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Una has...not really been outside of Blumenthal before.
She has, of course, but rarely. A farmer’s daughter, and then a farmer’s wife, she’s never really had much reason to travel much further than the town she grew up in. When she and Leofric married, they traveled north for the ceremony, and then further east for their honeymoon, but that’s about the extent of it.
She had hopes, once, of visiting Bren in Rexxentrum following his graduation, but that is a distant and impossible dream now, it seems.
Leofric is in a better position than her: he’s traveled a bit more, on behalf of the king, as part of his duties as a soldier in the realm, and so she’s not freaking out quite as much as she’d like.
Still, Zadash seems...impossibly large.
Luckily, Leofric holds her hand the entire time, his presence stern but comforting. “Stay close,” he tells her, as they wander the Pentamarket for supplies, and she tries to keep from gaping like a child at all the marvelous wonders nearby. There are so many people here, and so many of them are not human. There’s a large blue skin young man who towers over even Leofric, bartering for supplies with a short and stocky man with eyes that look like dark stones. In the streets, a red-haired half-elf little girl rides on the shoulders what looks like a goliath child. A teal blue man who looks rather sweaty is arguing with a white scaled dragonborn nearby, and Una has never felt more out of place.
“Don’t touch anything. Keep a hand on your pocket--there’s a thousand sticky fingers in this city, and it’d not do for us to lose everything Bren gave us.”
He’s a little paranoid, she knows, because at first they thought Bren had given them gold, and then they found he gave them platinum, a fortune’s worth. Spent wisely, they’d never have to work again in their lives with what their son has given them. And they have no home to return to, no worldly possessions at all save for each other, burnt to ash as it surely has by now.
She keeps one hand on Frumpkin in her bag, who sleeps atop a dragon’s hoard worth of platinum.
They don’t want to draw attention to themselves, and they do need to head towards Felderwin. But they also aren’t in too terrible of a rush.
The first night, they stay in a very nice inn called the Pillow Trove that has just opened recently. They eat a dinner better than anything they’ve ever had before: fresh, good meat, cooked with spices from places she’s never heard of before. Bread that she did not bake with her own hands. Wine that’s older than both of them. They toast to a new life, a new beginning, and a new start.
The second day, they are robbed.
But Leofric is quick, much quicker than she is, and he catches the girl--a dark skinned elven woman--and turns her into the guard, and they do not lose everything Bren gave them, thankfully.
“What will happen to her?” Una asks. At her heart, she is a compassionate woman, and the girl who stole from them seemed young (although if she’s being honest, it is hard to tell, with her being an elf.)
Leofric shakes his head. “The guard said the Cobalt Reserve would take her. Apparently they’ve had an interest in her for a while now, this is just as good of reason as any to take her in.”
“Will she be arrested? What’s the Cobalt Reserve? They won’t hurt her, will they?”
“I don’t know,” Leofric grunts at her. “It’s a big city. I’ve not been this far south in a while,” then he looks at his wife incredulously. “She did try and rob us, you know?”
“Yes, but--” she bites her lip. “Oh, I suppose you are right. She just seems so young.”
“She’ll be fine,” Leorfric tries to assure her, but he’s never been particularly good with words. “We should start to leave, though.”
So they do: they buy a cart and a wagon, two horses, travelling clothes to last them the journey and then some rations so they do not starve. Leofric buys himself a sword, a shield, armor. He buys for Una leather armor, a crossbow, a dagger that she doesn’t really want to use. A pillow for Frumpkin, who is surprisingly still surviving, despite being ancient for a cat.
“Do we need anything else? Anything to help on the journey?”
She bites her lips, and impulsively, buys two books on magic.
Una is not a very good reader.
She knows how to, of course, the very basics of reading. Knows her alphabet in Common and Zemnian, knows how to sound out letters to make up words. But outside of reading recipes in her mother’s shorthand and reading children’s stories to Bren when he was young, she’s not had much reason or experience in the intellectual arts.
She’s trying, now.
One book is sheer gibberish. Utterly useless, a waste of the five gold she spent on it. There are runes and inscriptions and words that are in a language she’s fairly certain she doesn’t speak, and she has no idea what any of it means. There are inscriptions on how to move her hands and pronunciations guides and she has no idea what any of it means.
The second book isn’t much better, if she’s being honest. But at least she can read it.
A few days out on the road, they make camp, and as they start to bed down for the night, Leofric nudges her. “Why are you trying to read that?” he asks, his voice soft and low, as to not attract whatever else might be lurking in the dark. “Why torture yourself?”
She huffs loudly, blowing a stray curl out of her face. “Bren learned magic.”
It’s quiet for a moment. “He did.”
“So did his boyfriend. The drow. Essek.”
Leorfric is staring at her openly now. “...He did, that’s true.”
“Well, I wanna learn,” she says stubbornly, glaring at the book as if it’s supposed to have all of the answers. “If they can learn magic, then so can I. They did things I didn’t even know it was possible to do. I want--” she hesitates, bites her bottom lip.
Her husband does not say “our son is much smarter than you,” thankfully, tactfully, even if it is what Una is thinking right now.
Instead, Leofric rolls over and cuddles her close to his chest. “You don’t have to learn magic, Una. You’ve got talents in your own right.”
“I know that. But,” she struggles, momentarily, to try and find the words to explain herself. “But Bren learned magic. And he’s not dead, not right now. And we aren’t dead right now either. But we can’t talk to him, and we can’t see him, and we’ve got eighteen years we’re supposed to go without seeing our boy, and I just--” she blinks back tears. “I wanna feel closer to him. Maybe learning some magic will help.”
Leofric doesn’t say anything; he just gently kisses her forehead, and holds her until she falls asleep.
The book isn’t completely useless after all, it seems; she does end up learning two important things:
The first is that magic takes many forms. Some are born with it in their blood. Some learn it through intense study. Some commune with nature.
Some learn through faith.
The second thing she learns is: the creator of all elves, the god of magic and knowledge, is known as the Archeart.
Halfway through their journey to Felderwin, Leofric just turns and looks at her one day.
“A drow,” he says, disbelief in his voice, from out of nowhere, with nothing but grass and trees and Una and a mangy Frumpkin to hear him.
“What about the drow?” Una puts her book down.
“Where did Bren even find a drow?” Leofric marvels out loud.
“I think he goes by Caleb now,” Una comments, although she’s also still trying to train her mind into thinking of him by that name, and not the name she gave him. “And the drow has a name: Essek, if I remember right.”
“How do you even spell that?”
“Like you know how to spell anything,” Una teases, sitting up in the cart, leaning through the opening between the cart and where Leofric is guiding the horses. “You wouldn’t know how to spell Leofric if it wasn’t your own damn name.”
“That’s fair,” Leofric whistles, and then leans back towards her. “Still, how do you figure they met?”
“I dunno. I asked Essek and he said it was complicated.”
“Yeah, but,” Leofric gestures to the open fields in front of them, where there is nothing but grass and trees, same as there has been for the past three days of their journey. “Here. Did they meet here in the Empire?”
“I assume they met adventuring, while saving the world,” Una explains, although the question does give her some pause. “Or whatever it is they end up doing.”
“Yeah but--” Leofric furrows his brow. Most of the time, she doesn’t think her son looks like her husband very much--Bren looks too much like her --but when they both are puzzled the resemblance is much clearer. “Either they meet here , in the Empire, which means there’s going to be a drow in the Empire. Or they meet in Xhorhas, which means our son ends up in Xhorhas somehow.”
“Or they meet in Nicodranas,” Una muses, tickled by how much thought Leofric is putting into this. “On the ocean. At a fancy party, hosted by a gold dragon.”
That gets her a hearty laugh from her husband. “Guess we’ll find out in 18 years, huh?”
Gosh, but that’s so long from now. Best not to think about it too much, or it might drive her mad. “I’m proud of you,” she tells her husband instead, leaning forward to kiss his cheek. “You may have punched Mr. Essek but at least you apologized afterwards. How are you feeling? About--all of that?”
“Confused, mostly,” Leofric sighs. “Wondering what happens to all the cute human girls in the future if he ends up with a drow.”
Una smacks him lightly on the shoulder. “That’s not nice.”
“I don’t mean it like that,” he grumbles, and she can tell he’s earnest. “If he loves him, he loves him, and that’s all there is to it. It’s just surprising to me. Last time I talked to him, he liked that Astrid girl he went to school with.”
“Eighteen years in the future,” Una reminds him. “Maybe something will happen. Maybe she’s evil, or dead in the future. We got a very abridged version of the story--there’s probably a lot we don’t know.”
“Eh, fair,” Leofric shakes his head. “I’ll adjust. I will, I promise. It’s just a strange thing to think about.”
“The good news is, you have the time.”
They are quiet for a few minutes, just the two of them on the road, and Una starts to read her book again, and then:
“But a drow though?” Leofric muses out loud. “I understand an elf--elves are cute, even you gotta admit that, but a drow? Aren’t they like...all evil, like a goblin or something?”
She can feel a headache coming on. “I don’t know, Leofric.”
“That’d be like if he came home and said ‘hey Mom and Dad, here is my girlfriend, she’s a goblin.”
“Oh, give it a rest , Leofric!”
Two days from Felderwin, she tries to pray.
She’s always had faith. Faith in Pelor, the Empire-sanctioned God of Light and Sun and Agriculture. But her faith has always been a little bit performative. She’s always believed in Pelor because that’s just what you do when you are Una Ermendred. You worship Pelor because your mother worshiped Pelor, because that’s what farmer’s wives in Blumenthal worship.
But Pelor didn’t save her son; magic did, and according to the book she purchased, the Archeart is the God of Magic.
So she prays to him.
Watch over my son, she begs of this deity she’s only just learned of. Protect him. Guide him.
She does not know if the Archeart hears her prayers. But faith has never been much about answers, anyway.
They do make it to Felderwin eventually.
There are a few scraps along the way--bandits who think them easy prey who soon learn that Una is much sharper with a crossbow than she ever thought. A bear they persuade to leave them be by throwing rations the opposite direction and running. A couple of awful, angry bird creatures that they decapitate, and then roast.
But they make it to Felderwin, and so the Widogasts are born.
The house next door to the Smyth’s home is indeed for sale. It’s much larger than the cottage they lived in in Blumenthal; there are multiple rooms, a spacious kitchen, a garden in the back. It’s not ostentatious: very little in Felderwin is made for wealth and privilege, much like Blumenthal, but it’s a nice house. She thinks they can be happy here, even if she misses Blumenthal’s flowers. Felderwin is...so very brown in comparison.
Leofric gets a job almost as soon as they arrive with the city guard, unable or perhaps unwilling to simply stay at home all day.
Una, for her part, stays at home, like she always has. She prays to the Archeart for guidance. She gardens.
She watches the children next door.
The Smyths are blessed with four children, and it breaks Una’s heart to watch them play in the field next to her’s. Three rambunctious boys and one awkward little girl whom they like to pick on. They are halflings, of course, and so they seem so incredibly small, but--
She’s never thought of herself as an envious woman. But watching these four children run and play and pick on each other makes her jealous in a way that’s difficult to articulate. Makes her long for the children she never got to have, the ones fate stole from her.
She thought she came to terms with this years ago, but it seems like an old wound reopening, the pain it brings her when she watches the children next door.
(Would her Bren have turned out the same, if he had a little brother or sister?)
So she stops gardening, stays inside, and reads. Rereads the book she purchased in Zadash. Buys more books in Felderwin, although there are only so many to choose from. Many are useless, but it helps pass the time.
Then winter comes.
Winter is hard for her. It always is; she would never admit it, but she lost her second baby in wintertime, and so the cold just always sends her mind on a dark spiral. Leofric knows this, and so he stays home more when he can, staying with her and trying to keep her company to brighten her day as much as he can. Felderwin in wintertime is particularly hard for her: it’s an ugly town, covered in frost, brown and gray and sick-looking.
She cuts her hair.
It’s impulsive; she was looking in the mirror, and instead of her own face looking back at her all she could see was Bren. Her son always looked so much like her, even when he was a baby, but it’s never been a thing that’s caused her pain before.
It’s painful, looking in the mirror now.
So she takes the dagger Leofric bought for her in case of an emergency and cuts off all of her hair, until her hair is as short as a boy’s.
Then she goes to the store, and buys a tonic that turns it from vibrant red to a dull brown.
Leofric notices, of course, but he doesn’t say much. Kisses her sweetly. Hugs her tightly. “Needed a change?” he guesses. There are streaks of gray in his beard that didn’t used to be there, and he’s let it grow much longer than he’s ever had in the past.
She sighs, and leans into his embrace. “I needed to stop seeing Bren every time I looked in the mirror.”
He nods, and kisses her, and doesn’t let go.
At night, she dreams of a place far from here. It’s spring, in a beautiful garden far lovelier than anything she’s seen in Blumenthal.
There is an elf watching her.
Or at least, she thinks it’s an elf. It’s ears are long and pointed like an elf’s, but it’s eyes glow an unnatural green. She doesn’t know if it’s a man or a woman: she cannot tell, and maybe that’s the point of the creature. Long blonde hair blurs most of its features, but it is watching her like a hawk watches a mouse scurrying across the field.
“You are not like most of my followers, Una Ermendred Widogast of Blumenthal,” the elf says to her. Even it’s voice is androgynous, high at times and low at others. “A woman, stolen from time.”
She blinks back tears. The Archeart, she thinks.
She wants to fall to her knees, but she cannot move. Instead, the elf circles around her, as if inspecting her worthiness. “But you’ve got a good heart,” they tell her, a gentle smile on their face. “And I believe you can do some good in the world, in the time that’s been stolen for you by your son.”
Finally, she finds her voice. “Can you save him?” She asks, begging the god in front of her. “Can you look after him?”
“Of course I will look after him,” the Archeart tells her, blinking in confusion. “He uses my gifts; by default, he is a part of my domain. But I cannot save him,” They take her hands into their own. “Neither can you. Only he can save himself at this point.”
She is sobbing now, uncontrollably, but she doesn’t dare move her hands from the god’s, not even to wipe her eyes.
“But I can save you, Una Widogast,” the Archeart leans forward, and kisses her forehead. She feels knowledge she’s only dreamed of seep into her mind. “Go do good in the world, my child.”
Then she wakes up.
The next day, Frumpkin dies.
It’s not too terribly unexpected: she’s an old, old cat, who has gone through some recent trauma. Honestly, it’s a little surprising she’s made it to Felderwin, honestly.
Una still cries when it happens, unable to believe that her mangy barn cat chose to die in front of her. “No,” she begs, watching as her cat--her only friend, the last thing she has from Blumenthal that didn’t burn--keels over by the fireplace. “No, Archeart, please, don’t--”
The magic comes from her fingers unexpectedly.
Then, Frumpkin, who was dead a moment ago, meows at her, so Una pours more magic into her, until her aged, sickly cat looks as healthy as she did a year ago, or longer.
Thank you, Una prays to her new god. Thank you. Thank you.
She gains a reputation for being the village healer after that.
People in Felderwin know that if you are sick or injured, you just need to go see Mrs. Widogast, up on the hill, and she’ll fix you right up.
And she does, of course. The Archeart gave her her magic, and told her to go do good in the world, and well, that’s what she does.
Quite frankly, she’s getting quite good at it.
The Brenatto’s have a boy who gets sick with a fever and would have died had Una not cured him with her magic. There’s a young boy named Jim who breaks his leg that Una fixes up. T’ravys Smyth catches a nasty infection that would have left him paralyzed, his wife and four children homeless had Una not been able to cure him.
It’s good work. It’s rewarding, both because she’s able to help people, and because she can feel herself growing stronger every day.
She starts gardening again; she stops herself from resenting the Smyth’s and their children, and instead takes pride in the fact that she gets to watch more children grow, even if her own child is so far away from her. She keeps Frumpkin alive five more years before she finally decides to let the old cat be at peace and rest eternally. When she buries her cat, she plants azaleas over her grave, and she misses her, still. When Veth Smyth from next door gets engaged to the Brenatto boy, Una sends her flowers for her wedding, and hopes, one day, she’ll be able to see her own boy get married.
Leofric, for his part, becomes a standing member of the community. He buys several buildings in Felderwin with the money Bren gave them, and in turn makes more money than they’d ever need. They eat good; they are both heavier here in Felderwin than they ever were in Blumenthal, rounder and softer than they were back then. But Leofric is a good landlord, though--better than the Empire, because he doesn’t charge an arm and a leg, and if people want to buy the land from them who’ve rented from them in the past, he cuts them a deal. Besides, it’s not like he and Una need the money.
(And that’s a fact that makes Una a little bitter; the fact that they never had money before, and now that they have money, it’s so easy to make more of it.)
He retires from active duty with the guard, but stays with the guard to train the next generation of soldiers. It gives him something to do, something to keep his mind busy, from wondering about their son.
It’s a good life, this one they’ve built in Felderwin.
She misses Bren like mad, though.
Not Bren-- Caleb. She has to remind herself to think of him as Caleb, and not Bren. Caleb Widogast, son of Una and Leofric Widogast, because that’s who they are, now. She is Una Widogast and her hair is mud brown from tonics, and she has a son named Caleb who she misses so very much.
I wish I could see him, she prays to the Archeart, every night, the same prayer she’s made for ten years, now, or however long it’s been since Caleb pulled them from the fire and turned their lives upside down.
For the first time, the Archeart answers her prayer.
I can’t show him to you , the god whispers to her. But I can give you the tools you need to see him yourself.
She listens intently as her god whispers to her. The next day, she makes Leofric sell a piece of land with a shop on it to Yeza Brenatto for a steal of a price, so she can have a thousand gold to buy a silvered mirror. It seems like such a waste, to spend so much gold for a mirror, but if it means she can see her son--
Well, Leofric understands. And the mirror is hers.
If anyone were to look in her house, they’d accuse her of being a witch and burn her alive. And she feels a bit like a witch, too; she transcribes the runes the Archeart has taught her on the mirror, and she burns some incense, and then her mind isn’t in Felderwin at all, but much further north.
Oh, her baby.
He told her, before, warned her, even that he spent time in an asylum. But such knowledge doesn’t prepare her for the sight of him again.
Ten years. It’s been ten years since she’s seen him last--twenty-six now instead of sixteen--and he doesn’t even look like himself.
His mind is gone, she thinks, staring into blue eyes that have been dulled from a brilliant blue spark. The incandescent spark of intelligence is gone from his eyes, and so is his personality, every ounce of his charm. His hair is long--too long, and unhealthy, stringy like it hasn’t been washed properly in a while. There’s a large bushy beard that’s also too long, and his body is too thin. He’s like a skeleton given just enough flesh to walk, and the tunic he wears is too big on him, and just makes him look thinner.
Her heart shatters every time she sees him. But it hurts her more to not see him, and so she casts the spell the Archeart taught her, every day, so she can see her boy, and she counts it a blessing, just being able to see him.
If he were there, physically, in front of her, she’d be able to help him--she knows she’d be able to.
But she’s not, and so she watches, helpless, as her baby suffers.
She thinks, sometimes, that he knows she’s there. There are brief moments when he blinks, and a spark of his intelligence seems to come back to him. He will look exactly where she is sitting, and say “Mutti…?”
“I’m here, Bren,” she’ll whisper, and pat his face even as her hand goes straight through his flesh, like she’s not even there.
( Because she’s not, the Archeart tells her. She’s just a projection, an illusion, something not real. Her body is in Felderwin even as her soul is in the asylum with Bren.)
But the spark never lasts, and the next time she sees him he’ll be just as bad off as he was before, if not worse.
Sometimes, she spies on Essek, too.
Mostly out of curiosity. Boredom. She will watch Caleb every day because he’s her son, but watching him suffer every single day is not good for her mental health. And she doesn’t have a lot of other people to look after: she spies on her where her home was in Blumenthal, once, and has a good cry over the flowers that have grown in the ashes of her home. Azaleas, ironically. Another time, she looks over her father’s grave, and cries over how long it’s been since she’s visited him and Mother both. But people? There aren’t a lot, and, well--she wants to know about him, this man her son loves (will eventually love? Time travel is so confusing.)
Caleb inherited his curious nature from her, after all.
So she scries on Essek, who she’s met exactly once. It doesn’t always work, and she doesn’t always get to see him, but she does succeed a few times. She gets a little bit better picture of her future son-in-law, when she does.
He’s brilliant, of course, and enchantingly handsome, and she is incredibly jealous, that he looks no different eight years in the past as he did when she met him. She sees him arguing with someone who she learns is his mother, and understands, just a little bit, by what he meant when he said his mother wasn’t like her, and didn’t love him. Deitra has high expectations and a cold exterior. A part of her wants to believe Essek was wrong and his mother does love him, in her own way, but the more she sees (always from Essek’s perspective, of course, which colors it slightly, but she’s never been able to scry on Deitra) the more she thinks Essek is probably right, and his mother doesn’t love him at all.
Mostly, she learns that he is terribly lonely. She understands that; she’s lonely too, whenever Leofric is gone or Edith from across the street can’t visit.
So sometimes, when she scries on him, she just sits with him in the quiet solitude, and she hopes it helps. He doesn’t know she’s there, of course, wouldn’t understand it even if he did know she was there, because how could she explain it? “I met you ten years ago when you helped my son teleport me and my husband out of our burning home, because you and my son had traveled through time to save us.” He would think she was mad. Sometimes, she wonders if she is mad, and just doesn’t know it.
Then Essek gets a promotion at his job, and it becomes much, much harder for her to scry on him, which makes her feel lonelier for him all the same.
One day, she just can’t take it anymore.
She’s watching Caleb--her boy, her Bren--in the asylum and she pleads with the Archeart.
Let me be with him for real, she begs of her god, pleads for divine intervention. One minute, here with Bren physically. I could fix him. I know I could. Please. One minute.
It is his birthday, she thinks as part of her prayer. He’s twenty-eight today, and he looks so much older than that. Let her help him, she pleads. You gave me your gifts to help others. Let me also help him.
The dice of fate are in her favor, and her god answers her prayer. One minute, her god intervenes, and her incorporeal form becomes physically in the asylum itself.
She moves quickly; a minute is not a long time, and she will not ruin this by wasting her time. She takes the ring off of her hand, the one Leofric got her last year for their anniversary, the one with a large sparkling diamond, something they never could have afforded back in Blumenthal--and smashes it against the asylum floor. She reaches and grabs the dust from the floor and holds it against Bren’s chest--his eyes are wild , crazed, even--and she murmurs the words for greater restoration before she can stop herself, magic and light flowing from her hand into Bren.
When he opens his eyes, her baby is himself, again. There’s the brilliant spark of intelligence that’s been missing behind his eyes, all these years. “Thank you,” he whispers in cracked Zemnian, his voice hoarse from disuse. “I don’t know who you are, but thank you.”
She must look like a madwoman, she thinks. No wonder he doesn’t recognize her: her hair is dark from the tonics she keeps using, wild and longer than she’s kept it in years. She’s heavier and older now, gray in her hair and lines on her face. She’s wearing her pajamas, and the symbol of the Archeart she wears around her neck glows with divine purpose, and she cannot help herself, she laughs and cries, both in equal measure. She wants to talk to him, but she can’t--her body is too relieved to see him back to himself, whole once again, to formulate words.
Neither of them notice the guard, until the guard is in the room with them. “What’s going on here--?”
But her Bren moves so fast, faster than she’s ever moved in her life, like a trained assassin his arms are around the guard’s neck, and he snaps the neck like it’s nothing.
He starts digging on the body and pulls out a necklace, a dagger, a pair of boots. He turns his attention back to her. “Come with me,” he asks her, as the alarms in the asylum start to ring. They must be enchanted, somehow, to know of a death so quickly.
She wants to tell him so much. “I’m not really here,” she thinks, or “You don’t need to worry about me” or “I love you, so much,” but she can’t formulate the words, so she just cries, and pats his face. His flesh is warm beneath her hands, and unlike so many times before, she manages to actually touch him, and it’s everything.
He understands, she thinks, because his back is turned and he is shoving the boots on his feet with record speed, and then the divine energy is spent, because she blinks and she is back in her home, bawling on their living room floor.
“Una?” Leofric calls from the other room, and comes running as quick as he can, sensing danger. “Una, are you alright?”
Oh, but she’s more than alright, even if she cannot find the words. So instead, she holds on to Leofric and sobs, grateful in a way words cannot express, that her son is on his way to recovery. That she was able to help him, just a little bit.
She can no longer scry on him.
She didn’t think--she didn’t think when she helped him out of the asylum, that it would mean she’d lose him, or at least lose her connection with him.
“I just don’t understand it,” she grumbles to Leofric, who is going through their mail at the kitchen table while she vents, cutting up vegetables for the stew. “I could scry on him every day in the asylum, but as soon as he gets out all I see is fuzz and static --”
“Hmm.”
“--and that’s even if the spell goes through at all!” She groans with frustration, chopping roughly at a potato. “He could be dying out there and I’d never know! What if he’s hurt out there, Leofric? What if our son is in danger and there’s nothing I can do about it?”
“Hmm.”
“--And don’t even get me started on Essek! I can’t scry on him most days either! Sometimes I get lucky and see just a glimpse or two of him at home in the evening, and he’s always alone; that’s not healthy for a young man, and it feels like he’s working all of the time, and--Leofric, are you even listening to me?”
He sets the mail down, and then he smiles at her, his grin large and toothy. His beard is more gray than brown, these days. “Eight more years.”
She blinks at him, tears welling up in her eyes before she can stop herself. “That’s so long, though.”
“Six more until we get to go to Nicodranas,” he’s still smiling, even as he stands and walks across the kitchen. He wraps his arms around Una tightly, pulling her close to his chest, and holds her softly. “At least you got to see our boys from a distance. I’ve not seen either of them in ten years.”
She hadn’t thought of that; she wipes her eyes. “You’re right, Leofric, I’m sorry--”
“I’m not,” he sighs, and kisses the top of her head. “I’m not trying to guilt you. I’m just saying that if I can deal with not seeing them, you can, too. It’s a shame you can’t use your magic to look after them anymore, but that’s okay, too. We just gotta have faith. They--they managed to save us, didn’t they? We gotta trust that they’ll be able to save each other.”
“You’re right,” she says quietly, still leaning against her husband. “You’re right.”
“Besides,” he grins at her, toothy and bright. “Six years? That’s nothing compared to what we’ve waited for so far.”
“Six years until Nicodranas,” she muses aloud. “Then two more years of waiting.”
“Waiting in a dragon’s tower,” Leofric nuzzles her, excitement in his voice. “Oh, I forgot to tell you; the Brenatto’s had their kid today.”
“Aw, really?”
“Yeah. I spoke to Edith earlier. Baby boy. Named him Luc.”
“Good for them,” Una sighs in her husband’s arms. “Good name, too.” She waits a moment, content in the moment. “Do you think we’ll ever get grandchildren?”
“Grand-cats,” Leofric proposes, and Una snorts with laughter. “Lots and lots of grand-cats.”
“You are terrible.”
“I love you,” Leofric murmurs, and then kisses her sweetly, and all is well in her world for the moment.
It’s funny; her son is so smart, so brilliant, and he told her so many things about the future, thirteen years ago, in that little bit of time she saw him last.
You’d’ve thought he might’ve mentioned the goblin raid, though. That seems like an important detail he forgot to mention.
She casts guiding bolt on one goblin, and scowls at her husband. “Leofric!”
“I know, I know!” He swings his sword, ending the life of the one she just cast on. “836 , he said. I know I heard him right!”
“I heard 836 too!” She swears, rushing over to heal Edith. There are too many goblins here, she thinks. People are going to die. She won’t be able to save them all.
“It’s fucking 833 PD,” he barks, and then kicks another goblin in the face for good measure. “Jim, get Edith to safety, and then round up the others. We can drive the rest of them out, see who’s missing.” The lanky young man nods, nervous as all get out as he helps Edith up off the ground, helping her to her home.
She forgets, sometimes, how fast Leofric can move. He’s right next to her, and he grabs her arm. “Should we leave for the coast?” He asks her quietly, now that it’s just the two of them.
She bites at her lip. “He said 836--”
“He also said an attack on Felderwin, and that we needed to be gone by the time it happened,” he gestures around them, to the burning buildings and the chaos the goblins have caused.
They are just hungry, Una thinks, mindlessly killing the last one nearby. The goblins just need food. She can create food and water but it’s bland, tasteless, but it will fill a belly. She’s been doing it to help people in town given the bad harvest, but now she wonders if she couldn’t have done more, for people outside of the village.
Is this what you wanted? She thinks, looking up at the sky, thinking about the Archeart. When you said I needed to use my gifts to help people, did you mean the goblins, too?
Leofric grabs at her arm again. “Una.”
“I know,” she groans, shaken back into reality. The smell of smoke burns her skin. “I don’t think we can leave yet, Leofric.”
“Bren said--”
“Caleb,” she breathes, correcting him. “Caleb said 836.”
“He said the attack--”
“Do you think our son would lie to us?” Una yells at him. “Have you ever known our boy to get numbers wrong?” She shakes her head. “There must be another attack, three years from now. Something worse than this.”
Leofric looks at her with disbelief, like he wants to argue with her more. Instead, he takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to miss him,” he says slowly, softly, and Una feels her heart break for him, and for herself. They both miss him so much.
She feels like crying, and maybe she will cry, later, but then Jim comes running back up to them. “Three dead,” he tells Leofric. “And three missing.”
“Who’s missing?”
“The Brenattos,” Jim says with a soldier salute. “Yeza, Veth, and Luc.”
Grief swells up inside of her. The Brenattos are so young, and their baby is only three, and who knows what the goblins will do to them?
“Nothing to be done right now,” Leofric shakes his head, and Una can tell he wants to do so much more than he can right now. “We need to put out the fires, and bury the dead, and then we can see about sending out a search party to look for them.”
And they do search for them.
But they don’t find them, nor do they find the goblins.
A few weeks pass before Yeza Brenatto shows back up, looking ravaged and scared half to death, clinging to a starving Luc. He looks so different without his glasses, smaller and feral, holding on too-tightly to his son that the baby won't stop crying. “Veth, ” he tells them, when they try and set him down. Una is already busy helping to heal the baby, her magic going through to the boy first, and then the father. “Veth. They still have Veth,” he grabs at Leofric’s shirt. “We--we have to go back, we have to go get her!”
"We will, son," Leofric assures him. "We'll go get her. Where'd you leave her?"
Yeza tries to give him directions, and Leofric leaves with three or four other men, in hopes of finding Veth Brenatto, or at least her body.
They come home empty handed.
It takes half the village to calm Yeza down after that, and even then he is still frazzled. If it weren’t for Luc, she doesn’t think he’d be able to stand staying in the village, even though he’s injured still and needs rest.
As she and Leofric walk home in the evening, things are oddly quiet in the little village they’ve made into a home, like they are both too scared to speak and break the calm that’s settled over them.
“I’ll stay with Edith tonight,” Una whispers to Leofric, hand entwined with his. “And tomorrow--”
“Tomorrow, we’ll head towards Nicodranas,” he tells her firmly. “I’ll get our affairs in order, sell the house and land, get things taken care of.”
She squeezes his hand again. “I pray we won’t be too early,” she whispers. She doesn’t know what it will do to the timeline if they are. Caleb was very clear; he could not see them before 838.
It is only 833. What happens if they move too soon…?
“And I don’t want to miss him,” Leofric bites his lip. “I can’t do it again, Una. I failed him once by sending him to that school, I won’t do it again. I can’t. I won’t, I--”
“Shhh,” she assures him, and pulls him down lower so she can kiss his forehead. “We’ll take our time. Move slowly. I’ll keep trying to scry on him, see if we can’t learn something.”
“Either of us could have died in the goblin raid,” Leofric whispers; he is so old now, his hair is more gray than brown, and so is she. When did that happen, she wonders? “I cannot stand it, Una. I’d’ve--I’d’ve rather burned than to lose you or Bren now. Not when we’re so close to seeing him again.”
“I know,” she says, and prays to the Archeart for guidance.
That night, she stays with Edith and helps watch over Luc while Yeza recovers.
In the morning, she and Leofric head to Nicodranas, three years too soon.