Affirmation Who: Falina Bjyr, Cormac Murrough, and of course Shartan Where: Vigil's Keep When: 13 Molioris, 9:45. Evening. Summary: In which Falina chooses a new family, and Cormac learns how to hug. Rating: T for language, because it's Cormac. Duh. Status: Complete
The ceremony was over.
The news spread throughout the Keep, carried in hushed whispers faster than the cool night breezes that swept through the drafty corridors. The still Keep stirred, not exactly waking because no one had really slept. Not tonight. This evening they had all waited and kept vigil, servants and friends alike. The heavy knowledge that not all who walked into the room of the Joining would walk out pressed upon each of them, and they had all found their own ways of handling it.
For Cormac, the past few hours were a blur of lost time spent staggering between fury and impotence. He had contemplated waiting outside the Joining chamber itself, before deciding against this. If he did not see Falina walking out, he couldn't trust himself not to do something stupid. Something like lunging for the Warden-Commander's throat. So he had found himself passing the time in the crowded courtyard, where the other friends of initiates had joined to try and take their minds off of the haggard truth with the old stand-by's of wine and song. He had trouble joining in either, but they presented a welcome distraction from the grim thoughts that gnawed at his ragged nerves.
But the moment a servant had skidded into the courtyard with the breathless announcement that the doors had opened and the new Grey Wardens were emerging, Cormac was threading his way through the warren of passages back towards the Joining room, Shartan hot on his heels. A jumble of voices echoed down the corridor as he approached, and his anxiety was cloying on the back of his tongue as he strained to hear Falina's higher pitch. He wasn't a particularly prayerful man but he found himself muttering a half-formed request to the Maker. Let her be there, was the litany that ran through his mind as he pushed his way through the growing knot of people, eyes searching for a tiny dark head.