After only three nights home, Dorin had to leave once again. Darma was there to see him off with all apparent sorrow, kissing him and hugging him tightly as they stood at the door.
Salles, wit them in the entryway of Dorin and Darma’s home, shook hands with Dorin and thanked him profusely for the generosity of letting him stay at his house. Dorin nodded politely saying, “Yes, yes. My wife has always been keen on supporting the Sages. She’s always taken pride in her Aresan lineage and loves Aresan cluture, even if she did end up marrying a non-Aresan like me. But, I’m happy to let her have her way in this. Besides you Sages are a good bunch. A bit over-educated, if I can be honest, but trustworthy and respectable, to be sure.”
Salles smiled uncertainty, not sure how pleased to be by this half-compliment and not really comfortably enough around Dorin to speak his mind.
Salles suggested that Darma walk her husband to the stables where Dorin had boarded his horse and then, after they stepped through the front door together, hand in hand, he remained behind, in order to give them some time alone. From the stables, she kissed her husband goodbye one last time, as he stood by his horse. He wrapped her in his arms and told her tenderly, “The thought that you’re back here waiting for me, gives me strength during those long, dull periods when I’m away from you. I just want you to remember that. I think about you daily.”
“And I think of you more than daily,” Darma coquettishly replied.
She helped her husband up in to the saddle, and they shared one last kiss before he trotted away out onto the streets.
When Darma returned to her home, she found Salles still waiting in the entryway, apparently anxious for her return.
“Was it a doleful departure?” he asked.
“It was,” Darma said, with an incongruously beaming face. “But don’t be jealous,” she said, noticing the tone of displeasure in Salles’ question, “He may be my husband and I may be devoted to him, but he is not the first man in my heart.”
“I’m not jealous,” Salles responded, averting his gaze and turning away from you. “And I can’t imagine why you would say that. How could I be the first man in your heart, a man you’ve known only for some nine days?”
“Did I say you were the first man in my heart?” she said, laughing playfully, “Maybe you’re not the one either. But then again, my husband did just say that I do love the Sages very much. So, why shouldn’t I be in love with a handsome charming Sage like you?”
Darma turned Salles towards her and took his hands in hers, edging her face towards him. She looked up into his eyes and suggested, “Why don’t we make love. Now. It’ll make you feel so much better. And, who knows? This might be your last chance. You don’t know when they’ll summon you back to the cloisters?”
Darma’s words turned out to be prophetic when early that evening Amida and Eloh appeared at the front door, both of them stooping from fatigue and eager to rest after a long day of travel.
Eloh hugged Salles tightly at his arrival, asking him, “So, young novice, have you become a man of the city now? You’ve been here so long, you must be master of the city by now?”
Amida and Salles shared a lighter hug and she merely said, “Hello Salles. Glad to see you.”
Darma, though, greeted them both with a jubilant and animated greeting, grabbing them in her arms and kissing them on the cheeks before she told them both, “Oh! So wonderful to see you, both. Especially Eloh, who it’s been far too long since I’ve seen. My, you only seem to grow more handsome as you age. I wish that were my fate. Yet, here I am. Not even thirty and my beauty already fading. Tragic to be a woman.”
Amida was forced to recount to Salles and Darma her entire ordeal with tracking the courier, being captured and held and finally being returned, while they sat over dinner. Darma could barely contain her emotion at hearing this harrowing tale and she congratulated Amida on surviving such an ordeal.
That evening, Salles, much to his displeasure, was again relegated to the windowless interior room he’d used when he first arrived with Noone. While he struggled to sleep, outside his door, the almost imperceptible sound of bare feet tiptoeing across the floor towards Darma’s room could be barely discerned from silence.
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