Letters from Home

[Vega]

99th Trial of Vhalar during Arc 717

Vega was sitting, cross legged with a steaming mug of coffee next to her. In her hands she held a thin pointed chisel, which she was using to craft arrow flights. She was working on making the slight grooves for the flights, carving gently into the wood in the slightly curved pattern. Her father had taught them both and, at the time, Vega had been truly abysmal at even creating the basic shape when they had learned together but she had practiced and practiced some more since that time. Now, she was much better and was even learning to twist the helix of the flight in such a way as was most preferred by him and her.

It caused Vega to raise an eyebrow when a messenger came into the camp - she looked at him as he walked into the space they shared, but he looked down at the letter and gave it to Arlo. Vega didn't say anything as Arlo took the correspondence, just gave him a smile as he took it. She thought that he looked a little concerned about it but then, it was rare that he got a letter. Vega lowered her head and began the process of shaping the arrowheads ready for the shaft. It was probably a note from his mother, Vega thought, Netta Creede was a nice woman who had been very accommodating and kind to Vega when they'd met. Arlo was a lot like her, Vega believed. It was the stubborn set of his jaw and determined expression.

Vega reached for the sanding parchment, starting to work on the arrow shaft itself. It was important that there were no notches or knots which she did not want in the shaft. The smallest bump or irregularity in the wood could send the arrow off. She was working on smoothing it when Arlo walked back into camp. Vega looked up with a grin of welcome which froze on her face.

"What's wrong?" Vega asked as he walked back into the camp they shared. Her hands moved of apparently their own accord and she put the unfinished arrows down, standing up as she did so. Something about Arlo's face, the way he moved and stood, told her that something was amiss and Vega took a step towards him. "What's in the letter?" her eyes were a deep amber as she looked at him with a frown of concern on her face and waited for his answer.

[Arlo Creede]

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Whenever Arlo wanted a few bits off on his own, just a few, he tended to wander off to a small pool in the trees that was just a short walk from their camp. The water there was shallow, cool and clear, and a small stream trickled into it from uphill, tumbling over small moss covered stones in its way. When the rest of the world was relatively quiet, he liked the sound the moving water made, and the barely there ripples on the water's surface. He wasn't the sort for meditation though and he rarely stayed long before moving on. This trial was different. It was where he went to open his letter, and there, sitting on the edge atop a large flat rock was where he stayed longer than usual.

Mostly, he felt empty after reading the letter. As if something inside him had been snatched away and the feeling part of him hadn't figured out quite yet what it was or what to do with it. The wooden charm he'd emptied out of the sack was closed up in his hand, and the scroll was sticking out of his pocket. All he could think of in that bit was that the letter he'd written ought to be arriving in Rharne just about now, and there was no one but his stepfather left to read it. He should have written sooner, just like he'd promised he would.

Lyova was there on his shoulder, but strangely quiet considering she seldom ever was. "You knew, didn't you. And you knew she'd never see my letter. You should have said it." he told her as he stood up from the rock and dusted himself off. "I'm sorry Arlo," was all the diri said as he turned and headed back to camp. Vega would be wondering where he'd gone off to. And he had a meal to put together. What was wrong?, she asked him when he got back and he paused there before finally saying matter of factly, just like that, "It's my mother. She's dead." It was strange, hearing himself say it, like it was someone else instead. Like a dispassionate observer of some sort.

At first it would seem that he didn't hear when she asked about the letter. But then he reached down and pulled the scroll from his pocket. Before he'd come back, he'd dropped the leather necklace and charm back into its pouch and reattached it. Handing Vega the scroll, he said, "You can read it, if you want to. It's from my stepfather." He didn't like standing there with nothing to do while she looked. So instead, Arlo turned and focused on prodding the coals from the fire back to life, and began collecting things up for their evening meal.

[Vega]

"It's my mother," he said, as calm as calm could be. "She's dead."

Vega felt his words as physically as if he'd punched her in the chest. In many ways, Vega's life had been defined by the lack of her mother, by the fact that her mother had died in childbirth. But in that moment, the mixed blood woman realised with a sudden almost beautiful clarity that it had all, always been about her. Vega didn't miss her mother, didn't love her. She didn't know her as anything other than a sort of might be imagined person. Yet, Nella Creede had been kind to her, had looked at Arlo with adoring eyes when he wasn't watching and had been alive.

If he was joking, this wasn't funny.

She wanted to tell him that. To beat him till he bruised when he admitted that he'd been joking. Because it wasn't funny. The words almost made it to her throat, but they never left her mouth because Vega knew, without a doubt, that he wasn't joking. Just looking at him, she knew. She knew.

Her hand reached out and took the scroll, but she didn't read it. It wasn't hers to read, it wasn't her business. Had his mother left a message for him? Was that what he might show her? No, Vega wouldn't intrude on that. So, instead, she moved over to his bag, the one she'd gotten him for his birthtrial, and she put it in there. Quite why her hands were shaking, Vega didn't know but they were. He was coaxing the fire back to life, starting to prepare things, moving around with slow, stilted movements then sudden bursts of sharp staccato ones.

Uncertainty about what to do, what to say stopped her steps for a few trill. But not for longer than that. As he knelt in front of the fire, she knelt next to him and her calloused hands took hold of his. "Arlo," Vega said, her voice thick with emotions. She looked at him and the irises of her eyes were white, although ringed with gold. "I'm so sorry." Gently, not pushing him or forcing anything, she pulled his hands to her, and she held on to them tightly with one hand, reaching out to gently stroke his hair, putting it behind his ear. It didn't occur to her not to - right now he needed to have physical contact, she was sure of it on an instinctual level. "Let's not cook tonight, eh? Let's stay in the Inn, we'll get a room the two of us, get food sent to the room and drink or don't drink, talk or don't talk." White eyes gazed on him and Vega watched him with unabashed concern in her eyes. "What do you say? Shall we do that? Or I can cook somethin' or help you." She kept firm hold of his hands, her own shaking from the shock of his words.

She wanted to help him, she realised. She wanted to make things better, to fix things for him. Because when he hurt, she did. Tears stood suddenly, unashamedly in her white eyes. "I'm so sorry, Arlo," she whispered, "she was such a lovely lady."

[Arlo Creede]

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After he'd said it, his mother was dead, and he'd handed Vega the letter to read, Arlo had turned around to focus on the coals. He knew his mother had liked her, and Vega had liked his mother. He knew in a detached way that the news would come as a shock and she'd feel things. He didn't want to see it written on her face because it would make him feel things too. And feeling was something he wanted to avoid. If he started feeling, he worried he wouldn't be able to stop.

Arlo was angry though. There was that. He was angry at Lyova because he was convinced she'd known and she'd shown him there, into his mother's dreams without telling him why. She didn't deny it, therefore she must have known. And if she'd known, then Jesine had known too.

There was the guilt too, but that went with the sort of feeling that he'd rather avoid. He heard Vega getting up from her seat and walking up behind him, but he focused on pulling a handful of potatoes and onions out of a sack. He only stopped when she crouched in front of him and took his hands. His eyes met hers, he could see the unspent tears there and he nearly yanked his hands out of her grasp.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't've said it like that. You liked her. She liked you too." When she suggested they leave the camp for the night, Arlo shook his head. "I don't want to go to an inn. Besides," he added. "We've got some wild hen to cook so it doesn't go bad." It was better to focus on practical things. As for that, he handed her the potatoes, onions and carrots that he'd gotten from the sack. "You can peel and cut them if you want. Bite sized pieces," he told her.

Arlo worked in silence for a while. He cut up the chicken that he'd broken down earlier and threw it into a pot over the fire with uncooked barley, herbs, the vegetables she handed him and a handful of wild mushrooms. At the last he covered it all with some broth he'd made trials ago and saved in a jar. It might seem as if he'd never speak at all that evening, but then sitting back while the pot heated up, he said, "I wrote her a letter like I promised I would. But she won't be there to read it when it arrives. I should've done it sooner," he said, and was quiet a while longer as he stirred the pot or stared into the coals.

"I only wrote it after I'd dreamed of her...I dreamed with her the night before. I've never done that before," he told Vega. "I never looked for her in Emea and I never stumbled across her either. She was a small girl and her grandfather had died. I was like...when I was little and I didn't tell her it was me. Then I wrote her a letter and she must have died the next night. It was a fever." He didn't say it. But he couldn't help but wonder that had he known, he might have been able to do something. That if he'd told her it was him, if he'd said something different to her, she might have fought harder to beat the fever. But he hadn't known. "Jonas said in his letter that she remembered. She told him that she'd dreamed with me. I don't think I'll dreamwalk anymore," he said bluntly.

[Vega]

He pulled his hands out of her grasp, more or less like she'd burned him with her touch and Vega breathed in a deep breath as he did that. Whatever he needed, right now, that was fine. At his apology, though, red hair moved as she shook her head. "Shush. Sayin' it how you said it was just truth Arlo. That's not a bad thing. I'm sad because someone I liked died, an' I'm worried cos you lost your mother. Don't apologise for sayin' it how it is." She had heard her father say, more than once, that you couldn't put gold trim on death.

He didn't want to go to an Inn, he said, and Vega nodded her head. Whatever he wanted, too, right now. So, she got the vegetables and she concentrated on peeling and chopping them. Bite size. What did that even mean? So that it fit in her mouth? Vega was of the opinion that her mouth was probably a different size to Arlo's or a Tunawa's. But she didn't ask, instead she took it to mean the kind of size he normally cut them to and so that was what she did. Vega was usually a very enthusiastic and rather slapdash assistant at best. However, this time she crouched down next to him and gave it her full attention. Carefully, slowly, she peeled and cut and at the end of it, he had vegetables all in the same size and shape.

He seemed totally disinclined to talk, which was fine. Vega didn't push it, she just made sure that she was there with him, helping him with the stupid vegetables that neither of them wanted to eat. But then, he sat back and he spoke. Vega didn't interrupt him, just sat and listened. She wanted to reach out and touch his arm, hold his hand, offer him comfort in some way, but that was what she wanted and he, obviously, didn't. So, she simply listened.

And he said a lot.

He was angry, Vega knew by looking at him. His shoulders were tensed, his back straight and everything about him spoke of it. There were a hundred other emotions that he was feeling, too, of course, but anger was there in the front. "I'm sure she'd rather share a dream with you than read a letter by you," Vega said in a soft tone. He hadn't written the letter quickly enough, she wouldn't get to read it. When he said that he wasn't going to dream walk any more, though, Vega lifted her head and looked at him with surprise on her face. She paused for a moment and then she spoke. "If I'd been a bit smaller, you know, maybe my mother would have lived through the birth." Her smile was mirthless as she said that, but then she added to it. "It feels true to me, that does. Maybe I could have done something, somehow, to change it. Maybe." Her shoulders lifted in a shrug. "It's not logical, I know. But grief isn't. It's raw an' it's hurt an' it's every in breath an' every out."

When he'd said it, Vega was full fussed to argue with him, but it tuned out, she wasn't going to. "You don't have to dreamwalk if you don't want to, Arlo. I'll miss you if you stop, though." That was certainly true, but wasn't why she said it. "Why are you gonna stop?" Vega wondered. She didn't sound at all judgemental, not like she thought he should do one thing or another, she simply asked. Then, with a fairly typical Vega lack of tact, she added, "I don't think you should sleep on yer own tonight. Can I bunk in with you?"

[Arlo Creede]

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For the most part, Arlo focused his attention on readying the pot for their evening meal. He'd done any number of times by now, the same or similar meals with an improvisation here or a substitution there. It wasn't complicated and he could go through the motions without putting too much thought into it. It was what he wanted, right now. He couldn't help but catch glimpses of Vega working on the potatoes, onions and carrots from the corner of his eye. If this was any other trial, he'd have teased her about the way each and every piece was so uniform, each the same size and shape. This wasn't any other trial though so as she handed over handfuls of her handiwork, he dropped it into the pot until he could leave it all to simmer awhile.

"It's what she said," Arlo told her, finally. "My stepfather. He said she told him it was better than a letter. Doesn't change anything," he insisted. "I should've written to her sooner. I should have written her more than I did. She wasn't old." He said the last as if it had been part of his reasoning. And maybe it had been. He'd get around to writing. She'd always be there. Except that she wasn't now. "A babe can't help how big its born," he argued when she talked about her own grief. Like Vega said, it wasn't logical. "There's more to it than that though." And that more was the reason he wasn't sure he'd dreamwalk again.

Because Lyova knew Arlo told her a short time later as he pulled the pot off the heat and served them both up a bowl of stew. Unlikely he'd eat any of the stuff himself. "It wasn't like wandering into a dream by accident," he explained. "It felt like I was pushed or pulled there, like I needed to hurry. Lyova knew," he insisted again. "She won't deny it and maybe Jesine knew too. I should have known, maybe I was supposed to and didn't." He shrugged then and put the bowl down, untouched. "Jonas said she wasn't afraid anymore, after that dream."

Could she bunk with him? He was no stranger to Vega's tendency to talk on impulse, but he hadn't seen that one coming. And it showed in the way he jerked his head up to look at her curiously. Of course he wasn't so foolish as to think she was suggesting anything...well, he knew what she meant. But for the first time, a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. It was gone as quick as it had appeared. "Probably, better you don't say that to anyone else but me." Someone that didn't know her better that was. They'd have jumped to the most obvious conclusion. "Only me," he added.

The truth was, he didn't feel like talking much. But he'd rather the sound of someone else breathing than not. Arlo wasn't going to tell her that though. Instead, he shrugged. "You snore. Lyova told me." The diri hadn't told him anything. In fact he suspected she didn't. In all the time they'd spent sleeping in tents side by side, surely he would've heard it by now. "But since I probably won't be sleeping much anyway and if you really want the company...A'right," he said. The thank you was implied of course, and hearing what he didn't say was a knack she'd have picked up as easily as he had when the roles were reversed, after all of this time.

[Vega]

He should have written more? Sooner? Vega looked at him and chose her words with care. "Maybe you should. But if you did, it wouldn't have made a difference to how much you love 'er. Or how much she loves you." It was a simple truth. "No, she wasn't old. An' she was surely too young to be taken away from you. So you 'ad lots of arcs to write to her. I think that's what we do, you know. Always assume there's all the time in the world. There isn't. Not for any of us." Life had such a strange illusion of permanence, Vega considered and then she decided that she wasn't really the best person to think about serious things like that and he would probably be better off with someone like her father or her cousins. Anyone other than her and her stupid ideas, she figured. "My Pappa, he says that you face death once in your life. Doesn't mean it's the first bereavement, but it's the first real one. Once you've looked 'im in the face, so Pappa says, you don't ever assume you can do or say stuff a different trial." She shrugged; in many ways it was all very theoretical for Vega. Her mother had died, yes, but Vega didn't remember her. She was very aware that she was telling him about something, a theory her father had which she had not, as yet, experienced.

"I dunno if that's true. But if it is, I'm sorry as can be you've had to look at him now, Arlo. I'd wish you a lot of arcs not doing so." Then, of course, he told her why he wouldn't dreamwalk again. Vega put the bowl down next to her and she looked at him, trying to gather together her thoughts. "I'm not the best person to be with you right now, I guess. I'm not clever or sensitive an' I can't rightly say that I understand half a pinch of what you're feelin', but I think you might be lookin' at it a bit skewey, Arlo." Consider it, she said. Dreamwalking had rules. For him. For Lyova and for Jesine too. Like he hadn't been allowed to tell her that he'd been in her dreams, not till she'd worked it out. Yet, maybe, she reckoned, what they had done is done a service to the lady that was Nella Creede. "They couldn't tell you. You know that, really." Yep, she considered, definitely better with someone clever or sensitive. Sadly, there wasn't anyone. "But they could ease her suffering. So they did. An' that hurt you, in a way, but in another maybe not. Cos now, well you've got an extra memory. I can't imagine what it must be like to have memories of yer mother, but I imagine that you'll want to hoard them." To her way of thinking, Vega told him, Jesine and Lyova had worked together to give both Nella and him a gift. "Relief for her, an' an insight into the woman you loved an' who loved you so well. I don't think yer right to be cross." Vega shrugged and then added, with typical lack of tact, "but if you wanna be, I'll support you and shake my fist an' not dreamwalk either."

And speaking of a lack of tact, even in the state he was in, Arlo's head shot up when she said she'd bunk in with him. When he said that she should only say that to him, though, Vega gave a slight grin of her own. "Any other trial, I'd be pointin' out that if I never said that to anyone ever, I'm gonna die old an' lonely. But I take yer point." She nodded her head and added, "only you, then."

She snored? Vega shrugged. "You have really bad wind. No one told me, no one needed to." Some things weren't going to change, no matter what. But, when he said that yes, that was fine, she smiled slightly. He was acquiescing to make her feel better, she thought and yet also, there was a thank you there - she recognised it, understood it. They'd travelled together too long now for her to not see it. Still, if she really wanted the company? "I do. Thanks, Arlo." On any other trial, she'd pound him of course. But not this one. This one, she'd pull on her warm pajamas and determine that she was not going to sleep till he did. But she'd pretend to, wrapping an arm around him and just letting him know that there was another being who was there with him. Eventually, of course, she'd drift off, but her intentions were at least good.

[Munchkin]

Test Review Pending

[Robin Stark]

Name:

Knowledge: Arlo

Cooking: Bite sized pieces cook quicker
Cooking: Wild hen
Cooking: Keep your broth
Discipline: Giving bad news calmly
Discipline: Not giving in to emotions
Discipline: Considering others even when in shock
Discipline: Reading into what is meant, not what is said, and reacting to that.
Fieldcraft: Coaxing coals back to life
Fieldcraft: Cook to stop items spoiling

Loot: N/A
Injuries: N/A
Fame: N/A
Devotion: N/A
Magic XP: N/A

Story: 5/5
Collaboration: 5/5
Structure: 5/5

Knowledge: Vega

Caregiving: Trying to comfort a bereaved individual
Caregiving: Do what they want you to do, not what you want.
Caregiving: Be clear about what you're offering
Cooking: Uniform cutting
Cooking: Bite sized pieces
Discipline: It isn't all about me.
Discipline: Reacting to shock

Loot: N/A
Injuries: N/A
Fame: N/A
Devotion: N/A
Magic XP: N/A

Story: 5/5
Collaboration: 5/5
Structure: 5/5

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Comments: Wow -- a very emotional thread. I think you both played it beautifully and I am excited to see what you do next! I'll be keeping an eye out for you two.

If you feel I've missed anything or if you have questions about your review, please don't hesitate to send me a quick PM. Thanks!