#setting out

The sun setting low cast long shadows all around the pair as they moved slowly but with purpose along the roads of Elwynn Forest. All the better, he thought. He couldn’t stand the crowds and stares of the city. He couldn’t before and he certainly couldn’t now.

There was a tension between them as they walked that even their idle chatter could not dispel. Its source was no mystery either. This was the first they had reconnected, save their reunion on the bridge, since he had abandoned her in a fit of madness and self-hatred.

He had been quite prepared to wander forever, surviving as he always had. His self-imposed sentence for his crimes. He owed her his life. Not because she had saved it, necessarily, but because he had selfishly cast it away and left her alone. For that, he would pledge his life to her. Whether that be by her side, or waiting endlessly until the end of all things, he would relish or endure it as necessary.

If it took a thousand years or more for her to reach out to him again, he would wait. He felt fortunate not to wait that long, receiving her note only weeks after she had left him on that bridge. Now he accompanied her on a quest of personal importance.

The tension remained between them as the minutes bled to hours through the trees. She was angry at him, still, he was sure. Her answers had, on the whole, been short and to the point when his questions were asked. He did not press or prod more than was necessary.

After a long period of silence, the words that came to him from her lips were the most shocking of all. “Tell me...tell me you’ll stay with me this time.”

It was enough to stop him dead in his tracks in the twilight shadow of a large tree by the road. He turned to face her, and all at once she looked the powerful huntress she had become and the timid girl she had once been. It was like a knife ripped open his chest again. The damage he had done. He hated himself enough to throw himself into that chasm once more. But no, he reminded himself, that was not his purpose. “There is no power on this or any world that will tear me from you again, save your command. Not even death.”

She nodded once, but doubt still visibly weighed upon her. “”I thought...you’d hate me, for what I had become.”

He placed a hand on her shoulder, thumb tracing the fel brands peeking out from her armor along her collarbone. His spectral eyes saw, despite her moment of modesty, a radiating power more beautiful than he had even known before. His words flowed easily, as if they had been waiting for this moment to be spoken. “”Surprised...yes. Hate, no. I realize now I hated only myself. I see the truth now, as if a veil lifted from my eyes. I see a power that you were destined to have. Beauty and strength which are not burdens of your chosen path, but the fulfillment of your destiny.” 

He spoke the truth. From the moment he had met her, years before, she had radiated a quiet strength and power, often hidden by timidity, but present nonetheless. But that radiance, he now saw, was a mere smoldering fire, burning low in preparation to be awoken and set free. Now that it had, his vision fell upon an angel, a rainbow of radiating energies.

“If ever there was anyone who made me feel beautiful...it’s you.” She said.

He shook his head. “I am merely an observer of your beauty, you are the one who has embodied it all this time.”

He heard it then in her voice, a trace of a little something different. Less demure, insecure, but confident and maybe a little cocky. “That’s not the first time you’ve said that...and I certainly hope it won’t be the last...”