Their shared touches, the warmth and scent of the dun stallion’s skin.

These things were familiar in a way that made Kvothe’s heart ache; the silent answer to a question she hadn’t known to ask. And yet… Yet she could sense something different about this novel ritual. Something more than the puckers of new scars that balked and baffled her lips. Some distant corner of the chestnut’s brain anticipated tension tightening the golden skin, but instead — instead Tyr seemed to ease into the press of her lips. Softening like ice beneath the fire of her touch. And as if sharing in some unspoken connection, the Friesian’s eyes fell briefly shut, too. Of course, for Kvothe, there was no peace behind this gesture; there was only confusion. Confusion and frustration at the distant closeness of her forgotten memories.

Surely it had always been this way between them — hadn’t it? The warmth, the tenderness, the gentle longing bared openly between them. If they had loved each other then as they did now (and there was a certainty in her heart that she could not doubt), then this was only the repetition of the years’ worth of moments that they’d shared. So how could it feel different?

Why did it feel like more?

I am here, so I would assume that for now, I have won. Kvothe did not laugh again, but her lips curled with mirth even as she worked a particularly stubborn burr loose from the stallion’s mane. A smile that softened at Tyr’s touch, her slender body leaning into his with a gentle sigh. “I’m glad,” the mare answered with a playful tone that did not entirely disguise the breathless quality of her voice. “The jungle would make for a much less charming captor and companion.” She spoke the words innocently, heedless of the damage they might do: the Kvothe who stood here remembered nothing of the lies the draft male had once spoken. Nothing of the false charm that had once held her like a bird before the eyes of a snake.

When you are ready, I would like for you to meet Oswin. But what she did remember — what she did know — came more as intuition than memory. Such as the way Kvothe knew, despite the gentle softness of Tyr’s voice, how important the request that he’d made was to him. It fell far and beyond short of any command, but to the red woman — to her, that was exactly what it became. Because the part of her that remembered Tyr knew that he asked for little (out of stubbornness or pride or fear, he asked for so little), and that the effort such a request might cost him was great. Whatever else he had been in his life (all of these things beyond the wall of her memory), Tyr was the sort who would sooner give of himself than ask of others. And in that way, the two lovers — who were as different as night and day to the undiscerning eye — were more alike than any stranger could ever have guessed.

“Oswin,” Kvothe murmured softly, tasting the name for any sense of familiarity and finding none. But in matters of her absent memories, she’d decided long ago to cede her trust to Tyr. “Do I know her? Or rather, did I know her, before?” In a twist of vaguely-cruel irony, it was the familiar that she found most frightening now. Because whoever this woman would be expecting when they met, the Friesian would not — could not — be that individual. Just as she could never truly be the beloved mare that Tyr remembered.

Her doubts threatening to swallow her again, Kvothe sucked in a sharp but silent breath, burying her face in the white sanctuary of the stallion’s mane.