Michellin

Wanderers

Kire almost laughed aloud at his answer to her. ‘Tag along’ was an understatement. She squeezed his hand gently as she shook it before letting go. She waited for the Kartaian to rise, noting with amusement that he had as much of a fondness for being roused too early as she did. “Aw. I’d like to disagree. The wine wasn’t bad at all,” she commented, grinning as she stood up, bracing against the wall. “I’m sorry to wake you, but I won’t be bothering for much longer. I’m heading home in a little bit, and I’d just like to say my farewells now before I change my mind and drink the whole week away here.” She would have shaken the elf’s hand, or even offered an embrace, but he looked like the biggest grumpy cat curled up in bed the way he was. “Thank you for the hospitality. Hopefully your two new additions don’t give you too big of a headache. I’ll come visit when I can.”

After Envy acknowledged her goodbye, Kire turned, about to leave, then glanced at Ruli again. She offered a small smile and raised her hand in one more farewell before walking out of Envy’s chamber. Afterwards, she hunted down Ysaryn, told her she had just been to Envy’s and saw Ruli there. “Take care, Chieftess. Hopefully it won’t be too long before I come back and see you.” Like with Ruli, she offered her hand to shake. Finally, she found Gavin still in the kitchen, though much more awake than earlier. “You.” She looked seriously at him.
“You’re going,” he commented. He gave her a small smile. “See you next time, then.”
Kire nodded. “Be good. Alright?”
“I’ll try.”
“That’s the most we could ever do,” she said.

She walked out to the forests one more time, taking her time. She wondered for a moment how Zeke was, what Aeron was doing. Finally, after wandering alone and savoring the peaceful mountain air, Kire opened a portal for home.

It was midday in Amria, too, when she stepped out, winded, into the manor Elva had kept as lady of the Northern provinces. Instead of her own room—or, more properly, the room Elva kept for Kire’s use whenever she returned there—Kire emerged in a library just outside Janes’s room. Her cousin, who had been spending the day reading reports and, as was typical of her, frowning in thought, immediately stood at first sight of the blue portal.
“Good gods! Kire! What happened? Here I was preparing a eulogy for you,” she snapped, then stopped, seeing Kire’s face. Tears were falling from her already red eyes, and she stumbled towards Jan, pulling her into a trembling embrace, burying her face against her shoulder. “Kire?” she asked, her voice much less harsh this time.
Kire only held tighter, her body shaking with sobs. “He’s gone. Finally. He’s gone, Jan. I—I—” I almost died, she thought, unable to say it out loud. I almost lost you all.
Jan returned the embrace. “Tell me later, Kay. Just rest for now.” That could wait. All of it: the questions she had about what had happened in the other world, her worries—and the reports she had been reviewing. For now, they were just two cousins reunited. If the last six months taught Jan anything, it was to savor any moment that Kire came back home alive.

Wanderers

Gavin rubbed his eyes, then blinked at the elf. “Oh. Tea. Yes. Okay.” Immediately the smell of it filled the kitchen, and his eyes widened, watering slightly. He looked down at the cup, watching the steam rise from it as the strong smell filled his nostrils. When the elf spoke to him, his lips parted; he had anticipated some confrontation, now that they were alone, but this was a surprise. “Thank you.” He forced himself to look into her eyes. “And—I’m. I’m sorry.” He bent his gaze to the ground again, knowing those words weren’t enough to make up for everything. He picked up the cup, did his best to keep his face straight, and took his first sip. “Oh—huh.” He raised his eyebrows before drinking more, though slowly. “That’s not bad—not that I thought it was bad—errr…” Gavin stammered, hoping the elf wouldn’t take offense and stab him over morning tea.

Kire stepped quietly into Envy’s room, then almost jumped when she noticed Ruli already awake inside. She immediately noted his gesture though and nodded, practically tiptoeing in to sit beside him. “Fun night out?” she whispered, smirking at him. “I was hoping to catch him awake. I’ll be leaving soon, wanted to say goodbye properly.” She looked at him, then smiled. “Hey. Thanks for not shooting me in the head with that bow my first night. And for everything else, of course.” She paused, then extended her hand to him to shake his.

Wanderers

Kire listened, brow furrowed in concentration as she did her best to focus on Ysaryn’s words. She laughed softly, shaking her head again as Ysaryn tugged on it. “Dunno what I want. Stupid, right? I guess that’s the problem,” she said, meeting her wolf smile with her own smirk. “Maybe you can visit my home sometime. This is not a bad place to stay, though.” She went thoughtful for a while, thinking it over. “I want to come back here. See more of you, and everyone else. Even Ruli, though he might not be too happy to see this face again too soon, right? Let’s start with that,” she said after a while, reaching up to gently touch Ysaryn’s hair, her own fingers brushing against the elf’s temple before flopping back down onto the grass, her eyes already closed. “Too fuckin’ sleepy to move,” she said, giggling again. “My pillow is too nice.” She turned her head, kissed Ysaryn’s lap, and let sleep take over.

She woke up in the morning a few hours after sunrise, which was a surprise to her, though not a pleasant one. “Uuuuuugh.” Kire cradled her head for a few moments, her eyes squeezed shut. “You’re too early! Go away,” she sneered at the sun in her own tongue, followed by a string of swears as she crawled on all fours towards the stream. She almost dove straight into the water, but luckily had enough balance not to completely fall right in. Sloppily, she splashed water all over her face and hair. It was only when she had woken herself up enough for the world to stop spinning that she noticed Ysaryn had stayed outside beside her. “Hey. Good morning,” she murmured softly, smiling at the elf. She wiggled her torso a bit as she sat. It wasn’t completely healed just yet, but Kire felt it was coming along decently. Though she had planned to wait until evening, she missed home, and she’d rather leave now than build up her reluctance the longer she tarried. “I suppose I have to get ready to leave now and say my goodbyes. Envy first.” Bits of last night came to her, and she remembered how the elf had stayed by her all night, her and her wolfish smiles, and her fingers in her hair. Kire blushed a bit, smiling. “Thank you for last night.”

When Kire went back through the kitchen, she found that Gavin had already beat her to the coffee. He was staring at an empty spot on the wall, his eyes red, his hair even more unruly than it had been yesterday. “You didn’t sleep here, did you?” Kire asked.
“Huh?” Gavin said, not quite awake yet. He sipped his coffee, then looked at them. “Hello.”
Kire snickered, then walked past him to get herself a cup, patting his head as she went past. He didn’t even bother to stop her. “No I didn’t sleep here,” he finally said, though he was facing Ysaryn. Kire shook her head as she carried her cup with her to the main chamber to see if the Kartaian was awake.

Wanderers

“Ha! I win!” Kire declared, raising her glass while still on the ground and promptly dropping it with drunken clumsiness.
“I’m still here, you know,” Gavin said. “And why is it a competition?”
“You’re not even drinking a lot! I’ve been counting!” Kire whined.
“Yeah? Alright Empress, how many did I have?”
“Too few!”

Gavin shook his head, a motion that made him dizzy. “Ugh. Alright. You win. I’m going to bed.” He gave a nod to Ysaryn before standing on wobbly legs to go back to the caverns. He heard the echo of Kire shouting “victory is mine!” right before he stepped back into the kitchen.
Kire dissolved into giggles once more as she carefully twisted so that she was laying with her back on the ground, looking up into Ysaryn’s face. “Heyy, Chief,” she said, grinning wide. “I like that. It kinda tickles.” She closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation of the elf’s fingers on her scalp, feeling herself drift to sleep. “You smell like rain over the sea at dawn,” she slurred, before falling silent again for a few moments.

“Hey, can I tell you something? I…don’t know if I want my throne back,” Kire murmured, eyes glazed as she opened her eyes to look up at Ysaryn. “What kind of Chieftess is that, right?” She chuckled a bit, softly shaking her head, looking fondly into her pink eyes, trying, and failing, to fight sleep.

Wanderers

Kire was feeling sleepy from the wine, and she had a lazy grin on her face, vaguely listening to Ysaryn question Gavin about his age. She snickered when Gavin said he was twenty, and she snorted, teasing the lad about how she didn’t quite believe him. He could be older, too, if he’s not sure. There was a chance he could have some of the Amrian lifespan, but there was also a chance that he’d live like a human who wasn’t Amrian at all. She explained as best she could how Amrian lifespans worked, and that Gavin, if he wasn’t fully Amrian, would be one of the exceptions. “Hey! Much old? Me?” She gave Ysaryn a mock frown as she reached for the elf’s wiggling fingers, grinning. “I am in the prime of my youth where I’m from, excuse me. And you know very well I can keep up with you, young lady,” she added with a wink and a laugh.

She looked from her to the exasperated Gavin before her gaze rested on Ruli, falling silent, her face solemn. Not too long ago they were at each other’s throats in Ziad, and now here they were. He still seemed to her to carry something so heavy inside of him, which she accepted he probably wouldn’t tell her about. If she was going home and wouldn’t be staying too long even for visits, it may not matter, anyway. The thought somehow saddened her, in much the same explicable way she felt when she and Ruli were talking back in the future settlement. She wondered if she would ever see him unburdened by whatever it was that hounded him. She hoped she would, someday.

Carefully, albeit swaying a bit, she sat up, refilled her glass, and raised it. “Can’t have drinks without a proper toast, yes?” she said, and against better judgment standing up to do it, her right arm extended. Gavin looked from her face to her feet, hoping she wouldn’t topple over and fall on him. “Hem-hem. Hey, Gavin, raise your damn glass. Alright, so. To the future prosperity of your people,” she said to Ruli, “and to yours,” she said to Ysaryn. “And you two, may you enjoy your new home and your new freedom,” she turned to Rab and Gavin then. “And as for our enemies and the darkness they cast upon our past, well, they can all be well and truly fucked.” She grinned gleefully then, then drank deeply from her glass, draining it in one go. “Oh. Okay. Gotta sit down now.”

And by sitting down, she meant sinking down clumsily onto her knees before toppling over sideways with a yelp. Lying down on her side, she cradled her spinning head, giggling, then moaning from dizziness and the dull ache on her torso.
“Uh.” Gavin looked awkwardly from her to the others. “Cheers. I guess?”

Wanderers

“Ah.” Kire sat up with a grunt, narrowing her eyes at the both of them as she leaned towards them, frowning. “I see how it is. I’m surrounded by miscreants!” She held her face in a serious expression for only a second before she snorted and burst out in giggles. “Oh, fine, fine, fine. I guess I can’t judge. I’m friends with pirates after all. I got a whole shipful of pirate friends back home, an all-woman crew. Some used to be slaves. Some I knew from years and years ago. Just after I got my crown. Mm. I was—sixty? Fifty? I can’t remember ‘zactly—”
“You’re what?” Gavin sputtered.
“—and they’d raid slavers’ ships or help me fight the Gemini. What? You heard me. I’m—hundred? A hundred. You didn’t know Amrians lived long and aged slower? They didn’t tell you?”
“Do I look like this is old information to me?” Gavin asked.

Kire lay back down, head rested on her interlocked fingers. “Huh. Weird. You’re weird. I don’t even know how you ended up here.” She sighed in a huff, then looked up at the night sky. Though her vision was a little compromised by now, Kire smiled, still enjoying the view silently. She raised a hand, tracing out made-up constellations. “The stars are different here,” she murmured, smiling softly, fascinated.

Wanderers

Kire blinked, going even redder when Ysaryn spoke to her, nevermind what she actually said, though she did return Ysaryn’s grin. “You silly girl,” she said, smirking, before hearing Ruli’s plea. “Why?” she said, turning to him, still grinning.
“Envy said you were smooth, you’ll manage. Oh wait—he was joking.” She shrugged before turning back to Ysaryn and giggled, then winced. “Oww. Okay, not too much,” she said, chuckling at herself as she clutched her sides. “You’re quite the fighter. Whoever you choose for your mate’s gotta keep up with you. Heh.” Kire’s mind went to that morning where she caught the elf bathing, and if it was possible for her to be any redder she would have looked like a tomato right then.
“What did I get myself into, holy gods,” Gavin muttered, though he did continue to stare as he drank.

“And you! You better be on your best behavior while you’re in here,” Kire said, rounding on Gavin, pointing at his forehead. “I might not be back for a while, and I better not see you, I dunno, up to no good. Pickpocketing, I dunno what you’ll do with your spare time.”
“Just because I used to be a thief doesn’t mean I’ll do that for fun!” His voice sounded shriller than he had intended, and Kire dissolved into fits of laughter, collapsing backward, even as she simultaneously also clutched her sides.

Wanderers

“Aw don’t be like that,” Kire said, pouting at Ruli at his comment about her hair. “I was teasing. You are actually fine. I mean, you look good. I mean well. Oh no, I meant the first one.” Kire wrinkled her nose at what she had just said, then touched her own scalp. “I miss my long hair sometimes. It’s just so hard to keep neat when you’re on the run and trying not to be assassinated. I love your hair,” she said, pointing to Ysaryn. “And your eyes. So pretty, ugh.” Kire drank a bit more, cocking her head to the side when Ruli made a comment about the visions.

“Well I don’t know why it happens,” Kire said, pouting, waving her hands and almost poking Gavin and Ysaryn in the face, the former muttering a frustrated ‘woman!’ before gulping down more liquor. Kire narrowed her eyes when she saw Ysaryn lean and mutter something to Ruli in Elvish. “Hey, what did she say? What did you say?” Kire asked Ysaryn and Ruli in that order. Gavin almost choked on his wine, snickering.

“Okay. Signatures? Signatures. You,” she said, this time intentionally poking Gavin in the face.
“What.” Gavin swatted her finger away.
“Used to stink with that bloody blood magic. But it’s changed a bit. Now you kinda smell like coreen—corra—corian—that green herb thing I’m shit with herbs don’t correct me. Now Envy? He’s kinda like um,” she gestured with one hand while drinking with the other, “flowers. Like the ones you find in the desert. Desert flowers. And incense—no, tobacco, or kinda like both. Make sense, though faint. I smelled a little of it through his wards. If I Shadow-walked with him or if he did the Touch thing, it would be a sharper smell. And you, milady,” she turned to Ysaryn, grinning. “Mm. I need my memory refreshed.” She held out her hand to the elf. Gavin raised an eyebrow as he watched.

Wanderers

Kire sat beside Ysaryn, amused as she watched the elf question her drunkenly about Amria. Kire wasn’t quite sure if she could explain it right, given that the drink was getting in the way, but at the moment she didn’t particularly mind. Not bad, Kire thought. When the Ring was still new to her and she couldn’t still control how she was going to expend its energy, she couldn’t figure out why she sometimes wasn’t getting drunk while on the drink. Turned out, the Ring would ‘heal’ her from drunkenness on those occasions. This past six months, she had figured out how to help it expend poison from her body, but it was a much more painful process. Tonight, though, definitely getting drunk.

Gavin was quiet as they drank together, feeling like the odd one out. These people were the closest he could have to amiable acquaintances, but while he was glad to be here, drinking and relaxing, he didn’t have much to offer by way of conversation, not without bringing down their mood. He looked up, surprised, when Ysaryn addressed him, though the surprise turned to puzzlement when he couldn’t understand what she was getting at. When Rulitus translated, Gavin cleared his throat. “Healing. Asked Envy to teach me sometime, when I’m ready. In the meantime, I’ll be staying here and helping around. He mentioned needing someone to help be a go-between for the two refugee camps here.”

Her next question made him put down his cup. He shook his head at Rulitus, meaning to indicate that he didn’t mind the question. “A little, yeah. Even under the haze of control, it’s hard to forget an escapee.” He pointed his thumb at Rab. “I remembered him being around during that time. Though, when the—when I’m asked to do the things in the caverns, it’s like I’m drugged, myself. It’s sometimes like watching somebody else from a window do those things, even though it’s your body, your hands.” Gavin frowned at his hands as he said that, then drained his cup. Kire took it, put more in, and set it down in front of him.

“He got my heart working again after it stopped. Not bad for a blood mage,” Kire said, mussing up Gavin’s hair. The lad grimaced and tried to shoo her hand away, which made her mess it up even more. “There. Now it’s almost as bad as your hair,” she said, teasing Ruli. Then, frowning as she tried to concentrate, she recalled the vague memories she had during that brief space of her ‘death’. “You see some really weird shit when you’re dead, ‘pparently,” she slurred. “Some of it’s like the weird shit I see after you do the whole thing with your hands. Your Touch. Whatever you call it. Are you sure that’s normal? Like my mind puts in some weird detail that wasn’t even there, and I definitely haven’t seen it before. Must be because I’m not from this world. Did you know your signature smells like cinnamon? Isn’t that weird? Don’t ask me why, I don’t make the rules.”
Gavin’s eyes widened at the string of sentences she had just babbled out almost without pause in between. “Oh. You’re that kind of drunk,” he muttered.

Wanderers

Gavin noticed the way Ysaryn stared. He couldn't hood her gaze and looked down at his feet. "I'm glad to know that," he said softly, his hands in his pockets.
Kire looked between the two, wondering if his decision to stay here would result in any further complication between them. Though Gavin hadn't been at fault for what he was forced to do, she also understood if Ysaryn didn't feel comfortable around the Gemini. And Gavin had been under control for months; he may seem to be adjusting relatively well now, but who knew what would manifest later on? What kind of person would he become, now that he was free?

Kire turned her attention to Ysaryn, realizing from the elf's expression and response that she hadn't exactly explained Amria or her abilities to her. "Not for good," she reassured her. "I would still visit now and then. Especially to make sure this one kept out of mischief." She pointed a thumb at Gavin, who winced at the statement. "Amria may be in another world, but I have my own way of getting around. Still," she added, grinning, "I'm glad you'll be here for the send-off."

Kire bent carefully over the crate, picking a bottle, already looking giddily at the cork. "Also useful for when you vomit. Less useful if you fall in and are too drunk to get up from the water," Kire put in at Ruli's idea, the look on her face suggesting this may have actually happened.