Monsoon

Augur Forest (Clear skies, midday, TC 604)

There are poppies growing next to the river. The rivermud hugs them in gangly clumps, heavy streams of silt disturbing those too close to the water. It rained last night, and it will probably rain again tonight. The rain will fall in huge tilted drops that will knock the flowers like hailstones, knock the looser ones into the swelling river.

Sorrel searches the mud for mushrooms. He’s looking for the smaller ones, bitidaea, old word made by the savage elves. “Sea pearl born from dirt.” He runs his fingers heavily through the mud, pausing when he feels the pearls against his palm.

Bitidaea have hard caps. The stem is the good part. He digs them up slowly, with a thin tooling knife, taking his time to get the most of the stem. His hands are caked in mud that falls off in slick chunks each time he works his knuckles around the knife handle. It’s too cold for the mud to stink, but it freezes his hands. The air is flat and the sun, withdrawn.

When he has a good amount he stops and thrusts his numb hands into the river. His skin tingles as the cold goes deeper, reaching for his blood. The current pushes the mud away and a cloud of gritty brown disperses to reveal the rose-colored caps, gleaming. Sticking out between his fingers. He takes his hand out and looks at them. They curl around each other like worms. He puts them in the basket.

These will be dinner tonight. He flash-ferments them to add some body to the flavor, then roasts them in a pan of oil, vegetables, and cracked spices. He’ll put in some sauce (he hasn’t decided what yet), let it marinade, and then pour it over a bed of linguini. He used to make it every Saturday, back when he ran the tavern. Back when it was easy to get a bag of pearl mushrooms delivered straight to Mithalleana by way of the underground market. Now, he finds pleasure in picking them himself.

The river babbles and chitters. A poppy falls over.

Museum of Unnatural History (Heavy rain, evening, TC 646)

There are some things you just enjoy more when you’re older. Simple tasks. Like sweeping out the house, or starting a fire. With nothing else to do, you slow down and enjoy the task. Sorrel likes spring because he likes being able to throw open all the doors and make a show of the cleaning. He likes the air of authority it gives him. In bad weather, like now, he’s forced to clean like a thief, sneaking the dirt outside when nature isn’t looking. It’s been raining for days. The dirt stays inside. The dust motes jump against the brick as he lights the fire.

In the armchair, Vulen is sleeping. The growing firelight stretches uncertainly across his face, oozing into each divot and river of age before creeping uncertainly up to the next one. When it reaches the edge of his cheeks, it dives suddenly down across his shoulders and neck, pools his chest like a Fireball bead—then retracts as the fire gutters, flickers.

After the Wardens, he started sleeping more. Not literally. His mind started sleeping more. Sometimes Sorrel had trouble reconciling the old elf in front of him with the young, boorish desert rat in his tavern. The desert rat—the High Commander, too—were both outspoken figures of justice and grace, people who flirted with the word “hero.” But after the Wardens, Vulen started sleeping more. In his mind. He kept his thoughts to himself more; his commentary was not so quick or readily available. It took Sorrel some time to understand that there was nothing wrong with him. He had simply grown into a quieter person.

He was a stronger person, too. Sorrel couldn’t recall the last time he had to be on night watch during a full moon. He had grown so accustomed to sleeping downstairs, bow knife at the ready, silent alarms on the doors, all just in case. One night he came downstairs with his quilt to see Vulen in the doorway.

“It’s okay,” he said, whispering. “Go back to bed.”

But the moon, Sorrel said, and Vulen shook his head.

“I’m okay this time. Trust me.”

Sorrel believed him because he said it in a way that Sorrel had never heard before. Normally, when Vulen says something like “Sure, I can be the next Warden High Commander,” or “Don’t worry, I think I know how to swim by now” he says it with a tightness to him. A tenseness in his limbs and jaws that betrays the extra weight he’s trying to take on. But when Vulen spoke that night, there was no extra weight. The wolf was weightless.

One morning after the full moon he woke up very early, unable to sleep thanks to the growing stiffness in his bones. In the kitchen he poured a glass of water, drank it slowly. Out the window, the moon had not set yet. An aging werewolf sat crouched on the hill outside of town, reading a book. Sorrel sold his bow knife to a game hunter at the bazaar.

Mithalleana (Thundering, past midnight, TC 684)

“That pasta you made,” Vulen says.

“When?”

“Long time ago now.”

“Elf long?”

“Normal long.”

Sorrel thinks. “The pearl mushrooms?”

“That’s what it was.”

“You’d never had them?” Sorrel lowers his book to gaze at his husband where he lies withering in the four-poster bed. They’re in the upstairs quarters at the Castle, accompanying Chakra on errantry. He wants them to accompany him every year. Vulen didn’t fare well in the carriage ride, unable to sleep and unable to stretch his legs. In the courtyard he faltered up the steps. It’s clear that this year will be the last year.

“That was the only time,” Vulen says.

“I should have made it again,” Sorrel tuts. “It’s one of my best recipes. Why didn’t you tell me you liked it so much?”

Vulen smiles. “I just did.”

Sorrel wonders at that quiet sleeping mind. How long did it hold onto that thought, onto the memory of the mushrooms, turning it around with the lunar cycle? The thunder briefly shudders the walls of the Castle. He watches Vulen as he tilts his eyes up and sighs at the ceiling, and the age seems to leave him, and there is a desert rat crawling into a barstool at his tavern. Sorrel thinks time has fallen away from him. Time doesn’t exist to him at all. He could stand up and turn away from Vulen right now and behind him would be his tavern, his youth, their youth, the looming process of falling in love again. He’s holding a tooling knife. His hands are caked in mud.