"Comfort"- Brea, Kylan
They stop for the night in a clearing near what had been Sami Thicket, bedding down to the distant bellows of the landstriders set loose by its destruction. Brea expects to find Kylan amongst the ruined houses- perhaps looking for his own- but instead she finds him standing before a gnarled tree far from the outskirts, studying weathered, old words carved into the trunk.
“Whose names are those?” she asks softly, so as not to startle him.
He jumps anyways, but softens at the sight of her face. “My parents. This is the last place I ever saw them.” She should have guessed- there is love in the way he traces each letter, too low to have been put there by an adult. “No one believed me. I just wanted them not to be forgotten before I could find out if what I remembered was real.”
The Hunter. He has told her, but she still shivers at the memory of his claws around her throat.
“...I believe you.” It’s a silly thing to say now that they’ve seen him in the flesh, but the look on Kylan’s face tells her that he needed to hear it all the same. She reaches hesitantly to touch the letters herself- hoping she isn’t overstepping- when an idea comes. “We...we could sing for them, if you wanted. The way you did for my mother.” She knows this pain. Having watched the Hunter crumble to ash does nothing to bring them back. She turns back to him. “It’s never too late. They deserve to be laid to rest with the truth.”
For a moment, his mouth hangs open, and she worries she’s said something terribly wrong. But then he’s pulling her into an embrace with more strength than she thought him capable. She strokes his hair, and kindly says nothing of the crack in his voice or the wetness against her shoulder.
“...I...I’d like that.”