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It had been four hours since the last of her companions, Drahsleeq, had parted ways with her, four hours spent walking in silence broken by the quiet clinking of all the metal equipment, empty flasks, and tiny boxes of basic materials that she always carried around. She was grateful for the noise and kept her focus on it as much as she could until her attention was caught by the familiar sight of her final destination. First it was smoke rising over the trees, then it was the overgrown fence that had heard too many unfulfilled promises of eventual repair, and then, at last, the house. Small and quaint, showing signs of its age.
Before it stood a man, matching it perfectly. Small and quaint, showing signs of his age, although he would take great offense at the implication of that, no matter how many ashen streaks in his fiery hair and beard tried to show him otherwise. He was looking over a group of neatly lined up sunflowers that threatened to surpass him in height within the following week, and he hummed to himself at the blooms of his labors.
It was the approaching clinking that broke his tune. Old man he may have been, but a musician still, and one who remembered perfectly the sound of his daughter returning.
He looked over his shoulder. “Kunhuta!”
Before she had the chance to say anything, the man had leaped the fence and rushed towards her, taking her in his arms in as much of a bear hug as he was capable of giving due to his gnomish stature.
“Oh, my sweet girl! Ye didn’t tell us ye were coming!” When he finally pulled away, he eyed her from head to toe and added: “My, you’ve grown! Gonna be as tall as yer mother one of these days, haha!”
Kunhuta let out a laugh at the joke that had been repeated so many times it had gone full circle from funny, to embarrassing, to endearing. “Sorry, dad,” she said sheepishly, “I should’ve written…”
“Oh no, no, don’t be sorry! Come, come, momma will be so happy to see you!”
He had walked halfway to the cottage door when he realized Kunhuta didn’t move an inch, instead she stood there, looking at the garden absentmindedly.
“Kunhuta?”
She snapped back, a smile that she wasn't proficient at faking on her lips. “Sorry. Coming.”
To the old pair, it was the most joyful of reunions. They never held it against her, their daughter was cut of the same cloth as them, a soul that grew restless, hungered for adventure, and longed to leave some sparks of goodness in the world (as explosive as they may have sometimes been in Kunhuta’s case). She had found a flock to scratch that itch with, and while their wings hadn’t spread so wide as to travel the whole continent, they had managed to gather a considerable amount of miles in their boots nonetheless.
She still visited her old folks of course, always with tales to tell, though these tales often lacked her mother’s daring and the telling lacked her father’s lyricism, she flew back into her nest with full knowledge a warm welcome would await her.
Like any other time before, a warm welcome she received. A cup of tea to ease her weariness from the journey, a piece of pie that hadn’t even gotten the chance to cool, and plenty of questions regarding her latest adventures. The latter she steered around to the best of her ability. She hoped her parents wouldn’t notice when she talked more about her latest gadgets than about the quest for the lantern.
Time flew past quickly when so much catching up was in order, and it was shortened by Kunhuta herself as well. She excused herself on the base of her exhaustion and got off to her room just when the Sun had left its post for the day.
She did try to stay true to her excuse. She couldn’t sleep. Her eyes wouldn’t stay closed, her jaw and shoulders remained clenched regardless of her reprimands. So she gave up, eventually, and sat at her desk, cluttered with tools and scraps of metal. A forgotten pocket watch lay among the mess, half disassembled, and she found it to be a satisfactory distraction for the time being. The tedious task of turning tiny screws or picking apart rusty gears gave her mind something grounded to occupy itself with. Something that wasn’t the looming shadow of shame.
“Past yer bedtime, innit?”
The question was immediately followed by the sound of her screwdriver hitting the wooden floor. ‘Hells, dad, you startled me!’ should have followed but it didn’t. Just a tired sigh as she bent down to pick the tool up.
Then footsteps, calmly approaching her.
Fergus sat on her bed. It creaked under his weight, not dissimilar to his own joints, and he allowed himself an old man’s groan before he spoke again. “I know somethin’s wrong, Firecracker,” he said, with no accusation in his voice. “Care to tell me what it is?”
She didn’t look at him. She knew his eyes were soft, his expression inviting. Fingers clutching on the screwdriver, tongue bitten between her teeth, she told herself that for once it may be a good idea to keep her mouth shut before it let out yet another stupid mistake. Perhaps if he had prodded more she would have been more determined in her resolution, but the patient silence only made the words bubble up to the surface.
“Dad…” she started off cautiously, “...When you, and mom, and aunt Lillith… All of you. When you were in your adventuring days, did you ever…” A deep sigh followed. Kunhuta had not been blessed with the eloquence of her father. “...Fuck shit up?”
Another second of silence.
Then another.
And another.
And then a burst of laughter, deep and strong, coming from a practiced singer’s lungs. “Fuck shit up?!” Fergus said, when he managed to catch his breath in between, “My girl, are ye asking if Fergus Taaveti ever fucked shit up? Are you asking if Lillith fuckin’ Idrael ever fucked shit up?! Darlin’, that woman fucks shit up like it’s in her job description!”
“No, I mean-” Kunhuta cut herself off and the screwdriver nearly slipped through her fingers again. “I mean really fuck shit up. Royally so. Like…” She fumbled for words again. “...Like almost-ending-the-world kind of fucking shit up.”
Fergus had to calm his own diaphragm first, he took a deep breath and only then answered: “I once nearly killed Lillith with a plank o’ wood.”
“What?”
“It’s true, ask her yerself. It was a stupid plan for dealing with a stupid squabble, and in that stupid, stupid way I nearly bloody killed her.”
At last, Kunhuta lifter her eyes from her desk, but just as she had, Fergus’ own drifted off into space and his gaze turned gray.
“And once… We, Lillith, Mojmíra, Tristan, Duncan, Hanuš, and I, the whole lot, jumped into a random portal without thinking. Got us to this cozy lil cabin, and we spent some time there to recuperate. We drank, we played cards, we enjoyed ourselves.” He chuckled. “Yer mother and I especially.”
“Ew, dad.”
Fergus continued: “And eventually, we left. Turned out the whole thing was an illusion, a magic trick set up to keep us nice and contained. While we were emptying the illusory wine cellar, our homeland got crushed by the Carmine’s advances. And we didn’t even know for a good while, we learned that much, much later after the fact. That… Was when it dawned on us how much we fucked up.”
Kunhuta stayed silent and watched him staring into empty air, only speaking up when he turned back to her again. “But, you couldn’t have known… There was nothing you could have done.”
He smiled. “When someone fucks up, really fucks up… Most of the time there was nothing they could have done. What matters then is what they can do to fix it…” His eyes wandered to Kunhuta’s traveling bag and all the flasks that kept clinking when she and her friends had parted ways for a few days. “And who they can rely on to help them.”
Kunhuta wanted to say something, maybe a thank you, or a comment about the cheesiness of lessons on the importance of friendship, but the words that were buzzing to get out just moments earlier suddenly weren’t there. So, instead, she stood up from her chair, laid the screwdriver and the watch on her desk, and walked over to the bed. She climbed on top of it, curled up into the smallest shape she could, and rested her head on her father’s lap.
He, of course, didn’t protest in the slightest. He just did what he was so good at doing. He sang. His hands ran through Kunhuta’s hair, as fiery as his own, and he sang the same silly ditty he had composed for her before she had even been born into this world. His voice was so quiet he didn’t fully articulate his words, but Kunhuta didn’t need to understand them to be carried away by the simple happy melody.
She woke up late into the morning. Her head remained exactly where she had laid it down the night prior, and when she looked up she found her mother, nuzzled into her father’s neck, with one blanket thrown around both of their shoulders and another over Kunhuta’s own legs.
That was perhaps the first moment since the fight in the temple of Oenas that the reality sank in - the world had not ended yet. The world was, actually, doing pretty fine all things considered.