[1] WEEPING MONK // you're not what I was looking for

34| Brothers {Part Two}

[TW// mild grief/retrospective grief]

Lancelot is reunited with someone thoroughly unexpected from his past. Ari also receives something quite unforeseen.

Gawain folded his hands up onto his hips as they walked beneath the afternoon sun breaking through the treetops, "If we continue like this then the forest may perhaps not be enough, it will not sustain us."

Ari nodded along to his thought with regret, "I know. I will give the order for hunting parties to travel out further, and I will ask the raiders to set up some kind of trade, one which preferably won't get us noticed by the Paladins."

The Green Knight hushed his voice away from the ears of the Fey as they strolled into the edge of the clearing, "It will be necessary, otherwise we won't be able to feed whatever army we gather."

Ari mulled over his point and her attention drifted as she glanced away from him through the clearing. She saw Lancelot by himself doing his work as usual but his face still looked washed with the same twist of sadness as it did when she had left him the night before. She didn't want to pester him with her curiosity or need to make sure that he was okay, and she wasn't too sure what he wanted from her, so she refrained from going to him again since the morning. But a thread on her heart pulled her to do so just then.

"Would you excuse me?" She twisted to Gawain, stopping whatever he had continued to say which she wasn't listening to with both her question and her hand lightly pressing above his bent up elbow.

Gawain looked at her beside him with his mouth agape, a little perplexed. He did not miss that it was the Ash man who she had looked towards.

"Of course," he smiled to her and Ari returned the gesture similarly before she walked away.

"Lance?" Ari called his name softly like always as she got closer to where he was perched on the tree stump. He looked up and offered her a faint smile but she could see that it had been forced. She noted that there was the same look in his eyes like his mind was drifting away and she didn't have to think about where to. There were Fey watching her but she stood as near to him at his feet as she dared so that she could keep their conversation just for them. It always felt strange having to keep her distance physically from him and she hated it, but she knows how he feels about the Fey asking questions.

Ari treaded carefully with her own, "Have you seen him today?" She didn't have to state who exactly she was referring to.

Lancelot broke his eyes away back down to his lap, another arrow again grasped between his fingers. He thought for a second but shook his head beneath the cover of his hood. Hector had avoided Lancelot for all of the day since they quite unexpectedly reunited the evening before. Lancelot didn't even know if he'd seen him at all. Even his scent which he now recognised was nowhere to be found amongst the rest, though he doubted that he could identify it just yet anyway. He was not trained to follow his own specific kind of the Ash folk and since there were none others left, he had no reason to. The familiarity which he once knew in that way was completely lost to him.