CrynwrDrwg ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ

The bridge was always the worst of the walk in any weather more foul than a sunny day. A massive beast of a structure that valiantly pulled Stormhaven and Bangkorai together. Morach lamented the height of it and the lack of any decent breaks for the wind, as he pulled his jacket tight around him. The snow still managed to crawl into his beard, before it melted and refroze once more in it.

The other end of the bridge came up, mercifully, just as Stormhaven turned into a faint grey detail behind him. He gave the river-black below the bridge a final cautious look before following the road down, just through Evermore’s western gates. The gate-guards gave him little fuss. He’d lived in the city long enough by now that any that had cause to bother him were either newly posted, or recently aggrieved by any number of things a man loved to redirect on to strangers.

It had taken him longer than he liked to return from Gavaudon, the weather what it was, and his body no help either. Bern put him through countless small drills from the moment he walked in that day. He could feel his body ache entire from all the falls and correction-hits he took during the sparring especially. The mark on the back of his skull gave a dull ache that he’d grown more accustomed to. He knew to expect his mind slipping up on small things later. Anticipating it never helped, despite it.

After months at it, Morach found himself slowly coming around to the training. It was different than the training Dro’zashi did for him, in a different lifetime, it felt. Bern was more thorough, calculating, but you could tell it meant more to the old Breton how his students turned out than it ever did his old Khajiiti mentor.

There hadn’t been more killing. Not yet, and Morach knew to expect another eventually. He wasn’t a complete daft fool, despite anything Fynola or Vardach might claim. He enjoyed the rest of the work they asked if him. The casing, the listening, the *hunting* of it. Reading a house and its people to know exactly when one woke, and when another left in the evenings. How they made their food, and how they made their money. He was good at it, and always had been. The only thing that had changed between the work now and a few years back, was who he gave most of it to, and how much he needed to gather. After he would deliver his expansive report at the Weir, he would find, to his own muddled confusion, a deep sense of pleasure he began to take in the entire affair.

The snow in his beard had further melted and frozen as Morach walked the evening lanes of Evermore. Despite the state of his boots, soaked through and frozen repeatedly, the thoughts of all he had been watching as of late danced around his skull. Until the thoughts drifted to the black bundle at the bottom of his trunk.

He turned down a lane, and the familiar sight knocked his mind back into place rightly. His little house, with its windows golden from the fire within, stark against the bleak winter. The smoke out of the chimney, more than he usually found. Thierry’s stubborn little birch, sat in the small garden by the wall. The whole weight of the day came out of Mor with a deep breath. Somewhere inside Thierry would be sat, either having a supper, or fiddling with a random bit of wood or leather. Waiting for *him.*