Stay

The sun hid into the horizon, and a gray sheet of clouds blanketed the stars. Dunmouth’s homes slept in the silence, and the inn remained as the single dying light.

Taliesin limped over to the inn. His wounds were healed, but it still felt as if the sword kept itself impaled in his ribs. A night of rest could soothe his superficial wounds. He could curl up in the mess of blankets they left—and pray that Leiren’s scent remained.

The innkeeper was engaged in conversation when Taliesin stumbled in.

“There should be rooms available.” The stranger complained.

“I’m sorry, but the last two that we had were taken up a few nights ago. They’ve paid for an entire month.”

The stranger rocked on his heels. “That might be a mistake.”

“It’s not, I checked to see if they vacated, but their belongings were still there.”

“I must have a room, I’ve been told that the town is lacking an apothecary.”

“I’m sorry, bu—”

Taliesin didn’t listen further, instead he hunched over his pain and down the corridor to the rooms. Nothing was in his room, only hers.

He fumbled over the keys in his pocket and opened the door to the empty inn room. The candle had burned the end of its wick two nights prior, and the moonlight that lit the room remained as a faint memory behind the looming clouds.

Despite this, Taliesin remembered every inch of the room. He remembered the bed that beckoned him—only to be an empty promise, with messy sheets of an unforgettable morning.

He rolled himself into the bed, grovelling for another hint of Leiren’s scent. He replayed her last moments, her last glance back with a smirk, her last stabbing joke, and the pleading lifeless stare when her breath faded.

Without realizing, his tears soaked the bedding underneath his head. As he wiped them off, a silhouette appeared from his doorway. A timid knock followed.

Taliesin’s cracked voice managed a word, “Varith?”

“No,” the silhouette responded.

Taliesin settled more into the bed, uncaring.

The silhouette moved closer, “I’m sorry,” it said.

“How did you know?”

The man peeked for any witnesses, and closed the door. “I’m sorry about your friends,” he said again, “I’ve been in the place you’re in now.” He pulled up a chair and sat beside him.

“Are you here to threaten me again?”

“No,” the man sighed, “what good will that do now?”

“I don’t know.”

Silence filled the next moments, and the man let it linger until he leaned forward and settled a hand on Taliesin’s back.

“There’s something I want you to know. Come over to my home when you’re ready, Seren and I will keep you company if you need it.”

The man stood and walked to the door. Taliesin stopped his departure, “do you still remember their faces?”

“Sometimes.”

“I-,” Taliesin choked on the dryness in his throat, “I feel like they’re fading from my mind, an- and it’s like I’m abandoning them again.”

“Then don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t forget them.”

Taliesin felt his pocket, the signed order, remembering that it carried sketches of his friends. “Take me to Shone.”

“No,” the man grumbled, and continued to leave. “Come to my home when you’re ready.”

“If you won’t help me, what else do you have to offer?”

“Nothing you want.” The gryfalcon master turned away. “Everything you need.”

Once the footsteps faded, Taliesin sat up from the bed to leave with a final glance; dirt caked the sheets, and erased any evidence of cleanliness.

The fire that once kept the rooms warm had diminished into a glowing ember, and the innkeeper snored in a rocking chair placed near the entrance. Taliesin placed his key on the counter and left.

Outside, the once still quiet had turned into a brisk wind. A few structures down, a single lantern burned behind a window of a wood shop. The wind muted Taliesin’s footsteps as he walked near the tavern, keeping the gryfalcon’s protruding head as a bearing.

The door opened after a couple knocks, and then the wind pushed the door farther in until it banged against the inner frame. Taliesin flinched from the rattling sound.

“I’m sorry.” It was Bryndall’s daughter. “I didn’t expect the wind—”

“Where’s your father?”

Embers in the home’s hearth grew with the intruding wind. It lit the room with a steady breath and a man stood across from it. He walked over to the door frame and patted his daughter’s back. “I’ll handle this, thank you.”

Her eyes traveled between Taliesin’s bruises and eventually she walked away with an anxious look back to her father.

The gryfalcon master handed him a damp hand towel. “There’s clothes and a wash basin out there. It’s still warm. Come back once you’re done.”

“Why are you wasting my time?”

The man turned and reached for something behind the door. “Here.” He handed him fresh clothes.

“Fine.” Taliesin grabbed the clothes.

The water instantly turned a murky brown when Taliesin stepped in the wash basin. After a few minutes of washing, he was back at the doorstep.

The door opened before Taliesin had a chance to reach for the handle. “Hungry?” Bryndall asked.

Taliesin walked in and dismissed the question. “You filled the basin before I came, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t.”

“I did.” A woman circled around the table and placed a bowl of soup in front of Taliesin.

Wisps of savory steam emanated from the bowl. Taliesin swallowed. “I’m not hungry,” he lied.

“Oh.” The woman rubbed her forearms. “I’m sorry, I thought y—”

“Why did you tell me to come?”

Bryndall glanced at his daughter then back to Taliesin. “What happened last night?” Bryndall asked.

Taliesin stared back, unwilling to answer.

Bryndall continued, “I know they died, but I’m talking about—”

“They were slaughtered!” Taliesin banged on the table, but then let out a calming breath. “They were slaughtered li—like animals,” he said.

“How did you survive?”

“I-I know how to defend myself.”

“Against three Steelbrites?”

“They were distracted, Lei— she—” His voice choked. “She knows how to hold her own and—”

Something brushed his back.

“Don’t touch me!” He screamed, catching Seren’s arm.

She blinked back at him, as if he woke her from a dream. “I don’t know what came over me, I saw a— I don’t know.” She stroked a bracelet, her face relaxed soon after.

“The Core.” Bryndall said.

Taliesin let go of her arm. “Is that what you wanted?” The calmness left his voice. “That’s right, I’m branded! My soul is branded. My father tried beating it out of me every night, but it *obviously *didn’t work. And now my friends are dead because my father was too much of a coward to finish it.” After a few breaths, Taliesin calmed himself. “Lei, Var, they didn’t know. For awhile, even if it was eating leaves, soup, or rodents to survive, for once, I knew what it was like to live without knowing how much of a stain I am to Taeleera. But I still don’t understand, how do you know about my Core?”

“I was there with your father.” Bryndall glanced to Seren and stroked his chin. “I was there with Sarke. We overthrew Gaerin, and I was there when our new nation took in the Hamsarians.”

“I see.” Taliesin slumped back in the chair.

“Gaerin?” Seren asked, as she sat at the table and fiddled with a spoon.

Bryndall stood and nodded towards the window. “It’s late. I didn’t ask you to come and chat.”

“Why did you ask me to come?” Taliesin asked.

He kept his stare on the window, and then went towards his room.

Taliesin pressed again. “I was talking to you.”

Still ignoring him, Bryndall opened the door and finally said, “Guilt, I suppose.” Then he retired into his room.

It was quiet again, and the hearths became only embers.

“I’m sorry about my father,” Seren rubbed at her harms. “I’m sorry about touching you as well.”

“It’s fine. Are you the ones that killed my friends?”

Seren flinched with the question. “Sorry?”

“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about.”

She pulled the chair that Bryndall once sat in. “Would you mind telling me about them?”

Taliesin eyed her. “I would. You must’ve seen them in the tavern, and in passing by the inn.”

“I think I have. There was a woman, and a man whose face feels too familiar. But I can’t place it with a name.”

“You know Varith?”

“Varith…” she said to herself. “Elias’ old flame. Yes, yes, I remember him now. I’m sorr—urm—yes, I remember him. He was always kind to me.”

Taliesin smiled briefly. “He didn’t seem like the type to be kind. Especially to a woman.”

“Oh, but he was. Yes, I remember better now. He came by frequently before I left.”

“He would? For you? Are you sure you’re remembering the right man. He didn’t fancy—”

“No, no.” Seren quickly dispelled the idea and waved her hands. “Nothing like that. He would help with chores. Brushing Borus, bringing water from the springs, and maybe planks to repair siding or roofing. But he never talked, talked. It was always a question about my childhood or about father’s past. If my father ever told me, I’d happily tell him what I know.” Seren’s eyes glazed over. “You know, he always said the same thing when he left. Something along the lines of: Oh well, it can’t be helped. Ones memory is ones memory.”

“Why didn’t he just ask your father?”

“He did. Often even. Only once did my father agree. Now that I think of it, it was around the last time I saw him.”

“I see,” Taliesin said.

Seren took the bowl of soup, which was now barely warm, and moved it in front of Taliesin. “I made it, you know. It’s good, I promise. Not poisoned too.”

Taliesin laughed. He took the spoon that rested on the table and tried a bite. The soup, even barely warm, tasted like a day’s simmered onion soup with softened carrots, and smoked meat. Every time he’d swallow it down, he’d be desperate for another spoonful to fill what he’d eaten.

“I’ll leave you to it.” Seren yawned. “There’s more in the pot. Don’t worry about finishing it. But you’ll help me cook another tomorrow.” She walked away.

Before she fully disappeared, Taliesin called out with food still in his mouth, “Seren.” He swallowed. “Thank you.”

“I don’t mind the chores,” she said.

“For a meal and a story.”

She gave a nod and went into her room.

Talisin ate the rest of their soup that night. When he was full, or rather when the laddle scraped the pot, he rested on a large chair. The chair was positioned in front of the hearth, where it received a constant ebb and flow of warmth and the ever-present cold. He fell asleep with a bowl that rested on his lap, and with a thought that kept him half awake.

I wouldn’t have cared Varith, why’d you have to play the fool?

Someone kicked Taliesin’s foot. “Wake up,” Bryndall said.

Taliesin jolted upwards, not really sure where he was. The morning light opened up the home, so that it seemed bigger than it was the night prior—unrecognizably bigger. “Where am I?” he asked.

“You need to help my daughter, she’s already started on her duties.”

Taliesin grumbled, “And what will you do?”

“Why, I plan on basking in the sun and frolicking in the grass.” Bryndall kept his face like a stone. “Get up. You ate my soup.”

“It was Seren’s.”

Bryndall paused, then pierced his stare at Taliesin. “I remember Varith well, and the conversation we had. The last conversation we had.”

Taliesin jumped out of the chair. He made a fist and pointed at Bryndall. “I know what you’re doing.”

“You do?” Bryndall stroked at his chin. “Then you must know what I said to him. And then you must know how much it must’ve felt to stay by your side. Suffering for months on end, for what? Only to die for a fabrication.”

Taliesin swung his fist at the end of the sentence. “It’s not my fault!”

Bryndall caught his hand easily. His fingers wrapped around like vines on a branch. With a twist, the pain radiated up Taliesin’s arm and causeed him to falter onto his knees. “Seren’s at the edge of town. Out by the farmer’s for feed and vegetables for the stew here and the tavern.”

Taliesin was still on his knees when he asked, “Why can’t you tell me and let me be with peace, knowing it?”

Bryndall released Taliesin’s hand. “There are things that are headed this way.” He bowed his head. “There are things worse than Steelbrites, I’m afraid. And I’m more afraid that I’m as much to blame as you are. The thought of speaking it now… I know historians, scriblers, and choniclers would say it was my fault alone—and perhaps you were a product of it—no, you were a child, as much as Seren in every regard. My selfishness only paused the things that are to come. Let me have today, and I’ll tell you and Seren everything.” With that, he picked up his head. “Now get out. As I’ve said, I’m a selfish man, and I’m willing to die with this burden.”

“Fine.” Taliesin picked himself up, brushed himself off and left. Slamming the door behind him. He heard a sigh from Bryndall as he left—a long and weary sigh.

The sun was reaching towards it’s highpoint, and every shadow began to merge with its master. Taliesin searched for the beginnings of the farmland, and assumed it was in the part of Dunmouth he hadn’t been. He walked that way and found a small hut on the edge of open fields. Seren was seen as a sillouhette in the distance, pushing a wheelbarrow full of feed and root vegetables. She didn’t struggle, only moved in the way that was complacent with the task itself.

“I was told to help you,” Taliesin said as he reached her.

Seren made a sound, “Oh,” but didn’t drop the wheelbarrow. “That’s alright. It’s not heavy or anything. Maybe I’ve gotten used to it.”

“Your father, he told me that you would need help, but if you don’t… I’m not sure what to do with myself then.”

“I don’t mind the company,” Seren replied. She walked on to the cobble-road, and the wheelbarrow moved effortlessly across it. Besides the sparse squeaking from the wheels, it was a quiet day, with normal townsfolk banter and conversation mixing with their duties. “Doing work like this reminds me of when I was younger.”

“Your father made you work as a young child?”

“No—no. He’d have me stay in the wheelbarrow, and he’d whistle, or talk endlessly on the people he met in the tavern the night prior. He aches easily now, and since I’ve taken up his taskings. Actually, that was a few years ago. He fought me on this.” She smiled and shook her head as she thought of it. “I remember he said, ‘it’s not work for a child,’ I was fifteen then. So instead of arguing, I woke earlier than him, and I finished half of his work faster than he could then. It’s hard to imagine his pace now.”

Taliesin wondered what it’d be like, if he stayed in a place like Dunmouth. Walking this way, placed him in a daydream. What would it be like, walking without a place in mind, talking without worries of the next day? In the same daydream, his friends would speak to him in that way—maybe with quick banter and childish quips. He dismissed the thought and said,“What would you have to do today?”

“It’s not a lot today. Just this and I tend to Borus for the rest of the day. He’s a cranky bird if I don’t.”

“Have you flown him?”

“Yes.” Seren grinned. “More often than my father knows. Waking before him, has many benefits.”

“I was always the first to wake,” Taliesin admitted. “My friends, I shouldn’t say they were lazy—but they were… very unmotivated.”

“You must miss them.”

“I do. I know people die, from the blight, from hunger, and hardships I’ve been fortunate enough not to know. Do you think it makes me a bad person to wish they died that way instead?” Taliesin cleared his throat. “I mean, obviously, not dying at all would be best. But, I’d like to believe that’s what they would want, and that could be foolish to think that—self-serving too.”

Seren dropped the wheelbarrow near her home, and wiped the sweat off her neck and forehead. “Eventually, the blight will take us all, and everyone I know has accepted it.” She watched the people in Dunmouth. “I have. There’s comfort in that acceptance.” Her gaze settled on Taliesin. “In your regard, I wouldn’t say you were fortunate.” She frowned. “It must be lonely not knowing that acceptance.”

“I did accept it, not too long ago.”

“Oh—” Seren grimaced. “Yes, of course.”

Taliesin helped her unload the feed and vegetables into a wooden storage shed. They then brushed borus, and cleaned his feeding tub, and even his wash tub. He enjoyed that, cleaning himself, whipping up a small gust as he did so.

The two didn’t talk much beyond Seren’s corrective advice on how to do certain chores. “Make sure you brush this way,” she said. “Or Borus would hate it if you spilled the water,” and, “we’ll need to clean this.”

They worked like that until the sun finally set and they retreated back in the home to prepare supper. Bryndall had refilled the home’s water basin, and he had already started the pot with water. It was set over the fire, and it boiled with the scent of potatoes and carrots.

“Sit,” he told Taliesin.

Taliesin had just washed off his arms and hands from the work earlier. Eagerly, he sat as he was told. Bryndall placed a bowl in front of him.

“I thought I was preparing supper,” Seren said.

Bryndall shook his head. “Some nights—some nights, I like to imagine that I’m still the one that takes care of you.”

“That’s really sweet, but…” Taliesin tapped on the table.

Bryndall sat beside his daughter—who was busy blowing on her potato soup. “I’ve thought a lot about what I should tell you.” His voice trailed off as he glanced away, supposedly ruminating on the subject still.

“Shouldn’t be much to think about,” Taliesin said.

“Right.” Bryndall shook his head to break up his thoughts. “The details are too fuzzy to remember.”

“To the best of your ability,” Taliesin replied with a threatening stare.

Bryndall rocked back into his chair, then folded his arms. “I’m afraid there’s not much to say. Beyond what he’s already told you, that is.”

“What do you think he’s told me?”