#i tend to blame it on the 'well of course you do. the author wont let you do otherwise cuz comphet | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tenspontaneite · 5 years ago

Text

Peace Is A Journey (Chapter 11/?)

In which Claudia and Soren contemplate weather, General Amaya becomes a folk hero, and Callum tries to wrap his head around the proceedings of a very eventful day.

(Chapter length: ~14k. Ao3 link)

Chapter warnings: Progression of permanent damage to a limb.

Spoilers for some s3 information pertaining to the Dragonguard and implications about Zym’s egg.

---

Something hit him on the cheek, not far from his eye; Soren flinched, and raised a hand to feel it. A droplet of water, trailing down his skin.

He looked up at the sky, stilling his horse, and received three more raindrops to the face. “Well, isn’t that just great.” He said, sourly, as Claudia stopped as well, her horse settling alongside his.

She followed his gaze, stared upwards, and took a raindrop directly to the eye. She made a surprised and vaguely alarmed snorting noise, rubbing at the eye in question, and grimaced a little. “….yyyeaaah,” She sighed, drawing the word out until it was heavy with resignation. “That’s a problem.”

“That’s rain.” Soren said, after stopping to whistle sharply to command the dogs ahead to stop.

Claudia sighed. “Yep.”

“That’s definitely rain.”

“I noticed, Soren.”

He glared at her. “We’re going to lose the trail.” He emphasised, as if holding her personally responsible for the unfortunate weather. He was kind of tempted to, honestly. Surely there was some sort of creepy dark magic thing she could do to mess with the weather?

She pursed her lips, and for whatever reason, looked up beyond the treeline to the looming silhouettes of the mountains. “Probably.” She admitted. “But for now, let’s follow it for as long as we can, until the dogs lose the trail.”

“And then what?” He demanded, restraining the urge to cross his arms if only because he needed at least one hand on the reins.

“And then, we go for plan B.” She said, eyes still fixed on the mountains. One of her hands fluttered over to rest on her satchel of magic-things, almost unthinkingly. “…There’s a town near here, I think. As long as the trail doesn’t go the completely wrong way, we can stop by and pick up some supplies. We’ll definitely need it.”

Soren frowned at her. “That really doesn’t sound like anything good.”

Claudia made a dismissive sort of pssh noise, and then spurred her horse back into a walk. “It’s nothing you’ll hate, don’t worry.”

“That’s really not-“

“Just move, Soren, until the rain completely wrecks the scent trail. Then we’ll talk about mountain-climbing.”

He blinked. Oh, right, she’d mentioned that before, hadn’t she? He shrugged, and whistled for the dogs again. Well trained and eager, they approached with tails wagging to weave between his and Claudia’s horses, eyes bright and intelligent. He smiled at them, and issued commands with a few more well-placed whistles, regretting that he was too high up on his horse to pat them. They responded quickly to the command and went on ahead to keep tracking, like the good dogs they were.

Following a trail for days on end was incredibly boring, but the dogs were definitely a bright spot. Being a Crownguard didn’t usually leave all that much time to spend with any animals other than horses, and it was usually someone else who took care of the horses at the end of the day. Not on this trip, though. He’d been brushing down and tending to both of their horses for the days of their pursuit so far, which he had found was just the thing to do to take his mind off…other things. Things Dad said he needed to do, which Soren really didn’t know if he could follow through on.

With a twinge of regret – for a second, Soren hoped they’d lose the trail. The rain was almost a relief, because…well, he couldn’t be blamed for what nature did, right? If they lost the trail because of rain, and couldn’t catch up to the princes…well, dad couldn’t really hold that against him, right? …Right?

…But Claudia had her dark magic things, so…the trail wouldn’t stay lost. He wasn’t sure whether to consider that a good thing or a bad thing. He didn’t want to disappoint Dad. But…

Soren thought of doing the right thing, and looked ahead, brow furrowed. The dogs were barking and sniffing, looking up to wait for the horses to catch up to them before running on again. Their mouths were open with tongues lolling around their doggy grins, utterly full of enthusiasm and cheer for the tasks ahead of them, and that did make him feel a little better.

The journey mostly sucked, and so did thinking, but at least the dogs were good.

---

The consecration was not well-attended. How could it be, when Amaya had announced her intentions to Opeli mere hours before? Gren was there, of course, though he wouldn’t be translating for her vows – they were for Amaya and Lady Justice alone, or so said the Priestess of Paragons. And what the Priestess of Paragons said, apparently, was how things would be.

Despite the short notice, there was still something of an audience, including a number of her unit. As soon as the word had spread, as it was wont to in a city full of gossiping guards with nothing better to do, she’d accumulated an entourage of soldiers who all of a sudden needed far more input and confirmation from her than usual, all full of a barely-restrained curiosity and eagerness that they probably thought they were successfully hiding. In the end she rolled her eyes, announced the time of the ceremony, and gave leave for anyone not on duty to attend.

Viren had come, too, though Paragons only knew how he’d heard. None of the other Councillors had heard, or they’d not have missed it for the world – even if they didn’t actually care about Lady Justice one way or another, something like the consecration of a new Justiciar was significant enough that they’d probably get a lot of mileage out of it at diplomatic meetings. It probably made good political conversation material…and Paragons wept, Amaya was glad that her job involved more battle and military tactics than political intrigue.

Or, well, it had. This consecration did, more or less, represent her taking something of a leave from her official duties as a general.

In any case, Viren had found his way to the Hall of Paragons for the event, which somehow didn’t surprise her in the least. He always did seem to find a way to know of everything significant that happened within the city limits. The man had seated himself in a row behind all of the soldiers who’d arrived first, calm and cool and collected as always, and she wondered, briefly, if it rankled him to sit behind people so much lower in status than himself.

“General Amaya.” Opeli murmured to her, turning to allow her to see the words. The two of them, plus the attendants, lingered in the archway that opened from the antechamber to the main hall. “Are you ready?”

Amaya shot her a look. If she thought the Priestess would understand it, she might have said, “If I wasn’t, after all this fussing over the ceremonial articles, I’d be very concerned.” Instead, she allowed the ascension of her eyebrow to do the talking, and watched the greatest religious authority in Katolis restraining a laugh.

The amusement reached Opeli’s lips, regardless, her smile slanting upwards at the edges. “Come.” She said, and beckoned her forwards. Amaya inclined her head, and moved into the light.

She wore her armour and her shield, of course, but the ceremonial adornments as well. The sword was her own, though it had been polished to a gleam, and was now carried at her side by an attendant robed fully in white, the metal shining from a cloak of navy velvet. Had she not needed her hands to make the vows, she might have carried the golden scales; instead, she was draped in a shimmering banner, royal-blue embroidered with gleaming gold, the symbol of those same scales shining in the candle-flames. Carefully, another attendant arranged the banner over her shoulder as she stopped at the podium and fell to one knee before Opeli.

The congregation was arrayed in the Hall, and rustled in a thousand metallic murmurs of armour-plating as she settled. One attendant righted the banner, the other offered her the sword; solemnly, Amaya settled it on the stone at her feet.

For a moment, she looked out at the hall – at the congregation – and felt the gravity of the moment settle on her shoulders with a hint of religious awe. She’d never been much for Paragon worship, herself, and thought that most of the commonfolk most besotted with it seemed to miss the point of the faith entirely. But, even so…the sight of the long hall lined with grand statues was undeniably impressive. Something about the whole picture of the place – morning light filtering through the mural-windows of coloured glass in the stone-hewn walls, ceremonial flames and candles lit along every foot of stone, the hushed and reverent quiet – it had a potent atmosphere. Potent enough to move even her.

The hall had been draped in Justice’s colours for the consecration. Blue and gold; almost the same shades that Amaya had been wearing already for years. If she were a more superstitious woman, she’d almost think it fateful. Instead, she turned the thought aside, and returned her attention to the Priestess of Paragons.

The attendants receded; Opeli turned to address the congregation.

Protocol dictated that Amaya ought to keep her eyes fixed on the sword at her feet. But at this angle, she had little hope of seeing anything that Opeli said, so she glanced up through her eyelashes, every so often, to see Gren signing subtly along. She caught snatches of the grandiosity, phrases like ‘pledges herself to the service of Justice’, and ‘as the sword is to represent the swiftness and the sharpness of a fitting verdict’, and Amaya assumed the symbology of the other two articles was discussed as well, but she didn’t manage to catch that.

In the end, Opeli turned back to her, and took a strip of white fabric in her hands. That was the signal she’d been waiting on: Amaya looked up, and watched her implacably as she spoke.

“You are Amaya, called the Shield, who come here today to be consecrated in the name of Lady Justice, that you might act with Her will, and speak Her truths, and mete out Her sacred justice where you find it is needed.”

Amaya’s part in this was, for the most part, marvellously redundant. It felt more sacrilegious than usual, to sit here at the podium and think the trappings of ceremony pointless, but her opinion remained: her vows seemed largely redundant when Opeli was saying it all anyway. All she did was repeat the Priestess’ words back at her, fingers careful, signing “I am Amaya, called the Shield, and I come here to be consecrated in the name of Lady Justice. I will act with her will, and speak her truths, and mete out her sacred justice where I find it needed.”

Opeli nodded, satisfied, as if she’d understood a word of it. Amaya could have been saying ‘I intend to prance around farmsteads waving this banner and clanging loudly on my shield to wake the goats’, for all she’d know.

Well. She thought Opeli did have a basic vocabulary of sign, but…even so. She could hardly be understanding enough to ensure the vows were valid. It was a matter of trust, she supposed. And, really, if Opeli couldn’t trust the person she was consecrating to take it seriously, she probably shouldn’t be consecrating them in the first place.

“I call on you to administer justice swiftly, when it must be done, and to neither flinch nor hesitate in your duty.” Opeli said, to evoke the Sword. “I call on you to weigh the crimes and the harm that a person may wreak against their character, their circumstance, and aught else that may drive them.” The Scales. “I call on you to blind yourself to that which drives you, and that which you think, and that which you have been raised to know, that you might judge as does Lady Justice: without bias, without discrimination, and without any sour influence that might cloud your sacred judgement.” The Blindfold, the representation of which was still held in Opeli’s hands.

Traditionally, Amaya knew, the blindfold would have already been tied around her eyes. But then she wouldn’t know when she was being spoken to, or when she was meant to speak herself. She had an inkling that she was probably the first deaf Justiciar yet. Certainly there had been amputee Justiciars – at least one, since every self-respecting child in the Pentarchy had been raised with the stories of Old Heartwood and his outlandish Xadian prosthetic – but if there’d been others who were deaf, she’d not heard of them.

Opeli had apologised to her, beforehand. Said she’d normally have devised a full alternative ceremony that accommodated her deafness, but that it was a little short notice. Apparently, given the symbolism writ in every detail of the consecration, there had to be careful and lengthy thought given to the crafting of a variant ceremony, and since Amaya had to leave more or less the instant this was done….well, there just wasn’t time. It wasn’t ideal, but it was enough for her. Tailored ceremony or not, she’d become a Justiciar today.

Amaya recalled, at once, just how many historical Justiciars were folk heroes, and had to restrain a grimace. If there was any Justice in the world, she’d never suffer such a fate.

Amaya snapped herself back to attention at the indicative tap of Opeli’s finger, her signal to speak, and spared a moment to be glad she’d practiced this a few times to memorise it. Carefully, she shaped her fingers and prepared to repeat the Priestess’ whole spiel back at her…and paused, just for a second, to run her mind over her reservations. As much as she’d never been much of a good religious woman, Justiciars were important. They were sacred. The respect was ingrained into her bones, part of a cultural and moral heritage that went deeper than religion alone could signify. Amaya could not, in good conscience, speak these final vows if she didn’t mean it.

So maybe, no matter how she liked to mock a lengthy and contrived ceremony, there was some point to it after all.

The swift administration of justice wouldn’t be a problem; Amaya had ever been talented with a broadsword. The weighing of harm…that was harder. That was the sort of thing the law officials were meant to train for – the sort of thing Justiciars were meant to train for. She had a better awareness of the Law than most every other soldier in the Pentarchy, due to her rank and familial connections, but even so…she still doubted, very much, that it was a good enough substitute for the decades of cross-discipline training a Justiciar-aspirant usually undertook before they were consecrated.

Still, she could mostly accept that Opeli knew better than she did. Opeli was devout. She believed in the Paragons, in the original teachings of Paragonism – that it was the duty of every living person to embody the best of themselves, and be truest to their greatest virtues, and act as if they themselves had a Paragon within them, waiting to be named. Opeli believed in the concept of Justiciars – believed that Amaya could and should open herself up to become a true vessel of virtue, and act in the world as an extension of Justice herself. And if Opeli believed so strongly, who was Amaya to question it?

Except she had to. Because how could she ever think herself capable of the Blindfold?

She was hunting an elf that might, or might not, have killed her nephews. Her boys. Sarai’s sons. How could she possibly approach objectivity in a matter so horrifically, viciously personal? She thought she’d be hard-pressed not to cleave the assassin in two the moment she saw her, no matter her guilt, no matter the weighing of the harm. How could she possibly stay her blade from a creature like that?

…Opeli trusted her as a Justiciar, which Amaya thought she had good reason to doubt. Opeli did not know her all that well, after all.

But Gren had faith in her, too, and that meant a great deal more.

She exhaled, and raised her hands to speak the vows.

She swore to wield the Sword. She swore to use the Scales as she ought. She swore, albeit falteringly, to wear the Blindfold.

Opeli reached out then and tied the ridiculous symbolic strip of fabric around her eyes. From then on, Amaya had only her expectations and her remaining senses to go on. Her heartbeat resounded steadily beneath her skin eight times before Opeli’s fingers touched her brow, cool with the wet ashes she painted there. The symbol of the Scales. She withdrew, and then for a while, there was little to go on.

She had an idea of what Opeli was saying, of course, and Gren would retell it for her later. The Priestess of Paragons accepted her vows, and declared her Justiciar until such a time as she abdicated or until she died. She was ostensibly informed that, should she ever break her sacred oaths, the title and the honour would be stripped from her, and she would never again be welcome in a house of Paragons, nor be permitted to speak in a court of law, nor have the right to sit in authority over any other soul than her own; she would be named across the kingdoms as a barren thing, honourless and forsworn, to wander in the empty and cursed and soulless way that all oathbreakers must do.

Which, she supposed, gave her some extra incentive to not lose her mind at the first glimpse of an elven murderess. There were stories about oathbreakers, too – and none of them good.

The blindfold was lifted from her eyes, all the candle-flame of the hall blurring back into view. Opeli smiled, and looped the thing twice around the hand that held the sword. “Rise, Justiciar, and go forth.” She said, and stepped back, clasping a hand to her chest: respect of the Priestess of Paragons to an agent of the divine. Behind her, the congregation rose, and did likewise, heads bowed. If Amaya were the type to be easily embarrassed, it might have been mortifying. Instead, she only bowed her head in turn, and took the holy articles with her as she left, striding down the Hall.

Behind her, Gren and a few of her Battalion peeled off from the congregation, and followed. Gren caught up with her not long before they reached the doors, but didn’t speak until they were outside, stepping out of the side of the Valley that the Hall of Paragons had been excavated from.

She eyed the other end of the Valley, briefly, where her sister’s grave presided. But there was no time for that, and she turned to stride the other way.

“Congratulations.” Gren said to her, with his hands, as they walked. “How do you feel?”

She considered it. “Tired and ready to get moving.” She decided, after a moment, and rolled her eyes at the way his face fell. “I also have an uncomfortable feeling that this is going to get a song written about me.”

“Another one, you mean?” Gren inquired, with a very specific sort of innocent expression that meant he was teasing her. “Didn’t the one near the border praise you as being an embodiment of Valor?”

She made a rude gesture at him. “Seems like I can’t go a year without tripping over a Paragon these days.” She said, though it felt a little sacrilegious to say it while still wearing the ceremonial pieces. “Someone will be trying to consign me to Mercy next, I’m sure.”

Gren’s lips pursed as he thought. His hands moved the next moment, saying “Fortitude, I’d think. I’ve already heard people muttering about that on the long marches.”

She sighed. “Of course.” She made sure to sign it with all the weary emphasis she could, because really. “Better than Mercy, at any rate.”

He offered a very pointed look at the Blindfold still looped around her arm, but said nothing. Still, the lack of comment felt cheeky, in that very characteristically Gren way, where he’d never so much as think of saying anything impolite, but the implication…

Amaya shook her head at him, just a little fondly, and gestured for them to hurry up. If they were going to get moving this afternoon, it had to be soon.

---

After what had happened – what Ezran had done – it felt utterly bizarre to set out walking again.

It was so…normal. Routine. They fell into the familiar rhythm of traversing unpleasantly steep slopes, and the increasingly-familiar menial vagaries of travel. Callum’s shoulder grew sore again from the strap digging into it, the items in his pack conspired to dig into his spine in the most uncomfortable ways possible, and his legs resumed their perpetual complaints of ill-treatment. It was unspeakably weird to keep climbing and keep walking as though everything was normal, as though nothing had changed, when – less than an hour ago – his little brother and an unhatched dragon had worked a miracle.

He kept looking at Rayla, and her hand, not quite able to make himself believe in what had actually happened. It was so…surreal. This morning he’d woken from nightmares, not long after that he’d been fighting off panic with what seemed like every breath, and now…

Now, they were…walking.

The bewilderment of it hadn’t quite worn off. Neither had the part of him that was coiled and anxious, waiting for disaster to strike, waiting for time to run out. He could still feel the tension of it in the pit of his gut, though so much lighter than it had been before. He kept waiting for something to go wrong. For something to change. But…

Despite everything, against all odds…it had happened. A miracle.

That thought, whenever it arose, made him stare back at his brother again, as if seeing him for the first time. It was just…Ezran. His little brother. A weird kid, true, but – who could have predicted he’d pull something like that out of nowhere? Except, he supposed, it wasn’t exactly out of nowhere, he’d seen the way he’d behaved with that egg, after all.

It seemed that no matter what he looked at, he was doomed to bewilderment. There was Rayla and her miraculously-probably-saved-hand, there was Ezran and his improbable dragon-channelling talent, there was the increasingly stark and mountainous terrain that he had ascended himself, so far away from home…

It was all so bizarre he pinched himself once or twice along the way, just to make sure it wasn’t all some crazy dream. And even that couldn’t dispel the surreality of everything.

Part of him kept wanting to stop and have another hysterical moment or ten to try to come to terms with everything that happened, but Rayla was still walking and Ezran was still walking so that meant he was walking as well, even though everything was crazy and he had no idea what was going on anymore-

“Stop that.” Rayla told him, abruptly, the words such a shock in the midst of his preoccupation that he stopped and nearly tripped over a rock. Ez stopped as well, and tilted his head in their direction, curious.

“…Er, what?” He managed, after a second.

She shrugged, reaching into her pocket to extract a piece of willow bark she’d stashed there. “Whatever you’re worrying about.” She elaborated, and popped it into her mouth. “I can practically see your thoughts getting all tangled up in there.” As she said the last word, she leaned in and tapped him on the forehead, a smile pulling at her lips as she drew away again. He intended to roll his eyes at her, but what actually happened was that he started staring and couldn’t quite stop until she made a face at him. “What?” She demanded, arms folding. His eyes, almost on reflex, followed the motion of her hand.

“Aren’t you worrying? About…anything?” He found himself asking, a little bemused. With all that had happened – how could she not be worrying about something?

“Like what?” Ezran asked, in her place, with a guileless frown. Rayla looked a little more understanding as she inspected him, but…yeah, neither of them seemed to be fretting like he was.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Callum started, a little sarcastic, waving his hand as though confused before gesturing it emphatically at Rayla’s, still dark, still bound. “That, maybe?”

Rayla seemed vaguely sympathetic at that, but…not worried. Ezran, on the other hand, just kept frowning. “But we loosened it.” He insisted, setting Bait down at his side as if he felt the need to have his hands free for the conversation. “Her hand’s gonna be fine now.”

“Is it, though?” Callum demanded, and then – then, perhaps unsurprisingly, all the worries that had been chasing themselves in his head came spilling out. “Are you sure about that? Because it looks to me like it’s still hurting her, and – don’t you remember what the Healer said? Taking the binding off might make some horrible….body-shock-thing happen!”

She grimaced at that, but hadn’t managed to open her mouth to say anything before Ez got his reply off. “But we didn’t take it off.” He pointed out, firmly, as though he thought Callum were perhaps missing something abundantly obvious that needed pointing out. “We just loosened it, like the Healer said. So she should be fine.”

“’She’ is standing right here.” Rayla said, dryly, hands going to her hips. She raised an eyebrow at them as they turned to look at her again.

“…Sorry.” He offered, after a moment. “But even if the binding just loosened – it was still by kind of a lot, right? What if it does…” He waved his hands sharply, frustrated at the lack of good terminology. Increasingly, he couldn’t stop remembering the Healer’s warnings about the dangers of reviving a near-dead limb; how the experience could shock the body, and poison it, and strike at the heart to still it. He hoped that, given the binding had only been loosened and not outright removed, it wouldn’t get that bad. The Healer had advised they impose their own looser binding if they managed to remove the first, and…well, that was essentially what had ended up happening, so…it should be fine, right?

But what if it wasn’t fine?

“…Poison my blood?” She suggested, after a moment, moving her bound hand to look at it herself. She flexed the fingers with a slight grimace.

“I guess?” He sighed, and followed her eyes to it. She’d put on a jacket about an hour ago, evidently starting to feel the chill of their surroundings, which obscured even the bandages over the binding. “I mean…does it feel any different? Better? Worse? I can tell it’s still hurting you.”

“Was it the willow bark that gave it away?” Rayla said, still dry, but eyes remaining on her hand. After a moment, she shrugged, and answered “It still hurts, I suppose, but in a different way. Feels more like pins-and-needles now. Before it was just kinda….numb, and aching.”

Ezran winced in sympathy. “I hate pins-and-needles.” He expressed, expression going pensive. “One time me and Bait were waiting in the grate behind the baker’s kitchen for hours, because we timed it wrong and there were a load of people there, and by the time we got out there were no jelly tarts left and my feet were completely numb. All the prickling was horrible.”

Her lips quirked upwards, clearly amused. “Think that, but maybe ten times worse.” Rayla advised, and his brother shuddered.

Callum didn’t pay a great deal of attention to the story, being more focused on her hand. “Does your pulse feel normal?” He asked, and in an unthinking gesture, reached out to check for himself. She looked momentarily startled as his fingers settled on her skin, but held the hand out for him anyway.

“How should I know?” She asked, sounding a little exasperated as he pushed her sleeve back to investigate the binding, hesitating at the bandage. In the end, he’d grown familiar enough with where to look for her pulse that he just felt for it through the bandaging, and…well, it felt normal enough? Not too fast, not too slow, not weak or jittery or anything…

“….I think it seems okay for now.” He decreed, almost reluctantly, and stepped back again. “But you should tell me if anything changes, alright?”

She rolled her eyes. “You worrywart. I’ll be fine.” She pronounced him, with an oddly fond smile, and then walked off up along the path again without so much as a by-your-leave.

Callum sighed, patted Ez on the shoulder, and followed after her.

---

The walking today was depressingly steep. It was almost entirely uphill, and the ongoing ascent was starting to wear strangely at the heels of his feet. They were growing sore, in a sort of abrasive way that he thought heralded blisters. His boots were broken-in enough by now that it had been a long time since he had any blisters, but apparently, enough mountain-hiking was perfectly capable of changing that. He wondered, uneasily, if he’d need to start padding his heels to stop them blistering too badly. It wasn’t as though he’d be able to stop climbing mountains any time soon, after all.

Rayla did not find a campsite she liked in the next hour, so he just…walked, and watched, and reflected on how much a single day could change everything.

Only a few hours ago, he’d been crying with relief. They’d all cried and laughed and shook like leaves from the awful, wonderful, horrible catharsis of what had happened. He still felt a little fragile – strange and tremulous, like his emotions weren’t quite up to any more hits or surprises, and he might have a breakdown at the first hint of trouble. It was unpleasantly exhausting, how wrung-out the experience had left him, as though all the mounting stress and dread he’d been cultivating had torn its way straight out of his gut, leaving the space behind empty and terribly raw.

He’d never imagined that something so fortunate – so miraculous – could leave him feeling so drained.

And, despite that, despite what had happened, despite everything…they were just…walking.

It wasn’t like they could stop, what with how far they had to go, and the lack of a suitable campsite, and the risk of ambush that Rayla insisted existed. According to her, those hunters they’d tied up ought to be able to get free and get to Verdorn within the day, and then they could mount some sort of pursuit force. So there was definite pressure to keep moving, but…still. It hadn’t stopped feeling strange.

Rayla chewed willow-bark more or less continually as they walked, and carefully pressed at her still-bound hand even though it made her grimace awfully. She avoided the raw bandaged area around the bind, but…even with the thing loosened, it obviously wasn’t going to be an instant fix. Her skin still looked dark, albeit not quite as much so, and she was obviously still in pain. Evidently though, it was better enough that the jacket she’d put on earlier wasn’t bothering her too much.

It was strange to see her in a jacket basically identical to his. Strange enough to distract him from worrying for a good few minutes, but certainly no longer.

He stewed over his concerns in silence, unable to stop and yet not wanting to bother her too often with queries about her health. In time, though, with something approaching mercy, the actual walking became tricky enough that it commanded a lot of his attention, and he couldn’t afford to dwell too much. The way ahead became more and more precipitously steep, and much more rocky; the incline seemed to be too much for most trees, and all at once the forest thinned noticeably. The trees that remained were pale shadows of the vast things in the forest below, with thin trunks and comparatively short statures…but, evidently, very stubborn roots. Some of them clung to the cliff-edges at frankly alarming angles, looking like they’d fall off at any moment.

They kicked up clouds of stone-chips as they walked, sending tiny dusty avalanches clattering down-slope. Without the thick carpet of years’ worth of pine needles, the ground was silt and gravel, and dangerously loose. He slipped a few times before he got the hang of looking for firmer, rockier foot-holds, and several times had to clamber up the steeper areas with his hands holding onto the rock for support. Ezran, with his smaller stature, needed help up the steeper sections frequently – and he’d had to hand Bait over to Callum entirely. The glow-toad was riding haphazardly stuffed into the top of Callum’s backpack, because there was no room for him in Ezran’s.

Rayla called for a break after one particularly unpleasant stretch that was basically rock-climbing rather than walking, and they collapsed gladly against some nearby boulders.

“Is it going to be this steep all the way up?” Ezran asked, a little plaintively, as he caught his breath. He seemed to be holding up better under the strain of the climb than Callum, because Callum couldn’t quite conceive of the idea of talking yet. He was too busy with things like breathing, and contemplating how unnaturally comfortable boulders became when one was exhausted enough.

Rayla, who had crouched near them but not deigned to sit down, peered up the slope and shrugged. “Hard to say. I’ve not gone through these mountains before.” She said, grimacing as she pressed her fingers into the palm of her hand, the skin going white in their wake. “But…probably, yep.”

Ezran groaned, and Callum would have done the same, had Rayla’s hand not distracted him. He blinked at her, decided it had probably been long enough since the last time he asked, and after a few seconds mustered the energy to ask “How’s your hand doing?”

She glanced over at him, then back down at her hand. She grimaced a little, then rolled the sleeve of her jacket up to show him her arm. He made a dismayed sound at the same time she exhaled, leaning forwards as she said “Well, my whole arm is sore now.” She made a face at the arm in question, and he could see why. “I didn’t expect to be able to see it though.”

There were raised pink lines along her skin, taking routes that looked like the pathways of veins. Pathways of inflammation, travelling with her blood. “Why didn’t you say something?” he asked, dismayed, and touched his fingertips to the skin to gauge the temperature. Was it warmer than it ought to be? He couldn’t tell.

“It’s not exactly agonising, Callum.” Rayla told him, dryly. “It’s just a little sore, like I worked the muscles too hard. Anyway, I’m assuming it’s normal.”

“Normal.” Callum repeated, deeply sceptical.

“As normal as something like this gets. Lots of nasty in this hand, right? And now it’s…circulating.” She shrugged, as though unbothered, but he thought he could see the hint of tension around her eyes.

“Isn’t that bad?” Ez asked, anxiously, as he shuffled over to look. “Didn’t the Healer say that that’s super risky?”

“From what I eavesdropped on, she thought it would help if it’s done slow and careful. And my hand’s still bound, so…probably counts.” She shrugged, trying for nonchalance, but he could see the tightness around her eyes. She was worried, too.

He inspected her, attempting not to be too outwardly anxious, and then reached out to take her healthy hand before he’d quite thought it through. He settled his fingers over her pulse to feel it, and asked “Does your pulse feel weird? Do you have any…I dunno, weird aches that aren’t in your arm?” Her pulse…well, he wasn’t exactly an experienced and knowledgeable pulse-taker, but he thought it felt a bit strange. Too fast, too light, and jittery. Oddly irregular.

She grimaced, and he saw a little of her fear slip through into her expression. “…Does feel a bit weird.” She admitted, quietly. “Hard to describe, though. Jumpy, maybe?” She shrugged, plainly uneasy. “So far it’s only my arm that hurts, though.”

Callum clamped down on his anxiety as best he could, holding silent for several seconds, and then released her wrist. “If your heartbeat feels off, I think you need to be careful to take it easy.” He said, eventually. “Don’t let yourself get too out of breath. Take lots of breaks.”

“…Sure.” She said, unconvincingly, and he glared at her. Crossed his arms, even.

“I know you don’t want to waste time.” He told her, with a little asperity. “But if you push yourself too hard while you’re sick and you have a heart attack – I don’t know about you, but I don’t know the heart-starting spell.”

She straightened a little at that, and while she did glare back at him a little, he thought something in his words had struck her. “…I did sort of guess that, Callum.” She said, dryly, and rotated her dark wrist a few times, careful.

He did not unfold his arms, and stared at her expectantly. “So….?”

She rolled her eyes, and pushed away from the rock she was leaning against. “Ugh. Fine. I’ll go easier on myself. Happy?”

“Ecstatic.” He answered, in tones just as dry as hers. She rolled her eyes again, standing with enough abruptness that it seemed a dismissal.

“Good.” She said, hefting her bags. “Because it’s time to keep going. Still a long way to go today.”

“You’re not exactly filling me with confidence, here.” He complained, hauling himself upwards with considerable effort. His every muscle protested the move – and so did Bait, who apparently wasn’t impressed with the sudden jostling.

“I’ll be fine, Callum.” Rayla insisted, and then stubbornly walked off back up the mountain again. Evidently, that was the end of that. He stared after her, unimpressed and worried at the same time, and huffed with the annoyance of trying to care for the health of someone so unnecessarily stubborn about it. You’d think an elf assassin who knew all the stuff she knew would be a little more practical about her own health, but, apparently…not so much.

He sighed, and held out a hand to his brother. “C’mon, Ez. Seems like we’re moving again.” He said this last part more loudly, and pointedly – a deliberate prod against the elf he knew could hear him perfectly well.

Ezran looked between him and Rayla with a vaguely wide-eyed expression somewhere between interest and concern. Then he shrugged, accepted Callum’s offered hand, and got to his feet. “I guess we just have to keep an eye on her.” He said, apparently unconcerned about being overheard. “So she doesn’t work herself too hard.”

A little playfully, Callum shook his brother’s hand on that before he released it, eliciting a giggle. “Sounds good to me.” He agreed. “Now, let’s get moving, before she leaves us behind.”

He wasn’t sure if the huff he heard was Rayla or the wind, but he was putting his money on the former.

Their resumed climb took them further and further into the thin cold air of the mountain, with trees becoming so sparse that there was little to no cover from the gusty mountainside conditions at all. In the morning, when they began walking and left the tied-up hunters behind them, Ezran had been delighted by the white puffs his breath made in the cold air, and had stomped around puffing in imitation of dragons, bringing a smile even to the then-despairing Rayla. He’d since obviously lost the novelty of it, but now…now it was windy enough that the gusts blew back the haze of their breath in their faces, trails of white vapour spilling out around their cheeks.

He wasn’t sure if windiness was just characteristic of mountains, or if this was worse than normal. Either way, it was getting unpleasant. In the end, he just tucked the tail of his scarf in so it wouldn’t flap around quite as insistently, and carried on.

If Rayla took things any easier, he couldn’t see any obvious signs of it. But, in unspoken alliance, he and Ezran conspired to be conspicuously and insistently exhausted after every particularly steep stretch of climbing, collapsing where they stood and calling for a breather and a drink from the waterskins. If the way Rayla eyed them was any indication, she was more than aware of the subterfuge, but she didn’t outright speak against them. She only sighed, very put-upon, and prevailed upon her own use of the waterskin before ushering them onwards.

Mid-afternoon, they started to see snow on the ground.

“Told you.” Rayla said, a little cynically, as Ezran bent to examine the scattered frosty patches of it. “Give it another day and we’ll be hip-deep in it.”

“Hip-deep?” Callum repeated, sceptically, while Ez picked up the evidently very icy bit of snow. It looked like it had melted from the gentle powder he was accustomed to, and then probably frozen again, forming larger icy clusters that crackled under his brother’s fingers in a weak echo of broken glass.

Her lips twitched. “Well. Shin-deep, maybe.” She admitted, and looked up at the sky. “’Course, all it would take is a decent snowstorm, and then we could be hip-deep in snow.”

“That must be a pain to walk in.” Ezran said, thoughtfully, as he looked up at her. “You could have some great snowball fights, though! And then maybe once we’re going back down a mountain, we could just sled instead. It would be way faster.”

“Sorry to say it, bud, but I’m pretty sure Rayla didn’t bring a sled from the Lodge.” He said, amused, and then followed Rayla’s gaze to the thickly-clouded sky. As if responding to his attention, a particularly stiff breeze puffed down his collar, and he shivered, tightening his scarf against the wind. “I guess it’s going to be colder from here on.”

“It won’t be so bad as long as we’re walking.” Rayla claimed, and hefted her backpack; the usual signal that they were about to start moving again. “And when we’re not moving, we’ll have a campfire, so…” She shrugged, and without further word, resumed her pace up the slope.

Callum and his legs took comfort in the knowledge that they’d almost certainly start looking for somewhere to camp soon, and followed her up.

They walked another good half-hour in the increasingly-moody winds before the ground evened out a bit, still sloping upwards, but much more gently. The trees apparently approved of this milder incline, and they found themselves travelling through a spindly pine-forest full of windswept branches; it was apparently windy enough frequently enough that the trees were all growing slanted westwards, apparently from the buffeting of the same powerful easterly wind currently blowing in his ears.

Eventually, they came to a loosely-forested cliffside where the rockiness of the terrain had denuded most of it of foliage. It sloped gently downwards towards the face of the cliff, at enough of an angle that he’d be worried about losing the egg over it if it fell out – it’d probably roll straight down and off the cliff. He winced at the intrusion of the thought, even as he looked to Rayla, perplexed at why they’d stopped. She was staring at the rocky expanse as if its modest dusting of frost and snow were particularly vexing, or particularly noteworthy.

“…We should probably camp here.” She said, with noticeable distaste.

He blinked, then stared back at the cliffside. “What, really? But it’s…” He searched for a word.

“Windy.” Ezran supplied, from beside him, his hair looking vaguely windblown in the same way as the trees. “And right next to a cliff.”

“Right next to a cliff is defensible.” Rayla informed them, though she did not look pleased. “Means if someone wants to ambush us they don’t have as many places to do it from. Anyway,” She gestured at the nearby trees. “This’ll be the easiest firewood around. If we keep climbing it’ll get steep again, and we won’t have much to pick from.” She frowned, ears drooping a little. “Just….don’t lose anything off the cliff-edge. Especially yourselves.”

Callum recalled the thought he’d had, and shuddered. “…Be careful with the egg.” He advised his brother, who practically recoiled at the words, flinching as if struck in the face.

“…I will.” He said, wide-eyed, with another glance towards the cliff.

Tentatively, Callum approached it, and peered over the edge. It was…a long way down. Not as far as he’d expected, maybe, and it wasn’t an entirely sheer drop – it was more like a near-vertical slope than an outright drop-off – but he didn’t expect the fall would be that much more gentle for it. There were trees at the bottom, and a little further along, a wide river. Beyond that there was another cliff face, rising up to join with the mountain behind it. He thought he could see a silver glimmer of water somewhere between the trees at the bottom. “…I think this is the gorge.” He said, after a moment. “You know, the river valley between Dorel and Farel. That the people of Verdorn use.”

“Makes sense.” Rayla said, setting down her bags against a snow-dusted rock. “Bit worrying, though. I hope no one spots the campfire.”

“If they do…” He frowned, paused, and thought through it. “Well, if they do, won’t they only be able to see it from Verdorn? Or the other mountain? So it probably won’t matter. It’d take them ages to get here from there.”

“Hopefully.” She sighed, and unzipped the tent pack. The wind billowed into it, puffing out the sides of the leather with a rhythmic sort of thwip sound. “Okay. This is going to be a pain.”

Ezran looked between her and the tent, quizzically. “…How come?” He asked, trotting over to put his bag (very carefully) down beside hers.

“Because of your hand?” Callum guessed, after a second.

“Me and Callum can put it up, like yesterday.” Ez added, expression bright, and she snorted.

“No, it’s not that.” She said, lips twitching. “Though my hand – and arm – being a pain…that’s not going to help. No, it’s the wind.” She waved her hand towards the spindly, wind-swept trees, as if to indicate the very pronounced gusts still buffeting them from that direction. “We’re all going to need to do this, or the tent will blow off the mountain.”

“…Oh.” Ezran considered this for a second. “I guess we’re using all the tent pegs today, right?”

“You bet.” Rayla agreed, and carefully extracted the outer-tent, promptly stamping her foot down on it to pin it to the ground. It was already ruffling and blustering along the ground, even rolled and folded and barely able to catch the wind at all. “Get the poles ready, will you? And maybe tie yourselves together with rope or something. Make it easier to catch each other if we go off the cliff.”

“Isn’t that a bit much?” Callum asked, sceptically, as he swung his bag around. Despite his words, he went rummaging for his rope coil, even as Ezran extracted one of the poles and began to assemble it.

Rayla raised an eyebrow at him. “Would you prefer to take a little tumble off the cliff, Callum?” She inquired, sardonic, and he huffed.

“…No, thank you.”

She nodded. “Then let’s just be careful.”

Ezran clicked the tent pole into place and reached for another. “Better safe than sorry.” He said, sagely, as Callum tied the rope uncertainly around his middle. Watching him, Rayla rolled her eyes, and shuffled over to take the rope from him.

“You need to learn to tie better knots.” She informed him, unceremoniously unravelling his apparently-inadequate attempt. She then proceeded to loop more rope around his middle, running it in and around in a looping knot that was considerably distinct from his own.

His eyes moved between her and her hands. He’d never really considered that there might be a lot of ways to tie a rope around someone, or that one would be better than another. He watched her setting both hands to the task, and wondered if it was hurting her. “…Well, I’ll practice that one later?” he offered, watching her progress with an eye for memorising it. She stepped back and pulled the length of rope with her, stamping down on the outer-tent that had begun to flutter rebelliously about in her absence.

“You do that.” She said, and approached Ezran. “Here, Ez. Don’t mind me, I’ll just tie you in.”

“Sure.” He said, agreeably, already at work on the third tent-pole.

In short order they were all tied together and had the tent-poles assembled and ready to apply to the tent. Callum still considered the rope to be flagrant overkill – sure, it was windy, but not that windy. It wasn’t like it was a struggle to stand upright or anything, so it wouldn’t be that bad, surely? So, when Rayla called for him to get a good grip on the tent with her while Ezran would have the duty of putting the poles in, he was perhaps not taking it all that seriously. He held on as directed, of course, and Rayla unfolded the tent fabric, and Ezran stood by with a tent-pole at the ready-

And then the wind billowed into the tent as if into a sail, and suddenly, he was struggling to stay on his feet.

“Holy-“ he yelped, as Rayla grimly dug her heels in and yanked back on the tent as it filled with air, puffing out as if fully-boned with the tent-poles and making a valiant attempt to wrest itself from their hands. The sound of the air rushing into it was a loud and enthusiastic whomp, and thereafter it billowed and flapped and rattled as it pulled at them, the force of the wind throughout it alarmingly strong. “This is crazy!”

“Told you!” Rayla called to him, wrestling the tent to the ground. It puffed around her, flapping rebelliously, and a sudden wind-gust nearly tore it from his hands. With a noise that was almost a snarl, Rayla hooked herself into the ground of the cliffside with her blade, wrapping a storm-line around her arm. “Ezran!” She reminded, a moment later, and his brother snapped from his stunned daze.

“Right!” Was all Ez had to say, as he attempted to flatten down a section of tent enough to get the pole into it.

He’d managed to get two poles in and had started on the third when the wind shrieked in from the east, blasting into the tent and yanking Callum along with it – with enough force that it sent him sprawling against the ground, the thick fabric ripped from his hands. His teeth clacked together around the shape of a yell as he hit the ground, with a pinch of pain at the edge of his tongue. He lay there, utterly dazed, for a timeless second filled with thoughts of sails catching the wind and the tent becoming a vast kite to carry them all away…

“Callum!” Rayla shouted, and when he looked over she was busy battling the tent to the ground with nothing but her hook and the storm-lines as leverage. Even so, she managed to spare enough attention to look over at him with urgent concern.

Ezran stood, craning his head to look past the flapping tent to see him. “Are you okay?” He called, anxiously, the third tent pole braced between his hands.

His mouth tasted like blood, and there were sharp scraping pains along the skin on various parts of his hands and arms, but…. “I’m fine.” He called back, a little hoarsely, and scrambled to his feet, head still wiped oddly blank by the shock of the impact. “I’ll just-“ He grabbed at a roiling corner of the tent-fabric and emulated Rayla, unspooling one of the tied storm-lines and looping it around his arm. It definitely made it easier to get a grip on the thing, but keeping himself upright was hard. And now that there were two poles in the tent, the damned things were nearly poking his eyes out every other second. “Just, get the poles in already!”

“I’m trying!” Ezran said, plainly agitated, as he tried to grasp at the relevant bit of tent for long enough to stick a pole in it. “Can you – hold this part down, or something? It’s really hard to get at it!”

Rayla responded to his request by practically throwing herself over the tent and tackling the piece in question to the ground. Amazingly, it was so full of the prevailing wind that it actually bucked and roiled underneath her. It was utterly ridiculous. Why did no one ever mention that tents could turn into stupidly deadly wind-socks under the right conditions?

The effort was enough, apparently; Ezran pushed the segmented metal pole into its tube and in that fashion the three of them worked, pinning the tent down in the right places for the last pole to be applied. Rayla then determinedly oriented the tent-door away from the wind, and then rooted herself and the storm-lines to the ground while Callum and Ezran made several desperate and largely unsuccessful attempts to pitch the stupid thing.

It took enough tries that his fingertips were sore with the effort of trying to pull the ends of the tent-poles into their proper places, but – they managed it eventually, and then Rayla was rotating the tent-door into a more favourable position while Ezran scrambled for the tent pegs, and they were basically done. They whacked in the pegs into the hooks on the tent proper – all twelve – and then laid out the storm-lines around the tent and secured those down too. Rayla enlisted the end of a blade as a hammer to knock the pegs solidly into the hard ground, while Callum and Ezran prevailed upon the use of large rocks for the same purpose.

“Ugh. Stupid wind.” Rayla muttered darkly, when they were done, and beholding the sight of their securely tied-down tent with exhausted eyes and aching bodies. “I hate putting up tents in bad wind.”

“….You’ve done it before?” Callum managed to ask, after several seconds of attempting to muster the energy. He looked at his hands and found the fingertips red and raw. He could feel scrapes along his arms and elbows from the fall, which his jacket hadn’t managed to protect him from. The fabric looked a little frayed from it, too.

The tent still flapped in the wind, but…ineffectually. Like a fish pinned on a knife. The sides fluttered noisily in the wind and the storm-lines quivered, but they’d done a solid job of it. That tent was not moving. Even so, Rayla seemed to find it a good idea to move around its perimeter, covering the heads of the tent-pegs with piled rocks. “A few times.” She answered, after a moment. “’Course, I had a whole team helping with holding the tents down then. Made it a lot easier.”

He nodded, a little numbly, and raised an aching hand to rub at his ears. The wind had been blowing in them for hours now, and combined with the fall, they were really aching, in a cold-feeling pain that was steadily spreading to the rest of his head. “…Inner-tent?” he questioned, flapping a hand a little ineffectually at the tent-pack, open and fluttering ominously in the ongoing gusts.

“Inner-tent,” Rayla agreed, and the three of them wrestled that part into the tent’s interior. This, at least, they could keep folded until they were inside, and out of the worst of the wind.

Setting up camp that afternoon continued to prove an exercise in problem-solving, when the wind promptly extinguished their first three attempts at a campfire and nearly set fire to the tent on the fourth. Eventually they moved it to a spot uncomfortably close to one of the trees, risking setting fire to that for the chance of some meagre shelter. It worked, finally, and Rayla set them to work melting snow to replenish their waterskins.

“Easier than looking for a water source.” She said, shrugging, pulling on some gloves to go scoop up more snow. “That’s one good thing about snow and ice, I suppose. If we’re unlucky, the nearest stream could be a good hour away, so….” She dumped the latest handful of icy snow into the pot and then waved towards it, demonstratively. The little-finger glove flapped around with the movement, plainly empty.

“Huh.” Callum said, committing the detail to his growing knowledge on journeying, and went to aid in the snow-gathering efforts.

The downside of having the campfire upwind of the camp meant that a large part of the campsite couldn’t really be traversed unless he wanted a lungful of smoke, which was yet another lesson he hadn’t really asked for and certainly hadn’t enjoyed, but it was probably helpful knowledge. Somehow. Once most of the camp-stuff was attended to, though, Callum started giving Rayla’s hand some pointed and meaningful looks until she rolled her eyes and came over to let him inspect it.

She rolled the jacket sleeve up again, and then he had a pretty good amount of arm to inspect for anomalous swelling. He eyed the places where, earlier, there’d been raised red lines along the veins and noted “I think your whole arm has just swollen up a bit, now.” Gently, he poked it. “Does that hurt?”

She grimaced, but shook her head. “Not when you put pressure on it? Not like a bruise.” She offered. “But it sort of…aches. Kinda. On its own. A bit like an overworked muscle.”

Callum’s own overworked muscles took that moment to remind him of how sore they were, and he shuffled his crossed legs uncomfortably. He shifted his hands more gently down the affected arm to where the binding still sat, albeit blessedly looser. “How’s the hand feel?” He asked, after a moment, reaching to the side to pull his medical supplies over, complete with the boiled bandages. “Any better?”

“Bit less painful.” She said, after a moment of consideration. “Still really bad around the binding…but not much helping that, what with the open sores and all.”

Ez side-eyed her then, glancing down at his bag and then back at her hand. “…Does the binding still feel loose?” He asked, after a moment. “I’m pretty sure me and Zym can do our thing again, but…I don’t really know how it’s gonna work. If your assassiny-ribbon is going to get tighter again or not.”

She was silent for several seconds, eyes straying back to the bandage obscuring the binding. “I can’t really tell.” She said, eventually. “Directly around the binding is mostly just…well, you know.” By ‘you know’, he assumed she meant ‘so sore and wrecked I can’t actually feel much from it except pain’. Like, he knew she wouldn’t actually say that, but the meaning seemed relatively clear.

“If it’s still doing the pins-and-needles, it’s probably still looser. Maybe?” Callum reasoned, fingers hovering over the knots on the bandages. Considering he’d only changed them a few hours ago, it seemed maybe too early to do it again, but… “And I think you’ve got a little bit of colour back in your hand. And definitely your wrist.” He touched his fingertips to the skin. It still felt cold; if there’d been much change there, he couldn’t really feel it yet. For a second, he near-reflexively went to look for her pulse – but on this hand, that was solidly obscured by bandage.

He set her hand down and went for the other one instead, pressing fingers over the radial artery. She looked down at it, then up at him, and asked “How is it?”

“Better than earlier.” He said, with some relief. “Your arm might be all swollen but at least your heartbeat feels less…weird.”

However unconcerned she tried to pretend to seem, he could see that that relieved her. “Well, thank the stars for that.” She sighed, then shifted back, retrieving her arm from his grasp. She stood and shuffled over to rummage in the bags, pulling out several containers still packed with goose meat. “Let’s get dinner out of the way now, and then we can actually rest a little.” She sounded almost wistful at that. He could sympathise entirely – even their downtime, lately, had been rather fraught.

“Sounds good.” Callum said, thinking briefly of his sketchbook, and the nascent sketch of Verdorn sprawling across a page. He thought, too, of the neglected sketch of Rayla’s hand, symbolic of the dread that had been gripping him so strongly the last few days. He wondered what it would be like, to look at it now.

“Are we going to heat it up?” Ez wondered, as Rayla unpacked their provisions. “Or just eat it cold again?”

Rayla shrugged. “Whatever you prefer, I suppose.” She said. “Though it is harder to heat up leftovers with the sort of equipment we have. If we boil it it’ll lose flavour, and it’s tricky to pike cooked meat sometimes.”

“I’ll just have mine cold.” Callum said, abruptly really feeling his exhaustion, and accepted a jar from Rayla with a sigh. “I don’t really want to wait.”

Ezran considered that. “I’ll do the same, then.” He decided, and took his own jar, making a slight face at it. Bait, sensing the entrance of food into the proceedings, immediately perked up from where he’d been sitting near the fire, and hopped up to Ezran with a demanding croak. Ez looked down at him, a smile chasing its way onto his face, and proffered a chunk of cooked meat at the toad. “I know it’s not exactly your usual,” He said, to the toad, as he knelt down to bring his hand closer. “But you’re okay with that, right?”

Callum, watching, noted that Ezran nodded as if in response to something before Bait shot out his tongue to accept the offering. It made him feel distinctly weird, in an on-the-edge-of-realising-something sort of way. He recalled the way Ezran had been talking to the egg, and uneasily considered that…well, Bait was a magical creature too. Did Ezran’s talent extend beyond talking to unhatched dragons?

…And, if it did, how far did it go?

…Could Ez really talk to animals, like he’d been saying for so long? …But then, if he could, why would he have got it wrong when Callum asked him to prove it?

He shifted uneasily for a while before he finally elected to just ask. “…So, Ez,” He said, slowly, in apparently a strange enough tone that his brother looked up warily. “This whole…talking to the dragon egg thing. Is that…” he hesitated. “Where did that come from? How long – I mean, was it something you realised you could do straight away, or…” He trailed off, not wanting to quite come out and say ‘have you been telling the truth this whole time?’

Ezran stilled, for a second, and then abruptly looked mulish. His shoulders hunched a little and he looked away. “It’s not exactly a new thing, you know.” He muttered, setting the jar down to fold his arms. “I’ve been talking to Bait for years. It’s not my fault you never believed me until it was a dragon I was talking to.”

His hands fluttered up in a sort of unhappy defensive motion, and his stomach twisted. It was a fairly bald confirmation of his uneasy suspicions, and…and he wasn’t really sure how to respond to it. Even with the evidence in front of him, and with what Ezran had managed with Rayla’s binding….somehow, it was still hard to wrap his head around the idea of this being true, too. He’d thought Ezran a liar on this for years, after all. For several seconds he struggled to find something to say, until Rayla took the matter out of his hands.

“Hold on,” She said, straightening, and looking between them with a raised eyebrow. “What are you on about, Ez? You can talk to Bait too?” Then, at Callum: “And you knew about this?”

“Not just Bait.” Ezran refuted, before Callum could speak. “It’s just animals. All animals. I’ve been able to understand them for most of my life, and been able to make them understand me for years – and I tried to tell Callum about it but he never believed me.” A hint of his temper leaked into those last words, the line between his furrowed brows deepening.

Rayla’s eyes slid to Callum then, expectantly, as if waiting for an explanation. His shoulders hunched and he hastened to say “But…Ez, if you really could understand animals, how come you got it wrong that time I asked you to prove it? Why would you have been wrong?”

“Because raccoons are huge liars, Callum.” Ezran said, impatiently, with a light scowl furrowing his brow. “I told you that, too. I didn’t know it back then, but raccoons are always playing tricks and they’ll never tell you the truth if they can get away with tricking you – and I wasn’t good enough to tell when they were lying back then, either, so…” He shrugged, and made a sort of there-you-go gesture with his hand.

“…So, they told you there was a treasure behind the waterfall when there wasn’t, and I ended up getting soaked for nothing?” Callum supplied, and his brother nodded. He looked away, frowning lightly, and….yeah, he thought he remembered that. Ezran trying to tell him about the alleged dishonesty of raccoons. After the waterfall incident, it had seemed a pretty blatant lie, and he hadn’t even considered the idea that it might be true. And then after that he’d got pretty used to dismissing Ezran’s subsequent claims to animal-talking as play-pretend kid stuff.

“Yeah, pretty much.” He agreed, expression a little less ornery now. Perhaps because Callum was listening to him without immediately denying everything? “So after that you just…wouldn’t believe me, because I’d been wrong, so I gave up on trying.” Carefully, his fingers drifted to his bag, and the egg within. “But…then me and Zym knew we were Rayla’s last hope. So we had to try.” A little solemn, he slipped the bag open enough to put his hands in, fingers settling over the egg. His eyes closed, just briefly, and Callum experienced a little rush of vertigo at knowing that his brother was communicating with a baby dragon right now.

“…I’m glad you did.” Rayla said, eventually, her fingers hovering over her left wrist, and the binding there. “I’d…well, I never really had much hope about it all even to begin with, but I was pretty ready to give up.” She reached out, and settled her hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, Ezran.”

He looked up at her over his shoulder with a small, shy smile. “…Well, it’s not like I did all the work.” He said, posture unfurling a little at her praise. “But, um, you’re welcome. I’m really glad we could help.”

Rayla blinked at him for a second, then slowly reached out with her bound hand to touch her fingertips to the eggshell. The motion was…careful, and tentative. Almost reverent. “Thank you, Azymondias.” She murmured to the egg, and Ezran smiled more widely beside her.

“He’s happy he could help, too.” He said, contentedly. “He’s still pretty tired now. But I think maybe we can try to work on your binding again tomorrow.”

Her lips twitched into a smile of her own. “I’ll look forward to it.” She said, and withdrew, leaning back from Ezran and the egg for a second, regarding them with a strange expression. “You’re a talented kid, Ezran.” She expressed after a second. “I’ve never even heard of someone being able to talk to animals before. Not even the greatest elven mages.”

Callum looked between his brother, who seemed very pleased at that statement, and Rayla, who had professed to his brother’s ability being something unheard of even in Xadia. He shook his head, disbelievingly, and said “It’s…it’s crazy, Ez, that you were walking around with this amazing weird power all this time and I didn’t even know.”

Ezran looked over at him, and his expression closed off again, just a little. “Only because you weren’t listening when I told you.” He reminded, mutinously.

Callum sighed, raising a hand to rub at the back of his neck, and nodded. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, Ez. I should have believed you…or at least tried to listen.” He set his face in the most earnest contrition he could, because, well…he did always try to own up to his mistakes, when he made them.

His brother inspected him, as if for signs of any duplicity, then relaxed again. “Well, you’re listening now.” He said, with a note of satisfaction. “And I accept your apology. I guess now you just need to make all the buttheadedness up to me.” There was a glint in his eyes, and Callum knew exactly what it heralded. He slumped, resigned, and considered how much his legs would protest to the Jerkface dance after so much uphill walking.

In the next second, though, he received some unexpected salvation. “Something I don’t understand, Ez,” Rayla said, diverting his brother’s attention back to her. “How does talking to animals mean you can talk to a dragon? Dragons aren’t animals, they’re people. So is it really talking, or…”

“It’s not really talking.” Ezran admitted, after a moment. “Animals don’t really have language like we do. I mean, some of them have noises they make to warn each other if there’s trouble, and sometimes they have enough of those that it’s kinda like they have words, but…animals don’t talk like people do, so…what I do, it’s kind of more like…” His words slowed, as if he were testing them one-by-one. “Like, understanding. And making them understand me.”

Callum made an interested noise. “So, kind of….more like some sort of magical empathy thing than talking?”

“I guess?” Ezran offered, shrugging. “I don’t really think about how it works. I just do it. And besides, it’s kind of more like talking with Zym, anyway.”

Callum looked over at Rayla and shared an interested glance with her. A moment later, she ventured, “Because he’s…smarter? Not an animal?”

“I don’t think so. Otherwise I’d find it easier to understand people, not harder.” Ezran said, a little automatically, and then abruptly looked over at them in alarm, as if he’d said something he hadn’t intended. “Uhh…”

“…Ezran, um.” Callum said, after a moment of looking at his brother’s decidedly shifty expression. That was a ‘caught stealing jelly-tarts’ face if he ever saw one. “I really need you to be honest with me here. Can you read minds?” The tone was joking, but…he was kind of serious too. ‘Harder’ to understand people? That definitely seemed like an implication that he could ‘understand’ them. What did that mean? Could he ‘hear’ thoughts? Pick up on feelings? And what would ‘making them understand’ constitute with a person, anyway?

“Of course I can’t read minds!” Ezran said, indignantly, which made him relax a little. At least until he followed it up with “Well, not really.”

Somewhat at a loss for words, Callum looked at Rayla again. Her eyebrows were very, very high as she stared at his brother. “…Care to elaborate, Ez?” She asked, dryly, and he squirmed.

“It’s not mind-reading.” Ezran insisted. “Really. What I have with Zym is – different. I can’t only understand how he’s feeling, we can talk with words – no one else is like that. You two, and other people – it’s so much harder to get anything from you than the animals.”

“…But, you can get something?” Callum prompted, when his brother went quiet.

Ezran looked away, furtive, and slid his fingers over azure eggshell. “Feelings, mostly.” He admitted, shrugging. “It’s easier when I’m touching someone. It was always like that. At first I could only understand animals if I was touching them, too. I’m better now, though.” He glanced up at Callum, and his shoulders hunched a little. He seemed bizarrely worried, and…Callum couldn’t really figure out why. What reaction was he anticipating, with the way he was watching like that?

Tentatively, Callum reached out, and laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder. Bemusedly, he noted that the contact – according to him – might be conveying some of his emotional state across. What was he projecting, then? Confusion? Concern? “So, if you’re a super-special magical empathy-mage now,” He started, intentionally teasing, intentionally warm. “Can you tell me what I’m feeling?”

Ezran eyed him warily. “…Kind of confused, and…worried about me?” His face screwed up. “What are you worried for?”

“I’m your big brother. It’s my job to worry about you.” Callum claimed, staunchly, and managed to prompt a smile. “Aunt Amaya said.” Mom, too, when she’d been alive. But bringing that up wouldn’t do anything except make everyone sad.

…Then he recalled that Ezran probably had access to that quick flash of grief, if he was sensitive enough to catch that sort of thing, and felt a little weird about it.

His brother dipped his head at him, subdued, in a sort of half-nod. “See, that’s…that there.” He said, abruptly. “People don’t like it when you know too much about them, or how they’re feeling. It makes them feel…I dunno. They don’t like it.” His eyes slid to Callum’s, with a kind of caution he hated to see. “…You don’t like it, either.”

“…That’s what you’re worried about?” Callum said, after a moment, and then very deliberately reached down to clasp his brother’s hand, just over the eggshell. “Ezran, you’ve always been weirdly insightful about people’s moods. Sure, that can be a bit of a pain sometimes, when I don’t want to talk about my feelings or whatever, but it’s not like – not like it’s actually a problem. I really don’t care if your….emotional insight is more of a magical thing than I thought it was. It doesn’t change anything.”

Ezran blinked at him, looking down at their hands, and frowned. “But you felt weird about it.” He insisted. “Just now. Kind of weird and uncomfortable?”

“I’d feel the same way if someone pointed out how I was feeling just by looking at my face, you know.” He pointed out, pragmatically. “People pointing out your feelings is uncomfortable, a lot of the time. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. And you’re my brother. If anyone gets to have super-special insight into my feelings, of course it’s going to be you.”

Ez studied him for several long moments, and Callum wondered if he was doing his empathy-thing even now, to feel whether he was being genuine or not. Then he sighed, shoulders slumping in what definitely seemed like relief. “…Thanks, Callum.” He said, quiet. “I guess I was kind of worried about what you’d think.” He paused, and looked up. “…Rayla?” He said, tentative. “What about you?”

It was then that Callum realised how quiet she’d been, watching them talk, watching them interact. She was still sitting a short distance away, just around the fire, and her expression was a little inscrutable. “…It’s really not mind-reading?” She asked, after a moment. “You can’t tell what we’re thinking?”

Ezran shook his head. “Aside from with Zym? No, I’ve never had anything like that before.”

Rayla considered that, then nodded. “Okay, that was my main worry. I’m not going to lie – it is a little bit uncomfortable, Ez, but…I don’t mind too much, as long as you’re careful with it.”

He tensed a little, perceptible to Callum through their joined hands. “…Like how?” He ventured, oddly timid.

“If you can tell what people are feeling – you can learn things that they…might want to keep hidden. Or don’t want to talk about.” She said, after a pause for thought. “So I think you need to be very careful about what you say about the things you learn, and…be respectful, I suppose. Feelings are…personal. And private. You need to make sure to know when it’s appropriate to talk about the things you pick up.”

Ez went a little more tense and a little more drawn-in as she spoke, but…not especially upset. Just…resigned. He nodded. “Yeah, I know. A lot of people just really don’t want other people knowing how they feel. Especially when it’s something that’s important, or secret.” He hesitated. “…I’m pretty used to knowing when to say something or not, by now. And I don’t spread around secret-feelings unless it’s really important.”

Rayla pursued her lips, thoughtful. The line of her brow made her look a little troubled. “You’re a good kid, Ez.” She settled on, eventually. “I suppose if I had to pick someone to have magical insight into my feelings, you’d be a good choice.” She hesitated, and then shuffled over to pat him on the shoulder, as much a reassuring gesture as it was a sign of trust.

He looked up at her, eyes wide and grateful and vulnerable all at once. “I know you don’t like other people to know what you’re feeling. You’re a really private person. I know.” He said, the words coming in a quick and sudden rush. “I’ll be careful, I promise. You can trust me.”

She looked at him, and her expression loosened a little. She moved her hand and laid it over Callum and Ezran’s, still joined over the egg. “I know.” Tentatively, her lips settled into a soft half-smile. She withdrew her hand, then, and sat back.

Callum looked between them, oddly touched by…by the open exchange of concerns? Reassurance? The obvious trust that Rayla had put in his brother? All of those, maybe. In any case, his chest practically ached with fondness for both of them. And wasn’t it crazy, that Ezran could probably feel that?

As if reading the thought – which he apparently couldn’t – Ezran looked up at Callum and smiled. Then he looked down at the egg again, as if distracted by…something it’d said? Something Azymondias had said?

“What makes him so different?” Callum wondered, aloud, as he allowed his hand to drop from the egg. “How come you can talk with him so much more clearly?”

“…I really don’t know?” Ez said, shrugging. “I…it’s weird. He just feels different. Like – the feeling of him, his mind and emotions? It just…fits. It’s easier to reach out to him. And he’s learning to kind of…almost reach back, sort of. Even though it’s hard for him.”

“I never thought dragons would be…awake and aware, even inside the egg.” Rayla offered, expression a little strange.

“Not awake. Not really.” Ezran shook his head. “It really is like he’s asleep and dreaming, and just…when we talk, it brings him closer up to the surface. But he knows me.” A smile flickered across his face. “And he knows you guys, too, from the sounds of your voices, and – Rayla, from the feeling of your magic. So yeah, I guess he’s pretty aware, for an unborn baby.”

Rayla seemed briefly nonplussed, perhaps at the implication that the Dragon Prince might recognise her, whenever he got around to hatching. And…wasn’t that a thought? “How long do dragons stay in eggs before they hatch, anyway?” Callum asked, leaning forwards to inspect the shimmering surface of the shell.

Ez made a complicated series of faces, then, like he’d just seen something profoundly baffling. “Uhh….” He frowned at the egg. “Good question, I think. Zym thinks he’s ready to hatch now. But there’s something he needs before he can, and he doesn’t know what it is, or how to get it, except that there needs to be a lot of magic.”

“I doubt it’ll come up.” Rayla said, with a quick glance at the shell. “That egg is years old by now – I’m not sure how old, but my parents left to be his Dragonguard a long time ago.” A shadow passed over her face, but she didn’t comment any further on that matter. Instead, she cleared her throat, and concluded “If it were that easy to hatch Storm dragons, he’d be a dragonling right now instead of an egg.”

“…Probably for the best.” Callum decided, tactfully refraining from asking exactly how young Rayla had been when her parents left. “If it’s this much work to keep us fed and travelling, we don’t really need to be feeding an entire baby dragon too.”

“Fair point.” Rayla agreed, and stood. “Well, you two watch the pot and the egg and do…whatever. I’m going to go get more wood.”

Callum suspected, looking at her, that her objective was less to get firewood and more to walk around a bit, and perhaps get some breathing room from all the somewhat-difficult conversations they’d been having. But still, he could appreciate that. He nodded. She promptly sped off into the windblown treeline, leaving him and Ezran and Bait sitting there with a dragon egg, a bubbling pot, and several jars of food.

He sat silently staring at the fire, oddly uncertain of what to do in the quiet, and exhaled a very long and tired breath. Beside him, Ezran nodded understandingly.

“Long day, huh?” he commented, sympathetic, with his hands still on the egg of the dragon he apparently had some sort of magical connection with.

Callum considered the early awakening, the mounting despair over Rayla’s hand, the unexpected arrival of those human hunters, the whole exhausting event of what Ezran and the Dragon Prince had done with the binding, the several hours of uphill walking, and the incredible effort it had been to get the tent up in the wind. And that wasn’t even considering the difficult talks on the subject of Ezran’s abilities and the associated privacy concerns…

“Really long day.” He agreed, with feeling, and looked up at the sky.

Despite everything, despite everything that had happened….it was barely past late-afternoon. The sun was low enough for it to be evening, but…only just.

Abruptly, he considered that he’d need to change Rayla’s bandages and get her to do her hand massage before they slept, so really, the day still had a way further to go. He sighed again, this time with heartfelt exhaustion, and slumped backwards to the loose rocky ground. It should have been hideously uncomfortable, but he was too tired to care.

“Callum?” Ezran asked, alarmed, head shooting up to look over at him. “Are you okay?”

“….I’m fine.” He said, weakly, from the ground. “I’m just gonna…lay here a while, okay? It’s been a crazy day.”

Ezran considered that for a moment. “I think I’ll join you.” He decided, and flopped back beside him, egg held securely in his arms.

Callum huffed, lips quirking in a smile, and let his head fall back. “We can just watch the clouds for a bit, I guess.” He said, and that was exactly what they did.

He was so very, very ready for this day to be over.

---

End chapter.

S3 notes: If you’re not a new reader, be aware that I’ve gone back and made edits to chapters 1-10 to accommodate new s3 context and information, but only on ao3. Tumblr editions remain unedited. Nothing really needed any major changes, but the stuff’s in there. There are edit notes at the beginning of every chapter on ao3.

Notes: In a fairly sudden decision made today, 30/11/19, I cut this chapter in half. The second half will be finished and posted as chapter 12 instead, and all my future chapters have been renumbered. This is because even I was getting sick of how long my chapters were getting, and my desire to avoid obscenely high chapter counts was not compelling enough to stop me from cutting it. Otherwise I think this chapter would have ended up being about 23-25k, and no one wants that.

From now on, I’ll be making an effort to keep chapters under 15k unless there’s compelling reasons not to, such as it being an important chapter with important emotional and narrative flow.

Next chapter is currently like 9k now, and I expect it to maybe conclude at around 10-12k. Lots of Corvus in that one.

Story notes:

Timeline: This chapter takes place on 19.05, day 9. Kids have camped at an altitude of 1500m, and have ascended maybe 250-300m in the day.

Quite early in the morning, Soren and Claudia contemplate weather. This occurs more-or-less concurrently with Callum and Rayla tying up the hunters last chapter. Early afternoon, the Zym-Ez Machina happens, and after that they’re travelling. It’s been an eventful day. Not much later in the afternoon, Amaya is consecrated as a Justiciar.

Camping note: The windy campsite experience is one of my own. Except in my case, it took ten people to hold the tent down while other people put the poles in and pitched it, not two. Same tent size as the kids have, pretty much, and it took ten people to stop the wind from flinging it and us off the mountain. So…I’m making gratuitous allowances for Rayla’s strength.

Camping on a slope? Also personal experience – though in my case it wasn’t the same campsite as the Windy Place. One of my group lost her bowl over the cliff, and someone else had to tackle her backpack when it started rolling downhill towards the edge. Considering we were all carrying group gear – losing that backpack would have been dire. See more slope-camping difficulties next chapter.

Medical note: Thanks to the Zym Ez Machina, Rayla’s binding has been loosened somewhat. Now it’s about as tight as it was a day or two past the ritual. This is allowing her to reperfuse to an extent – there’s enough leeway for blood to circulate into the hand and start oxygenating it properly again. This also carries the toxic waste products left by dead or deoxygenated cells into the rest of the body, causing inflammation and tissue death and mild systemic shock. As I have stated before, I’ve decided that elves are less susceptible to reperfusion injury than humans, so this will not approach life-threatening levels for Rayla. It will, however, be pretty unpleasant, and exacerbate the severity of her permanent damage. In this chapter, the first signs of systemic shock start to set in, and then the elfy biological mechanisms she had kicked in and stopped the worst effects.

On Zym’s egg: From s3, a lot of people seem to assume that Zym’s egg was laid on the day Avizandum died. I disagree. I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be Zym’s hatchday, and Zubeia was off catching a storm or something that she could bring back and hatch him with. Some reasons: if it was the day he was laid, Zubeia would have been there, because she’d be laying the egg, and I doubt she’d have gone flying off immediately afterwards. Rayla’s parents left to join the Dragonguard when she was a kid, years ago – I can see the Dragonguard being formed in advance of the egg being laid, but not that far in advance. And lastly, Viren seems to know about the egg’s existence already – his realisation of why Avizandum was there was much more ‘oh this makes sense now’ than ‘what if….the dragon king has an egg…what a horrible thought’. He certainly knows that Avizandum has a mate. So I maintain that Zym’s egg is years old, and he’s been maturing inside it for a long time as his parents wait for the right conditions to hatch him.

That's all for now. Expect another update within the next few days!

#tdp #rayllum #tdp fanfic #tdp rayla #tdp callum #tdp ezran #piaj #piaj chapters

29 notes · View notes

the-real-tc · 8 years ago

Text

Fic Update! Wide River to Cross: Chapter 17

Author’s Note: A big thanks to @katybeth23 and @mlcsped for being my “sounding board” and offering encouragement and timely suggestions. We return to Lisa’s POV this time, and of course she’s still not in a happy place (duh, because she’s not with Jack, that's why). Hope you enjoy, despite the not-happy Lisa moments.

Chapter 17:

The Great Divorce Horse

The day’s forecast for Toulon called for sun with some cloudy patches towards afternoon. Lisa was glad for it. Bleak, rainy weather from earlier in the year seemed to have moved on, giving way to more favourable conditions for the grapes the Laportes were expecting to harvest in and around September from Lisa’s property. Dry weather also meant better riding conditions. As Lisa was wont to do in the mornings, she saddled up Indigo for a quick ride. The blue roan was eager for something more than a sedate walk through the open field nearby, so Lisa indulged him in a healthy gallop, urging him on with a hard nudge to his side. She delighted in the rush of the wind against her exposed face as they raced along, her ears filled with the sound of Indigo’s pounding hooves as they beat the turf. Her own pulse quickened with the thrill of the run.

Lisa was at once grateful for those first humans who developed the art of domesticating the wild horse. All that skill and knowledge had trickled down through the ages to this one point in time when she could enjoy this activity. Horse and rider together made an amazing and complementary team whether for work, sport, or recreation. The fact Lisa had dedicated her entire adult life to the pursuit of maintaining strong bloodlines and rearing the best thoroughbreds meant she was part of that continuum, etching her own place in horse-breeding history.

After about a half-hour, Lisa turned back for home.

Home. Is that what this is now? Lisa thought as she came over a slight rise and spotted her property in the distance. I guess it is, if I’m going to be selling Fairfield.

Selling Fairfield was an inevitability. Rachel had put up no resistance to Lisa’s giving it up, and once the sale was complete, her investment in the Avignon venture could proceed. Even though another investor had backed out—which was the reason for the most recent delay—Dan was confident they would be able to find someone else. In their latest conversation, Dan had mentioned he was actively looking for that third potential investor. “…And once we pool our resources, we’ll be looking at having one of the most state-of-the-art horse-breeding facilities in Europe,” he’d boasted.

The memory of that conversation now struck Lisa like a bolt of lightning. Dan’s talk of “pooling resources” had been one of the reasons Jack started suspecting Dan and Lisa were on the road to reconciling whatever differences had parted them.

It still stung on some level that Jack could have even entertained that notion. Was he still so insecure about Dan that he would think she was getting back together with him? Even now, long after that unfortunate event, Lisa wished Jack had asked her, straight up, what was going on. It was true she rarely talked about her work with him because Jack had almost zero interest in high-end, racehorse-breeding. It was a rich man’s world, and Jack preferred to steer clear. That, and any mention of Dan was sure to be a mood-spoiler, regardless of whether it was only in the context of business.

Once Lisa was back inside after caring for Indigo’s post-ride needs, she settled in for a day of catching up on correspondence. Half-a-dozen other horses following Porthos had been tested for specific genetic markers, and Lisa was eager to see if the results had come in from the lab. Already, they had nearly thirty clients with mares interested in the middle-distance champion; Lisa expected that number to double before the breeding season was over.

There were several messages in Lisa’s Inbox vying for attention, but the newest one caught her eye in an instant:

Mackenzie Hutton-Parsons Re: Diva Girl

Lisa clicked on the message link as memories came to mind from the day she gifted Mackenzie and Ian Parsons with the supposedly cursed Andalusian horse.

“Dear Lisa,

I hope you’re doing well. Remember when you so generously gave Diva Girl to me when I married my darling Ian? You made me promise that if we ever bred her, you wanted her first-born. Well, I have some great news. Diva Girl foaled last night on Ian’s parents’ farm in Montana! It’s a boy! We haven’t thought of a name yet; we thought we’d leave that privilege to you.”

A smile spread across Lisa’s face at the news. Mackenzie’s message went on for several more paragraphs, updating Lisa on how things were going at her small Art Gallery and Ian’s growing graphic design company. It started to read almost like a confessional when Mackenzie mentioned her parents, Ray and June:

“Mom and Dad are also keeping well. They’re thinking of selling their place in the Hamptons and offered it to us first, but I don’t think we’re going to take them up on it. As much as it would be nice to keep it “in the family”, I just don’t see me and Ian hanging around with that crowd. It’s so weird to say it, but that world just seems alien to me now. Once the gossip about my eloping with Ian died down and my parents accepted that I wasn’t marrying some other trust-fund brat, I realized just how much pressure I had been putting on myself to live up to their crazy expectations. Now, I can’t imagine working in that cutthroat, brutal world I left behind when I quit my job with Strickland & Cook.”

Lisa recalled meeting Ray and June Hutton on a few occasions in the company of her own good friends, Elspeth and Riley Penfield. The Penfields were practically an institution in horseracing circles and had owned a few champion racehorses in their day. The last time Lisa saw them was at the Breeders’ Cup two years previous at Santa Anita Park. Mackenzie’s email concluded:

“Anyway, hope to hear from you soon! Ian and I would love to come out and see you all again sometime in the near future, and of course you’ll have to let me know what name you’d like to give Diva Girl’s foal.

Sincerely,

Mackenzie Hutton-Parsons”

Lisa wrote back a quick reply, saying she was of course only kidding when she’d staked a claim on Diva Girl’s first-born, but she was happy to supply Mackenzie with some name suggestions if she was lacking. She hit ‘Send’, planning to continue with reading her emails. Scanning the “subject line” area in the list to prioritize the messages in order of importance, Lisa still hoped to see something from the genetics lab. However, the ‘all caps’ text of one email from her ex-husband was impossible to ignore:

Dan Hartfield

Re: IMPORTANT!! MUST READ AND RESPOND ASAP!!

“Lisa, Where are we with the sale of Fairfield? You need to get on that, or we’re going to miss our window of opportunity to get things off the ground per the timetable we set. Any more delays, and it’s going to start affecting our bottom line. How am I supposed to find another investor if you can’t even commit? Things are tenuous right now, and I need your support. I needn’t remind you of all the times I supported you, so get this done. Get back to me as soon as you receive this.

-Dan”

As much as Lisa felt the Avignon venture was a positive step towards maintaining their place in the competitive world of breeding the best racehorses, she was greatly annoyed at Dan’s pushiness. He’d previously claimed he was positive he could find another investor; now he was changing his tune, pinning his inability to bring in someone else on her apparent lack of commitment to the cause. Pulling out of Hudson as one of the main hubs for their breeding operation would elevate their status even higher on the international scene, so this plan—though risky—made a lot of sense. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, thought Lisa. Nevertheless, the hostility she currently felt towards her ex-husband was reaching a critical level. How dare he blame her for his failings?

“Dan,

As you’re aware, the real estate market is in the toilet right now. If we try to sell Fairfield at present, we’re not going to get its full worth. That’s going to mean another hit to your precious “bottom line”. I think it’s prudent to wait a few more months. The market is bound to swing back in our favour. I don’t want to give the farm away for nothing, so let’s be patient about this. Our timetable will still be on track, so use that time to woo those other investors you were so confident of finding.

-Lisa”

With a smug smile, she hit the “Send” button. She didn’t know if suggesting her reluctance to sell Fairfield due to unfavourable market prices would make him back off, but appealing to his “bottom line” was sure to make him think twice. Dan could be ruthless when it came to the money side of things, and the thought of not coming out on top in a business transaction tended to upset him.

When they had first met, Lisa had known right away Dan was success-driven. They were similar in that sense, and their love of horses had initially made for a very comfortable and compatible partnership. Dan could be very charming when he was in the process of orchestrating a deal; he had certainly been very charming when they had been getting to know each other romantically. The charm wore off soon enough, as though Dan grew bored of keeping it going once he’d landed her as his wife. Things they should have discussed before tying the knot became problematic. He’d wanted to move to the ‘States; she’d balked at leaving Fairfield, which she considered a perfectly logical base of operations if they were going to make a serious go of breeding thoroughbreds. Dan had thought Hudson to be too “small potatoes” a town for what he envisioned. She’d acquiesced, however reluctantly, concluding such a compromise would be good in the long run for both their fledgling business and their marriage.

I was right about one of those, at least, Lisa now reflected. The business had thrived, and they’d made invaluable contacts and friends by dint of their more cosmopolitan setting in the ‘States, something that wouldn’t have been as easily accomplished in Hudson.

But where they found success in breeding fine racehorses, they couldn’t make a success of their marriage. The business became Dan’s sole focus, and he expected Lisa to keep up. She’d assumed children would come right along with the marriage; when it didn’t happen, Dan wasn’t nearly as supportive as she had hoped he would be. The heartbreak of several miscarriages didn’t evoke in him the kind of compassion she’d expected and wanted, leaving her to feel as if she were alone in her grief.

And then Dad became ill and Mom left, Lisa thought with a sad shake of her head. Taking care of Matthew Stillman had come with its own set of difficulties, but it afforded Lisa a much-needed “time out” from her marriage to Dan. She concluded during those eighteen months of tending to her father that she didn’t miss her husband. His cruel words to her about the possibility of passing Huntington’s on to their children had rung in her ears for a long, painful while.

Dan must have used the lengthy time they were inadvertently separated to re-think his attitude, for when Lisa returned to the USA shortly after Matthew’s passing, he had a special request.

Lisa recalled he’d been particularly solicitous of her. “I have a horse I want you to come see,” Dan had said the morning after she came back. “A yearling. I think you’re going to love her, Lisa.”

From the moment Lisa laid eyes on Diva Girl, she was indeed taken by the gorgeous Andalusian. The ink was barely dry on the ownership papers when the young horse began to present unpredictable behaviors. Despite that, Diva Girl managed to bring home some prizes when she was shown, but nevertheless continued to misbehave for no apparent reason. None of their trainers seemed able to deal with Diva Girl’s temperamental streak. One trainer even threatened to sue Dan and Lisa for damages after being bitten very badly—a complication that worsened an already frustrating situation. Buying the horse was supposed to have been Dan’s way of patching things up; instead, it was having the exact opposite effect on their floundering marriage.

Eventually, Diva Girl was sold to new owners who believed her problems were exaggerated; the proceeds of that sale divided between Dan and Lisa as part of their divorce settlement. Months later, Lisa was picking up the pieces of her life, trying to get Fairfield back into shape, when she received a call from one of the owners.

“We can’t cope with an ill-tempered horse and a divorce at the same time,” the wife had complained to Lisa. “We can’t even agree on a sale price for her, so we’ve decided to just return her and get our money back. That, at least, my soon-to-be ex-husband and I can agree on!”

The last thing Lisa wanted to do at that time was take back the horse; too many bitter memories attached to Diva Girl and the mess of a marriage she wanted to leave behind. Buying her hadn’t made any practical sense from the very beginning, and now that impulse purchase was coming back to haunt them.

Arranging the return meant involving Dan. Lisa was loath to involve her ex-husband, but circumstances dictated otherwise. Dan could probably find another buyer more quickly than she could, and she was sorely in need of the capital to keep Fairfield running.

“Just talk to Dan, darling,” Evelyn had counseled Lisa at the time. “It can’t do any harm, can it? Heaven knows I’m the last one who should be talking about letting pride get in the way… But now is the time to swallow yours. Take back that horse, sell her to someone else, make back the money, and everything will be all right.”

Swallowing her pride meant also shoving back the worst memories of words spoken in anger and malice in the heat of so many terrible moments.

“You think you can do better somewhere else, Lisa? Is that it? Is there someone else in Hudson?!” Dan had accused in what was perhaps their darkest period.

“Of course not!” Lisa had shot back, shocked to the core he could think she would be unfaithful, even if things were strained between them.

“Oh, I don’t know, Lisa. You did spend more than a year there,” Dan had sneered. “I know how men look at you; don’t pretend you don’t notice, either. You think some other man is going to be okay with the fact you’ve got a 50/50 chance of inheriting the same thing that killed your father? That if you have kids, they could inherit it, too? Give it up, Lisa. It’s time you realise you ought to be satisfied you’re with me. You need to quit being obsessed with this motherhood deal, count your lucky stars it didn’t work out, and move on to more important things: like our marriage, and our business!”

Aunt Evelyn had always liked Dan, so she had been disappointed when Lisa announced the divorce. Nevertheless, Evelyn offered a compassionate ear through it all, though she was never able to fully comprehend the reasons, believing her niece was making a terrible mistake.

Lisa hadn’t felt ready to share those particularly awful conversations and deeply cruel words and accusations from Dan’s mouth. Part of that was because Lisa hadn’t been able to talk about her pregnancy losses with anyone else besides Rachel, and partly because she knew Dan liked Evelyn, too. Their marriage might be over, but that didn’t have to poison the rest of the family relationships.

There was no way to avoid the Diva Girl issue, really, so Lisa eventually heeded her aunt’s advice. She had put aside her pride, mustered all her courage, and picked up the phone to call Dan.

“I spoke with Clarissa McNeil. She and Chip are getting a divorce and, uh… want to return Diva Girl. They say they can’t deal with her moods, and neither of them wants to keep her once they’ve gone their separate ways. I don’t have the funds right now to cover the full repayment. I—I need your help, Dan. After all, we bought her together, before the divorce. She belongs to you, too…”

Lisa wasn’t sure how he would react, fearing the worst; thinking he might maliciously choose that moment to blame her for Diva Girl’s issues and declare the horse to be solely her problem. To her surprise, though, Dan seemed to have a reversion to his old charming self.

“I’d be happy to help you, Lisa. We may have our differences, but I know this is important. Don’t worry; we’ll take Diva back. We’ll find another buyer soon, okay? That way, we won’t be out-of-pocket for too long.”

“Thanks. Thank-you, Dan,” Lisa had responded, flushed with genuine gratitude. She was further surprised by Dan’s next words:

“You’re welcome… And Lisa, I know you’ve been getting a little financial help from Evelyn, and that’s great, but don’t be so stubborn that you let Fairfield sink into oblivion. I don’t want you to lose your family business because you didn’t want to ask me for help. We may be divorced now, but there’s no rule that says we can’t be business partners. We were always good at that side of things, weren’t we?”

Truly, they did very well as business partners, and Lisa found herself agreeing to allow Dan to come on as an investor in Fairfield’s operations. Lisa hadn’t initially interpreted his offer as anything other than a gesture of kindness coupled with a calculated risk that had a good chance of paying off. He never entered a business deal without a “What’s-in-it-for-me” clause; Lisa never once considered he might have suggested a partnership with an aim to win her back.

Dan eventually moved his own breeding operations back to Hudson under the name of Brookland Stables, ostensibly to benefit both his “bottom line” and that of Fairfield’s. Years of hard work began to pay off, and Fairfield Stables’ thoroughbreds began to place in national and international races. In all those years, Lisa’s single-minded pursuit of building up Fairfield had precluded any notion of pursuing a serious relationship with someone else; she was determined not to get involved after such a dismal failure with Dan.

All that had changed when she met Jack Bartlett at the Heartland Open House. By all appearances, they were totally incompatible. She was young enough to be his daughter, enjoying a jet-set lifestyle as she courted wealthy horse owners with more money than Jack could ever hope to see. Nevertheless, the spark that flashed between them burst into a flame that burned slowly but surely, warming them both with the realisation this was more than a passing fancy.

To Lisa’s consternation, Dan became weirdly territorial once he realised Lisa was starting something with the rodeo legend. It had all been going along so well; the thriving business kept them both happy; kept things uncomplicated. If Dan thought he was wooing her again, the appearance of Jack threw all those plans into the manure pile.

But that’s all gone now, Lisa now thought with deep regret. Between Dan’s irrational jealousy and Val Stanton’s desperate plays for Jack, Lisa found herself wondering how they’d managed to last for as long as they did.

Maybe it’s the old Diva Girl the ‘Divorce Horse’ curse at work again; it’s following me around, but it ruined me and Jack even before we could say “I do”, Lisa pondered, then scoffed at the notion. While she’d floated the possibility of being cursed in her relationships before, Lisa was too rational and pragmatic an individual to truly buy into it. After all, Mackenzie and Ian Parsons were still happily married; Diva Girl’s behaviors solved by Amy’s astute diagnosis that she just wanted to “be a horse”.

At least it wasn’t a problem horse that got between us, Jack, Lisa mused. We have only ourselves to blame for our breakup. Maybe Dan is right; maybe I am dragging my feet with putting Fairfield on the market… What am I holding on to anymore?

Oh, I sure would love to see your handsome face at my door, Jack. If you still love me, I wish you would take the first step, because I don’t know how to feel anymore about how you rejected me that night at Heartland when I rented that ridiculous hospital bed… I don’t know anymore if you even want to see me, or talk to me, or tell me you’re sorry and you want me to come back… because if you did, Jack, I’d be back in a heartbeat, and I’d keep Fairfield for good.

Chapter 18: Always Something There to Remind Me

#Heartland #heartland fanfiction #wide river to cross #Chapter 17 #The Great Divorce Horse #Lisa Stillman #Jack Bartlett #Dan Hartfield #Aunt Evelyn #my fanfiction #Jisa #jisa fanfiction

25 notes · View notes