In search of... (part 2)

[bitterguardian]

After years of living in his subterranean home around the vault, Horvath is unused to being woken by sunlight. To fall asleep comfortably sunk deep in a plush chair is familiar, but the chair is not his own, and to wake with a cat sleeping on him, and another running around playing is familiar, but these are not his cats and there are more than two. Also he rarely has the foresight to pull a blanket over himself. To feel so much at home in a place that is not his home comes as a strange surprise.

Last night before he dozed off in the chair, however, he had a great deal of food and alcohol, and his body would urgently like to remind him of that fact. He's grateful for the new set of crutches in easy reach, and he hauls himself up on them and swings along off to the bathroom, letting the cats scatter in his wake.

Once he's tended to the basics, and ascertained that while he is hung over, it's not a bad one, he notices the note from his host conveniently stabbed through on a prong of the antlers around the bathroom mirror. She had some foresight, indeed.

Bonjour Max! I hope that your sleep was a deep, healing one and that you woke to a better day! I had an errand to run early this morn, and might not make it back in time to be there when you wake. So! There is food, coffee, tea - and I shall return with fresh eggs for breakfast if you sleep so long.
Mara

The towels from yesterday have been replaced with clean ones, his clothes are washed and mended on the bed, and there's the salve still waiting back on the footstool beside the chair in which he slept. Thanks to the ambient light of day waking him, it's not late by any means, so he takes time to wash, to put salve and a bandage over the blistered stump of his leg, and to dress in his own clothes once more. When he emerges to investigate the kitchen, Horvath feels more like himself than he has since his encounter with Shub niggurath sent him questing. Pantleg folded up and tucked neatly (a trick he learned back in the army hospital when he was first learning to adapt to the amputation), moving faster on the new crutches than he can with a cane, he murmurs to the cats, and seeks out a cup of tea to help drive away the vestiges of a headache that's not strong enough to dampen a good mood.

Comments

[sunandshadows]

"I shall, and shall dance for you all the dances that you had not the time to see on this journey of yours. But there may be other quests in our future, Maxim. Oh oui, there may yet be others to come."

Rocking back on her heels, the faeling slips out of his arms and back - up - and away. If she had thought about it, she would have liked to have gone stately, like a lady. But no, the sun was bright, the autumn day was warm. The wind brought the tang of oak leaves to dance in, the distant scent of almost over-ripened wild fruit to find and eat with berry-stained fingers and berry-stained lips, and the promise of an afternoon of watching the birds fly south from the branch of a high, old tree that swayed in the winds.

She begins to hum. The hum turns to a song as Mara walks, then skips, then dances out of sight. Snatches of girlish giggles and a few lines of a song are echoed back to him, until they too fade into the forest deep.

"...Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight..."

And she is gone.

[bitterguardian]

If she'd gone slow and stately, he would have worried, but seeing her dance and skip makes it easier to watch her go. He'll carry the memory of her bouncing along with the autumn leaves on the breeze, and it keeps his heart lighter than it has been. Horvath watches her until she's out of sight, and listens to the fading voice, and tends his fire.

The tea is made in silence, but he's at peace, rather than gloomy, and when he drinks it inside a ritual circle, he thinks of the other aglaophotis flowers, growing and blooming in her hair. Horvath stays with the fire, letting it die down of its own accord as the afternoon lengthens into evening. There's the whisper of a chill on the wind, winter to come, but he's still warm enough. When there are only embers left, he buries them neatly, and makes a thorough effort to remove all traces of his presence.

Well away from the still-growing bush, Horvath opens the doorway to home, pulls it around him, and steps forward to reunite with his cats, with Bel if he's around, and to reheat the food she's sent him with for an easy dinner. It will be good to be home, but tonight he'll dream of the wild woods, and a lilting voice echoing through them.