1328 - Making Peace Before is Too Late
Stone Family - England
The Stone family reached an ideal harmony thanks to Clementia and Isaac's effort. While Clementia spent the majority of her time with Athelyna, Isaac took care of Thomas and Ellen. Leonard, now a child, helped with the animals and the plants.
Bucket Family - Germany
The Bucket's children were always playing around and enjoying the countryside, but Steffan, the older of them, never quite enjoyed anything and despised his little siblings >:(
Bastian Bucket aged up into an infant. He was just like his mother but with his father's eyes.
Even Sophie Bucket aged up into an adult :)
Zymmer Family - Germany
Now with Rasmus gone and magic being her priority, Margrite got a job in the Magic Realm thanks to her best friend Simeon, so she made a few renovations around her house. She made herself an altar and she added a new floor with a bedroom just for Erika :)
But not everything were good news. Soon she heard in the village that her dad Wick (with whom she hadn't spoken since he betrothed her with Rasmus) was really ill due to old age.
Now that she was in a better mental place, she decided to bring him into her house until his last breath. Margrite told him everything about her marriage and Wick was so sad about it that he asked for her forvigeness. They spent his last days remembering the good old days with Ermel (Margrite's sister) and Candle (Margrite's aunt and Wick's sister) around in the house <3
García Family - Spain
When Ermel received Margrite's letter about her dad passing away, she was so sad that she couldn't even get out of bed. She struggled eating and Alberto was really worried because she was pregnant at that time.
The labour came sooner than later and Ermel gave birth to a baby girl called Aldonza García. The little one died a few hours later due to the malnutrition she suffered when she was in her mother's belly.
The good thing was that Juan García aged up into a healthy and active toddler :)
Births [1]
SPAIN
♰ Aldonza García: 1328 - 1328
Birthdays [3]
GERMANY
Bastian Bucket: 1327 -
Sophie Bucket: 1298 -
SPAIN
Juan García: 1326 -
Deaths [1]
GERMANY
♰ Wick Zymmer: 1285 - 1328 (43 years old), by old age
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Epilogue II - Siren’s Call
'The truth was... inevitable. And now they know.'
He awoke with a start, a silent cry breaking on his lips. He looked around frantically, taking in his surrounding and feeling the pain in his chest subside.
Anwen curled and stirred at his side, her form buried deep in the soft mattress and her face obscured by long entangled strands of mahogany hair. She peaked from underneath the blankets and sprang straight when she noticed his afflicted stance.
“A nightmare?”, she breathed softly, reaching for his cheek to catch a tear clinging at the corner of his lid.
He nodded silently, briefly unable to find his voice – or rather unsure that it would not betray him.
The words still rumbled in the back of his mind like thunder on a mountain, an earthquake in the jungle... Distant. Smothered. Inescapable. Thorns breaking through his skin, hard plates of pumice bark growing on his back and tendrils holding him trapped as the voice rent his mind open.
'This is your true calling. You feel it. You know it.'
Her armour was dented and sunken, her body drawn and quartered, her head hung low, defeated and bloodless, vines and thorns ensnaring her wrists and neck, twisting broken bones and ripping her to shreds, and yet the dragon demanded more.
“Trahearne.”
Her voice was clear and soft, a whisper like a breeze breaking through the heady atmosphere of the jungle, the warmth of the sun from beyond the canopy, dispelling the last remnants of his vision, casting away the shadow of the dragon.
“It's alright. You're safe. It's over. It was only a nightmare.”
"But it wasn't...", he breathed, livid as he stared at the scar on her neck. "I almost lost you, Anwen... The Pale Tree, the Pact, you... Mordremoth almost destroyed it all, and I—... In the end, I succumbed. And you almost died because of my momentary weakness...”
"But I’m alive.”
Her voice was soft, yet her conviction unwavering.
"No one can fathom what you endured to resist... right till the end. And even if..." Her breath dimmed to a murmur and she took his hand, bringing it to her chest, as he had in what he believed were his last moments. "Even then... you were never lost to me... And now, we are safe. We're together. It will take time. But even shadow must come to pass... These wounds will scar, and the scars will fade..."
He averted his gaze, a heavy silence weighting down on him.
“Mordremoth... it knew what you meant to me, Anwen. And... it intended to deprive me of all hope, to destroy you so I would turn. It showed me what it would do — what I would do — when it’d have captured you... I know—... I know the seed was destroyed. The dragon is gone, and yet... Sometimes, I can still feel its claws in my mind... in my nightmares... And I’m afraid.", he avowed in a shattered breath. “I’m afraid I might hurt you again.”
"Dearheart..."
Their fingers intertwined, a muted golden glow radiating under her touch, drawing patterns shifting in the dawning light; she embraced him, holding him tight as his breath seized and his shoulders quaked.
A long moment passed, only troubled by Anwen's whispers and his shaking breaths.
"It's alright. It's alright, I love you. It's alright."
"I'm sorry."
"It's alright.", she murmured, laying a kiss on the thin glowing skin of his jaw and cheekbones, his chest heaving with a content sigh and his glow flaring under her touch.
“Do you trust me?”
He let out a broken chuckle.
“With my life and the world.”
She guided his hand to her neck, a shudder running him through when his fingers grazed her throat — a feather light brush... just shy of touching.
"You won't harm me."
He nodded intently, exploring the arch of her neck, learning the pattern of coils and sharp edges drawn in pearlised skin by a hand that once was his, a permanent reminder of what it took for them to be reunited, only to freeze as a shiver sent her trembling under his touch.
“Am I hurting you?”, he pressed, considering her heavy lids, and sharp breathing.
“No.”, she murmured, lost in the warmth of his bark, and the softness of his touch. Her voice was low and distant, her pupils blown and a deep red blush slowly rising to her cheeks. “Quite the contrary.”
Oh.
“Anwen...”
"I'm sorry", she blurted out, as if suddenly drenched in freezing water. "I didn't— I didn't know it would have such an effect on me."
A feverish sigh shattered her voice when he traced the dash slashing across her neck — where she had ripped the tendrils from her flesh — an enthralled smile enlightening his features.
"May I?"
She nodded eagerly and whimpered faintly when he captured her lips, drowning in the radiant warmth of his glow, the sweet taste of his skin, the forlorn abandonment of his kiss.
He tasted of honey and mulberry, of mint and petrichor, and she wished the moment would never fade — that they could stay like this forever, loved and protected and nectared on his lips.
He briefly withdrew, allowing her a deep, shaking breath — tacitly requesting her consent before he deepened his touch.
Her heart skipped a beat at the sheer intensity of his gaze, loving and tender, and yet simmering with an ardor she knew only in his most impassioned moments.
"Do you want me to continue?"
“I—” She swallowed thickly. "I don't know."
He withdrew in an instant, his fingers intertwining with hers as her blush deepened.
"I want to see where this could go.", she admitted softly. "But I don't want to rush things. You were so crestfallen earlier... I fear you might regret, if we...", she trailed off. " I want you to be sure. Comfortable enough to say no, or tell me what you want. I... I want you to feel safe with me... "
"Safe.", he repeated, casting a glance to their surroundings.
Outside, the lights of the lamp-posts flickered their last in the cold dry wind, casting an ever changing golden light through the frosted windows of the west wing.
In the former study recently turned bedroom, the hearth cast a warm honeyed glaze over the furs and soft woolen blankets of the wide carven bed, and the cascades of shimmering linen drawing a canopy of mist and stars dancing in the silvery light of dawn.
Winter drew to its end, bringing the last of its great frosts upon Divinity's Reach, the frozen bite of snow carrying in its wake the murmurs of a bountiful spring.
Most mornings, she would have found him already awake, bent over old maps and months old reports, annotating and correcting the coasts and settlements in purple ink according to intel the reconnaissance teams sent to Elona gathered of the massive topographic and demographic changes the southeastern continent had undergone in a century.
The brand and the crater where Kralkatoric was believed to have fallen dormant, tore the desert in two; North, villages, settlements and free-cities maintained a slither of trade with the rest of the world and South, locked in a complete autarchy behind the Bone Wall – surely this was not literal! – the realm and dominion of the last of the Primeval Kings, Palawa Joko. A lich, Trahearne had noted. An enemy to reckon with were the reports of the agents sent there in reconnaissance to be trusted.
Anwen had worried, then... wondered how far he would push himself before crumbling, how long he hoped to keep the guilt at bay, instead of addressing it, how much suffering he intended to inflict upon himself to make amends for one mistake.
But suddenly, the Pact no longer needed him — perhaps their trust in him was too damaged, or perhaps he was — and as much as General Soulkeeper had tried — and failed — to present this as his choice to make, this sudden demotion had left him empty and in this void, nightmares had grown more violent than ever.
He had endeavoured to fill this void — reading, planing their return to Caer Aval, studying Orr once more for his own interest rather than to avert an evergoing end of the world crisis — to find a new purpose, to find relief in this newfound freedom from the call of his Wyld-hunt and his responsibilities, but for now, all he got was the cruelty of the night, and an insatiable ache for a moment to claim his own.
"I have never been safer in my life."
He slowly melted into her embrace and laid back beside her, drowning them both in the soft glaze of honeyed light and the vibrant scent of mulberry.
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