Of Caverns and Casters ✓ [TLRQ #1]

Chapter 69 - Leavi

I just lost my best friend.

The thought echoes through my head as I wash the dinner dishes, alone in a back room with a tub of warm water. I've been avoiding the others all day, trying to keep my hands busy and my mind shut off. It hasn't worked.

I just lost my best friend.

I can imagine what my mother would say if she were here. Stop being so dramatic, Eleaviara! He was hardly your friend, let alone your best one. All you two did was argue.

But he was also always there. Even when he didn't agree with me, even when I led us into danger, he was there. I suppose I assumed it'd always be like that.

Which is dumb. I scrub an already-clean dish harder. People don't spend their lives together unless they're married, and even then, they often wish they didn't have to. My mother certainly never counted anyone as her friend. Acquaintance, annoyance, assistant, or a tool to manipulate favors out of. Those were about the only categories she had for people.

"I, however, am not my mother," I tell the dishes, "and I don't aspire to be."

Grabbing another dish, I scrub at a stubborn piece of food, then dunk the bowl into the water. It bothers me more than it should that there's one less dish to wash tonight.

A window at the back of the room reveals gently falling snow. I wonder if he's safe. Did he manage to start a fire? I think he still has coal and his flicker, but out in the open, with the winter wind, that won't do him much good. He'd have to find some deadwood to build a decent blaze, but I'm sure everything outside the barn is wet.

And what about shelter? He doesn't have a tent. Maybe he'll sleep in some convenient tree hollow, like lost children do in story books. Or maybe he did make it to another town, and he's in a different inn where the rooms aren't orange, or flowery, or—

What decoration did Sean's new room have? It suddenly occurs to me I only saw it once after Aster took his old one, and I don't remember.

My hands fall still in the water-filled tub.

The door swings open behind me, and I go back to scrubbing, my focus down on the dishes. A piece of hair escapes my bun and hangs down beside my eye, concealing whoever entered the room. Maybe if I ignore them, they'll go away. I really hope it's not Jacin, and I don't want to look to find out.

I bring the bowl out of the water to inspect it.

"Here." Aster's soft voice shocks me into looking at him. A drying cloth rests on his hand. "Let me."

"Oh." I pass the bowl to him and tuck the piece of hair behind my ear. "Thank you." If anyone in the house had to come help me, I'm glad it was Aster.

He's just as quiet as I am, the swish of the water and the soft clink of the dishes taking the place of conversation. It's strange to see thoughts swirling in his head. It's like trying to read a tome in a foreign language—knowing something weighty and important is going on but having no idea what it is. Right now, Aster's face is a maelstrom of troubling ideas, but I don't bother him about it. That would leave it far too open for him to turn the question back on me.