#whitestoneendures

"Hold still. Going around with an open wound here isn't a good idea."

Vesper took a deep breath as Vex placed her gloved hands on the large open wound high on her thigh. It was a dangerous spot to be injured and needed looking at right away before she bled out. The fight was still going on, but Vex was kind enough to stop and help Vesper, who could barely stand after a vicious attack had caught her by surprise.

"Can't you give me a straight answer anymore?"

"For what, Vi? Why I don't want to go with you? Why I don't want to stay here? I have--" Orym took a deep breath, rolling his shoulders, looking out on the cliffside where she had followed him. News had spread (from his mother or Nell maybe) that Orym was intending on setting off alone. Possibly towards Emon.

"I have to do something on my own. Without..."

Without Will. Without Derrig.

He had never had to do that before. Never.

Send me ⚠ to find my muse at the end of a trail of blood.

Vesper had lived long enough to know how dangerous the life of a de Rolo was. Herself and her siblings of course, but even going back to the earliest settlers of Whitestone, where there was always a de Rolo present... their family had always met trouble of some sort or another.

Percy's children were no different. They were de Rolo's after all. Their parents had met adventuring, why would they find the life of a diplomat to meet fulfillment.

But seeing the children harmed was never easy. It was a vision, vague enough that she didn't know when or where, a day ago that had put her on edge. A trail of blood.

Vesper had the familiar feeling in her stomach, the dread of a more terrible vision coming to fruition. She hadn't yet gone to bed, though now it was near morning. She walked the halls of her ancestral home until she was lead towards the kitchens. A guard meeting her their, long past looking surprised to see Vesper show up before they summoned her.

"M'lady--"

"Show me. Then fetch a healer."

"Already done, ma'am." The guard, Peter, moved into the kitchen to lead her to her nephew.

"Come in through the back not to upset your parents?" Vesper couldn't help but sound a little annoyed, but mostly worried. Her tone, however, was almost always gentle towards her brother's children.

“What do you dream about?”

"Well, darling, I dream about all sorts of things. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're not so good. Sometimes they even come true. Did you have a bad dream, dear?"

"You were injured. Have you allowed someone to heal you or are you too stubborn to let them?"

"No-- um, no, I mean, I did. I did, Tempset. But..." Orym shifted a little nervously. The Tempset was worldly, she was wise and powerful and smart. He did not take her for a fool, he did not take her to be prejudice or bigoted in anyway. What he did know, however, was her abundant caution for her people. Himself, included, if not more so, after everything he'd lost.

If she wanted to bench him, so to speak, she could. He didn't want that. Not over something that had been resolved.

Orym's hand briefly touched the scars on his face, as if to show they didn't hurt. But he knew they wouldn't heal either.

"And now, rather than admit these feelings, you're dancing around one another with this mind-numbing and frankly boorish mating ritual."

"Keep your voice down, Vilya." Orym glared back at his old friend as he plucked eggs from his mother's chicken coop. They were alone, more or less. The others of Bell's Hells were enjoying their few days in Zephrah. And all Orym wanted to do was spend time with his mother, doing chores around the house for her.

"Could you take these into the house for Mom? Please?" He handed the basket to her, or rather held it out hoping she would take it and drop the subject. Once she was gone, he'd start up on actually repairing the warped boards of the coop. And he couldn't very well carry on a conversation about his stalled love life if he was hammering away, could he?

"Why would I hang out with a loser like you?"

"I don't know! I didn't ask you!" Orym frowned deeply, balling his fists beside him. The urge to push Vilya away from him was too much. But he wouldn't. He couldn't. They hadn't spoken for almost a week, despite Will going back and forth between them trying to mediate.

And now even Will and his older sisters had given up. Derrig and Nell had tried to get them to talk. Mama wouldn't get involved, but gave Orym a big piece of her mind over his sulking about it.

They were fighting. They weren't friends anymore. Why couldn't people just let it go?

Why wouldn't Vilya just go back to how things were before? Orym didn't know what he'd done, and she wasn't saying. All of a sudden, it seemed like, Vilya just hated him, out of the blue. It was really getting to Will and couldn't have happened at a worse time. Orym and Will just realizing they wanted to be more than just buddies, more than even best friends. Orym loved him. And it hurt to see Will so upset that Orym and Vilya were fighting.

"Remind me what we're looking for, exactly?"

"My ring. I could have sworn I put it here..." Vesper led her niece into her room by the hand, her thin cold one in the younger's. She used a cane, much like her brother and she was certain had her parents survived to the age she was now, at least father might have needed one. Mother was always so graceful, she couldn't image her having to.

Of course Vesper hadn't misplaced her ring at all. She never did. Even when she could not remember the significance of it, it took on a new one for her. And it was for that purpose why she had taken too long to pass it along.

Vesper let go of her hand, picking up the small gift purse on her vanity. It was soon clear it was all a silly ploy to get the younger Vesper to spend a little time with her old aunt.

"Well, I suppose I'll need to find a new one. I'm much too fiddly with my hands not to have something on them. But this one... I know I've told you before it's been in our family for generations. My mother gave it to me on my 19th birthday." Vesper took a deep breath, opening the small purse and taking the ring out. Vesper had turned 20 the same year the Briarwoods had attacked.