(also posted here on ao3)
Aloth knows it’s a bad day when he thinks back minutes, hours, and finds large, gaping spaces where his memory should be. It’s not an uncommon occurrence, really, but it’s all the evidence he needs to confirm that Iselmyr has long overstayed her welcome. He sees it in Kana’s uncharacteristic hovering, in the way Edér looks at him when he thinks Aloth isn’t looking, in the way Hiravias grins at him in a jest that Aloth cannot recall, in Pallegina’s frostiness as a direct result, no doubt, of Iselmyr taking his foot in her dirty hands and forcibly shoving it down his throat.
It’s not the first day like this he’s experienced, but he’s uncomfortably aware of it in a way that he never was, before that day in Brackenbury’s Sanitarium. There’s comfort, sure, in the reality that none of his companions will turn him away for Iselmyr’s presence – but though Aloth logically knows this to be true, it’s difficult to shake the decades-old instinct that demands that he run and hide.
It’s what his mother had advised him to do, after all – and was she wrong? Not in Aedyr, surely – but looking back on it in hindsight, she’d only said what was necessary for it to no longer be a crisis on her hands. His father would have been no help, that was certain, but his mother? She had power at her disposal. Influence. If not the necessary resources at her fingertips, then enough to send Aloth away to someone who did know how to help him.
… gods. It’s been decades since he last spoke to her – days since that day in the Sanitarium that brought it all bubbling back to the surface like a cauldron set to boil. They all have bigger things to worry about than this… awkward situation that affects nobody but him.
Dyrford’s inn’s stables are as stuffy and uncomfortable as Gilded Vale’s had been, but he’s paradoxically more comfortable here than he’s been in a long, long time. Something about being surrounded by comrades, almost friends – Senri sandwiched between a dozing Kana and Pallegina, whom no one was willing to touch her because she gets too little rest as it is; Edér snoring in the corner with Itumaak pressed against his outstretched leg, Sagani’s hand tangled in her companion’s fur just in case; Hiravias tucked into a little ball in his bedroll and Durance, half asleep, prodding at the hearth to keep the flames warmly blazing for just a little while longer.
Aloth ought to be resting, too – the scribbles in the margins of his grimoire have grown near nonsensical in his fatigue. But instead, he finds himself thinking back to his mother – of her long, dark hair, identical to his – of the weight of her hands as they’d settled on his shoulders the day he told her about Iselmyr. She’d probably meant for it to be comforting. That’s what he’d like to think, at any rate.
–but then, another memory comes to him, unbidden. His mother sitting behind him, running a brush through his hair. His father is nowhere to be seen and, somehow, he knows that his father will not return in time to interrupt whatever it is that the two of them are doing here. If he thinks long and hard enough, he can’t quite recall when they last spent a quiet moment like this together – and sentiments like that are usually evidence that the memory might belong to Iselmyr instead, but somehow, he knows that’s not it.
His mother sits behind him, and her hands are in his hair, and for once in his life, there is no risk of future hurt. She speaks to him in a calm, lilting voice – of vast and varied histories long passed, of infinite futures to come, of magical theorems that connect their souls through it all. It makes him almost drowsy – and he trained himself out of sleeping too deeply long ago, lest his slumber be interrupted by unwanted attention, but a part of him wonders if he could simply… rest here, and not worry about where he will awaken.
… and then, he notices the peasant woman. She looks ordinary, forgettable in her rumpled clothes and hunched posture. On any other occasion, he wouldn’t pay her a second glance – but his vision ripples, and the image solidifies until he can identify long, stringy hair and shadowed eyes. There’s only one possible explanation for that.
For a moment, the peasant woman looks to him, and Aloth to her, neither of them uttering a word – and then she moves. He opens his mouth, and Iselmyr takes over; he knows this to be true because the next thing he knows, everyone is awake and the peasant woman is nowhere to be found. The memory splinters, then, but… it wasn’t really a memory, was it? There’s not a single moment like it that he can recall; if anything, it’s a childish wish that will never become a reality.
Sagani and Itumaak crouch by the door, peering outside. Pallegina stands a little ways behind her with a blade drawn, and Edér stands behind her simply standing straight and tall, cutting an imposing figure to all who would cross him. Kana inhales deeply, as if preparing to chant. Durance and Hiravias stand ready by the fire – Durance, as if Magran herself had blessed him with the ability to manipulate the embers behind him, and Hiravias who will command those same embers, should a fight break out.
And then Senri comes through the door, alone and unharmed. “False alarm,” she says, her voice smooth as ever. It’s enough to set them all at ease, enough to return to their respective bedrolls. Sagani remains upright, though; she leans back against the wall, but not before whispering something to Itumaak that he can’t hear. Pallegina sheathes her blade, but keeps it within arm’s reach. Senri sighs, settling back into her bedroll, though they all know she won’t be getting any more rest tonight.
“I’m sorry,” says Aloth, miserably. “That was… I don’t know what came over me.”
Except he does know. He knows that it was not a memory, truly, that overtook him before he became aware of that peasant woman’s presence. He knows that something had happened to him – that someone must have done something to him – for him to think, even for a moment, that that vision could have been reality. He’s long made his peace with never having a proper relationship with his mother, but the absence of it, now, is a heavy weight that’s settled uncomfortably in his chest.
“You were watching for danger, and alerted us when you suspected one,” says Pallegina, with far more kindness than he deserves. “There is no fault in that.”
… so she says, but there had been no danger to begin with – or at least, not one that posed a threat to anyone in this room except, maybe, Aloth himself.
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