mustering
characters: estinien varlineau; io laithe (wol) | pre-relationship
word count: 900
note: i'm having a lot of feelings about siblings, accidental family, and the way men love. [divider credit]
“Have you noticed our little shadow? He's been following us since we left the city.”
Io’s ears shift a degree, but Estinien suspects she doesn’t have to apply much focus to pick out the clumsy footsteps in the brush. She grins, eyes trained forward so she doesn’t disturb their company.
“And here I was thinking you'd taken the long way round for my benefit,” she says, and his skin tingles with the shy mischief in her voice.
He turns to her, strafing sideways, then walking backward down the well-worn path that slithers beneath the canopy. He takes stock of both his companions. The boy–in shaggy hair and tattered clothes, creeping through tangled plants several feet behind them–still thinks he’s unseen. And Io–in the dappled green light, she is more beautiful than the image he’s kept in his mind these past months, and looking far more healthy–is only teasing him
Are they back here? In the place they can laugh together, or make jokes that almost touch the heart of the thing that goes unspoken between them?
Noted.
“Two birds and all that.”
That makes her eyes widen, and makes her smile. Estinien is unable to resist joining her, even if he has to look away.
He continues, “I am worried for him, though. One needn’t have a scholar’s wit to see that the merchant has the boy leashed. He’s being used.”
Her ear twitches again when their follower snaps a branch, but they are careful not to give him away.
“You do this often, you know?”
“Hm?”
“You have a knack for finding wayward souls. Little lambs.” Her laugh is a familiar melody, quiet but uncouth. Something he didn’t realize he missed. “It’s like you call to them, or they to you… Like you can’t help but care for them.”
“Hm.” He returns to her side, an arm’s length away. Both too close and too far.
Estinien thinks of his brother, as he often does. A little thing, wiry but tough. He liked to chase the sheep to try to rile them up, to rile Estinien up when it was his watch, but they would simply follow him, as sheep are wont to do. It wasn’t long before he’d made friends of the entire flock and took as much pride in their care as Estinien had. Even with so few years between them, their parents trusted Hamignant to watch over the flock, and Estinien to watch over Hamignant.
He thinks of the first time he saw Alphinaud. Never mind the ghost he saw in the lad’s face… there was something else there. He was lonely and lost, carrying the weight of a sin he could not have predicted. A haunting, and a mirror. In the end, he became a source of inspiration, though it took him far too long to realize it.
Vrtra and Aymeric, too. As alone when he met them as he has been at one point in his life or another. Wanting for company, for connection. Wanting to be chosen based on fondness and merit. Wishing for family.
Lost lambs…
Hamignant’s name hasn’t left his mouth in years.
He wonders if Io would care to learn about him. She is a shepherd too, of a kind. He thinks they might’ve liked each other, or that he would have found a way to make her laugh if nothing else.
“Hami…” he begins. The pause lasts too long. Maybe this is stupid. Why dig up the past when he is only so recently able to see a future?
Io smiles patiently.
“Your brother?”
His eyes fall to the leaf-covered ground and he nods. “He would walk our sheep into the fold from pasture. He named them all. Even if they already had one, he’d change them to something he liked better–insufferable, really. Anyway… when one went missing, he’d beg me to join him in the search, make me scour the fields and nearby forest with him until we found whichever young, or old, or lame sheep had wandered off alone, staring up at us with that look of relief. And I was a bit bigger than him, so I would carry it home while he doted on Flopsy, or Custard, or whatever the fuck he’d named them–” he feels his smile spreading as he shakes his head, and the vacuum in his heart surrounding Hamignant shrinks, just a little. “I suppose what I mean is, he still holds me accountable.”
They walk on in silence–Io looking faraway and wistful, and himself feeling lighter having breathed life into the memory–until the trees spread out and give way to the Perfumed Rise. A mile away, the jewel-green sea meets the pink shore, but the wind carries its roar up the hill.
Io’s steps bring her closer. Out of interest in his story, perhaps. “What will you do with this lamb, then? I presume he intends to follow us to Akyaali… We can’t expect him to find his way back to the city alone.”
Estinien sighs. He already knows how this will play out.
You see, being a brother is much like being a shepherd: watch the horizon for danger, be willing to fight it off, carry home the lost and the hurt. The roles are inseparable for him, because he learned them at the same time, with the same person.
“Focus on convincing Matsya to put in a good word with the locals for our boat. Leave the boy to me.”
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