for a very long time, lestan stared down at the child beside blossom.
she was golden as reverie was, still miniscule and downy with childbirth. he stared at her as well as reverie, though not so long upon the latter visage, too overcome to gaze at her for long.
lestan did not reach out for the girl; he tapped his paws with all manner of anxiousness and swallowed very hard.
she was a fawn where reverie was a doe. and both cervine ideas had him quite choked by fear suddenly.
at last he held up the bone. "i d-don't even know where i got this."
the night of the bright french and the glen-tongue
"b-but reverie," he licked his lips, "i've known you a long, long time. because beside loch teine i saw —"
aware of how crazed he sounded but not caring, lestan went on, sweat sliding down his forehead. "one night as we danced and sang, golden deer, thousands of them, came to us. they encircled us. they asked who among us was mayfair."
his paw trembled, the slice of ivory, rounded, rough with his bitemarks as he had held in his mouth during most of that long, terrible fever; it fell before reverie.
"well, i was mayfair."
lestan was shaking.
"ah, i was only a boy. only a child. but they told me, well the leader told me they were draoidhean. druids. and these ones were of the golden hoof, meant to stamp out sin. they said," and his voice cracked,
"they said 'because of the evil that the name mayfair brought to donnelaith, we cannot suffer your kin to live." he spread his paws. "thirty of us, man, woman, child. murdered by the druids for what my family did. for what lasher did."
lasher, a name he did not and would not ever know. he could not bear to look at reverie, having hung his head during a good deal of this retelling. "their irony was to let me live, to let me escape. a member of their very order struck me unconscious in the chaos of that night beside the lake, and i believe it was the same warrior who bore me across the lake. in the morning i woke alone, far from all i knew but alive. her face i do not remember, only what she told me before she knocked me down: "is e reverie an aisling dùisg agad mu chumhachd."
after a second, lestan at last raised his head, translating for her ear and trying now to look into her eyes. "i do not know why i was spared. but i fear i have brought my curse to you. and to her. it was a god of deer who i met slain in the wild. and it was a servant of the dark which drove me from the creek. but the deer remained, always, a great doe who billows in fire. if there is a woman here who watches, be assured it is one of those. until i meet her, i will not know."