Difference between revisions of "Logs:Turn of Day"

H'kon had woken suddenly, but left the bed quietly enough he'd not disturbed Madilla. Her quarters - all the crafter's complex, it seemed - were quiet. When he'd paused outside the children's door, H'kon had heard only their breathing, focusing until he could make out each child distinctly, Lilabet, slow and steady, Dilan with his cold, Raija, faster.

He'd moved into the main living area, thinking of tea, choosing water instead. Let them all sleep. He'd eased out a chair, set his glass on the table. Now, he sat, slouched. Arekoth, also, was asleep. H'kon knew the particular dance of colours at the back of his mind - a dream of precision flying, likely with the wing, though this one was not so vivid as to provide a distinction. He did not probe Arekoth for hidden detail. Let him sleep peacefully, let him dream of simple pleasures.

It was not that H'kon himself was not at peace. His heartbeat had been faster than usual when he awoke, but he'd not woken with a cry, not even with a start. There had been no sign that his dreaming had disturbed the woman next to him, nor even the quilts on the bed, overmuch. But it had not been a dream of fantasy, where imagination could twist cruel realities into something more monstrous. It had been a dream of memories.

H'kon twisted his glass of water in place, a quarter turn. He watched the liquid settle in the dim light of a barely-unlidded glow. He did not need light to reassure him of those things that were safe and good. He did not need it to push darker images from his mind. No, he called them back, thought on them with furrowed brow and the downward press of the sides of his mouth. He looked again at the camps at Nabol, as they looked from the air, disarray despite his attempts to order them. He looked to the cookfires that could not provide the warmth men needed, but only heat the rations that had not been enough. He looked to the skirmishes between those men, some brothers, others brothers in arms, others still strangers. Disaster had not brought them unity. He looked to the injuries he'd seen tended: bumps, bruises, broken bones, bloody flesh. He looked to the bodies they'd found, those that had been trampled from the start, those that had come when men turned on each other after too long waiting. He took his hand from his brow, where still there was a scar.

H'kon, now thirty-three turns, rider to brown Arekoth, commander of the refugee camps then, wingsecond now, man of family, sat at the dark table, twisted his glass another quarter turn, waited for the day to come, and remembered.