"Ah, a guest from Gridania? I thought I--" But the joke Raubahn was about to make fails to materialize, as he sees exactly who it is Kan-E-Senna has sent.
The woman raises an amused eyebrow at him. "General Aldynn," she says. "Don't tell me, you were expecting someone taller."
"You must be Summer Storm." He looks, somewhat upward, at her face-- there's no mistaking that profile, or that sense of humor. "Your brother speaks highly of you."
"Copper is the champion of Ul'dah? I swear, every time I leave him alone--"
Raubahn hides a smile. "He told you naught of his exploits?"
"Oh, he wrote to me there had been troubles with voidsent and mysterious mages, he neglected to mention he'd been dispatching them himself."
She looks so cross, so much the exasperated sibling, Raubahn gives up and laughs outright. "Well, I see I need not waste time telling you the woes of Ul'dah. Although if what Kan-E says of you is true, you're at least as formidable as Copper Sky-- or he is, compared to you."
Summer examines him for a moment, clearly trying to decide whether he's joking. He returns his straightest face. At last she laughs too, a surprisingly soft sound, and extends her hand.
"It's good to be back," she says, "however briefly."
He takes the offered hand. "The good is Ul'dah's, for the time you're here. Now then-- let's have your message, envoy of Gridania."
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Summer shades her eyes against the setting sun. "Up there," she says. Raubahn follows her gaze and sees the stand of black willow trees atop the rise-- not many, and not as large as some, but large enough. Tall enough to have been growing since before the Calamity, the occupation, the mad king. To have survived it all.
"Aye," he says, "it looks a fine spot. I'll stay here, if you like."
"You can come up," Summer responds, as they dismount. "I'd like it if you did. Just-- give me a moment first, all right?"
He nods, and she ducks her head just briefly for him to kiss her cheek. Then he moves off the packed-earth path, to find somewhere safe to hitch their chocobos, and she starts up the rise.
It's a steeper climb than it looked from the bottom. If she weren't in uncommon shape for her age, Summer thinks, she'd be quite out of breath. But the view from the head of the rise is worth it-- the Fringes spread out around her, the sunset glinting on the river and painting its colors onto the bluffs, and the trees' long shadows stretching out to the land like welcoming arms.
She rests her hand on the bark of the nearest one. It's deep brown, beginning to show the grooves and rough bark that come with age. Like her, maybe. Like he might be now.
"We did it, Silent," she murmurs. "No more kings, not here. And it was even harder than you thought it would be. But whatever comes next... it'll be better than what we had."
The soft sound of feet on the rocks tells her Raubahn has caught up. She doesn't turn, but she lets him come to her, put his arm gently around her waist, and she leans into him when he does.
"There was a black willow tree just outside our village," Summer says, half to him, half to the air. "Just the one, as long as anyone could remember. I used to go there to gather bark for Father's medicines. We met there, you know-- I was seven, and he was nine. He was named for that tree, and he liked to sit underneath it and think about-- whatever it was children thought about-- and that day I was climbing in the branches, and I dropped my basket right on him."
Something like a laugh escapes her at the memory. The sound gives Raubahn permission to smile too. "Oh, he used to fret when I climbed so high up," says Summer. "But I did it anyway, because I liked him fretting over me. And then one day he said, if I came down from that damn tree, he'd marry me... and I never climbed it again."
She doesn't have to tell him the rest-- how, always the more cautious between them, Silent Willow had kept his head down, and how he'd been taken to Theodoric's palace anyway. Why he had no grave to visit, and why the black willow tree wasn't there now. Raubahn knows all that. But this, the quiet days before-- they were never for sharing, only now and only here.
He lets Summer go, so she can stoop down to place the stone she's brought at the base of the tree. She kneels there for a quiet moment. When she stands, to lay her hand on its trunk again, Raubahn places his own next to hers.
"Rest well, Silent Willow," he says solemnly. "Rhalgr take up your cause."
Summer turns at last into her husband's embrace, and he holds her in their own silence, under the willow trees, in the last light of the sunset.
Eventually she sighs. "We ought to climb back down," she says, "before it gets too dark."
"Ever practical," Raubahn agrees, but this time he kisses her before he lets her go.
