Bird of a Nest (bow 3)

Chapter 26

The air was crisp and fresh in the morning. The sky was a deep blue and the weather had been good all day. Too good to stay inside and mope. So, Ryraso was surrounded by rosemary bushes and dirt, helping replant the plants from their smaller containers into the dirt. He rolled his shoulders, running his hand through the plant. It was warm in the greenhouse, the rosemary preferring a warmer climate than Navat often provided but it was popular as a medicinal herb as well as for cooking.  

The smell was familiar to Ryraso, taking him back to the lessons he'd had with his local healer about the basics of making medicine. Further still to the smell of his aunt's kitchen went she cooked the mid-winter feast. When he had been younger, he could even dimly remember his mother doing the cooking but those memories were gone now. She had been unable to cook for a long time by the time he was able to remember well.

The dirt wasn't damp enough for the rosemary at the moment but that was easily fixed. If only everything else was so easy to fix. Ryraso clenched his fists in the dry dirt, willing the thoughts away. Things were better. much better than before. He wasn't feeling crowded anymore.

"You have a look on your face," Kit'z pouted, fluttering next to him and scowling darkly at Ryraso. Or at least as darkly as Kit'z could manage. The man wasn't quite able to pull off a disapproving look.

"Do I?" Ryraso said idly, taking no offence to Kit'z being blunt.  He loosened his grip and shook the dirt off his hands, sitting back on his heels. "I can't think why," he said lightly.

"Maybe you should have helped Gar'kin with re-fencing the outer gardens. Heavy work tends to help shift bad emotions," Kit'z mused, leaning on Ryraso's shoulders and bumping their heads together. "I'd lend you my amethyst necklace but Kol'bur has it at the moment. He and Gar'kin were fighting and he needed some extra help." Kit'z swallowed, his wings flapping as he admitted his mates had a fight. A fight that Ryraso could guess the subject off. It seemed Gar'kin had finally confronted Kol'bur about his attitude to Ang'as. 

"Doesn't surprise me," Ryraso smiled fondly at Kit'z's belief in crystal helping emotions work through people, if not a touch sadly at the situation. Ryraso used to have a few crystals from Kit'z but when the ship had gone down he'd lost them like so many other of his trinkets. "How do you feel about that?"

Kit'z shrugged, his arms wrapping around Ryraso tighter in a clear demand for comfort. "It's hard," he breathed. "Seeing beyond the black fog that clings to Ang'as. But Gar'kin? He doesn't see it. He sees straight through to the k'nairi behind it. I can feel his love for Ang'as. I can feel it next to his feeling for the nest and it's the same. Loving Gar'kin means accepting his heart has a place for Ang'as, but then when we face him, the fog floods in and it's hard to see anything but the fog."

There was a strange moment of silence as Ryraso considered the words. It was certainly true part of loving someone meant accepting what was in their hearts. Gar'kin had loved Ang'as a long time. But the fog, that was a new analogy. "I wonder," Ryraso mused, bumping their head together again. "I don't see the fog either. Just the man who is lonely and suffers from ill rumours being spread about him. What crystal would help remove that curse?"

"Rumours? Black gems, they absorb the blow," Kit'z smiled, Ryraso feeling it against his skin. "Tourmaline or Onyz feel right. But, they would be treating a symptom rather than the cause. Labradorite would work too.