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Tear filled eyes. A child clinging to his mother. The offer of bread and somewhere warm for the night, the knowledge that he won’t accept it. It’s kind of them, but they’ve had a fright, and they need time to weave back into each other now that part of their thread is missing.
“Thank you, Warden Davrin,” the child says, a rehearsed line he doesn’t even mean.
Still, it means a lot.
*
Hot water in the cold. The fire staying lit long enough in the rain to boil the pot. Yam soup along with the hard tack in his pack.
Enough to share, even if there’s nobody to share it with.
*
“Your vallaslin. I’ve never seen one quite like it. Is it for Andruil?”
Clan Ralaferin always brings curious onlookers when he comes to trade, and he likes to see it bloom in the youngsters. He wonders if they will feel the drive of the hunt like he does, the drive that takes him past the edge of the woods towards the edge of the world.
*
He opens his pack after stopping with Ramesh and two new recruits on a long trek through Nevarra. The younger, Elisin, has slipped in a note and a handful of roasted nuts.
To next time the note says with a simple x, and he remembers the soft smile at the edge of the man’s lips.
*
Rumours of griffons persist, and he rejects them every time he hears them. Warden-Constable Carver tells him he remembers stories from his childhood, and Davrin wonders if they are similar or different to the ones he heard from the hearthkeeper that struck his mind at such a young age. He cannot imagine the constable as a young man; he wears a weight on him that makes it impossible for Davrin to peel it back. He wonders if he is seen the same.
Underneath it all, he remembers the feeling in his heart when he imagined soaring through the sky.
*
Awkward. That is the first word he thinks of when he sees the new hatchling. Awkward, head too big for the body, feathers poking out at strange angles. It screeches and screams day and night and he does not remember the last time he slept.
“I can’t believe how lucky we are,” Remi says, and he knows it’s true, even if he does not feel it now. How very fortunate they are.
*
He asks one day why they chose him, why they trusted him with this mission. Carver laughs, and simply says, well, why not you?
He cannot think of a good enough answer.
But the question remains.
*
He watches Remi as she soothes the Griffon, Assan, with a careful movement of the hands which looks like spellcraft to him. Big glassy eyes follow her and they are finally granted just a few moment’s peace.
“You have a knack with him,” he tells her, and she smiles, but does not break the connection.
“I just meet him where he is,” she says.
*
When Remi breathes her last, he wishes he had held her hand. He dreams of it for many nights after. All of the things he should have done. All of the ways he failed his watch.
*
Rook checks in on him. They check in on everybody. He notices it immediately; they cannot sit still, they cannot stop.
He finds his knife and finds a piece of wood and starts to carve.
He does not stop carving.
*
Assan in flight. Learning how to attack. He does not stop when called. He needs to learn to stop.
He needs to be taught when to stop.
The hunt is not just the pursuit. The hunt is the stillness. The hunt is waiting. The hunt is being free to move, to change, to adapt.
*
“Our Gods,” people say, and he thinks of Andruil. He thinks of the joy of the hunt, but also the pain of it. He thinks of what it means to never bring your quarry home.
*
At night, his mind is filled with Rook, and he feels like he is being watched. Perhaps he is. In the fade, who knows what is seen and unseen, real and not real?
When they have been there too long, he wonders if any of this is real. He wonders if he imagined Arlathan– home – and their time there. He wonders if all of this is just a dream, and he is in the mud in the wetlands, trying to sleep through shrieks.
*
He can feel the hum of energy around them. Bellara is kinder than he thinks he deserves. He can’t help but keep her at a distance. The magic she holds, the artefacts, the threads she pulls, they sit awkwardly in his chest.
He thinks of his childhood, his people, not their people. He thinks of fires lit from stone and hand-sharpened arrowheads. He thinks of traditions that felt like rope around his neck.
*
Wings on the still air. The rustle of leaves in the trees. He takes Assan to the forest, and he is a child again.
*
They are all there to do a job. He tells himself every day. They are all there to do a job, but he cannot help but enjoy hearing Bellara read her stories aloud. They are there to do a job, and he lets Taash correct his posture with firm hands. They are there to be a job, but he shares a bottle with Lucanis, a peace offering, and he lets the gentle dizzy warmth cover him like the sun.
*
He has never been afraid of anything he could touch.
When Rook is close, he feels afraid.
*
At Weisshaupt, he understands himself again. The hunt, the hunter, the life and the death, the duty and the sacrifice.
He feels mud and blood below his boots and everything feels real.
*
After Weisshaupt, he is lost again. What is left, when all has been sundered?
They sacrifice their lives for a promise. What is there, when that promise cannot be fulfilled?
*
Rook picks flowers, scattered through the gory nightmare of blighted lands. Rook picks flowers, and says a silent prayer for a woman with tendrils breaking through her skin, and returns the blooms to the land.
Asaan is warm beside him.
*
He is sorry for her, in the end. He is sorry for Issaya. He is sorry that they were all a promise that was doomed from the start. He sees what love can do, when pulled apart and twisted by circumstances.
He can see what it can do, but he will love anyway. He has no choice.
*
He is ready to lose himself. He is not ready for how it feels to lose somebody else. His knife slips in his hand as he carves, the blood tarnishing the wood. He cries out, and the sound of it shocks him. He does not even let himself breathe sometimes.
*
Rook cries. They do not speak about it. Rook cries and he holds them and he is flooded with them. Their tears wet the earth and he knows he won’t be able to stop what grows.
He knows he would not want to stop it.
*
Perhaps it is enough, these small things in the face of gods. The great privilege of watching a new life grow. Of building on something. Of creating a new age. The simple pleasure of their skin on his skin. Roots, not ropes to bind, but weight, stillness.
Something to live for.