[Mkguild] First Impressions (20/20)

[Nathan Pfaunmiller]

Here's the last part of this story!  Thanks for sticking with me
throughout.  Now I just need to go back through nand edit it before I
send it off the Virmir.

________________________

	Somehow Alex had managed to shut out the chaos that surrounded the
wedding preparations since his resignation a little less than a week
ago now.  He had wandered back and forth between his small apartment
and the various eating establishments that he used to survive between
patrols.  Every now and again he would take a detour to the training
grounds to spend a little time tuning up, while secretly keeping one
ear one the other people in the area with him in vain hope that
someone would have heard news of Gerard and Lois.

	He never spent long in training, either.  While his personal guilt
drove him to better itself, the training area that he always used had
been one of the places he had most often seen Gerard.  Memories
refused to let him linger there, but they kept him coming back as
well.  At once they drew him to that place and drove him out.

	The celebration of the Duke’s wedding was well underway when he awoke
halfway through a night’s rest on the eve of the Yule.  On such a day
he would usually have a few drinks at the Mule, probably with Gerard
and a few fellows before the former returned, as sober as could be,
back to celebrate the season with his family.  The lynx felt no end of
sorrow at the thought of the stag’s wife waiting by the window,
listening for her husband to work the latch on the door, and never
seeing him.  She knew by now that Gerard had been declared missing in
action, but love would still offer her hope; one that Alex could do
nothing to help.

	He swung his legs over the side of the bed and tried to settle his
mind for a few moments.  Nothing helped, though.  The thought of
Gerard’s family waiting for his return, ever more hopeless even as the
city celebrated around them, drove Alex to do something.

	So he dressed himself in as fine clothes as he owned, both in honor
of his visit and for the sake of the celebration, and set off down the
halls, looking for the gate that would lead him to the town.  The way
that the sounds of revelry seemed to shift around him was almost
dizzying.  It seemed as though the strange nature of the Keep’s
geometry was sending him first within a dozen feet of a few joyous
people, only to send him to the other side of the Keep on his next
step.  He frowned as it took longer and longer for him to reach the
outlet gate.  Only seldom was Kyia this slow in granting him his
desired destination.  Had she any apparent limitations within the
walls, he would have suspected that the constant flow of revelers was
keeping her too busy.  At any rate, he wandered through the curiously
empty halls alone, hoping each moment that the next turn was the last.

	When Kyia finally saw fit to let him leave the upper Keep, however,
he nearly collided with an onrushing child.  He began to chide her,
only to find that it was Lucy, looking more than a bit disheveled.

	“Alex!  They’ve returned!” she cried, her lack of breath seemingly an
inconvenience minor enough to ignore.  It took Alex a few moments to
register exactly what she had just told him, but once he realized what
the words meant, he had to make sure he was not misunderstanding.

	“Who, Lucy?  Who has returned?”

	“Gerard!  Gerard and Lois both!  They’re alive!”

	He slumped against a near wall, sliding down it until he landed
solidly at the bottom.  The fact that he had pinched his short tail in
performing this action seemed of little note to him.  A rush of
emotions flooded through him, not the least of which was relief.  He
ran a paw down the back of his neck, breath coming in short gasps; he
felt as though he had been holding a single breath since he caught his
last glimpse of Gerard through the trees, and only now had been able
to let it out.  A crushing weight had been lifted from his chest, and
he was finally able to breathe freely.

	Lucy was far less subdued in her relief.  Her face was lit up and she
laughed giddily.  While no tears were flowing now, their trails were
still clearly visible on her face.  She didn’t ask Alex if he was
feeling all right, or whether she could help him with something.
Instead she simply waited for him to recover.

	Several moments passed with neither of them speaking.  People came
and went around them, all wearing their best clothing in honor of the
day’s festivities.  A few gave the two a sidelong glance, and every
once in a while some people would stare and shake their heads, unable
or unwilling to figure out what might be going on.  It wasn’t until
about ten minutes after the news had been delivered that anyone
actually stopped.

	Breathless and somehow managing to sweat in the cold northern winter
was a young boy.  He took several moments to gain his breath before
saying anything.  He seemed old enough to be Cursed, and perhaps a bit
too old to have received the age element of the Curse.  When he
finally managed to catch his breath, he nodded to Alex before
speaking.

	“I have a message, sir,” he said.  “I believe you may already know,
but it is my duty to carry my message without question, so I will do
so.  Gerard ard’Elias and Vincent Lois send greetings.  They asked me
to tell you that they arrived safely this morning, and both are in
good health.”

	Alex nodded and looked at Lucy for a moment, managing a smile.  “He
told you, too.  You ran ahead of him.”  It was a statement of fact,
not a question, and Lucy nodded in response.

	“I had to tell you as quickly as I could,” she explained.

	Alex nodded, finally standing once more.  “Well, if Gerard is back,
then he will be spending the evening with his family.  I wouldn’t want
to interrupt that for the world.”  He smiled at Lucy.  “What say we go
drink to our friends’ safe return?  Perhaps sing a few inappropriate
songs to no one in particular.”

	“I could do that,” she said, smiling impishly.  “Well, the drink, anyway.”

	Alex laughed, an action that felt almost as good as hearing the news
that their friends had returned safely.  He staggered one step,
steadied himself, and, nodding to the messenger, walked off into
Keeptowne with Lucy close behind.  There was still time for some
celebration.

*	*	*

	Gerard hobbled down the streets of the town, patiently waiting as
other people crossed in front of him.  He looked absolutely out of
place among the revelers, hobbling down the road on a single crutch,
leg freshly bandaged, and wearing simple clothing that had been
provided upon leaving the healer’s.  The raccoon had insisted on him
bathing, lest anything that might have been festering in some other
minor wound more seriously infect his leg wound, and while he did not
feel at all like one of those that milled around him the simply
feeling of clean fur made him feel infinitely better than when he had
first arrived.

	He finally reached the small house that he had left those many weeks
before to go on this fateful patrol.  He grasped a familiar knot in
the wood with one of his hand, rough nails sliding over its uneven
surface.  That he could feel it told him that he was not dreaming, but
everything else seemed to point him to the opposite conclusion.  How
could they possibly have made it?

	And in a moment he realized something that shocked and humbled him.
All the while, throughout the last or two that they had spent in the
wilderness, fighting for their lives, he had never once cried out to
ask Eli for His help.  Gerard looked up into the crisp night sky,
whispering a short prayer for forgiveness, and of thanks for their
safety.  He would see Hough later to more fully deal with the
situation, but he was sure that Eli, in His grace, would grant him
this night for celebration.

	From the moment that a familiar, tearstained face greeted his knocks
on the door, he ceased to wonder, or even truly, to care if this was
still a dream.  He simply held his wife close, pulling her completely
from the ground and holding her close, leaning against the doorframe
to support his injured leg.  Eli’s grace truly was wonderful, even if
he had been too self-centered to notice.

*	*	*

	Lois stood outside a solid oaken door inside the halls of the main
keep.  He had set off with Gerard when the stag had left to see his
wife, intending to part paths before reaching the man’s home in order
to give him privacy.  As it turned out, Kyia decided to separate them
a little while earlier than they had perhaps expected, and Lois lost
track of his companion before they had even left the upper Keep.  Now
after twenty minutes more of walking, he stood before this door in
consternation.

	He was no stranger to Kyia’s power over the Keep, but this was the
first time that she had actively worked to keep him from leaving her
domain.  As it was, he had only just now realized that this door had
been popping up every few turns since Gerard had left.  It was always
on the left side, always standing stubbornly shut, and always showing
very little in the way of distinguishing features.  Lois had found a
particular interplay of the grain that he could identify, however, and
had finally decided that it had always been the same door.

	And so he concluded that there was a reason that Kyia was keeping him
from reaching his room at the inn, and decided to find out exactly
what was going on.  He carefully worked the latch, only slightly
surprised that it was unlocked, and pressed it open.

	Beyond was a private room.  It was not luxurious by any meaning of
the word; a well-worn wooden desk sat against the far wall, while to
his left a low bed, little more than a straw mattress with some
blankets to hide the stray strands atop it.  On his right, however,
were several things that were oddly familiar.

	A quick inspection showed that everything that he had left in the inn
had been moved to this room.  The chest, otherwise undisturbed, was
set up along the wall, with the few supplies he had removed from it
arranged neatly on and around it.  Atop it was a small piece of
parchment that looked like it might have been ripped from a paper
meant for wrapping meat.  Scrawled on it with legible but poor
handwriting was a small note.

	Lois: Received instruction to move your supplies to a permanent
residence this morning.  Welcome home.

	It was signed by the keeper of the inn, and attached to the final
bill for his room.  Not a day extra was charged; the day his supplies
had been moved was the day he had left.  He looked about the room,
taking a deep breath, taking in the smells of the room.  Somehow
everything felt right.  There was nothing special about the room, but
having it furnished in any way was more than he truly needed.  With a
sigh, he bent down and carefully unlocked his chest, pulling from it a
few items before stepping over to the desk and sitting down.  Setting
them in a vaguely organized pattern around a central writing area, he
sat down with a sigh.  Rest would come in a moment.  He had much to
write.

	And yet, with some chagrin, he found that his journal was nowhere to
be found.  He had not used it since the ill-fated attack on the lutin
encampment, but he had been almost certain that he still had it.  Then
he saw the coat pocket he usually placed it in, and understood why it
was lost.  It had been perforated by the same blade that had opened
the gash in his side.

	Sighing, he slipped back to his chest and drew out another small
book, of the same size, and indeed, binding as his original journal.
Scrawled on the pages were all manner of strange things, from sketches
he used to plan maneuvers he could use in his work, to small snippets
he had copied from books, to various experiments into writing in one
of the southern tongues.  Flipping past all these he found a blank
page, and began to write.

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