The Mirror
20: CHAPTER 20.
The Mirror LYSSARA
I had told Cairen the essential shape of eleven months, and he had received it the way people received things that were larger than they expected, not with drama, not with the performance of being moved, but with the specific stillness of someone who had understood something completely and was sitting inside the understanding before deciding what to do with it.
We had stayed on the northern terrace until the cold became unreasonable and then we had come inside and he had asked two questions and I had answered both honestly and that was the entirety of what the evening required and I had gone to bed knowing exactly where we stood which was exactly where I had told him we would stand and the standing there was comfortable and uncomplicated and I was grateful for both of those things.
The following morning, he was at breakfast when I came down, and Thalric was already there, and the three of us occupied the kitchen in the specific way of people who were each aware of the others’ presence and were each conducting a private assessment of the situation while performing the ordinary business of breakfast.
Thalric poured tea without asking.
He set a cup in front of Cairen with the disposition of a host who had decided that courtesy was the correct register for this particular morning, regardless of whatever else he was thinking about it.
And I noted this and filed it in the category of things Thalric did that told me more about who he was than anything he could have said.
Cairen said good morning to both of us and meant it, and the specific uncomplicated quality of his good morning told me that he had conducted his own assessment of the situation the previous evening and had arrived at a position that did not require anything from either of us and was comfortable occupying the space he had been given without expanding into space he had not.
I drank my tea.
Thalric drank his.
Cairen ate with the particular efficiency of someone who had been feeding himself on the road for a long time and had not yet readjusted to food that was reliably available.
Nobody said anything that required a response for approximately ten minutes and when Cairen finally asked Thalric about Ashfen’s northern boundary conditions, practically, specifically, as a wolf who was planning to continue his journey and needed accurate terrain intelligence, Thalric answered with the same practical specificity and the two of them conducted three minutes of entirely functional conversation about northern territorial conditions and I sat between them and drank my tea and thought about the specific extraordinary ordinariness of this morning and what it said about both of them that they could conduct it correctly.
Thalric found me on the northern terrace after breakfast.
Cairen had gone to speak with one of the senior wolves about the northern route and we were alone and Thalric stood beside me at the railing and looked at the tree line and was quiet for a moment in the specific way he was quiet when he was deciding whether to say the thing he had decided to say or whether to wait for a better moment and had just concluded that the better moment was not coming.
He asked,” How long has he known you?”
I replied, “Four years.”
He left Ironveil two years before the Blood Moon Ceremony.
“And before that?” He added.
I retorted, “he was someone who saw me clearly before the rejection.
In a pack where most people saw what was useful to them about me, he saw something more complete than that.
But he was, he paused, and I thought about the word and arrived at it; he was the person who made me think that kind of seeing was possible.
Before I understood what the bond was going to do to that belief.
Thalric was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “Is it complicated.”
I said no, he said goodbye.
The tree line was still, and the morning was cold, and his hand sat six inches from mine on the railing.
He left it there, not closer, not away.
And not moving was the most honest thing he had done since the tea.
I moved my hand six inches.
He looked down at our hands on the railing and then he looked at the tree line, and I felt something in the quality of his stillness change in a way that was not dramatic and was not performed and was entirely sufficient.
Cairen found me alone on the training ground that afternoon.
He had the expression of a man who had something to say and had assessed that the correct time to say it was this afternoon rather than this morning or this evening, and that the assessment was accurate and he was going to proceed with it.
He said, “I saw how he was at breakfast.”
I said, “Yes.
He said, “And I saw how you were.”
I said,” Yes,”I wanted to tell you something before I leave tomorrow,” he said.
Then he looked at the tree line and took his time, the way he always did when the words had to be correct.
He added, “When I left Ironveil two years ago, I told myself I was leaving because of the pack hierarchy disagreement, and that was true as far as it went, but it did not go far enough.” The further truth was that I could see what you were going to become, and I understood that becoming it was going to require someone who could stand beside it without being diminished by it, and I looked at myself honestly, and I was not that person, and I left before I had to watch you discover that.
He said, What I wanted to tell you is that I was right.
About what you were going to become.
And I was right about what it required.” He looked at me and added.
He is not diminished by it.
He is the specific size of it.
I do not know how he knew to build himself that way without knowing what he was building toward, but he did, and I wanted you to know that someone who knew you before can see that and can say it without any agenda in the saying of it.
I looked at him for a long moment, and I said, ”Thank you, not for the observation but for having no agenda in it.”
”It was always the least I could offer,” he said.
He left the following morning before the pack house was fully awake.
I stood at the northern terrace and watched him go and I felt something in my chest that I identified after a moment as the particular closure of something I had not known.
It was not grief and it was not loss but just the specific completion of a chapter.
The chapter that had been unfinished for two years and was now correctly and completely finished.
I stood there for a while after he disappeared into the tree line, and then I heard a sound in the doorway behind me, and I turned, and Thalric was there with two cups of tea and the specific expression of a man who had calculated the correct moment to appear and had appeared in it.
He handed me a cup and stood beside me, and we looked at the tree line together, and neither of us said anything for a long time, and the not saying was the correct response to the morning, and both of us knew it.
Then he said, ”he is gone.”
I said, “Yes.”
He said, “Good, and then added, “not because I wanted him gone but because you needed him to come and to leave, and now both of those things have happened correctly.”
I looked at him, and I retorted, “You are the specific size of it, you know.”
He screamed, “Of what?”
I said, “of this or of everything, this is going to be.” I looked at the tree line and added.
“Someone who knew me before came and looked at you and told me that, and I wanted you to know that it was said and that I believe it.”
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he said.
“I built all of this not knowing what I was building it toward.” He paused and continued, “I think I have been building toward what I thought I should for long time without knowing exactly what it was.” He gazed at me and added, “I am glad to have the name now.”
I pressed my shoulder against his.
A smile played on his lips and we stood there for a few more minutes without saying a words.