Grey. grey grass, grey sky, grey mountains, grey land. Everything Jasper had done had led them here. The highlands. Every choice, every word spoken. The wind blew through the grass, sending the smell of rotten summer through the air and bringing with it the knowledge, but not yet fall of the coming night.
Pain ebbed and flowed through the world, breathing and breaking on the sparks that lit the paths of distant cities, cities where Jasper was no longer welcome. There were no travellers here. That was a given. There were no travellers here. Lesser men were wise enough not to stray from their graves these days.
Jasper’s boots were worn, their coat patched and their mask cracked, but that was okay this far away from the civilised kingdoms. There was nothing for them here, but that was better than the flames and death they had left in their wake. It wasn’t as bad as they imagined, they hoped that much. Or maybe it was, there was no way to tell. Their memory was cracked at best and everyone else who had been there when it happened was dead.
Their blond hair was tucked up into their hat, and the only other notable feature about them was shattered, so even if they encountered another traveller, and even if that traveller looked close enough or had heard the rumours of stories, they weren’t the Eldir without it. Now they were just Jasper, with their strange accent from a town so far east that it wasn’t on any maps, and scars that they could have passed off as from a bad childhood.
It wasn’t that they didn’t want to be recognized, it wasn’t that they didn’t want to shout their name and title for all to hear, and it wasnt that the travellers this close to the mountains would even care what happened in the capital of another kingdom to a man they had never heard more than whispers of, but there was always the chance of ears on the wind and true sight in the eyes of horses, and Jasper couldn’t risk it.
And so they had come here. They walked, and they hummed their songs, and they remembered everything that they had done wrong, every choice they had made, every wrong word said and everything they could have done to help.
Every step in the right direction brought them closer to a place they had only ever heard sung of, a place they didn’t even know the name of. It was supposed to be better there, a place they could mend all their years of wrongs.
The sun bled down behind the mountains and Jasper stopped underneath a wilting tree. They breathed in the smells of this place, felt that writhing turning wrong deep, deep inside. They didn’t eat, that wasn’t something that needed doing anymore, and they didn’t sleep. They just sat and watched and waited.
Slowly the sun peaked above the mountains and began to warm this god forsaken land. Jasper stood, brushed the dirt from their clothing and started down the road again, humming a tune from somewhere they couldn’t quite remember.
Halfway through the day, Jasper came to a crossroads. There was no sign, no painted rock, nothing marking the right way. One led straight, following the line the mountains carved in the earth and cutting across the barren plains. The other led into the mountains, nothing more than a footpath compared to the roads Jasper was used to. They took that one.
As soon as they passed into the shadow of the mountains they felt it. It felt like distant bells and the smell of strawberries in the summer sun. Jasper hadn’t even fled ten paces before the dogs were on top of them. They screamed, kicking and thrashing at the snarling wild things, but they held firm. They surrounded them, a mad mass of growling and barking.
Footsteps sounded on the trail behind them. The dogs bounded off, panting and wagging their tails like they hadn’t just tried to eat Jasper alive. They pushed themself to their feet, brushing off their pants, and turned around. A young girl stood in the centre of the road, the dogs sitting at her feet and panting.
She looked Jasper up and down, taking in their mud caked boots, patched cloak, layers of filthy clothes and cracked porcelain mask hanging from their bag. They stood like that for a long while.
The girl was barefoot, healing scabs covering her knees. Her clothing was clean and well cared for, but fraying and patched almost as badly as Jasper’s. She didn’t look like she was from any country in particular, brown hair, brown skin, a voice with a heavy accent but from where Jasper couldn’t tell. Her aura though, now that interested them.
“Witch.”
The girl stared at him, unmoving and solemn.
“Who trained you?”
She remained silent.
Jasper missed Celenie. She had always been so much better than them at this sort of thing. The fact that they spoke seven different languages probably helped. Jasper wracked their brain for words in any other language.
“Seelim.”
Another blank stare.
Jasper tried three other languages, but to no avail. After the fourth she shrugged and turned, beginning to walk away.
“Hey, wait!” they shouted, stumbling after her.
The girl stuck her tongue out.
Jasper sighed. They looked back along the road. The sun was already beginning to set, and it was starting to get cold. The moon wouldn’t be up for another couple of hours, but that wasn’t enough time for them to get back to the main road.
“Please.” They said quietly, “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
The girl looked back over her shoulder along the pathway twisting lazily into the mountains. She nodded and began walking again, her hounds falling into step around her.
“Does that mean i can come?” Jasper shouted
She didn’t look back so Jasper took off running after her.
“I haven’t been to this part of the world in a very long time. It’s a lot different than I remember it.”
The girl ignored him.
“Do you live here with your family? I didn’t know there was anyone out here, honestly I wasn’t expecting there to be anyone out here. It’s so far from Bris Carval.”
Jasper followed the girl into a deeply wooded valley. Flowers cropped up from the sides of the road, and birds sang their evening songs in the trees. Moss hung from the trees like the curtains of the stages Jasper had followed tooth and nail across the country.
The girl walked quietly down the path, and where she passed the birds and insects seemed to sing louder, a lilting harmony that reminded Jasper of something long ago and distant. They broke into a small clearing, passing under an archway woven from willow branches. A sign hung down from the arch with the words Halloway Broch.
A small cottage sat a little way off the trail in a field of summer grasses and small wild flowers. The girl clicked her tongue and the hounds ran forwards, sniffing around the house and chasing each other in a game of keep away.
The girl walked towards the hut, hands out. The feeling of the clearing changed, heat rippling off the house in strange mirages all the way to the road. Jasper breathed in deeply, feeling some restoration from the wave of magic. This child was good at what she did.
Jasper remained on the road, staring at the small cottage, the flowers in the field. They remembered a place like this.
“Is your family here?” they called to the girl. She had reached the door to the cottage and looked back, meeting Jasper’s eyes. She gestured for them to go with her, and they stepped forwards, hurrying towards the house.
The sun was nearly set by the time Jasper had gotten situated inside the cottage. It was empty of people save for them and the girl, and the hounds of course. They couldn’t see much in the fading light, and the girl had refused to light even a candle, but they could make out the shape of a bed, a fireplace, a table underneath the window and rows upon rows of shelves, stacked with jars and plants. The floor was smooth stone, covered in most places with woven and worn rugs.
The girl made up a small bed in the backmost corner of the room, a nest of blankets and a pillow and all but shoved Jasper at it. They lay down, pulling the blankets tight around themself, but did not close their eyes. Instead they stared out the window, watching the flight of the night birds and the shift of the moon. The girl moved about the cottage, pulling things from her bag and putting them away, filling a jug with water and grinding herbs in a small mortar and pestle.
Jasper’s vision was beginning to swim with exhaustion when she made her way over to them. She handed them a small clay cup with a warm liquid sloshing around in it. She gestured for them to drink it and they did. It was sweet and spicy, like ginger and lilac. They were out before they even had a chance to put the cup down.
The girl, Injiri or Leaf as she called herself, took the cup from the strange traveller’s hand and set it down in the basin. She watched them for a moment, taking in everything she could about them before heading to her bed. She drew the curtain around the heap of pillows and blankets she slept in, pulled on her sleeping clothes and prayed at the small carving of Ishor she kept on her windowsill. She ended the prayer with a rude gesture and crawled into bed, setting her charms as she drifted off to sleep.
Dia nosed her way in through the curtain and curled up next to Leaf, ears pricked for danger, head resting slightly on Leaf’s shoulder. Outside, Marus and Ava circled the perimeter of the field as they always did.
Jasper woke up. They woke up content and with a temporary absence of sadness they hadn’t felt in years. They sat up, looking around. The cottage was filled with sunlight. Beside Jasper’s head a plate heaped with food sat besides a cup full of tea.
The door and most of the windows were open, letting in the sounds of midmorning and the smells of the woods in summer. Jasper looked around, taking in their new surroundings now that they could actually see them.
Rugs of every colour covering a grey stone floor, shelves full of dried herbs and coloured liquids in bottles, a table across the house covered in papers and quills next to a curtained off area Jasper could only assume was the girl’s bed. Herbs hung from the ceiling as well, basil, garlic, lavender and lemongrass, mint, rose, tarragon and rosemary.
Jasper rose slowly. They reached over and picked up their plate and tea, carrying it outside. The girl stood in the lawn, tossing fead to a cluster of chickens. A goat grazed nearby. She looked up as soon as they stepped outside.
“Good morning.”
She nodded and gestured to the plate in their hands, making an eating gesture.
“Thank you.” they said, sitting down with their back up against the house.
The food was good. Sweet cakes drizzled with honey, rice and cubes of pork with a cream sauce for dipping, a slice of fried bread with sugar crusted onto it. The tea was sweet and sour at the same time, delicious and leaving Jasper wide eyed and awake. The girl continued to work around the yard. She finished feeding the chickens and moved around the house. Jasper got up and followed.
A braided wood fence surrounded a small coup with three goats in it. The girl picked up a leather bucket from the ground and handed it to Jasper, gesturing to the coop.
“You want me to feed them?”
She nodded and left.
Jasper sighed. They remembered mornings like this, so long ago. The crisp coolness of night hanging in the morning air, pine needles and dry grass crackling under foot. They scooped out the hay with their hands and tossed it into a wooden trough. They supplemented it with some rice and corn they found in a bin near the house.
The girl was sitting on the roof when they came back around, weaving willow branches together, making a basket Jasper realised.
“Hey!” they called up to her “i fed your goats!”
She nodded and gestured to the ladder on the side of the house. Jasper sighed and began to climb.
They sat on the roof for the better part of the morning, weaving baskets. Jasper was rusty, they hadn’t had to use their hands for work like this in years, but they caught on quickly. The girl moved with skilled, practised hands, weaving the branches in and out, creating intricate designs.
Jasper had always enjoyed the simplicity of weaving, the soft in and out of wood or cloth. Around midday the girl vanished into the house, her hounds following. Jasper remained on the roof, watching the white clouds move across the sky. They lay back, breathing in.
The soft patter of raindrops woke Jasper. They sat up, rubbing their eyes. The sky had filled with grey clouds now pouring water down.
“Crap.”
They scrambled down the ladder, their shirt and coat already soaked. The girl was sitting at the table inside. She looked up as Jasper stumbled in, and hid a smile behind her hand. She stood and crossed the room, digging through a chest up against the wall.
She tossed Jasper a towel and they sat down, drying off their hair.
“How long was I asleep?” they asked, handing the towel back.
The girl held out three fingers.
“Three hours?”
She nodded. One of the hounds came up and nosed her hand. She patted its head and sat back down at the table.
The two of them spent the rest of the day inside. Jasper sat in their makeshift bed, listening to the rain come down.
That night Jasper didn’t dream, and they slept more peacefully and more fully than they had in so many years, maybe ever. The girl who was called Leaf watched them, her beautiful power lilting across the room, covering them in a blanket of her own design.
Leaf did not like strangers. She did not like people that came down her path, into her territory, disturbing her peace. She liked this one. They were calm and peaceful, they did not hate any but themself, they brought with them a feeling of cool heat, a sister to her strange wonderful magic. She smiled to herself, thinking of a distant place and a distant time and a child who could have been just like her if born a nation to the left.