Everyone had been oddly quiet after what Lux said. They supposed it was only fair, considering they’d shattered a significant portion of their collective worldview with very little regard for any of it. In Lux’s defense, this didn’t come as anything new to them; it came as long awaited confirmation. Tobia, on the other hand, looked like he was one deep breath away from getting too much oxygen to his head and passing out.
It made the uncomfortable feelings inside of Lux stir again, and that was stupid. They’d had their reason to keep quiet about the song, no matter how crucial of a puzzle piece it might be. Tobia was just a stranger from the capital, of all places. He had a target on his back, painted bright enough that a Favorite had pointed a magical pistol at his head, and Lux had a promise to their people they’d already broken once.
Still, he had saved their life back in the temple. Thinking about the arc his blade had described above their head before it collided with the automaton, Lux couldn’t help but wonder if, maybe, it was time to start trusting him as much as he seemed to trust them. Tobia might have been a wolf, but he didn’t have to be a liar too.
The one to break the silence and save Lux from the tangled mess of their own thoughts was Deirdre. She nudged Wynn, who had been staring into the middle distance with an unfocused-yet-contrary expression, and she pointed at the last verses of the song. “About the ‘ten wide trees’,” she said to them, “do you think it might be those?”
As if dragged back into reality, Wynn seemed to jolt back awake at her words. “... Huh,” they said, to which Lux retorted, “What the hell do you mean, ‘huh’.”
They might have put a tad too much vitriol in the words but, to be fair, they’d been searching for those trees for years, making no progress whatsoever. Also, Wynn was still the brat who had brandished a pistol in their face. Lux was entitled to a modicum of animosity, given the situation said pistol had landed them in. All they could do, after all, was ignore the pangs of nostalgia that had started creeping up on them since they’d sent the letter home and hope Daphne and Granny wouldn’t worry themselves sick.
“Back when Drust first found out I was a Favorite,” Deirdre said, sounding small, “he took us to this forest east of town. There was a place there he thought I could try to interface with, but it turned out it wasn’t anything from the Old Times. Not that we could have activated it either way, considering it was a spell designed for four people.”
Wynn muttered something pretty colorful under their breath about how much of an incompetent prick Drust had been, but they prompty stopped after Deirdre gave them a light swat over the head. Their gaze still darted to the blood that stained her clothes, even if only for a moment, and Lux watched as fury turned their eyes darker.
“I never gave it much thought after that,” Deirdre continued, “but I remember the place was surrounded by ten huge trees. Wynn even went around counting them, talking my ears off about how big they were. It was really rather sweet.”
The really rather sweet brat in question made a mortified noise, which seemed to sail right over their sister’s head considering the placid, melancholic smile she was giving them. At the very least the exchange seemed to have made Tobia feel better, judging by the amused glance he threw Lux’s way.
Relief tingled in their veins at the sight, but they clamped down the sensation with a surge of annoyance. The answer to what they’d been looking for all their life danced in front of their eyes like a mirage, not quite out of sight yet not quite close enough that they could finally grasp it in their hands. Now wasn’t the time to indulge in any distractions, lest it slip away from them. If they could force themself not to think of their family, they should be able to brush off Tobia’s attentions with nothing more than a shrug.
“Would you be able to locate the place for us?” Marion asked. She had already spread on the table the map she and Lux had been poring over for the past couple years and now she was carefully smoothing out the creases, looking a little smug for having brought it with her in the first place.
The two of them had ticked off each nearby area they got to explore, gradually filling the map with their own marks as they came back from yet another failed expedition into the woods. It felt all kinds of surreal to finally have the information they needed delivered to them on a silver platter, as if it would dissipate in the fog of Lux’s dreams if they dared to blink away.
Lux didn’t want to admit it, but they’d been making bounds of progress since Tobia came careening into their life with his ghosts and his problems and his earnestness they couldn’t quite shake off. Everything about him lingered in the places of Lux’s mind where they didn’t dare shine a light, in fear of its brightness ricocheting.
Deirdre studied the map for a while, running her fingers along the swirls of ink and mumbling quietly to herself about days of travel and possible landmarks. By the time Lux was starting to feel restless, she rested her palm on a patch of forest a ways away from their current location with an air of finality. “I’m pretty sure it should be somewhere in here. Wynn?”
“Yeah, looks right to me,” they said with an infuriating shrug.
The two of them spent the rest of the evening going over viable routes and smudged memories, while Lux and Marion tried to divide the food they’d brought with them for what they had assumed would be just a one-day trip to the town. Tobia had taken one look at the thin slices of fruit bread and then he’d volunteered to search for something edible outside.
“You didn’t offer to go with him,” Marion said, sibylline. She had long since decided to give up on the food rationing and was now pacing around the shack for possible hidden spots. She said it was her dragon’s intuition calling out to her, but Lux suspected she just needed a more substantial distraction from her own thoughts than staring in dismay at their meager dinner could provide. This weird insinuation, too, must be her way of keeping her head afloat. All Lux could do was go along with it, in the hope it’d help her scrub the blood from her mind the same way they’d scrubbed it from underneath her fingernails with fresh snow earlier. She hadn’t even looked at them, instead staring out at the orange glare of the setting sun. She was looking at them now, though.
“Why should I leave the comfort of our shelter to follow Tobia on his hapless quest?” they said. “Surely you can’t consider a handful of wilting dandelions, or whatever weeds he’s going to find out there, worth the hassle. I know you’re not that famished.”
Marion gave a snort. “Yeah, right. This is about the dandelions,” she said, without elaborating further. Then, as if wanting to punctuate how little she cared about Lux’s indignation, or about her own outlandish suggestions for the matter, she gave a final, harsh tug to the door of the cabinet she’d been trying to pry open the whole time. The rusted hinges came clean off of it, together with the rest of the poor, mangled door.
“Great job,” Lux said, deadpan.
“Go to hell,” Marion replied, sunnily.
Wynn and Deirdre, who had raised their heads from the map like a pair of startled deer at the sound of the horrible demise of the door, came over to take a look at the contents of the dismantled cabinet. Their fine spoils consisted of some pots and pans, as well as a strange three-legged structure with a flat iron top.
“A cooker!” Deirdre said, bright with the kind of excitement people usually reserved for far less dingy objects. “We can make actual food now! Um, not that there’s anything wrong with your delicious fruit bread. Or chewing on raw edible weeds.”
“No, I agree wholeheartedly,” Lux said. Then, because Marion’s insinuating tone still burned on their cheeks, they added, “But don’t tell Marion, she baked that bread herself and she’s very sensitive.”
Marion’s eyes went wide from horrified realization. “I did not—” she began, shooting Lux a glare that lost its bite as soon as she heard Deirdre laugh.
“Well,” Deirdre said behind a curled hand, “all the more reason to cook something nice to go with it, then.” She picked the cooker up, grimaced at the streaks of dust and grime it left on her hands and stalked outside to wipe it down with fresh snow. Once she was done, she placed the lantern on the ground, careful not to jostle it, and placed the cooker on top of it.
Lux startled, but one vicious look from Wynn was enough to kill whatever comment they might have had on the tip of their tongue. Folks who didn’t have the luck of being born close enough to a feather temple had to improvise, even if it meant doing something as blasphemous as using the Apostate’s flame to cook their dinner. Back in the village, they would store their firewood in bundles by the hearth where the Spark rested, so that its heat would keep the wood safe from the worst of the humidity. People made do.
“Wynn,” Deirdre said, “Would you be a dear and go help Tobia out there? It’d be great if you could find me some eggs.”
Wynn, who Lux suspected had never been a dear in their life, acquiesced without as much as a peep. Lux thought their quest for eggs seemed doomed from the start, considering how dark the sky was getting, but they kept quiet about it. Deirdre looked leagues better than she’d done when they’d found her, her cheeks growing rosier in the golden light cast by the lantern, but she couldn’t quite hide the shadows under her eyes. If hoping for a few eggs could be enough to distract her, even for a short while, then Lux was going to let her have her fun with that. Instead, they walked over to the map and busied themself going through the pale pencil marks Wynn had traced earlier.
The supposed location of the trees was a few days of travel away, further east than they’d ever dared wandering. Thankfully, a number of marks signaled areas of shelter along the road where they should be able to hunker down during the harsh, biting nights. Back in the village, Marion had lent Tobia some of her clothes after noticing he was shivering in his breezy Whitewick finery, but this was still only his second time venturing into the winter; things could take a turn for the worse if he got sick from sleeping outside.
A calm, slow stretch of time passed before Wynn and Tobia trudged back inside the shack. Much to Lux’s surprise, they were both cradling a few eggs in their hands. Tobia also looked like he’d fallen off a tree, if the fine smattering of snow clinging to his cape and his hair was of any indication, but they all chose not to point that out.
“You left some in their nests, right?” Deirdre asked with a chiding look.
Wynn made the face of someone who’d had to answer that same question countless times before and expected to have to answer it many more times in the future, but they still nodded dutifully. “Yes, of course,” they said. “No need to wring your hands over the parents’ broken hearts.”
“That pistol is incredible,” Tobia said. He’d snuck up to Lux, still holding his share of eggs and smiling down at them with an infuriating, oblivious kind of grin. His nose and cheeks were red from the frigid air outside and his eyes were a little lucid from the wind whipping in his face. “All Wynn has to do is describe a target to it and it will find it for them. They say it’s how they tracked me down, back in the library, though they couldn't be sure it was me since they’d never seen me in person.”
Lux wasn’t feeling at all impressed with the pistol that had landed them all into this mess in the first place, or with how easily Tobia had let Wynn trick him, but they gave a nod of acknowledgement nonetheless. They did have Wynn to thank for bringing them to Deirdre, and also for the night’s dinner, they mused.
Soon enough the air in the shack thickened with the smell of scrambled eggs. They all helped themselves from the pan, wolfing down the food along the fruit bread. It almost tasted like home to Lux, like they could close their eyes and kid themself into believing the rest of their family was here with them. Granny, with her stories and her dry humor as she complained about the council, and Daphne, warm even as she nagged Lux about their table manners.
“I’ll boil some water for the road,” Deirdre said after they were done. “You guys go to sleep before me, this should be quick.”
The bumps of the floor dug into their back, but Lux found they were too exhausted to care. They drifted asleep with their back to Marion’s and the murmur of the snow sizzling into the pot, hoping to dream of lazy evenings by the fire.
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