When Kirdain had awoken yesterday morning, he had been in pain, and badly so.

His muscles had been sour, his head foggy. His mouth tasted as if something that had died a week ago had come back to life and decided to switch places with his tongue for the night. Some of his bruises had darkened because he hadn’t taken care of them properly last night.

He had felt awful. Tired, too. After a messy day and night on horseback, battling a crazy elf, and everything else that had happened, sleeping on the ground, his back nuzzled up against a tree, was not ideal.

This was one reason why he had agreed far too easily, without precautions, to the ongai’s request to stay here.

The other one was curiosity.

He had left the tree they had slept in, intending to just saddle up Atela and leave for Agshraf or the nearest city. Take a portal from there. But that same ongai from last night had already waited. Waited for the both of them to come out. And after very few words, Kirdain had agreed.

She — her name was Raskra and she was the Seventh Huntress of the Forest — had asked him to stay until the Moska was healthy enough to travel and see his business through. Whatever that was.

After she had promised to relocate them, Kirdain had agreed.

He hadn’t done anything else, except allowing himself to be relocated yesterday. He, and Atela, too, were in need of a longer break and they had taken it. He had quickly checked in with Telassi and Ilandi. Telassi had not been amused at all but at this point, their hands were tied. He would get an earful — at least — once he was back in Nahandrain. He had only been allowed to leave for Agshraf, then as part of an emergency to the forest. Now, he had kind of granted himself leave until the ongai was awake and Telassi did not like that.

Ilandi had just been disappointed. They had sounded lonely. Kirdain got that. Somehow, exploring the White Forest would have been nicer with them by his side.

But despite his heavy conscious he had slept like a baby for hours and awoken rested. The forest seemed to heal him in its own time, with its own magic. Atela experienced the same sensation.

When he had awoken this morning, there had been no sun to shine into their temporary home. Now, they could hear the gentle purring of rain on leaves and bark and ground.

Their new quarters were aloft. Deeper in the forest, the ongai had somehow cultivated giant mushrooms, that grew into platforms with giant, hollow mushroom caps that could be described as very weird caves. When one ignored the white, spongy fruit body it did feel like a cave. Only that fire was no option, and it still reeked hopelessly. Raskra had given them a bottle full of oil against that smell; it had a flowery note to it but so far, had done very little. The funny smell was — according to Raskra — the result of moisture, creeping inside the mushroom’s cap whenever the rooms were uninhabited. It wasn’t worth the effort to keep up the enchantments.

Kirdain was not sure if he liked that statement.

Atela on the other hand was certain that she didn’t like any of it. Her antipathy felt painfully obvious to him.

‘I hate these heights’, she mumbled, reaching to his thoughts. They had decided to spend their downtime training their unity.

‘I know.’ Truth be told, he didn’t care much for heights himself. But he didn’t want his anxiety to bleed into hers. He needed to be the stable one for the moment. A fact that didn’t help at all with the idea of training, but maybe it would make it easier in the long run.

Footsteps approached their quarters and a voice boomed. “May I enter this sacred home?”

Kirdain jumped, then laughed. This had to be a customary greeting. And he had no idea how to properly respond, so he decided to go with a greeting he had heard when he was younger: “Leave the spirits behind, dance with us tonight.”

Through the door — a big hole in the mushrooms fruit body, that was sealed off with a spell against rain and critters and stuff — came an ongai. She was big. Her four horns — two curled up- two curled downward - were inset with gold and silver, her scales green-silver. Her big eyes stared at him intensely and her mouth with that one tusk that was broken, smiled.

“That”, she said with a slight lisp in her voice, “was a weird greeting.”

“Was it?”, he asked and stretched his index finger in a crude imitation of a claw out. The ongai copied the gesture and they interlocked index fingers for a second.

“Yes”, she said. She nodded deeply towards Atela. “I see, you haven’t managed to get rid of that idiot, dear”, she said.

Atela snickered.

“So, what would I be supposed to say?”, he asked.

She shrugged. “’Come in’ for example”, she said. “It’s an old greeting, we don’t use it anymore.”

“… Oh.”

She shook her head. “You’ve never been able to keep these details straight.”

Kirdain smiled. He sat down on the elevation at one end of the room, his guest sat down on the ground so their eyes were on the same height. Cross-legged, they looked at each other.

“Good to see you, Kirdain”, she said.

“Good to see you, too, Ashra.”

She inclined her head briefly. “I didn’t believe I would meet you again so soon”, she confessed.

He flickered agreement with his hands.

“Did you manage to get those traditionalists off your back?”, she asked. She of course knew why he had gone back to Agshraf.

“Yeah”, he said. “It was … not as easy as I thought it’d be, though.”

“Hmm.”

He could see a thought flashing past her eyes. “What is it?”

“Oh, I did bet on you, you know?”

“You what?!”

“Yeah, Tishian and I bet. He said you wouldn’t go through with it. I said you wouldn’t make it.”

“… Wow thanks to the both of you”, Kirdain said.

He wasn’t really mad. Betting was one of the many ways students and even grown Vandrainor passed their time. They bet on anything. The number of Vandrainor for the next season, arrival, the requests from wealthy families, the death threats an ongai Vandrainor would get before finishing. Graduating grades, the numbers of crows in the sky after midday.

“I was in rhetoric class with you!”

“I passed!”

“And nobody knows how you did it”, she said and they both chuckled.

For a moment, an easy silence was between them. Ashra had graduated on top but they had never been rivals. Rivalry was for mortals. Or idiots. Not for them. They had been too close for that.

“So… how have your people treated you, since you’re back?”, Kirdain asked.

She hesitated, and for a second, he could see the scales on her neck rippling. “Honestly… I miss the Stable”, she said. “It’s great here but… it’ll never be the same, you know? When I left, I was just Ashra. I was going to be a healer, might have been a good one, too. Maybe the Third or Fourth of a district. But now… Now I’m the Vandrainor of the district I used to live in when I was little. My parents are so proud, my siblings are, too. Though I think they are also annoyed. But I was gone nine years and …”

He nodded. “It’s different.”

“Yes. I… I can’t swear, I can’t stumble. I was invited to a formal dinner and when I snorted everybody looked so… horrified.” She shook her head. “You know, most ongai Vandrainor don’t return here.”

“I heard about that.”

“I never understood why”, she said. A seriousness was in her eyes, he hadn’t seen before. “But now I do. I’m… I’m a reminder of the past. A monument. I live and breath, I walk beside them but to my people, I am history, Kirdain. The ongai love the Vandrainor. We still remember how it was. Not like you people…” He saw how her thoughts carried her away, to a place beyond words.

Kirdain reached for her hand. She interlaced her silvery fingers with his. He did not let go. “I’m sorry, Ashra”, he said.

She nodded quietly. “I know it’s weird but, it feels so good being among the woodelves. They are hateful little creatures but at least I can scream at them. I can flip them off, and all that shit. I wouldn’t do that with an escort but …”

“But?”

“But I did sneak into their clubs a few times already. You know, just to mess with them, tell them what they’re doing is unnatural and vile.”

Kirdain gasped. “You didn’t!”, he said, letting go of her hand.

“Oh, I sure did”, she said. “And you know what? It felt so good. They might be pretty much out of humor about us now, though.”

“Oh, they are.” He quickly relaid his encounter with Artemis and his patrol.

Ashra bit her lip. “Oh shadowbark! You actually fought him?”

“I mean he was … he insulted us. You too.”

She grinned. “Yeah, I imagine he did.” She shook her head. “So you’re here for not even a week and already you managed to get into the Myrsky family’s good graces?”

“The … who…?”

“The Myrsky. Those three are the younger generation.”

“They were siblings?” He thought back to the familiarity between the bigger elf and Artemis. He wasn’t sure if it added more oddity or if it explained their behavior.

“Yes, they are siblings. The Myrskys are a die-hard traditionalist family. Unfortunately, they have a tendency for Twospirits among them.” She shivered. So did he. “They had another sibling but that one … well. Some just don’t adapt, you know?”

Kirdain swallowed. Poor soul.

He felt Atela’s presence reaching for him, and connected with her. No one spoke for a second. Then two. Then a minute. Silence for that sibling they had never met. For the sibling, they, too, had lost. To a practice enforced by hurt pride and hate. By stupidity and blindness. Ruthlessness.

His mind wandered away. Behind the known ends of the world. To the north, where the boats left shore from time to time. Filled with old and broken and tired souls. Would they accept that tortured mind? That homeless soul? That split spirit? Would that sibling they had never known find a place between them? Would they be granted peace in the city with ember-roofs?

He hoped so. But he wasn’t sure. He had never stopped to ask. He wasn’t even sure whom to ask.

Ironically, among the immortal Vandrainor, the deaths of their own people were even more of a taboo than elsewhere.