Seeking Fate (closed)

[The Valkyrie]

Traveling with a four year old was more difficult than Bryn had imagine, and she sighed as she pulled the little girl from the fountain. She had originally intended for them to sleep in a tent each night, rather than spend gold on an inn. Her conscience had gotten the best of her though; the valkyrie feared what danger might lurk in the silent woods alongside the road that led to Concordia. If it had just been her, Bryn never would have batted an eyelash at the thought of highwaymen or wild beasts. She was adept with her sword and shield, and the armor she wore gave her more protection and strength than she was naturally blessed with. But that armor did nothing to help Astrid, and the valkyrie sighed as she looked at her daughter who stood before her with water dripping from her brown curls and the tip of her nose.

"It is a good thing we are traveling during the summer little one," Bryn scolded her child with a trace of humor, "Or you'd be freezing at the moment. Come with mama and we'll find a proper place for you to dry off."

Astrid giggled and nodded, taking her mother's hand and following her across the street to the last inn they would encounter before delving into the dense forest of Concordia. When they entered, the innkeeper frowned at the small girl who stood dripping in his common room.

"I apologize for the mess," Bryn smoothed Astrid's wild curls as she spoke, "Do you have a room free for the next few nights?"

The little girl smiled her biggest smile at the innkeeper who had no choice but to let the frown fade from his weathered face and smile back at her. Bryn shook her head at Astrid's natural charm. No wonder the child could get herself into so much trouble and rarely have to suffer any consequences. One look at that sweet face and those pretty brown eyes and her heart just melted.

"Yes mum," the man behind the desk replied as he turned and pulled a key from the row of hooks on the wall, "I've got one at the end of the hall that'll suit you nicely. I can bring up a cot for the li'l one if you'd like."

"She'll sleep with me," Bryn took the key from the man with a kind smile, and shook her head, "But thank you for your kindness."

"We offer dinner with the price of your room," the man added, "I think the missus is making ham and potatoes tonight. Always delicious."

The valkyrie laid a handful of coins on the counter and the innkeeper took them with a gracious smile as Bryn led her child toward the stairs to get them both cleaned up before dinner.

[Duffy]

The Devil’s Spoke was a name oft attributed to the ridge of mountains that stretched across the northern fringe of Scara Brae, others called them the Windlacer Mountains, and many more the Glass Knives. Duffy knew them all too well, the colloquialisms and monikers for the familiar, for the fragments that formed his homelands. As he drank from a tankard inscribed with a northern tale he did not understand, he concluded that his sabbatical from city life was ill advised and not spent wisely. The tavern chided his interest in exploration, or perhaps it did not, and the alcohol that coursed through his veins was doing all the work, all the talking, all the restricting of motivation and confidence.

“Oh well,” he mumbled, his teeth clashing against the brim of the steel cup with a rush of false static. “Back to big city life,” he downed the soapy dregs and slammed the tankard onto the mahogany bar of the institution he could not remember the name of. There were plenty of other patrons milling about, drinking their sorrows away or enjoying the company of a fair maiden, or two. Each had their own excuse for being on the island of Corone, and all of them no doubt were running to escape a life they could not deal with, a life they longed to change without any effort on their own part. Taking the easy way out, he thought, hypocritically motioning to the bar tender to pour another beer.

Time stopped and distilled into a long drag. “Oh naive little me,” the thief began to mumble, humming his own little tune to the sound of conversation and the busy streets of Concordia’s premier and only town beyond. Amidst the birdsong and squirrel foray, the tavern was the hubbub of the forest’s sprawling metropolis, it’s heart given wooden form and bound in the structure of iron nails and socially constructed nationalism – if you belonged to this town, you drank here, and made a great display in doing so. Duffy was beyond caring, it was his only time away from the lights and rioting in the city, he was damned if he was going to waste it getting wrapped up in other people’s problems.

He glanced at a woman to his right, half-unthinkingly and dropped his gaze back to the frothy slop that had been deposited in front of him. Eagerly he swigged it, and eagerly he put it down to distance himself from the hops that tasted somewhat…pugnacious. Something sparked at the back of his mind, the sort of casual reminder your sub-conscious gave when it was trying to tell you something. Her dress, her matriarchal dominance, each little piece of a greater puzzle fell together and readily Duffy paid it the attention it deserved. Looking up, and adjusting his bandoleer and cloak to a more suitable and casual equidistance between slut and noble adventurer, he turned to get a proper look.

She walked with a sultry swagger, and a child at her arms only reinforced the ancient bard’s tale that a woman at your side often came with baggage. He didn’t mean it like that, but he certainly felt a draw to the hips and the cool and collected confidence in which she surveyed the inn, acquired a room and swept him off his feet all for the cause of donning more suitable attire to taste the innkeeper’s wife’s wonderfully bland ham and potatoes. He blinked, and for a moment, time stopped outright.

Suddenly, his holiday didn’t seem like a wasted trip. He waited for her to return downstairs, and then, oh boy, then he would enquire as to why he thought he had seen her somewhere before…in his dreams? Or perhaps in the depths of the Aria, the ancient Valkyries of old had instilled in him some sort of expectation, some sort of primal connection to the unknown. He had to find out.

[The Valkyrie]

It took almost an hour to get Astrid dried off (thank the gods for the fluffy towels in the adjoining bath chamber) and into suitable clothing: a simple blue dress with lovely little red flowers embroidered around the collar. It took another ten minutes to drag a comb through the child's tangled chestnut curls. And of course after all that, Bryn still had to see to herself. She left her armor on the bed, assuming it wouldn't likely be needed within the peaceful confines of the inn, and changed into a rather sedate grey belted tunica over a pair of soft brown leggings, leaving her rather ornate boots on as they were all she had to wear on her feet.

"Come along Astrid," Bryn called to the girl who quickly took her mother's hand as they left their room and locked the door.

"Will there be food mama?" Astrid asked as they made their way downstairs, "Do you think they have dessert? I want apple pie. Do you think they have apple pie?"

"I don't know pooka," the valkyrie laughed, "We shall have to see. I'm not certain you deserve dessert after your escapades in the fountain."

"But mama!" the little girl protested loudly as the pair emerged into the common room and Bryn led her child to a table near one of the windows, "I was hot!"

The valkyrie only smiled and took her seat, Astrid climbing into the booth across from her mother. Bryn pulled a leather thong from her pocket and used it to tie her golden curls back from her face. She briefly considered cutting her hair short above her shoulders like she had done with Astrid's, but she wasn't sure she wanted to part with it so easily.

A rather plump older woman with greying hair pulled back into a bun and creases around her bright blue eyes approached them with a warm smile. Bryn couldn't help but smile back, and was glad she'd decided on this inn rather than the other across town.

"What'll it be young lass?" the woman aimed her question at the child rather than her mother with a wink.

"Do you have apple pie?!" Astrid asked excitedly.

"I do at that, lass," the matron replied with a hearty laugh, "But I'll wager your mum would rather you eat something more dinner-like first. I'll bring you both some ham and potatoes, and if you clean your plate like a good girl, and your mama says it's alright, I'll bring you some pie after."

Bryn smiled her thanks to the woman, and settled into the booth to wait. Astrid was chattering away about a little red bird that was hopping about in a bush outside the window. The valkyrie tried to consider how long she and her daughter should stay in the small town at the edge of the forest before trekking into the depths of the ancient woods in search of Yggdrasil.

[Duffy]

Apples, Duffy thought, struggling to remember his common after he caught sight of the woman once again. The young girl accompanying her was either a charge, or a daughter or relative; her youthful exuberance reminded him of home. It took a while for the connection between the colloquialisms of ‘Redden’ to become Apple, but as he made the chain, he slipped off his bench and sidled over to the booth in which they had sat. He coughed politely, interjecting at an appropriate point in their conversation, and rather simply said “Excuse me madam, have I perhaps witnessed you before in the Citadel, or mayhap the Pagoda?”

The simplest of edges was driving his trade speak, intermingled with common as was the custom in formal greeting for Scara Brae. Wherever or not it was normal for Corone, Duffy had no idea, but he hoped the meaning he implied translated to the woman’s understanding of the mutual worldly language.

“I mean not to pry, but I feel as if I either know you by reputation unheard, or have seen you at work in the…” he glanced at the child, and thought ill to mention blood, “artistry district of my homeland.” Somehow he thought he was wrong, but something from the recesses of his mind called a battle cry of remembrance, and a tree of some sorts blossomed up from the still grey waves of the Aria. As it bloomed, Duffy bowed once more, awaiting the woman’s response, rebuke or acceptance of his question. The sound of the glory of a thousand barbaric tales filled his ears in silence, making the anticipation between them swell with a cliff-hanging notion of nausea.

Over the Aria’s sea a Raven flew, its eyes ablaze with fire and lightning trailing it’s wings. For a moment, Duffy mistook it for a phoenix, before realising that something in the woman’s aura made him tremble. What hand had fate dealt him now, and what world of pain awaited him for asking such private matters to such a strict looking woman?

[The Valkyrie]

As the man approached their table, Bryn wished for a moment she'd made Astrid sit next to her in the booth instead of across from her. She'd left her sword above in the rented room, and she halfway regretted it now. Perhaps her paranoia was unnecessary, but when it came to her daughter the valkyrie would go to whatever lengths were required to keep the child safe.

She relaxed a bit when the man spoke, her eyes surveying his face as he questioned how he might know her. Astrid was busy playing with the flowers in the vase that decorated the table. The unlikely questions made her wonder if he wasn't just looking for an opening to flirt with her. It seemed unusual for him to do so, as she'd never noticed a man who was interested in a woman with a child.

"I'm uncertain how you might know me," the valkyrie replied slowly, her face reflecting how puzzled she was by the wording of his question. His glance at Astrid confirmed that he was trying to avoid speaking directly of whatever connection he thought they might have. "I'm no one of consequence, and most certainly have no artistic talent to speak of. What land do you call home, sir?"

Bryn had traveled through many lands during her quest for the armor she now called her own, but had never stayed long in any of them. Rare it was that she had even encountered any of the residents of the places she visited. She wondered briefly if the man had been on the battlefield with a warrior she had taken to Val Halla while she was still in the good graces of the goddess of death.

[Duffy]

“I…” Duffy felt oddly disappointed, as if all the leads and loathness in the world had ended up with no leads to speak of. “I am a native of the isle of Scara Brae. I do not mean to alarm you, but I am of a proficient enough mind to recognise familiarity when I see it. I…” the images he was seeing changed from an ocean and a raven to an open battlefield, with swords clashing and magical flame raging between sides.

At its heart stood a very familiar face, one Duffy had come to love; Lysander.

“This…might sound strange, but did you ever witness a battle at the heart of the Corone High Plains…roughly…” he counted the events of Lysander’s Flock on the digits of one hand. “Five…years ago?” The drab and lifeless ocean appeared once more, as if the vision was only a glimpse, a skein sliver of a reality he had to decipher for himself. “If I am entirely wrong then pleasure, big me good day and I shall leave you both to the wonderful delights of Mrs Crab-Apple’s over boiled ham fist, but I fear the rattling butterflies in my mind are not illusions.” He looked at the empty bottom of his tankard, and tilted it slightly.

I hope…

[The Valkyrie]

Bryn looked back to Astrid, taking the rose from her daughter before she could pluck all of its petals and leave them like drops of blood across the wood of the table. When the man mentioned the battle, it took her a few moments to register what he said. Her attention was still focused on Astrid, and on trying to figure out why he thought he recognized her.

Five years ago, nearly six, the valkyrie was not yet cursed. She still roamed the battlefields of Althanas at that time, harvesting the souls of the honorable warriors who fought and died in battle. Five years ago, nearly six, the valkyrie had taken her final warrior, although she did not know it at the time.

It had been rather an oddity. Female warriors were few and far between, and while Brynhilde could recall every warrior she took, the women were far more memorable in their rarity. The battle in Corone had been one in which she had harvested the soul of a spellsinger named Celia. It was a shame there were no male valkyries, as it might have comforted the warrior woman more when she realized she was soon to die. Bryn had fought at her side, and when the spellsinger fell, the valkyrie knelt at her side and took any pain from her as she died. The gods had rewarded Celia well, as Brynhilde recalled.

"I'm sorry," she apologized for waiting so long to reply, "I have witnessed many battles, the last being in Corone. Were you fighting there? I do not recall the survivors of that battle."

She tread carefully, not wanting to reveal how or why she happened to be involved in the battle. Bryn rarely remembered those who remained standing after a battle. They were not her concern. Only those she had been sent to retrieve were of any importance to her.

Bryn frowned, trying to recall if she knew the face of the man who stood before her, but it was not familiar.

[Duffy]

Excitement strong to scintillate drew Duffy's mind to a close, it was her! "I would speak of the battle more, but I do not think it wise in such polite company, mayhap you will join me by the comfort and warmth of the fire this evening, when your..." he treaded water, "sister has retired?"

The tavern this time of day was still busy, with the late trade between business in the small way stop town forming a semi-rush before the sun set and the night-time shroud scared customers of an honest nature away. Salt and steam drifted out through the kitchen door as the housewife of the innkeeper went to and fro, each time she appeared she was carrying plates mounded with steaming nothingness, and each time she dissipated she carried plates back with nothing more than bone and gristle left for the sink.

Fate often dealt Duffy opportunities on coincidence alone, but somehow, he felt very aware that the deeds of his own hands had caused this crossing of paths. "But worry not, I was not fighting there, truth be told I fight very little, except perhaps my own personal war." He felt comfortable at least, turning to counting the stains on the table as he awkwardly made connections in his mind about what was normal to do next.

Ah, he remembered, "I shall be seated on that wonderful lookin' plush till well afta' ten, if you should deem it fit to join me, smashin'," with his pretence dropped, his accent returned and he bounded away with a courteous bow, vanishing out of sight to enjoy the last waves of heat before evening settled in proper. He lingered just enough to catch any departing remarks. Whilst he had written Lysander into existence, and expected his history to have had little impact on the lives of others...this woman seemed to have met him before Duffy had written the play.

Perhaps, they could seek their own individual fates together, through a mutual understanding of a time and place that was a part of a near but not all too distant past? He caught a breath, and leant against the balcony railing to drown his sorrows in the stillness of the village.

[The Valkyrie]

Bryn glanced back over to Astrid as he mentioned her innocent ears. She knew very little of her mother's past, but had heard the glorified stories of battles and gods which were all that the valkyrie knew in the way of fairy tales. She laughed at the idea of the little girl being her sister.

"She's my daughter," Bryn corrected him gently, "I've not seen my sisters since before the battle we spoke of. I will grant you that my daughter would not likely benefit from hearing of battles that I might have been involved in."

She tried to keep her voice low. The little girl had laid her head on her folded arms, and stared out the window at the darkening evening. It was well past time for her to sleep, they had been walking most of the day until late afternoon and she knew the child must be exhausted. Bryn hesitated at the thought of leaving her daughter upstairs unattended, but her curiosity was almost insurmountable.

"I do need to take the child to her bed," Bryn agreed finally, "She's had a long day, it won't take long for her to fall asleep. Perhaps I will be able to return and hear your stories of how you know of the battle we've spoken of."

The valkyrie tried not to be thrown off by his change of accent, and instead of worrying about it, she stood and slipped by him to pick Astrid up out of the booth. The child wrapped her arms and legs around her mother and laid her head on Bryn's shoulder. Astrid's brown eyes were distant, close to sleep already. Bryn quickly but carefully took her daughter up the stairs to their room where she laid the child onto the cot the innkeeper had placed in the room while they ate. The little girl had fallen asleep on her Bryn's shoulder and only briefly opened her eyes as her mother laid her down. With a happy sigh, Astrid turned over and curled up into a fetal position, her breathing quickly settling into the softness of sleep.

Bryn stayed a few moments longer to be sure the child had indeed fallen asleep and wouldn't wake again looking for her. She left the lamp burning in the room and locked the door behind her before returning to the common room and looking over to where the stranger had requested for her to join him at the fireplace.

[Duffy]

It hadn't been that much of a wait but already the sun was hanging low over the tree line, it's once radiant glow long since dimmed to an orange umbra - piercing the tips of the evergreens and oak. Duffy sat waiting by the fire as he had said he would, and every now and then he looked up to the stairs to see if she was coming. I 'ope she does... At the back of his mind he wanted now more than anything to get some answers about why The Aria kept landing him in other people's nightmares, and kept pulling him into the sorts of circumstances you tended to hurry and retire to escape.

He turned back to watch the fire, it's hedonistic smoke a mix of orange and clove and dry lichen on the great behemoth like logs that sat in the heat. The flames danced about the logs and mimicked the colour of the evening sun, casting it onto the heavy stonework and simple mantel piece above. Several chintzy and tasteless ornaments adorned it, no doubt homely trinkets of the innkeeper's wife to match the small and illustriously bad mannered book case full of stories of love and debauchery 'under your nose.' It looked a bit like Ruby's living room, now that he thought about it.

At the sound of footsteps in the semi-abandoned tavern, Duffy snapped to catch a sight of Bryn and smiled warmly. He bounced upright and stopped at a standstill between her and the chairs. "I din't think you'd come - madmen are common place round 'ere sure enough! Can I get ya a drink of sumsort?" He half-curtsied and half gestured for the lady to be seated on the more comfortable of the two armchairs.

[The Valkyrie]

The common room appeared to have been dipped in molten gold as the sun slipped deeper toward the horizon, casting long shadows across the floor of the inn and lighting her golden hair to flames. The man who claimed to recognize her was seated by the hearth as promised and stood as soon as he caught sight of her, his voice bright with what she supposed was excitement. Bryn had noticed before that his accent had changed, more relaxed and a bit harder to understand. It was no matter though, she could catch the meaning of his words well enough, and had enough curiosity to endure the accent.

The valkyrie greeted him with a brief but demure curtsy, as was considered polite in the more civilized regions of Althanas. She had learned quickly in the time since she had become mortal, that it was better to err on the side of politeness than to be seen as rude or worse, barbaric.

“Madmen are commonplace everywhere, sir,” she agreed as she took a seat in the armchair he motioned to, the faded blue of the fabric glowing in the light of the fire and the setting sun, “I’m fairly certain I’d be able to defend myself should it be necessary, and better that my daughter be upstairs than here if you should in fact turn out to be a madman. And no, thank you, I’ll have nothing to drink at the moment.”

Bryn waved off the innkeeper’s wife before she could approach and offer food or drink and the woman smiled, the flesh around her blue eyes crinkling a bit as she nodded and made her way to see to another customer instead. The valkyrie wasn’t sure where to begin with their conversation. It was rare that a living soul recognized her, most had such trauma from a battle that they had no recollection of any faces save those whose life they had taken, or one who had nearly taken theirs. This man had not fought in that battle he said, so she wondered what function he’d had in such a bloody fight.

“The battle, in Corone,” she began, turning her face to the fire as she tried her best to remember a single battle out of the countless others she’d taken warriors from, “You say you did not fight in it? What place had you then on that field?”

[Duffy]

Her question completely stumped Duffy, who had been hoping for a little more polite conversation for thoughts to bound around in his usually empty skull. He made an awkward face and waddled over to the opposite chair and clonked himself into it. He stared into the flickering flames for a while. All the talk of madmen in the world could not surpass what he was about to say.

"This... this will be difficult for you to understand, if you will forgive me for being presumptuous. Whilst I did not fight in the battle, I did have a hand in it's machination. You see," he leant forwards and picked up the poker to the left of the fireplace, a simple iron rod with a deer's head handle, "I'm a bard, of sorts."

He let the clichéd image sink in and knocked the blazing logs into a row of three, to cover the grate beneath with embers so that it maintained it's heat for a little while longer. The dusty basket on the right had not yet been refilled, even though the smell of dry moss and pine lingered in the tavern. "Something I did created a person's history, re-wrote time in a way to allow that person to exist, to have a past, a life to look back on and learn from."

The sun was truly settling now and the fire grew brighter as the natural light died. It cast it's glow on the thief and the woman and slowly the tavern grew quiet. No doubt the occupants had returned home before dark, or had gone to change to come out once more at midnight when the more raucous festivities began. "When I write a play, if I ever become attached to one of the characters or favour a role I perform too much, that person can spring to life. When I wrote Lysander's Flock I could never have known that Lysander and his Raven homunculus Brandy-buck would become real."

He doubted the name would ring a bell, if she had been there at his side chances were he would not have made a mention of it. That battle, if he remembered the play as well as he should, had been when Celia died at the hands of the Empire Sorcerer Drakensberg. "I do not know who you are, miss, but whatever you do, or did, brought you to that battlefield and I am sorry to say, that I have perhaps had an unknowing part to play in whatever fate has transpired since. I noticed you because I share memories with Lysander, since I wrote each passing day of his life, each flight of fancy and line he spoke..."

Who was she?

"So you will understand that I must ask something of you in return...what business did you have at that battle, and did you speak with a woman named Celia; of auburn hair and classic temperament? She wielded two katarhna's and called on the angels with her voice." Although he would never admit it and never come to know the irony in writing it until it was too late, thirty years from now he and Ruby would stand on the very same peninsula in Corone and die in a blaze of poetic glory. He did not realise, but all his love for Ruby had poured into Lysander's love for the Spell Singer Celia...

He had to come to know the character more...and what cruel fate he had placed on the life of this fair woman.

[The Valkyrie]

“And to think,” Bryn replied in a quietly amused voice, “I thought my story would be impossible to believe.”

The valkyrie still hesitated to reveal how she had been involved in the battle in Corone. Without any further answer for the moment, Bryn looked around the common room, green eyes resting momentarily on the innkeeper at his desk, on the young man sitting in one of the booths across from a plain looking girl a couple of years younger than him, finally on the face of the bard sitting in the chair before the fire who claimed to recognize her. To say that he had created the battle, had given life to one of the warriors there, it seemed quite megalomaniac. Perhaps the Scara Braean was mad? Perhaps however he had been involved in the battle had addled his brain. He had obviously had something to do with the tragic and bloody battle on the Coronian High Plain; he knew of Celia and described her accurately down to her heartbreakingly beautiful voice.

“I knew Celia,” she finally continued, meeting the man’s gaze, “I was there when she fell at the hands of the sorcerer who took her life.”

She paused long enough for that fact to set in. The tone of his voice and set of his jaw when he described Celia was enough for her to know that she was of no small consequence to him. Should she be honest in her telling of how she happened to be at Celia’s side during her last moments? It only seemed fair. What harm could it possibly do?

“I am the one who escorted her from this life into the next,” Bryn revealed carefully, “At that time I was one of the chosen maidens of the gods, I had the honor of taking fallen warriors to their final reward.”

It seemed so long ago since she’d been in the good graces of the gods. Since she had fallen in love with a warrior she was supposed to carry to Valhalla and had failed to deliver him into the hands of the goddess of death, Brynhilde Darkthorne had been forbidden to set foot in Valhalla or any of Asgard ever again. The goddess had promised that if Bryn fulfilled her “destiny” then the warrior the valkyrie loved would be released from the underworld and Bryn would return to Valhalla. Instead, Bryn had gone to the land of the dead herself to rescue Eryk. She had been pregnant with Astrid and the foray into the underworld had almost cost her not only her own life but the life of her child and her child’s father. It was that child who she now took to the great World Tree, Yggdrasil, at the center of the Concordian forest, to hear what destiny the gods held for the chestnut haired little girl that held Bryn’s heart.

“Celia was the last warrior I took to Valhalla,” the valkyrie said slowly, as if it hurt to relive that memory, “She was very brave.”

[Duffy]

Every little truth in Bryn's voice made Duffy twitch with glee and enthusiasm. It had been a long time since the still-youth had felt alive, but the realisation that fate had brought him so close to an opportunity as this sent fire into his veins. It was an unreal prospect, but one that could not be wasted.

“You…saw Celia Burton, the Wife and Paragon of the Blade Singer Lysander?” He carried the awe filled puppy look off rather well, but meant every bit of jealousy and admiration he implied. It did not occur to him that she might have sent many other heroes and heroines of the thousand years prior to their happy ever after. The flickering flames of the fire cast an eerie glow over the woman, and her hair danced in madrigal blooms of red and orange life. Without meaning to, the sombre atmosphere of the evening tavern air cast a sorrow across his guest, and it dawned on him that her revelation had brought nothing more than further questions.

“Brave? I can only imagine. Hypothetically speaking, miss; do you think you could at all imagine how one might…return someone from this Valhalla?” He waited for a few moments as a raucous woman with red hair stumbled into the tavern in a wave of laughter, stumbling steps and drunken antics. He watched her as she was lead out of the establishment and peace resumed, before leaning out of his seat and resting his chin onto an inquisitive hand. “I ask out of need more than curiosity. It would appear that I have changed the very course of history with my delusions, for in truth, Celia Burton died not five years ago, but four hundred and fifty. I would like to rectify the wrongs I have caused, but it must be her hand that fans the flames of the Grand finale. It must be the fallen goddess of war that slays the daemon she left on this plane.”

Duffy was not too innocent to assume Bryn would understand. He did not think he did altogether, there were patches of confusion still clouding his judgement and the lateness of the hour and the long journey betwixt Scara Brae and Concordia had stricken his bones, back and balls with lethargy and pain. “I would do…anything to see her walk amongst us again, anything at all.” He meant every bit of his pledge, perhaps too much. The last flame cracked the last log in two and the fire died down into the last stages of ember-light. Duffy glanced at it, and scooped himself from the chair to tend to its needs whilst he let his questions and revelations swirl in the woman’s mind.

The sound of a log hitting the heat rekindled his joy for the strange way that life went about offering the living hope. Fireflies sprung up from the scorched moss and he watched the embers float upwards on their ascent to the heavens with a deep and meaningful bite of the lip.