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Erik smells the herb before he sees it; he's used to spotting it dried in back alley stalls, hidden behind wares so the guards don't see it as they pass, not hanging free and open where anyone could find it a short walk into the Manglegrove. Maybe it belongs to Flint. Maybe this is where one of the Downtown market stalls gets their supply; easier to hide it from the guards long enough to grow it and dry it if it's in the Manglegrove, probably.
Erik pauses just long enough—considering whether to grab it and stash some away to sell later in case they need the money—and Ven stops, too. Of course, Erik has no idea where to sell it outside of Downtown Heliodor, what this little stash might be worth, or how to tell if it's even good. Anyway, he figures he should probably avoid doing too many illegal things with the Luminary around, or, at least limit his illegal activities to things that will help Ven and his quest (whatever that is). The less likely they are to get noticed by guards, the better. Time to learn to keep his nose clean.
Erik redirects his gaze. "Thought I saw a bubble slime," he lies smoothly. They have already moved a little off the beaten path, a little past where bubble slimes drop from the trees, but Ven glances around, anyway, hand on the hilt of his sword. Erik almost feels bad about the lie. Ven looks like he's about to keep moving when his eyes land on the herb. He smiles softly, pulls out his sickle, and starts to cut the ties holding the herbs to the drying line. He doesn't take much, just a single, smallish chunk off a larger, drying plant.
"Do you, uh, do you know what that stuff is?" Erik tries.
Ven pauses in the middle of putting away his sickle and pulling out some herb paper to smirk and sign, "I thought you were a hardened criminal. It's just an herb." He winks. Winks, like Erik is the prude here.
Erik laughs nervously. This is, he reminds himself, the Luminary. Ven just saved their lives yesterday and proved with some crazy root vision that he's Yggdrasil's holiest chosen one this morning. "I'm not stopping you, I just wanted to make sure you knew that stuff doesn't exactly go in the fun-sized forge."
Ven finishes packaging the weed into his bag, wrapped like a medicinal herb so it won't make his pack smell or, Erik assumes, lose any potency. He seems to know what he is doing. Much better than Erik would, honestly. While his hands are occupied, Ven says, "My granddad used to smoke. Dunstan—he's the mayor of Cobblestone—he still does."
"You can talk? Have you been able to talk this whole time?" This is a lot to take in, okay, and it's been a busy few days of weird shit happening—escaping prison, running from a dragon, jumping off a cliff, finding out that there really is honor among thieves—so Erik feels like that's saying a lot. He can't say why the idea of the Luminary, some country boy he just met, finally speaking and doing drugs seems more implausible than the woodcutter vision, but a guy has to draw a line somewhere, and Erik figures this is a pretty good one.
Ven goes back to signing. "Of course."
Erik realizes with a sinking sensation that Ven is suddenly tense and defensive again, like he was when Erik first told him they had to go back to Downtown. "I mean, it's not a big deal, obviously. I talk all the time."
Ven smirks, signing, "You talk more than me."
"Ha, funny," Erik snarks. "So like, the uh, herb there, it's not illegal in Cobblestone?"
Ven shrugs, giving a wavy hand motion. "The knights of Heliodor have more important things to worry about. Like those two dangerous fugitives. My mom didn't like my graddad smoking, but she wasn't going to turn him over to Heliodor." His face scrunches up as he begins to move a little faster, strides lengthening as he signs about Cobblestone.
That's a lot of casual information, a lot of, goddess, Ven really misses his mom, he has a terrible poker face. Erik really hopes the knights of Heliodor were just visiting, maybe dumping a bunch of reward money on the town for turning over the Darkspawn. Hendrik was supposed to be some kind of hero. Heroes didn't usually hurt innocent mountain villagers, right?
Then again, the Hero of Heliodor already threw at least one innocent mountain villager into the dungeon cell next to Erik's with a promise to execute him sometime in the next three days, so.
Erik begins to walk faster as he sees the edge of the Manglegrove cresting into hills and rocky outcroppings. Once they're in the open, Ven leads the way, no longer signing, just running. The slimes scatter from his path. The way to Cobblestone is just around the corner and through a short cave, but Erik isn't surprised he's never heard of the place; it doesn't look so much like the path to a town as the path to a dungeon full of monsters and loot. Ven gets ahead in the cave, too far to sign in the low light, his footsteps echoing ahead of Erik on the way under the mountain, the only sound coming from the other side.
Erik can't say when, exactly, he loses Ven, but one minute Ven is leading the way, and the next the smoke seems to have clogged Erik's senses. Ven slows down, doesn't respond to Erik, and then just slips away.
Erik can't blame him for that. He doesn't even know the place, but the destruction—this is. This is so much worse than just Mia. Erik doesn't have the scale for something this horrible happening to everyone he knows because he doesn't care about most people he knows. He can't even imagine. All of Sniflheim, the priest, the viking ambassador, every kindly old lady who used to sneak bread to him and Mia; losing Ven, Ruby, and Derk, too, all of them burned up with every place he has ever lived. Everyone he has ever known turned to gold because they made the mistake of knowing Erik; that's what this is like.
It's a big grief. He doesn't want to think about it.
Erik takes the time to check the houses—it's weird there don't seem to be any bodies, no burnt flesh smell, but the place is also very clearly empty and ruined, so maybe there's a mass grave somewhere they don't need to see, maybe everyone is being executed in the Heliodor dungeons. There's nothing they can do about any of it, not against an army, not when they're at least a day or two behind on whatever transpired. Erik loops the whole town but can't find Ven. There's a lot of ground to cover, though, so he circles a second time, really checking around and behind and inside of what's left of the buildings, and by the time he has passed everything again, Ven is standing under the tree at the base of town, the one wrapped in a big vine like the root in the Manglegrove.
Ven's hand is glowing against the vine, so Erik doesn't try to talk to him until it stops. He doesn't know what possible advice Yggdrasil could offer for something like this, but he's happy to let Her do the heavy lifting. Erik can feel the hatred for Heliodor rising like bile in the back of his throat the longer he stands here, breathing in the smoke. Everything, just gone. Everything has been burned or taken already. It feels a little crude, but it's not just the loss of life that bothers him, it's the waste of burning the storehouse, the food, the shops and all their stores. That's what really drives home that there is nothing here left to save.
If the people of Cobblestone were being interrogated or would be released from wherever they had been taken, there would be no need for all of this.
-x-
Ven makes his way through the town, trying not to look too closely at anything—not the item shop full of smashed pots or the stables, broken down, horses gone, or the storehouse, full of the year's grain and vegetables, all burnt to ash, seasons of work wasted—finally stopping outside of Dunstan's place. It seems a bit unnecessary to try the door when he can walk right over the rubble of Gemma's living room to step into the house, but he does. The door frame, of course, is one of the sturdiest parts of a house. A bit surprising that the door didn't burn more, honestly.
Ven gingerly steps through the brick, trying not to disturb the smoldering rubble. He can feel a change in the air pressure, signaling a rain soon. Hopefully, that will help with all of... Cobblestone. Some of Gemma's needles, whittled from bone, are already ruined, but he salvages a few, and there's a spool of thread still intact, saved from the fire by some rubble. He finds most of an older sketchbook, steals a copy of her Cobblestone Clobber design—not the latest one, but the latest one he can find intact—and moves on, slipping the sketchbook into a leather bag he latches shut and stows in a stone cabinet to keep it out of the weather. He wants to scour the town and take what he can, but they have to travel light and move quickly. He tries to keep an eye on Erik to remind himself of that.
When he was young, it seemed an adventure that his mom had the house on the highest hill in Cobblestone, but now it just gives him a full view of the destruction.
Most of his mother's nice iron cookware is still okay, a little sooty, but not beyond repair. He can't take them with him; he wants to, but it's just not practical. They're heavy and he can't exactly use them on the road. He takes the time to store them in the remains of the stove, rinsing them in the river nearby, so that they are at least a little protected from the weather, pocketing his mom's good soup spoon, and then he picks through the rubble of his attic, climbing some very precarious brick while Erik protests below, "Are you sure that's safe?" until he reaches the edge of the upper floor, dislodging Chalky's old traveling rucksack.
For a heart-stopping moment, Ven thinks he's lost it, he's lost everything, the pipe is going to shatter in the fall, but Erik catches the rucksack before it crashes to the ground.
The bag is ruined. Between the smoke and the fire, it's not exactly usable, but inside, Ven still finds his granddad's pens and his pipe, protected by the bag. Erik doesn't comment as Ven slips the stuff into his bag.
"Ready," Ven signs.
Erik nods, leading the way out of town.
-x-
Erik offers to set up camp for them. Ven can see the entrance to the Kingsbarrow from this hill, but it's already nighttime and they've been walking and fighting all day.
"We're not exactly in tip top shape, you know?" Erik says. All the round vowels really make his accent pop; Ven can't place it. He can't place much other than a Heliodorian accent, to be honest.
Ven nods, rifling through his rucksack. He didn't even look for his mom's cookbook. He didn't think of it. Why didn't he think of it? He never remembers all the herbs that go into her stew, he can't—how is he supposed to—what if the embers spark up in the night and take whatever is left? What if the rain ruins the cookbook instead? What if her cookbook was still there, but now it's not?
"Hey, hey," Erik says, dropping the kindling. "Woah, man."
Ven brings his knees to his chest and buries his face for a real cry. It has been a very long day. He startles at Erik's hand on his back, moving in soothing circles. Ven wants to kill Jasper, wants to turn around and fight all of Heliodor—none of them, his mother, Dunstan, Gemma, none of them had anything to do with this.
He hiccups over another sob, remembering his granddad's last words in the vision and the letter—don't hold grudges, always live life with love in your heart. The advice seemed simpler and easier as a child, more sensible before Ven opened his eyes to ash and smoke. He isn't sure Yggdrasil was really protecting him by hiding that—he doesn't want to admit that his faith in this mission falters, but he thinks for a moment that there must be some mistake. Why didn't he insist harder that Chalky tell his mother not to send him to Heliodor? Why didn't Yggdrasil let him know what he had lost so he could keep it from happening?
Ven signs, "I'm okay." He scrubs his face and takes a shaky breath and thinks about taking out the letter again, but he can't. Not right now.
Erik hesitates, but he doesn't argue. He continues setting up the fire, remaining by Ven, his posture and gaze focused on his task, which Ven appreciates because the first spark of flame makes him uncomfortable. He watches it eat up the kindling and doesn't think farther than that. He just watches, head empty, chest hollow. The woodsmoke smells fresher and finer than the ash of stone and rubble and thatch. Ven tries to only think about woodsmoke, about his mother's stove kindled fresh, all day long for a good stew.
After they've eaten, or, at least, after Erik has eaten and Ven has put away enough that Erik doesn't press him to eat more, Erik empties his bag, separating out the reagents and monster parts he collected through the day for the item bag, and Ven does the same, dumping everything onto the ground to see what can be re-sorted. It's a good ritual, he figures. Better than thinking about—literally anything right now.
He sees the Manglegrove herb wrapped in some of the paper he usually reserves for wrapping medicinal herbs, but he isn't exactly going to help at the item shop anymore, is he? Dunstan didn't need the herb, either.
Chalky's pipe is also in the pile.
Ven picks up the pipe and Erik starts picking out some of the forge reagents from Ven's pile to add to the general bag. "Have you ever smoked?" He sets the pipe in his lap to sign.
Erik isn't obviously looking in his direction, but he still laughs. "No way. I couldn't afford it. Derk and I were always moving from one big score to another, just enough to get by." He pauses. "Have you?"
"Once."
Erik freezes, his hand halfway to counting out their medicinal herbs. "You're joking. The Luminary?" He grins, all of his attention on Ven now.
"I don't even know what that means," Ven signs with sharp, jabbing gestures. "You've known about this longer than me."
Erik puts his hands up in surrender. "All right, tell me about your troubled, criminal past."
Ven almost feels a smile starting at that, but it seems like too much energy to make his lips move. "When my granddad passed, he hadn't finished smoking his stash."
Erik's teasing smile turns into a grin. "You're kidding."
Ven can feel his own lips quirking up a little. "He didn't want my mom to know he still smoked, so he asked me—"
"How old were you?"
"Fourteen?" Ven makes a so-so gesture. "—he asked me to make sure mom didn't find his stash if he passed before he smoked the last of it."
"So you smoked it? Wait, what about the mayor?"
Ven holds up a finger. "I didn't know he smoked yet. I got the herbs out of Granddad's room, stashed them in my bag, and climbed out the window that night. I had to sneak next door to Gemma's, she was my..." Ven's fingers get caught over the next part. How can he explain Gemma? His best friend? His sister? His twin, his partner in crime?
Erik waits patiently, more patiently than Ven expects he's used to being, based on the few days they've spent together, how Erik is always fidgeting with something, always counting stars or sharpening his knife if he can't find something to do.
"Gemma was—we were close..." Ven signs.
"Like, your girlfriend?" Erik prompts after another brief silence.
Was she Ven's girlfriend? They hadn't really—well, they'd never—
That time they kissed when they were thirteen didn't really count because it was just to see what it was like.
Ven never even had a chance to find out if he was in love with her, he just figured that would fall into place or it wouldn't, they had all the time—
"Did she turn you in?" Erik prompts.
Ven shakes his head. "Never. She was like my Derk." That makes Erik smile again. Ven takes a moment to re-orient himself in the memory. "She sneaked out with me. We went down to Cobblestone Falls, where Granddad liked to go, and I asked her if she would help me dispose of the herbs."
Erik leans forward, his item-sorting forgotten.
"Gemma said that was the really good stuff, it would be a shame to waste it."
Erik's eyes blew wide. "No!"
Ven nods, his lips finally curling upward just a bit. His chest is a mess of emotion, a rising stone in his throat, warmth in his heart. That night was like that, too, the fresh news of Chalky's passing mixing with Gemma at his side, lamenting that it would be wasteful to send the herb down the river. "I told her we could smoke it instead. She waved me off, 'No, no, no! It wouldn't be proper!' I said I was going to smoke it without her, and then she told me I was doing it wrong."
Erik laughs so hard he nearly falls off the log. "And how would she know?"
"Her mom was sick for a long time, so she used to smoke with her granddad and mine, and so I guess Gemma knew more about it than I did from watching them."
"You're telling me the blessed Luminary got stoned down by Cobblestone Falls?"
"It was nice. Remembering Granddad." Ven picks up the pipe again to fiddle with it. There was a little groove along the handle where Chalky's thumb had always rested. Ven's thumb was still too narrow to fit it. His mom had taken in quite a bit of the waist on his coat to let him wear it, too. It felt like maybe being the Luminary would never be enough to make him as important as Chalky had been. Yggdrasil had chosen Granddad to find him, that felt more significant than anything else She had done or whatever destiny he was supposed to put up with. Whatever else he went through, his mom and granddad felt like the most significant surety that divine intervention had gotten him this far.
And Yggdrasil still hadn't stepped in to save either of them.
"All right," Erik says.
Ven glances up. "What?"
"Show me how to get stoned, you criminal, you."
Ven laughs. "What about the soldiers of Heliodor?"
"They're going to be checking Heliodor and Cobblestone. They won't know to look out here, not yet."
Ven spins the pipe around again, checking to make sure it's clean enough, before nodding.
Erik grins. He shovels roughly half the remaining medicinal herbs into each of their bags, leaving only Ven's Cobblestone mementos and the Manglegrove herb on the ground in front of him.
Ven takes time to prepare some of the herb; whoever grew this batch did pretty well in caring for it. He takes the pipe, Gemma's how-to-smoke instructions echoing in his memories, and he feels more calmed by the familiar scent of the herb, reminding him of Chalky and Gemma, than by any effect of the smoke, he thinks, but he does feel better.
He passes the pipe to Erik, who holds it all wrong, but seems to get it before Ven can start explaining. "Like this?" Erik tries to mimic what Ven did, but now Ven sees what Gemma saw, and tries to sign that Erik needs to inhale more, again, harder, he's not really sure, but Erik isn't doing it right, and his thumb isn't doing the right thing either.
Erik coughs a little anyway. "I don't feel any different?"
"You didn't do it right."
"How hard can it be? All I do is suck on the pipe, right?"
Ven tries to explain quickly in signs, but Erik can't understand him one-handed or when he's going too quickly at the best of times, so he tries again, slower, taking another hit from the pipe.
"I did all that," Erik argues.
Ven signs, "New plan: come here." Erik turns, leaning closer as demanded. "Inhale through your mouth when I tell you to."
"Okay," Erik says. His eyes get a little darker when Ven moves close enough to kiss, tapping Erik's shoulder to signal now.
Erik inhales, Ven's mouth lightly fitted over his.
He holds the breath like Ven had, eyes watering until he coughs, smoke going everywhere. "Okay," he chokes out. "Okay, that was a little more intense."
"The first hit is always the hardest." He takes another puff from the pipe, less because he needs or wants his head to feel cloudy and more because he likes the smell, likes feeling close to Chalky and Gemma.
"Oh, is that what it is?" Erik flails for a water skin, roughly wiping his mouth on his sleeve after he's done. "So I can keep my status as a street rough?"
Ven laughs. "Your hair is too soft to be a street rough."
"Oh, like you're the expert on rough streets," Erik argues, rolling his eyes. Then, he says something so garbled and nonsensical—it sounds like Heliodorian, but all in the wrong order, or mushed together or something. None of the words fit where they fall.
"What did you say?" Ven signs.
Erik laughs. "I said, 'can you even speak Thieves' Cant,' but I see that you...can't."
"You're just making that up," Ven argues. "There isn't a secret thief language."
Erik smirks. He taps out something on Ven's hand, like a mixture of signs he almost recognizes and a rhythm that he doesn't. He understands, suddenly, why some of Erik's signing seems like nonsense, if he's falling back on whatever this is to try to sign to Ven. Erik taps out the same message three times. "Can you even speak Thieves' Cant," Ven gathers from context clues.
Ven's hand feels cold when Erik draws back, still grinning.
"It's not a real language," Erik explains. "More like... ciphers and code, mostly. You could probably pick it up pretty fast, if you wanted to."
Ven holds out his hand more insistently.
Erik takes it, signing something short and simple, saying it aloud as he goes, "V-E-N."
Ven copies the sign back onto Erik's hand.
"Yeah!" He reaches for his bag again, pulling out a book. "Derk gave me this, but maybe you might need it more?"
Ven takes the book, tilting it so that he can see the cover in the firelight, trading the pipe to Erik. The pages are clearly handmade and cheaply. There isn't anything on the cover. The first page is sketches of hand signals, the same kind of tapping and movement that Erik just did. He remembers after a moment to sign, "Thank you."
Erik takes another puff from the pipe, trying to mimic what Ven did. Ven laughs, slipping the book into his bag next to his journal. "Do you need help?" he signs.
Erik scowls in the firelight. "It's not complicated, I can pick a lock, I can do this."
"Can you pick a lock?" Ven asks. "You just hit the guard and took his keys in the dungeons."
"I was being efficient," Erik defends.
Ven takes the pipe back. He sucks in the smoke, holding it for a moment, before signing to Erik, "Okay, come here."
Erik glances to his mouth and then his eyes. "Fine," he says. This time, he seems more prepared for Ven, leaning close, mouth stopping just shy of kissing Ven, his hands hovering just shy of framing Ven's face. Ven waits just a few seconds more to feel Erik's exhale across his lips before tapping his shoulder to signal him, breathing the smoke out.
This time, Erik doesn't cough. He does make a face when he finally breathes out. "Is it always that bitter?"
Ven shrugs. He can't imagine the smoke tasting any other way. It smells homey and familiar, but he guesses it might be bitter, underneath all that. Maybe it's an acquired taste.
Erik frowns at the sky. The rain has stalled on the other side of the mountains for a bit, but it looks like the wind might send it their way soon. The clouds already obscure most of the stars.
Ven opens his mouth to speak, but he can still feel the lump in his throat and the way his voice wants to stick and grind from everything that happened today. He closes it, reaching out to tap Erik's shoulder for his attention instead.
Erik's attention drifts to Ven, warmer than the campfire. "I can't tell if I'm feeling anything," he says.
"You're feeling it," Ven signs. Ven is starting to feel drowsy, eyes a bit dry, and not just from the crying, and Erik has a peaceful, far off look on his face that Ven hasn't seen yet. "Tell me about the stars."
"I don't know a lot about them," Erik protests.
Ven shrugs. "Something," he prompts. "You're always looking up."
Erik glances back upward to scowl at the clouds for a second, before pointing upward, leaning close enough to press his shoulder to Ven's to make sure they had the same view. "There, between that cloud, that's—" he says something with too many vowels that Ven doesn't quite catch, not Heliodorian, maybe more Thieves' Cant? "—the stars make up her sash. She wove it from moonlight and left it in the sky to guide wayward world-wal—uh, travelers back home."
Ven doesn't move away when Erik lowers his arm, leaning into the warmth. Erik feels a bit like a sunbeam right now.
"I knew you weren't a real criminal," Erik snorts. "One pipe full and you're falling asleep already."
Ven giggles. "I didn't say I was a criminal. I didn't say anything."
"Not true! I heard you say words," Erik argues.
Ven turns his head to argue more insistently, but he forgot that he was so close to Erik, and his cheek brushes Erik's. He doesn't remember what he was going to argue. He does shift enough to put one hand on Erik's shoulder for balance, freeing his other so that he can touch the spikes of Erik's hair.
Erik shivers a little under him.
Ven pulls back enough to sign, "how does your hair stand up?"
Erik smirks. "A little thing called style."
Ven laughs. "I thought you would need..." he waves a hand, "hair stuff. Slime."
"I'm not sticking slime in my hair."
Ven runs a hand over the ends of Erik's spikes, watching them flop in the wind, bouncing against his fingers.
The rain starts pretty much without warning. One minute, Erik is letting Ven touch the ends of his hair, the next the fire is sizzling and fat, wet drops of water are pelting them both.
"Tent!" Erik cries, grabbing the bags and shoving them into the small tent Derk pushed off on Erik. It barely has enough room for the two of them and the bags, but Ven decides it is better than getting rained on.
Ven flops into the tent next to Erik, nearly kicking over the tent pole in his haste. He prefers the Manglegrove campsite, honestly. The coast feels too open, too cold with the coming winter. The hugeness of the horizon always made Ven feel too small after growing up with a horizon blocked by mountains and trees. He supposes that's what part of the Tor ceremony was for, too, showing sheltered Cobblestonians how big the sky could really be. That felt different, though. Holy. The coast just feels exposed.
Erik doesn't lie down yet, rifling through their bags for something. He pulls out their stash of rations, counting carefully.
Ven taps Erik's knee to get his attention. "Just eat it. You can eat it all. I can fish and hunt." He's not sure how much Erik can understand in the dying firelight barely illuminating their tent flaps. Ven remembers those need to be tied closed, his boots are already getting wet, but Erik is bad enough at Heliodorian signs, he doesn't expect Erik to have a lot of practice with hand-signing.
Erik runs a hand over his face. "I'm not that hungry."
Ven drowsily lifts a finger to poke at Erik's ribs, getting a startled yelp. "You need to eat more when we're on the run. Running takes more energy."
Ven sits up a little, summoning a small wisp of a flame to see by; it makes Erik nervous to have it in the enclosed space. It makes Ven nervous, too, but he isn't listening to that part of himself right now. He uses his free hand to take out a sheet of herb-wrapping paper and sets a collection of rations on it for Erik—some cheese they need to finish soon, a few leftover berries he doesn't want to go soft in the bag, a long strip of chewy jerky that Erik seems to like a lot, and the last hunk of bread. Everything else, he helps Erik to package back into the bag with his free hand.
"Eat this much," Ven signs with the flame flickering on his fingertip, signing with it; it doesn't burn him. Erik still watches it with a wary eye. "It'll go bad if you don't, anyway."
Erik takes the bread, at least. It's a bit dry, but that doesn't seem to bother Erik.
Ven extinguishes his flame, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness—darker now that the fire has been rained down—before he properly closes the tent flaps to keep out the weather. He flops back down on the bedroll, kicking his boots off.
"Aren't you hungry?" Erik asks. Then, seeming to realize his mistake, he reaches down, feeling in the darkness until he bumps into Ven's arm, following it to his hand and makes a quick circular signal, "For yes, or" he makes a slashing motion with his thumb across Ven's palm, "for no."
Ven signs "no," across Erik's hand. He is, a little, but not enough to stay up and figure out a snack.
"If you're sure," Erik replies. Ven hears him rummaging around somewhere, finally pulling something from the item bag that gives off a soft, red glow. A lamplight. "Aha!"
The flame in the center of the lamplight is more of a flickering, magical glow than true embers. Erik breaks the cheese in half, handing the larger chunk to Ven. "Isn't smoking this stuff supposed to make everyone hungry? I'm pretty sure it does."
Ven takes the cheese because it's easier to eat than to argue. When he finishes, he signs, "After Gemma and I smoked Granddad's stash, we raided the town's stores for food. Gemma ate most of a wheel of cheese and her granddad made her stay home because she had gas so bad he thought she was coming down with something."
Erik covers his mouth, laughing so hard he nearly chokes. When he recovers, he manages, "What about you?"
"Three apples and a bunch of deer jerky," Ven signs. "We fell asleep in the storehouse. My mom made me help out at the butcher's for a week."
Erik snorts. "And I thought I had a reputation for making trouble."
Ven can feel the warmth in his chest ebbing, though the drowsiness stays. It hits him again, all at once, finding the mess he made of Dunstan's mayoral announcement board, hiding a frog in one of the pots at the item shop, getting fussed at for climbing trees when his mom wasn't looking. All of it, everyone, just gone. It feels dreamy and far off with how unreal it is. Like if he stays gone long enough, Cobblestone will rebuild itself, and everyone will come out of the mountains, unharmed.
Ven inhales a shaky breath, reaching out to steal some of Erik's berries just to have something to do.
"I'm a prince of Dundrasil," Ven signs.
"There was a prince?" Erik asks.
Ven huffs out a partial laugh, the best he can manage. "Yes. Me."
"I thought you were from Cobblestone?"
"Apparently, I was adopted," Ven signs.
Erik stops halfway to shoving another piece of jerky into his mouth. "Oh. Oh, shit."
"That's what the letter was. I knew—Dunstan was never subtle about it, and Mom told me a little—but I didn't know I was a prince."
Erik stares at the jerky in his hands for a moment. He tears it in half. "I don't know what to say. I'm sorry." He holds out half of the jerky.
Ven tries to wave it off, but Erik insists.
Erik offers up, "I'm not really from Heliodor. I don't know who my parents are."
Ven is intrigued by that, at least, hungry for any details about Erik, anything to take his mind off today. "Your accent isn't local," Ven agrees.
"Noticed that, did you?" Erik rubs the back of his head, watching the flickering glow of the lamplight for just a moment. "We're a couple of misfits, huh?"
"I think we fit," Ven signs. "It's nice to have you along."
Erik huffs a laugh. "Thanks for having me on your quest to save the world."
Eventually, Erik slips the lamplight back into the bag and Ven tries to sleep.