Work Text:
In the days following Percy’s death, I do many things I’ve always wanted to do: I renovate my kitchen, Juniper begins teaching me Gnomish and some Celestial, I organize my wine cellar, I fix a footbridge that had been falling to rot in one of the castle’s gardens all on my own. I cut my hair short. I ask Myrda my housekeeper to show me how to sew and weave -- all sewing I’ve ever done has been for basic maintenance of my garments and darning my socks back when I was much younger travelling with Vox Machina or even earlier when I lived in the forest with my brother. And even then he was always better at it than I was, more dexterous and precise like our seamstress mother, so I let him do it while I hunted and prepared our meals. I do some hunting again, too, and in the cool starry nights I leave my spoils charmed with a preservation spell Keyleth taught me years ago on the doorstep of anyone who looks like they need the food.
I count the time in days long after it -- his death -- has passed, when others would start calling them months, or years. Today it was been five hundred and thirty six days since. I try not repose on those thoughts too much, because I don’t think he would like me to dwell on such unpleasantness for very long, but my brain does like to remind me every morning when I wake regardless, like it reminds me of the day of the week. Yesterday was five hundred and thirty five, a rainy Folsen, and I spent the morning making so many preserves for the winter with Myrda the house still smells of pears. Today is five hundred and thirty six, and I’m expecting my eldest daughter Elaina to come visit with some of my grandchildren and her husband. We will go to lunch and perhaps spend some time outside taking advantage of the sun and the relative warmth and I think it will be a good day.
I love fall in Whitestone with its forest and mountains especially this time of year: their reds and yellows and oranges and browns are rich like my favourite stew and they are quiet when the town and fields and orchards and farms are bustling with harvest activity, by Pelor’s grace. As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to enjoy that kind of silence more, one filled with the crunch of leaves beneath my feet, the trickle of streams hidden by the trees, and the caw of ravens that flock around and roost in the trees and cliffs of the mountains at night. My own breath, my own heart beating in my ears. It’s like it all sings me a song -- and sometimes I do sing, too, in the stillness by my favourite brook, perched high upon a tree. Melodies and words from old human lullabies my mother sang to us as children or from Whitestone folk songs Keeper Yennen taught me decades ago. Sometimes there are no words at all just like the brook has no name, and no one can hear me but the woods and the animals so it doesn’t really matter how silly I sound.
There are puddles filled with decaying leaves and mud patches as I walk through the worn cobblestone streets of town -- Percy always hated the cobblestones and had theories about smoother surfaces, and I’m sure the tinkerers he’s inspired over the years have taken his ideas and worked through them somehow, but for now, we have this. It looks nice, in any case, and the sun is shining down onto the small pools of water, and it all smells delightful, like the earth and rotting, sweet apples and rain. As long as I avoid the tannery, of course, which smells like fucking shit.
Instead I take the street that will bring me to the Slayer’s Cake so I can pick up some pastries before I go meet Elaina and the grandchildren at the Sun Tree. Davan likes the bear claws and Vili’ette will eat just about anything if it’s been smothered in powdered sugar. Of course a grandmother must spoil her little ones, and I really do not see them nearly enough, what with Elaina and her husband Au’briel always off on their diplomatic missions to different Ashari tribes of Tal’Dorei and Davan and Vili spending much of their time with their other half-elven grandparents in Zephrah. When sharp-eyed Elaina announced to us that she was to marry a childhood friend she’d met on one of our any trips to visit Keyleth when the kids were little, it was something of a shock, but Aunt Kiki remains delighted to have little de Rolo spawn living in her village now. In any case, that shock was nothing compared to the time we visited just before Percy got really sick and he found Davan running down the street chasing after a butterfly with some others of his age, completely barefoot, with dirt all over his face and arms. I just laughed at his frown and told Davan to stay out until dusk.
It’s difficult to keep track of all my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but I do try my best. Madeline is the easiest, as she lives just outside of Whitestone with her farmer husband -- another thing Percy found scandalous more than likely until the day he died. She’s busy with the harvest this week, much too busy to come to lunch with us, but I’ll more than likely see her and Jaymus, her husband, this weekend. Their kids are off on their own now, and in fact I received news a few weeks ago that their oldest, Miriam, has accepted a new position at the Lyceum, teaching something to do with Transmutation. I’m not quite sure what exactly, but neither Percy nor I were ever too good with anything magical.
Vesper inherited Greyskull and lives there in Emon, though it’s less of a homestead and more of a headquarters for her adventuring party. I worry about her but really, I can’t say much against it because Pelor knows Vox Machina got in more trouble than any other group of sell-swords the continent has ever seen, and caused their fair share of trouble too. She comes home often enough to visit though, through the teleportation sigil we had installed for her there, and her stories of her journeys and the treasure she’s found and the people she’s saved leave me aching for it all over again, itching to take out Fenthras from its locked glass display case where it is safe from any would-be thieves.
Danny is -- well. I’m told there’s always at least one in large families who loses themself. He takes after Vax, his namesake, though I don’t think he knows it. He looks like him, more elven and graceful than any of the others, and when he was a child he frowned in just the same way Vax did. I haven’t seen him since his father’s funeral, but he send me letters sometimes. They’re full of beautiful poems and stories that tell me nothing about what he’s doing or where he is, and they are difficult to read. He asks for money. I send it to him even if I don’t always think I should. Vesper tells me she sees him on occasion, every other month or so, when he shows up at the Keep with bruises and cuts, half-mad with pain, unwilling to explain how he got in that state. I think it has something to do with the Clasp or some other such group -- I suspect he is living like a shadow and always reckless, just like his uncle. He’ll find his way eventually, I’m sure. I hope.
Cassidy is the baby of the family, though I suppose she’s not such a baby anymore at 35 years old. I am so proud of her. She’s the youngest First Dawnbringer of the Sunhaven Vasselheim has seen in two centuries -- the head cleric of Pelor’s worship there. I remember waking her early on mornings I was feeling particularly Champion-y to go walk up from our house to the castle gardens, her little fist covering sweet sleepy yawns as I made her watch the sun cresting over the Sierras, brown hair like her father’s had once been turning golden in the new light. Somehow she never complained. I suppose Pelor had known her from the beginning, like I suspect he knew me, and calmed her then, in the pink chill of dawn. I still do watch the sunrise when I can, and she joins me whenever she visits. I’m forever working through my feelings about Pelor and religion, even though it’s been more than fifty years since our visit to the Fields of Elysium. I don’t know how Cassidy figured it out so quickly. Maybe I’ll ask her next time we see each other.
I follow my nose to the bakery, much like Trinket used to sniff out his favourite treats. A few people wave at me and call out cheery greetings; the sun is out after yesterday’s rain. I feel silly thinking it but at times I feel like it too -- the sun, I mean -- is waving down at us, at Whitestone, in Pelor’s stead.
“Lady de Rolo,” says Jonna, the current manager, who is behind the counter as I walk in. There are a few people scattered about the tables, but it’s quiet before the lunch rush. “How are you today?”
The Slayer’s Cake is no longer the only bakery in town but it’s become something of a place to gather -- at least for the older folks in town, who meet in the mornings and evenings over coffee to discuss the latest happenings and gossip. Places like these -- small villages and towns isolated from others by forests or mountains or water, their people knit together by necessity and seclusion -- subsist on rumours and stories and gossip as much as anything else.
“Darling, how many times have I told you to call me Vex,” I say. “Vex’ahlia if you must.”
She laughs and shakes her head. “I’ll try,” she says. She’ll try about as much as she’ll let me pay her for the sweets I choose. She’s young, for a dwarf, and we’ve already told her she’ll get the place in a few years. We offered it to all our children, of course, Kaylie and Juniper included, but the most any of them ever wanted was to work here in the summers of their youths between school sessions. That was something Percy and I agreed on, though I don’t think Cassandra ever did: our children worked as soon as they were able and made their own money.
“Well, see that you do,” I say. The sweets on display today look delicious as always: small gâteaux with fresh apples dusted in cinnamon sugar, delicate Madelines (named for our Madeline, of course), glistening pear tarts, towering cakes dripping in caramel and beautiful braided raisin breads, chocolates and truffles that I know from experience positively melt when upon your tongue, spiced cookies, puffy pastries stuffed with preserves, fudge dotted with nuts, things with names I’ve never heard of and some of which I can only guess at the pronunciation. It is difficult not to choose one of everything, but the thing about being a half-elf with a relatively long life who also partially owns a bakery, is that I know I can always come back tomorrow, and the day after again.
I wait for Jonna to place my chosen treats in a basket, and look around. There is an elven father trying to stop his two little ones from fighting over a bun of some kind, a young halfling with her nose buried in a book and her hair shining gold in the sun, two old human men in a corner, mugs of tea steaming before them, talking quietly to each other.
“Do you think she’s looking better,” I read off the lips of one.
“She’s looking older,” says the other, I think. The right side of his mouth droops a little, making him more difficult for me to read.
“Shut your mouth or she’ll hear you,” the first whispers. He glances toward me and I turn my head just as Jonna calls out my name.
My family should be arriving soon. I take my basket and go.
Instead of Au’briel, it is Keyleth who steps through the Sun Tree with Elaina, Davan and Vili.
“Oh!” I say. Keyleth ignores me for a second as she whispers something to the Sun Tree, then turns and smiles, wide and beautiful and the same as it was when she was 20. In fact, everything about her is the same as it was when she was 20, save for the scars, perhaps a few laugh lines, and her hair, which reaches her arse now, though it’s still bright and soft beneath her circlet.
“Hi,” she says, and does the same little awkward wave she always does. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
“Grandmother, Grandmother!” My little ones leap over me and quickly find the basket of sweets, which I hand to them after I kneel and take them in my arms. Elaina helps me up and hugs me as the children squabble over who gets the biggest bear claw.
“Mother,” she says. I kiss her cheek and stay in her embrace for a few seconds before pulling back. “Au’briel was called to Syngorn on business, so Aunt Kiki brought us. Is that alright?”
“It’s more than alright,” I say. “Come here, you.”
Keyleth takes a few long strides and I pull her in tight. She smells, as she always does, like sun-warmed skin and spring mornings, and when I step away, I see she’s fashioned a daisy and tucked it in my braid without my noticing.
“I thought you were too busy to come visit little old me,” I say, touching the flower with one ginger finger.
“Please,” she says, “I’d never be too busy for you or Whitestone.”
I don’t think either of us believe that, as she hasn’t been in months, but she is the leader of her people, and she still writes me letters occasionally. I’d never begrudge her absence, just like I don’t Pike’s or Scanlan’s or Tary’s or Grog’s or Allura's or Zahra's. We all have our own lives now, and the one we shared is long since over. There are history books about us now. That’s all we are to most people, now: history, and the heroes of funny or sometimes scary tales young bards tell around campfires.
“Kids, please don’t eat those before lunch,” Elaina says. Davan looks at her with guilt and cinnamon sugar clinging to the left corner of his mouth, a half-gone pastry in his hand. Vili’ette does not so much as pause at her mother’s scolding, and continues biting into her tart.
“Oh, let them. Grandmother says it’s okay,” I say, and ruffle Davan’s hair. “We just won’t tell your Papa, huh?” He cheers and goes back to his prize.
Elaina rolls her eyes. “You’re not the one who’s going to have to deal with them asking for sweets before vegetables every day now.”
“Perks of the job,” I say and take Davan by a sticky hand. “Come, let’s go see your Aunt Cassandra before lunch. She’s been asking after you.”
Vili rolls her eyes. “She’s so old.”
“Ouch. You know I’m older than she is,” I say.
We begin the walk up to the castle as people wave to us and call out greetings to Elaina and me. It’s then that I notice that Keyleth has stayed back, nearer the tree, and isn’t moving to follow us, instead looking up at a raven perched on the gable of the shoe cobbler’s shop directly in front of her. It’s small compared to the one that follows Keyleth around, but its eyes are sharply intelligent and glittering black in the sun, and it looks down at her keenly.
“Keyleth, darling,” I call, “are you joining us? Cass would love to see you.”
She startles and the raven hops a little on the roofline.
“I, ah, hm.” She stumbles over her words then laughs to herself, breathy and self-conscious. She looks down and shakes her head. I’ve always wondered how her antlers stay affixed but mostly I chalk it up to magic, either the circlet’s, hers, or the ambient energy in places blessed by deities or with a heavy concentration of magic-users that allow wounds to heal faster than they would normally in places bereft of mages and magic. Keyleth looks up at me and shrugs, one bare foot twisting and tapping, fidgeting on the damp cobblestones. “I’ll catch up with you later. I’m going to go for a walk in the forest.”
I frown but let her go. We’re going for our own stroll later, so either we’ll find her there or we won’t, and if we don’t it’ll more than likely be because she doesn’t want to be found. I’m at home in forests, especially Whitestone’s; I know its clearings and trees and streams and birds, and can find my way with moss and stars and wind and bark better than most. But Keyleth is the forest, in a way -- connected to it and to the mountains and the sky and the ocean and the desert and the earth in a way I’ve never understood. She can become any animal or creature, and she doesn’t need to use markers like strangely-shaped rocks and fallen tree trunks to find her path. She simply knows the path. She is the Voice of the Tempest, after all, and I am just a widow.
“Grandmother?” Vili’ette says from a dozen feet away, drawing my attention away from studying Keyleth as she walks away to find her way out of town. “Did you know that when you squish a butterfly its guts are yellow?”
“I -- what were you doing squishing butterflies?” I ask and walk quickly to rejoin them.
“It was an accident!” Davan says. “I was just playing with--”
Assisted by frequent interjections from his sister he recounts his story and we continue on through the town and up to the castle where my sister-in-law waits for us. When I look back again Keyleth has disappeared into the streets and the raven has flown off.
In the end, Cassandra insists we eat at the castle with her and in the face of her increasing frailty it’s hard to deny her. The little ones don’t really mind, and instead ask throughout our meal to go visit the dungeons below ground. Where they learned we have dungeons I don’t know but I wouldn’t put it past one of their older cousins or even Vesper last they saw her to have let it slip -- she enjoys playing with them and with Elaina entirely too much. They always were a little at odds with each other: Elaina driven and ambitious and cunning and politically-minded, and Vesper brash and loud and uncaring of propriety or procedure.
In fact, I attribute a lot of Vesper’s finer qualities to the fact that she spent her thirteenth summer in Emon with Kima and Allura -- ostensibly for tutoring, as she had been falling behind in her studies. Instead she came back swearing like a sailor and with a propensity for fighting that I know Allura had no part in.
Percy never knew quite what to do with her, or any of our children, really, even Elaina, who I believe is the most like him. In truth, I don’t think he ever believed he would live long enough to have children. His life took him by surprise at every turn, even by the time Cassidy came along and he had been changing nappies expertly for years. I never knew how to help him with that -- none of us did , though we tried. His friends, his family. It was something he carried within him like he had Orthax. He loved his children, but I don’t think he ever thought he deserved them.
Madeline occasionally uses a rifle for hunting, but she prefers a bow like me, and even then, she and her husband raise most of their own livestock and rarely have need for wild game. Percy never really tried to get them interested in firearms, as he himself had lost much of his passion for them, and even began to resent and regret them. None of them ever wanted much to do with his guns, which was, however hypocritically, a relief for both of us, especially when some of our children grew to be more -- volatile, perhaps, then some others.
Should we have tried to tame Vesper’s more dangerous tendencies? Should we have tried to understand Danny better, to be more tender with him, to help him? Should we have encouraged Elaina to become a politician, instead of a politician’s wife? Should we have let Cassidy leave home so soon, and go so far? Should we have forced Madeline, who had always been excellent at arithmetic and could calculate sums faster than her father and as fast as Gilmore, to finish her schooling? Should we have introduced them to their grandfather in Syngorn? Their half-aunt, before she became exactly what I wished she never would? Should I have spent less time in the woods, Percy less time in his workshop? Should we have been more loving with them? Spoiled them more? Gotten angry less? There were times I was so angry. Not at them, but at -- all of it. Anger like I’d never known, not even after my mother's murder. Anger and grief no one could help me with, that frightened Percy. Did I do all I could? Did we do all we could?
I am the first to admit I have not always been a good mother. How could I have been, when I barely knew how? My mother, my beautiful, wonderful mother, was killed before my first menstruation, before my brother’s voice dropped. My father is nothing to aspire to. And Percy’s family -- well. There was nothing there that could be done. Then for years -- what felt, sometimes, like an eternity -- Vox Machina was travelling around the world, defeating dragons and demi-gods and saving kings and rebuilding cities. Where, in between all that, had we learned to be parents?
Pelor knows we did what we thought was best, always, yes. But Elaina came so soon after Vecna, after Vax -- we didn’t have time to catch our breath. I was still in mourning when she was born, and I did not know how to live without him yet nor without the thrill and terrible distraction of adventure, of killing, of surviving by the mercy of healing potions and resurrection ceremonies. And here was this little perfect thing in my arms, this baby we hadn’t planned for, red-cheeked and crying, more terrifying than any dragon we had encountered yet. I wasn’t ready. Neither of us were. We made so many mistakes, that first year. And then every year after that.
We went to Westruun once, as a family, to visit Pike and Scanlan and Grog and a newborn Juniper, and to announce to them that I was pregnant, again, with Cassidy that time. It was a hot, rainless summer, and the grass around their house just on the outskirts of town was so yellow and dry that the Margrave banned all fires, which I remember only because Grog decided to take the children and their adults to a pond he knew of that was good for swimming in the Bramblewood near the base of the Gatshadow.
“Hoping to see another nymph?” Percy asked when it was suggested.
“I never -- now why -- who told you -- no way!” was the spluttering answer, and we laughed and packed our picnic basket and changed into our swimming costumes, my stomach still flat enough for my favourite, and set off for the pool in the woods.
We had arrived and Percy’s pale skin was already turning red from the sun, refusing with Grog to wear a floppy-brimmed hat like the rest of us, and we were splashing about in the water, Scanlan entertaining infant Juniper and two-year-old Danny with different funny faces and songs on the edge of the pond.
It was then we heard a small, high-pitched yell: Madeline, in pain. She had cut her hand on a sharp rock in the shallower end of the pool and it was bleeding red and dark into the water, and then I could not breathe.
“Mama! Papa!” she yelled for us, but Pike was closer, her hands already glowing with Sarenrae’s touch, and she wrapped her fingers around Madeline’s little delicate hand, stopping the flow of blood, then washing the remainder away into the water until her palm was clean and the skin unblemished.
For one terrible, disgusting second, I wished that Pike had not healed her hand so completely. I wanted her to have left a mark, and some pain Madeline could feel later. Nothing bad, just -- a twinge. So she could learn, like I had learned: the hard way, the way that gave me scars and a bad knee and nightmares every other night. And then the relief came, the gratitude for Pike and her instincts still sharp from battle that allowed her to jump to action and heal whenever necessary.
I cried that night in the mansion Scanlan made for us when we were visiting, big enough for all the children and Trinket, who was, by then, getting very old for a bear. Percy didn’t know how to comfort me mostly because I couldn’t bring myself to explain to him why I was crying at all.
But -- mostly, we did okay, I think. Despite it all. They were good children, they are good people, and they have given me so much joy in my life -- and grandchildren, two of which are now dragging me by the hand to see the dungeons, with all the strange fascination and excitement kids have about these sorts of things. So I follow, and Cassandra hobbles behind us with her cane while Elaina stays to chat with the cooks and maids she knows, and I don’t complain even though I’m cursing Vesper in my head. I tell Davan and Vili’ette about the time we found their grandfather in a prison behind bars like these, and all that came after.
We walk through the woods, the kids full and subdued from lunch and their trip to the darkest parts of their family’s homestead. As am I, frankly. We don’t find Keyleth, but I don’t yell for her. Instead I point out some trees: this one is an elm, these are birch, this one is a maple like the ones some in town tap for sap they boil down to make sweet, thick syrup. The leaves turn orange and red and yellow in the fall, and then fall by winter, covering the ground before the snow and leaving their great wooden bodies bare. Do you see those birds above, I ask. They are flying south for the winter, past the Stormcrest Mountains, where it’s warm. This plant is poisonous if eaten but when boiled and diluted, can be used to calm rashes. This one when ripe tastes good in salad. These mushrooms grow when it’s damp in autumn -- they are unfit for humanoid consumption but many creatures that dwell in the wood use them for sustenance. Some things are right for us, and some are not, and it probably took a lot of trial and error and error again from someone much braver than I to find which is which.
The sun hides partway through the afternoon and I send Elaina and the little ones back through a well-worn path back to Whitestone before it gets too cold.
“I have something to do here,” I tell them. “Myrda will let you in the house, don’t worry about it.”
“Be careful,” Vili’ette says. “There might be wolves.”
I don’t know why she thinks this, but I nod anyway, sagely. “Thank you. I will be sure to watch out for wolves.”
“You don’t have your bow,” says Elaina. Her eyes dart around as if a wolf is stalking us now and she pulls her coat tighter to her body.
I roll my eyes, and Davan giggles. “Darling,” I say, “I am the Mistress of the Grey Hunt, and not so old I can’t find my way around my own forest.”
She raises her hands. “Alright, alright.” Her eyes become narrow. “We need to go home soon,” she says.
Quickly, I run through the scenarios in my head. Keyleth is home, waiting for us: unlikely. Keyleth has forgotten she is my daughter’s way home: equally unlikely. Keyleth has lost track of time and is unaware that we are well into the afternoon, having gotten caught up in the joy of being a squirrel or some such animal: not only possible but a well-documented frequent occurence, but I don’t think that’s the case at the moment. Today, I know where she is.
“Go on,” I say. “I won’t be too long.”
I watch them long enough for them to disappear down the trail into the trees and brush before I turn and follow a path I know well but to anyone else seems arbitrary and difficult to navigate. I pass a fallen birch that never died instead growing crooked and low to the ground, a perfect place to perch and rest for a few minutes, but I keep going. A familiar boulder, a little clearing by a creek, some trees I cut small marks into years ago with one of my brother’s daggers, like I’m following him -- and I am, to his bench, which I reach half an hour or so later, though it’s hard to judge now that the sun’s hidden behind the clouds.
The bench does not stand alone anymore. There’s a tall stone bird bath full of fresh rain water, commissioned following Trinket’s death -- he’s buried somewhere near, too, closer to that creek. He was always happiest away from towns and cities, like me, so I found the most peaceful place I could think of for my Trinket.
There, cross-legged on the bench, eyes closed and hands on her knees, is Keyleth. She takes a deep breath and opens her eyes to look at me when I walk into the clearing.
“I thought I was being quiet,” I say.
She smiles. Her eyes are red like she’s been crying, and there’s some snot on her upper lip, though I won’t tell her.
“You were,” she says. I suppose that means she heard me through other means -- vibrations, or a mouse told her, or something.
I sit next to her, and immediately she lays her head on my shoulder. The bench is cool beneath my arse, and a bit damp as it hasn’t completely dried yet. Before this I could smell the sweetness of rotting apples fallen from their branches, wet leaves and moss, the ground dotted with worms here and there from yesterday’s rainfall. Now I smell only Keyleth -- all those things innate within her, and more.
“Keyleth, darling,” I say after some time. As much as she probably just wants to sit on this cold piece of rock for another four hours and say nothing, that’s not really an option at the moment.
She sighs. “What?” she asks, like she doesn’t know her behaviour is freaking me out, a little.
“Have you been here the whole time?”
She tilts her head up and squints at me with a frown. “How long has it been?”
“Oh, just -- four or five hours,” I say. I wrap my arm around her and she wipes her nose on her arm before settling back against me.
“Wow. I didn’t realize,” she says. “I should probably be hungry.”
“Probably.” Myrda will feed her at home, when we get back. Somewhere behind us a chickadee sings and I hear the crack of twig, more than likely just a squirrel jumping from branch to branch or a rabbit hopping around.
“You know,” Keyleth says, “I haven’t been here in -- years, I think. I don’t know. When Trinket died.”
“That was over twenty-five years ago,” I say. Twenty-five must seem like nothing to her. It’s so much to me.
She ignores me. “I tried to go to the, uh, what’s it called, the Raven’s Crest, the temple in Vasselheim. But I couldn’t bring myself to go inside.”
“Well, that place is creepy,” I say. Even when I was angriest, I didn’t go.
“And then I thought, well, what about the temple in Whitestone! But there were, there were people there, and I couldn’t face them, I couldn’t go in. So I came here. I figured this is as good a place as any. I guess.”
“For what?” I ask.
She sighs but it comes out frustrated and loud, and her hand clenches into a fist where she’s rested it on my thigh. “I need to talk to him,” she says. “Or Her. I don’t care. Just someone.”
“You need to talk to Vax?”
I need to talk to him too -- there is so much to say, so much to tell, I have missed him so much. I wish he’d been there five hundred and thirty six days ago when Percy died, and before then when he became ill and weak, and before then when he wasn’t. I wish he could meet my family. I wish he could tell Vili’ette about the wolf he once had control over. I wish he had been at Pike and Scanlan’s wedding, and Tary and Lawrence’s, and I wish he could see how old Grog has gotten, to everyone’s surprise, including the foremost Lyceum researchers. I wish he could speak to Danny -- he’d know just what to say. I wish he were here right now, holding Keyleth’s hand while I take the other. I wish I could hear his voice one more time.
I wish all those things, and as there has never been a moment since the Raven Queen took him when I didn’t wish them, I know I will wish them forever. But it’s been more than sixty years. Decades. I think of him every day, and fondly, but the pain is no longer stifling. There is so much more to think about, now.
“No, it’s not -- don’t look at me like that,” she says, and starts to cry again.
“I’m not looking at you like anything.” In fact I have my chin resting on the top of her head with my eyes closed.
“You’re not pitying me?” she asks.
“Not yet,” I say. “I need more information before I make that decision.”
Living with Percy so long did, perhaps, change my sense of humour a little.
Keyleth wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and I pull out a somewhat dirty handkerchief from one of my pockets, which I used this morning to wipe off the mirror in my bathroom. She blows her nose and sits up straighter, though she replaces her hand on my thigh when she’s done with the handkerchief.
“I need--” she sniffs a little “--I need to tell him to let me go.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
She’s silent for so long I fear she’s tired herself out from crying and has fallen asleep. I hear a woodpecker and a crow’s hoarse cry overhead.
“I went on a date last night,” she says, finally. It startles me.
“You what?” I ask, then process what she’s said. “Keyleth, I think that’s wonderful. Have you been on --”
“No, I haven’t since. That’s why I thought -- it’s time. It’s more than time, right? Last night felt like the right time.”
“Past time. It’s been so long.”
“I know! I know.” She sighs and flutters her lips a little like a horse, flustered. “Do you want to know who it was?”
Yes, I do. I can’t help but feel protective of her, my Keyleth. “It’s killing me how much I want to know,” I say.
“It was -- you know Yanis?”
I push her away for a second and look at her properly. “You went on a date with Jarrett’s son? Our Jarrett? His son?”
She shrugs. “He asked me. I went to meet him in Emon. It was nice.”
“He’s a baby!”
“He’s 37 this month. That’s not -- he’s not a baby. For a human, that’s adult.”
I’m shocked. I shouldn’t be -- I understand how time works for Keyleth, or rather, doesn’t work. She’s nearly 80, but for her, that’s nothing -- a blink of an eye, a pair of wings flapping. She will see trees grow from seedlings to great trunks that reach the sky, and outlive them still. She will see rocky beaches turn finer and easier to walk on from the rolling of the waves and the tides. She will see more sunrises and sunsets than I can count. And if it was any other man, I think I wouldn’t react so strongly but -- Yanis?
“We changed his nappies when he was a newborn,” I say.
“Well -- a lot of our friends had babies and we changed a lot of nappies. I can’t limit myself to -- well. Maybe I just can’t limit myself,” she says, then frowns. “You know, I thought you’d be pleased. That I’d be -- putting myself out there, or whatever it is Scanlan always says I should do. And I didn’t have to explain my whole thing to him, you know, he knows it all already.”
I scoff. There are books and stories and plays and songs from Tal’dorei, Issylra, Marquet and beyond, in large part thanks to Scanlan and Taryon but there are plenty of other artists who were enamoured with the romantic, dramatic story of ours -- which I say with the utmost contempt. At least with Tary, we expected it, and with Scanlan -- well, we know which parts are real and which parts he put in just to mess with his readers. The rest were just a pile of opportunists.
“The whole world knows your thing already.”
She shakes her head and her hair tumbles around her face. “But he’s known me his whole life, and hasn’t just read the unauthorized biography, or whatever. He asked and -- well, he’s very handsome.”
That, I must concede. “He certainly takes after his father.”
I expect her to giggle or blush but instead she looks down and brings her hands to her lap, clenching them together. She still hasn’t said what this has to do with speaking with Vax.
“Keyleth, you know Vax would have wanted nothing more than for you to be happy. He would never have been angry about this, if this is what you wanted.”
“Then why can’t he let me go?” she says again, and I stop. I don’t -- I don’t know what to make of that. So I sit in silence until she continues. She does, eventually, wringing her hands together over and over. “We were leaving the restaurant in Emon, and it was so nice, Vex. We had such a nice time. He was funny and smart and we talked about so many things and I didn’t even drink too much wine because I wanted -- well, I don’t know what I wanted. We went for a walk in the Cloudtop District, you know, I was walking him to his house, and I know he was about to kiss me goodnight, or, or, or ask me inside, I don’t know, and I look over and there, in the dark, on top of a bench on the street was just -- the raven. Well, a raven. I don’t know if it was the one, you know, the one that comes visit me. And I couldn’t, Vex, I couldn’t stay there. I ran. I didn’t even explain myself. I just left.”
“Oh,” I say. For a moment, it doesn’t feel like there’s much else I can say. But I’ve never been one to be speechless for long, so I pry. “Where did you go?”
She begins to cry again. “Where else?” she says, and laughs wetly. “Greyskull. Vesper let me in. She was a bit confused, but so was I, so she just let me go into the chapel and use the tree there. You’ll probably get a letter soon.”
It’s difficult to stop myself from asking for more details about my daughter, but I say nothing. It’s getting colder with a soft breeze picking up -- the trees rustle like ghosts in the leaves. I wonder if there is any god in this forest, watching us from the wind. I’ve never felt alone here, in any case, but I doubt it’s ever been Her, if anyone. I’ve never felt Her here, not really, not even at Vax’s bench. I’ve only ever felt peace, and of course, grief. Though, now that I’ve thought about it -- maybe that is Her, after all.
Keyleth goes on.
“And I think Danny slipped past me in the dark just before the keep, but he’s -- god, he’s just like Vax, you know. I thought I heard something but I suppose it could have been anything. You remember how Vax used to sneak up on us.”
I know, and I remember.
“Have you -- did you go back today and explain yourself to Yanis?”
She shakes her head, looking absolutely miserable, and I wipe a tear from her cheek. It’s soft and my old hands are rough from holding bows and pulling bowstrings.
“No. I don’t know what I’d say.”
“The truth, I suppose,” I say.
“What, that my, my boyfriend is -- haunting me still, decades after he died?”
She’s crying too much for me stop her tears anymore so I just press my cheek to her forehead, bringing her close once more.
“Dear, I don’t think he’s haunting you. I think he’s watching over you.”
“That’s semantics,” she says, muffled in my neck.
“Not at all. He doesn’t want -- Keyleth, Vax only ever wanted to take care of us. You and I. He wanted us to be safe and happy and he was willing to die for it. He did die for it. So if this is him, visiting you every day, then it’s just because he wants to make sure you’re alright. Of course the raven was there last night on your first date. I would want to know you’re safe too.”
She is shaking and I feel my throat get sore and tight, my eyes stinging. My first tear falls onto Keyleth’s crown. We must look absolutely ridiculous, the pair of us, but I don’t let that stop me.
“That’s stupid,” she says. “Yanis wouldn’t stand a chance in a fight with me.”
“I don’t know anyone on the planet who would, darling. But it’s different when it’s someone we love, isn’t it? We worry.”
“You don’t worry.”
“I worry all the time. I’m just better at hiding it,” I say. I kiss her forehead and close my eyes. “I worry so much I don’t know what to do but hide it.”
She nods into my skin. She is warm against my side while the rest of me is getting colder -- I feel gooseflesh on my exposed arm and remember we have to get back to Elaina and the children soon. I do hope Myrda’s starting supper so we can have a warm meal before Keyleth brings them back to Zephrah.
“Why -- why do you think the raven never comes to visit you,” Keyleth asks into my skin after a moment.
A question I’ve asked myself and cried over more times than I can count. I was jealous for a very long time, when I still thought that the raven really was Vax -- now I’m not so sure it is, believing it instead to simply be a friend sent to comfort and protect, maybe relay messages to the other plane. Either way, it hurt me, for years, whenever Keyleth told me about the bird that she saw every day that brought her gifts of shiny rocks and fallen coins, that looked at her so intelligently it was like staring back into a soul.
But I think I’ve got it figured out now.
“I don’t think -- I don’t know if I really needed taking care of. I had Percy, and we looked after each other. I had Cassandra and Zahra and Kash and everyone else nearby. But you were alone in Zephrah, mostly, and you were taking on this monumental task of leading your people and being a diplomat and an advisor and all those things,” I say. “I wish I’d checked up on you more often, the first few years. We all sort of drifted, you know? It’s like none of us knew what to do anymore. And then I got pregnant -- sorry, I don’t want to make excuses. We were all pretty fucked up. But I knew -- I knew at least you had the raven watching you, right? Whether it’s him or it’s not, it was something.”
“And now?” she says. “Now that Percy’s gone?”
“Well, I -- I suppose I can take care of myself now.”
She twists away and sits up straight to look up at me like she doesn't believe me but doesn't disagree out loud, at least. Her face is red and blotchy but she is still so young and lovely, almost like the day we met. We have lost so much, seen unimaginable things, felt unconscionable pain and great, weightless joy together, and aside from the length of her hair which to my knowledge has never been cut since she lost it in that lava so long ago, a few sunspots on her nose and some scars, Keyleth shows no sign of it. I, on the other hand, am showing more of my mother’s lineage as I age, and though I’ve still some years to go yet, I have coarse grey hairs shining beside the black, wrinkles around my eyes and mouth, some sagging skin and soft fat that never receded after my last pregnancy, and a knee that aches when it snows. This morning when I looked in the mirror I heard Percy’s voice, raspy in my head like it was by the end: “Darling, you have never been more beautiful. However did an old withered man like me find a woman like you?”
The next time I look in the mirror I will wonder what Vax would have looked like at my age.
“So you’re saying,” says Keyleth, “that he doesn’t have to let me go. I have to let him go.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” I say, though I’m much less sure than I make it sound.
“Would you ever let Percy go?”
Five hundred and thirty six days, and I’ve counted every one. “I -- Keyleth. You have hundreds of years left to live. You have so much time, one day you will stop counting years altogether. You have so much left to do.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” she says.
“I mean, god, go on a second date with Yanis, if you like him. Go on as many dates as you want, with whoever you want. Explore the world on your own. Build a house in a tree. Spend a summer in the Feywild. Go to Vesrah and learn to sail. Fall in love again, Keyleth.” I grasp her hands and squeeze them when I say her name.
“I will watch everyone I love die,” she says. “I can never forget that.”
I take a breath and hold her fingers tight again. “Listen. Seeing Percy’s health deteriorate like it did was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever been through. Knowing no amount of magic could help him as his organs failed one by one… god, Keyleth. I can't even explain to you how that felt. But he was old, and his body had been through so much. I have never loved anyone like we loved each other and I miss him still, every moment. But,” I say, cutting her off before she can offer a rebuttal, “it was worth it. It wasn’t always good, but we got to be happy for a very long time. We built a life together. We had five children together, and now we have grandchildren. It was worth it, do you understand? I would do it all over again tomorrow.”
It looks like she’s going to begin to cry again, but instead she wipes her face with the handkerchief I’ve given her, breathes in and out two, three, four times, and kisses me.
Her mouth is soft and sweet and her skin smells of the earth. Her hair, when I tangle my hands in it, is long and drapes over my shoulders and arms. When she pulls away after a few moments, her eyes are wide and she is already stammering an apology.
“I -- oh my gosh, that’s not -- I didn’t mean to -- I just wanted to see -- I’m so sorry, Vex, oh god --”
I kiss her again.
“That’s a start,” I whisper after.
I realize then that it’s getting darker, and we’ve been out in the woods for longer than I thought. She catches me looking up at the sky and makes a face.
“Oh no. I forgot Elaina,” she says.
“Well,” I say. “Do you feel better now? Are you ready to go back?”
She purses her lips and tilts her head like she’s considering her answer, much like the raven does when he looks at her.
“I’ll apologize to Yanis,” she says, “and think on the other things.”
“Alright. That sounds like a plan.”
When I stand my arse is sore and one of my legs is almost numb, and I try to shake off the pins and needles as my blood rushes through my body once more. Keyleth makes much of the same grimaces I do as she gets up, stretching her arms over her head and massaging her thighs with her hands.
There will be more conversation, I suspect. More crying, more convincing, more thinking, more apologizing. These feelings that have been festering within us for so long -- they will not be gone just like that. And I don’t know what this means for the raven, or for Vax or Percy or Keyleth or me. I don’t know what any of this means. I don’t know if I will stop counting, and I don’t know if Keyleth will start living again. But I do know I can take her by the hand and walk with her through the woods to find my family, and before we reach Whitestone I can kiss her again, and again, and promise her more later.
It is, I think, something I’ve always wanted to do.