Page 28 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
Aislinn didn’t know what that meant. “Why does he come out here, do you think?”
“For the same reason you do. To feel.” Fort looked up at his silhouette. “For the same reason any of us do anything.”
Desperate to prove she was well enough to return to Afelcarreg, Aislinn overexerted herself after breakfast helping Luna clean up, ripped herself open again and was confined to her bed for the rest of the day, trying to recuperate.
She was not best pleased. She had never laid around doing nothing in herlife.She had no idea what you were supposed to do. Luna kept the door open and spoke to her as she was going about her daily tasks, and found a couple of racy Dwarven romances for her at one point, which certainly helped.
“Are these yours?” she asked at one point.
“Ya-huh,” she chirped. “Brought them with me when I left Avalinth. They’ve kept me company many a night.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Miss what?”
“Avalinth.”
Luna paused. “Yes,” she said. “I am content here—even happy, most of the time. I love the sky and the flowers and the animals—but Avalinth is like nothing else, and it is still home to me.”
“Why did you leave, then?”
“Because I would have missed the others more.”
Aislinn paused, wondering if now was the time to ask aboutwhythey all came to be here, or if the information would ever be offered.
“Besides,” Luna carried on, before she could form the question, “they would all have been hopelessly lost without me. Not one of them knows how to cook well or run a household.” She appeared in the doorway, brandishing a large bowl. “I’ve made a cake for later—would you like to lick the bowl?”
The next day, after an agonisingly long morning ‘taking it easy’ (and having blown through Luna’s saucy romances) Aislinn promptly declared she’d had enough and dragged herself to the stables to assist Caerwyn in caring for the wargis.
“You’re going to kill yourself,” Caerwyn remarked, expression stony.
“Death would be an adventure compared to the mind-numbing monotony of doing nothing for another day.”
“Do you ever slow down?”
“I’ll slow down when I’m dead!”
“You’ll be dead if you don’t slow down.”
“’Tis but a scratch.”
Caerwyn stared at her, eyes deep, as slick as river stones. “You were gored by an undead stag, Aislinn. There was… a lot of blood. If the homestead had been any further away…”
“Did I worry you?” she asked, certain she hadn’t.
Caerwyn did not reply.
“Wait, did I?”
“A little, perhaps.”
“We’d just met!”
“It is never pleasant to watch someone die.”
Aislinn stilled. “No,” she agreed, voice hushed, “it isn’t.”
She wondered who Caerwyn had lost, how many he’d watched die. She was almost certain he’d been there when his mother passed—almost certainsomethinghad happened that night—but his words spoke of multiple losses, of ones that hadn’t reached him quite so much and yet hurt him all the same.
