Chapter Text
The cart that they had managed to scrape up enough funds for – and that was all the way back in Alfield, what feels like years even though he knows it’s only been months– is falling apart beneath them.
It’s been raining for three days straight.
They have enough rations for maybe – another three days, if he skimps on his and passes the rest off to Luc. More, maybe, if Astrid and Wulf skimp on theirs as well, but they really can’t afford it, not now, not ever, but especially not now.
He has no idea where they are, or where the nearest town is.
He knows which way is north, though.
Ha.
Useless.
“Caleb?” Nott’s voice snaps him out of his musings, and he flinches, slightly.
“Sorry – sorry, you were just zoning out for a while.” She traces a circle on the wood beneath her hand, where she’s leaning against the wall of the cart, and sighs. “Do you think we can stop, soon? Luc’s about to fall asleep.”
He glances back and –
Luc blinks back at him, eyes at half mast and hands lazily pushing some marbles around in the back of the cart. He gives him a small smile, and Luc waves a small hand back. Essek’s curled up next to him, staring blearily into space, a book open on his lap. It’s only the four of them, in the back of the cart, right now.
(He hasn’t heard the pages turn in over an hour. He’s not sure if that was because he’s been floating, or because Essek is as well. Mentally, he means. He wouldn’t need to float if he’s sitting, that would just be silly.)
(Shut up, he tells his brain, and tries to focus enough to respond.)
“Ja, we can stop soon. It’s almost sunset, anyways.”
He stretches to crack where his knees had stiffened up, and lifts up the tarp to talk to Yeza.
Yeza’s been driving for about an hour – they’ve been taking shifts, so that somebody was always in the cart to watch Luc, and in this rain they’ve kept it to three people (and Luc) in the cart, three people outside – and he looks drenched, hood tucked tight over his head and hands clenched around the reins. Astrid and Wulf, dragging themselves alongside the horse, are drenched as well, Eodwulf quietly humming a marching song under his breath. The horse isn’t quite strong enough to pull them all along in the cart, so they alternate who has to walk.
(They have to move slowly, ever so slowly, because none of them have the stamina to walk for hours upon hours, not with the injuries they’ve taken, but they are managing. Somehow.)
“Yeza –“ he starts, and watches as Yeza goes, “Eep!” and turns to face him, “- do you want to find a good place to stop, for the night? Luc’s about to drop off.”
“Sure, sure, sure – there’s a little dip, over there, could that work?” He motions with his chin towards a small clearing that Caleb can just spot through the rain, and that – that’s fine.
The bubble will make it more fine.
“Ja, that will be fine.”
He hesitates, for a second, and then calls out to Astrid. “Sassa, we’ll be stopping soon. Just a bit longer.”
She pats Eodwulf’s shoulder in response, and gives him a nod. Any words she says in return are lost in the pouring of the rain against the tarp.
He ducks back beneath the cart, and nods to Nott.
She flashes a quick smile at him, and in a few minutes they can feel the cart slow to a stop.
Yeza sits back underneath the tarp in the cart, Astrid and Wulf climbing in as well, the wood of the cart groaning at their weight but holding steady.
Caleb hops out to walk the slow circle that will form the bubble to protect them for the night. He fits the cart and horse under it, as well – no need to leave her out in the cold – and knocks on the side of the cart when he’s done. Nott, Yeza, and Luc all come scrambling out, and they make camp on the slightly muddy floor beneath the bubble and beneath the cart. Astrid and Wulf stumble in from the rain a few minutes later after walking a perimeter, and a bleary eyed Essek follows them. They lay out tarps on the ground to protect from the mud, and then get the bedrolls arranged in short order. It’s a tight fit, all of them in here, but the fact that Essek rarely leaves hand-holding distance from Eodwulf makes it easier to fit them all in.
The fact that they all tend towards huddling together in a mass of bodies for heat and comfort helps, as well.
Luc falls asleep almost immediately after getting some food in him, and after a quick glance to Caleb – and he nods, he will take the first watch – Nott settles herself at his side and follows him.
Yeza smiles at her, just a quick quirk of his lips, and he nestles himself into Luc on the other side and slips into slumber.
“Do you want a partner for watch, Br – sorry, Caleb?” Astrid reaches up and starts unpeeling her waterlogged woolen hood from her hair, shivering slightly and then relaxing as Eodwulf’s cantrip dries the cloth.
“No, no, get some rest. You were walking for a while.” He pats her knee, awkwardly.
“You sure? I can stay –“ Eodwulf’s words are interrupted by a massive yawn, and he blinks. “On second thought. Maybe not. Um – Essie, you up for staying awake –“
Essek is rocking, slowly, in a steady waver of back and forth, exhaustion digging pits beneath his eyes. “Unless we miraculously got more powders for my potions,” he says, slowly, and yawns into his hand, “I’m afraid I’ll be rather useless. Sorry.” He sounds sincere, and Caleb’s already shaking his head.
“It’s fine, I said it’s fine. I’ll switch with Nott a little later, ja?” He presses a tentative kiss to Essek’s hand, and watches as the drow blushes, dark blue rushing to his cheeks. “Get some rest.”
They’ve been traveling hard for months now, on their rush to get out from the watch of the Empire, from the Dynasty.
Nott had confided in him, about her past, her family and her husband and her child and her death, a month into their return to solo travel after leaving the Nein.
He doesn’t regret leaving them. He was putting them all in danger.
But he misses them, maybe.
Just a little.
(That’s a lie, his brain tells him. He misses them so much, and it doesn’t matter, because he left. He clenches a fist in his lap.)
(Wait was that – no, just a mouse. He drops the burn of fire in his palm, and breathes.)
Anyways.
She had told him, about her past, about how she –
How she died.
Because they had been nearing Felderwin, and then he had gone to seek out Yeza and see if he and Luc were alright on her behalf, and then.
He digs his nails into his palm.
There had been archmages, in the town. Forcing Yeza to work on – on what seemed to be another dodecahedron. A beacon, he knows now.
He had recognized the mages. Knew them, and their connections all too well.
He had panicked.
And the night that they had arrived in town, he and Nott had snuck into the house that she used to live in, and reunited with Yeza and Luc, and slipped away before sunrise. He had to magic both of the archmages unconscious, and he still isn’t sure how he had done it. The night is a blurred mess of fire and rage and panic in his mind. Of Nott’s hand in his own, Luc on his back, Yeza on his other side as they ran.
They’ve been running, ever since. Went through Alfield and Trostenwald, and then twards Xhorhas, first, because he figured – they could disappear in the wastes, find some life away from the Empire’s eyes, but they had ran into people fleeing the opposite direction two months after escaping Felderwin.
It had shook him to his core, spotting Astrid and Eodwulf limp alongside a drow, in that mountain pass. He had thought, for a long moment, that it was over. That the hunters had finally caught up to the prey.
But it wasn’t like that. Wasn’t like that at all.
They, he had figured out, when Astrid had broken into hysterical sobs at the sight of his face, were not hunting at all, but rather also the hunted. In the end, they were all running from the same thing.
It takes hours to work out the story, but he’s still – in awe of what they had managed to do.
Tricked the governments into finding peace. Manipulated the Assembly into giving up some of their power.
Astrid – smart, incredible, terrifying Astrid – had poisoned Ikithon for years, looking for power, and when she had stumbled into the stray path of a greater restoration and learned the truth –
Ikithon died a month ago, she tells him, face breaking into fangs and teeth and a ghostly grin.
She became the wolf, and she guarded the sheep.
(He thinks of Astrid in Ikithon’s white robes, and throws up, then and there, while she talks. Eodwulf rubs his back.)
She guarded the people, she says, rubbing her eyes. Shook off suspicion from the Assembly, from Dwendal, and worked with the Dynasty to create peace.
(Essek – the drow, he learns – had been working with the Assembly as a spy into the Dynasty for years, from before he was an adult to now. Had grown exhausted of it. Had been manipulated and blackmailed into staying, at the risk of his own health.
Essek, the drow, who had been captured and blamed and kept after, he realizes with growing horror, the halfling working on the beacon in Felderwin had disappeared. Essek, who had been tortured, and experimented on, for sixty days.
Essek, who Astrid and Wulf explain, has no home to go to anymore, no country to find solace in. Essek, who they’ve adopted as family, now.
Essek, he learns, is easy to love.)
They finished peace talks a week and a half ago, and had faked Ikithon’s real death. Worked with the rest of the network of scourgers, to put someone new in power – Someone named Lena, he learns, who he vaguely remembers as older, hair the color of snow and ice – who cares more about keeping children and the empire safe than keeping power for herself, who can be cruel but who they trust. Someone who will keep the Assembly in line.
And they ran, Essek in tow. Ended up stranded in Xhorhas, after a teleportation gone wrong, and had been trekking back through the mountains for days of endless walking (and, well, floating on Essek’s part, but two months of torture and malnutrition had broken the drow’s will and magic into barely enough to keep him aloft.)
He had cried, that night, surrounded by people he’s in love with, people he loves, and the future had felt less black and terrifying.
And then they had gotten through the Wuyun gates, and then out of the Empire, out of the Dynasty -
And now he has no clue where in the Menagerie Coast they are, other than a few week’s journey from Port Damali.
They hadn’t stopped, really, at any of the larger cities along the way. They stopped at the outskirts of Feolinn and Tussoa, briefly, just to get food and supplies, a new wheel for the wagon, but anywhere larger had been to terrifying to show their faces in, too much to try and deal with.
He tightens his fist, and snaps Frumpkin onto his lap to distract him from following that thread too far.
He doesn’t see anything on his watch.
That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing there, but he can’t. He can’t -
He can’t think about that too hard, or he’s never going to get to sleep once he –
Oh.
Its time for him to wake Nott up.
He does so, and she blinks her bright yellow eyes awake, catching the faint light from his cantrip in the dark and turning into pools of gold.
She pats him, once, on the head, and then scrambles to sit up on top of the cart and keep watch. She’s stuck in that form, still. He doesn’t know how he’s going to fix it. He will, he has to, but right now he just… he doesn’t know. Isn’t strong enough for that kind of magic.
He lies down, next to Luc, and Yeza, and the rest of their rag-tag family, and tries his best to not think of the horrors that could be lurking in the dark, of the mages finding them, of the Assembly finding them, gods, what was he thinking getting so close to other people, this is exactly why he left, he needs to leave he needs to leave he’s putting them in danger, scheisse –
Luc, next to him, rolls over and grabs a fistful of Caleb’s shirt, still asleep.
That –
That is why.
He has not known Luc and Yeza for long, but they are Nott’s family, and he is Nott’s family, and that makes them his family too, in a way. They are all family, now.
Frumpkin nudges himself into his chest, and he falls asleep surrounding by his cat’s soft breathing and Yeza’s less soft snoring.
Nott shakes him awake, in the morning –
Eight am, the back of his mind whispers –
And they pack up and return to the cart.
He takes the reins, this time, Frumpkin settles next to him on the bench.
He still has no real idea where they are.
They’re following a road, and it’s decently well traveled, even though they haven’t spotted anyone else, which is slightly concerning, but probably fine, and there’s a throwing star sunk into the mud, over there –
Wait.
No, not a throwing star, just a bit of scrap metal, probably from a wagon wheel that had busted there.
Hm.
He rubs his fingers against the thin leather of the reins, and tries to focus back in on the road ahead.
It’s –
It’s been difficult, lately, to keep his focus and keep his mind from slipping off its tracks and into the pit that are his memories.
He hasn’t –
It hasn’t been this bad in a while.
Since –
Since right when he met Nott, probably.
They had been fighting a group of bandits on their way out of the empire, terrible, terrible people, they had almost gotten away with Luc and Nott had been screaming, and he had used his fire and watched them burn –
He had gone fuzzy, for awhile, and.
Nott had told him later that the bandits had a caster with them, and that he had gotten hit with something, and that he had been screaming. It had taken almost a week for him to stop crying, a week of hiding desperately in a cave with Astrid and Eodwulf holding his hands, Essek mashing his rations together to make sure he could actually hold something down.
He doesn’t – he doesn’t remember, what happened, but it hadn’t been like how it usually was, when he lost himself in the fog of memories – it had been more like he was reliving all the worst parts of the academy all at once, crystals in his arms and false memories in his brain, Eodwulf screaming as he took a knife to the gut in training, Astrid crying after a mission, hands touching and pain, so much pain –
He isn’t.
The cart is stopped.
Why are they stopped.
What is –
Hand on his arm.
“-leb, hey, you need to stop scratching at the bandages, you’re going to hurt yourself –“
Who.
What is happening.
Something soft pushes itself into his hand, and on a reflex, he stops the repetitive motions in favor of scratching it’s ears.
Frumpkin.
Okay.
“Caleb – hey, it’s just me – let go of the reins, okay? Eodwulf’s going to drive.”
He lets go of the reins.
Scheisse.
He breathes.
Eodwulf takes his place on the bench, reins in one hand, and Caleb shifts himself into the back of the cart, where Astrid is glancing at him worriedly and Luc is playing with some spare buttons and marbles in the corner of the cart, Essek humming some song he doesn’t recognize. Yeza and Nott walk next to the cart, carrying on a soft conversation about alchemy, throwing worried glances his way when they think he isn’t looking.
He leans against the back wall, knees pulled up to his chest and Frumpkin wrapped around his neck, and tries not to flinch when Astrid settles next to him.
She doesn’t say anything.
Ja.
It hasn’t been this bad in a while.
But right now it’s – it’s pretty Not Great.
He traces words in celestial onto his palm, to help focus in to the real world, and not what’s brewing in the back of his mind.
The trees thin out ahead.
The road, as well, is getting wider now, and more cared for – no longer just a tramped down dirt path, actual cobblestones.
Probably getting near a town, then.
That’s good.
He leans a little heavier against the back of the cart, and taps Nott on the shoulder.
“Hey – Caleb – you alright?” She asks, hands nervously fiddling with the crossbow in her lap.
He nods, and points towards where chimney smoke is just starting to become visible over the horizon.
“We are, ah, approaching a town. I think.”
“Oh, okay!” she searches through her bag for a second, and he watches as her face falls.
“A – a fancy town, do you think? We don’t have enough gold for an inn if it is.”
They are moving closer, now, and from what he can see – brick and wood buildings, whitewashed walls, simple structures.
“Not a fancy town, I don’t think.”
He squints for a second, and – there’s an inn, it appears, a few hundred feet away and to the left.
He points it out to Yeza, and a bit later they hitch up the horse and cart to a post outside and head inwards.
The inn is slightly shabby, just a little bit. There’s a few cobwebs lurking in the corners of the ceiling, and the tables and chairs are mismatched and worn. Despite that, it seems, he notes, to be pretty popular, given the fact that it’s only four pm and the tables are already half filled with an assortment of farmers, some mineworkers, and just a scattering of people in general.
They sit down at a table in the corner, the seven of them, and he - he trusts Nott and Yeza to handle getting rooms so he just pillows his head and arms onto the table and tries to ignore the noise. Essek sits close enough against him to touch, and falls asleep within minutes, head resting on his shoulder. Astrid and Eodwulf take position around them, almost like guards, and Astrid starts playing a simple card game with Luc while Eodwulf scans the perimeter of the inn, eyes combing over and over everything and everyone, his hands clenched into tight fists in his lap.
He catches fast snippets on conversation above him – Yeza talking to the innkeeper, Nott handing off some food to Luc, Nott talking about what the weather is like outside because apparently it’s pouring now – he falls asleep for a little bit, himself, and wakes up to Nott’s soft voice talking to Luc and Luc’s softer voice speaking back.
He props his head up on one of his fists.
“Did we get the horse taken care of?” He asks, blinking away the sleep that he had been taking.
Yeza nods, grimly. “Yeah. Money’s going to be rough, though. We have enough for meals tonight and tomorrow, and a room for the night. That’s, uh, that’s it. If we want to have food beyond just foraging and rations we need to get some coin.”
Hm.
“I could.” He stops to swallow down the initial burst of panic that this thought causes. “I could sell some of my compon-“
Nott shakes her head violently. “You don’t need to do that.”
They lapse into silence again. They’d already sold much of the finer clothes they had owned, a month into travel like this, scrounged around for any money they could get to buy food and make sure Luc would never go hungry.
Yeza coughs into his fist. “We could just – stay here, in town, for a bit? Look for work? We should be far enough from the border and from any larger cities that we can lay low.”
“Where is here, exactly?”
“The innkeeper said the town’s called Melegryn, we’re roughly three weeks journey from Port Damali, a day and a half from Gwardan. And the trees were blocking the view, before, but we’re close to the base of the mountains.” Yeza raps his fingers against the table, and sighs.
“I know, I know staying in the same place isn’t the most optimal thing, right now. But we are out of money, and if we want actual food for Luc and a roof over our heads we might need to suck it up and stay put for a while.”
If it was just him and Nott, they could probably rough it out. If it was just him and Astrid and Eodwulf, even, they could probably manage.
But. Luc deserves so much more than that. Essek, he thinks, looking at the thin form of his new friend, couldn’t survive that for much longer than he already had been forced to.
“Ja, that might be best.” He expects Astrid and Wulf to protest, but it seems they’ve made the same calculations he has, because they simply nod, looking exhausted.
He rests his hand onto his hand, and observes the rest of the tavern. He hadn’t been sleeping long – the light outside tells him its probably around five thirty. The tavern is a little fuller now, with people starting to come in off a days long work and people getting dinner before heading off to work the night. There’s dwarves, here, and elves, more than he’s used to seeing in the Empire, and a bunch look like they’ve just got off a mining job, still wearing heavy duty clothes with traces of dust and dirt on them. Loggers, too, it seems like, or hunters – clad in thick pelts, axes balanced at their side as a party of them has a roaring laugh at some unheard joke, tankards of mead slammed onto the counter and making him flinch.
Everyone looks cheerful, despite the weather outside.
He’s glad to see that the seven of them don’t stand out too much, beyond the fact that they have Luc with them – there’s other halflings and humans here, and a few tieflings and even a handful of goblins in the same group as the dwarves, playing a card game and gambling with small pebbles. Elves, too, and even another drow, part of the same logging group, a thick scarf wrapped around their hair as they laugh uproariously, rolling a pair of dice on one of their hands.
They’ve noticed, as they got away from the empire, that goblins and drow are not as hated here, because Nott hasn’t been getting weird looks and they’ve seen other goblins along the way, all of whom had been a little strange, maybe, but not like the stories that Nott would tell about her time with the clan near Felderwin. Essek, too, hasn’t really stuck out.
Regional differences, he guesses.
He doesn’t really know. The Empire is very – monolithic, in races, and beliefs.
It’s better for Nott, here. She doesn’t have to hide as much.
“We could always go and see if there’s an apothecary in town, see if they need just – assistants, I guess?” Yeza is saying, and he belatedly realizes that he’s missed out on the conversation again.
“M-Maybe? If Caleb could watch Luc –“
Nott’s voice is cut off by the inn keeper who has swept over to their table, long heavy skirt trailing around her boots.
Its embroidered with little frogs near the hems. Strange.
“You folks need anything, now? My name’s Jo.”
Yeza clears his throat, and sits up a little straighter in his chair. “We’ll be taking dinner, if that’s alright.”
She gives him a warm smile, and nods. “Anything else?”
Nott shoots him a quick glance, and after a pause, she speaks up.
“We – we are, um – we’re going to be in town for a while. Do you know of any place that’s – that’s hiring, maybe?”
Jo leans back on her heels and thinks for a second, counting out something on her fingers.
“Huh. Well, mines are probably out of the question for ya’ll, if you’ve got a kid with you – cute kid, by the way - the people who work with the fair folk, too, at least til he’s a little older– and I don’t think there’s anywhere in town that’s hiring. Old Joe’s been looking for some folks to help out with training the militia, but you folks don’t really look like fighting types, if you pardon my mouth.”
If she only knew, he thinks. If only that was true.
She falls silent for a long minute, and he’s just about to ask something else when her face lights up and she snaps her fingers.
“But there’s this family, out on the old Dordain farm, they moved out here a couple of months ago. Might still be looking for farm hands, or at least just people to help out in the shop they’re opening up in Gwardan. If you folks want, I can send them a message, get one of them out here by morning to see if they need any help? They’ve made quite a name for themselves in this sleepy little town of ours, don’t get much new folk round here. They’re real nice, though. I’m sure they’ll be able to hook y’all up with some work, even if it’s just for planting season.”
“That would be – that would be great, thank you.” Yeza tilts his head at Caleb, and he nods in return. Nott nods as well.
Astrid and Eodwulf just stare, distant.
Essek murmurs something in undercommon in his sleep that almost sounds like an agreement.
And Luc – well, he nods, but he just looks confused and a little tired.
It’s adorable.
Jo smiles, again, and then turns and yells out, “Oi! Kreech!”
A dwarf turns away from watching the goblins’ card game, and grumbles over the din of the tavern, “What’d you want, Jo? I’m busy over here, Iriks is gonna win – “
One of the goblins – Iriks, he guesses – drops his cards, and pulls his hands to his face.
“- or not.”
Kreech stands up, and lumbers over to Jo. He’s large, for a dwarf, and is probably a good two heads taller than Nott.
“What’s up?” He asks, reaching a hand up to scratch at his beard, careful not to disturb the wildflowers that appear to have been braided in.
“Can you send a message to the folks at the Dordain farm, tell ‘em I’ve got some people looking for work?”
He raises his eyebrows, but just ends up nodding. “Yeah, sure thing, Jo. You want me to send it to – Clay, or –“
“Clay’ll be fine, I think. Tell him to either come, or send someone I guess, round the morning?”
“Sure thing, doll.” He winks at her, and Jo bursts into laughter.
“Shut it, Kreech.” She swats him with the washcloth attached at her belt.
Kreech chuckles, and writes down a short message on a piece of paper. With a snap, a small burrowing owl appears on his shoulder, and with a careful motion, the paper is placed in the owls claw.
He then proceeds to just lean over and throw the bird out the window.
Well, then.
Caleb tightens his fingers from where he had started to pet Frumpkin in his lap.
“You should be nicer to Bartholomew, Kreech – swear to all the gods, you ain’t never learned how to treat him nice.”
“Can’t believe you named him Bartholomew, I wish I never lost that bet –“
“Your own fault for being so darn awful at scorpion catching, you fool –“
The two walk away bickering, and leave the rest of them staring in confusion.
“Okay, then.” Nott whispers, and she and Yeza share a confused look.
“We can always say no, ja? If this Clay turns out weird.”
“He’ll probably be weird. But we’re probably weirder.” Yeza glances around at them, and shrugs. “If it doesn’t work out, we can leave again. We have no stakes here. But we need to at least try.”
True.
The room that they have for the night is simple, but it’s clean and dry and there’s a bed big enough for four of them to fit, if they scrunch in. In the end, Yeza and Luc and Nott take the bed, and he and the others make a pile of their bedrolls on the ground at the base of it, using each other as pillows and curling together until sleep eventually takes them. They’re safe enough – he hopes, he thinks, he hopes – in this room, with both the dome and his wire across the door and windows.
He is so scared of staying. Of stopping his running, of stopping the constant terror in his mind that screams at him to escape, of catching up to the lick of fire at his heels.
But he owes it to all of them to try, and least. To keep them all safe, and healthy. To give Luc a better life. Here, in this too-warm room with no real blankets, no real pillows, but with family he would do anything to save – he can have this. He can protect them. Everything will – maybe they won’t be okay, but they’ll be alright.
And he sleeps.
He wakes up, a few hours later – three am, his mind whispers – with a scream half held behind his teeth and a terror that takes a few exhaustingly long moments to fade.
Nott’s eyes blink open, blearily, as he sits up to hunch against the bed frame.
She doesn’t say anything, but she pats his shoulder and curls in closer to him.
It takes another hour, of sitting and rocking and trying not to wake anyone else up before he sleeps.
And then it is morning.
Breakfast, downstairs, is a quiet affair. There’s not a lot of people at the inn, at this hour, and Jo serves them up plates of eggs and potatoes within minutes of their sitting down.
She cocks her head at them. “Kreech got back to me last night, said that Clay’s gonna send over one of his people round nine. Not sure who he’s sending, but, honestly, all his folk look pretty distinctive so you shouldn’t miss em.”
She whirls away to sweep to opposite corner.
“It’s eight thirty, now.” He mumbles, and makes a clock chime under his breath.
“Caleb, do you and Nott want to go make sure that we got everything packed, upstairs? I don’t want to have left anything behind. We can stay down here to meet the person when they get here, and watch Luc –“
Luc high fives his fathers gesturing hand, and then continues to eat his eggs.
“- thank you, Luc. Just in case we need to get out of here in a hurry?” he finishes, and stuffs a bite of potato in his mouth.
“Ja, Yeza, we can do that.”
He kisses Astrid on the top of her head, absent mindedly, and brushes both Eodwulf’s and Essek’s shoulders with a soft hand.
Nott bobs her head next to him, and scarfs down a few more bites of eggs before leaping off the stool and heading back upstairs. He follows a bit behind, and Yeza flashes him a grateful look as he passes by.
They pack up their bags and he spends a quick second to fold Luc’s blanket and place it back into Yeza’s pack. It doesn’t take long to get everything together, honestly, even taking into account the fact that Nott gave up after five minutes and just started to organize her own bag full of buttons and various shiny bits. This long into traveling, he knows by heart which things go in which pockets, to which person. Not that they really have separate belongings, now adays, but – he remembers, still. He’s good at this.
When they head back down stairs, packs in tow, Yeza’s in the middle of conversation with someone who must have come in while they were upstairs, wearing a pair of muddy boots and overalls –
And a very familiar cloak.
A very familiar haircut.
Nott, at his side, lights up, and races down to the table. He follows, and before he can overthink it, he calls out, “Beauregard?”
Beau turns towards him, and shock overtakes her face.
“Holy shit man, Caleb? Nott –“
“Hi!” Nott calls out, and slides into the stool next to Yeza.
“Hello, Beauregard.”
She stares at the two of them, and then to Yeza, and then to Luc, and the back to the two of them. Takes a long look at Astrid, and Eodwulf, and Essek, and squints, trying to piece it all together.
“Are you guys actually looking for work? Or.”
“Nein, we are looking for work. We are, ah –“
“We’re super broke.” Nott shrugs, and then leans in closer to Beau.
“Do you live here? Where’s the rest of everybody?” She demands, reaching out to poke a bony finger at Beau’s chest, colliding with a thump against the weight of her thick cloak.
“No, yeah, we’re all here – I mean, Fjord and Yasha are out on a trip to the coast right now to grab some stuff, but everyone else is here and they’ll be back tomorrow – where the fuck-“
Nott covers Luc’s ears and hisses.
“Sorry – where have you guys been? Jester’s been trying to send messages for months, now, we thought you might have – well.”
She kicks at the ground, and scowls.
“We were worried. A lot of sh- stuffs happened since you guys left.”
Caleb frowns, and he subconsciously traces the outline of the amulet under his shirt.
“I apologize, Beauregard, that may have been my fault. And sending can be – precarious, sometimes.”
She sighs, and sits down at the table with them.
“It’s fine, man. Least you guys are okay.” She throws a thumb over to Yeza, and continues, “Who’s this? I mean – you said your name was Yeza?”
Yeza nods, and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
Nott – she’s fiddling with the bandages wrapped around her hands, and she looks nervous.
“He’s um.”
She sighs.
“He’s my husband.”
Beau blinks.
And then blinks again.
“O…kay?”
“We’ve uh – we’ve been married for five years?” Her voice tilts up at the end, and Yeza slowly lowers his head onto the table in exasperation.
“Nott.”
“Yes?” Her eyes refuse to look at Beau’s face.
“Aren’t you like. Nine?”
Nott looks vaguely panicked.
“Sort – sort of?”
Caleb scrubs a hand over his face, and sighs.
“It’s a long story, Beauregard. And maybe not something to be explained – ah, explained here.”
Beau raises an eyebrow, but huffs out a small laugh. “And who are these folks?” She gestures at the rest of his friends, and smirks. “You guys got caught up in the whirlwind that’s Nott and Caleb, huh?”
He winces. “Ah. Beauregard, this is – Essek,” and Essek waves, already looking tired even though he’s just woken up, “And – um.”
He’s blushing. He can tell. “Astrid and – Eodwulf. Whom – whom I told you about. Briefly. But there’s – ah. Past issues that you may be thinking of have been mostly – uh. Mostly resolved.”
Gods, that sounded stupid.
Beauregard slowly looks at Astrid and Wulf in turn, eyes squinting, and apparently she sees something she likes because her shoulders relax, and she stops the glare and sneer that had started to creep onto her face.
“Glad that you two are alright. I’ll want to hear the full story – everything, honestly, what the f…heck happened to you guys – but that can wait till we get you back to the others.”
She taps her staff against the ground – it looks different, he notes, more solid, less like a weapon, and it’s… shorter? Maybe she’s changed fighting styles – and bites her lip.
“About work, though – you don’t need to like. Look for it? Unless you really want to, I don’t know. But we have a house? And honestly like. A lot of money.”
She smiles, a bit.
“Jester and Molly would be glad to see you guys. And, wow, you haven’t even met Caduceus –“
“Caduceus?” He asks, mind pausing on the name.
Beau chuckles. “He’s this giant firbolg dude, we met him up north in this graveyard – really long story, I’ll tell you later – he’s real chill, I’m sure you’ll like him. He’s a little weird, but. No weirder than the rest of us, so maybe not that weird? Or maybe really weird?”
Her face scrunches up in confusion, almost, and –
He missed her. He missed her so much.
“But yeah. Do you want to come to the house? We have room, there’s a second house on property that no one’s using, even. Might take some renovation, or whatever, but it’s livable, and we have a pretty decent set up going here. There’s plants, and flowers, and cows and sh…stuff. It’s nice.”
Nott glances at him, from across the table, and he blinks slowly.
“That sounds good, Beau. That sounds – honestly, that sounds perfect.”
He guesses they really are staying here, then.
At least – at least for now, he tells himself.
(In the back of his mind, he knows that giving up these people again would tear more of him apart than he has left.)