Arth Triss Mentor dream.

--

It began with the wine.

Yes. It had begun with the wine, in the rough-hewn tent off the plains pathways spiraling into
Ratchet. The crude animal skins that made the walls of the teepee still smelled slightly, they had
not been cured properly, or left long enough. It smelt like the inside of an animal - the hot, dark
belly of some great beast.

Greymantle had sat across from her, cross-legged on the faded rug made of brightly coloured
rags. Keanan had taken another corner of the carpet, sinking into a seated position only at
Greymantle's insistence, dropping sullenly to the ground, wordless and seething. Outside, the
Blackriver kept watch.

They were past the crossroads now, and the noise was suffocating. Insects and animals
screamed in the background, a heady roar of nature that insisted in some small way that the
presence of four soldiers made absolutely no difference here whatsoever. They would be scored
by sand and swallowed by the dust, they would become nothing but the ghost of a scream on a
prairie wind, lost to time.

----

She watched him walk away. The man she'd have chosen for a father, if we were allowed to
choose such things. A peculiar, small kind of family, a bond that was never spoken and never
would be; there was too much pride and fear in the way.

It had been a chance sighting as her booted feet padded on the dirt-caked cobbles that covered
the city. Something had caught her gaze and drawn her eye, a familiar stride, a unique way of
opening up the crowds and paving a path onwards. Something about the square set of his
shoulders and his relentless pace made her own footfalls falter to a meandering halt, something
sharp and painful blossoming in her chest.

He was leaving.

For one horrible moment, she thought she was going to run after him and catch his arm, to ask
him to stay - to demand that he stayed. As if that would do any good; as if that would do anything
other than rankle his anger. She might as well have demanded that the tides stop turning, or
shouted at the sun not to set.

Besides, they'd been here before. When he'd lain a whisper from death on that last pale bed, all
she'd done was ask him to stay, to beg in terrible, angry whispers that he come back. She'd
threatened and raged and her grief had been complete. Whichever way you looked at it, her
protestations at his death had all meant one thing; they were the same truth told ten different
ways, the same sharp cry in the night: Don't leave.

And one way or another, he had come back from the final edge. It hadn't been his choice, it had
been an aberration they'd forced onto him, a rip in the world, a perversion of nature. He'd come
back angrier, more detached. Eventually.

The room was silent save for the shallow, whispering breaths coming from Greymantle. His face
was sallow, his body little more than a skeleton, lying oddly like a collection of mismatched
armour on the innkeeper's best bed. Triss stared blankly at the mattress, ashen-faced and
numbly disgusted at the constant scritch-scritch-scritch of rooting insects nesting within.
Anything was better than looking at the ghost on the bed. Keith sat on the mattress, watching his
father grimly, his sandy head bowed. What had they done? The Blackriver stood off to the side,
a stern and disproving presence. He had not been listened to.

The watery sun had dipped low over the horizon by the time Greymantle finally stirred. The dusk
made spectres of the shadows in the room, casting a sinister shade to the old man's face as his
eyes blinked open laboriously. The effort appeared to be monumental. For a long moment he
was silent, confused, even as Triss felt her heart swell in her chest, an awful and treacherous joy
that he had survived despite it all - despite his wishes. Greymantle turned his silver head on the
filthy pillow, his cheeks sunken and hollow like a dead man. His face was a skull with candles for
eyes. Triss watched him seek the Blackriver's eye - a gaze that was finally met, wearily. The
younger man shook his head slowly after a long moment of their silent stare. What speck of
colour left in Greymantle drained and his paper-thin eyelids shut as tightly as his state of
weakness would allow. His jaw slackened, and the noise which emerged from his parched throat
was something Triss would never forget as long as she lived. It made tears sting her eyes,
made the swell of her heart wither in shame. He let out a quiet, despairing howl.

A hand fell on her shoulder then, shattering the memory that still placed freezing fire in her chest,
even after all this time.

"Will he come back?"

"Perhaps. After a time."

"He will."

"Of course."

They were both telling the truth, but as the world turns, that doesn't mean they weren't lying
either.

Their eyes met, hers stormy and cobalt coloured and slick with stupid, childish conviction. He has
to come back. She hated herself a little for that, even as she turned herself to face him, tearing
her attention from the closing gap in the crowd Greymantle had disappeared into. Her gaze was
a plea: Tell me what to do. He averted his eyes - uneven in colour, the glass iris shifting a
moment after it's other - the strong line of his stubble-framed jaw clenching. He would not allow
her the luxury and danger of looking to others for answers in this; figureheads are women, not
children.

"He has named you acting Captain in his absence." Aeagor's voice was even, no hint of what he
might think about that decision registering in his tempered tone.

"And if I don't want to be acting Captain?" Her voice was sharper than she'd intended, but her
sudden anger demanded no less. There was no question that she wouldn't wear the mantle for a
time - her loyalty was an formidable inferno to behold - but he had left without telling her, and
somewhere inside she was shouting and stamping her feet unreasonably.

"Do you not?" Blackriver spoke mildly, his gaze placid. It infuriated her.

"Must you be so reasonable in all things?" She said hotly, turning from him in the sudden and
unreasonable rage that threatened to choke her.

"I've angered you."

"No. He's angered me. Or you both have, I haven't decided. I suppose he told you he was
leaving?" She rounded on him then, a storm in her eyes.

"He did."

"Of course he did." Her words tinkled with ice. Unfair, unfair. "And what am I supposed to do?
Did he tell you that? What words of wisdom did he decide you were entitled to hear and I was
not?"

"He left you no instructions."

"For mercy's s-..."

"He said you would need no instructions from him, that you were both capable and trusted and in
possession of the courage to do what would be necessary in his absence."

That brought her up short.