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

63| Fathers Forgotten - 𝐈𝐕

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

It had begun to grow dark when they had walked to the cavern, and the forest was even darker when Lancelot left to summon the witch. When he returned, the three of them waited. He watched as Morwenna explained to Tristan what was happening as best as she could. Lancelot watched the boy's features contort as he concentrated on reading the movement of his mother's hands, finding the exchange rather beautiful to witness. The Fey soldiers and scouts had hand signals to communicate between them when quiet was needed, but those gestures were nothing in comparison to this. A whole language built upon not needing to use their voices.

What Morwenna couldn't describe with her hands, she wrote in a patch of dirt over by the cavern wall. Lancelot left them to it and observed from the distance.

Then finally his senses tingled, and Morwenna picked her head up too at the sound of almost silent scratches along the stone floor.

"You were told to stay away from magic," Yeva sneered.

Her grey eyes burned holes into Lancelot's blue from across the cavern, in the hollow entrance where she leant her talons on the walls. Her patchy, coarse feathered wings trailed to the floor.

Lancelot raised himself from the rock he was perched on and stood to his full height. "You agreed to help."

He received only a lengthy, reticent glare before Yeva dropped her talons and lumbered towards him as though she were already bored of this request. A sneer still lingered on her mouth.

Tristan was led by Morwenna over to him as well, though they stayed almost always behind him. As though he was their shield from the witch. He supposed that he was their protection, given that he led the Ash now. The adjustment in his mind had not quite made its home yet.

Yeva hadn't outgrown one word orders since the last time they had encountered one another. She held out her pointed talons. "Give."

Lancelot squandered the need to growl in his throat and like the trained hound he was— always ready to follow orders— he handed over the Ash stone.

Tristan squeezed his mother's hand. Mama, what is he doing? He asked.

A straightened index came swiftly to Morwenna's lips. Lancelot saw all of this out of the corner of his eye.

While Yeva examined the stone and drew a pouch of what Lancelot could only describe as ground up, dried flowers and herbs, he glanced over to the mother and son. Morwenna's delicate features were still wary, her grip tight around her son's hand, though Tristan only watched on with interest.

"Sit," was the next of Yeva's dry orders.

Remembering how he had awoken in a ball, contorted on the ground, Lancelot sat on the hard cavernous floor instead of one of the rocks. Tristan followed his lead and sat as Squirrel does, his knees crossed and spine straight as though he were about to be told a story. The last to sit, was Morwenna on his left. He didn't think she'd ever had dealings with magic before, and Lancelot did not know how to reassure her that things would not be as harrowing as they appeared.