Chapter Text
"I'm going for a walk," Kit says.
She doesn't have to pose it as a question. Edér follows her, like he always does, and Defiance Bay appears unchanged as they leave the others at the inn and make their way through the city. The streets are damp with recent rain, the sky heavy with the promise of more, but the people are out and about, as they always are. Kit recognizes a few, and she is careful to weave a thread of power around herself and around Edér as they walk, so that any curious eyes slide off of them like water.
The stories are already trickling in, and she doesn't feel like fielding questions about the Lady of Caed Nua, back from the dead and back from her titanic clash with the gods in the wild waters of the Deadfire.
Defiance Bay is no different. Only Kit is. Only Edér is. It's comforting and unsettling both, to walk streets that haven't changed. It settles as a melancholy weight in Kit's chest, but it doesn't hurt. There's something cozy about moving unseen through a place that's almost home and observing its everyday hustle and bustle. Edér makes up stories about a few passers-by, and Kit laughs, and it could almost be five years ago.
The forests of the Dyrwood rise up just beyond the bridge, and as Kit steps into the shadows of the trees and sets foot upon the sodden underbrush, something in her finally, finally relaxes.
"I hate the ocean," Kit says, leading them deeper into the woods. The ground is solid beneath her feet. Its pitching and turning is nothing like the waves, entirely imperceptible to mortal senses. It moves, and it doesn't. Far below, souls once whispered an eternal song just outside of mortal hearing. Perhaps they still do. She just has to find it, has to listen more closely than she ever has.
The air is heavy and rich with the passing of rain. The scent of life renewed, turning ever onward despite the winds of change.
"Was getting pretty sick of it, myself," Edér agrees. "How long do you reckon we'll stay?"
Even on islands so big that Kit couldn't hear the sea anymore, a salt-smell had clung to the air. Here, they are far enough from the docks that only the smell of damp earth surrounds them. There is no rush of waves here. Only the wind and the faintest hum of animals souls thrumming just below their cries. Even the city behind them is muted.
"A while," Kit says. She needs to go to Eir Glanfath and Dyrford and visit every adra vein in between. She needs to see to Caed Nua's progress, left in Emery's capable hands all these months. She needs to spend time on land that maintains the illusion of forever, where rain doesn't threaten sails and hulls, only renews growing things. "Make that a while."
"Don't tell me you missed the Dyrwood," Edér says, dry.
They're far enough now that the forest might as well go on forever. Kit turns around to face Edér and breathes it in. Her chest feels light, airy. It doesn't make sense, when things are perhaps more dire than they've ever been. "I hate to say it," Kit says, "but this strange little country is home. Besides," she adds, "it's where I met you."
Edér blushes and tries to hide it behind a pipe that he pulls out and lights hastily. "Good to see we made a local out of you," he says. "Missed it too. I wouldn't mind hanging around."
"As long as you want," Kit says, warm.
Edér waves his pipe at her. "Thought you wanted to meditate or something?"
He watches over her as she gets lost in the glow of essence, in the resonance of living things, searching with a cipher's ear and a Watcher's hearing. She has tangled irreversibly with gods, and she hears incredible things now, at impossible distances, but she can't hear the adra in the bay, in Stormwall Gorge. She can't hear Caed Nua. With her mortal ears, she hears only another band of rain, coming in fast.
Something has changed, and maybe one day, it will be for the better. But for now, they have work to do.