain. She was cute, but the girl never stopped talking. It didn't help that Eric, his older brother by four years, was now in his lunch classes, either. But Silence never seemed to want to talk or ask questions or compare him to the golden, perfect Eric.
One afternoon, she overheard Stanley, the class goofball, asking Jake why he sat with "that weird girl." Jake had just shaken his head and told Stanley, "Leave Silence alone. She's nice." She'd gone off then, wondering why Jake would bother to say anything good about her. Apparently, he didn't know how horrible she really was.
Aylah pulled good wires out of the exposed section and coiled them while she considered the gears, her mind flashing from those early days to another, when they had been in seventh grade.
Jake and Aylah were at the lunch detention table. Again. Jake had given her half of his lunch. Again. They were playing Othello. Again. And they finished in a tie. Again. It had become a comfortable lunch routine between them over the past four years, but Aylah's life had become increasingly worse at home. Even school wasn't a safe haven any longer, since her stepfather insisted upon picking her up every day. Where he took her and what he did with her in the hours after school, no one knew. Not even her mother.
Something in the way her stepfather treated her now told Aylah she needed to get away from here, but she was too scared to run. Today, she and Jake had tied seven times before the bell for the end of lunch. He put away the board as she carefully wiped off the table. Then, as the students and teachers filed out, ignoring the one troublemaker and the one who'd slowly become invisible, Aylah had done something strange. She touched Jake's hand. Jake's head snapped up and he stared at her, shocked. In four years, they'd never touch hands or bumped into each other or even looked at each other for very long. They'd had silent lunches and Othello.
She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. "Thanks, Jake," she'd whispered, her voice rough from her stepfather's abuse and the screaming she'd done when he'd beaten her with the buckle-end of his belt afterward. Then he'd done it to her again, and she couldn't talk normally. Her throat was bruised inside, but that wasn't enough for that man. So he'd made it an agony for her to sit, too. When she looked up, she saw her stepfather watching her. He'd come to pick her up early, for a doctor's appointment that she knew she didn't really have. From the look in his eyes, she dreaded the time to come. She'd left with her stepfather, letting Jake find his own way back to class. It was the last time she'd seen him. She'd been fourteen and Jake, thirteen.
That afternoon, the ride to the cabin had been filled with accusations of whoring around, that she was a slut, like her mother. That she was worth nothing but what she had between her legs--and that wasn't enough to earn her room and board anymore. She'd ruined his plans for her. That afternoon, her stepfather had nearly killed her. He'd left her for a while, unconscious and bleeding on the floor next to the bed. It was after dark, and he wouldn't be back until her mother was in bed and asleep. That was the routine. If her mother knew what he was doing, she didn't seem to care. Her mother was in love with the monster. From the time she'd been three, Aylah had learned that a woman's love for a man was evil. Horrible. She wanted nothing to do with it. She knew the cost too well.
Disobedient and desperate, she'd dragged her broken body to her clothes. He never bothered to take those, since he knew he she wouldn't disobey him. But this time, the threats of further violence hadn't worked. She pulled the clothing on over her open wounds, not caring that she was bleeding through the thin material. Her shoes went on her feet without socks, and oh, they hurt. He'd whipped her feet today, used his cigarettes to burn her heels. Stumbling and falling from the agony in her feet, she managed an uneven, lurching crawl through the woods and fields to the highway.
When the headlights had picked her out, she knew that it was him. Back. And he'd kill her. She welcomed the thought of death. At least then the pain would end. Her eyes were nearly swollen shut from punches he'd given her. Her body ached like it never had before. She let her eyes finish closing and waited for him to destroy the last thing she had.
Instead, she heard a man's voice, rough and low, asking what had happened. She couldn't even cough in reply. Her voice was gone. He picked her up carefully, and before she blacked out from the agony of his hands on her back, she smelled the most wonderful scent in the world. It was a combination of leather, sweat, engine grease and motor oil, and an aftershave she later learned was called British Leather. The voice drifted into her hazed return to consciousness, soft and gravelly. Whoever this man was, she hoped he wasn't like her stepfather, but she knew he probably was.
Heather and Aylah only stopped working on the engine when even the moonlight was gone. By then, the men had figured out how to take the boxcars apart without having to cut sheets from the sides first. The ends were generally welded, a few of the specialty cars having rivets instead, and the rooves of the cars were attached to the first side they tipped off the train. Because most of the cars were single-sheet, lightweight steel in sheets from 60-80 feet in length, depending upon the age of the car, it wasn't hard to tip the sheets out to lie on either side of the tracks. After the sides and roof were off, it was simplicity itself to pop the floor up and to one side. The axles were held in place in by the weight of the car. Even though the axles were incredibly heavy steel composites, they weren't held in place by anything more than gravity. The gearboxes and big wheels were pushed off onto the grass on either side of the tracks, and they moved to the next car.
The men had finished over forty cars in the last ten hours, and the last one was about to have its wheels tipped off the tracks before they called it a night. Headlights intruded on Aylah's vision, and she felt that odd stab of hope and terror again. If it hadn't been for the memories, she'd've simply accepted that someone was coming and it wasn't--couldn't be--her stepfather. Being back in Jericho, being part of the town again, had done a number on her confidence. Jonah had taught her to hide any fear, but she still felt it. She closed her eyes and didn't see Heather waving to the man who stepped out of the car and put his hands on his hips, annoyed that he'd had to track his men down after he'd gotten out of the meeting.
*****
After such a pleasant end to what could've become a bout of accusations and recriminations, Jonah had been more than a bit annoyed that his men were gone, leaving Stevie to mind the office. Calmly, he'd questioned the man, knowing that his anger at something Stevie hadn't done would only confuse the man. Had Stevie been a part of this madness, he'd've paid the price. Since he'd only been ordered by the others to stay put and monitor the radios, Jonah saved his irritation for those who deserved it.
He stalked over to where Aylah was standing, ignoring him. He started to snap at her, but caught the expression on her face. That look hadn't been there in years, and he hated seeing it now. Jonah bit his tongue and waited for her to acknowledge something outside of her own mind. He saw her nostrils flare and her shoulders relax, just as Heather bounced over to him like a puppy.
"We figured out how to move the train, Jonah!" the perky brunette said, her voice proclaiming the exhaustion she felt. "And we get the added benefit of metal that can be used, oh, dozens of ways--and that's without modification!"
Jonah nodded, wondering which one of the two women had come up with this bright idea. He moved closer to Aylah, and finally asked, "And what if we could get the engine back in service?"
He was surprised when Aylah slid her arms around him and buried her face in his neck, inhaling that comforting scent again. She hadn't done that in years, either. She wasn't the one who replied, even though Jonah had specifically asked her the question.
"Not possible," Heather said. "We took the time to look it over, and, even if the engine had zero problems, there's no way we could get the wheels back in place on the track. We just don't have the equipment, and, if we did, the ground here is too soft to support the weight of the crane that would have to be used. These tracks are on a heavy gravel bed, which is the only reason they're still useable. The car--" she cleared her throat and tried not to remember what the occupants of the sedan had left behind them. "The car was totalled, too. We had it hauled back to the garage to be stripped down there. Besides, what are we going to use boxcars for? If we need the extra storage for anything, we can put them back together, but the sheer size will limit where we can put them without cutting the steel." Heather shrugged, pretending she didn't see Aylah curling into Jonah. "But the good news is that we have all the parts, still, so we can rebuild the things if it turns out we need to."
Jonah sighed. Well, since Perkins and the kid from the neighbourhood were going to look over their tiny railyard and what was left of Jericho's trains anyway, if they decided they could use a car or two, they'd deal with it then. By then, though, they should have more people who knew how to weld properly, so none of his group would be needed there, unless it was to supervise construction.
"All right. It's late enough that we'll head back for the night." His arms were wrapped around Aylah, his cheek against her hair. He was very careful not to make their pose a big deal. "Did you drive?" he asked Heather.
"No, Aylah drove me in her car." Heather pointed to the car Jonah had given Aylah when she'd gone off to college. The 1972 Mustang was still in good shape. Of course, it was Aylah, so she'd kept the damned thing, even if it was old enough to be a moneypit. Why? Because he'd given it to her. There were no limits on what she could and couldn't do with it, but she'd keep it until the damned thing rusted away, because it had been his. Same as Jake had kept the RoadRunner. Well, until Jonah had retrieved it from where Jake had had to leave it after his wreck. Leon and Billy had fixed the windows and the rear quarterpanel, checked over and repaired everything that had been affected. Jonah was taking care of the engine, when he could.
Jonah took the keys from Aylah's coat pocket and handed them to Heather. "Here. Drive home and come back in the morning. You can bring a transport truck out here and start loading these parts you've got into crates. We'll sort it all later."
Heather took the keys and said goodnight, getting a nod from Jonah in return. Aylah mumbled something in reply, but neither one of them caught it. Before dealing with Aylah, he gave a sharp whistle to the men who were putting away their tools. Noah came over, noticing how Jonah held his woman. Eyes concerned, he flicked his gaze from Aylah to the boss. Jonah gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head and told Noah where he wanted the sheet metal taken, how he wanted it organized. Noah nodded. Jonah knew he'd take care of it, relieved that the man didn't ask anything about Aylah.
Finally, Jonah and Aylah were left alone at the half-open engine and partially dismembered train.
"So what's this all about?" his voice gentle in spite of the words. He wasn't exactly good with words in situations like this.
"Got to remembering while I worked. Not easy being back, Jonah," she mumbled, her voice muffled by his collar and neck. Jonah didn't say anything for a long time. He just held her, remembering the run into the hospital in Rogue River. Something about where he found her had made him think taking her to Jericho's clinic wasn't a good idea. He'd been right. That instinct would raise again around her, and it wouldn't the first time he'd wished he'd been wrong about her.
He'd been headed for a midnight meeting in Rogue River. One of his contacts said that the bypass was a sure thing, which meant he'd finally be able to get rid of some of the people he'd been keeping out of Jericho for the last fifteen years. Hell with the town--he didn't want these people anywhere near his wife, later expanded to include his kids. If people in Jericho thought he was scary, they'd obviously never met the people who'd been steadily taking over transport in Oklahoma and southern Kansas. They had a toehold in Wichita, but so long as Jericho stayed unimportant, his kids were safe. It was his work of the last several years to make Jericho seem like a town that wanted to be as big as Mayberry. Hell, if he could, he'd make Dogpatch, U.S.A. look like a booming metropolis when compared to his hometown.
What was that? He slowed, pulling to the shoulder of the road. What the--it was a person. Young. He threw himself out of the car and slid down the banking to the still form. Was he dead? He looked at the face, no help. The bruising was as bad as he'd ever seen. The slim neck and delicately flaring hips made him suck in his breath.
Not a male--a girl. About Emily's age. Unconsciously, he said a quick prayer. Let it not be his baby girl. He checked her hair and shuddered with relief. No, this wasn't Em. He spoke, keeping his voice low and careful. She'd not responded at all. When he picked her up, he heard a tiny whimper, then nothing. He kept talking to her, didn't even know what he was saying, as he carried her to the car and put her in the passenger's seat. He was driving the RoadRunner, his favourite car for night trips to other towns. The power of the engine was enough that he could whip from here to Rogue River within an hour and a half. Taking the back roads, it was even shorter.
His hands felt wet. He looked down at his hands and cursed. The girl was a bloody mess. In seconds he was in the car and forgetting he'd ever heard the words speed and limit together. He talked to her constantly, tried to keep track of her pulse. Thin, unsteady--and she was lapsing in and out of consciousness.
"Hold on, kid. Hold on. We'll be there soon. Gotta stay with me kid. Stay with me." He repeated those words over and over, echoing what he'd told another soldier in Vietnam. Tonight, that episode seemed like yesterday, not nearly twenty years ago. His hands were covered in blood--he could smell it. Metallic, sticky-sweet, like rotting hamburger meat.
He parked in the Ambulances Only zone and pulled her out of the car, ignoring the irate EMT who'd started yelling at him. Carrying her gently as he could, he got the door open and called for the doctors at the top of his voice. Men and women came running to see what had caused such a commotion.
"Take her--she's hurt. Bad. Found her on the road." The urgency in his voice was not what they responded to. One look at the bloody mess in front of them got the night crew moving. One woman picked up a telephone and started calling the best trauma surgeon in the city. That man had been Doc Hallowell.
"What's her name? Blood type?" the charge nurse belted out, ignoring the other shouts around the ER for different things.
"Don't know. She's been in and out of consciousness. Lost a lot of blood--" his voice quit working. "Come on kid--wake up!" he rasped as her weight changed in his arms. He knew that feeling. She was giving up. "Don't give up kid…come on…"
A gurney was brought in and Jonah put her down on it, watching as she shifted in pain as her back touched the bedding. The nurse caught it also and told the others to help shift her onto her side. The silent girl actually moaned as they rolled her onto her dislocated shoulder. The other arm was more obviously injured, a compound fracture showing in the way her arm bent in three directions.
Jonah forgot the blood on his hands and ran one hand through his hair. "Found her less than an hour ago. Roadside. No sign of a vehicle--looked like she crawled." His words had been directed to the room at large. He couldn't do this. He had to tell them he hadn't done it. The man shivered, an unfamiliar feeling snaking through him. He couldn't name it.
"We'll take it from here. Please," another nurse said as they wheeled the girl into surgery, "let us take her. We can help her." He didn't respond, just tried to follow the girl. What was it he'd heard in Saigon? If you save someone's life, you're responsible for them forever? He hadn't understood it then, but it was starting to sink in. "Sir, you can't go back there. We need to help her." Hands on his chest, pushing him to a chair. "Tell us what you know. Please. It's the best thing you can do."
Something about the nurse's voice brought him back from wherever he had been to the emergency entrance. He nodded, then began to tell her what he'd noticed about the girl's injuries. He'd learned to assess injuries in prison, and in his secondary occupation as town badass.
"Fists--caused the bruising on her face. Burns, old ones, on her arms. Wrists have rings cut into them--like handcuffs were too tight on her. Back is bloody, shirt is soaked through. Left arm is probably broken, but can't tell. It's hurt, for sure. Right arm definitely broken--at least two places. No bleeding from her head, except the cut on her cheek." He continued the catalogue of what he had seen in the car.
"Are you her parent? Guardian?" The voice was calm, but urgent.
"No," he said, then he looked at the nurse for the first time, "but damned if whoever she was living with didn't do this to her." That was what he had felt. Sickness that one person could do this to a relative, to kin.
"How can you know that?" the nurse asked, surprised at the accusation.
"Scars on her arms--saw them, but didn't recognize them." He took the nurse's arm in his hand. "Listen to me. If anyone comes in here looking for her, her name is Sally Prowse. I am her uncle and legal guardian. No one, not even her doctor, is allowed to see her without me.No one. Not even the nurses. Every time she has someone in that room, there will be at least one other person there."
The nurse shook her head. "I can't guarantee that--"
Jonah's eyes grew hard. "Then let me put it this way--whatever happens to her here, happens to you. If someone--anyone--comes and hurts her, talks to her, takes her out of here--you answer for it. When I'm not here, she's you're responsibility. Are we clear?"
The nurse paled. She'd been working this unit for years, but she'd never seen or heard of anything this bad, not even from the worst wrecks. And to think that this had been done to her deliberately--she nodded.
"We're clear," she replied, her voice shaky.
"Jeanette! We need O+, stat!" came the call from the ER. She started to move and Jonah released her arm. He'd call the office and tell them he'd be gone for a few days. Stevens wasn't an idiot, neither was Cale. They'd manage to get things done at the mine without him. Besides, he'd already taken what he'd needed for graft for the month. Between the bypass and the guys from out of town looking for better things, the tiny bit he had for them would be all he needed to get rid of them for good.
Another nurse came in and offered him the use of the ER shower and a change of clothes, hospital scrubs. That's when he looked down and saw the blood all over him. He shuddered and accepted it. Then, just before he showered and changed, he called his contact, told him they'd meet in the morning at the hospital cafeteria He spent the longest night in recent memory waiting in the chair.
The next morning after his meeting, he found out the extent of her bleeding and non-bleeding injuries. The doctors and nurses also looked a bit green under their exhaustion. After he was told by a stuttering, pale nurse what else the man or even men had done to her, he went into the men's room and threw up everything he'd managed to choke down at his breakfast meeting.
He ached for the girl, a sympathetic reaction he'd not had in ages, but the one thought that kept him going was simple: Thank God it wasn't Emily.
She'd been able to tell them her name three days after he'd found her. Her eyes were still bandaged, her left arm was in a cast, her right in a sling, her face still horribly swelled. She was on her back on the type of mattress they used for burn patients, to allow as little contact as possible to reach her back and help her heal. Every time he came in to see her, he noticed that she seemed to recognize him before he even spoke. It wasn't until she finally was able to speak and tell her name that he realized how. His scent. Her nose twitched a bit when she heard the door to her room open. When it was Jonah, she seemed to relax and would even touch his hand, something he found remarkable after what she'd endured.
Jonah had spent a lot of his time in Rogue River over the next few months. Somehow, he'd managed to pay the medical bills, get himself named as her guardian ad litem despite his record, and then take her to someone he knew would help her heal. If she could.
Two weeks after learning her name, she was well enough to sit up and visit with him when he came by. What had become an ordinary afternoon included Jonah stopping in to see her before going home, if he could, or calling her, if he couldn't. He'd managed to change his schedule so that he could be in Rogue River more often. This ordinary Thursday had been the first time he'd been by in three days, and he walked into the room to see her pushing her dinner around on her plate and crying.
"What's wrong, kid?" he asked, knowing she wasn't comfortable with being called Aylah yet. She'd asked him not to call her by her name right now, and he'd agreed. So he called her kid. It worked for both of them.
"The nurses were checking the last wounds on my back today. I can't feel them, I'm on so many pills…" she sniffled, then continued. "I don't know how healed I really am, and they told me I was healing up nicely. That I'd be back to my pretty self in no time." Wounded eyes looked up at Jonah. "I'm not pretty, Jonah. I can't be with all these scars. I know all of the marks, and I know better. She said the scars weren't bad on my back, but I know better. I know. If they weren't bad, I'd be healed by now, and they're still changing the dressings. The doctor just took some stitches out yesterday…" Her voice, stronger and richer now that she wasn't being used that way, too, broke on the last word and the tears fell down. He watched as she cried as she'd endured the pain in the car--silently.
"I'll get one of them to come in and tell you the truth, kid, if you want," he offered. "I'll even stay for it."
"I…I'd rather have you tell me." She didn't look at him, just pushed the food around with her fork and let the tears fall. "You haven't lied to me yet."
Even when it hurt her to hear it, and him to tell it, he'd told her the truth. The last time he'd been there, the doctors had been worried about telling her the consequences of the abuse she'd suffered, so they'd told Jonah. Fifteen minutes and three cigarettes later, a futile effort to calm down some, he'd walked into her room and told her the truth. She couldn't have children, the damage was too extensive. If she ever did try to have a child, chances were she'd miscarry within the first two months. She'd been so surprised that she'd answered him back just as honestly. She never wanted children.
"Okay, kid. If you really want to know, I'll tell you. But you're going to eat first," he said, his voice gentlely insistent. "You may not like it, but you need it to heal." Her response had been a sigh, then she ate most of what had been brought to her. Afterward, she'd leaned forward as far as she could and asked Jonah to check her scars and tell her the truth.
"No, kid," he said softly, "you're right. You'll never be conventionally pretty. These are going to be bad, and they may never fade. Especially this one," he brushed the healed skin to one side of the worst wound. She'd gotten him to help her stand, and he'd checked the rest of her aft side. "Same for the rest." She nodded, and got back into her bed.
"I knew it. I know better than to believe I could be beautiful." Her voice was calm, but her eyes showed that the damage she'd endured physically had also been engraved on her mind.
"Would you call me handsome?" he asked, not fishing for a compliment, but to get her out of this funk. "Honestly?"
She looked at him, carefully considering the question. "No, not in the movie-star ways. But…you're strong. You don't have to be handsome."
Jonah smiled. He hadn't had to lead her after all. "My point, kid, is that pretty people tend to fall apart when something happens that threatens the secure place they've made with that physical beauty. I've seen it more than once. I married a pretty woman, but she wasn't strong enough to stay by me when everything went bad." The golden band on his left hand had stayed there all these years. He wasn't sure he could take it off, no matter how tainted that relationship had become. He loved Sylvia. A golden ring was all he had left of his marriage. He looked at her. "Here's the difference between you and the pretty little things that everyone admires: You are a survivor. You can endure. You are strong." He smiled.
"Strong girls aren't beautiful," she said, thinking of the girls she'd heard everyone talking about. They were all lovely, slender little things, with flaring hips and wild hair. They were nothing like her.
Jonah shook his head. "Strength is the only beauty, Aylah. Strength and will. Remember that and ignore anyone who says otherwise."
After a long while standing together, Aylah pulled back from his arms. They didn't have to speak to understand that it was time for them to return home, to Jonah's home. Even though they went to bed, even talked about the various things that had occurred during the day, Jonah's thought kept returning to those days when he'd been her only source of hope.
Given the grim circumstances they were facing, he hoped that the years since then had given her the strength to carry on without him. As it was, tonight's reaction wasn't reassuring.
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On a Dark Horse