by Liv Savell
“Of course you will. I know you will. Anything you set your mind to…” She grinned once more and laced her fingers within Delyth’s shifting in a nervous manner. “We’re only staying in Moxous for a few days before heading to La’ Cante. You wrote that anytime we needed a place to stay… If it’s an imposition, I’m certain we can find an inn—”
Etienne reddened in a way that made Delyth think Alphonse had been right about the state of his rooms. She bit her lip to keep from chuckling.
“No, no. Of course, you can stay with me. I—um, I have a spare room.”
Delyth could see the wheels turning in his brain, trying to figure out if he’d have time to go home and clean.
“If you have more classes or other obligations, perhaps we could meet you there later?” the warrior asked, feeling as though he might need a helping hand.
Etienne grasped the straw with both hands. “Yes, excellent! I’ll have dinner brought up from one of the local inns when you arrive.”
Alphonse stepped forward to hug Etienne goodbye, agreeing to see him later. He provided directions to his lodgings, and then she and Delyth were out the door, back down the flights of stairs, and in the courtyard once more.
“Well. I suppose I can show you around the city or the market…” Brushing a bronze curl away from her face, Alphonse shaded her eyes. It was just past noon. They could find a street vendor and take a luncheon.
“Do you think his house is a wreck? Poor creature, I worry now that I may have done him a disservice by clucking after him all those years. He never learned to do it for himself…”
⥣ ⥣ ⥣
* * *
Alphonse watched Delyth disappear from Etienne’s sitting room with something like nervousness. The warrior had begged the use of the mage’s spelled bathtub to rid herself of the accumulated grime of a week’s flying and only streams to bathe in. Which then left him alone with Alphonse, the two of them seated in overstuffed armchairs and equipped with an after-dinner tea. She took a sip of hers, watching Etienne fidget in his armchair.
“So you truly love it? Your cottage near Nyth’draig?” he asked, finally.
“I love it so very much,” Alphonse agreed, the joy in her eyes spreading to light up her entire face. “I heal the villagers and travelers, and I tend to the plants and the chickens. I knit and sew, and Delyth has started teaching me to whittle wood, but I’m not very good at it.” She blushed a bit. “I read, and I write some. I make potions and dry my own herbs.”
Alphonse knew what it sounded like. As if she lived a quiet, uncomplicated life. Not some great mage from Moxous. Not the acclaimed healer she would have been in her own home village in Ingola. Etienne would likely have been bored to tears, but Alphonse was peaceful. At last. The reliable pattern of the days, healing the few sick and spending her hours with no voice but that of her own in her mind— No violence, no drinking blood, no sacrifices or Va’al or Enyo or any God-offspring—
It was perfect. Just to live in her own skin.
And, of course, there was Delyth. Her hands fisted on her knees, and Alphonse hastily took up her cup of tea. Sleepy tea. She doubted it’d work.
“It’s not perfect. Del still must serve Enyo, and she can be gone for long periods of time. I fear for her safety but,” Alphonse shrugged. “I’m happy.”
✶
Etienne nodded, twisting the teacup in his hands. It was good that Allee had finally found peace. Especially after the way he had upended her life that fateful spring in which Enyo had first returned.
Just a few years ago, no amount of time alone with Alphonse would have ever felt uncomfortable. But now… after all he had done…
It felt strange to sit within the same room, to share a meal and pleasant conversation. As though he would not feel the need to make up for his failings the rest of his life.
He took another sip of tea, filled with regret and a sense of longing for bygone times. Once upon a time, he would have never believed that he and Alphonse would have ended up so distant.
“I’m glad you’re happy,” he said, the ‘but’ hanging in the air between them despite not actually having been said.
He still regretted the events that had taken them to Thloegr, changing the courses they had set for themselves forever. Alphonse in particular. He had come to respect the gruff warrior Cabot that Alphonse loved, but still, he could not help but believe that all would have been better off if it had never changed. “Do you ever miss the futures we’d planned before… everything?”
Alphonse set her mug down with a clink. “No, I don’t think I do. Because I … I was just following the path that someone else set out for me. My parents told me to become a healer, so I did, and Moxous told me to take those classes, so I did, and then you told me to read that spell, and I did…” She smiled sweetly, teasingly almost. “The only choices I’ve really ever made myself were to return to Moxous to finish my schooling and then to find Delyth. It’s a different life, but it’s mine. Totally mine.”
Etienne didn’t understand. Not exactly.
His life had always felt his own, even as a child, misunderstood by the family he had been born to. His mind, his surety in his own eventual path had formed a foundation that was solely his. Moxous had been a tool to use, not another master.
And it had been that hubris, that unfailing belief in his own eventual greatness that had ultimately led to his worst mistake, the summoning of Enyo.
Still, he nodded anyway. If Alphonse felt as though she had found the same fit in her Wildlands village as he was striving for at the school, then he should be happy for her.
He motioned around the rooms he lived in. “Sort of like this is mine.”
“Precisely. Though my home is a bit cleaner…”
Etienne snorted and looked around his home: tall ceilings, shelves for all his books and scrolls. A hearth in every room and glossy glass tiles in the bathing rooms and kitchen. Sure, it was a little cluttered, but he still thought it looked nice.
“Are you happy here, Etienne? I rather thought you would have become a traveling sorcerer, not rooted to one place.”
Etienne smiled sardonically. Hadn’t he gotten enough traveling in that year or more of traipsing through the Wildlands? Then again, he supposed there were merits to moving wherever he could find the information for his next study…
No. That life was a thing of the past, gone along with Allee’s career as a notable healer.
“I have a purpose here,” he said. “Giving the students of Moxous moral guidelines rather than just power and school rules.”
He would make it so that students would not repeat his mistakes, too caught up in their own ascension to pay heed to consequences. It would be his life’s legacy. A better Moxous. Rather than new discoveries.
And was he happy?
No. He didn’t think so.
But it was enough.
“I do miss you, though,” he said with a small smile. “How close we used to be.”
The healer reached across the distance between them and placed her hand atop of his. “I miss you as well, brother,” she murmured, squeezing gently as though to convey the truthfulness of her statement. “If you ever grow bored of Moxous, you could come to my home. Meet my ladies. Sylvie wouldn’t mind another human to boss around.”
“Ah, yes.” Etienne smiled. “The chickens.”
He looked down at Alphonse’s hand, laid over his. Small as ever. Unchanged, even. Despite all that had happened. He hadn’t ever truly lost her—not even the darkest moments of their journey to Thlonandras or the events that followed.
And maybe they would never be as close as they once had been.
But they were still family.
“That sounds good. Maybe during the winter break. If that’s alright with you, sister.”
“Truly?” Her hands tightened all the more, and then she tugged Etienne into another hug. “I would want nothing more than to see you for the winter solstice!”
❀
With a muffled creak, the door to Etienne’s home sailed open. A rich voice trilled, “Etiii? I’ve come to drag you from your work. Where are you, thoughtful flower?” and Alphonse yanked back from her embrace with the mage to see an astounding man standing in the doorway with an armful of roses in the crook of one elbow, and a bottle of wine in his other hand. He was incredibly fit, with mahogany hair and skin and dancing, blue-black eyes. His white shirt was entirely unbuttoned, revealing a chiseled chest and well-formed abdominal muscles. Alphonse could not think of a single reason why anyone would be bursting into Etienne’s home, let alone a man who looked as though he were a model for the art school sculptors. How had he even gotten in? Was the door unlocked, or did he have a key?
An odd sound of surprise escaped her lips at the same moment that Etienne made a strangled sort of gasp. Both brother and sister struck dumb; they just stared at the stranger, whose initially seductive expression was changing into one of confusion. “Oh, ah… I didn’t realize you had company.”
“Allee?” Delyth’s voice came from the spare bedroom, tension making it sharp. She must have heard Alphonse’s squeak of surprise when the stranger came in.
Peeling her gaze off the man with a god-like physique, Alphonse noted that Etienne’s blood pressure was rising, his face a darker shade of red than the roses the half-dressed man had brought. “Jacques, I— I forgot!” he sputtered as Delyth padded into the room. While her hands were empty of weapons, Alphonse saw them fisted, ready for battle.
“Uh,” the man, presumably, Jacques, seemed to recover faster than the rest of them, smiling broadly and covering his bare chest with the wine bottle. “Hello, you must be Etienne’s friends? I’m Jacques, I’m also his— er— friend.”
“Oh,” Alphonse said.. She had never known Etienne to make friends, but she supposed he would now that he worked at Moxous. “Do you work at the school too?”
“Moxous? Oh, ha, no. I’m a florist,” Jacques gestured towards his bouquet of roses in explanation, and Alphonse nodded as if she understood. But she didn’t. Etienne, who had gone paler than his usual alabaster, did not say a thing.
“Are you doing a study with flowers? Perhaps a botany experiment?” He usually found herblore and botany boring, but maybe he had found an interesting spell or paper on the topic.
“A study on flowers?” If possible, the question only seemed to confuse Etienne. “No. I’m rewriting the Moxous curriculum, remember?” He glanced at Jacques and reddened again but didn’t provide her with more explanation.
Alphonse felt Delyth behind her and looked up into blue eyes with confusion. The warrior placed a hand on each of her shoulders, smoothing outwards and down her arms. She leaned over and pressed a kiss to the top of Alphonse’s head, then brought her lips to the healer’s ear as though to press a kiss there as well. “Annwyl, I think they’re lovers.”
The healer glanced askance at the florist, who had taken the opportunity of her distraction to button his shirt. Etienne and a florist? Etienne with anyone at all clashed with her understanding of him, for no one person could possibly be as interesting as his studies. “But—”
“Jacques, would you like help pouring the wine?” Delyth cut in smoothly, saving Alphonse from further awkwardness as she stepped forward to take the bottle from the man’s grip. “You’ll have to show me where the glasses are, though.”
The shameless smile Jacques gave Delyth was enough to convince Alphonse of the nature of his relationship with her brother, and the healer felt herself keeping her eyes firmly averted from Etienne. “So… ah…” Alphonse struggled to find the right words.
“I know. He’s quite… symmetrical. But he keeps coming around, so I suppose he enjoys my company.”
“Yes, I noticed he was very developed.” Alphonse tried to keep her face straight as the words came out, but a breathless giggle escaped all the same. The tension broke, and Etienne’s brow arched sardonically.
“So I have found.”
They were both laughing as Delyth and Jacques returned, wine glasses in hand. With the initial shock over, the four spent the next hour in amicable conversation. It wasn’t long, though, before Delyth started to fade, yawns interrupting her speech. It had been quite a long flight. Eventually, she seemed to give up on staying awake. “Is it too early to sleep? We have a ways to go tomorrow.”
“It’s never too early to go to bed,” Jacques’s rich voice brought a smile over Etienne’s face.
Alphonse stood hastily. “Well, it was very nice meeting you, Jacques. Unless you’ll be here for breakfast?” The two men exchanged a look and the florist only gave a noncommittal shrug.
“Goodnight,” the warrior drawled, cutting off any more strained conversation, her hand at Alphonse’s elbow. Together, they turned to the spare bedroom to sleep.
⥣ ⥣ ⥣
* * *
Handing over the coins to the street vendor, Alphonse donned her newly purchased sun hat with a grateful sigh. She tied the strings about her jaw, looked out across the bay where several ships were coming into the harbor. La’ Cante had a wonderful sea breeze that smelled of brine and whipped her hair into a bird's nest bundle of curls. The sun kissed her cheeks until they glowed.
Alphonse knew she could have been happy in a place like this. La’ Cante was not so different from Port Carcarac, where her friends from Moxous had settled. Now she was all the more happy to be walking alongside Delyth as they headed for the docks, where Brande had written he worked.
“Brande wrote he worked on a ship called Dancer. I think that’s a pretty name for a ship, don’t you?” The healer turned to peer up from beneath her hat and smiled up at her paramour. “Have you ever traveled by boat?”
“By boat?” Delyth blinked and reached for Alphonse’s hand.“Um, no. I’ve never even been on a boat. Dancer is a pretty name, though not as pretty as Alphonse. They should have named their boat after you.” She bumped the smaller woman with their clasped hands. “It shouldn’t be hard to find if this is anything like Aberdwyr. We’ll just ask a few sea-types once we get to the docks—they’ll know all the different ships that anchor here regularly.”
“Sea-types?” Alphonse’s cheeks warmed at the compliment. “What, precisely, is a sea type?” Of course, she knew what a sea-type was, but it seemed a silly thing to say, especially for Delyth, and so Alphonse giggled. “Are you a ‘sky-type’? What am I? A...A…” She couldn’t think of the type someone else would see her as. Besides, perhaps meek. Two years ago, that would have seemed like an insult. Now she was glad to be quiet and reserved. Soft. She had earned that softness. It wasn’t a title to wear with shame, but instead to embrace and embody. “A reading type?”
As they walked along the docks, Delyth gained her fair share of looks, though no more than that. No insults, no one blanching in fear or pulling children away. The citizens of La’ Cante had the largest population of Cabot Alphonse knew of, so they were used to the unusual and different. Even now, Alphonse could see men and women alike walking past, carrying baskets of fish or eels, with webbed fingers and slits in their necks that she knew would allow for breathing underwater.
Brande hadn’t been that type of Cabot, but he was undoubtedly kin to the seafaring people.
༄
“Hmm… How about my type?” Delyth said, her lips quirked in the sort of smile that one simply couldn’t help. A little awestruck. Alphonse was grinning up at her, amber eyes framed by her curls and the cute sun hat she wore, and for a moment, Delyth was standing in the middle of that forgotten stretch of Thloegr road, meeting the healer for the first time all over again.
Delyth hardly noticed the stares people directed towards her but found herself in the novel position of being the one staring. She tried to look surreptitiously, conscious of the discomfort such attention could cause. Still, it was remarkable to be around so many others like her. Or wildly unlike her, but still different from most humans.
Delyth almost forgot their purpose in her interest but reined
it in. She would get to meet and talk to some of these people when they got to Brande. So, tearing her gaze from the other’s along the docks, the warrior stopped a likely-looking sailor and asked him for directions to the ship they were looking for. He responded kindly and pointed the way with long, webbed fingers.
True to his word, they found it near the end of the docks, a graceful, three-masted craft with elegant lines.
“Dancer seems an apt name,” Delyth told Alphonse, though she didn’t move to step aboard. Her belly turned a little with nerves. Should they wait here? Hail the ship? It wasn’t as though they could knock…
❀
“Who gets to name the ships, anyway?” Alphonse asked as she watched some workers in a small dingy nestled alongside Dancer.
Delyth shrugged. “I guess the people who build them.”
The workers were scraping away barnacles and other debris. It looked like grueling work, especially with the noon sun overhead. Occasionally, one would plunge into the ocean waters only to reemerge and haul himself back into the dingy to resume work.
She knew that the least human-like Cabot would work these types of jobs. Menial and laborious. Brande had said in his letters ‘ship maintenance’. The healer suspected this was it. Stepping closer to the edge of the pier, Alphonse squinted before steeling herself to call out. It still made her uncomfortable to be loud in public, but after all, this was a friendly hail. “Brande?!”
One of the figures below looked around, and even from where she stood, Alphonse could see him smile. He waved and spoke to his companions before diving overboard. “Oh goodness, he’s coming right away. I never saw him swim— Delyth, look how fast he is! That’s incredible. Do you think he can move through the water so easily because of his skin?” Fascinated, Alphonse watched as Brande came to a small ladder and hauled himself up onto the pier. She hadn’t forgotten how frightening Brande looked, with his translucent skin and wide, inhuman eyes. He was smiling so that every one of his sharp teeth was on display.