as soon as she is able to, caeda requests a return to the monastery from rusalka. she is lucky that her request is granted without much fuss. the dream that she’d had played far too many tricks on her— for her comfort she needed to see her beloved marth again.

though even with his warmth, she was not sure she would ever forget the feeling of dying. the blood that had pooled at her stomach had felt so real it made her nauseous just thinking about it.

caeda has a feeling humans aren’t supposed to remember things like that.

she finds his dorm room with ease and knocks on his door. “marth?” she calls out with her normal voice— disguised to hide her grief in public but still normal. “it’s caeda, i returned from my mission!”

               Wracked by the disappearance of not merely one soul deeply loved, but many others, a king’s mind could only be led to hem and haw of the differences these absences make. To stutter and hitch on its thoughts of useful behavior as consciousness towards the academy, and all else, dwindles to a thread. Amid all this worry it would be foolish to expect of him the same perfect labors as he has portrayed before. The pen in his hand petering off the paper in his state of distraction, misguided ink rubbed away with as slanted a mind, calculations conducted off-beat by more handfuls then pinches.  .  .Can he be blamed for his faulty ways at a desk? Deeper concerns surely lie beyond it!

               The days are joined together ceaselessly by his gnawing concern that he is not there to brave their hostile elements with them in Rusalka; his allies and friends in so much measure. Caeda, Kris, and Katarina among them. Every hour serves to remind that those to whom he might bequeath all the measure of his love are also for all the duration of a month without presence to receive it. But as he is soon to know, there is a difference that cuts this day from the rest, like night and day, sea and sky—

                  Announced with the call of his name then the full and beautiful sight of the former Talys princess herself, Caeda returns to him after that painful hibernation, and for a grateful matter of seconds there is little else that can enter his eye. His arms engulf her at once. “You’ve returned! I hadn’t expected you to be back today, but I am all the gladder for it—oh, you must be positively exhausted! Are you hurt or hungry? Perhaps you’d like to bathe first? Forgive my eagerness without prior thought. I’ve no mind to pile myself onto you at once after such a tiring journey—”

               Every word and function is to halt at his discovery, stopped in their tracks. A thick line of tension stiffening her in his hold where relaxation should have persisted, a studious speed drives his gaze as he draws back to examine her, guided by the knowledge of something amiss. Traveling then lingering on the finer points of expression with invisibility to an unversed eye. The exhaustion buried there, the silent appeal for comfort that only Marth could provide, the signs are enough compel to a different breed of question. The further gaping of a dormitory door as he moves to allow her into his heart and his halls in one backwards step. “...Come in, Caeda. I’d like to hear of your time in Rusalka, and of yourself. As much as you are willing to share, of course. I am sure you have many stories to impart."