V2 C150
“So, tell me, how did the escapade go with Krakow? I imagine it must have been one considering that not only are you here, but Michal, and atop that he saw fit to enlighten you of a story best left secret.”
Aethelwulf sipped from his tea, holding the steaming cup with both hands. Michal and I looked back and forth between each other before we spoke. I shook my head, hoping that would be enough for Michal to understand what would be best left omitted. He squinted before shaking his own with a sigh.
“Seer Aethelwulf, it may take a moment.”
“Oh, I have the time, I’ve got nothing except for that.”
I leaned back into my own chair as I readied myself for the idle conversation as Michal led the account.
Here we go, hopefully he doesn’t come to any conclusion we don’t need.
Michal took his time, weaving together a fair enough story about his needing to be here. Beginning with a rising urge to explore from a position not as the profiteering trader, but that of a wayward adventurer. Capping it off, Michal managed to paint a finer picture of a lie than I could have asked, even of myself. It was to the point he had me raising my own brows alongside Aethelwulf as Michal recounted our team’s prayers and our absolute desperation for another healer thanks to our harrowing experience with the skinwalker en route and our bickering over recklessness afterward.
Isn’t it sinful? For a priest to lie so much? Or is that even part of the worship behind Solah?
I thought back, relaxing my neck as I looked at the ceiling, looking back as far as I could in my memories.
Nope, pretty sure lying is still a sin.
I smirked, looking back to my tea as Michal fell silent, and Aethelwulf turned his attention to me.
“The picture is painted pretty and carefully.”
Aethelwulf sipped once more, the sputtering of liquid accompanied by an out of place cough from Michal as Aethelwulf spoke again.
“That still doesn’t explain why you speak with Va’ranian blood in your accent.”
As with Vaughn and Beryl, I could not hide it here. I wonder, were mother and Callum aware and chose to not mention it?… That may be why mother came to check on me last night…
Aethelwulf spoke clearly, and with a smirk, as he placed his cup to his side.
“Kiyomi, I guarantee that hasn’t been lost on you. Especially with how you’re shifting in that chair.”
He pointed a finger at our feet, his bony fingers shaking ever so slightly.
“Michal’s story is well and good, but one of my flock had to receive her prayer somewhere. And for you to display an accent as such within only the three sentences I’ve just heard, that is not the voice of a Damusian. Care to enlighten me some? Even if it is only a little, our small chats require some modicum of progress. I’d hope you still received that, after a month of absence.”
Aethelwulfs words were leveled, and free of any sense of entrapment. He was giving me an out, but, given our talks, and the courtesy he’d granted already, I sighed.
You’re just going to start a snowball effect, ko?
I winced at my own thought, then relented.
He doesn’t need the whole story, but we can give him something to go with since he’s intent on helping me with my mind.
“I mentioned before, of my suffering from amnesia.”
I placed my own cup to the side, my hands now sitting in my lap as I pressed them together.
“We spoke of it in some limited capacity before, of your condition? Has there been an improvement?”
Aethelwulf chuckled to himself.
“Or have you yet to rid yourself of the fish like memory.”
If that was supposed to be some form of joke, its appreciated but it still doesn’t fit as much as I’d like it to.
I shared his smile, though mine was filled with a hint more pain given my thoughts each night since we departed from the hole in the ground.
“I’ve gained some clarity, more than I would like.”
I found myself clenching my fists, the absence of the cup leaving my wanting as I began to lock my fingers together.
Why the nervousness for fuck sake? Is it because you’re struggling to understand who you are still?
“I think– that I a may be whole of mind, now. I found myself in prayer at Kraków’s temple… I am unsure, but the goddess has seen fit to answer some questions, and present me with more.”
I furrowed my brow.
C’Mon, you can open up with this. Be vulnerable, just, don't make a show of it.
“I think this may be at the most unknown juncture of my existence.”
I waited, waited and hoped that Aethelwulf would stay his questions while he slowly processed my words and sat back. Looking up to him, he seemed in thought, thumbing the scruff at his neck while looking to the corner of the room.
“You speak as if you've experienced more years than any child would. Near the sixteenth sun or not. I imagine this Va’ranian tongue you now carry reflects that…”
More pondering, as Michal spoke quietly.
“An orphan of Va’ren, coming to Brenton in such proximity to the civil wars outbreak.”
Aethelwulf nodded, then continued.
“So you say, you know the nest you come from now. I imagine the questions and answers you received hand in hand do little for your wellness, and only make your search of peace in the temples greater.”
He lowered his hand, resting it on the chair’s arm as he corrected his posture.
“Of the answers you did receive, did you find peace in them? You speak of your prayer as if it was answered literally. For what may as well be simple meditation, to have your memory’s once more. You simply didn’t receive a blow?”
I shook my head, a sharp frown taking over my features as my brows furrowed farther and my eyes glued to the floor a third time.
“An answer in full, I take it then.”
Aethelwulf paused.
“That steel, Wyrmstooth. The Wyrmstooth, not just a namesake, is it?”
A moment of silence continued as I choked on the attempt to lie, before Michal gave it away in his own awkward shuffling within his chair, and by the further clenching of my fists.
“I will leave the questions to myself, then. My secret is yours, thanks to the kin-killer, so any you bear are mine to hold.”
Michal winced as Aethelwulf broke the silence.
Kin-killer?
“It seems I’ve more in store for my prayers than I initially believed.”
He muttered, before tearing a gaping hole in the atmosphere with the slaps of his hands to his knees.
“Breathe, for Sol’s sake. That is behind us.”
Aethelwulf leaned forward as he did, breathing an air of vigor into his voice similar to when we first spoke. Michal nearly deflated in his seat, his shoulders relaxing to the point the chair creaked beneath the loss of tension from himself. Me, though, I found myself nearly pulling my shoulders in closer as I shielded myself from the world as the thoughts slowly ate away at me more and more. I exhaled sharply, trying to straighten myself, but the effort was obvious and thankfully ignored.
The hunt, I can’t fuckin wait for the hunt. I need to break this tension!
“So why do you both come to me? And why the story for Michal’s presence? And I know it wasn’t for me to recount the same story as Michal told… Kiyomi?”
“Ko?!”
I nearly shot up, Michal touching my shoulder as Aethelwulf spoke my name.
“Why come to me, Kiyomi? With Michal.”
“Ah, we’d hoped you would have a place for him here, alongside brother Kaine.”
I spoke, pushing the impulses down.
“Speaking aside from myself and my team, Michal doesn't know anyone here besides the two of you. We were hoping he may find his place here in our absence, both for shelter from the winter, and as a means of his living outside our work.”
“What of the temple you were restoring? Is it not sufficient to live there for the winter?”
“I'm sure I can manage there.”
Aethelwulf and Michal each spoke in turn.
“Aye, you may be able to make use of it. But we ourselves have not, and even Vaughn is unsure of its suitability thanks to its distance from town.”
I leaned to the side of my chair, my tail readjusting as I did.
“I'd say we felt better if you'd stay in town.”
I'd like to not hear of you freezing to death walking back and forth. You came here for me, and I won’t have that on my conscience.
Aethelwulf scratched his beard for a long hard moment as he debated with himself, looking back to the same corner for a moment.
“Would you be fine doing the ground keeping? I’d say its a deal harder as I age, and Brother Kaine can only do so much on his lonesome.”
Michal nodded.
“Yes, seer.”
“What about scribing? We need to go through our more aged scrolls, my fingers grow stiff with age.”
“Yes, seer.”
“What about helping with prayer?”
“Yes, seer.”
“And funerals?”
“Yes, seer.”
“And helping me bathe?”
“Yes, seer— No, no emphatically, old goat.”
Aethelwulf giggled, craning over in his chair.
“Then you have a place.”
He nodded to himself, then tapped at the arm of his chair.
“I’ll have you stick to our agreement, Kiyomi, though I think it’ll be a fair bit more work than simply pondering the gods reasoning like some adolescent scholars. This may simply be spent helping you with your trauma, though, I would stress—“
Now he placed his elbows on his knees.
“I would stress you discuss this with your mother, and soon. She can be a deal more comfort than anything I can ever say. You know that.”
I nodded, standing from my seat.
But I still can’t—. I don’t want to— I still don’t know…
“Yes sir.”
I steeled myself, looking to the sealing as I pushed it down once more.
“Later, but I will.”
“Kiyomi! Michal! Over here!”
Beryl called to us, standing just a few dozen feet from the gate to make space for other traffic.
“Hey you two! You’re all packed, right? We won’t have to turn back?”
Vaughn and Beryl both seemed in higher spirits, glad to have a shorter hunt than most under our belts. That, or they’re excited to get their first job with a new teammate underway.
That’s all well and good to be excited, but at whose expense? He is a sole healer!
“I swear to the gods, Michal, you better be one hell of a healer. From how they’re bouncing, and my own history, they’re probably excited to see how you deal with me.”
“With you?”
“I’m more prone to injury than I’d like. That’s what I get for being the vanguard. Ko, Ces le vie.”
I said with a shrug, garnering the same awkward look Vaughn and Beryl would give me time and time again when I used quotes from earth.
“What the hells does that even mean?!”
“Don't worry about it.”
The other two started walking as Michal and myself caught up.
“We are still set for the same plan we’ve used before, right?”
Beryl asked, neatly inserting herself between me and Michal. I nodded, smirking at the not so subtle attempt to hoard me, since Vaughn fell into the opposite side of Michal.
“Mhmm, halfway between the pass, there should be one of the smaller sauropod herds. If we can plant ourselves near, sleep early, wake up early, we should be able to catch a pair of Stalkers probing for stragglers or a separated calf.”
I went over the plan we’d used twice before, hunting stalkers by setting a trap of our own, or more appropriately, an ambush.
“I do have a slight favor to ask.”
“Hm? What of?”
“I want one of the Stalkers for myself, to face down.”
Beryl, Michal, and Vaughn each seemed at odds with the idea, all three of them raising their brows and clearly not liking the proposal.
“Veto.”
Beryl immediately fielded a frown, throwing her arms up into an X while shaking her head.
“Mnmm, not cool with the plan, super strength or not.”
Michal looked between the two and shrugged.
“If you’d expect me to say any different? I’m afraid not.”
Damnit.
I reached my arms up, stretching my arms.
“I’m needing this, please?”
I did my best to let the stress I’d been going through show as I managed to pop one of my shoulders, dropping the arms and leaning back as I did.
“Veto.”
“Not cool.”
“New guy, so no.”
“Fuck!”
Okay, fine, no lone wolf hunt.
I looked over, Vaughn and Beryl’s same looks of concern, and Michal with his ‘new guy’ indifference.
“Okay, new deal. If we get them both at once, I get to take them down while in arm reach of you all.”
Beryl looked up a moment, while Vaughn and Michal looked to each other for some odd reason, before being pulled to the side by Beryl as we walked. It only took a moment before they each turned back and we resumed our walk.
“Only if you make a promise for my birthday.”
Oh fuck, that is in a week, isn’t it? Fuck it, she’s the birthday girl.
I sighed.
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
I waved a hand to the side, my tail whipping to the side as I did. Beryl seemed to glow for a moment, her tail raising her into the air as she welled up for some reason. Vaughn, peered past, brows raised as he waited for the negotiation to reach its peak.
“You wear a dress for the occasion.”
I don’t need more shit to make me question who I am!
“No.”
An immediate pouty frown as Berly forced her tongue out, before crossing her arms and giving me the cold shoulder.
“Then no deal.”
For fuck sake!