[2] WEEPING MONK║you're not what I was looking for

63| Fathers Forgotten - 𝐈𝐈𝐈

Lancelot's attempt to help a friend brings them closer together. Ari confronts the power that she'd let slip through her fingers.

As soon as he'd finished wrestling with Tomas' parting words to him, Lancelot took a walk around the forest to clear his mind. Most Fey folk had reverted to looking at him with doubt once more, but it was only due to his recent shift from no one to someone within the camp. He was not one for mingling, able at best to pass a one-word greeting and nod his head to those who he met along his winding route. Most of the Ash had pitched the tents that they had travelled with in a new space that had been cleared of bracken, not far from his own cot, so he headed that way.

At least then he was sure to encounter at least one friendly face.

He did not know many of their names quite yet— there was little difference to their appearances. The women all had the same long and almost raven hair, whether straight or waving. They made up around a third of the group while the rest were all men, elders, and children. Those who remembered the Burning Night and those who didn't fell into separate categories, too.

He'd gathered that there had been a few joinings amongst them, since the young children could not have appeared by themselves. He remembered the little boy who had clung to Morwenna's skirts whilst they were in the valley for the ceremony, and wondered— with what Ari had said of their likely prospect together— for a moment without envy, which of the Ash men amongst them was the boy's father. It was simple curiosity and nothing more.

The eldest Ash was a woman whose crimson under eyes drooped with the rest of her face. More wrinkles were across her skin than there were needle thin veins on an oak leaf. She reminded him of Zurah— that old witch, with her eyes that saw everything and gentle hands that had touched his own with her blessing.

The men ranged in ages and all, except for perhaps Tomas, looked as though they could fell a tree with their bare hands. Lancelot supposed that life in the blistering northern caves will have hardened everybody. Turned those who had lived in the shoreline town of Joyous Gard into survival folk who taught themselves to hunt, fish in the rivers that came from the mountains, and protect their lives and all that they had.

He shook his head as he walked.

They were not the only ones.

Horses and their riders on patrol passed him by with Elyan and Kaze leading the way. Hanna's great horns were unmissable amongst them.

The ash coloured cloth of the sleeping tents that he found blended amongst the dark, flaking tree trunks. A streak of white moved around and scoured, sniffing at the undergrowth. Nira had not moved far from the Ash since arriving, as if she knew that at their sides was where she belonged. Though she slept outside of Lancelot and Squirrel's tent through the night and was gone by the time that dawn broke.

The Ash had arranged themselves as best as they could in a circle around a central hearth that had been built, unlit when Lancelot stood at the farthest edge of the round. Most of the folk were not here, either training with weapons or putting themselves to use elsewhere. But a familiar face had remained across from him, in profile as her body bent forwards over a bucket and scrubbed with a brush at wet, oiled cloths.