fw sir heron shaw is not a casualty of war. (adjustments) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-04-30 22:25:00 |
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The New Year had come in time for the first faltering buds of spring, and, perhaps appropriately given the year they’d had, the first delicate waves of warmth the region had seen in some time. Although huge swaths of the city still bore the marks of the night’s exuberant revelries (extending even to a few still-staggering souls in the streets of the Commoner’s District), this portion of the park seemed largely untouched. Rows of cherry trees stood pristine, looking better than they had even the day before--for now, delicate pink flowers were starting to unfurl their flags, announcing (come what may) the dawn on another year. Dew-blackened branches cast a delicate latticework of shadows on the ground, even in the weak, early morning sun. Heron’s can picked its way through the cobbled walk, his blue eyes illuminated white and squinting into the sharply angled light. The chalky sounds of his steps seemed clumsily loud to his trained ear when isolated by the hour from the other foot traffic in the city. It wasn’t that he hadn’t enjoyed himself in a mild way in the hours before dawn. It was just that, after decades in the service, he could hardly manage to sleep past the sun. But then, he realized, glancing up from the ground and his thoughts at once, it seemed he was not quite alone. Every footfall echoed throughout the ground, every sound amplified in the emptiness of meditation. Toku opened his eyes and looked up to see the familiar face of Heron Shaw, a lone man braving the morning of Valendian New Year’s Day, which would see no activity until well past noon, by which time some of the city’s inhabitants would begin to recover from the previous night’s festivities. Toku unfolded his legs from the lotus position and stood up. “Good morning,” he greeted, with a polite bow of the head. “You are up commendably early, Sir Shaw.” Heron’s half-smile seemed to radiate from the corner of his eye, grooved lines in his skin like cracks in ice. Toku was older than him, and it was difficult not to note the ease with which he flowed from the ground to a standing position, the vagaries of age and injury evidently not encumbering the mage just yet. “Arguably commendable,” he said, navigating the final few steps to Toku’s chosen vantage. “Less impressive if I didn’t--overextend the night before.” Heron extended a rough palm in greeting. They shook hands, and he continued, “Don’t imagine your night was too chaotic, either, Councillor.” “Indeed.” Toku chuckled. “The closest I came to last night’s revelry was hearing a group of young men attempt to serenade a lady by the Mages’ Tower shortly before midnight.” “Ha. Poor woman,” Heron said. “Expect it wasn’t exactly a polished chorus.” He’d heard similar singing in the streets outside his window, as predictable every year as if the holiday itself followed a script. Something about the familiar routine, he expected, was comforting to the citizens now more than ever. As though acting on an unspoken cue, the two men began to walk side-by-side, a sort of informal patrol of the park that turned up no activity but a few casualties of the previous night, snoring in the shade of the trees where their bodies may have given up on them only a few hours prior. If the early spring breeze blew cherry blossom petals into their faces or hair, they remained none the wiser, oblivious to the world around them. There was just the slightest hint of stiffness in Heron’s jaw at the sight of the city scattered with people as well as with refuse, celebratory or no. Now that he’d crested forty, it was easier to attribute his private peevishness around certain public behaviors to his age rather than some kind of innate cantankerousness. “I hope nobody shall attempt to argue the commendability of your waking hours, today,” Toku said. “It is New Year’s Day; you could take it easy for one day, if you wished to.” Another half-smile broke his soldier’s grim composure. “Too many years breakfasting before dawn, for the field or the dojo. Expect you know the feeling. For one reason or another.” Matsudaira Toku was as much a figurehead of the Mages Guild as Heron was the Fighters, even moreso. They were alike in many ways, and of late the latter had found himself wondering what signs Toku had gleaned from the latest series of disasters in Emillion, what he thought they boded for the future. With a wry smile, Toku said, “I suspect had we been members of the same Guild, our training schedules would have seen quite a bit of overlap.” (Absently, Toku wondered if, many years ago, he may have run into a younger Heron Shaw at the dojo, before his shoulder injury had put an end to his training with the katana and his time as a Blue Mage chasing wild beasts in the Outlands, before Heron too had suffered the injury that had changed the course of his career. Perhaps they had one trained side by side, mage and fighter, and never known.) “Never offered my condolences,” Heron said, after a long silence, punctuated only by the soft (and lopsided, in his case) sounds of their steps. He looked at Toku. “For your father.” A reply to such words was never easy to phrase, beyond the prescribed formalities, but some people deserved more than that. “He was in quite a bit of pain, toward the end,” Toku said quietly. “He is not, now; for that, I am grateful.” Heron was quiet. He could well imagine that sort of gratitude: he'd felt it enough on the field, windswept, standing over the incurably maimed, the bereaved and bereft, yearning for death. Though his confession of such would never see the light of day, he’d experienced it himself, not so long ago. Cherry blossoms smaller than thumbnails danced across their path, the breeze brooming them along the paving stones in idle waves, mingling with confetti and dust. His father had been ripped away in one stroke decades ago, and his mother had aged such that she seemed not older but simply more wiry, denser, an oak polished by the wind, growing impenetrable rings around old hurts like a protective embrace. Heron could hardly imagine her dying of anything. “Small blessings,” he said at last, but the words were hardly out of his mouth before the bells of a nearby church were pealing out the hour, their grand, buzzing tones caroming gleefully across uneven rooftops and under eaves, dashing through windows left open for perhaps the first time in months. A flight of doves burst from the exconjuratory atop the bell tower and scattered into the blue, as rudely awakened as the dreamers they’d passed minutes before. It was deafening. Heron’s laugh was half-muffled. “Well, if they weren’t awake before…” Toku chuckled. "One determined enough to sleep cannot be deterred by such things." As he spoke, two young men slumbering some distance ahead turned on their sides with a groan and stilled again when the bells quieted. Content, no doubt, for they still had another hour left until the tolling woke them again. |