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7

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A groan? Maybe a moan of distress? His groggy mind could not put it together. It sounded close, but distant at the same time. Why did it sound familiar?

Then, a shout.

“Let me go!... please…” It made him jump, but his body refused to open his eyes and truly wake from his restful slumber. His own mind made him doubt whether he heard anything. Was it really? Was it a dream? Where was it coming from? Why did it sound so close?

Then – scratching.

Quick, intentional scratching.

Rylir’s journey to consciousness was blissful and uninterrupted except for that odd bit right before he woke up. It must’ve been a dream, or at least the end of one.

Still… it sounded so close.

The warmth of the furs surrounded him, and he enjoyed it wholeheartedly. It was a welcome wake up call from the morning before when the Wizard of the Wood forced him from his warm bed on the shelf to accompany her on an herb harvesting venture.

He was not bitter about accompanying Essie on the trip. In fact, he was grateful Essie was willing to teach him and bring him along. Still, it was hard to abandon a perfectly good bed to enter the frozen forest.

He would just study a little harder today, and he would try to remember more of the “proper names” of the herbs and plants. It was the least he could do for Essie. Perhaps she would be pleasantly surprised if he memorized the information quickly. It would take effort, but it was the least he could do.

The smell of fresh cut wood lingered in the air as did the smell of chamomile tea. The warmth from the crackling fire coaxed him out from under the furs covering his bed.

The scratching continued as Rylir carefully leaned over the shelf ledge to see Essie writing feverishly.

Always writing.

Always awake.

He stifled a yawn and stretched as big as he could before leaning over the ledge again and looking at Essie.

“Good morning,” he called down, unable to hide the yawn immediately following that statement.

“Morning,” acknowledged Essie as she barely flashed a glance at him before continuing her work.

“Busy already? You really do not understand the concept of sleep, do you?” teased Rylir, trying to start the morning off with a little bit of humor. It wasn’t a departure from how he greeted her some mornings, but something seemed a little different. The giant sorceress seemed distracted by something weighing on her mind; and, rather than quip back, promptly responded by giving a half-hearted shrug as she worked.

“There are far too many items to accomplish to allow myself to maintain unconscious for extended periods of time,” stated Essie. Rylir picked up on the subtle difference of her tone. She didn’t sound irritated, but there was something there that made her words sound weighted – like there was something on her mind that she was unwilling to talk about.

Although he wanted to ask, Rylir didn’t feel like he had the courage to ask; or, rather, he did not think he had the right to ask. They had only known one another for a short amount of time and asking what was on someone’s mind and expecting an answer felt presumptuous.

Her words also reminded him of what his older brothers would say.

The day is only so long.

Chores are not going to do themselves.

These contraptions of yours will not build themselves, and we certainly do not know how to put it together. Hop to it!

“You sound like my brothers. Always busy. Always working. Up at the crack of dawn every single day.” It was completely involuntary, an accident, but Rylir spoke out loud. It was meant for himself, but Essie heard it all the same.

She wasn’t sure why she stopped writing. It was such an off handed comment that, on any other day, would not have gained her attention. Still, there she was sitting at her desk, writing implement in hand and letting the ink branch across the parchment, latching onto Rylir’s comment about his brothers.

She remembered Rylir saying something when they first met about having no family now, hence why he elected to stay here with her until he thought of a place he wanted to go or had someone he wanted to visit and stay with instead. At the time, she did not think about pressing him further for information. It wasn’t relevant and she hadn’t anticipated him staying for this long.

But now, hearing this comment, some form of curiosity peaked inside of her. She swallowed dryly, removed her writing implement from the parchment, and folded her arms across her chest.

“Brothers?” she asked quietly, something that shocked Rylir slightly. He wrestled himself out from under the furs until he reached the edge of the bookshelf.

“What? Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” apologized Rylir as he took note of Essie’s body posture. Essie cleared her throat, eyes distantly focused on the parchment she was writing on before, and clarified her question.

“You just said brothers, that I sounded like your brothers. How many brothers do you have?” asked Essie. Her question took him off guard and brought a pang to his heart, but what fascinated him more was that she was asking him a personal question about his life and his family.

“Um… Four. Four brothers, and an older sister,” answered Rylir as he remained propped up on one elbow. He passively scratched at the edges of his nails, an unconscious nerve calmer. “I was the second youngest in the family, so a lot of the jobs went to my older brothers. They were going to be in charge of the land first, so they took on more of the chores.”

“Four brothers and an older sister? Quite a large family,” replied Essie. “You had land?”

“Yeah, we did have a lot of land; or, rather, my parents did. It was meant for farming and harvesting, sometimes livestock of other families nearby,” said Rylir. “They did a lot of the work, but I always wanted to ease up their workload, so I made contraptions to make things go quicker. My sister always teased me that I was just trying to get out of work, and my brothers said if I wasn’t working with them that I should hurry and make my devices so they could take a day off.”

“Contraptions? Like the ones you made here?” asked Essie. Rylir grinned and dared to push himself up and dangle his legs off of the bookshelf. He kept his hands firmly planted as a counterweight in case he felt like he might slip.

“Yeah, some of them. There were wheels that were turned by the stream and by these big sails on really windy days. I had a lot of designs and things I wanted to build, but I… I just ran out of time,” said Rylir.  

There was flutter in his chest at his diaphragm. It had been such a long time since he thought about his siblings in depth, let alone talk about them. He let a breathy chuckle slip, which caught Essie’s attention. Her ice shard like eyes flicked up to him for the first time since this interaction.

“Funny, I haven’t talked about them in so long.” Rylir reached up and rubbed his neck awkwardly, averting his eyes from Essie’s ice shard blue eyes.

“Why? What happened to them?” asked Essie, her demeanor shifting from curious to that same direct tone Rylir was familiar with. It was like she was bracing herself – preparing for his response, which made both of them.

Rylir took a moment to take a deep breath before nodding a few times and, adopting Essie’s same direct tone, replied, “They got sick. Everyone in the town came down with some weird illness a few days after I left. I offered a trade, my labor for some spare parts and scrap a neighboring farmer had. So, I left to get parts from a neighboring farm and came back after the sick was everywhere. I barely left in time and recovered, but...”

Rylir didn’t feel like he needed to continue, and thankfully Essie didn’t press him further. He let his breath calm and that unease in his diaphragm settle before looking down into Essie’s eyes which hadn’t left him since she looked up.

There was something there.

Sympathy?

Remorse?

Connection.

There was something in her eyes that made him feel like, for the first time, they had something in common. It was just a spark, barely discernable and only there because he knew what to look for. He wasn’t sure how to pinpoint it, but he did know it made him feel better.

“Sorry,” he said, chuckling and turning away awkwardly. “Um… do… do you have family? Siblings? Parents?”

Rylir watched it happen – a wall in her eyes went up. The air tensed, like she was guarded, but not because she was distrustful of him. Rylir wasn’t sure what it was, but it was present all the same.

Before he knew it, Essie had taken up her writing implement once again and started writing again.

“No. I don’t have anyone. Just my mentor, Kaven Ardox,” she said quietly. Rylir sighed. Did he press his luck? Couldn’t hurt, could it?

“What was he like? This Kaven guy. Was he… like you?”

“No, he was…” Essie stopped herself mid-sentence. How could she describe Kaven? He was a lot of things, and the time spent with him was considerable. She elected to go for the straightforward approach. Just the basic facts. “About your height, perhaps a little shorter. He had a talent for the arcane and taught me what I know about magic. He didn’t have much of a sense of humor, but he knew how to help me make sense of what I found confusing, if that makes sense. He knew how to talk to me. He was… well… honestly, he was like you.”

Rylir felt his mind reeling to go in every direction, but the biggest thing he noted was the last part.

“Like… me?” He felt flattered, though it was short lived.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m looking for a baseline comparison which we both possess a frame of reference for. There is no reading between the lines here,” Essie stated.

Though she had attempted to dismiss the statement, Rylir couldn’t shake the feeling she meant that involuntary complement.

Now he definitely had something to prove today while he was learning.

Determined, he pushed himself up and got to work. Those herbs weren’t going to learn their own names.