Emberwood We'll go to a place that is safe from greed, anger, and boredom

Reverie beckoned to him—Akavir cast a sideways glance to Mae, questioning, but she could offer him little as to what her ‘adopted’ mother might have wanted with him. Nor did she seem entirely interested in attending with him—which drew a rather reluctant brooding from the swarthy man.

For one who was uncomfortable in his presence, she somehow managed to be within it quite often in the weeks prior. She set beneath his skin somehow—like walking on broken glass each time he saw her. A reminder of his failures—

—and there were so many of them.

When he came to their newly scented borders, his champagne gaze drifted over her—but there was nothing to be said, because she turned, beginning to weave her way without a word.

A clearing.

He looked around—stoic, but certainly aware. It was when she pointed out a sapling that she spoke, and Akavir found himself heavy with the weight of the words.

He stared at it—lost for a moment.

‘I loved her,' Reverie had cried to him when the news had reached him.

Oh, the things he had said to her. Things he had wanted to say when he had realized the depth of which Reverie had hurt Moss—yet still things he had said out of hurt and loss.

Reverie had buried her here. What she could gather.

An ear flicked back at the sound of her soft paw falls, stepping away from him, as if realizing he needed this moment alone.

He sank down, an exhale given—his head bowed. The sharp memory of her lost in the swamp… buried beneath the bracken and blood. So much blood… Kvarsheim’s blood. Cygnet’s blood. Wren’s, Mae’s…

His stomach clenched—his eyes focused upon the sapling… the intricate details of the leaf. The memory suppressing—the finality of Moss’s life.

“Gabh fois, a charaid,” he whispered to the memorial again, just as he had the night he had spent with her body.

And again. And again.