The day was heavy with heat, a wet summer air that clung to the skin like a fever. A coyote watched me from the ridge, as they always did when the world turned green again.
Curious spirits, drawn to both feast and famine — one was always near, no matter the season.
My mother walked just ahead. The thicket stirred. I darted through, branches whispering against my arms.
"Mother, wait for me!"
I raced toward home. Her shadow slipped between trees, quick and familiar. The door creaked open. I followed. It closed behind her.
"Mother?"
I grasped the handle. It would not move. Again and again I pulled, the wood unmoving, cold beneath my palm. I leaned my forehead to it.
"I give up mother—you can come out now!"
A voice came from within, soft as breath against glass.
"My beloved, it is not time."
It was her voice, but hollow, like a harp with its strings cut.
I woke gasping. Air tore into my lungs.
Then I remembered. I ran to her grave. There she lay, where I had buried her just the night before.
My legs fell. I knelt beside her.
"Why did you leave, mother? Why did…"
The words shattered in my mouth. The sorrow within me slaughtered the hollow where words live.
Dawn came pale and slow. Rennan gathered his things, air steaming from his nostrils. I heard the soft whine of the cub that I had left behind calling for me. I must tend to him. Lest he should die of the cold, though he was born of harsh reality.
I could not leave. It was only yesterday that she was slaughtered by that beast.
I must stay.
If I didn't, everything she had built would turn to dust like the rest of Vearda. I still had not mastered the harp. I did not know the final songs of the forest. She still had so much to teach me.
The cairn crouched in frost. My mother lay beneath it. I pressed my palm to the topstone until the cold burned it. My hand reddened, but I did not move. The pain was not greater than that within my chest.
The cub whimpered in my arms, nosing at my chest as though reminding me of its own loss. His pulse fluttered against mine, fast and fading. Searching for warmth.
Rennan sat a few paces off, knives spread upon a flat rock, scraping steel against whetstone. Sparks leapt and died in the wind.
He did not look at me. His shoulders were hunched, his hair tied back with a strap, his breath rising, a slow mist.
At last I rose. My bones creaked like wood under strain. "I will stay with her." My voice came raw, thickened by the night and the grave.
"I cannot leave her," I said, "You can go Rennan. I would rather die by her side than leave her here alone."
Rennan gave only a low grunt, but the smallest lift of his brow told me he had heard. His hands did not stop their work.
What was once my home, sagged in the mists of dawn. Smoke was long gone from its chimney. I saw her everywhere—hands upon the harp, shoulders stooped at the hearth, laughter startling birds from the rafters. The doorway gaped, swallowing light and memory.
To leave was betrayal, to turn my back on the life she bled to keep alive was to kill her memory. My feet sank in the snow, unwilling.
Rennan stood ahead, his shadow stretched thin in the pale light. He did not call. He only gave a solemn nod and went on his way.
I will honor my mothers life. I will master the songs of the forest. I will become what she wanted me to become. King over myself. Among the wild, I am not to be its victim, but the coyote, survivor.
I whispered toward my home, toward the cairn beyond: "Wait for me mother. I will find you when my time comes."
Then I turned and gathered what I could to travel light. I coddled the cub, stopping its whimpering, and fastened him to my chest with a strap. I made for the direction I last saw Rennan, and the wind swallowed my tracks.
He had already made good ground away from me. It took me almost the whole day galloping through the thorns and thickets of the forest. Then I saw him ahead. I called to him,
"Rennan!"
I saw him turn in the distance. Squinting through the wind, he gave a small grin. Not evil but one that hid the joy that he would finally have company. He waited ahead for me and once I stood beside him he said to me in a calm tone.
"Sekan, let us waste no time!"
"What?"
He took off, not waiting for me. And so it was, we moved through the pines.
Rennan's voice came low as bark cracking. "You drag your heels. Weight on your forefoot. Step where the branches do not lie." His frustration with my lackluster steps were made evident.
Often he stopped me, showing how to breathe shallow, how to still Solas when he whimpered. The cub quieted when Rennan's steady hand pressed against his back, though he squirmed against mine.
When hunger found us once again, Rennan caught a rabbit with ease and thrust it into my hands.
"Yours."
Its warmth wriggled between my fingers. I broke its neck quickly, making its pain short lived. Blood ran into the snow, steaming like incense at a pyre. The fur clung wet to my palms, and I gagged. It reminded me too readily of my mother's slaughtering, how her hands worked clean and sure where mine trembled. Killing was still so unnatural to me.
Rennan's knife split the belly clean. "Mercy is not sparing life, boy," he said, voice flat. "Mercy is sparing needless pain. I cut fast because they cut my mother slow."
His words hung in the air, heavy mountains.
That night, the cub grew restless. Moonlight slicked over his fur, and his eyes caught it, gleaming pale-green, brighter than fireflies. When I touched him, the glow faded—but a pulse leapt from his chest into my arm, racing through me until my breath faltered. My hand glowed with the same light but for just a second. Slumber came upon me quickly as if long days' travel had drawn life from me at once.
I woke up slow. Rennan was sitting and waiting for me and the cub to rise. The cub was still at rest. Dawn had not come but it would soon. The frost was lighter than it had been the nights before. I took the cub as he slept and mounted him to my chest again. We put out the fire from the cold night and were off again, though I did not know where we were going. Rennan had a determination that led me to give no questions.
Solas was never full in the short time I had him. He gnawed at scraps twice his size, breathing steam thin and long as though a furnace smoldered slowly inside him.
Rennan eyed him with unease. "Not natural," he muttered. His hand lingered near his blade. "Kill it now, before it grows teeth you cannot master."
I held Solas close. His tiny claws clutched my tunic, heartbeat hammering. "He is my mother's breath," I said, sharp as ice. "You will not touch him."
Rennan nodded and fell silent, as if he felt shame.
We were making ground and ahead of us was a hill, it stretched like the crest had from before my mother was killed. We took no time to admire the view as I had done before, but plunged straight into the valley below. Arriving at the foot of a mountain, we made camp for the night. Planning to make it over the mountain in just a day.
The night was silent, but the morning came quickly. Again Rennan rose first and waited for us. I began to question if he even slept at all, or just kept watch at night. With the same routine as the previous day, we began our journey.
We made quick work out of the climb. Helping each other up the steep lifts of stone. Only steps away from the top and we saw the suns at high noon. Their light pierced the clouds. It was a sight to behold. But onward we went. Over the top. On this side, the most peculiar thing, there was still snow. But it was still, as if the wind had hushed. How could this be?
"Sekan, be prepared, the descent will be harder than the climb."
"Why?"
"Look down."
I looked not into the vast white but only a few steps ahead. I saw stone, gravel and a steep descent. It was as if any step could be my end. For some strange reason it gave me solace. Fear of death did not mock me as it once had. Knowing one step could end me gave me focus like I had not possessed.
Every step was carefully placed. Rennan was ahead of me, for he traversed the jagged landscape far easier than me. There was a small plateau below us, so we stopped to rest. I let Solas from my chest. He stretched his small legs, pawing at the snow as if he discovered it. His eyes pierced me, as if they were a mirror to my own soul.
"Keeping that thing around for too long is a bad idea."
"I must keep him, he is my kin now."
Rennan grunted, dismayed that I did not agree with him.
"Let us continue."
He rose from our rest. I followed, grabbing Solas to carry him again. We made for the foot of the mountain.
After we had arrived, it was so still and pale I couldn't believe my eyes. Solas was restless, as if he wanted to return to the winds.
The ashen pillars of trees hushed around us.
Figures slid from the shadows—humanoid, but wrong. Their skin cracked open like stone under fire, molten seams spilling light. Jaws unhinged too far, tongues thick with ash. Fire leaked from their eyes, orange and black as burning coals.
They moved fast, faster than I thought flesh could move. Rennan's knives flashed, biting deep into oozing wounds. Their blood was so hot it hissed against snow, searing black wherever it spilled.
I loosed an arrow. It struck, but sank shallow, the shaft lit ablaze as the creature's flesh melted around it.
The air reeked of burnt flesh. My hands shook. These were no beasts. No men. Something worse.
One lunged, molten hands reaching, but Rennan caught its throat and opened it from ear to ear. Fire spat out like a torch guttering in the wind. His movements were sure, practiced, merciless. His face did not change.
When silence fell, Rennan stood over the last, his blade dripping black fire. His breath smoked in the cold air of the night. The ground sizzled at his feet, around him the blood of the molten men.
I dared at last: "Where are we going? Why did you choose this life?"
He wiped his blade on the snow, eyes hard as flint. For a time I thought he would not answer. Then his voice came, low and stripped of warmth.
"My father, Elkiran, was once a man of joy. He broke bread with beggars. He sang in the market square." His jaw tightened. "Then came the mark. He was deceived and saw me as a weakness to his rule. Blamed my mother. Before crowds, tortured her, and smiled as she bled out. Smiled, as though death were his kin and we were strangers."
The steel trembled in his hand though he held it steady.
"He cast me out. Exiled me, a pitiful attempt at mercy. So we head toward revenge. No. Toward justice."
The forest swallowed his words, leaving only the hiss of his breath.
We found one more, broken in the dunes of snow. Half-melted, gasping, her hand reached out—skin sliding like wax, eyes still human beneath the smoke. Her words cracked, begging.
Rennan raised his knife.
"No!" I stepped between, Solas pressed tight against me. "She was once man. We must allow her a more graceful death."
Her eyes locked with mine, desperate, pleading. Breath fogged black.
Rennan's hand shoved past me. The blade fell quick and final. Blood spattered my cheek, hot, thick. The body sagged into the snow.
I stood frozen, mouth open but silent. Solas growled low in my arms, as though speaking in my stead what I could not.
Fearing the coldness of Rennan I fled, but nowhere was home. I was in a foreign land, the trees did not know me, they turned away from me.
The trees reminded me that which I missed, home though it was not comfortable it was where my heart belonged. With home in my mind, my mothers last words came to me, "It lays beneath the hearth…your inheritance." I realized she was not speaking in song but that my inheritance was truly under the hearth, whatever the thing was.
I need to find what she left for me.
Rennan was searching for me, I could hear his footsteps nearby so I spoke out, cutting through the sound of the morning wind.
"Rennan, I must go back, something is waiting for me." In an attempt to sound harsh I then said, "If you choose to follow is up to you, but I will go nonetheless."
"I will follow, but you must tell me why."
I responded in a way similar to him, silence.
"Let us make for the mountain again." He said with a deep exhale.
We rested for a moment before leaving. Hunger began to set it, but we left. The morning light gave us life. We climbed the mountain, it was slower this time, the whole day brought us only the peak of the mountain.
Night was upon us.