In Falling, Leaves

[Llyewell]

((This is a continuation of Summers Past.))

In the days after Sebastion’s leaving, Sigarni was as a shadow without a light source. She was disconnected from others, disjointed, dim. She did her chores with a disinterested proficiency, and then took to her bed, often without more than a mouthful of food. She was adrift, cut loose in a sea of familiar fields and faces that had all become terrifyingly strange.

The hearts of the young feel things keenly, and every high and low is magnified. The hearts of the young are resilient, too, and in time Sigarni began to perk up once more. She began to eat, to speak, to laugh and joke and carve and whistle. Her parents breathed deep sighs of relief, and sent murmured thanks to the gods above. Sigarni once again began to explore the fields and hidden places of the small village, outwardly seeming to be the girl she always was. Deep within the small secret space of her heart, there was an old wound, and the incessant litany that she hadn’t been enough.

The demon attacks continued, and after each, the older members of the village would stand around and jaw about them, opining about their frequency and intensity. The younger members of the village stood nearby and listened, and though some of them rolled their eyes or scoffed at the words of their elders, more and more began to drift away in the darker hours of the night, bound for adventure and glory. In the natural order of things, the village began to shrink and die. The earth began to shrug off the shackles of ordered fields, and families began to move closer to Milltown and Caer Laledan. The Balstons left one winter day, knocking upon the Dagans door and saying their farewells on their way out.

Through those months, Sigarni never received a single word from Sebastion.

It was almost a year before Sigarni gave in to the siren call of adventure. Mr. Dagan could see it coming, and he shared an ale with her on the eve of her leave taking, just as he had done secretly with Sebastion. He spoke of strength, and wonder, and stars. He told her to remember her faith and keep it, to never confuse bravery with stubbornness, and to always, always remember that she was loved. She’d hugged him tightly and kissed his weathered cheek and murmured all of the proper sounds, but even then there was a sly voice that whispered in her mind ‘but not enough’. She tamped it down with every step she took away from the village.

Three more years came and went, and Sigarni drifted from place to place. She saw towering mountains and sweetly swaying trees. She counted stars and waves upon the beach, and grew dizzy at their numbers. She honed her skills and answered the Crier’s calls when she could. She gradually shed the skin of the girl who followed Sebastion Balston over the fields, and with it she shed her surname, taking on the handle ‘Windblade’ because it sounded sleek and dangerous, and maybe it would rub off on her.

As much new knowledge that she gathered, as many new skills that she mastered, she never truly forgot Sebastion. She could recall his smile, his eyes, the sound of his voice as he teased her, and the changed timbre of it when he spoke promises in the shell of her ear. Though she trudged to her parents’ new home in Milltown time and again, there stubbornly remained no word from Sebastion, and she wrestled with pain, unable to decide if it would hurt more to imagine him dead and gone, or to imagine him breaking his every promise to her.

In time, Sigarni made new friends, and once or twice her eye was taken by an attractive male. It was never more than an appreciation for their form, a vague yearning deep in her belly. Only one man came close to having his name join Seb’s in Sigarni’s heart, and it turned out his shark toothed smile was more truth than she had imagined.

She had been confirmed as a rogue with earth shaking results. She’d been taunted and teased by demons, and had worn the blood of a soldier cut in half as she spoke to him. She’d worked with aching back and blistered fingers to build a pyre, to help with the gates, to shore up the rogue tunnels. She was tempered by these challenges, but still enough of a young girl to need to take a moment and cry sometimes. She remembered her faith, and kept it as promised. She tried hard to know when she was being brave, and when she was being stubborn. She took strength from the evidence around her that she was loved, drawing peace and strength from the occasional visits of her Spellslinger friend, Synvasti. She carved, and cultivated, and took as many small joys from her days as could be gleaned with open arms and shuttered heart.

But she never once took the white bone bead from her hair.