lukeoutbelow | Do not be afraid of light

Do not be afraid of light

They smelled the battlefield long before they saw it. The apprentices and little Sisters who hadn't been on this kind of excursion before covered their noses and exclaimed. Vena didn't. As the child of a camp follower she would know to expect this, but her tread slowed and she looked repeatedly at Sister Lashan, especially as the sound of incredible numbers of crows cawing grew louder.

"Nasty, isn't it? Decay is part of death which is part of life," Lashan said firmly, if not totally without sympathy. How young had she been, the last time she was upset by the aftermath of battle? "There's armies that immediately turn around and sort the living from the dying from the dead and take care of that then and there. Not here, they're leaving it for the locals to handle or not and we're local enough. If you fight, you may well fight for people who'll leave you if you fall and move on. Make sure you at least have friends who'll look for you." They pressed on with their wagon. The donkey put its ears back but did not balk.

It wasn't as bad as it would get over the next few days. The bodies - it was now academic who had belonged to which side of whichever meaningless conflict this was - were not much bloated and decayed yet. Flies were not yet overwhelming. Right now the field of bodies was mostly attended by carrion birds, and various other birds that were willing to take advantage of the bounty before them. Finches among them, tiny beaks dipped red. A few other people could be seen picking their way across what had been a perfectly useable pasture. They kept clear. Lashan tasked girls to keep watch for them anyway, pretended not to see the ones who were being sick, and oversaw as dead men were loaded onto the donkeycart. They'd take them away a distance, say the rites, strip them of useful things, get them buried, and come back.

She paused. Something... like a sound. Not a sound. Lashan was hearing something with her mind, closer than the pickers. A threat? She stood like a sentinel and paid attention.

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Guts is slow to wake to the calming sound of rain, having plunged into an unusually deep sleep. He didn't wake up once, despite the rise in activity that would normally have him jolting to alertness. The pain didn't disturb him as he expected, which left nothing but the tiredness of a day's exertion. Peaceful, despite some of the revelations of the night prior.

He examines the bruising of his ribs, pressing lightly with his fingers to test how tender they were beneath the robe. The medicine and healing charm of the sword did its work, however, leaving him aching less than he might have originally. He attributes it mostly to the Apothecary's work, and is agreeable enough when she suggests for him to move his things to the guest house for the night. He thanks her, too, for the medicine, even if it tasted 'like someone bathed their feet in it, first' (to use the exact descriptor). He'd move the sword to the guest house later.

The bear paw is given rather freely to the questioning Sister, offering it to her to make whatever she pleased of it. He didn't consider himself a craftsman. He had no particular opinion on what to make of it and was hesitant to form attachments to objects, even keepsakes. They can sort out the rest once its made into something.

And from there he changes clothes (ignoring any wandering stares) borrows a cloak, and runs out in the rain to his first task. Running still aggravated his sides, he is quick to discover, but he makes it to the Forge merely wet and a little sore. He'd heard the singing of the women his first week there, wandering the compound, but never bothered to enter inside until now.

Surveying the hot interior of the forge, he looks for Lashan. He wanted to see how she was holding up. The space wasn't entirely unfamiliar - he'd visited enough blacksmiths to have swords made for him to get used to the fire and the noise of hammer strikes on metal. His eyes would pause at the anvils, occasionally, looking at the sparks, before he continued searching.

('Oh, you,' the Sister Apothecary would have said. 'Believe me they can taste far worse.')

The smithy doesn't have much to distinguish it from equivalents elsewhere. It's large, accommodating multiple workers. As this kind of place goes it's clean, if still sooty and smutched and smelling of fire, earth, the odd sweetness of heated metal, and sweating bodies. If anything sets this apart it's that some of the same religious symbols as out on the Temple can be seen all over, including a tiny altar to the Crafter-Twin. And that there are more lanterns containing oddly colored little flames. Perhaps it's just that the glass is tinted.

Two doughy women are using tongs to wrestle what can only be Guts' sword out from the forge itself. It's a lot larger and heavier than the short sword being worked more comfortably by another pair and they place it carefully before getting it clamped down. Currently the tip of the glowing metal is forked like a snake's tongue. Under rhythmic, constant hammer blows the two tips start to close into a familiar point.

Lashan is holding court, leaning on her cane as she supervises with a posture clearly suggesting that she wants to be hands on. She's the main person singing, though not the only one, some low and throaty Plainsfolk song that the hammer blows fall into. Vena is there too, near the bellows, working a heavy file over some scuffed and much smaller blades clamped in place. She sees Guts outside, brightens, and waves enthusiastically. Lashan sees this, glances his way, and nods, and Vena comes to the doorway.

She would've come to hug him, but plants her feet in time to not and sways in place. "Hi! Master will be a minute if you want to talk to her. You didn't get your head bashed in!"

Edited 2022-10-14 15:27 (UTC)

"Nope. Still here."

Guts runs his fingers through his short-cropped hair, as if to check that he still had the back of his skull there. Yep. Everything in place.

"Armor held up pretty well."

He notices the women working on his sword - he had been itching to mention that he'd completed his end of the bargain, and was waiting for his pay, now - but decides to let it slip. As long as they were working on it, he'd figure the blacksmiths were too proud to leave the project incomplete. He doesn't quite nod back at Lashan, but he locks eyes with her briefly, as greeting.

"Just wanted to see how the old lady was holding up. Looked pretty beat, yesterday." he says truthfully to Vena, arms crossed. He seemed quite at ease among the molten metals and flames and sweaty exertion of the forges. The cool breeze outside was small solace against the heat of the forge. It was enough for him.

"Everyone's saying fighting a bear by yourself is crazy. Real people don't do that and win without spears. I'm really glad you didn't die! Were you scared?"

If he doesn't make any move to pull back, Vena will absolutely put her small hand on one of his crossed arms and get gray smear on him, some mix of sweat and filed iron particles and ash. The smithy is only relatively clean and she is grimy from working in it.

"Oh, well, the healers are mad at her," she says matter-of-factly. "When you caaaaa um when you're out in lightning storms a lot of people die, she could've got hit!" Nailed it. Nailed that suddenly realizing she was almost talking about lightning magic and changing what she said in time. She likes Guts, but he will not understand. "I bet she was really close. And, she shouldn't really do that kind of thing anymore..."

Vena's voice lowers with that statement, a shadow crossing her expression. Lashan's a towering figure in her life, almost invincible, but every time she has to fight it's so hard for her afterwards and it's very easy to see where that's going. She frowns, then, and determinedly focuses on The Boy again, grabbing for his arm. "But hey, hey, anyway, how was Safflower? You didn't hurt her did you? She's a real good horse."

“Yeah. Pretty sure it was gonna chop my head off.” he answers her truthfully. As many times as Guts was used to nearly throwing his life away, he still felt scared sometimes.

He says nothing to the smear of dirt. Forges we’re always coated in some form of dust and dirt every time he’d wandered into one. So there will remain Vena’s handprint.

The boy does perk a brow up as she stumbles over her explanation about Lashan, the awkwardness dragging on for a painful few seconds as he once again offers no conversation to smooth it over. Whether or not he caught her slip up appears to be a mystery.

More tiny hand prints on his arm as she asks the question.

“She was a good horse. Ended up dismounting once the fight got thick, though. Too many trees to maneuver around like I wanted.”

Edited 2022-10-16 16:41 (UTC)

"Oooh." She shivers. "Was it really big? Did it really have horns and hands and eat some of the soldiers? Did it keep fighting when you cut off its hand and cut its eye out? I don't think people can do that." Apparently there's a lot of gossip going around and Lashan hasn't given her all the details.

Vena deals with her slip-up, and with thoughts of the elder Sister's mortality, by just not dwelling on either! "I'm learning to make knives. Do you wanna see them? I'm gonna show you, stay here," she decides, not requiring an answer before she turns and heads back to her workstation and starts unwinding the clamps. Her hair is in braids, as usual, with a kerchief tied over them to mostly protect them from the dirt. They need that, there are smudges on the cloth and her face.

Lashan, having finished the song and whatever minutia she was supervising, stumps over with her cane and looks Guts over critically. The lines around her eyes are more pronounced and she leans on the stick even when standing still, but she does seem to have recovered some of the vitality that had been absent last night.

"Sun's coming up," she says of the bruises showing. "How's your head?"

Not even a day has passed and the story was already starting to get out of hand. Guts has a disgruntled expression on his face by the barrage of questions, opting to answer none of them and feeling quietly grateful that Vena easily shifted the topic on her own. The girl had enthusiasm, if nothing else.

With the apprentice busy with the knives, he decides to switch tack to Lashan, the primary reason he'd wandered in here. She... didn't look terrible, at least. Wearier, older, in a way that stood out as incongruous in his head but that he couldn't quite put his finger on. If she leaned too much on the cane, they be nearly eye to eye.

"Better..." he starts, finding the words of concern getting stuck in his throat. He looks away from the sharp examination of the old woman. Looking away made it easier.

"You looked pretty beat up. Wanted to make sure you weren't about to keel over after all that."

There'd been a lot of men accompanying the bear. He couldn't see any wounds from the glimpses he got last night, but he can't imagine she'd escaped unscathed.

There's a bit of a sense of vacuum with Vena not present to fill the moment with anything she can think of. Lashan shrugs and looks away herself, absently examining a wet windchime. "I'm not dead yet. I hate to say it, but those twin priests were right. It would've gone worse if I closed sword-to-sword with anyone, and they had someone smart enough not to let people keep panicking just because I can find a visor slit with an arrow."

Lashan knows that her Sisters can't count on her to be what she used to be. Really, for quite a long time now she's brought people with her, helping, taking up the increasing amounts of slack as her own strength declines. It's just that stories grow in the telling. The ones about what she pulled two decades ago are large enough to cast shadows on everything since, recasting various events as Lashan-and-supporters. She's known, this whole time. It's just as well Guts is getting more of the focus now.

Abruptly she says, "Wish I could train you, but anything that I know and you don't won't even apply." It takes years to become good with the bow, and years to train horses up to Plains standards and to work with them, and caution, let alone seeing himself as someone with value? Guts has some liking for her but she doesn't need any special power to know that it itches at him to be here, that he tolerates the soft communal nature of the enclave better knowing he has the option to leave it. "You'd just be humoring an old lady if we sparred on my best day, and this isn't it. No, you'll get better with experience as your teacher, and you're fearsome already."

Self-deprecation. She's not fishing for assurance and doesn't believe he'll think to give it. "So, will you be doing anything different if you've ever got to face another bear?"

Guts never considered the woes of old age. Such things were always ended with the nihilistic thought that he’ll probably be dead way before that starts to become a problem. A warrior that makes it to Lashan’s age? That was already something hard won.

“Don’t plan on becomin’ a blacksmith anytime soon, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

In case the old lady had any doubt about his willingness to give up the freedom he’d earned. No, he would be chafing at anything chaining him down, even if he didn’t hate this place. Same as always.

At the question, he gives it a good thought, giving an interesting pile of ashen motes on the ground a long and thorough examination.

“Guess that’d depend on if I have my sword or not.”

He can break armor with his own great sword, he knows. It was heavier, balanced differently than the blade he’d used the previous day. The extra length of metal would let him stay a little further away and still have that sharp tip find purchase in the animal’s vitals. Maybe even longer than the arms of the animal looking to swipe his head off. As for the rest?

Well, it doesn’t hurt to speculate, but he figures the next big beast will have its own bizarre circumstances catching him off guard.

Edited 2022-10-18 14:22 (UTC)

"Good, you'd be shit at it. It takes years to learn and there's not space in my smithy for someone as big as you're going to get," she says. He has to find his own way, regardless of what she thinks would be better for him. Regardless if it means going and getting himself killed, she doesn't have the right to decide for people. "Not without pushing someone out, and they wouldn't appreciate that."

They really wouldn't. If she's too old to go fight she's too old to make enemies of friends. That's always exhausting and much worse than ending up with normal enemies.

Guts has enough brains to take the question seriously, at least. She scratches under her throat, grimacing a little as her nails encounter a bristle.

"A bear's fat and hide are thick enough to be a kind of armor. It absorbs blunt impact well and can foul up and tangle a blade. 'S why people hunting bears usually bring spears." And why she'd told him to stab it. Lashan's sword has enchantments on it to keep it from sticking in a body and to preserve its edge, and that had made some difference. "If you can thrust fast enough with that steelbride - well, that's not a tactic I'd expect anyone else to use, but you're not anyone else. Might work."

Behind her the Sisters wrestle the big sword back into the fire to reheat. This weather is making the metal cool fast enough that they can't work for as long at a stretch as the other day ago. "Don't worry, you'll have it. It's too late now to break it into scrap. This is a learning experience. We're too used to ploughs and shortswords."

Edited 2022-10-18 15:22 (UTC)

Going to get? It perturbs him when Lashan speaks like she knows him, or knows the future, somehow. Maybe wisdom like that simply comes in exchange for being old and shriveled. He briefly considers how much of a pain it'll be to get new armor and weapons if her prediction comes true.

"Wasn't doubting that." he says, in response to her assurance to the completion of the job. "You blacksmith types are more honest than mercenaries and nobles, and I did my end of the bargain."

Usually. He'll still give the sword a good examination.

"But sure, next Bear'll get a lot more thrusts than slices. The little cuts only seemed to piss it off."

On a human, the injuries might have slowed them down quicker. The big bear had more blood to lose without abating its pursuit. He would have been in trouble if he didn't catch the edge of its ribcage when it reared up. It was easier to gauge where its heart was, then.

"If I want to find more weak spots, I'll have to take a closer look at that corpse."

At the veins and arteries and entrails, in particular. The neck was an obvious option, always, and the chest. He is fairly certain if he could split open plate, he could do the same with an animal skull too, if he had his heavier blade. But if there were spots in the arms and legs he could sever, some big artery somewhere that can kill it faster, that'll spare the edge of the greatsword.

Surely Guts doesn't think he's done growing. It's very clear to Lashan, when he's not covered up by armor, that he's very young and has a lot further to go. Despite being this muscular he's really at the gangly stage.

She laughs. "Such faint praise. Blacksmiths do actually have to be effective and do as we've said, or we don't eat." Lashan's got a pretty dim view of nobles as a whole. Mercenaries, her opinion is a bit higher, but she lived that life for long enough, and maintained merc contacts long enough after that, that she doesn't have illusions about it. There are halfway decent ones, even of companies who take care of one another. She's picked up rumors of another one of those recently. But they're not like war bands from the Plains at all.

Not that those had always been as good as she had been brought up to believe, of course. Still.

"By now it'll be fully stiff, hard to poke around at. And another miserable ride to get there." Not to mention that there will be more men crawling around - that thought will not dissuade a boy like this.

Vena comes up with a short stack of half-sharpened metal, the blades distinct from the long tangs. They're grimy, but even polished up wouldn't have the faint ripple evident in Lashan's swordblades. "Look! They're stock removal, so, there was a broken sword and I cut them out of it. With help," she adds, looking at Lashan, and then back at Guts. "The scraps are getting forged together! I can't do that yet. Here, look at them, aren't they nice?"

Lashan shifts slightly, swallowing the urge to tell him to ignore the flaws in the work - of course she sees some - and be polite.

Guts’ thoughts about the future tended to end a few days ahead of his present. He had enough on his plate trying to figure out how to stay alive the following week, and seemed to be satisfied keeping his mind there. Beyond that, it was all rather nebulous.

Distracted from the thought of revisiting the bear by Vena, he takes a look at all the shards of metal being hammered into vaguely knife like shapes. It looked a bit rough, but so did most pieces of metal before being polished up.

He wasn’t a master blacksmith, he couldn’t see all the mistakes Lashan could. He just sees some works in the rough that will surely be refined into something worthwhile by all the skilled artisans here.

“Looks like you got a good head start. What’re they for?”

Vena tries to press the stack of small proto-knives into his hands and wipe her own hands off on her already exceedingly dirty child-sized apron. More iron-smelling gray smutches are moved around.

A little distracted, she says, "Um. They're for everyday, like, for food or carving stuff or string -"

"Preparing fish and small game," Lashan puts in, though as she says it she has the sinking feeling that no one's ever sat Guts down and showed him how to remove the last joints of the limb and the skin and the entrails before cooking a given small animal and at this point he might find such niceties needlessly fiddly.

"-yeah, and nails and hair..." Vena trails off, frowning, and then gasps a little as she realizes what was wrong, her face openly dismayed. "I forgot! Guts! Your hands are really big!"

Sister Lashan exhales sharply through her nose and turns her face away, clenching her jaw; do not laugh, do not laugh.

"No they're not. Are they..?"

As if to accentuate her point, the entire bundle of knife-shaped metal nuggets fits onto his outstretched hands, though he never thought of them as particularly huge. He would never admit that his rather solitary, wandering lifestyle did not leave him with many points of reference.

He begins to put two-and-two together (why was Vena making the knives anyway...?) and realizes she was up to something.

"You don't have to make one for me. I already have a dagger."

Guts looks at Lashan, questioning: "You brought it back, right?"

“They’ll probably get bigger,” Lashan says sotto voche, regaining control of herself. “Boys usually stop growing at, oh, anywhere from nineteen to twenty-one.”

Blade and tang together, the not yet knives could all balance in a stack along one of Guts’ hands.

“Yeah, we brought it back, though it was tempting to just leave it,” Lashan grumbles, carefully not touching the still-pink scar at her jaw. “It’s good to have more knives. Different tools for different jobs. A smaller blade’s better for precision and not cutting anything you don’t want cut.”

“I want to give one to you,” Vena wheedles. “It’s my first time! She’s just had me on nails before. Though, I did make one into a sword… Anyway, if I have to finish one quick then I’ll know better finishing the others and I can give them to Rauri and Andel and-“ she names some other friends -“for the solstice! It’s okay if it’s too small? I can make a bigger hilt probably?”

'How does she know? It's all girls in this village.' is the annoyed thought floating around behind his disgruntled face. He doesn't appreciate the restrained laughter! What was so funny to Lashan anyway?

He's brought out of the mood by Vena, who kindles a feeling of... warmth? Appreciation? Guts may be a hired killer, but he wasn't so heartless as to reject a gift like that. His expression softens. Kindness from the world wasn't a thing he got to experience often, so he's quiet when she insists. It seems like he would aquiesce without a fight.

"I'm used to blades on the larger side, but small knives can be useful too." he says, echoing Lashan's sentiment.

Guts isn't going to nitpick a present. He just can't imagine why Vena took such a liking to him when they've only known each other for a week. They were still practically strangers.

Stars, Lashan does not miss being that age, or the bristly paranoid loner period she'd had some years after that. Children!

Vena, peering closely up at Guts, is relieved. She'd thought arguing that it wasn't going out of her way and would actually help her - and really, knives had been in the planning before they saw him so it's not a lie - would be more convincing than insisting that she wants him to have something to remember her and everyone with. Or that it feels grown up and cool to have a mercenary going around carrying something she made and none of her friends would be able to say the same. But hey, she doesn't have to argue!

"Can I have one of the claws? I bet I can put it in the handle! It'll just take, you know, some carving and glue, I guess," she says, frowning with concentration as she tries to work out how to implement that sudden burst of inspiration.

"I wouldn't overuse the glue," Lashan advises her. "Think about grip and positioning. Would it make it harder to use?"

"Ummm." Vena rubs her face in thought, getting smudges everywhere. "Maybe the sheath instead. Or... along the spine of the handle? But the wrapping would hide it, huh..."

Edited 2022-10-20 22:05 (UTC)

"You're gonna have to get claws from that girl hovering around that doctor's tent. She wanted to prepare the paw for something."

Other girl... Guts realized he never got a name. He figures Vena is gregarious enough to hunt down the claw she wants in a compound this small, though.

"Bet she'll be off to tan the skin once the rain stops."

Guts follows the conversation idly, picking through the roughened knives in his hand. The tang just about fits in his palm for the time being, though he really didn't have trouble manipulating a small blade with two or three fingers. In an unusual moment of levity, he plays with one a bit while they talked shop.

"This'll end up pretty bloodstained at some point." he remarks, eventually. "Better not to make it too fancy."

They're quite rough blades now, still bearing some burrs and irregularities from being cut with hammer and chisel and hammered out. The edges are all quite blunt, very unfinished.

Vena's a little crestfallen to think of having to put aside any elaborate, fanciful plans. She rallies. "Do you have a favorite color anyway? I wanna know. Here, look, mine's blue, but blue leather's not a thing, so Master Lashan made me one with a fascinum. Look!"

She has a rather tinier knife, extremely sharp, with a long handle and a blade only about three inches long in a sheath carried around her neck by a braided cord. Vena draws it and holds it up. There's a short loop of a thin leather strip on the end, bearing a blue bead with white eye rings, like the beads on Lashan's temple regalia. Guts has probably seen it in passing before, a small knife is indeed useful day to day.

"It's pretty." he admits, leaning forward to get a closer look. His eyes remained fixed on the blue bands of the bead, surrounded by enough mundane colors and patterns to stand out particularly well.

And then he pauses, having been asked for the first time what his favorite anything was. He was never particular about color, so he thinks of things that are pleasant to be around, to look at. His world wasn't only dirt and gore. At times there were fields of pink wildflowers, the bright yellow of birch trees in autumn, a deep blue sky above. All of these kindled some warmth in him, made him wonder at times if there was some other path he could tread.

They only ever ended up being brief respites, but they were respites regardless.

"Why don't you make it blue, so if I find something out there to bring back, I'll remember what color you like?" he says, figuring that'd be more useful to say than 'I don't know.' It was stupid and sentimental, but she was just a kid.

"And they'll match."

It's unlikely they'll ever see each other again, after this. She'll forget it in time. But at least he can humor the girl. That is what he figures.

Lashan turns away while he’s considering so neither child will see her face tense as she hides her reaction, the anger that shields how profoundly sad that is. Never asked about what he liked! Why have the gods sent her a child like this now, past the point where she can do something about it?

It’s the wrong question, she knows. Outside of old tales the gods are nothing like that involved and personal and she’s not a hero to get that attention anyway. Even their messengers have long gone silent. The closest anyone is to the divine anymore are the lykeblades, and if they have answers they’re not sharing.

Lashan walks off to get her girl a roll of birchbark from a rack of them. It will be useful in designing this knife.

Vena, not snooping, nods sagely. “It’s hard to pick! I like a lot of colors but the Plains people really love blue, it’s all over the inside of the temple and it’s so beautiful there.” It’s the color of magic and associated with spirits and the Twins, though each has their own other colors too. She brightens to think Guts will come back. “Yeah! Sure! Do you like dragonflies? Sometimes they’re blue.”

Edited 2022-10-23 06:14 (UTC)

“They’re alright, for a bug.” He wrinkles his nose a little, thinking of the flies, wasps, and other insects that plagued the hot summers. He wasn’t entirely devoid of some youthful irritation with the world. Dragonflies get a slight bump up in the rankings for not biting him on those warm and humid months.

“Well then, blue it is.” He agrees with her easily, ignorant of Lashan snooping in on his thoughts. He does notice the old woman had sauntered off, and cranes his neck to get a look at her.

“Well, since you’re not about to fall apart, I’ll stay out of the way.”

Guts was not a picky client, it seems. He will leave the blacksmiths to do their work and occupy himself with something else. Probably training agility again, once the rain storm clears.

"I like dragonflies. They're so fast! But not my favorite bugs really," and Vena would be quite happy to continue in this vein indefinitely but she can recognize wrap-up talk when she hears it. And she does also enjoy the work in here, and Lashan's close attention in teaching it to her. She'll wave before he turns away.

Lashan makes an exasperated noise, deliberately reaching into her irritation. "I'm not as decrepit as that, boy. Eat something, or do whatever else is an option in this rain." Food and rest are always part of healing, whether that's working the magic or having it worked on you, or just waiting for the body to recover. She would've told someone else that age go play - lots of teenagers would be annoyed - but really doesn't want to consider if Guts hasn't or doesn't, even by himself.

He can get something to eat, the refectory isn't serving right now but someone will give him something if he comes by. They are industriously preparing for the next meal and can spare him some probably raw vegetables and cheese or a bit of grain porridge. Otherwise the enclave is rather quiet, people mostly staying in shelter. The rain has gentled and lightened and is almost warm but it's hard to go anywhere without tracking mud or going through puddles.

There are some raised voices and yelling out by the stables. Quite a number of the younger Sisters, from small children to a few in their early twenties, have aggregated there. Little kids have been, and some still are, digging holes with sticks and making mud pies. There's a wallow full of footprints and deep indentations where girls had been wrestling, and those girls can easily be picked out by how absolutely coated in sticky wet dirt they still are. The major attraction, though, is that most present have divided into teams and are hauling opposite ends of a thick, knotted rope, shouting with excitement.

Edited 2022-10-25 13:12 (UTC)

A mischeivous grin pulls at the corners of his mouth when Lashan starts to grumble. Guess she was doing better than she looked, all covered in the dark soot of the smithy as she was.

"Eating ain't a bad idea," he says, grabbing onto that excuse for an exit and taking it. "Catch you later."

He'll leave the Blacksmiths and their honest work to them, trusting the metal will be honed and heated to a clean edge. Even in the rain, the outdoors felt like a more fitting place for him, anyway. So he wanders out into the sparse drizzle, now well used to walking towards the refectory after Vena had shown him the route a dozen times.

The Sister at the refectory was willing to relinquish a bit of food up, and he takes whatever bites of cheese they had to spare by the window. Lunch would be here soon enough before his stomach would start to bother him. The reception growing warmer with each visit was an interesting detail that the opted not to think too hard about, even if he did notice. He takes the small portion with a simple thanks before continuing his path forward.

His initial plan to sequester himself in his usual haunting ground is interrupted by the bustle of activity around the stables. Rain in a mercenary camp meant more work than play, especially if they had to move locations in the miserable weather. His most vibrant memories are of struggling with slippery rope, wood wagons, and the horses that pulled them. Miserable and ankle deep in mud. Plate mail caked in a horrible mess in the aftermath - who else to be stuck with cleaning but the youngest of the lot? The rivets did a good job of wedging in as much crap as possible between sheets of steel. That detail was the most vivid of the lot.

Even though he'd seen children play enough times in villages, it always felt strange and distant. Like a disembodied version of a childhood he never knew himself. So he watches the games as an outside observer, leaning on the wooden fenceposts as the girls play amongst each other. Some tossing each other to the ground in mock-fights and the others caught in their tug-of-war. He was down to two pieces of cheese.

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