27: Standing Watch

We waited in the Grove for three days, and I spent most of that time setting up the outer ring of trees around the plateau. A few of the little growth bushes kept dying off for reasons I couldn’t figure out, but on the whole the system seemed to be working well, and by the end of the three days I had the first layer planted in its entirety. Grace kept me company for some of it, but Troy began to hold training courses in hand to hand combat and her time was mostly taken up by that.

On the fourth day though, disaster loomed on the horizon. An enormous storm front was threatening my Grove from outside its bounds. It was strange, the idea that storms could exist beyond the perimeter and I wondered how that even worked. Until I took a peek outside my Grove that is.

The storm was there in the form of a huge boiling wave of energy, arcs of various elemental magics flashing within its depths. It looked incredibly ominous, and as soon as I saw it I was rushing back inside to tell the others. Our stay in my Grove had ended, and I just had to hope that all the work I had done wasn’t wiped out by the time we were able to return.

Leaving in a hurry as the gigantic dark clouds loomed ever closer, each member of the group was in a circle around me, guns drawn and aimed. We had no idea what we’d find outside, so we just had to be ready to fight back if our mark was watched.

Thankfully, were lucky this time, no one stood outside except a few very startled birds. As soon as we’d made sure no one the coast was clear, we took off south through the farmland, hopping stone fences as we went. With no road to follow initially, it was slow going, but once we made contact with a farmer’s backroad, we started making better time.

“Are we still going to go to Millowhall?” Grace asked cautiously as we walked, glancing worriedly at Troy.

That was a concern of mine as well. With James in Fennimore’s hands it was only a matter of time until he got through the language barrier and learned of Avonside’s existence. If he didn’t know already that is, he’d called us aliens after all. Maybe word was already spreading amongst those in power?

“Yes,” Troy said confidently, which had me confused until he explained, “Either he knew about Avonside already, or he’ll know soon, that much is certain, but what is also certain is that James doesn’t know the specific route we took to get here. Shit, I don’t even know it since we don’t have any maps to go by.”

“Right, but like, they can still find it eventually, and if we spend another month or two out here…” Adam interjected, also looking worried for the folk back home.

“There are two other important things to remember,” Troy went on. “One, it takes time to assemble and move an army, and two, there is a hell of a lot of both distance and other nations between the two. We’re smack bang in the middle of one of the largest powers in the region, and from what I’ve managed to piece together, they aren’t exactly fond of the folk from this area.”

“Oh yeah!” I blurted, remembering what Cad and Valda had said. “Some people I travelled with mentioned that they had recently fought a war against the Ghraiga. I’m not sure if it was the same war, but like I said a while back, the man executed a bunch of prisoners too. Maybe his dickish reputation will stop him from being able to march through everyone else’s lands.”

“There is that too,” Troy agreed. “So we get as much info as we can during this trip, the type that might help us stand against an attack when it comes. Avonside wouldn’t survive regardless of if they had advanced warning right now.”

“So we take our time and gather as much information as possible, and just hope Avonside is still standing when we get back?” Kit winced. “That’s pretty bleak dude.”

“Hey, not just information guys,” I blurted, having a brainwave of massive proportions.

“Oh? What do you mean?” Troy asked with a slight smile.

“We have my Grove! We can dump as much crap in there as we want and it will follow me wherever I go! We could get our hands on like, a shitload of materials and take it all back with us. Might take a while to transport it to and from my Grove since there’s a magical cost based on how much I’m moving in and out, but still!” I explained with growing excitement. I could get Bray all the metal he wanted with this! The only problem was money…

“That is… a fucking fantastic idea,” Troy blurted, losing his calm for a second as his eyes widened and his expression shifted into a grin. “Wow, that will be amazing, depending on what we can get our hands on. Ryn, you’re fucking brilliant.”

“She definitely is,” Grace said with a grin that was all dancing eyes. “Bray is going to worship you for that. They were all complaining about low stores of materials even before we left.”

“What can we trade for though? We’re not exactly rolling in the local currency,” Adam frowned, thinking hard.

We all went silent as we each worked the problem in our heads. We had information, that was our biggest asset, but not here with us, not really. It was all back at the university, books and professors and stuff with a sizable chunk of the information of Earth to pick through.

“Everyone think on it,” Troy said after a moment. “We’ll table the discussion until we have any ideas. The very least we could do is walk around collecting large rocks or something to help with construction.”

With the conversation halted, we continued to move through the farming backroads for most of the day, eating lunch as we walked rather than stopping. Every moment we stayed close to the city was another that our enemies could find us. Word had probably already gotten out that Fennimore was looking for a group like ours.

A few of the locals saw us, but they all kept their distance, the armour serving its purpose of scaring everyone away very well. No doubt mention of our passage would reach the ears of our enemies at some point. We really needed to ditch the armour in favour of sets that were a little less conspicuous.

When the day began to close however, we ran into a problem. Namely, where to sleep. I wasn’t sure if it was safe to go back to my Grove yet, and I certainly didn’t know any way to check. Which meant we either risked me going back inside to take a look, or found somewhere to camp.

Troy eventually made the decision to keep us out of the Grove for now and we found a small copse of ash trees to sleep in. No fire or anything, just blankets on the ground and a watch set through the night. I volunteered to stand watch with Grace during the quiet early morning hours, because I wanted to keep her company. Also because she was the person I most wanted to spend watch with anyway.

My sleep was fitful, fraught with strange dreams that made little to no sense, and I was almost grateful when I was woken. Getting up quietly as Troy and Kit went to sleep, Grace and I made our way to a small bank of soil to watch the dark night around us.

Night time was something that still got to me, the eerie dark of the night around us. Sure, the sky was always bright with the day side of the ring, but the land around us held no light but the distant barely visible glow of a farmer’s hearth fire. There was no bright smudge of city lights on the horizon or a line of highway street lights off in the distance. Just raw darkness.

Shaking myself out of my thoughts of the night and what we’d lost, I turned my mind to Grace. There was something I’d been meaning to ask of her since we found each other again, but I could never get around to mentioning it, so I took that chance now.

“Grace…” I began in that tone everyone uses when they have a heavy question to ask. “How did uh, how did the rest of our friends, or family take my um… disappearance?”

She gave a quick glance sideways at me, opened her mouth to speak, but then paused. She pursed her lips and picked up a stick from the ground, beginning to play with it as she formulated her response.

“Adam and Duncan, they took it the best. They were upset, but of all of us, they were the ones who knew you the least. Kelsey and Melody cried, they mourned, but they kept moving too. You know that I was… well, first they didn’t believe me, the admins. I had to insist and show them the weird place where you got taken,” she replied quietly, her voice sombre with memory.

“Then when they did, there were questions, so many questions. The security dickheads wanted to know everything, it was… awful,” she sighed, her hands shaking a little now. “But it wasn’t as bad as Bray.”

“What did he do?” I asked, suddenly anxious. What had happened?

“He wasn’t… he got angry at me first, for not stopping you. We argued and it was just… he was torn up. Really torn up…” she said, then paused and looked up at me with a question of her own in her eyes. “When you said you knew his type… what type is that?”

It took me a second to understand what she was referring to, but when I did, I wasn’t sure if it was my place to say. I hesitated, but then… I also wanted to know where she was going with this. “He’s gay,” I finally replied. “He’s still dealing with a lot of internalised homophobia, some days he uh, really hates himself over it. I tried to be there for him during those times but… it’s hard. He isn’t an easy person to comfort.”

“I thought so, because… well I think he might have been in love with you Ryn, or rather, with the guy that you were,” she said, a stray wisp of her short hair blowing into her face as she spoke.

I watched that wisp for a moment as I processed what she was saying. Shit… that was a lot. Bray had lost me, his friend, but also… the person he’d fallen for, even if I had never reciprocated. I wasn’t the best person to understand love, I’d never felt it, or let myself feel it. I lived in the world though, I knew what happened to other people when they lost someone they loved.

Groaning, I placed my head in my hands. “Fuck, that would explain a lot.”

“Yeah,” she nodded, a hesitant hand coming to rest on my back. I twitched for a second, but then leaned into the comforting contact. It was completely at odds with my normal aversion to physical contact, but I really liked it when she touched me. A frighteningly large part of me wanted to just lean over and fall into her arms, her soft, safe arms. She might not take me into them though, and that fear of rejection is what kept me in place.

“Did he stay angry with you?” I asked once I’d pushed down the urge to press close to her.

“No, he came around eventually. We grew closer for it in the end, but it was a hard few weeks,” she told me as she idly stripped the bark from the stick she’d been playing with. “He wanted to come along on this trip with us you know, but they wouldn’t let him. Too valuable where he is apparently.”

“Yeah I can imagine,” I smiled, thinking fondly of the guy who’d been my best friend for a while now. “He’s such a nut about metals and stuff. Has he gotten onto you about swords yet?”

“Oh my god, don’t even remind me,” she chuckled, miming a flourish with the stick. Putting on a terrible impression of Bray, she continued, “Steel isn’t actually just one metal you know! There’s so many different types, and you have to make sure you choose the right one for the weapon, or you may as well have used lead!”

I gave a startled giggle as she performed her impersonation. While the voice was off by a whole lot, her words were the exact ones I’d gotten when I first dared to mention that most hallowed of metals in his presence.

“He’s such a dork,” I grinned, smiling into the night as I took a trip down memory lane. “Can’t wait to see him and the others when we get back.”

“Me too,” she sighed. “Almost as much as I want a nice hot, high pressure shower.”

“Wait, did they get the plumbing sorted?” I asked, suddenly very excited for the idea.

She raised a hand and shook it side to side. “Sorta, they were working on it. Materials were low though. Takes a lot of metal to run a pipe out to one of the rivers.”

I laughed then as an idea occurred to me. It was a wild one, a crazy one for later on… but…

“I could make a shower in my Grove,” I murmured as the idea was still forming.

“Wait, you could?” she asked eagerly. “How?”

“I mean… so long as a plant has like, all the right parts, it can be pretty much any shape it needs to be right?” I said, a cocky smile forming on my lips.

“You…” she breathed, excitement glittering in her eyes so brightly I could see it even in the dark. “Please do that!”

“I totally plan to!”