Chapter Text
Somehow, Delfstan’s smallholding still stood. The home Caerswys had known for most of her life was unassuming, sun-bleached stone with small windows and a doorframe she had had to duck to get her frame through as she had grown to maturity. The land was still maintained, and she suspected that one of their neighbours was still tending to it. Briefly she remembered the family further down the valley and made a mental note that she would check in to see how they were doing later, but for now it was late, and she was weary and needed rest.
Putting her hand to the door, Caerswys paused for a moment. The last time she had seen the Hyur she called her father had been on his deathbed, right here in this house. After all that time it still ached. The comfort and warmth had seemed to evaporate and she couldn’t get away fast enough at the time. She closed her eyes and drew the cool night air, revelling for a moment in its familiar ocean tinged scent. All the places Caerswys had been to and all of the things she had seen, and still nothing soothed her in this manner. The night air of coastal La Noscea was unique in her mind, and its sense memory was enough to take her back to her childhood.
The only home she had known from a young age, Delfstan’s home was as simple and unassuming as he had been in life. The man in question had been getting on when he had found her as a young girl. Lost, shivering and near unconscious in the bottom of a small boat drifting near the coast a mile from here, some twenty six years ago. Hair matted to her scalp and covered in blood that had come from the two protruding growths piercing violently through the top of her head, she had been wearing only the shabbiest of clothes. She recalled later that Delfstan had told her he had nearly taken her for voidsent, until she finally opened her eyes to look at him and had immediately burst into tears.
“No demon could have made the sounds you did back then, and that was that.”
The mischievous smile he had given at the telling came to Caerswys’ mind then, and she laughed, finally breaking the spell that the silence had held over the house. Lighting a candle she stepped inside and closed the door behind her, muffling the sounds of the breeze outside. She would remain ever grateful to him, and hoped that she was still making him proud.
Slowly opening her eyes, Caerswys pushed the door open.
The single room before her somehow seemed smaller than she remembered. Two beds against opposite walls on one side of the room, and a small cooking stove under the window of another. The room was sparsely decorated, with a small rug on the floor and a small clay vase of long dried flowers standing in a window ledge. She must have forgotten to dispose of them before she had left on her journey to Gridania.
The doorframe still had the marks that the two had made over the years to mark her growth- Caerswys’s growing taller and taller, eventually stopping at what they assumed to be her fifteenth summer (though, no-one could be sure). She noted the marks she had insisted they start making for Delfstan after that summer, always in roughly the same place on the frame. The grain of the ash familiar under her fingertips, she traced the marks before turning towards the stove and retrieving the kettle from it’s still familiar place. Her father, ever a man of habit, had kept a good store of tea leaves that somehow had survived through her absence, and after retrieving some water from the pump outside Caerswys set to work boiling the water for the Summerford blend they had both been so fond of.
Pouring the tea into her fathers cup, she sat in the chair she always remembered seeing him asleep in at the end of a hard day. Knees up near her chest, she had to laugh. She’d only ever sat in it when she was very young, and her Roegadyn genetics hadn’t yet pushed her past most other races' normal heights.
“Yep, this chair was definitely not made for your legs, Caer.” Her voice, soft and low, echoed out into the room, addressing no-one in particular. When she had continued to grow and grow, Delfstan had been delighted. Though others had initially treated her with suspicion, particularly as her horns had continued to grow, he had only ever extolled the virtues of her height and strength. As he grew weaker in age, she had been able to take over the lion's share of the tasks, able to put an end to his insistences that he be the one to do the hard toil simply by threatening to carry him like a small child into the house.
Life had been kind to them both, bringing them together. And then The Calamity had come, and things twisted from there.
Wild, desperate creatures stalked the lands, preying on local livestock and those foolish enough to be out after dark. In those first six months he had pulled together what savings he had in order to buy her a bow, insisting that she patrol the valley in order to protect the land of them and their neighbours. Ironic then that so many of them, who had shunned her for so long were forced to rely on her as their protection. In time, she had become a familiar face to all in that part of La Noscea, eventually being invited in for breaks to take drinks with them, and in time, meals.
It had been difficult to accept, at first. She had been resistant to all forms of charity growing up, seeing it as a kind of pity. It had felt forced, like a trade for their continued protection. It made things easier for Delfstan’s limited food stores though, enabling him to eat and keep up his strength whilst she was away. Sometimes she managed to bring home a fresh kill, hunted during her patrols, but as the years after The Calamity went on they became harder to find. “And anyway,” her father had always insisted- “an old man like me doesn’t need a whole carcass. Share it with the neighbours, they’ll have more need than we.”
As it turned out, he was right. The larger families, those with young mouths to feed and the sick and elderly, greeted her in those days with joy and relief when she brought furs and preserved meats. The youngest children especially, those unfamiliar with the story of her arrival in the valley, always ran towards her laughing in excitement, begging her to pick them up and throw them around.
In some ways The Calamity had brought them all together, in a much tighter community. When Delfstan had first become sick with the illness that would eventually consume him, Caerswys had sought advice from their neighbours on the parcel of land closest to them. The family that lived there, a large family of lalafell had insisted that their eldest child, who had knowledge of healing herbs return with her to care for him whilst she finished her route. From then on there had been a stream of visitors, people who came on multiple pretexts in order that he would not be alone. What had for so long just been the two of them became something much larger.
And then Delfstan had died, and the bottom had fallen out of Caerswys’ world. The anchor that had kept her in place and secure for so long was no longer there, and she drifted through the days, no longer certain of how her life would play out. Unable to maintain the farmstead and patrol the valley, Caerswys began to teach some of the younger residents how to use a bow in order that they could work together to keep themselves safe. She had sold the Aldgoats that had provided her and Delfstan with milk, and when the final harvest had been gathered in she portioned out the meagre crops that had grown and gave them to the neighbours. With the final delivery she had felt somehow lighter. An unknown energy had crept into her in the months leading up to that harvest, and she felt the call of lands unknown.
************************************************************************
Sunlight crept over the windowsill and across Caerswys’ face, gentle at first. Her eyes, still heavy, opened slowly as she took in her surroundings. A twinge in her neck reminded her that she had fallen asleep in the chair, and she groaned as she rolled her neck, feeling her spine protest the strange angle she had slept in. As she stretched, her eyes fell on the vase in the window again, vivid against the blue sky outside.
The flowers from the night before had been replaced, fresh ones bringing a small amount of life to the home of her memories. She frowned for a moment as she realised she had also been covered by a blanket, before observing a cup nearby with steam rising from it, and the familiar scent of Summerford blend wafted into her nostrils. As Caerswys continued to come to, and her senses all made themselves known to her again, she thought she could hear the sounds of someone humming outside, and the sound of something familiar and heavy hitting the earth in a repetitive motion. It took her a moment to register who the voice belonged to, before she realised who was outside.
The Warrior of Light stood, threw the blanket around her shoulders and slowly trudged towards the door and opened it with a smile on her face.
It was a new day, and though he was not there to see it, Caerswys knew the fact that people continued to care for his land would make Delfstan happy. He had been a good man, and in her mind she could not have been luckier that he had found her and brought her into his life.