[o] Nothing ends, only changes

Jude

The Greatwood had been home to him once. A home split in two, spread across more parents than most would know and distances more vast than a child had any right being tugged between, but a home nonetheless. It’s a familiar ghost he doesn’t feel he has any right to claim, but which makes him bleed nostalgia with every step he takes within the forest’s reach. Nothing feels like home to him these days but memories of the Greatwood are ones that remain otherwise untainted. That makes them unique enough to make him long for something he doesn’t think he can have anymore. 

Mathair is a presence so grand he can scarcely breathe beneath her boughs. Mighty in a terrifying way that makes you feel tiny and meaningless. Jude’s mother had laughed that away when he was a child, tried to tell him how Rae and Frey and Mathair were interconnected and only smiled fondly when Jude would shake his head and urge that they were each different degrees of intimidating. Even as an adult - questionably, but he’s twenty and considers himself one, which is all that matters at his age anyway - his knees feel a little weak when he looks at the mighty tree. 

Offerings aren’t necessarily standard for the seasonal gods. They don’t have shrines as far as he’s aware. But the Greatwood, the Fae, his mother - they’d instilled a reverence that has him bending knee willingly to offer one anyway in the shape of a thin line across his palm that bleeds slow onto the moss. Protein, calories, life. More meaningful things than baubles and trinkets for a god that would find no worth in them. Jude would reserve those for his own herald.

Standing, he clenches his hand past the sting of the wound and the way it spreads crimson across his palm as he looks up into Mathair’s canopy. “Let me find one. Please.” Let him save his best friend.

I LEND EVERYONE MY EAR, BUT NOBODY MY HEART
I'D LIKE TO CHANGE THAT, BUT I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START

Theea

There it is.

The Mathair.

It looms before me—vast and ancient and unbearably still. The kind of stillness that makes the world around it hush in deference. I stop a good distance back, boots sinking slightly into moss that gives with a shudder. The air smells strange here—rich and heavy, like wet soil and overripe fruit with something sharper curled beneath.

As I pace in a circle around the tree, memories bubble softly to the surface. Not unpleasantly, but there is a certain edge to it.

When I was small, barely tall enough to reach mom’s waist, both she and dad brought me here. We didn’t go close then, either. My dad held my hand too tightly, making sure I didn’t get too close, and my mom kept her voice hushed and careful, like even speaking too loud might wake something best left sleeping. I remember staring up at the tree’s impossible height, wondering how anything could be so old, so alive. I'm glad to see it again.

It feels even bigger now, instead of smaller like it should. Like she’s grown in the years since I’d been here, or that I’ve grown smaller instead of bigger. 

I stop in my tracks, just in time to watch a young man rise from where he’d been crouching in the moss. I catch a flash of blood in his palm—it’s not a far leap to assume he’s making an offering for his quite curious request—

“Find what?” The question blurts out of my mouth before I can think to stop it, and right away, I cringe. “I mean,” I clear my throat, “not that it’s any of my business. Sorry.”

there is defiance in being a d r e a m e r

Jude

By time he’d come to live in the Greatwood there had been no leadership left to speak of, or at least none he’d known of or abided by. Then again as the son of a demigod he’d often been given more grace than a child as respectful as he’d been would have cared to abuse. Still, he isn’t accustomed to hearing footsteps even so many years later. The Fae carry themselves on wings or elastic mushrooms, and the sound of someone moving registers as more animal than human. His shoulders hike instinctively in vague preparation for fight or flight - only to land on freeze instead as a clearly human voice speaks, dashing the prey-fear crawling up his spine.

Alas, pretty girls are as terrifying as any predatory animals the Greatwood might house, so Jude doesn’t breathe any easier once he’s verified she’s human.

But she’s somehow even more awkward than he normally is. Jude hadn’t been sure that was possible honestly, and it makes him crack a lopsided smile that hasn’t learned how to be charming yet. “Um, hi. You walk really quietly has anyone told you that?” His laugh cracks with the remnants of being taken so thoroughly by surprise, not quite hysterical but humorously shrill. He clears his throat firmly and doesn’t let himself feel embarrassed even as his cheeks warm rebelliously. “It’s not a big secret - what everyone’s looking for out here lately, I guess. One of Vi’s roses.” There’s practically been organized search parties as far as Jude has heard. He’d been content to bury his head in the sane until…well, until Noe. The reminder drains the smile off his face and he looks down at his bloody hand which is turning tacky now. “My best friend is infected. And she’s all I have.” It comes out with a sharp note of defensiveness, shoulders tense when he meets her eyes again. It’s not half as important or honorable as using the flower to take power back from the Family, and he knows it. He just really doesn’t want to have to hear it out loud instead of in his own head.

I LEND EVERYONE MY EAR, BUT NOBODY MY HEART
I'D LIKE TO CHANGE THAT, BUT I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START

Theea

I blink once, and one side of my mouth pulls upward before the other, and my smile is nothing short of proud. ”I have been actually,” I say. I certainly hope I’d have been, considering my mother. Silence, stealth, being quick on my feet—all things both my parents drilled into me since I was forming memories.

And then it makes sense; of course that’s what he’s looking for. I wonder if I should be searching for that. To beat back the disease infecting Caido, infecting everyone. It’s when I think of that, that I experience a rare gratefulness that my mother stays under the radar now.

His smile is gone, replaced by something I can’t quite read. But his best friend being infected… I can see why he won’t look at me. There are those who’d call him selfish for wanting to cure a single person and not an entire region. I meet his eyes with brows drawn upward at the center.

”I’m sorry for your friend. And you.” I glance at his hand. ”Hold on. Here.”

I swing my bag around to my front and open the top flap, digging in and rifling through an annoying amount of things—how do I have so much yet so little—until I’m able to produce a clean strip of cloth. I give him a small, reassuring smile as I approach and hold it out for him. ”For your hand.” I step back and slip the strap back over my shoulder. ”I’m Theea.”

there is defiance in being a d r e a m e r

Jude

Her pride is clear in the tilt of her chin and the curve of her smile, and Jude can only laugh out the remaining jitters in her chest with a small shake of his head. It helps his heart rate slow to have her react so…normally. “I’m sure it’s normally a compliment, but I think you gave me a few grey hairs.” A saying he’d absorbed from his dad which he finds sits awkwardly on his tongue for all it naturally comes to it. 

It’s something that adds an extra beat of self-conscious silence to the stretch that unfolds between them, until her quiet condolences break the silence. Honey eyes jump to her, wide and startled. “Me? No, I’m - well I’m out here walking in the woods and she’s…” Jude isn’t sure what infection feels like to Noe actually, but his shame feels like ash on his tongue; her sympathy is better suited for Noe, not Jude. 

He extends his hand stupidly as she offers the cloth. How she continues to blindside him so thoroughly is almost exasperating. Is it magic? Is he just really bad at socializing now? Not that he was ever much more than mediocre at it but clearly he is growing rustier by the day. “Thank you. That’s - well, you - are really kind.” Flustered by the graceless way he gets it out, Jude takes a moment to wrap his hand up, grateful for a midwife mom and soldier dad who didn’t overlook first aid training a day in his life. “I’m Jude.” He extends the bandaged hand to shake before quickly trading it out for one that wouldn’t hurt so badly to squeeze. “Are you from around here?”

I LEND EVERYONE MY EAR, BUT NOBODY MY HEART
I'D LIKE TO CHANGE THAT, BUT I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START

Theea

A few gray hairs? My smile twists into something amused, eyes glimmering. “My apologies for aging you,” I say with a dip of my head.

He doesn’t accept it, what I’ve said, but it was genuine. I think of my mom being infected, and it makes me sick. I can’t help but wonder what I would choose to do with a rose, if she were. It doesn’t take me long to know the answer: I’d choose her. He doesn’t seem to think his efforts are worth anything, or even that he might need to have his suffering acknowledged. “You aren’t just walking in the woods,” I assure him with a sympathetic smile. “You’re hunting for a way to save someone you love.”

I just shrug at his thanks as I pass off the cloth. “It’s nothing, really.” I don’t mind helping—it’s why I struck out in the first place. Tired of hiding, tired of thinking only of ourselves. What else could mom expect, telling me all those stories of heroism?

He holds out his hand, then switches for the other, and I grin with a breath of a laugh. I take his hand with a good shake. “Jude. I’m Theea.” When I release his hand, I hook my thumbs into the straps of my bag, and I shake my head. “Not really from anywhere, no. Always been nomadic. Just stopping here on my way to find some family. What about you?”

there is defiance in being a d r e a m e r

Jude

Heart finally relaxing to a proper rate, Jude manages a smile in return, wry and charmed. “You owe me, then. Something that’ll cost like…six months of life? I’ll send you a bill.” 

She is straightforward in a way that cuts to the quick, and Jude isn’t sure how to contend with that. It’s what he’d loved in Noe from the start, though her forthright nature is louder and more sarcastic than this. It touches him. It terrifies him. He feels naked under her calm stare and he doesn’t even know her name. “Yeah…I guess I am.” Even his tone comes out rattled, shaken by her kind validation and the mirror it forces in front of his face. He lifts his newly bandaged hand, the fabric already darkening with blood - but not spreading too far, clearly successful in slowing the bleeding. “But then this isn’t nothing either. So thank you.”

Departing from the strangely affecting topic is a relief to him, and he shakes her hand gently - never the type to try for firmness. She seems to take care of that for him with the exuberant motion that brings his own arm along for the ride. “Really, always nomadic? But you must be my age.” Maybe he’s biased as someone who’s always belonged to a region, but it sounds awfully lonely. Dangerous even. “I was born and raised in Torchline but I just moved to Stormbreak recently. I don’t have any family though - cousins, I guess.” Or so Flora had declared them once. And his mom had called Remi and Ronin something like uncles, but Jude had bounced between parents so much it had never been more than sentiment. “Who are you looking for? Maybe I know them.”

I LEND EVERYONE MY EAR, BUT NOBODY MY HEART
I'D LIKE TO CHANGE THAT, BUT I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START

Theea

“Noted, I’ll be sure not to shave too many months off my own in the meantime.” He’s got a good sense of humor, I decide. There have been plenty of people in life who’ve been unhappy at me accidentally or not accidentally sneaking up on them. I inherited the soft steps of my parents.

He seems to shrink under my comment, a flower folding in upon itself. My brows pull together, head tilting a little. What happened to him to make him doubt his own abilities so deeply that he can’t take someone pointing them out? Even just a stranger. My heart wants to reach out for him, give him the confidence he needs. But if I’ve learned anything from my over-empathizing with my mom, there’s no convincing someone of something when they don’t want to hear it.

Yet, he agrees, and I grin. His voice might shake, but he’s admitted it. I give a breathy laugh  and glance down with a nod. “I suppose it isn’t,” if only to make him feel less guilty. “So you’re welcome.” It doesn’t feel like I did anything big, but I suppose that to some people, even the smallest kindness feels like a lot.

He seems surprised at my lifestyle, but I think I’m just as surprised at his. No family. Maybe I’m biased as someone who’s always had family close to me, but it sounds awfully lonely. “I’m—” Shit. What age would I call myself? Um… “Nineteen.” That feels right. “Though I was just a kid last season. Frey helped me get to where I needed to be. I was tired of traveling in seclusion with my mom—I wanted to make more connections.”

I heft my heavy bag a little, adjusting it. Then he says what most people have said: Maybe I know them. I’m hungry for more stories about them—I’ve missed out on so damn much. “You lived in Torchline! Do you know Remi and Ronin Taliesin?” I bite my lip hopefully. “They’re my uncles. Or were. I haven’t seen them since I was very little, I don’t really remember them.”

there is defiance in being a d r e a m e r