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A horse boy with magic in his veins.

Well if that doesn’t sound like a perfect mirror of Jonathan’s soul, she’s not entirely sure what does. Rugged and arcane, this brother of Allerick’s sounds like the perfect student for her sweet soldier. Even his name, Gable, sounds docile and kind. Perfect. She’s suspected that at least half of Jon’s hesitation to take on a student is simply due to feeling intimidated by the thought of teaching someone who’s had a more formal education than he’s had. She doesn’t necessarily think that would be a bad thing, perhaps the two could teach each other in the process, but she understands where the stress comes from.

"Certainly, I think I've reveled in this dreary atmosphere quite enough." She says, watching for the moment the vampire tries to change the dream. It's been a real treat, seeing him come unraveled little by little as the moments pass. But all that pales in comparison to the distress that leaks out of him when he realizes that breaking out of the vision she's constructed around them is going to be harder than he first thought.

She may not have his artistry, but her magic is far more robust than his, and that makes quite the difference in this specific situation.

Ramona's hold on the dream is not particularly tight, but neither does she ease up when it becomes clear that Allerick is struggling to get the vision to do what he wants. This is exactly what she's been waiting for, after all: his breaking point. Instead of offering relief in the form of kind words or a new, calmer setting, she simply tilts her head and savors the maelstrom of emotions that fall off of the vampire like red leaves in autumn.

Anxiety. Hunger. Longing. Excitement. Weakness. Fear. So, so much fear.

It tastes delicious.

Suddenly they are back in her parlor, but Allerick's state is no better. The panic continues to consume him, even after his success, and the emotion begins to manifest physically, forming little round burns that smolder and smoke from his clothing, filling the air with the acrid scent of burnt skin and cloth. This has grown out of control, she feels, as he bolts and knocks over the heavy chair he had been in. But they don't stay in the parlor long. Not a minute after the vampire hits the floor, the dream-turned-nightmare falls apart.

The boy's scream rips her straight out of the vision, and they both come to in her room.

Instantly she rises to her feet, sweet words of apology dripping from her mouth, a look of regret and concern plastered across her face as she moves about the room, darting from the sofa to her belongings and back to the hearth where the warm wine simmers softly in the heat of the fire.

"I'm so sorry, darling. That was cruel of me." This she croons as she draws a blade across her palm and bleeds into the tin cup, her back to the vampire and thus hiding her actions from him. It isn't much, hardly a mouthful. But it will hopefully tide him over until he can get a proper meal, preferably off of Maddox or Ariathel. She seals the wound with a cantrip almost immediately after. "I shouldn't have left you in the dungeon like that, especially knowing you hadn't eaten yet today."

Just before turning around, tin cup and towel in hand, she adds a little scoop of white powder from a vial hidden in her sleeve to the garnet red mixture. It isn't anything nefarious, but Allerick is unsettled, and honeyed words might not be enough to keep him here with her right now. A little chemistry to help calm his nerves is not unwarranted, she thinks.

"Here." She purrs, holding the cup near his lips for him to drink. "It's good and hot, now. Should help put your mind more at ease. Then we can talk about getting you something to eat, alright, love?"

After batting furiously at his arms and chest to extinguish the burning pinholes of light, Allerick’s scream tapers off into a strangled noise. A startled, nearly blank expression begins to erase the look of terror that had been there a moment ago and he falls very still.

Suffering from a dry mouth and almost no recollection of where he is, the young vampire blinks around at the room and at the older woman as she mills around it while he continues to gasp and pant and swallow like a man pulled from the sea. A clammy sweat has broken out on his forehead and the back of his neck.

His hands are gripping the chair’s arms. That’s the first thing Allerick notices when he begins to settle back into his body. The next is the coolness of his skin and the total absence of any real blisters. It was all a nightmare, then. Just a nightmare. A pitiful, pathetic display of weakness triggered by the slightest sense of confinement… His ridiculously disproportionate reactions come flooding back to him without any of the pain or terror that had driven him to behave in such a way, and now… all he feels is disgust. A kind of appalling embarrassment—mortification, really—gurgles up inside of him like black ice water. His lips pucker. He looks as though he might be physically ill on his own shoes.

And speaking of his beautiful clothing… The ebony buttons of his fine silk shirt hang limply by mere threads (or not at all, having been launched somewhere across the room and perhaps lost beneath the bed) and his suit jacket is rucked down around his elbows like a shawl from when he’d tried to rip it off himself.

The deep plunge of his open shirt doesn’t bother Alerick in the least, but those buttons were a gift. …If the thought of crawling on his knees to retrieve them wouldn’t bring on another, insufferable degree of humiliation, he’d do it now. But he won’t. He’ll just have to wait until the old bird has flown the nest in the morning to search for them.

“Tch…” Trembling, but with the cool and haughty expression of a cobra, he shrugs his way back into his suit and grudgingly accepts the offered wine. But Allerick insists on holding it in his own hands this time. And there it remains, full and steaming, while he concentrates all his energy on making absolutely sure his lower lip does not quiver like a child’s on the eve of a thunderstorm.

It takes a minute before he’s sure his voice will not fail him. He cannot look at the woman, but he smiles in her direction, exceedingly politely. “Scusami, la mia Padrona. I…”

He has no words for what happened. No convenient excuse or clever story. Neither the truth nor a lie would make his actions seem justifiable now, or at least not to his own ears, so he half shakes his head to dismiss the unspoken words and lifts the cup to his parted lips to drink deeply.

When the first swallow washes over his tongue, the vampire tastes the wine and questions the trace of blood. Could he just be imagining it? Is it a holdover from the realness of that dungeon? It very well could be, but the effect of the unexpected additive is unmistakable as his heart rate quickens again and his pupils dilate. Allerick lowers the cup a petal’s breadth from his mouth and throws a quizzical glance in Lady Arathel’s direction. Her encouraging smile dissolves any last stubborn dregs inhibition; he shuts his eyes and releases a shaky sigh of relief into his next sip, which becomes one long swill that drains the cup.

-

“Miss Ari? I’ve got a favor to ask of you, if yer willing.”

Gable’s physical body has mended itself well. The color returned to his lips late yesterday afternoon, and although there’s still a duskiness around each eye that suggests he isn’t out of the proverbial woods yet, he looks nearly like his sunshiney self this morning. But he knows, as Maddox and Ari know, that his strength will desert him again by mid afternoon. Even the makeshift cane he has come to rely on to keep himself steady won’t help him when the weakness strikes.

And there’s a limp. A bad one. It dropped him to the floor the first time he moved from the Master’s bed to use the facilities. He can make it look better than it is if he moves deliberately, but if he can avoid moving at all when anyone’s watching, that’s even better. Which is why he’s standing in the kitchen doorway just after the breakfast rush has passed, wearing a soft expression that tips between excitement and worry.

“Master Eris ought to be home today. I’d like to look… nice for him. He ought not to come home and fuss over me after all that he’s done; I’d like him to say ‘the lad looks fine! I think I’ll go and put my feet up by the hearth’ when he sees me, but I feel… sorta sour. I’ve got knots in my hair from lying on it, and it’s a bit longer than I’d like. And a bath sounds like heaven.”

“No bath!” Lee protests from his spot on the floor with Splatters, surrounded by a pile of that morning’s breakfast rolls. Gable ignores the interjection with half a smirk.

“Would you… would you help me to get sorted? I’d ask Maddox, but I’ve already imposed upon him to change Master Eris’s bedding for his arrival, and to be honest… I don’t trust he’ll know what he’s doing with the shears.” The sly grin through which he teases the absent chief of staff is playful in a brotherly way. With their lengthy chats about courting and love, friendship and family, and the frustrations and rewards of hard work, the two of them have grown quite a bit closer in a short time. Even Lee has added ‘uncle’ before ‘Madds’ and Gabe has all but named his own future nieces and nephews from the redhead’s marriage to the wood elf.

Ramona listens attentively from where she stands across the room when Allerick begins to speak, but the sentence never resolves, leading her to issue a sympathetic tut. “No need for apologies, dear. You just focus on settling back into your own skin. Have a sip of the wine, darling. I always find food and drink help ground me after a bad out-of-body experience.”

She watches closely to his expression as he sips from the tin cup, knowing the exact moment when he tastes the blood mixed within. But the look she gives him is as innocent as a lamb, an encouraging smile that drips with approval for the small sip he did take before the pause. At least the blood masks the taste of the sedative. She doesn’t expect him to drain it all at once, but she’s pleased enough to see it happen anyway. Now all she has to do is wait.

“There’s a good lad.” She practically purrs, crossing the floor to exchange the tin cup in Allerick’s hand with a cool, damp cloth with which to wash his face and freshen up, straight from the washbasin. “Let me know if you’d like to lie down. I know those sorts of experiences can be taxing.”

-

Ariathel immediately looks up and away from the potatoes she’s been peeling, hearing her name called from the kitchen doorway. She smiles, drying her hands off on the apron she wears, pausing only briefly to glance at the timepiece on the wall before giving her answer. “Of course. I’ve got some time before lunch, and I’m a bit ahead of schedule prepping for supper as it is.”

“Now let’s see…” Her hands find their way to her hips as she cocks her head and examines the young man before her. “You’re quite right about not trusting Maddox with the shears. I love the man dearly, but he’s hopeless with these sorts of things. Excellent with a sword, but that does not translate to scissors. We’ll take care of the hair first. Kick that stool over here if you can, I’ll fill a basin so we can get the knots sorted before we go at it with something sharp.”

The man is tall enough she can simply fill a basin with water and have him lean back against the countertop so she can get at his hair. He truly does look horrible, the poor thing. Greasy, tangled locks and a face that practically screams the fact that he’s been recently on death’s doorstep. But with a little care and maintenance… hopefully they can have him looking a bit better before Master Eris returns.

“Let me know if anything tugs.” She says, wetting his hair and starting to work out the knots.

The old archmage’s doting doesn’t feel at all like the pampering Allerick expected to receive when he was invited to her room. No, this feels like charity, and the young, proud vampire despises her for it, or at least despises the way it makes him feel so very young and sickly… but he accepts the damp towel with a sour nod of thanks anyway and dabs at his neck and face.

“No, I do not wish to lie down. I must leave you now. I…” Allerick swallows thickly and trains his eyes on the floor. It was foolish of her to give him a taste of what he craves while his stomach is empty, but what’s done is done; his feeding instincts have kicked in.

It would be positively stupid of him if he chose to remain in the same room as a prominent archmage now. Losing his mind to bloodlust is not how one wins friends or influences people… or secures future glory and a renowned title as Dream Architect of the Archmages.

“Grazie mille per la tua ospitalità, la mia Padrona, but I cannot bear the thought of imposing upon you any longer. Now it is time I secure a real breakfast. Perhaps later… later we could...” A peculiar heaviness comes over his body. Then the room begins to turn—or is it Allerick doing the turning? He draws himself up to his feet very slowly and straightens his suit. It must be the hunger that’s causing him to feel so strange in the head.

The young vamp pulls on a smile that is, frankly, quite drunk as he murmurs another goodbye. But he still doesn’t move toward the door. His pale hands lift to his head, where he strings spindly fingers through thick, glossy, soft hair. He twists it around and around and hums to himself, perfectly pleased. Then he looks at her with his eyes half-lidded and a stupid grin splitting his face.

“Old woman,” he croons, “would you like to kiss me a little? You did not need to put something in my glass if that is what you wanted.” But he’s glad she did.

-

“You’re an angel.”

Gabe releases a happy sigh and makes his way in slow, stiff movements to the aforementioned stool. He’ll be needing a shave eventually, too, but he can probably manage that much on his own. If he can’t, if his eyelids droop or his hands begin their trembling, then he’ll just have to throw himself on Maddox’s mercy. A shaving razor is a bit more like a sword than the scissors, anyway, and the red-whiskered man ought to be just as familiar with its protocols as Gable—with probably a few more years’ experience.

“I think I love him, too.” The confession comes with a grin, but it’s followed by a more thoughtful expression as Gabe settles into the position the head cook (and hairdresser) indicates for him. “Maddox hasn’t hardly left my side these past days. He’s such a patient man. Selfless.”

Tipping his head back, Gabe’s lashes flutter shut and the tension that his body has held onto in order to protect itself from further injury, further pain, further warping of the bones and joints and ligaments, melts away from his muscles with a few steady breaths. He nods to her request for honesty, but even when the snarls in his hair catch and the knots pull at his scalp, he doesn’t make a peep. It all feels good, in its own way. It’s one thing to be dirty with dust, but quite another to smell the sick seeping out of your own pores.

“My mother used to comb my hair for me when she’d been on the drink. She was a loving and gentle woman, but always busy with friends or men. She never sat still ‘less she had a bottle in her; that’s when I’d get my cuddles, just before she’d fall asleep... You have gentle hands, too, Miss Ari. Like a mother’s.” He smiles up at her softly, eyes twinkling with secret knowledge of future plans and pursuits.

The vampire's protests, unsurprisingly, fall on deaf ears. Ramona nods along at his words, but they mean very little in the grand scheme of things. Even if he does try to leave, she'll only collect him from wherever he ends up losing consciousness and bring him back here. It wouldn't be a good look for either of them, but it would still be entirely doable, especially with the help of the little mechanical assistant she keeps in her bags. There are questions she needs answered, and Allerick's pride is the very last thing she will allow to come between her and finding those answers.

All she has to do is wait for his body to quiet down, and his mind to follow suit.

Luckily it doesn't take long. The confusion that draws over Allerick's features is a delight to behold, and the unspoken questions and subtle lack of coordination bring a slow smile to her face. She can't help the almost girlish giggle that she lets out at his mumbled farewell, especially after he does nothing to remove himself from the room immediately after.

But then she watches the sluggish realization dawn, and although she does not appear outwardly displeased about it, her gaze turns questioning, almost as if to ask, Yes, but what are you going to do about it?

"Of course, darling." Ramona purrs, trailing the back of her fingers lightly across his cheekbone, then behind his ear and around to cup his jaw and tilt his chin downward. The kiss she gives him is sensual, if brief. A foretaste of what could be in the near future, if the lad allows it. She won't take anything physical from him while he sleeps, but afterward, and perhaps before if he can stay awake long enough, are their own possibilities. "But that's not why I drugged you, dear Allerick."

Her hand moves downward, then, along the side of his neck and down his shoulder to drop all the way to his hand, which she takes in both of hers with a dreamy smile. The archmage begins by flexing the vampire's fingers, then moves on to massaging his palm and the spaces between knuckles, working out the stiffness winter brings to all hands both young and old. She hopes he finds the sensation pleasing. In the past she's watched Jonathan fall asleep halfway through the same attention. Perhaps Allerick will enjoy it too?

"Come lie down with me, love." She says again, though she phrases it less as an offer and more like a suggestion. A very firm suggestion. "Leave the acquisition of your breakfast to me, I very much doubt your hunger will be particularly noticeable soon anyway. In fact there's a good chance you won't even remember this conversation when you wake up."

-

"Don't you go stealing my sweetheart, Gable Kendall." The wood elf warns with a note of mock severity to her voice. "If I find you two kissing in the barn I'll flay both your hides with the dullest fork I have in this kitchen."

It takes a good amount of time to work out the tangles in the recovering man's hair. A significant amount of it is caked in with sweat and grime, and so she uses a bit of mild soap to help things unknot. It's soothing work, and reminds her of the way she used to wash Bral's hair before cutting it when they were younger, though she'd had to lay him down on the counter over the sink because he was too short to do what she is with Gabe now. Nowadays he knows enough magic to keep his hair at his preferred length without the need for scissors.

Now if only he could keep the ruddy brown mop on his head clean with that same magic, she'd call him a miracle worker.

"Someday." Ariathel matches the man's almost mischievous smirk as she works out a particularly bad snarl. "I do hope to be a mother eventually. But that'll have to come after I clear some things up with Maddox. The man is such an oblivious prude I have to wonder if his parents ever had 'the talk' with him before he came here, because I know for a fact Jon didn't. He tried with Bralthrawn when he was a teenager, but the poor sprout came out of the library more confused than when he went in, and I ended up being the one to answer his questions. Some of them made me wonder what they actually talked about in there..."

Once she can run her fingers through Gabe's damp hair without snagging, Ari squeezes the murky water out of his locks and pats them dry with a towel as she has him sit upright and scoot away from the counter. The antler-handled comb in her pocket comes out and straight to work right after, running in long, fluid strokes until it meets no resistance.

"What do you think? Do you want to keep the 'rugged farm boy' cut? Maybe try something more refined, like Madds's 'almost a prince but not quite'? If you give me a minute I could even imitate Jon's signature 'just rolled out of bed' look."

Allerick’s long, black lashes flutter shut and his grin simmers down into a boyish smirk of anticipation. With dampened lips parted and relaxed, he waits for her kiss to surface out of the darkness beyond his eyelids.

The moment of contact elicits a low hum from deep in Allerick’s throat as he voices his approval, but the pleasant sensation leaves him again all too soon... The boy’s eyes flicker open and he sticks his chin out to chase the feeling, but groans as it slips away into the confusing words the archmage forms with that same wicked mouth.

“No? ...Allora perché?”

The woman’s hand, warm and exploratory, drifts along his neck to his shoulder, then down the length of his arm, finally scooping his hand into hers. He finds himself leaning into the touch, straining for more of it. More of the warmth. Allerick tips his chin down and watches the things she does. It feels good. Strange, unlike anything anyone has ever done for him, but good. His breathing becomes slow and shallow as his hand becomes warm and pliable. Sometimes he holds his breath for so long he forgets the familiar rhythm altogether and has to start over with a deep, soft sigh.

“I will remember,” he insists, perhaps just to be argumentative, then follows her to the bed and climbs onto the mattress like a clumsy child. The vampire lands face-down on its spread and he remains like that for a while, nuzzling the soft, worn fabric. Finally he rolls onto his back with a lazy grin that has very little to do with Ramona now.

-

Gabe pipes a low whistle at the elven woman’s issued threat and replies with mock gravity: “Awful glad we got it out of our system in private, then.” With a beaming grin and a giggle, he lifts both hands to protect his face as if he expects her to ‘flay’ him here and now.

If not for the pleasure of their conversation keeping him sharp, Gabe would find it easy to fall asleep with Ariathel running her fingers through his hair. He has petted himself on the head in a similar way on many lonely sleepless nights, but it’s never quite the same as surrendering to the soothing touch of someone else. Hearing their breathing, smelling their scent, even laying his ear to another beating heart… The ache that springs up in his own chest at the memory of such an absence makes him even more glad for the senior staff members and their budding romance. They’re each so deserving of the other’s tenderness.

Gabe’s cheeks tinge a bright pink, but his grin is nothing short of amused by Ari’s anecdote about Bral and Master Eris. “Well, my father was never shy to educate his sons, and I might have given Madds something of a briefing on that subject… Nothing lewd, on my honor; only what I’d pass on to Lee in ‘nother ten or more years. Last thing I wanted to do was shock the man the color of his hair, but I must admit I’m awful keen on Lee having a little cousin to play with. My cousins and me were always close, ‘til they moved off with their own families... Have you thought of names you like?” A bit shyly, Gabe offers the suggestions that have been rolling around in his own mind.

He heard some of the names spoken in the pub, while others he read in love letters passed around on the coldest nights on the trail. A few are from legends. Nearly all of them have some meaning like bravery or kindness or the other virtues, but one in particular means ‘son of fire.’ Agneya.

“Welp. I reckon Master Eris and Maddox are both willing to share a lot with me, and they have, but neither will thank us for stealing their style. …Have you ever seen one of them rancher boys from up north, Miss Ari?” Gabe describes himself, basically, at a time in the past when he was part of a pack. The pack he loved, not the one he was born into.

Most of the other boys on the ranch had the same kind of haircut, and besides being convenient and low-maintenance, the girls liked it well enough: flowing, wavy, textured, just long enough to run your fingers through but not so heavy it could get in your eyes while you worked. A real cowpuncher ‘do.

“Of course you will, darling.” She says encouragingly as she guides him toward the bed. It wont be long now, she thinks, before he drops off, especially if the long, slow intervals between each breath are any indication. “I have every confidence in you, you’ll be able to look back on this conversation with a great deal of fondness by tomorrow.”

There is no grace in the way he sluggishly crawls onto the bed, shoes and all, but she adores it nonetheless. She can’t resist the temptation to run her hand through his silky black locks, massaging his scalp and neck, even rubbing his shoulders every few strokes. Ideally he would have taken his suit jacket and shoes off beforehand, but she can take care of that once he turns over. If she can wriggle a half-conscious Jonathan out of his formal archmage attire in all its layers, she can probably handle the stringy vampire and his suit jacket.

Eventually, he does turn over and she gets her chance. She starts with the loosened buttons, frowning at their state. She’s no seamstress, but that’s what magic is for. If she has time before Allerick wakes up, perhaps she’ll search for the missing buttons and reattach them while he sleeps. It isn’t too hard to weasel him out of the jacket once the buttons are undone, and the shoes come off easy enough afterward. This dressing down is as much for her as it is for him, because he’ll be more comfortable that way, and she’ll be more comfortable cuddled up next to him. Not to mention it’ll be easier to sell a lie of him coming to bed willingly if he doesn’t look as though he was on his way out when he wakes up.

“How are you feeling?” She purrs softly, only halfway expecting any answer at all from her drowsy charge as she settles on the edge of the bed beside him, cupping the side of his face and stroking her thumb over his cheek. In truth she doesn’t really care how Allerick is feeling. At this point the conversation is more a method of gauging just how much longer she’ll need to wait before delving into his mind.

-

“Cheeky brat.” The elven woman snorts, smacking Gable lightly with the towel tucked into her apron strings. “Long as he knows where to start, I can probably coach him through the rest. Make sure he gets it in the right hole and all…”

She smirks, moving on to trimming his hair after hearing his description of the style he’s after. There’s a brief moment where she excuses herself to grab a mirror to help him guide her attempts to replicate the haircut he’s after, sticking it in his hands and instructing him to talk her through the length until he’s happy with the results.

“Oh I’ve thought about a few… haven’t told Maddox about any of them, of course. Don’t want to spook him after all this work to get him interested.” She sighs wistfully as she trims away his unruly locks. “I don’t know how Madds would feel about a name from my side of the family, but I’d like to have a daughter named after my mother at some point. Hwíniel. It means ‘daughter of joy’. Mum herself was always sort of a dour character. Very serious, always on about making sure everyone was taken care of, worrying about our future… can’t say I blame her, what with trying to raise us by herself and all. I’d like to give my own children a better life than that, something more stable.”

“Whether or not that stability means I get to stay here…” Her face turns to something resembling a grimace, something hurt and sour. “I hope it does. I like Master Eris. He’s kind, he’s fair, stars above, he’s even good with kids… you should have seen the way he had Lee wrapped around his little finger while you were sick. But he’s not… I don’t know… maybe I just worry too much. Probably got that from mum. I suppose I’m just afraid that one day he’ll fall so hard he won’t be able to get back up. He’s getting older, after all. Sometimes his body can’t quite keep up with what he expects of it. I don’t want to be here to see that day.”

Allerick’s face is still planted on the mattress cover when Lady Arathel’s nails scratch his scalp and her fingers wind around in his hair. The sensations register distantly and with no particular pleasure. From then on, he’s only vaguely aware of his own body and the way it is rolled to one side, then the other, his bare skin pebbling at each rush of cool air where his clothing used to be… Allerick’s eyelids slip shut and his hands roam weakly at either side, searching futilely for something to cover himself with.

To the mage’s question he mutters, “Freddo… Sono molto…”

Then his hands become still.

-

Sheets of goosebumps rush across Gable’s arms each time the scissors rasp close to his ears. Hasp, hasp, hasp, the blades whisper, and he grins like a boy.

Every tuft of hair that falls from his shoulders to the floor might only weigh a fraction of an ounce in reality, but in his mind and his heart it feels as though he’s shedding months of burdensome history. Like rings inside a tree, one’s hair has the tendency to keep record of one’s seasons, too; when a difficult season lasts for too long, hair grows long and unkempt from neglect, a reminder of too many days and nights blurring together. Cutting it off comes as close to shedding one’s old skin as any mammal can get, and for that reason, a great giddiness bubbles up within Gabe. He’s as light as air and alive like lightning. If he had the legs for it, he’d leap off the kitchen stool and fly into the garden or race into the hills, whooping and laughing all the way. For the moment he’d settle for shaking the cuttings off himself like a mutt who rids his summer fur of dust motes, but thankfully for Ari’s sake, he only smiles at these thoughts and lets the urges pass.

“Oh, hun, Hwíniel is a beautiful name.” A soft, doting tone colors Gabe’s voice as he envisions an infant with Ariathel’s elfish features and a shock of Maddox Rex’s vibrant locks. A ‘daughter of joy’ indeed. But it isn’t lost on him that Ariathel seems to have grown up fatherless. As she expresses her desire to do better for her own children, he makes a soft noise of conviction and agreement. That’s all he ever wanted, too. To do better.

With a slight tip of Gable’s hand, the mirror captures the wood elf’s face and all the complex emotions it holds as her daydream morphs into a daymare. His own expression reflects what he sees: the preemptive sadness and fear of an event they both know will happen someday and are helpless to prevent, and the mourning of a thing so loved and cherished, it isn’t a person at all, but a part of their own selves. In such a short time of knowing Master Eris, he feels he’s become a better father, a better man, and a truer friend now than he ever could have hoped to be. No one ever really taught him how to be those things before, and only so much of it can come to a man through sheer instinct… He needed a father to show him how it’s done.

“You won’t be alone when that day comes, Miss Ari. And if I understand anything about Master Eris and his love for you all, you won’t be made destitute then, either… Master Eris will have left everything to Maddox, I reckon, seeing as they’re kin. And Madds will ensure this will always be your home, and your children’s home, and maybe even the place in which your lil’uns raise their own children.”

“Just promise me that when you’re mistress of the house, you’ll convince your husband to keep a horse or two in the barn and you’ll leave a mince pie out on the sill for the poke you retain to care for ‘em. The poke bein’ yours truly.”

Gabe offers a smile that he hopes is reassuring in some way, conveying a sense of family and security and friendship that can weather whatever storms the future brings them. But behind the smile a twinge of dread and awful loneliness pangs in his heart. Though he cares for Ariathel and Maddox and the others, he loves their old man.

Ramona is delighted to watch Allerick lose consciousness, not only because the results suit her purposes, but also because the event itself is beautiful to behold. The way his narrow frame melts into the sheets, his hands uselessly reaching for nothing, his big, pale eyes finally closing in sleep. She hears him exhale, long and deep, and in the next moment leans forward to kiss him in the same manner, long and deep.

“Leyar’s bones, boy, you are a treat.” She purrs against his mouth, nibbling his lip just before she rights herself. She has work to do, after all.

But before that, she dresses down herself, doffing her day clothes and slipping into a silken nightgown, ensuring that she’ll be comfortable enough while she lays with Allerick. Even she doesn’t know how long her investigation will take, as most of it will depend on how soft the vampire’s mind is for her. If he’s pliable enough to let her dig through things without trying to impede her overmuch, this could be over in a matter of minutes, leaving her free to do as she will with the rest of the time that she has him for. With any luck, the sedative will hold for the rest of the day, and keep him agreeable for quite a while afterward.

Now settled and ready for an afternoon of burning magic, Ramona stretches out on the bed next to him. His goose flesh hasn’t gone unnoticed, and she brings with her a downy throw that she draws over the both of them as she wedges herself against his side. It’s comfortable enough, though she wishes his shoulder wasn’t so bony… she’ll have to put a little fat on him, if she can convince him to stick around.

With a contented sigh, she rests her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes, but not to sleep. Instead, she sharpens her magic into a long, thin spike, and drives it into his mind to begin her search. She's gentle but insistent in her prying, like a child lifting rocks in search of beetles, going slowly so as not to frighten the treasures hiding beneath, but still turning each stone regardless of how easy it comes up.

It doesn't take long for her to start seeing things of interest.

Some of his most recent memories are of Jonathan, which makes her job quite easy, as they are the first she encounters. He seems well enough in the vampire's memories, which is a good sign, though the lad's emotions surrounding their relationship are... odd. They seem to swing between something like envy and respect, and there are no shortage of unclear thoughts about the old wizard, and a good number of them seem to also be tied up with thoughts of his brother, which makes sense if Jon has taken him on as an employee.

Although she now has everything she needs and could easily withdraw from his mind, curiosity spurs her onward. All she had been after had been a general look at Jonathan's physical state, that the vampire had been apparently unwilling to share in a conscious state, but now that her appetite has been whet, she finds it hard to stop. She has the opportunity to dig even deeper, to learn what makes Allerick tick, and far be it from her to pass that up.

She presses forward, and is not disappointed by what she finds.

Gnawing hunger and the scent of fresh bread, chains that rattle and pinch while he watches helplessly as a feast takes place before him. He's not had any food for days, neither blood nor solid sustenance, yet here he is, chained to a wall while others eat and drink from a filled platter right in front of him. Bestial hunger wars with as-yet flimsy self-control. But what's more is the undercurrent of fear, fear stemming from the sight of a man who looks very much like Allerick himself, enough to be related by blood, and very closely at that. A father? An uncle? Instinct tells her father.

As she digs even deeper, she learns of his ancestry, of his dreams of achieving power the likes of which most minor deities would envy. She almost laughs aloud when she discovers these longings. No wonder the boy is so vain. If he already thinks himself to be the rough that gods are carved from, then he likely already possesses the egocentrism most deities are known for. All he needs is the power to back it up, which... isn't impossible to achieve. It's simply extremely difficult and unlikely. His dreams of hybridization do pique her interest, though. While the prospect of becoming infected with both vampirism and lycanthropy is unlikely to lead to the sort of result Allerick seems to be after (deriving divinity from disease seems far fetched at best), it would at least be an interesting case study.

Perhaps she could even help him with such a thing.

-

"Oh I hope you're right, Gabe..." Ariathel sighs, finishing up the last touches on the man's new haircut and brushing the resulting strands off his shoulders. "Jon is a good man, and I know there's a good chance that'll happen, but... well, I worry about the Court. There are certain things that have to happen when an archmage dies, and certain things the Court takes as its dues. I... Maddox would know the specifics, but I've heard the boys talking before about how 'strategic' the estate's location is... and then there's Blackstaff to consider... what if whoever she picks as his successor decides they want to take up residence here? What if they're cruel? I've heard horrible things about some of the other archmages..."

The wood elf shakes her head, realizing that her hands have stilled as her thoughts have spiraled. She pats Gabe's shoulder, putting away her shears and dumping out the basin of water she used to wash his hair earlier.

"Sorry, don't listen to me." She sighs with another shake of her head. "No point in worrying about those things yet... I hope. Though him being a day late getting home certainly isn't helping that. I know that storm blew through yesterday, I'm hoping he just stayed in town and isn't lying frozen on the side of the road somewhere..."

“But I want to listen.” Besides the intrigue of learning about the Court and the responsibilities and peculiarities of his master’s position therein, it’s important to Gabe to hear his sister’s concerns. Someday, he might be able to do something about them. Not now, not while his body is still using every ounce of his strength to recover before the next moon hits, but eventually he’ll have a grip on his own mind again and he might be able to contribute something meaningful to his family’s future and security. So long as they have each other, they’ll have options. And so long as they have options, they’ll find a way to flourish.

For now, he catches her hand to give it a squeeze. “Master Eris doesn’t strike me as the sort of man to leave his loved ones’ fate to chance. I reckon he’s got something tucked under the floorboards for you that even the Court doesn’t know about.”

But as Ariathel moves on from fretting about the hypothetical, her words suddenly bring a prickle of dread right to the surface, to the here and now. A cold, sick little jolt flips Gable’s stomach. He swallows.

“Wait a minute. He’s… late?” Slowly Gabe’s face glazes over and his brows pull together and he moves his lips soundlessly as he walks himself through the math, counting the events of each day he’s been laid up in the Master’s bed. The trouble is, he can’t quite recall those details in any solid order. One moment he’s watching Lee ride his wooden horse and whoop like a rustler, the next he’s talking to Maddox about the anatomy of a good poem, then he’s forcing himself to imbibe a bowl of broth; in his mind’s eye, each instance happens right beside the other, yet the light in the room shifts to totally different colors and vibrancies and he can’t even be sure which shade of sunlight goes with which memory... He has no way of telling the days apart. Or the hours. And many of them have been lost to the numbness of the medicinal fog that helped him through the worst of his pain. The remainder of the ache in his bones and joints still makes it difficult to ground himself totally in the present. Defeatedly he sighs and rubs his hands over his face. “It seems I’ve lost a day.”

Gabe’s tone is that of someone who has broken a promise or abandoned their vows against their will. Here he thought he’d been keeping a vigil for his master, joyfully preparing for his timely return, but in reality, valuable time has already slipped away without his notice. Warmth and tightness begin to constrict his chest.

“Has–has Maddox gone out to look for him yet? He didn’t mention anything to me. We ought to… to arrange a party. We need to do it, now, while there’s daylight…” Gabe jolts up to his feet well enough, but his knee buckles on his first step and he catches himself by a breath on the cane. The grimace that accompanies the near-accident succeeds in muting a pained cry that otherwise would have burst out of his throat like a startled gamebird from the brush, but the color of his face has begun to drain. His midday crash has already begun; he just didn’t notice it while sitting down, being pampered.

"I'm not surprised." Ariathel sighs, donning a sympathetic smile as she squeezes her adopted brother's hand back and runs her hand over his newly-shorn head. "Those tablets... I've seen Master Eris lose whole weeks before, when he's been badly hurt, or after Lady Arathel gets through with him... Bral was in a sorry state too, when he had to take them for a while after he was stabbed. I can't call them truly evil, they do too many good things for that, but I guess I'm just grateful I've never had to use them."

She sucks in a breath, bounding forward and trying to catch Gabe in the same motion as he falls forward, just barely catching himself with his cane. Not that she would have been much use anyway, being probably half his weight if that. If anything she'd probably end up crushed beneath him.

"I'll talk to Maddox about it." She says, trying to be reassuring while also keeping the anxiety she feels at the shade his face has turned under control. "But first I think it's time we get you back to bed... and we should try to get you there before you collapse, because if I have to call Maddox and Bral and possibly even Khech and Bolvos to come help me carry you back to bed, that'll just take up more time that they could spend out searching for Jon..."

Ari doesn't like the sound of the words she uses as they come out of her mouth. She'd much rather be trying to persuade Gabe that Jon is probably fine, and that he's a smart man that know the wilds around his home like he knows his own hands, and that he's probably on his way back to them right now. But she helped raise a stubborn young boy. She knows how to weaponize the things he cares about to get her way. And honestly, isn't it best for everyone that Gabe crawls back in bed for his usual nap now? After all, it won't do for Jon to come home to more stress... But she can't help herself. She has to offer him something to cling to.

"Besides," she continues, clearing her throat as she tugs his arm toward the kitchen's doorway, gently so as not to put him off-balance, "Jonathan Eris is a skilled woodsman. I'm sure he's trekking up the mountain as we speak, hale and whole after spending an extra night at the inn in town to weather the storm. Look, out the window, the weather is clear right now, see? Should be easy going for him. Bet you he'll be on the porch before supper. Now, do you want me to take you back upstairs, or would you rather head downstairs back to your usual room?"

-

His ears are ringing.

He is halfway up this bloody mountain, and his ears are ringing.

It's been many decades since that's happened with this much intensity, not since he was first bound to Blackstaff two centuries ago. He feels young again, in the worst way possible. Frightened because of the war, and because of this thing that was happening to him that he had no control over. Unsettled by thoughts that he knows aren't his but still feel like his enough that he struggles to tell the difference. Exhausted by the effort of trying to rein in this force that now lives in the same space as his mind and pushes him to make decisions that are rash and bold and sometimes foolish because as powerful as she is, Blackstaff's perception of the world and its workings is still limited.

But he's halfway there. Halfway to home, a warm fire and soft, fleecy rug between his bare toes. Halfway to a bath and a fresh change of clothes. Halfway to a home cooked meal and the privacy afforded by his own property and the wards that protect it. Halfway to the comfort of his own bed and a nap that maybe, just maybe, might banish this headache that he's fought since Blackstaff's return. But most importantly, he's halfway home to the people he loves and protects with his life.

Now if only the sun would quit reflecting off of the snow and trying to blind him...

It takes him a moment, but then Gabe recollects the first time he heard Lady Arathel’s name. Maddox had uttered it with a kind of dread, hunched over a makeshift desk and a stack of blank parchments while they were taking turns keeping vigil over Master Eris during his fever. “A rather frightening lady,” Madds had explained, “who demands to hear of any changes to Jon’s health.”

Gabe's imagination offers up the pictures he’d started developing of Lady Arathel those weeks ago, when he envisioned a sort of tall, skinny, hook-nosed woman with tiny dark eyes and scraggly gray hair. New details form rapidly: the brown bottle of pills in her hand, her creaky voice telling Jonathan Eris ‘it’s time to go to night-night’, and the little scar on her chin from an excised mole… But he hardly has time to formulate a complete image of the frightening physician before his jaw drops open.

“Bralthrawn was stabbed? I know he’s a bit of a naughty one, but he’s only a kid…”

Ariathel’s dastardly manipulation of Gable’s tender sense of guilt and devoted attachment toward their employer works in a heartbeat. Although Gabe wants nothing more than to dig his heels in and insist on helping the other men search for Master Eris, the last thing he wants is to take resources away from his master in his time of need. It would literally sicken him to know he delayed the older man's rescue, even by a few minutes, just because of his own hard-headedness.

The weak reassurances Ari offers on the heel of her ominous comment does nothing to reassure Gabe at all. Just because the weather is clear now doesn’t mean Master Eris didn’t get stuck in the worst of it yesterday, hours and hours ago.

Gabe leans heavily on the cane for a moment while he considers where he should lay himself down to rest. He has become quite fond of that huge bed and its cuddly draconic company, but he’s sure Master Eris needs and deserves the warmth and refuge of the upstairs quarters more than he does. And, thanks to Maddox, the room will have been refreshed with new sheets and fresh air by now. It will be like he never intruded to begin with.

“I’d like to go to the room downstairs. Not my first one, but the one he prepared for me at the start of the treatments, if that’s all right. It’s… cozier.” Filled with gifts and love and mercy and pleasant memories of soft shanties and murmured stories. Even the inky recollection of twisted limbs and crying out in torment can’t erase the thrall of love that had washed over him as he dropped to his master’s feet beside all those books and quilts, wiping tears in his robe, overwhelmed by such kindness.

When Lee realizes the adults are moving away from the dining hall, he stands and hurries to present himself to the nice elf lady with outstretched arms and a sheepish, smitten grin.

Gabe chuckles at the whelp’s starry-eyed hopefulness. "What do you say, cucciolo?"

"Pleeease!"

"Please what?"

"Please Miss Ari can you carry me pleeeeeeease?"

When they first arrived at Black Pine Crossing, it would have crushed Gable to see Lee’s affections so focused on others, but now it makes his heart brim over. His little boy trusts again. He's found home.

“Indeed he was, though it wasn’t his fault.” She says with a kind smile as she helps Gabe right himself. “Let me know if you need to lean on me, love. One of the previous stable boys was quite the bad actor. Bral tried to make friends, and they got along well at the beginning, but the lad was only here because he wanted to steal from Jonathan, or kill him if he got the chance, and, well, my baby brother got in his way. Luckily the curse on the blade was mild, and Master Eris was able to dispel it before it could do any lasting damage, but his shoulder was practically useless that spring… drove us all nuts.”

Her shoulders almost sag with the amount of relief she feels at hearing him relent to her badgering. Especially hearing that he’s amenable to resting downstairs. Not that she disagrees with him sharing Master Eris’s bed, but trying to get him up the stairs right now with how unsteady he is feels like a more difficult task than it’s worth. Besides, they’d have to get past the wards if they went upstairs.

“Of course.” She takes his elbow and carefully leads him out toward the stairs, stopping short when Lee bounds up to them. But she’s all smiles as she hears his little request, and after making sure Gabe will be steady enough on his own, grants it.

Ariathel tucks her hands under his arms, and on the count of three lifts him up and settles him on her hip, toting him like the professionally trained parent she is.

She still goes slowly, for Gable’s sake, pausing to let him catch his breath or lean against her or readjust his balance every few meters. He’s been doing better over the past few days, as long as his pain is kept under control. Otherwise he just seems miserable. All she can do for now is encourage him to rest and hope for the best. Hopefully he’ll start perking up once Jon gets home.

The room isn’t quite as lovingly made up as it was the first time Gabe was invited into it, but it’s been freshened and cleaned. Someone has returned the bear pelt, beat out and rolled up, to the foot of the bed. There are fresh linens and a heavy quilt beneath it, a soft mauve color with faded gold binding on the edges. It might have been purple at one point. There are pale impressions of goldenrods woven through the fabric, like there might have been a print or embroidered design on the fabric once upon a time.

“How long’s it been since your last medicine, Gabe?” The elven woman asks as she sets Lee down on the chair in the corner, so that Gable can sprawl on the bed if he needs to. “I can run upstairs and get the bottle if you need me to.”

“Heavens beyond, girl, y’all must’ve been terrified for the poor kid.” Despite his gentle nature, Gable has seen his share of brawls and senseless bloodshed. He can recall all too easily the wet shck noise of a blade piercing deep into flesh, the gasp of copper scent thrown into the air, the grayish cast to a man’s face as he leaks his lifeblood on the floor. But to add a curse into the mix, too? He can’t even begin to imagine what fear like that would’ve felt like.

The moment he’s close enough to her face to plant a kiss on her cheek, little Lee does so passionately, holding her jaw with his hands, then immediately hides his face into her neck with a giggle to rival the cherubs. His father joins in with a chuckle.

“Sometimes his body can’t quite keep up with what he expects of it.” Ari had said that of their employer not more than half an hour ago, but it feels awfully close to home for Gable at the moment. He takes the journey to the spare room at an easy pace, though he has to fight his pride at every step, and yes, occasionally pause to lean on the little woman beside him.

It seems to Gabe that the spare bedroom on the lower floor rises to greet him like an old friend as they enter it. Familiar scents, familiar sights, the same worn-out old pelt as the one that had kept him comfortable through the worst of his fevers… All that’s missing is the man who provided it for him.

Gabe brushes his hand almost reverently over the soft mauve quilt.

After resting the cane against the side table, he lays himself on the bed in an awkward maneuver that looks a bit like a stiffened goat falling over in slow motion or a turtle being tipped onto its shell. As he lies there with all his bones and fiery muscles settling into the mattress one pop and searing twinge at a time, his teeth grit and stars dance across his vision, but he’s careful not to let even the smallest noise slip.

From the chair, Lee watches through large, dark, wary eyes with his chin tipped down gravely.

It takes Gabe a moment to get a hold on his breathing before he can answer the elf in a tone that isn’t a gasp. He dresses it up with a small smile. “A few hours ago, I reckon. Can’t really say for sure, but can’t say I’d decline it now if you offered. Thank you, sweetheart, for the new ‘do and all the care.”

It’s as obvious to him as to Ariathel or even Lee that he wouldn’t be of any use to Master Eris like he is right now, exhausted and aching, but if the man still hasn’t turned up after a nap and a bit of recovery… Gabe won’t hesitate to make the most of the second wind that usually visits him just before dinner time. Hopefully Ariathel can forgive him for whatever he’s about to do.

-

He limited himself to half a tablet. Just half, chewed, with a sip of water, and it was enough to hasten him to sleep and relative comfort without the groggy hangover that bites in the end. When Gabe opens his eyes again, the sun has shuffled into the lower portion of the western sky. A terrible dull feeling greets him; he doesn’t need anyone to tell him Master Eris has yet to return. The man’s absence is like a portion missing from Gabe’s own mind and he has lived without the thrum of it, the music of it for too long.

Soft and warm and heavy with sleep, Lee rolls over and curls up again when Gable eases away from him out of the covers. And he does ‘ease’ this time, comparatively speaking. There’s just enough of the medicine left over to keep him from gasping, at least. He contemplates taking the other half now, but decides to carry it along in case of emergency, whether that be his own or his master’s.

Bundled up in a couple pairs of pants, wooly chaps, three tunics, and his waxed sheepskin coat, Gabe sets off on the laborious task of sneaking (waddling) through the house unnoticed. It isn’t as though he’s afraid of being seen so much as afraid the others’ worried or guilt-inducing inquiries will drive him back to bed the same way Ariathel did this afternoon or, worse, a streak of pig-headedness will put him at odds with their care for him.

He doesn’t waste any time in fetching Buddy from his stall; for one thing, the poor old beast hates the cold, and for another, he simply isn’t a quick enough steed for a sneaky escape. So Gabe legs it. Swift, but tottering, ducking any clear views from the house’s windows, weaving with the trees and wherever game or person has left a legible trail for him to follow. In this way, his quest starts off well. Very well. If he had the disposition for it, he might have made quite a good burglar, (at least in the way of escaping unnoticed) he thinks with a bit of goofy pride. He’d have done even better at night, of course, but nothing on the earth or beyond it could have kept him back from hunting for Master Eris’s safe return a minute later.

The hobbling cowpoke picks his way through the snow drifts and trails about as far as the place where Maddox first met him mounted on Timber’s back: partway down the winding road leading from Agate Pass to the Eris home—or from Home to Agate Pass, in this case. He’s out of breath and ruddy in the cheeks by the time he leans against a tree, sniffing and coughing wetly. The other half of the tablet is already sounding quite good, but he knows he can ignore the twinges a bit longer.

Gabe hasn’t dared to call out for his master yet, fearing someone from the house would hear him and turn him back around, but the moment he begins to consider he ought to try it, even once, he takes notice of a familiar tingling, like the sensation of a sleeping limb coming back alive, but in his mind.

Hope spikes first, followed by terrible dread. The old man is alive—but where? And for how long?

Gabe’s voice rasps out not much above a whisper at first, and it feels as though the solid wintery landscape swallows the pathetic noise whole. But then desperation and fear and joy all bundle together to give him a jolt of strength and the next call comes out as a small cry, then a squawk, then a despairing plea that bounces off the bark all around him: “Sir? Sir? Master Eris!”

“Maddox?”

Ari pokes her head into his office, brows clearly knit in concern after dropping off the bottle of pills downstairs for Gable. Her hands wring in the fabric of her apron for a moment, before she releases a long breath and stills them. The redhead hums and glances up from the ledger he’s been reviewing, his expression morphing into something that more closely mirrors her own concern when he notices her unease.

“Everything alright, Ari?”

She sighs, folding her arms over her chest while she tries to order her thoughts. Maddox is patient, though, giving her his full attention, the ledger forgotten until the wood elf has what she needs from him, even if that ends up being just a listening ear.

“I’m worried about Gabe.” She finally admits, staring out the window behind the redhead. “And, well, Jon too. I know he’s only a day late, but… I can’t help this feeling that he could be in trouble. Maybe we should go out and search for him? Set someone up at the property’s edge to keep an eye out for him? I don’t know, maybe Gabe just has me all worked up over nothing, but he near panicked when I told him Jon was late…”

Wordlessly, Maddox sets down his quill and rises, gathering Ariathel up in his arms and pressing her face against his chest. Seconds later she sighs, and he feels her previously-unshed tears dampen his shirt. He shushes her, running the palm of his hand over her hair and pressing a delicate, chaste kiss to her head. The redhead stays silent for a long time, just holding her and providing comfort while he thinks about what to do about all of this.

“I know, being without him has been hard.” His reassurances come quietly, like words whispered between lovers. “If he doesn’t show up by tonight, we’ll go out and look for him in the morning. You know how long it takes to hike up this mountain in the snow, and I don’t believe he’s rash enough to have set out yesterday in the middle of a blizzard. I imagine he’ll show up around dinner time, right as rain, a little chilly but otherwise just hungry and ready for a bath and some quiet time. He’ll be fine. He has his magic to fight off the cold and any wild animals that might try to take him down. That’s more than all the men in this house combined, Ari. He’ll be alright, but we can go out and look in the morning in case he isn’t.”

“Alright…” She lets out a shaky sigh, and Maddox holds her a little tighter, a little longer, than the conversation strictly requires.

-

Jonathan Eris plays a dangerous game as he climbs up the mountain pass toward home.

Blackstaff’s presence in his mind has become close to unbearable. It feels like there’s a bolt of lightning bound to the side of his head, shocking and burning his mind with each step of his foot. There are little lights that dance across the periphery of his vision, which has gone blurry on the left side, and he can’t help but think the two are related.

To cope, he’s slipped into light meditation in an effort to block out the sensation of her intrusion. It’s helped a little, but it’s made him less aware of his surroundings. He doesn’t notice the birds that call overhead, nor the buck that stares at him through the bare forest. Luckily neither means him any harm, and he keeps pressing forward. He doesn’t even notice the cold after a while.

But there is one thing that pierces through the fog: His name.

He only catches the last word, Eris, but the voice that calls is unmistakeable. At first he wonders if it might be a hallucination. Surely Gable should still be abed, resting? But no, there he is, shambling through the drifts like a drunken moose, listing first to one side and then the other, narrowly avoiding falling into the snow. Luckily he doesn’t, but the way his hunched body sways makes him unsure if such will be the case a second or third time.

“Gable!” He calls back, and luckily the air is calm and clear, allowing his voice to carry as he trudges all the more quickly up the slope to the lad’s side. “What in Eeyr’s name are you doing out here?”

Despite feeling his mentor’s presence nearby, Gabe hardly expected for him to be so near, or even capable of answering. His head whips around until his eyes locate the wisp of a man heading in his direction from the lower part of the hill, and immediately a flare of warmth floods through him like the summer sun in all its glory.

“Sir!” The singular syllable bursts out of Gabe’s throat like a bark, the triumphant and joyful kind, the kind with which one greets a sorely missed packmate.

Snow has collected in the furs on his chaps, clumping and balling until they’re hardly worth their warmth for all the effort they take to drag along, but suddenly the cowpoke seems to forget all about the extra burden or the exhaustion that had crept over him moments ago; he lurches forward into a hobbling dash, tripping and laughing and calling out in frantic, gleeful yelps all the while.

Thankfully Master Eris meets him more than halfway, and Gabe all but collapses into the man’s arms in a heap of relief and hot, happy tears.

“Oh, Pops, thank heavens, thank the stars, thanks be to whatever things are holy and good—you’re alive! Ari said you might be frozen on the side of the road somewhere, and that you were late, but I didn’t—I didn’t know you were late, I swear, because I lost… lost a day…” Here Gabe takes a deep breath and looks as though he has more he wants to say, like how he feared that his own brother was the one who’d left him for dead or that animals had scattered his bones so they’d never find him to lay him to rest, but he only gulps and buries his face into the fur collar of his master’s cloak.

Gabe’s happy tears quickly dissolve into tired, grateful weeping. “Are you really here, or do I just want to see you?”

Jonathan is entirely unsurprised when Gable practically lunges for him. Unlike he might if the stable boy was in his wolf form, the wizard feels no fear, and instead of dodging or cowering, simply rushes forward to meet him and gather up that great body in his arms.

“Easy, lad, I’m here, it’s alright.” Jon murmurs into the boy’s hair. He feels hot, and the wizard worries he might be running a fever, especially with all of the rambling about him lying frozen on the side of the road. “I’m alright, Gabe. You’re alright. I’m here, I’m real. Nothing’s happened, I’m right here, I just stayed in town an extra night to wait out the storm. But I’m here now, and I’m almost home, and you are too.”

The pressure in his skull is all but forgotten for a moment, as he tries to soothe both his own anxieties and Gable’s at the same time. He needs to get both of them home as soon as possible, because the sole reason for the urgency of this entire journey has decided that preserving his delicate health is less important than rushing into the freezing cold to rescue him, when the boy himself his hardly capable making his way back up the mountain himself. In fact he worries that the difficulties Gabe has had just walking down the mountain are telling of that.

"Alright, come on, son." He says, adjusting his hold on Gabe.

He hesitates only a moment, just long enough to verify that he has the magic necessary to do what he needs to, and then in a blink, teleports them both to the floor of his quarters. The snow caking both of them melts in a matter of minutes, leaving a cold puddle on the floor, and the sudden change in temperature makes Jonathan gasp. The wizard can't help but cackle, seeing the piercing eyes of the pseudo-dragons scattered across the room that fled at their abrupt appearance.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m just so glad to see you.”

Gable hadn’t realized just how hollow he’d felt without his mentor’s presence thrumming in his mind. The pain and the pills had filled the void in turns, at least partially, but now that Master Eris is here, the pain doesn’t matter and the wizard’s comforting touch soothes Gabe in a way the medicine couldn’t. His next breath comes as a shuddery, self-soothing sigh with a little voice to it. Nearly a whine, but something softer.

The cowboy hardly notices the shift of scenery all around them as the wizard’s magic whisks them away, except the sudden increase in the temperature of the environment quickly puts him into a high flush. His cheeks burn, as does his chest and the back of his neck, and although his hair is quite a bit more tamed than it had been a few hours ago, there’s still plenty of his bangs left over to get plastered to his forehead. He only eases away from the death-grip he has on his mentor when it becomes too uncomfortably hot to maintain it any longer. Which doesn’t take more than a minute or two. When they finally get a good look at each other, Gabe can hardly look away again.

By the time Gable has shed the woolies and the other layers down to his thinnest pants and an unlaced tunic, he’s become quite sluggish and overheated. He’d already been melting from his exertion in the snowdrifts, and the post-nap second wind that had billowed in his sails has died down to little more than a gentle waft. To be honest, he far prefers the exhaustion and aches that come from an honest day of labor.

“Did you… get the muzzle, sir? Is it with you?” It doesn’t look as though Master Eris could have been toting a large metal contraption in his robes or the small pack he carries, but magic is strange and Gabe is still quite naive in its ways. His tone is almost hopeful, but his expression is nothing short of wary. He expects the thing to look painful and cumbersome.

When a familiar, relatively cold, scaly body and bouquet of soft plumes brush against his calf, Gabe smiles, glances down, and greets the tiny dragon with a soft mrr. He’d love to bend down and pet the little sweetheart, but he’d rather avoid any position that might send him into a head-first summersault in front of Master Eris... and frankly, he’d rather not give away anything about his current state of recovery that doesn’t seem positive, but the limp with which he approaches the nearest corner of the bed betrays him a little. As does the wince and sigh he vents once he’s seated.

Jonathan waits for the younger man to let go first, which ends up taking quite a while in his mind. Clearly he’s in need of the comfort afforded by such close contact, and the wizard isn’t about to deprive him of that. It’s just as well: the sudden absence of all the magic he spent to get them here has left him lightheaded and a touch unsteady, and the longer they can brace against each other, the longer he can put off having to accept that. It was, what, a third, a quarter of the distance between here and town? There was a time in the mage’s life where he wouldn’t have been able to make that leap at all, much less with a smidge of magic to spare, and with a passenger no less.

Luckily he manages to stay upright when they finally separate. He doesn't like the sudden red cast that Gable's face has taken on, though he figures it probably has something to do with the sudden change in temperature. He probably doesn't look much better himself, breathing hard with the exertion of spell casting on a nearly-empty stomach and three days of little to no sleep. Jon knows he's been through worse, but that doesn't make the situation any less difficult.

"Not yet." He admits once he has his breath back. While he speaks, he paces around the room, putting up his staff and his sword and dropping his bag on the chair by the hearth, before he starts shedding his own heavy layers. "Mordecai will need a few days to make the muzzle. He'll bring it up when it's ready and collect his payment while he's here..."

The mage's eyes are drawn to his stable boy's uneven gait and pained noise the second he hears them, and he can't help but frown. Gabe has recovered a bit, yes, but there's still quite a ways to go before he should be making treks through snowy mountain passes. And yet, he did, at great risk to his own health and safety. The old man sighs and shakes his head.

"You probably ought to lie down." Jon says, finally peeling off his sweat-soaked tunic with shaky hands and tossing it into the nearest laundry basket as he gathers up some clean clothes. He still has his trousers on, but his boots are long gone, so his footsteps are nearly silent as he steps behind the partition in the corner of the room to fill the tub with water. "You look as though you might just fall over if you don't."

"How have things been, otherwise?" He calls from behind the partition. As much as he would love to simply fall in bed and sleep out the next week, he knows his rest will be easier if he's washed the grime of travel from himself first. "I know you said you lost a day, but how have you been feeling besides that? And have there been any crises I need to prepare myself to deal with before revealing my presence to Maddox?"

Although the thought of imposing upon Mordecai the bullman embarrasses Gabe, in a way, he’s still quite glad to hear he’ll get the chance to lay eyes on him after all. It isn’t every day (at least not in the Nest) that one gets to behold a mighty minotaur. He’ll have to prepare some questions for him, in case they get the chance to talk.

“I will after supper. Promise.” Gabe is more than a little hesitant to let his mentor out of his sight again too soon, and he certainly won’t be laying his clammy back onto the man’s fresh bedding, so he remains stationary and upright for now, albeit a bit slouched. He’ll journey back to the downstairs bedroom when his nerves and his bones have had a little rest.

Gabe chuckles a bit at the wizard’s questions. “The only crisis we’ve experienced while you were away, sir, was you bein’ away. Black Pine ain’t the same without you in it.” Gabe pinches the middle of his tunic to billow some air against his skin while he considers how to give a full report without giving a full report.

“Madds and Miss Ari have handled everything well enough, but I know I’ve been a load on ‘em,” he continues in a subdued tone. “Maddox picked up my duties on top of his own, o’course, and Miss Ari has catered my meals up here thrice a day. She was kind enough to get me cleaned up, too.” Gabe runs a hand through his hair, a bit self-conscious of the fact his handsome, flowing ‘do has gone to sheer frizz from the wetness and the heat off his scalp.

He thinks back to the concerns the wood elf had shared in their quiet moment alone in the kitchen. Casting their minds toward a grave future certainly felt like a crisis, but Gabe decides against raising that particular subject with his master now. …If ever.

After a moment he admits, “I get tired sometimes. And my right hand doesn’t work too good yet. It lets things slip.” Gabe swallows and fists the hand as tight as it will go. The weakened digits might steady a light book, but they surely wouldn’t grip a broom. Or a chisel. “I was hoping you could teach me that thing you did when we shod the ponies, if it ain’t too hard? I might need an extra hand when I get back in the barn.”

He’s not sure at first if it will work, given how plumb tired he is physically, but it turns out he has just enough fuel in the tank to focus hard and drag the partition towards himself a little with magic. The sudden screech of it across the floor startles Gabe into a snorted laugh, and the proud burst of positive emotion that follows seems to float through the air right along with the sparks of dissipating amber. “See? I’ve been practicing ‘drawing on the lake’ like you told me, sir. And guess what? I even got the little wolf to howl, too. Twice.”

He didn’t believe it the first time it happened, on account of being unsure if he was daydreaming through the medicinal haze. At his second attempt (quite sober) nothing happened. But unless the tablets brought on the exact same hallucination on two different days, they seemed to have helped him with his block. He has been a far more successful pupil from his sick bed than he’d been at any point during his frantic days and nights studying the arcane primer.

And speaking of those tablets, he pops the leftover half in his mouth and crushes it with his teeth. Grimacing through the initial bitterness he asks, “Did Al behave himself?”