Chapter Text
The dreadful surroundings were surely to blame.
Morrighan Ferus had never wanted to describe a landscape as smothering before, but this monotone stretch of rock melancholic bushes was surely it. It was called something, but even if she had been told the name several times, she hadn't been able to keep it in her head. Possibly it had to due with her roots in the Feywild where every individual blade of grass or pebble had a name on its own and so it seemed redundant to name a whole forest or a grassland something to. The practice of doing only appeared as visitors from the material plane did.
The Crown Keepers had walked on this dirt road, twisting endlessly through this land for several days now, and a sour mood had descended over them. They weren't even conversing anymore. The change was probably standing out more to her, because she had only just gotten to know these people, their brighter and more lively sides. The Dorian that she had gotten to know had been a considerate and sometimes bumbling person, who tended to hum a melody to himself without thinking; the Dorian that strode in front of her now was silent, brooding about things without being able to formulate exactly what. She could recognize it since she had a tendency to be that way herself, feeling this anxiousness in her body with no source. He wouldn't even thrum on his lute any more, when they were taking breaks. It had been one of the first things she had gotten used to travelling with this group, his careful playing as she was curled in her bedding falling asleep, notes pawing shyly as if not to disturb. Her bird had sometimes imitated the melody. Now it seemed ages since she had heard it, or any bird for that matter.
Then there was Fy'ra Ra, determined and wise. When Morrighan had gotten more open about receiving signs and omens from the Matron of Ravens, a goddess that she in her wildest imaginations had never seen taking an interest in somebody like her, the fire genasi had treated it like an initiation into some sort of sisterhood of goddess affiliates. What she had learned about Fy'ra was that if the woman thought you had something on your chest, but felt too shy to ask for advice, she would come to you instead and coerce it out of you.
– If you ever feel worried about something, she could say. The gods are seldom clear in their communication, and it's normal to wonder if you are interpreting their wills correctly. If I tell you of my own experience with the Wildmothers gift you will surely recognise it.
Morrighan would have thought that their respective goddesses would have made them incompatible with one being the ruler of death and the other the warden of nature, but Fy'ra clearly didn't see it this way, and maybe she was the making wrong assumptions.
The other woman acted as the group's scout, keeping ahead and starting off to dig up roots, and find water for them to compliment their rations with. The environment wasn't hot, since the sky had been overcast for ages, but it was dry and Fy'ra's task had gotten harder at the same rate that the distance between her and the rest of the group had increased. Nowadays she strode so far ahead that Morrighan often lost her from sight.
Dariax had taken the longest to be affected by heaviness in the air — even after everybody else had lost the energy to reply to all of the musings that went directly from his head to his mouth, he had kept on going on about everything between heaven and earth that took up residence in his brain for a couple of minutes. The dwarf lived by his very own tempo, was something that Dorian had said once, and she found it to be fitting description. With Dariax she had very quickly felt accepted, like how a dog would treat a complete stranger as if the person was already a member of its extended family. Also dogike was the way he was sensitive to the general mood even if he didn't really get what was going on. He gave everybody this confounded look now, a worry in it that was absolutely not concealed.
As a natural consequence of looking at others with concern and not the ground, he slipped on a loose rock and lightly sprained his ankle, whereupon the group decided to take an early break in between a looming ring of boulders that might have served as a gathering spot for caravans, though no sign of people remained there now.
Opal was the worst though. Her change had not been gradual, but hard-hitting the same way a heart attack was. There had been the Apogee solstice, and then the young human woman who Morrighan had gotten to be fast friends with, wasn't so easy to get in touch with anymore. Whether she was walking or sitting crosslegged in the shade of a rock it looked like she was in a trance, and like the normal Opal was sent off somewhere else.
Blaming everything that had started to feel wrong on dreary scenery felt preferable.
She could avoid thinking too much into the fact that Dorian had stopped playing his lute after the night that Opal had asked him to play a certain tune which he had uncharacteristically refused to do, or that most of Dariax worried looks went towards her whenever the mirage around her shifted and let the image of the crown through for a second, or that while Fy'ra didn't seem to hold the Matron of Raven's any ill will, the same could not be said for the Spider Queen. A scenery was a better culprit, because sceneries would always change — after one that looked bad you would surely pass by one that looked better — but for Opal she couldn't be sure that the change coming would be a good one.
Better to grumble about dust sticking to her fur, to further ground her belief that this was the only problem here.
– I would like you to help me with a plot, Cyrus Wyvernwind said, the last of her recently acquired comrades.
He had approached her from behind, and told her this completely unprompted.
– Sneaking up on girls like that, you might scare them half to death, she scolded him. Crankedly, because she was hardly immune to the pervasive bad mood herself. If she hadn't been, she might have made a prank out of it instead, yelping and turning around towards him with her palm pressed towards her heart and overly horrified eyes. Given to take things at face value as he was, he might have actually been fooled by the performance. In either case she still made him look like a puppy that had just been pushed down a couch.
The older air had the most classically manly face out of the men in the group — it was the broad jaw that did it — but whenever something made him sheepish he ended up looking as boyish as he was at heart. He didn't make the very valid point that her ears had been turned towards him the entire time, and that startling rabbit person like her from behind seemed implausible in general.
– What did you say that you wanted, she asked, pretty sure that the word "plot" had been mixed in there, and wondering if he knew what an ominous word that could be.
Dorian was already glancing with suspicion their way.
– Could we go somewhere else and talk about it, Cyrus asked her, likely instinctively aware of his younger brother's attention on him.
Like Dariax, Cyrus had been able to valiantly keep his mood up — in fact she could still recognise him as the same amiable tagalong that she had gotten to know during the heist in Kymal — and if there was any scrap of endurance left in her heart, the best thing she could devote it to was not being the final nail in the coffin of his spirit. At least this was her reasoning when she willingly followed Cyrus away from the group. Dorian looked after them, but his current position, leaned with his back against one of the boulders, was apparently restful enough that he decided on not pursuing.
They traversed the rocky ground for a couple of minutes, watching for nesting serpents at every step, until Cyrus stopped in the shade of a set of depressed juniper shrubbery, the ferns such a light and dusty green that they looked sickly. Even so, that they were kind of green instead of gray made them the most lush thing that she had seen grow for a while. Cyrus gesticulated on a spot between those junipers, at a blanket of dry-land moss.
– Alright, I have imagined a fun surprise for everyone.
She looked down at the moss. While it was true that the sight of semi-alive plants had surprised her a little bit, the increase of "fun" hadn't been substantial.
– Are you talking about this moss, she asked just to make sure.
– Yes.
– Really?
– Well partly.
His fingers played a symphony on his lips, while he hopefully concentrated on how to phrase himself clearly. She sat down, because she was tired in general, and because she had missed the feeling of sitting on a surface that wasn't hard baked ground.
– It's diplomacy one-o-one, he said.
She looked down at the moss again.
– It's for Fy'ra, he said.
– Fy'ra?
– As a gift.
– She wants this moss?
– It's very possible.
– You lost me at diplomacy
– Okay so, did I ever tell you that learning that was part of my schooling as I grew up?
It had been mentioned at some point while the group still made active conversation, that the brothers had been taught at home, and that the schooling had consisted of language, history, rhetoric and other subjects that seemed meant to prepare a child for a career in politics. Their parents' profession was definitely of that nature, comfortably situated in the decision-making crust of wherever the brothers came from — and they probably hoped that at least one of their sons would follow in their footsteps.
– My parents would let me sit with them sometimes when they received delegates and that's when I learned the art of being agreeable.
He smiled a pearly white smile that said "as you surely must have noticed by now."
She was conflicted, because while he usually acted polite this was the same man who had accidentally upend an ale barrel onto a travelling merchant in the last inn that they had stayed at, who then charged them horrendous sums for the resources that they had needed to buy from him. Even if half of it was bad luck at work, Cyrus still had a knack for making as high a number of enemies as friends.
– When you invite a representative from another land or federation, he continued, it doesn't matter if you dislike them personally or if the relation between your different societies is poor, you need to show them respect. You do that by showing them appreciation, and the best way to show appreciation is …
He leaned forward, waiting expectedly for her to finish. She got the impression that he was reenacting his childhood lessons, his ma or pa probably expecting Dorian and him to fill in a lot of sentences this way. Unlike when she willingly absorbed everything Fy'ra Rai had to teach, Morrighan had seen Cyrus mistake poisonous crowberries for normal wild raspberry too many times to have full confidence in his knowledgeability in anything. Despite his higher schooling.
Look at him doing that thing again, where he described what sounded like courtly duties to her, without a hint of bragging, or a sense that his childhood had been anything unusual. Just another joe's homelife. Not that neither he nor Dorian could fool anyone. Even if they had been more cagey about their past, she would still have figured out that the Wyvernwinds and/or Storms was a family of some higher standing through some notable hints, like how they both looked like princes, that sheltered-child naivete and how they glowed in certain environments where people from simple backgrounds would feel like intruders. She could see them slip into a concert hall like they had been personally invited by the owner, even if they happened to be wearing rags.
It was lucky that the waitress jobs that she had done inside casinos had let her see that toffs could also be nice people (the ratio of toff to nice-toff corresponding roughly to whoever gave her substantial tips) or she might have found both brothers insufferable.
He had waited for her to reply for a while now, starting to sweat,
– You write a ballad about that person, she said, because she had gotten to think about Dorian. She knew that he'd written a ballad about a deceased old man and found it sweet.
– A gift. Giftgiving's the answer, Cyrus corrected her lamely.
– Okay gifts, she said sourly, since she thought her own answer sounded just as valid.
– Exactly, Cyrus exclaimed, pointing at her as if her grumbling was some profound wisdom.
– What?
– You are feeling pissy.
Another thing her experience as a waitress, serving drunkards and idiots, had taught her how to resist snapping back at low-key rude comments like that. She did so now, knowing that Cyrus belonged to the latter camp and thus stomped on her toes unintentionally.
– It's not just you, he added. Everybody is feeling a bit under the weather. Not sick, but …
He gestured loosely in the air.
– … And it's not strange at all. We are tired and sore, haven't slept well and are forced to eat stale bread to survive. It's traveller's weariness that has accosted us. That's why the group needs something to break the tedium and cheer us up, and giftgiving is the perfect thing.
He crouched down to her level, probably having begun to feel awkward about standing while she was sitting. Now his face was beaming at her excitedly from close proximity.
– I assume this is the plot you mentioned, she said, wondering what her role in it was. An accomplice? A voice in her head that she didn't like whispered that she had been put here and explained the surprise prepared for the group, because he didn't consider her truly a part of that same group. That dark cloud of thoughts, she pushed obstinately away.