But fate, it seems, has its own way of weaving destiny's threads.
Ten years after we first stumbled upon that frozen hovel in the Irish countryside, our path led us back to the same green valley. Much had changed in a decade—the scars of famine had healed, new cottages dotted the hillsides, and the sound of children's laughter echoed where once there had only been silence. But some things remained wonderfully, blessedly the same.
Aoife greeted us at her door as if we had merely stepped out for a morning walk rather than vanished for ten years. Her hair had gone fully silver now, and the lines on her face had deepened, but her eyes held that same fierce fire I remembered. She pulled me into an embrace without a word, then turned to Alistair and did the same, holding him so long and so tight that I saw his eyes grow wet.
Behind her, framed in the cottage doorway, stood a young woman of perhaps fifteen or sixteen, with auburn hair the colour of autumn leaves and eyes like the Irish sea on a summer morning—green and grey and blue all at once, shifting with the light. It took me a moment to recognize the silent, hollow-eyed child who had once leaned against Alistair's leg for comfort.
Siobhan had grown into someone extraordinary.
She stepped forward slowly, her gaze fixed on Alistair with an intensity that made me catch my breath. For a long, suspended moment, neither of them spoke. Then Siobhan reached up and touched his face, her fingers tracing the lines that ten years of service and travel had carved around his eyes.
"You came back," she whispered, her voice husky with emotion—the first words I had ever heard her speak, for she had remained silent all those months we stayed with them, even after her brother Declan had found his voice again. "I knew you would. I told Mam every night—I told her Alistair would come back."
Alistair stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. And perhaps he was. The last time we had been here, she was a silent, grieving child who followed him like a shadow and pressed her small body against his leg for warmth. Now she was a woman—barely, yes, but unmistakably—and the way she looked at him held something far deeper than childish affection.
I stayed in that valley for three months that visit, and in that time, I watched something beautiful unfold. Alistair, who had never spoken of marriage or family, who had given himself so completely to my service that I sometimes forgot he was mortal and young, found himself utterly undone by a girl with sea-glass eyes and a voice that had waited ten years to speak his name.
They married in the spring, in a tiny stone church overlooking the valley, with wildflowers scattered across the path and Aoife weeping tears of joy so abundant that she had to borrow my handkerchief three times. Declan, now a sturdy young blacksmith of seventeen with his father's broad shoulders and his mother's fierce loyalty, stood as Alistair's witness. Siobhan wore a dress of pale green linen that matched her eyes, and she smiled through the entire ceremony—a smile so radiant that I saw Alistair forget to breathe.
The years that followed were some of the gentlest I have known in my long existence. We made the valley a regular stopping point in our travels, and I watched Alistair transform from a devoted steward into something more—a husband, and then a father. Siobhan gave him four children in rapid succession, as if her body was making up for all the years she had spent silent and still:
Ishbel, the eldest, born a year after the wedding—a serious child with her father's wheat-straw hair and her mother's watchful eyes, who learned to read before she could properly talk and would spend hours curled beside me as I told her stories of distant lands.
Finlay, the first son, born two years later—a wild, reckless boy who climbed every tree in the valley and once fell into the river trying to catch a fish with his bare hands. He had his grandfather Magnus's stubbornness and his grandmother Elspeth's gift for making people laugh even when they wanted to be angry.
Mairi, the second daughter, born another two years after that—a quiet, observant child with an old soul and a habit of saying things that made adults stop and stare. She reminded me, uncomfortably and wonderfully, of myself at that age.
And Torin, the youngest, born when Siobhan was twenty-three and Alistair thirty-three. He came into the world on the coldest night of winter, with snow piled against the cottage walls and the wind howling across the valley like a living thing. Aoife, still hale and strong despite her years, delivered him herself while I held Siobhan's hand and Alistair paced holes in the floorboards.
From the moment Torin drew his first breath, I knew he was different. He had his father's pale blue eyes, but there was something in them—a restlessness, a curiosity, a hunger for horizons—that I recognized immediately. It was the same look I had seen in Magnus's eyes when he first entered my service as a young man. The same look I had seen in Alistair's when his father sent him into the world with me. The blood of wanderers ran through his veins, and no amount of hearth-fire warmth would ever fully satisfy it.
I thought, perhaps foolishly, that the line of stewards might end with Alistair. That he would grow old in that valley, surrounded by his children and grandchildren, and that when time finally claimed him, I would mourn and move on as I had always done. But fate, as I have learned across centuries, rarely obliges such tidy expectations.
When Torin turned sixteen, Alistair came to me as I sat by the lake where he had first kissed Siobhan, watching the sunset paint the water in shades of gold and rose. He was fifty-two now, grey threading his wheat-straw hair, lines of laughter and sorrow etched deep around his pale blue eyes. But the man who knelt beside me on that shore was the same earnest boy who had wept in my arms beneath the shadow of Yr Wyddfa, all those years ago.
"It's time, Mistress" he said quietly. "Torin's ready. That damn boy got the blood—his grandsire's blood, and mine too, I suppose. He's restless, curious, hungry for something more than this valley can give him." He paused, swallowing hard. "I've watched him these past years, the way my Da looked at me when I was his age, the way Torin looks at the horizon, the way he questions everything, the way he lights up when you tell stories of your travels. He's meant for more than farming and shepherding. He's meant for your world."
I looked at him—at this man who had given me nearly four decades of faithful service, who had wept in my arms and laughed at my side, who had married and fathered children and built a life while remaining steadfast in his duty to me. "And what of you, old friend? What of your service?"
Alistair smiled, and it was the same smile he had worn as a boy—open, honest, full of warmth. "My service never ends, Mistress. It just... changes. I'll be here, in this valley, holding the home front. Watching over Siobhan and the others. Making sure there's always a place for you to return to." He reached out and gripped my hand, his grip still strong despite his years. "But Torin needs to go. He needs to see the world like I did, like his grandsire did, like his great-grandsire Duncan did before him. It's in his blood—this wandering, this serving, this being part of something larger than one small life in one small valley."
That night, Alistair called Torin to sit beside him by the fire, and I watched from the shadows as a scene unfolded that I had witnessed many times before—a father passing the torch of service to his child, as his own father had done before him.
"Lad, needs to go with Mistress and learn," Alistair said, his voice carrying the same cadence his father had used, the same words his father had spoken. "You need to see the world like I did while serving her. Not just the duties, but the heart of it. I'm sending him with her. She'll teach you what I cannot anymore."
Beside him sat Siobhan, her auburn hair now streaked with silver, her sea-glass eyes still beautiful after all these years. She reached out and took Torin's hand, her grip gentle but firm.
"We've four children," she said softly, her Irish lilt still strong despite decades of marriage to a Scotsman. "Ishbel has her books and her teaching. Finlay has his forge and his family. Mairi has her healing and her herbs. But you, my Torin—you've always had the horizon in your eyes. I've known since the night you were born, with the snow howling outside and you screaming your first cries into the world, that you weren't meant to stay." She cupped his face; the same way she had once cupped his father's face so many years ago. "This opportunity isn't the kind that comes to valley lads. Most never leave, never know what's out there. But you—you'll walk roads your father walked, see things he only described. That's a gift, Torin. Don't waste it."
Torin knelt before them, a tall, serious boy of sixteen with his father's pale blue eyes and his mother's watchful stillness. "I'll make you proud," he promised, his voice steady despite the emotion thickening it. "I swear it."
Alistair pulled his son into an embrace, holding him the way his own father had held him decades before and spoke the same words. "You already have, lad. Every day since the moment you were born, you've made us proud. Now go. Like me, my father and grandsire before him. Be her eyes, Be her ears and hands where we cannot. And know that every night, we'll be here, thinking of you, praying for you, loving you across whatever distance lies between."
Torin left with me at dawn the next morning, riding a horse, his brother Finlay had trained specially for him, carrying a pack his sister Ishbel had packed with care, wearing a small leather pouch his sister Mairi had sewn herself, filled with healing herbs and a lock of their mother's hair. At the edge of the valley, he stopped and looked back—just once—at the small figures gathered outside the cottage to watch him go. His father stood tall despite his years, his mother leaning against him, his siblings arrayed around them like a living tapestry of love and farewell.
Then he turned, squared his shoulders, and rode on.
And so, the line continued, as it had for generations before and would for generations after. A chain of mortal souls bound to my immortal one, each one carrying the blood of wanderers, each one giving themselves to a service that would span centuries.
But that is a story for another time.
When the memory faded, I found myself back in the group discussion, acutely aware of the shift that had occurred in my absence. As I had walked into the session earlier, I had caught more than a few glances from the other participants—the botanist who suddenly became very interested in his notes, the geologist who had forgotten to stop staring, the female professor from Oxford who gave me an approving nod that seemed to say "well played." And Kaelen? Kaelen's gaze had flickered to me for just a fraction of a second longer than strictly necessary before he looked away, his jaw tightening almost imperceptibly.
Good.
Now, in the thick of discussion, I spoke of the spiritual significance of old-growth forests in pre-Christian Europe. I connected the dots between watershed management and ancient taboos about polluting sacred springs. I spoke of the world as something to be listened to, not conquered—a perspective I had learned from him, on a mountain that no longer existed.
And through it all, I felt him watching, questioning, slowly drowning in the impossibility of what he was hearing.