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La Vie
Doesn't the Title say it all?
One would think that she was excited, her two-month search finally coming to an end, but truth be told all her thoughts had been tuned down to a low angry hum of whispers in a dark place at the back of her mind. She looked around the wood, her breath frosting in air. She was seven days riding from home, yet the forest seemed to go on forever, its paths weaving in and out like veins in a river, some disappearing from disuse. Her breath steamed and frosted in the air, and her hood was up. She pulled her hood back to listen to the muted sounds of a winter wood. She knew she would find him today, but she didn't know how to feel until she found him...she didn't know how she would find him. She fumbled into her coat and pulled out the note. It wasn't so much a note so much as three words written in unusually flowery script on the back of a scrap of map of southern Northwode. There was a spot circled near a small stretch of creek, and that was where she was riding now. She flipped the bit of map over to look at the flowery script again.

Bring him home.


She folded up the scrap and tucked it into her cloak, urging her horse forward as she pulled up her hood again.

Alden had once (drunkenly) joked that Ethan didn't save her that night. He said that a she-wolf had came along and swallowed their little sister whole as she lay bleeding after that attack, and that was what Ethan had carried home in the dim dawn hours. "Granted," Alden had said, face flushed and swaying in his seat, "He did bring our sweet sister home. She's just hidden somewhere behind those sharp teeth." Kyrene didn't remember too much of the rescue. She remembered the stink and the blood, Alden retching, Ethan and Father's voice and warm arms and furs around her, and the darkness fading into a gray dimness before being replaced altogether by yellow candlelight and the castle barber-surgeon murmuring something to her father and her father getting loud, angry. She wondered if Ethan was in the same spot she had been in when he found her. She wondered if he would still have his face, his hands...The Gitan were not above taking the hands of someone. Her horse's hooves crunched in the snow as she rode between birch trees, which stood out from the snow like white bones notched with soot charcoal like those her mother would scry with. Her horse kept a good pace.

It was midmorning when she reached the creek, and she rode alongside it for a few hours before she reached a small log cabin half-sunken in snow with a trickle of smoke coming from its stone chimney. She swung off of the horse and landed knee-deep in snow. She pulled her boar spear from her horse's saddle and adjusted the strap of her quiver and bow around her shoulders. She looked around, frowning. A small little cabin in the middle of nowhere? She expected some fortified redoubt, arrows flying, blood to be spilt, but here it was so silent and still save for the movement of the water. There was a vague familiarity about this place. She circled the cabin, looking for guards or an ambush, but found nothing. She paused at the opposite wall of the cabin and squinted her eyes at an odd pattern in the frost. She stepped forward and brushed away at the frost. There were lines and names notched into the wood, faded by the swelling and shrinking of water from winters and summers. She pulled her glove off and scratched away further at the frost. They highest name was at about rib height for her. Ethan. She blinked and squatted down to look at the other names. The line right below Ethan was Kyrene. Below that was Alden, then Bell and Florenz at about the same height. Her eyes widened.
"Cal, we're wasting time," she heard her father's voice.
"Just hold up you old grump," she heard Old Latham's voice in her mind and her own giggled, "Well...what do you know? Kyrene's sprung up like a weed! She's taller than you, Alden!"
"Nuh-UH!" Alden had said and Kyrene had stuck out her tongue at him in turn. Her father had simply 'hmphed' and given his daughter a one sided smile.
Kyrene brought her hand away from the wall and stepped back from the cabin, looking around. It was half-sunken into the snow and earth now, but she remembered it. It was one of the Latham's hunting cabin, laughably sagging from disuse. Kyrene could have kicked herself. A family cabin. So remote, only an ally would know about it, and even then it was a hazy memory in her own mind.
She checked once more for any forces surrounding the cabin, but there was nothing but snow and silence. Finally she stood in front of the door. She took a deep breath, her grip tightening around her spear. She pushed on the door. It wasn't locked. She opened it wide, spilling white light into a dark, dusty room, lit by small red embers in the fireplace.
"Mmnh..." she heard a groan from the corner and saw a bundle of blankets stir. She dropped her spear and raced forward. She yanked back a woolen bedsheet and lost her breath.
"Ethan!" She dropped to her knees next to the bed, nearly seizing him by the shoulders, She looked down at the hideous scar on his stomach and the black veins spiderwebbing away from it. "Oh gods, Ethan, what did they do to you...? Ethan!"
His eyes opened slow and bleary. "Whuh...?" he moved to sit up but winced and laid back down. His hand lifted up cold and clammy and Kyrene clasped it tight in hers. He looked from his hand and gave her hand a weak squeeze. Kyrene squeezed his hand back and his breath went short. "It is you...you're real."
"Of course I'm real," Kyrene said.
"Heh..." Ethan laid back, then his eyes snapped open and he nearly sat up again, but Kyrene put a hand on his shoulder to keep him from hurting himself again. "Alden," he said, looking up at her from the bed. Kyrene could feel tears blurring the edges of her vision, but she blinked them away.
"He came home, Ethan. He came home all on his own," she said, her voice cracking, "Ethan, what are you doing here?"
"Florenz..." Ethan muttered.
"Florenz?!" Kyrene said loudly, "You found him? Where is he?"
"Florenz said you'd find me..."
"Where is he, Ethan?" If there was a chance of finding Bell's brother as well, Kyrene would leap at the opportunity, but then Ethan also needed medical attention.
"Left...left with a friend...said you'd find me...Everything went red...I got away...I was still hurt...They found me...Said..." he trailed off and shut his eyes, then they snapped open again and he once more nearly sat up but Kyrene kept a strong hand on his shoulder, "Bell---" He said, "The baby--Bell---"
"They're fine," Kyrene said, brushing some sweaty curls stuck to Ethan's forehead away, "At the rate they're going the baby'll be bigger than her when it's time to pop it out." Kyrene smiled, but it faded, "Ethan---I need to know where Florenz went. Bell's really worried about him too."
Ethan shook his head. "They left...Didn't say where..." Ethan smiled, "They're...they're okay though..." he looked up at her, "You worry too much."
"Worry--!?" Kyrene choked on the word a moment, "You're gone for two months, no word, and last seen stabbed by that stinking troll-f*cker and left to...to..." Ethan's hand squeezed hers weakly and Kyrene crumpled a little where she was kneeling, somewhere between crying and hugging him and screaming, "I'm so sorry," she said, "I'm so sorry. I should have been there. You wouldn't have...He would have...I'll kill him. I'll kill him for what he did to you. I should have found you sooner. I tried...I was looking...But the war...and you were gone, and father needed someone for the troops and I was looking and I was looking for so long and I couldn't find you and they needed me and I couldn't leave them but--- I didn't know where you were---"
"It's okay---"
"No! It's not okay! I should have found you! I'm the hunter! I should have----" His hand weakly squeezed hers and she bit her lip and sighed, "I...wouldn't have found you if it weren't for this," she said, taking the scrap of paper from the interior of her cloak she pressed it into his palm. He looked at it. "Florenz said you'd find me..." he said again.
"Florenz wrote it?"
"You mean you seriously can't tell?" Ethan chuckled but then his hand flew to his stomach and he flattened out, taking deep breaths.
"Some courier brought it to the camp...right to my tent, didn't say who from," said Kyrene, frowning, "So you don't have any idea where Florenz went?"
Ethan shook his head. Kyrene looked down, then inhaled and exhaled. She had left the door open behind her and her breath frosted in the air now. "I'm taking you home."
"Good...for a second I was worried you were going to go searching for Florenz."
"Hold still---" Kyrene slid her arms underneath him.
"Ky---You don't have to---"
"You're not strong enough to walk---"
"Oh look at that I'm feeling better already just give me a minute---nnh!"
"Stop being such a baby," she said as she picked up her eldest brother bridal-style, still wrapped up in blankets. She frowned. Ethan had lost a lot of weight. She'd carried deer heavier than him. He was limp in her arms now, not fighting it, just breathing raggedly. She walked out into the snow and sank even deeper with Ethan's added weight. She helped him up into the saddle and after grabbing her boar spear from the cabin and affixing it to the saddle, swung up onto the horse herself. Ethan's weight slumped onto her from behind and she did her best to ride gently on the way back to camp. Even though he was light with emaciation and weakness, there was a weight on him that hung over him like a pall. She wondered if this was how he and father had felt when they brought her back home that morning six years ago, if her brother was still in there. Still, he felt warmer than back in the cabin. That felt good.
"Ethan?" she said, after several hours spent silently riding.
"Mm?" he murmured, half asleep.
"Well...a few weeks after you disappeared, Bell started craving apples. She couldn't get enough of them. She was eating them nearly by the bushel. We had to get the castle cook to look up recipes for cooking apples with stuff like pork so that she could eat them. Just...apples, every meal. It was kind of funny, actually. She'd be in the war room and she'd just always have to have one on hand."
"Apples?"
"Yeah..." Kyrene looked over her shoulder at her brother, "Mother said that's a good sign. She said that means it's going to be a boy."
Ethan slumped against her. "A boy..." he murmured.





 
 
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