After a long day, Rolen slips into the room the Harpies have provided and gingerly sits on the side of the bed. Beia, you always told me to stop rushing into things…and yet…
“Can’t sleep with my boots on, I suppose”, a glimmer of a melancholic smile. You always did give me a hard time when I did…
How can I slow down now? This is the first time I’ve
found a damned thing about what may have happened to my family…and we were not
the only ones!
Next the cloak, “Ugh…no, not on the floor. Mother and Father taught…tried to teach me better than that.” Where are you? Are you alive? Are you with Beia? She survives…our bond would tell me if she had been slain…I think…oh, dearest sister, you must be alive, you must.
Collar, shirt, vest, next to the cloak. These new companions, will they help? Should I trust them? The last time I told anyone of what happened, Donegal perished…yet they also search for a mysterious malefactor…do we share the same foe?
A wry glance at the dagger sheathed on his left forearm, “Using you to scare away those goons at the dock was the first time I’ve drawn you in a long while. A valuable reminder that you’re of use yet.” Off it comes, hung neatly alongside everything else.
I will trust them. I have to trust them. Whatever is happening in Hallea is far larger than I thought. But what is happening?!? These Statens, are they behind it all? There is so much yet that I do not know…
A few steps back to the bed, “Cleaner than the ones I’ve slept in recently by far.” These Harpies are good hosts, at the very least. Heh…and even better hosts now that we’ve restocked their supply of coffee and tea!
Down he lays, but his eyes remain wide. “I should sleep, it was a long, difficult day…”. Sleep, ha! Do I truly wish to sleep and revisit that night in the manor? The day I buried Donegal in that copse? My dreams…my nightmares…why do they always return to those moments? A whisper, “I will know peace again when I know the fate of my family”.
Yes, that is when I will know peace. But what will gaining that knowledge require? Can I do this? “At least now I need not do it alone…”
No longer alone. I am so grateful to no longer be alone… He sleeps, and for the first time in months it is a calm and dreamless sleep.