Chapter 13: Departing for His Old Home
Breakfast was an assortment of eggs, bacon, and pancakes. The staff that served it were all wearing green collars. They seemed shy, maybe nervous, around Kashira, which made breakfast altogether awkward. Kashira might have been in some agreement because once all the food came out and was set up, she shooed them away.
Goren sat at the same improvised table as before and ate a few small pancakes; after the full meal last night and the earlier snack, his head felt a lot clearer. Some of last night, particularly getting the collar, as well as discussing things with Kashira, felt a little fuzzy in his memory. What was still apparent, despite how much he did not want to think about it, was her method for carrying him from her castle to Arieton. He made his thoughts focus on something else. I suppose it is the first time I have had two good meals in a row in about a week. It was several days walk from Feridan to Buetarn, and before that, his mentor had been dying, only to have it all topped off by an encounter with gnolls.
However, he also did not want to think about gnolls. I suppose that regular meals will come to an end for a time after this. I will not be able to eat while Kashira flies, and then we will have to fly somewhere once we leave the town again… He found that he wasn’t looking forward to that either. He dreaded the idea that there would be nothing to leave Buetarn with. Worse, he was afraid that they would be much too late. It might have been too late already when he arrived the day before yesterday.
Then, as if his down mood had been somehow heard, when a server checked on them, Kashira made a request. “I would like something packed away for lunch. I will depart right after breakfast, but I would like something for the road. Can you arrange that? Something we can tie to my other wrist.”
Goren felt a little pang of guilt as she corrected his assumption without him even mentioning it. He was quiet and finished his pancakes.
Joyra returned with a gem pendant. “This can be anchored to a collar as an accessory. A little magic can be used to dry the wearer.”
Kashira nodded with approval. “Does it clip on? You can hand it to Goren?”
Joyra nodded, “Of course!”
Goren was relieved that he would be dry, but this completely confirmed his suspicions about his travel arrangements, which caused him different anxiety. He accepted it and then put it on the collar himself.
Soon breakfast was over, and Goren was tying the large bag of food they brought to Kashira’s other wrist and packing his new sketchbook and things into the bracelet pack. Kashira’s nose pressed and rubbed against his shoulder a little as he pulled the drawstrings tight.
“I will walk you out of the city to where I can take off, and after that, I’ll hoard you for the flight.”
Goren felt himself flushing even though he knew it was coming. “What if we followed up on that other idea of getting you a saddle?”
She continued to nuzzle him. “I will consider it for the future, but we don’t have time for someone to make us one. I think that if you are going to find out about Buetarn, we should try to get there sooner rather than later.”
Kashira smiled as he sighed almost dramatically; she waited to see if he would say anything, but he just nodded. “Here, let me help you up.” She offered him an upturned paw. She felt that same warmth in her chest as he readily climbed into her paw. Then, she carefully lifted him to her shoulder as close as she could to her shoulder. He pushed off her paw and then caught hold of her mane and pulled himself up. She waited until he stopped wiggling on her shoulders and neck to settle securely on her before she started to walk.
Before she had taken many steps, he was already combing her mane down with his fingers, tugging gently at the tangles in the long silvery fluff. “Do you really think that there will be anything back there?”
Kashira made a soft hum. “I…” she hesitated but felt the truth was best, “…do not know, but I am hoping so. It would make more sense for them to take some captives, depending on what their culture is like, possibly even slaves.” She tried to speak softly, but her voice was much quieter than she meant it to be. Thinking about all this made a patch on her neck itch a bit.
His collar carried her soft voice to him just fine. “So, we go back to Buetarn, I just... walk up and talk to them? And do what? Ask them if they still have my family...? What would happen after that?”
“It depends on what we find when we get there, but you will ask for whoever you want back. They may just hand them over because you can reveal I am with you. If they do not, and are not intentionally too difficult, I will just try to buy them. Failing that, though, I will terrorize them.”
The wind shifted and brought a strong scent of cherry blossoms, even at this time of year. Kashira remembered the smell was persistent way back then too, though she never actually saw the trees. No petals drifted on the winter wind this time, but she’d seen it happen before.
Kashira felt a little relief as they neared the gate. Focusing on Goren helped her to avoid thinking about what had come in the past. “It… feels… off. If my family is there, then I would choose them, or friends, I guess, but… if neither, I feel like I ought to choose someone. The idea of choosing who might go free and who might suffer a fate of forced labor or worse for marauding gnolls…”
Kashira felt tightness in her chest, especially as he seemed to wilt forward into her mane, as if a heavy burden pressed down on him. She worried again that none of this was a good idea. “Right now, this is the way the world is; we do not have to like it, and we are lucky enough to not have to embrace it ourselves. Even though I cannot save them all, I can certainly help save some, which is better than none. It does mean that some will be lucky and some will be less lucky. If you find no one that feels right to pick, but you still want me to help someone, I can make those decisions.”
She wanted to justify it further, that she understood the gnolls probably had pressure to survive because of the situation north of the mountains. Taking all of what was left of Buetarn back would leave them no choice but to repeat what they had done somewhere else. The destruction that had occurred was most likely beyond her ability to fix or provide for… There were a lot of complicating factors that made it so she didn’t want to just rush in and choose sides.
Goren huffed. “All right.” There was a long silence as she exited the city, nodding to the guards. He pulled at her mane still. She waited and wondered what he was thinking about. She tensed some as he took a breath in and continued. “I feel… unreasonably lucky myself somehow. I didn’t die in the snowstorm, and you are so strong, I probably do not have to be afraid of anyone, not really. And you have been helping me so much with everything, but it’s only been a couple of days.”
Kashira hummed. “Well, for one, I can say that I genuinely like you, and that makes it easy.” She smiled as that got a flustered, puffy noise out of him. There was another moment of quiet as she walked to make her way out into the fields and off the main road. “It may have been luck, but you are not at fault for doing what you could to survive. You can blame gods or the randomness of life, but you must do your best to not try to imagine yourself as guilty or responsible for any of the things that happened. The winter has been harsh; there has been famine north of us, so that had a lot more to do with what happened to Buetarn than anything you or anyone there could have had to do with it.”
He sighed. “It might be easier if I were guilty of something somehow. I haven’t done anything special in all my life, but somehow, I am here with you and alive.”
Kashira laid down on her belly and tipped her body to the side, prompting him to turn and hop off her shoulder into the snow. He sank into it up to his hips with a little squeak that made her smile. What a cute noise. I adore him.
She waited as he waded closer to her; then she reached and scooped him up with her front paw and brought him to perch on the back of her other paw so that he was not standing in any more snow. “Well, perhaps you are an answer to my prayers; I wanted not to be alone, and then a storm brought me an adorable, fluffy, white-with-brown-spots, jayune artist who also needed me.”
He looked down, and she could tell that she had flustered him, but clearly in a mostly good way. He couldn’t even come up with what he wanted to say.
They did need to get going, but as she lowered her nose to him, he held onto her. It spread warmth from her chest to the rest of her, so she decided to just be still a few more minutes.
Lukka sighed as they finally arrived in the town. It was unearthly quiet. “I don’t want to be here,” she told her uncle one more time, as if she could just stop what she was doing and walk the days’ journey back home. It wasn’t the first time she had voiced this concern, but the grizzled brown gnoll just grunted.
She stared at him, and he clucked at the oxen dragging the cart. “What you want me to say, eh? Your mother was adamant. Your skills are needed here; your future husband too.”
She breathed out, feeling her cheeks puff a little bit. “But it’s depressing, don’t you think? How many broken hearts do you think are down this hill?”
“They aren’t gnoll-kind, so it doesn’t matter. They are whatever we need them to be alive or dead, what do you care? Don’t overcomplicate it,” he growled as if she had somehow threatened him personally by saying something like that.
“Yeah yeah,” she said as she hopped down from the cart to help get it down the hill, walking alongside the oxen. A cold breeze kicked up, cutting right through her dark gray and white fur. She scrubbed at her arms as if that would help to warm her up enough to ward it off, but it felt like it was also deep inside her too.