POV - Azra'il
He went out alone.
There was no prior conversation. There was none of the hesitation ritual at the gate that had marked the previous day. The morning after the first step, Rudeus simply appeared in the courtyard with his shoes on and the expression of someone who had made a decision somewhere around three in the morning and had decided not to give his brain the opportunity to reconsider.
I was under my tree with the morning tea when he passed through the gate without stopping.
I watched his back for a moment.
I took a sip of tea. It was enough.
Roxy had received the news that Rudeus would be joining the irrigation that day with the professional neutrality of someone who had learnt not to display excessive surprise at positive developments involving the Greyrat twins, because displaying excessive surprise generally resulted in something exploding or in an experiment she would have preferred not to have authorised.
"Good," she said, in the tone of someone confirming a logistical piece of information.
"Good," repeated Rudeus, in the tone of someone who had expected more of a reaction and was mildly disappointed by her efficiency.
I said nothing. I finished getting ready and was set to leave.
The dirt road of Vila Buena had that particular quality of late autumn mornings: the air cold enough to be noticeable but not unpleasant, the smell of earth still damp from the previous night, the golden wheat fields on either side with the low morning sun catching the ears of grain at an angle that made everything slightly more beautiful than it was in practice.
Rudeus walked between Roxy and me with the posture of someone monitoring their own body for signs of threat with the attention of a technician checking a system that had failed before. His shoulders slightly raised. His eyes moving at an above-average frequency, sweeping the path, the fields, the distant houses.
Nothing happened.
The road continued being a road. The fields continued being fields. The birds passing through the sky continued being birds with agendas entirely indifferent to the existence of Rudeus Greyrat.
After a few minutes, his shoulders dropped two centimetres.
I did not comment.
We were halfway there when farmer Aldric passed in the opposite direction with a cart of hay and the particular mood of someone who had woken early and was satisfied with the fact. He saw us, raised a hand with the casual greeting of someone who greets whoever they encounter on the road, said "good morning" with the naturalness of a breath, and continued on his way.
Without looking twice. Without comment. Without any particular interest.
Rudeus had stopped.
Not completely. His feet had continued moving on reflex for two more steps before realising that the brain had paused its instructions. He stood in the middle of the road looking at the retreating cart with the expression of someone waiting for the second act of something that had ended in the first.
The second act did not arrive.
The cart turned at the bend and disappeared. The road went quiet again. Somewhere in the field to the right, two villagers were animatedly discussing something that, judging by the gestures, involved either a particularly troublesome chicken or a matter of fencing with equivalent urgency.
Rudeus looked at the two villagers. Who did not look back because they were completely absorbed in the question of the chicken or the fencing.
I went to him, stopped at his side, and observed the villagers alongside him for a moment.
"Congratulations," I said. "You have just discovered that the villagers of Vila Buena are considerably more concerned with chickens and fencing than with your existence."
Rudeus looked at me.
"The good news," I continued, "is that nobody is judging you."
"And the bad news?" he said, in the tone of someone already anticipating the answer and not particularly pleased with that anticipation.
"The bad news is that it means you are not nearly as important as your brain spent years imagining you were." I resumed walking. "It is humiliating and liberating at the same time. Most people find the combination uncomfortable at first."
Rudeus stood still for one more second. Then he followed me with the expression of someone having complex feelings about having received therapeutic advice packaged inside an insult.
Farmer Maurice's fields were as always, with that particular silent need for water. Roxy assessed the situation with her customary professional eye and began dividing the field into sectors with the efficiency of someone who had done it dozens of times.
Rudeus was at her side with the attention of a pupil who had decided this was an educational opportunity and not merely a practical task, which was technically true and also conveniently an opportunity to remain close to the tutor.
〈Chubby little pervert.〉
"I can take the north sector," said Rudeus, in the casual tone of someone making a logistical suggestion and absolutely not trying to impress anyone. "The continuous flow is well established for me now."
"Good," said Roxy, with her customary efficiency.
Rudeus assumed his position with the posture of someone preparing for something important. He raised his hand. He directed the mana with the concentration of someone using approximately twice the amount necessary for the effect they were trying to produce.
The stream of water that emerged from his palm was technically an irrigation spell. It was also clearly an artistic statement about what was possible with an absurd mana reserve and questionable motivation. The stream had volume, had shape, had a certain elegance in the arc it described before reaching the furrows of the field.
It was, objectively, more elaborate than it needed to be.
I positioned myself beside him with my own controlled flow for the south sector, more discreet, more efficient, using exactly the quantity of mana required and not a thread more.
"The decorative arc does not accelerate soil absorption," I said, low enough for only him to hear.
"It is not decorative," he said, at the same low volume. "It is pressure control."
"It is exhibitionism with technical terminology."
"They are different things."
"They are exactly the same thing with different names."
Rudeus glanced at me sideways without interrupting the flow. "You are only bothered because mine looks better."
"Mine is more efficient."
"Efficient is not the same thing as impressive."
"For someone irrigating a wheat field," I said, "efficient is precisely what ought to be impressive."
Rudeus opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again with the expression of someone who had a response and was evaluating whether it sounded better than silence.
He chose silence. Which was, in my assessment, the wisest choice he had made all morning.
We continued working on our respective sectors for a few minutes with the veiled competitiveness of two siblings who were technically collaborating and in practice monitoring each other with the attention of referees in a competition neither had officially declared.
Roxy finished the central sector and came to check on our progress.
She looked at Rudeus's north sector, the decorative pressure-control arc still present in all its unnecessary elegance. Then she looked at my south sector, precise and without ornament. Then back at the two of us with the expression of a professional arriving at conclusions about human nature that she had suspected for some time.
"That came out very well," she said.
Rudeus straightened up with the satisfaction of someone receiving a positive assessment from the specific source they had chosen to impress.
"Both of you did excellent work," Roxy added, in the neutral tone of someone being precise.
Rudeus's satisfaction became slightly less radiant.
Roxy looked at him with the expression she had developed specifically for situations where it was necessary to be simultaneously professional and maternal, then placed her hand on his hair with the gentle gesture of a pat that he had clearly not anticipated.
Rudeus's expression moved through several stages in rapid succession: surprise, then that particular brightness in the green eyes I had catalogued as a warning signal for a pervert.
〈Chubby little pervert.〉
[At least he is consistent.]
Roxy then turned to me with the same gesture.
Her hand settled on my silver hair with the same gentleness, her fingers moving through the strands with the automatic pat of someone who had arrived at the conclusion that the two children before her deserved the same treatment.
I looked at her.
She looked back at me with the calm smile of a teacher who had made a decision and did not intend to reconsider it.
〈I am an ancestral entity who has governed empires, presided over cultivation sects, been a goddess in at least several dozen different cosmologies, and survived more than a thousand reincarnation cycles.〉
[Correct on all counts.]
〈And I am receiving a head pat from a thirty-seven-year-old mage.〉
[Also correct.]
〈Record this as an unsolicited indignity and file it alongside the nappies and the crawling.〉
[Filed. With the note that your heart rate during this event was what I would classify as comfort, were you to permit me to use that word.]
〈I do not permit it.〉
Roxy withdrew her hand with the serenity of someone who had concluded an administrative process. "You both truly did good work," she said, to the two of us, and returned to the central sector to check the condition of the soil.
Rudeus was looking at me with the corner of his mouth lifted.
"Do not say anything," I said.
"I did not say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was merely observing."
"With that expression."
"Which expression?"
I made a vague gesture that encompassed his entire face. "That one."
Rudeus looked away towards the field with the expression of someone who was being very well-behaved and would like that to be acknowledged.
I returned to the irrigation flow with what dignity the situation permitted, which was less than I had planned for that morning.
It was later, when the field was completely irrigated and the three of us were resting in the shade of a tree at the edge of the property, that the moment I had been waiting for arrived.
Rudeus was looking at the field around them, the villagers working on neighbouring properties, the normal and entirely indifferent flow of a village functioning at its usual rhythm. A woman was hanging laundry. Two men were carrying sacks of grain. A group of children was running along a parallel path with the particular energy of those who have no agenda.
None of them were looking at Rudeus.
None of them had any particular opinion about the existence of Rudeus Greyrat.
He looked at all of it for a time I did not measure. Then he said, in the low voice of someone testing their own conclusion aloud for the first time:
"It is strange."
"What specifically?" I said.
"That..." he paused, reorganised. "I spent so much time afraid of what people would think or do. And here they simply..." he gestured at the field. "Do not care."
"Most people," I said, "are too busy with their own troubles to have time available for judging yours. The judgement you feared was largely imaginary. Not because there were no difficult people in your past. But because the mind generalised that experience to every external space, even spaces where the threat never existed."
Rudeus was quiet for a moment. "You speak as though it were simple."
"It is not simple," I said. "It is merely true. Both things can coexist."
Roxy was alongside, listening with the contained attention of someone who had learnt that certain conversations were better observed than interrupted. She looked at me for a moment with that particular expression of suspicion she had developed over the months for situations where I had clearly done something that produced positive results and was pretending nothing had happened.
I ignored the expression with my customary rehearsed innocence.
The road back was different from the road there.
Not dramatically. Not in a way that a casual observer would notice. But Rudeus's shoulders were in their normal position. His eyes swept the road with the frequency of someone looking at the world rather than monitoring for threats.
Roxy walked beside him talking about the next magic exercise with her customary ease.
I walked one step behind the two of them, watching.
When we reached the house, Roxy went in first, calling out to Zenith about some detail of the dinner she had promised to help prepare. Rudeus stopped in the doorway.
Not for long. Perhaps two seconds.
He looked back, at the dirt road and the golden wheat fields in the late afternoon, with the expression of someone checking whether something was still there.
It was.
He went inside.
I remained at the gate for a moment after he disappeared through the door, looking at the fields and the mountains on the horizon with the orange light of dusk over everything.
It was a good day.
I was not going to say that aloud.
But it was.