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The poppies are sprouting.
Ardbert kneels next to them in the soft dirt and marvels at the dozens of small green shoots. They’re so fragile, so delicate when he brushes his fingers over them. There aren’t even any leaves yet.
A few stems snap, when a tremor passes from shoulder to the tips of his fingers.
It usually rains a lot in early spring in Lakeland, at least in Ardbert’s memory. With the world still regaining it’s aetherical balance, though, it’s shaping up to be a particularly wet year.
Ardbert fashions a tarp for his little garden of poppies and leeks and his few scraggly blueberry bushes, and he digs an overflow ditch to help a little with the flooding. By midday, though, the drizzle of rain has turned into an overwhelming torrent. Again. And Ardbert is forced to take refuge inside once more.
He’s never been good at house chores. Tidying up feels… a touch pointless, honestly, and always has, considering how quickly he tends to mess things up again. But he makes sure books get back to their shelves and all the jars in the kitchen have their lids and sweeps out the house, though he has to sacrifice a towel where the floor gets soaked from having the door open for even that short period of time.
It doesn’t take all that long. Ardbert hates being idle. He picks up hobbies– weaving, reading, woodcarving– only to put them down again less than a bell later. Restlessness bubbles under his skin. He dallies far longer with dinner than he needs, purposefully taking far more care than he ever would, just for something to do.
And yet, at the end of the night, sleep eludes him. Ardbert can but lie in his bed with his eyes closed and
drift.
From the mountains to the Source, to Excelsior Gate.
It’s a well-worn route these days, if a bit muddy, and Ardbert keeps a careful eye on the dark clouds hanging heavy on the horizon. Kaesar lets out a soft kweh when Ardbert ties her reins to the fencepost. Dune pants at his side, tongue lolling happily from the side of her mouth. The hound is bigger than she’d been even a month ago, even a week ago, and wisps of flame are starting to haunt her steps, but the size of her paws suggests she still has a ways to grow yet.
“Good morning, Ardbert,” Lyna greets warmly. Fort Jobb is busy this time of day, busier than it usually is this time of the week, but the Captain happily excuses herself from whatever conversation she was having with a pair of guards to walk Ardbert through the markets.
Ardbert hopes that wasn’t supposed to be important.
“It wasn’t,” she assures as he browses the fruit selection today. The citrus from Kholusia is looking good. Lyna drops on one knee to give Dune some vigorous head-rubbing. “We were just exchanging stories and concerns: who knew that wearing metal armor and wielding metal weapons in a thunderstorm could prove so dangerous?”
Ardbert snorts. The plums from Slitherborough are looking a tad bruised.
“Did I ever tell you the story of how Branden once got struck by lightning?” Ardbert wonders, because he honestly does not remember. From Lyna’s short gasp, he has not.
“And he lived ?!”
Ardbert laughs and selects a pair of oranges, for himself and Lyna, and some overripe plums, for a marinade back home, and, perhaps, to make some of that tea Nyelbert used to love so much. “We were in the mountains around Voeburt in the middle of summer…”
This place wasn’t Lakeland, in Ardberts time. Neither was there a Crystal Tower, nor a Crystarium around it.
Back then, Radisca’s Round had still been a tower and the Elven fortress had stretched all the way up North to the Ostall Imperative. Where the Crystarium is, there had once been a small town called Banora, infamous for its “dumbapples”-- blue-skinned, sweet and tart in the same, but the dumb trees could never seem to settle on a season to flower and fruit all together.
There’d been a push, some ten years before the end. Fundraising to build an Aetheryte. Trade and travel never did pick up, but. Life went on: until it didn’t.
Ardbert had dreamed of having a home there, before the end of everything, after the end of everything. Just a little cottage with a garden. A dog, maybe, and a goat for it to chase around every other day.
The rain batters the white blossoms off of the one dumbapple Ardbert can see from his window. He sips his warm cider and scratches behind Dune’s ears and supposes, the reality of the dream never does measure up to the dreaming.
Hopefully he still gets his apples this year.
“Mail for ya.”
Ardbert blinks. He’s kneeling in the dirt on the other side of the fence from the road, trying to figure out if the weeds pushing up around his lilies are spring onions or just weeds.
It gives the mailman time to dig through his bag and produce a piece of fine stationery. Thick, and heavy , and the black lettering on the front slants and slashes in that too-familiar way that makes Ardbert’s heart skip a beat. He rushes to wipe his hands off on his pants. His fingers still leave brown prints on the white envelope.
“I, uh. Thank you.”
The mailman gives a lazy salute and remounts his Amaro.
‘Ardbert,
I do not know if this letter will even reach you…’
Something is stealing Patricia’s cows in the night.
One of those big sabertooths, Ardbert thinks at first. But, with this much mud around, you’d think he’d be able to find a track. He employs every trick in Renda-rae’s book, but there isn’t any damage to the fence, either, and the branches of the trees where they hang over the fields aren’t thick enough to support that kind of weight.
“And I ain’t cuttin’ them either!” Patricia shouts in the distance, where Lyna is trying to get helpful details from the woman, and when Ardbert glances over his shoulder he sees both of them looking his way. “They’re the only way we got any damn shade, and I’ll be damned if I–”
Birds scatter off the far cliffs into the air– starlings, Ardbert thinks they’re called, but he’s not an expert. They form twisting flocks against the turrets of the old fort and the drab grey sky, and, if Ardbert squints, he thinks, maybe, he sees the shadow of something else creeping along the stone.
“See anything?” Lyna asks as she joins him on light, silent feet. Her shoulders are tense. She feels it too.
“Don’t know yet,” Ardbert grunts and wishes, not for the first time– and not for the last either– for the weight of his axe.
Lightning flashes and thunder rolls and Ardbert sacrifices the pot he was planning to make jam in to instead catch water when his roof springs a slight leak. He’d grab the tarp to cover it, but the only one he has that’s big enough is still protecting his garden.
He had to expand the overflow trench again. He rolls the tension out of his sore shoulder, hands shaking, and thinks, at this point, he might as well dig himself a pond.
‘Tehpe,
Your letter finds me well, actually. I’ve no idea how you did it. No, don’t explain. I’d like to solve this one on my own…’
“Mail for me?” the mailman chirrups, surprised and happy in the same, and Ardbert smiles and curses the way he can’t see the man’s eyes for his bangs and the brim of that damned hat.
His neighbors don’t know who he used to be.
Nor do they seem to particularly care. Maria commented on his mother’s sense of humor, once, to name him after one of the old Warriors of Light, and Ardbert had laughed and laughed until he could explain away the tears in his eyes.
Patricia is easier. Patricia doesn’t care much about anything but her cows. Barely seems to remember his name, most days– she calls him “boy” or “lad” with the rough kind of affection that reminds him so much of the way Nyelbert used to say “idiot”.
They meet for tea every Tuesday, and Ardbert didn’t want anything he baked to get soaked on the way over, so he brings a jug of plums soaked in tea instead, and doesn’t complain when he’s strong-armed into helping decorate the nursery.
“Apparently most pregnancies used to be this easy,” Maria says from where she’s kicked-back in her comfiest chair. “Thank the Creators for that, honest. I love my son to bits, but if things were half as hard this time I’d’ve gone straight for the herbs.”
“I’m sure you’ll be singin’ a different tune when her time comes, mark me,” Patricia drawls. She’s on the very top of a stepstool, painting the trim a pale rosy peach. “You’re damn near twice the size you were with him! And the doctors are sure you ain’t caught with twins?”
The women laugh, and Ardbert would with them if it weren’t for the cradle he’s trying to move a few inches over. Who in the high hells thought to make the thing so damn heavy… “Where is the little helion anyways?”
“Out with his da.” Knitting needles click as Maria picks up her shawl project. The yarn is burgundy red, spun through with flecks of black and flashes of gold, and Ardbert wonders who’s getting married. “They’re supposed to be fishing ‘round the Crack.”
“They best be careful,” Patricia warns. “There’s something out there that’s been nabbin’ my dear cows…”
Ardbert meets Maria’s gaze behind Patricia’s back and rolls his eyes, but he fills all three cups with fresh tea and listens politely as Patricia rehashes her aggravations.
Somehow, despite the rains, the weeds still find time to sprout.
It’s a rare sunny day, the heat of approaching summer making everything humid and sticky. Ardbert huffs and wipes sweat from his forehead and rubs at his aching knee. His poppies are starting to grow heavy with their buds, and his leeks are shooting up fast and fat, and even the blueberries are blooming.
Dune snaps at butterflies. Kaesar makes little snuffling noises where she has her beak tucked under her wing. Ardbert sighs and soaks up the sunlight like one of his precious little plants.
Beyond the fence, there is the whump of an Amaro landing.
“Mail for ya!”
‘Ardbert,
If you say so. It’s not exactly a secret, especially not if you remember our journey through Il Mheg, but far be it from me to deny you your fun…’
The grief still hits him at the oddest of times.
He’s out with Lyna and a dozen Crystarium guards, because the people of the Greatwood are finally starting to rebuild in proper, and Lyna wants to put on a show of good faith, that towns on the border will have the protection of the Crystarium just as any town of Lakeland might. Ardbert is… mostly there as a showpiece, honest. Not many in Norvrandt know of his contributions to bringing back the Night, but the Blessed are keepers of history, and Tehpe isn’t here.
Lyna on one side, Granson on the other. Even Kaesar is on her best behavior, not nipping at other chocobo’s tails like she tends to. Ardbert has a sword that Lyna shoved on him hanging from Kaesar’s saddle, and he can’t keep his hand off the pommel.
He fell here, once. Slipped down a hill and didn’t catch himself in time, a couple dozen yards down gravel and through thornbushes. Brandon spent an hour with him by the river, washing out gravel and picking out where the thorns had snapped off in his skin. Brandon, because for all his size and stature he had the most gentle hands, next to Lamitt, but Ardbert.
He doesn’t remember why he didn’t want Lamitt to see him, in that moment. It might have been embarrassment. They might have been fighting about something. It didn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter.
Grief digs like gravel and thorns, pressed into his skin, and Ardbert has let it fester, let it heal over and get infected. Just to feel something. Just to have something of them, to carry them with him still.
“Look alive,” Lyna mutters out of the corner of her mouth. “And get your hand off your sword, Ardbert. You’re making me nervous.”
Granson snickers.
Ardbert lets off Kaesar’s reins, just a bit, and she bites Granson’s chocobo just in time so that, as the Night’s Blessed open the gates, Granson gets tossed on his ass.
‘Tehpe,
Runar is doing well. He asked after Y’shtola, and I. Didn’t know what to tell him. I’m not keen on playing messenger between them, if I’m to be honest…’
Lightning flashes. Thunder rolls.
Ardbert can hear the Fuath singing in the storm, if he listens hard enough, so he tries not to listen very hard at all. His woodworking is finally starting to take the shape of… something. He’s not sure what it’s going to be yet, only that he has had great success following the natural lines and whorls of the wood. And by ‘great success’ Ardbert apparently means that he isn’t nicking his finger half as much lately.
The vii of Fanow have great stretches of waxed cloth to keep their homes dry even in the worst of the rains. Makes their spaces feel a bit stuffy, to be honest, but. It also makes Ardbert uncomfortably aware of how empty the village is. The Crystarium is three times the size, and yet its vaulting spaces don’t feel as abandoned. Ardbert keeps expecting to turn and trip over a child rushing by, but there’s just empty air.
“That will change, come this time next year,” Ciuna assures when Ardbert points out the quiet. “For many of us, the Light and the lack of seasons affected our cycles quite badly. But we have recovered this spring.” Her ears flick and her eyebrows wiggle suggestively. “More than recovered, in fact.”
Ardbert feels himself flush up to his hairline. He turns quickly back to his woodworking to the tune of Ciuna’s barking laughter.
“That will make a good spoon,” she says, leaning forward to lay a hand on his. “But keep working at it,” and he can’t help but feel she is teasing him.
‘Ardbert,
You may pass on that Y’shtola is doing well. Or, at least, as well as she can be, given the circumstances…’
His hands are shaking.
Tehpe’s last letter sits on his desk, tear-stained and crumpled. Each word had been more unbelievable than the last: towers of darkness, twisted Primals. A mad Ascian and his teleporter to the moon.
Zodiark.
The End of Days.
It’s not raining, yet, but the storm-clouds hang thick and heavy and dark. Ardbert doesn’t even waste time putting a saddle on Kaesar. The wind is sharp and cold and wet and Ardbert rides into it, as fast as Kaesar can carry him, as far as the lightning will let him.
Despair is a warrior’s greatest enemy– now quite literally– but Ardbert allows himself this one moment. To throw his head back and howl, the noise lost to the raging of the storm. A hundred years of grief and solitude given voice.
He was a hero, once. Now, he feels as helpless as a babe. With nothing else to do but wait, and it’s not fair, it’s not fair. Ardbert curls his fingers
“If you had the strength to take another step, could you do it?”
and he can still feel Tehpe’s slender hand taking his own, the way it had taken no strength at all to pull the Warrior of Darkness to their feet and
“What, all on my own?”
he weeps.
He wakes, much later, in bed.
The candle on his bedside table has been put out, his desk straightened. He is clean and dry beneath the blankets that have been heaped atop him.
A second voice is snoring in the darkness.
Aedbert does not move but to settle his eyes on the far wall, but, apparently, he does not need to. Snores turn to snuffles, turn to a small head pushing at the bottom of his chin. He can’t even bring his hands around them like he used to– his chest is a hollow void of aching, and his joints feel swollen stiff. It’s not despair, it’s just… exhaustion.
“You gave us all quite the fright, you know.”
At some point, you get tired of the world ending every time you turn around.
Feo Ul is not the kind of person to be ignored, though. Sharp little nails dig into Ardbert’s throat, and he yelps, scrambling back. At least they’re in their smaller form, he thinks stupidly, or he might have accidentally flailed them from his bed. As it is, they stand in the spot Ardbert vacated, arms crossed and face pulled into a frown.
“Honestly! You and Ryne and Lyna: have you no faith in the person who saved your worlds?!”
“Of course I do!” Ardbert protests hotly. How could he not? He’s seen Tehpe at their most powerful, land–rending, god-killing, terrible and beautiful, resplendent and sublime.
But he’s also seen Tehpe at their lowest. At the end of the day, he knows, Tehpe’s still as mortal as the rest of them.
Gentle hands cradle his face. When did he start crying again?
“Then we must have faith,” Feo Ul says. “For they are my beautiful sapling. Van rie-d ri rie, they will live.”
‘Tehpe,
I don’t know if this letter will reach you…’
The storm blew most of his dumbapples from the trees.
Ardbert is still running a slight fever, but he took the morning to gather the lot of them, baskets of hard white fruit that now take up the most of his counter space in his small kitchen. Unripe dumbapples… aren’t good. They’re sour, with an unpleasant texture. Ardbert just can’t bring himself to waste them.
“Might try to cook ‘em down,” Maria says doubtfully, tapping one of the apples on the table. It makes a sound not unsimilar to a rock. She's brought the now-finished burgundy shawl, flecked with black and gold, with a new trim of seashell-white, heavy and warm where it's been thrown over Ardbert's shoulders. “‘Bout anything tastes good if you add enough sugar.”
“Pies, maybe?” Ardbert wonders. He frowns. Not that he doesn’t enjoy a good apple pie, but, this number of apples, he imagines he’ll get sick of them pretty quick.
“Sure a few. But also apple butter and apple jam. Straight pectin if you’re lookin’ to make some other jams this year. And if you’ve got something to help with juicin’ them…” Maria nods and rolls up her sleeves. “Let’s see whatcha got in your cabinets– no, you, sit. Cinnamon, sure, but you got star anise maybe? That jar of honey I gave you ages ago…?”
Ryne has grown into a beautiful young girl.
She looks less and less like Minfilia every time they meet– her hair has darkened to a proper burning red, and, as she matures, it’s clear that her face is going to be a different shape. And she has more muscle to her now than Minfilia ever did, broader in the shoulders and across her chest. Training with Thancred’s gunblade and sparring with Gaia on the regular will do that to a person, Ardbert supposes.
She still sprints the last paces between them like a little girl, though, still sweeps him up in that same over-eager hug, though nowadays she’s strong enough to lift him off his feet. Gaia approaches at a more sedate pace, but there’s a smile on her lips too. They’re both in practical hunting garb, weapons strapped to their backs, and it makes Ardbert feel a touch underdressed.
“Lyna is busy,” Ryne apologizes as she sets Ardbert back on his feet, though, really, Ardbert needs no explanation. If the End of Days is truly coming, then he imagines Lyna must be swamped with the preparations. He’s honestly surprised she was able to spare Ryne and Gaia.
But the End of Days is unfortunately not the end of life’s middling day-to-day problems, and at this rate poor Patricia is going to run out of cows.
“Are they going to mind?” Gaia jerks her head towards the stone walls that loom above them. It’s no Lyhe Ghiah, but Laxan Loft is still an impressive ancient construction– and, perhaps more relevantly, full of watching eyes.
They’d throw flowers from the walls this time of year, Ardbert remembers. Poppies and lilies and roses by the fistfulls, and the taste of Nyelbert’s mouth under his own, sweet and tart as overripe plums, sprout to blossom, sapling to tree, this is how elven boys become men.
Ardbert had left a basket of flowers at the gate before Ryne and Gaia had arrived. His first poppies and lilies, as well as some dumbapple blooms to fill space.
“C’mon,” he says with a smile that he hopes is reassuring. “I think I saw it along the north cliff-face.”
‘Tehpe,
You’re the resident dragon hunter around here. Or, at least, you’re friends with one. Either way, I need your advice…’
Ardbert’s poppies are blooming. He gets a good harvest of leeks, and immediately gets his pepper sprouts in the ground. The blueberries are ripening, and he keeps sneaking them off the bush in pairs, savoring the sour bite and eagerly seeking out the sweetness.
He regrets planting the lilies where he did, because they’re spreading faster than wildfire with their big, heavy, sweet-smelling blooms along his fence– and spilling out beyond. Ciuna rolls her eyes when he comes to her pleading for help, but she shows him how to press thin boards into the earth so close together that the roots can’t find their way through and so deep that they can’t slip under. She doesn’t have any advice for what’s grown beyond the patch, though.
“Lilies refuse to stay dead,” Ciuna spits with a roll of her eyes. Pokes Ardbert hard in the ribs. “Much like yourself.”
Ardbert rubs at the sore spot, but takes both as his due. She doesn’t mean anything harsh by it, he knows. But the vii remember, and they’re not likely to let him forget.
Instead, he flicks water in Ciuna’s direction. “Get over here and help me with this then,” and he carefully drags a comb through Dune’s wet fur, stopping when he reaches a tangle of burrs. Poor thing is getting in her weird gangly teenager phase, tripped right over her own feet and half down a hill of gravel and brambles before Ardbert could catch her.
Ciuna’s bright peal of laughter is so familiar that Ardbert’s heart clenches.
At least he has her shoving a handful of bubbles in his face to distract him.
‘Tehpe...’
From the mountains to the Source, to Excelsior Gate. This time, though, Ardbert leads Kaesar over the grand bridge. Dune at his side looks a bit scraggly but ultimately no worse for wear. He waves at the guards he recognizes, thanks the Zun at the Amarokeep in their own tongue for caring for Kaesar so well. Steels himself.
Dune presses her wet nose to his shaking hand.
The Crystal Tower soars above the Crystarium, glinting its brilliant blue in the sunlight, a beacon of hope and a haven for all who live in its shadow. The sight shouldn’t fill him with such… dread . But the memories swell beneath his skin and threaten to choke him.
Elidibus had worn him like an ill-fitting suit of armor, and it had worked. Helpless within his own body, Ardbert had been able to do nothing while Tehpe had torn through every shade Elidibus had thrown against them, every lost friend, every bleeding love. But when push came to shove, Elidibus had won the day, because Tehpe couldn’t bring themself to harm Ardbert.
And when Elidibus had used Ardbert up, he’d been thrown aside like trash. Like a broken toy, unable to even lift his axe, unable to even move when Elidibus had–
Dune barks, her teeth snapping just inches from Ardbert’s hand. He draws a sudden, rasping breath. His head spins.
“‘S alright,” Ardbert slurs, swaying to his knees to scratch behind Dune’s ears. “‘S alright. I’m alright.”
“I should hope you are,” Lyna snaps, the sharp of her voice belying very real concern. Even in her Captain’s armor, the metal of her heels make no noise against the pavestone. She kneels next to him and presses her shoulder against his, taking his weight without wavering. “Chessamile has her hands full as it is.”
Ardbert winces. “Is she in labor yet?”
“No. Chessamile warns that it will not be long now, however.” Lyna’s hand wraps around his elbow as they both rise to their feet.
They start their way towards the Spagyrics. Creators, but it’s getting hot . Spring is giving way to summer, the summer solstice. It’s less than a week away now, Ardbert realizes, and wonders where all the time has gone.
‘Dear Tehpe,...’
There are maps spread out over the table.
Lyna still has access to the Ocular, for all she refuses still to draw on the Crystal Tower’s magic, so that’s where they meet. Ryne and Gaia, sharing a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits, and Ardberts gets a smack on the back of his hand when he reaches for one.
“If you wanted some, you should have shown up sooner,” Gaia says haughtily, but it makes Ryne giggle, so Ardbert can but rolls his eyes. The map is covered in little flag markers, circles of colored glass meant to indicate where the scouts are focusing their attentions, stains where someone or another had carelessly placed a mug of coffee or tea.
They’d not found their quarry on the cliffs of Laxan Loft, but they had identified a few places a flying hunter might make its roots. It’s not likely to be one of Tehpe’s Blasphemies, considering that the skies aren’t burning and the stars still twinkle in the night, but. There’s no such thing as being too careful. They refuse to be the reason those monstrosities have the run of the First.
The women around him discuss the information that the scouts have brought back– or the lack thereof– but Ardbert can only stare at the map and frown. He traces a finger along the road that curls past Fort Jobb and up towards what had once been Holminster Switch. There’s something missing there. Something he saw from the cliffs of Laxan Loft, some distant memory niggling in the depths of his mind.
Between the Crack and the mountains, there’d been. Not a village, but. A few families, their houses around a well that an old man had dug in times long past. It’d been… a vinery? Or a brewery? Ardbert remembers the sting of alcohol and Lamitts laugh as she told him to slow down, country boy. You ain’t keeping up with this dwarf!
Gaia stabs a pushpin through the map, less than a hairsbreadth from Ardbert’s skin, and Ardbert’s head snaps up in surprise.
“We’ll check it out,” Ryne promises, and their trust makes Ardbert’s heart swell to bursting.
‘Dear Tehpe,
I miss you.’
Ardbert can see the bones of Banora in the stones of the Crystarium. He’s still attuned to the Aetheryte, though Tehpe has warned that his Aether is too thin to attempt to teleport anywhere unless strictly necessary, even as a side-along. The tavern is still in the same place, too, even if the walls of it are gone and it’s not Gertrude working the bar, but where there are now merchant stalls there used to be Missus Hewley’s garden, the town blacksmith, the chocobo stable…
Food is still produced in every available space, at least. Something of a reminder that makes Ardbert’s heart ache. It’s more sophisticated here, in the Crystarium, in carefully-tended gardens and in overflowing windowboxes, in the hydroponics of the Hortorium, but it’s. The same plants, Ardbert thinks, running his fingers through thick crops of fuzzy dark-green leaves. Purple carrots, he explains, and over there are garden beets, and in that bed–
“You are very knowledgeable about these things,” Granson notes, and his voice is warm and fond.
“I was a farmer-boy,” Ardbert admits with a bit of a laugh. “Hydroponics go a bit above my head, sure, but. Water, nutrients, sunlight– the basics are all the same right?”
The thought of his own garden, neglected, makes him wince a bit. He hasn’t been home in a while, and it’s getting into summer now– the height of weeding seasons. It’s just. There haven’t been any new letters from Tehpe. Ardbert knows that.
Ardbert tries not to dwell on it.
“Tell me about these?” Granson asks, but Ardbert has to swallow around nothing before he can respond.
They put him up in the same room in the Pendants.
It's been kept, since Tehpe left, of course. There are new flowers in the vase on the table. The window boxes have been weeded. Everything has been dusted, and the sheets have been changed, and it smells like the Manager of Suites has aired it out every once in a while.
Nothing else has really been touched, though. Ardbert stands in the very same spot he manifested, what feels like an age ago, runs his fingers over the table where he and Tehpe shared meals, settles into the same chair where Tehpe would read to him in the first moonlight Lakeland had known in a hundred years. Tehpe's Evoker's tome sits on the little table still, senselessly unfaded by the sunlight. Ardbert props open the window and serves himself a small plate of sandwiches.
The scent of cucumber and whipped cream fills the small sun-warm space, followed by chamomile and orange and Ardbert pours the still-hot water in the teapot over the waiting dried leaves. The metal fairy wings pressed into the leather are cool beneath Ardbert's fingers. He settles the heavy tome between his plate and teacup, his nearly-finished wooden spoon in his lap, and opens to the dog-eared page where Tehpe left off.
“On the properties of Hecatolite, in regards to their use in the geometries of Arcana, as storage and conduit of Light-aspected Aether…”
Maria has her daughter on the last truly stormy night of Spring.
A black storm rolls in hard and fast over a blacker night. Lightning flashes and thunder booms and the rain pounds hard on the glass and metal, and over the noise the child screams . Ardbert doesn't think he's ever heard an infant so loud.
“That's good,” Chessamile soothes, calm and happy, bouncing the newborn over to water warmed for just this moment. “A good, strong pair of lungs and a perfectly healthy girl.”
Ardbert winces as Maria finally lets go of his hand– she has a grip like a gremlin– and reaches for her baby. Pale as her mother, though Ardbert can't help but wonder if she'll tan in the sun like her father does after a good week of fishing. She has a tuft of wispy blonde hair on her head, still a bit damp under Ardbert's hand when Maria grabs his wrist and guides him to it. She's so warm, so fragile and soft, and she's healthy, and Ardbert isn't the only one in the room a bit misty-eyed.
“I was thinking–” Maria says softly, smiling down at the babe. “-- about calling her...”
Nothing quite grounds you like holding a child. Lungs and living flesh, heavier than his axe ever was, but, still, more delicate than anything Ardbert has ever known and will ever know again. Everyone is crammed in the plaza, and for the first time Ardbert doesn’t see his own puppetted body at the top of the stairs. In his mind’s eye, the sky is not burning and raining stars.
Instead, he sees Branden laughing with Sauldia as they dance in the fairylights. He sees Lamitt laying with her head pillowed in Nyelbert’s lap as they argue about one magical theory or another. He sees Tehpe, resplendent and beautiful in the starlight, holding an exhausted but exuberant G’raha up on one side while Lyna holds him up from the other.
He sees the child in his arms, looking up at him with bright eyes and a brighter future ahead of her. As a hunter like her namesake, or a fisherman like her father, or a spinstress like her mother, or anything at all she wants to be.
Granson surreptitiously pinches Ardbert on the side. It jolts him just enough that he realizes that Feo Ul-as-Titania has finished their speech, and that they and Maria and everyone else is looking at him expectantly. Lyna is rolling her eyes and Ciuna is giving him a cheerful thumbs-up from over Titiana’s shoulder and Granson puts a hand between his shoulderblade and pushes him– very carefully– towards the stairs. He steps forward, and his knees don't shake, his hands don't tremble.
“Ardbert,” Titania greets, warm and regal. “Who do you bring before Hydaelyn and Her Star tonight?”
His mouth is dry and tacky and he has to wet his lips twice, but his voice is steadier than he was expecting when he says, “I bring Renda-Rae Hayward before Hydaelyn and Her Star tonight.”
He sees his friends. All of them together, as they should be.
And this time, saying goodbye does not feel so much like pulling thorns from beneath his skin.
From the mountains to the Source, to Excelsior Gate, and, finally, on the road home. The dumbapples have put on another round of heavy blossoms, and pixies sleep in the curves of huge lily blooms where someone has apparently been tricking them into helping tend to Ardbert's garden. The gate is propped open, and Dune runs through unhesitatingly, barking with recognition and delight.
Tehpe has a new scar, Ardbert thinks a little dumbly. More than one, from the way they're standing, a basket of blueberries and peppers held carefully on one hip as they indulge Dune's jumping and yipping. They're hair has gotten longer, too. Dyed black again, though the wine-red tips left untouched, a thick braid over their shoulder where once there had just been a thin rat-tail.
But their smile is the same, small and soft and lining the corners of their eyes. And when they look up and see Ardbert there, their eyes widen, burgundy and gold, and Ardbert can't find the air in his chest to breathe.
“Hello,” they say, soft and sweet and a bit breathless. Ardbert doesn't fumble dismounting Kaesar. Barely.
“Hi,” he says, a bit dumbly. They reach for each other at the same time, one small hand caught in both of Ardbert's, and he can feel new calluses, new scars, a new familiar magic humming just beneath. And there's a million things Ardbert wants to say, questions he wants to ask, assurances he wants to receive. But he takes another half-step forward, and Tehpe does too, tipping their chin up, long lashes fluttering, and–
They taste of nearly-ripe blueberries, sweet and tart. Ardbert sweeps them up in his arms and they're real, they're real, flesh and blood and solid, mouth parting around a gasp, tongue wet and firm against Ardbert's own. The basket drops to the ground with a heavy thud, no doubt bruising peppers and sending blueberries rolling off into the poppies, but Ardbert doesn’t care, he doesn’t care.
All he cares about is the way Tehpe’s fingers scramble to grab fistfuls of the front of his shirt and pull him down further. The way they whine in the back of their throat, small and desperate and happy , trusting him with their full weight even as they both sway.
All he cares about is Tehpe, and they’re right where he would ever want them.
They do have a new scar.
It wraps around their hip, a huge swathe of skin scored away. It’s tight and gnarled and still shiny in the warm afternoon light through the window, blood-hot and bigger than the whole splay of Ardbert’s hand. He presses a kiss to the edge of it, mourning and worship and celebration in the same.
On one hand he wants to ask. He wants to know. He wants to hear all of Tehpe’s tales, too tall to belong to anyone else.
But on the other hand, he doesn’t want to ruin this : Tehpe in the orange-red sunlight, propped up on every pillow in Ardbert’s house so they can look at him through their lashes as he settles into his place between their thighs. They’re bare but their jewelry and the flush that stretches all the way down their chest, and Ardbert is still in his rough homespun, straining against his trousers, supplicant as rests his head on the stomach of his god. They smell of salt and clean sweat, of heat and musky-sweet.
So he scrapes his nails gently over that new scar instead, just to see how much feeling they have left. Not much, if the way they scoff and smile is any indication. They run a delicate hand through his hair– so much longer than it used to be, and Ardbert was thinking of getting it cut, but their fingers curl tight and yank , and he thinks, maaaybe not after all.
The sun sets late. Not quite Summer-Solstice-late, but the day is long enough that Ardbert should start to feel restless again. Instead he feels drowsy and lazy in the heat by the time the sun is behind the mountains. The bedroom is cast in long, soft shadows. It’s still cluttered. Tehpe hasn’t picked up any more than Ardbert did before he left, apparently. But instead of feeling messy, it feels. Homey.
They’re sat at his desk, the burgundy shawl and nothing else, a dozen unsent, unfinished letters in their lap. Ardbert should probably feel embarrassed to let them read those. But he’s thinking, they’re not wearing their glasses. He should probably light a candle soon, if they don’t summon a magelight.
‘Dear Tehpe,’ written at the top of every page. Steady and sloppy, tear-stained and clean. ‘I miss you’ and ‘I love you’, and everything in between. Tehpe smiles and runs their fingers over the pressed poppy glued carefully to the paper.
Did you ever get them? Ardbert wants to ask. He turns over so that he can pillow his head on his forearms and look at Tehpe the right way around. Did you ever hear me, wherever you were?
“So,” he says instead, “what’s next for the Warrior of Light?”
When are you leaving? Ardbert doesn’t ask. And how far from me will it take you this time?
Tehpe snorts. They fold the letters into fourths, taking care to press the creases tightly, and slip them into the drawer of the portable easel that hangs from their pack. “Well. The Scions of the Seventh Dawn– the organization Thancred and Shtola and Raha and the others worked for, if you remember– we disbanded. On paper, at least, it does still feel like we’re dealing with every problem in every corner of Etheirys every other day. But.”
The bed is too small for the both of them, but Ardbert makes space for Tehpe to sit on the edge anyways, one thigh pressed flush to his chest. He turns to them like a flower does the sun, drinking in as much of them as he can in whatever time they might have left.
“But,” Tehpe continues, “There has been talk of an expedition to the New World. To Tural. If…”
They reach for him, and Ardbert reaches back, weaving their fingers together, heart soaring with hope.
‘Dear Ciuna,
Take care of Dune and Kaesar for me, would you?’
“If you would like to join me.”
‘Dear Ojika Tsunjika,
I know it’s last minute, but, if there is still space…’