Regaining Strength

When he woke from the fever there was strange looking healing equipment hanging off him. Winnie looked exhausted, Tarsorel had recovered somewhere nearby, Lavendara was crying, Silver looked weak, but they all seemed glad. Terrified and glad.

He didn't fully understand what had happened, but over the next day and a half he would learn through retellings or the pieces he'd put together himself. Winnie had saved his life. It was a near miss, and over something so unlucky and ridiculous as a once off dirty blade. After all the physical trauma he'd endured in his short life, it seemed almost funny. He might have found it so except for the fear in the others. It affected him profoundly, and for the first time gave him an appreciation, through theirs, for his own life. He held no value in his life before, he was nothing. Worth nothing, going nowhere. Less than nobody. They saw something different when they looked at him. He struggled to see it, himself... But there was no avoiding it, it was there and it had a shape. No colour, yet.

Time passed. Ryheric was glad to be alive, grateful and almost weighed down with the gravity of his near death experience. He avoided the others for some time while they traveled to Evendim. He needed to fully process what he had been through, along with the uphill journey of healing aided by Winnie's care.

Evendim provided rest and respite. A little, at least. Though, during his time out of action, some niggling events had sprung up to require his attention. Some of these small events seemed to escalate, Ryheric did his best to handle what arose. Mostly with success - as much as could be hoped for, while he was still healing and far from his full strength.

He was surprised how much the group seemed to need him. To him it seemed like he had done very little, but emerging from his lack of self worth (slowly, like a snail) also gave him the ability to recognise that it was something about his position. The role as leader - the others turned to him and relied on him being there. Like grounding. He felt even more guilt that he'd been weakened so badly by the ordeal, but soon pushed that aside and came to terms.

He was taking this role seriously, and he was learning. He set some proper standards to a few key members of the group and for the first time, took on the mantle of his role as leader, properly and without questioning himself (at least in front of the others).

The young man knew that the dynamics of the group would evolve and change from here on, and that everyone needed some respite. Once he was strong enough, he took them back to Bree.

Things had changed between he and Silver, then been set upon by abrupt circumstance - one after another, and another. Rowan's unprecedented return from what seemed to be a faked death and turned back on the woman he claimed to love, Silver's imprisonment in Bree, the reduction of venom and vast change in her attitude - though in truth, Ryheric expected this facade to break any day... he still waited and watched. Nevertheless, they grew closer. She cared for him fiercely, and more fiercely.
Still, there was nothing smooth about them. Nothing easy, nothing predictable for the future. She wanted stability - so did he. For now. "No promises", he had insisted and not for the first time.
He wasn't ready.

Lavendara's mother had passed. It was not a happy occasion, yet Ryheric found himself moved by how the group had come together. Atharann, Scanie, Silver had all helped in the investigations to find her. Winnie and Cwen had supported Lavendara with rich and full comfort of a like Ryheric had never before witnessed. He would think it sounded pretentious.. But the only word for it was "special". Bittersweet, deep and beautiful as the girls gathered around Lav in her vulnerable moment, weeping and holding the hand of her dead mother at her bedside. Neither Winnie nor Cwen faltered even once, and both shed tears for their friend and in compassionate sympathy.

As for his own part in the death, he'd moved out of the house where Lav's mother had passed away and found a shovel leaning against the back wall. Ryheric was good at picking grave sites. Though usually this was a less personal affair. He picked a spot some distance away from the house, and on a flat piece of the small block of land, so there was no future chance of unpleasant land erosion from heavy rain exposing any remains. After finding a basic shovel, he got started on what he'd always been good at - getting stuck into the physical work. He'd normally have made a grave just big enough to cover a body and prevent the smells of decay from affecting anyone nearby. But this was more personal. He'd heard the phrase 'six feet' somewhere once or twice before when referring to burying the dead, so he decided it would be appropriate to dig something a bit more substantial than "just get it (the corpse) out of my sight, Ryheric!" He dug approximately his own height down, and coffin-sized across. He doubted the dead Breelander lady-of-the-night would be receiving an actual coffin. Therefore he got it into his head to make the hole more into a precise, hexagonal shape of one. A coffin, made out of the ground. He liked that idea. So he set himself to accomplish the task with at least the satisfying sense of having a goal.

Brym was a troubled individual and Ryheric was glad he had come into the group. This was a man who needed companions around him, he had seen too much. He had some unruliness around the edges of him, but seemed a goodly sort. Ryheric was sure Brym was experiencing some unpleasant side effects or flashbacks of intense trauma and grief. He was, at least, surrounded by good people who had the best chance of helping him through this. Sometimes he even had moments where his spirits were high. Ryheric enjoyed seeing him happy.

Aerluinil's first impression on Ryheric had been almost moving. She had come in to the Prancing Pony and listened to his music while he practiced. He had seldom seen one so affected by the notes, as though she were living the scene as much as he did when he played. Upon talking to her, the woman had some strange mannerisms. Almost too ladylike, she struck him as a forgotten queen. Tall, regal and with a modesty that spoke of utter assurance of her own power, without any petty vanity. She took him to one of the ruined towers in Bree where she sang to him. A lament in elven. This was a tongue Ryheric was unfamiliar with, but in song it seemed otherworldly. The rain fell and ruins loomed overhead. She was sad, like the fallen stones. He didn't like to part with her on that note, so he took her hand and twirled her once, whispering to her that the stones surely were worth a dance to enliven some happier memories in them. He insisted on that hushed tone that next time she came here, she should do so. 

She told him he should be forward like that more often. She liked it. He liked that. He'd see her again.