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“Rost?”
Pausing in his work, Rost turned towards his young charge. Aloy was lying on her stomach drawing dots and lines on the floor as she often did these days, her metal trinket perched above her ear.
The very sight of it still unnerved him. He had dismissed the thing’s capabilities at first as just a product of Aloy’s near-boundless imagination, but she had soon undeniably proved him wrong.
It likely wasn’t dangerous, of that he was certain. He was not at all pleased with how it was able to show her visions, yet he also could not deny that it was invaluable when it came to hunting machines. Rost had allowed Aloy to keep it, even though it was against his better judgement, on the condition that she at least remove it to sleep. She was at an age where her attention span left much to be desired, and he had been confident that with time she would lose interest in her little relic.
So, the sight of it sat stuck to the side of her head as it had done every waking moment for the previous six months was hardly a comfort. It twinkled innocently, reflecting the firelight with the motion of Aloy’s heels kicking back and forth in the air.
“When will my beard start growing?”
“Your beard?” Rost repeated.
“Yeah. I was in the valley today and a group of hunters went past me and they all had big beards with braids in them like yours,” she said in a rush, drawing another straight vertical line on the floor in front of her, her eyes slowly moving side to side as she did.
“You were in the valley,” Rost replied, his tone flat. “Where in the valley did you go?”
Aloy didn’t look up. The only indication she gave that she had heard Rost came in the form of her pressing her lips tighter together - a clear tell that she was going to lie.
“The truth, Aloy.”
“Fiiine.” She sighed dramatically. “I was hunting the rabbit I caught us for supper and the tracks just kept going and going.”
“And?”
Gruffly, Aloy admitted that she had wandered close to Mother’s Watch during her hunt. Rost inhaled, intent on admonishing her, and so she ploughed on ahead with her voice raised to purposefully cut him off.
“It doesn’t matter; I wasn’t caught.”
“That is not the point,” Rost pressed.
“Yeah it is! If I wasn’t caught then I’m not in trouble,” she insisted. Her voice took on a duller tone, her words mirroring something he had told her many times himself: “Do not avoid the question.”
Rost raised his eyebrow and continued to observe her for a moment longer before turning back around in his chair. The wood his hand was still only half-carved; he turned it in the light to check for imperfections before continuing.
“Rost-”
“You will not grow a beard.”
The sound of her fingertips on the wooden floor stopped. “What do you mean?” she asked, puzzled.
“Only men grow beards.”
“Why?”
“Women are created in the image of All-Mother, with little hair on their bodies, and men are created to be opposite to them.”
“Why?”
“Because that is the way that it is,” he bit out, his tone perhaps more harsh than had been his intention. Chided for her curiosity, Aloy fell silent.
For about five seconds.
“That’s stupid.”
“Perhaps so,” Rost allowed, carving another strip from the ridgewood in his hands.
“I’m gonna grow a beard even bigger than yours someday,” Aloy declared, the tapping sounds resuming. “And it’ll have seven braids in it.”
Considering it not worth the fight, Rost was alright with Aloy having the last word.
Despite the fact that her likelihood of growing a beard was very very low and that Rost was not a gambling man, he would not have wagered against her. The child had a peculiar way of seeing directly into the heart of things, almost single-mindedly shooting straight and true for her objectives, and seeing solutions which Rost himself sometimes could not see. Only a short amount of time had passed since she had stalked through a group of spooked machines as if she were nothing more than a shadow, and he was a continued witness to the effortless way in which she bent a relic of the cursed metal world to her will. If Aloy said that she was going to grow a beard, he could never truly rule out the possibility.
Which is why he wasn’t entirely surprised when she approached him a few days later, eyes shining with mischief and pride.
“So that is where those fox hides disappeared to,” Rost remarked. From the looks of it, she had used the tails from several cured pelts to stitch together a beard the same colour as her hair. He could admire the creativity of it, if nothing else.
“Can you tie it for me?”
“Have you made an attempt by yourself?”
Pressing her lips together, Aloy nodded briskly. Rost stared at her, as patient as an evergreen, until she relented and shook her head as he expected.
“I can’t tie it if I can’t see my hands,” she insisted.
“You cannot know if you have not tried.”
To her credit, she did not protest for much longer. Reaching behind her head, she attempted to tie the makeshift beard on, however even after a few tries it still would not stay in place.
Deciding that she had made a valiant effort, Rost beckoned Aloy towards him.
“There may be times where you will be required to draw your weapon without daylight to aid you,” Rost said, carefully guiding her hands as they tied the straps together. “Picture your hands as you make the motions, and you will see just as well as you can on the brightest day.”
With the pelts in place, Aloy turned once again. Her wide, beaming smile was visible in the set of her eyes beneath the beard.
“See, Rost? I said it’d be bigger than yours.”
“You did.”
“And it has nine braids,” she boasted. “Some of them are kind of small but there are big ones too.”
“Indeed. It will keep your face very warm while you replace the hides you took.”
Her eyes and mouth opened wide, aghast, dislodging the beard from its place under her nose. “What?!”
“You took them without permission,” Rost explained pointedly. “I may have need of them to repair our winter clothes. They must be replaced.”
Crestfallen, Aloy nodded.
“Do you at least like my beard?” she asked quietly. Rost reached for her, adjusted the beard so that it sat in place once more, and smiled.
“It is a very handsome beard.”
“Really?” Aloy asked, the joy returning just as swiftly as it had faded. She then asked, shyly: “Will the All-Mother be angry that I have a beard? If she didn’t make me into a man?”
Rost considered her for a moment. “We all grow into the people that the Goddess intends us to become,” he said. “Some may take meandering paths, but she smiles upon us all.”
“As long as I replace the hides,” Aloy finished for him, nodding to herself. "And I'll practice with my weapons in the dark!"
A stone fell into the pit of Rost's stomach. This was another lesson he had been trying to teach her, which had yet to fully sink in. "That is not an appropriate place to begin training a new skill.”
Aloy hummed, thinking. With a flicker of amusement, Rost watched as she brought a hand to her chin and stroked her beard in contemplation.
"Maybe... I could start with braids?" she said, after a moment. Gathering momentum, she bounced on the spot. "I could make lots of braids with my hair in the dark to start! That would work, wouldn't it?"
"I believe so," Rost agreed. Aloy bolted down the hill towards the valley, promising to return in time for supper - whether or not she would return with five whole foxes as she also promised, Rost was not so sure.
Although, he mused as he repositioned the wooden bead he was carving, he would not be surprised if she achieved such a feat after all.