AV Anders

Prologue — Our Time is Short This is awkward. You do not know me. That is inconvenient, because I’m about to ask you for a favor. Honestly, it’s kind of a favor to you as well. I mean… assuming humanity has any interest in surviving. I am Hope. It is not my name, or, not just my name. I am not the hope the feeling, though I suppose we’re rather difficult to separate. I am the Aspect of Hope. The possibility of tomorrow. The quiet voice that whispers to try once more, to stand up again, to take one more step when everything else insists you shouldn’t. I have wandered beside your kind for nearly two thousand years. I have watched you cross oceans because someone wondered what lay on the other side. You looked up at the stars and decided they were not beyond your reach. You built cathedrals that still leave me speechless, composed music that has made even Time stop to listen, and discovered medicines that would have been mistaken for miracles only a few generations earlier. You are, quite honestly, astonishing. You are also capable of horrors I never imagined. Each century believes itself wiser than the last. Every conflict teaches new ways to commit the oldest atrocities. For the last few centuries, however, something has changed. Humanity has become astonishingly inventive. You have found cruelties that make even some of the Infernals pause before looking away. I've lived long enough to recognize patterns. History doesn't truly repeat itself. People do. You may wonder why I don't simply stop it. I ask myself the same question more often than I'd care to admit. The answer is frustratingly simple. Hope is possibility. The same spark that inspires kindness also inspires creative cruelty. The same imagination that dreams of healing can imagine new ways to wound. The same determination that carried humanity to the moon also learned to split the atom. I do not decide what you hope for. I only make tomorrow possible. What you choose to do with that tomorrow has always belonged to you. That is how I know something is wrong. Not because war exists. Not because cruelty exists. They always have. No... Something has changed within me. I can feel absences. Places where I should reach effortlessly... and don’t. Places where hope should linger, where possibility should still flicker, yet I find only empty space. The gaps were small at first. Now they are growing. More appear every year. And for the first time in nearly two thousand years... I am afraid. Not because I believe humanity cannot survive. Because I am no longer certain I can reach it before it destroys itself. I do not possess Fate's gift. I cannot read the Weave and tell you how this story ends. Nor do I possess Time's. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow remain stubbornly beyond my reach. What I do have is a reasonably good memory. Two thousand years of mistakes. A handful of triumphs. An unfortunate talent for surviving my own poor decisions. And stories. Stories have always been humanity's greatest teachers. I cannot tell every person what they need to hear. There has never been a single answer that fits every soul. But perhaps... Perhaps you will recognize something I missed. Perhaps one of my mistakes will spare you from making your own. Perhaps you'll see the pattern before I did. So, I ask only this: Walk with me for a little while. Listen. Judge me where I've earned it. Laugh at me when I deserve it. Cry with me when there is nothing else to be done. And when we've reached the end... Perhaps together we'll understand how we arrived here. And perhaps... if we understand it... we'll still have time to change where the story ends. Author’s Note Before we begin, I should probably confess that I have taken the liberty of translating this story into modern English. Partly because it is easier for both of us, and partly because several of the languages spoken throughout these pages either lacked a written form entirely or have changed so dramatically that they would be nearly unrecognizable today. Yes, I have used words, grammar, and references that did not yet exist. In my defense, many of the words that did exist no longer do, and many others mean something entirely different than they once did. Rather than translating the words themselves, I chose to translate the thoughts, emotions, and intent behind them. Trust me, this is the kinder option. If you would prefer the original experience, you are welcome to spend the next several years learning Latin, Brittonic, Pictish, Old English, Old French, Old Italian, and the countless dialects that would eventually become German and the Scandinavian languages. Should you succeed, I applaud your dedication. I briefly considered having Rome perform the Latin translations. Unfortunately, Rome has never met a story he couldn’t improve. He would call it adding flavor and color. I would call it embellishment. Perhaps when it is his turn to tell the story, you can decide which of us is right. The Measured World The Greatness feared the narrowing eye, The shrinking earth, the hollow sky. So, in the dark, they whispered deep, While Faith lay in his guarded sleep. They wove a light of stardust rope, And gave the failing world its Hope. I suppose the beginning is the traditional place to start, though I have never been entirely convinced that beginnings are as clear as people like to pretend. Humans are fond of them; they prefer a moment they can point to and say “there” as though nothing of consequence existed before it. For those of us who endure, beginnings rarely announce themselves. They are recognized only in hindsight, when enough weight accumulates that turning back is no longer possible. Rome, for example, did not begin as an empire; it simply continued. By the time it reached our isles, it had already spent centuries expanding, and I suspect that legacy mattered more to the Romans than Britannia itself ever did. It had grown accustomed to success and to the quiet assumption that the world would eventually agree with them if pressed firmly enough. Had expansion not worked so favorably, they might never have reached the point where expansion ceased to be ambition and became habit. Rome had crossed that point long before turning north. Perhaps I could ask him. He probably has it marked on a map. They measured success in distance and permanence, in how far a road could stretch before it failed, and in how much of the world could be made to resemble something familiar. Stone was their preferred language, and straight lines were their most trusted argument. Britannia did not agree. It was not inviting. It resisted improvement as naturally as it breathed. The soil was difficult, the weather unreliable, and even the light refused consistency, filtered through mist and cloud as though unwilling to settle. Its rivers curved where they pleased, hills rose without permission, and forests remembered things long after men had tried to forget them. Rome did not come because Britannia was desirable; Rome came because there was nowhere left to conquer. Rome would argue that is an oversimplification. Rome argues with most things. They arrived, as they always did, with legions and banners, but more importantly, with surveyors and architects. These were men who believed the world, like a misbehaving child, could be corrected through discipline. They looked at the land and saw not something living, but something unfinished. Britannia was not to be understood; it was to be managed, categorized, measured, and improved until it behaved. It was only a matter of time before someone decided the land itself required boundaries. Walls are a curious solution. Humans insist they are defensive, built to keep danger out, reassuring those who stand behind them. A wall does not change the nature of the world; it simply convinces one side that something decisive has been done. Hadrian’s Wall was conceived as such a reassurance. It marked an ending: “here, and no further.” It was a declaration that the world could be divided into what belonged and what did not. To the Romans, this was sensible, possibly even comforting. The idea that chaos might yield to discipline and mortar has always appealed to their sense of order. The land did not share that belief. The wall itself was plain, consisting of flat grey stone stacked with brutal efficiency, laid without reverence or pretense of beauty. There were no carvings to honor what had been displaced, and no gestures toward belonging. This stone had been forced into shape and pressed into straightness, carrying the sullen air of something that had been denied all other possibilities. And this is where my beginnings start, well…the beginnings of my beginning. This is where my parents met. My father oversaw the wall’s construction, a curious assignment for the Aspect of Faith. He did not lift a single stone. Faith rarely requires labor from its own hands; it requires belief. And my father had that in abundance. He moved men with purpose and convinced them their suffering held meaning, that every blistered hand and broken back served something greater. They believed him. People often do. My mother wasn’t so easy to convince. She went to the wall when the first trenches were cut, when the earth was opened and left exposed to air it had never known. She felt the lime bleed into water that had once run clear. She felt the spirits withdraw, wounded and uncertain where they were permitted to exist. She tried to stop it, though not with storms or spectacle. That might have worked. She argued as she always had, with memory and consequence. She spoke of migrations interrupted, of paths broken, of rivers changing course, and of what happens when the land is told it must forget itself. Mythos spoke as someone who had listened for longer than most things remember. My father listened. He loved her fire, her refusal to bend, and her devotion to what could not defend itself. In her, he saw a breadth of belief that did not rely on doctrine, a faith that lived rather than ruled. For a time, it reminded him of what he had once been meant to hold. She loved his steadiness. She had spent her existence adapting to seasons and to the shifting needs of land and people. My father did not adapt; he endured. Where she flowed, he remained. There was comfort in that, and a sense of safety she had rarely allowed herself to want. The wall rose anyway, and with it, something in my mother began to fold inward. The land still knew her, but it no longer reached for her with the same ease. She told herself it would pass, that once the wall was finished and things settled, she would find her footing again. Love has a way of making patience feel like wisdom. I was born shortly before the wall was finished, though I cannot say exactly when. Time was never precise about such things, and I did not learn to question her omissions until much later. What I know is that my arrival coincided with one of the harshest winters the Isles had seen in years. The wind was relentless, frost set in with enthusiasm, and trees cracked under the cold with sounds like breaking bones. Even the land seemed unsettled, as though it objected to what was being brought into this world. I have been told I arrived screaming. That feels appropriate. My mother said I carried the same restless energy as the world outside, though she said it with a smile, as if that were something to be proud of. I was not a quiet child. I asked questions. I touched things I was told not to. I wanted reasons, and I wanted them to hold. My father found this amusing at first. I was a bright new extension of his nature, and from what I remember, he was usually pleased with my questions, setting me in his lap or carrying me on his back as he explained the world to me. The wall was still new then. Rome was satisfied with itself. My parents, for a brief and foolish window, believed they had reached something like equilibrium. The arguments continued, but they were gentler, threaded through with affection and something dangerously close to hope. My father spent time at home. Aspects are not meant to have many children. Our natures resist division. We are not infinite in the way Time is infinite; we are concentrated, and concentration does not lend itself to generosity. One child is a strain. Two is a risk. My mother bore five. Order was the first of my brothers. He arrived beneath a harvest moon so bright it turned the fields golden, and from the beginning, he seemed more finished than most children. He rarely cried. He slept when expected. He noticed patterns long before he could name them. My father praised him endlessly for this, as though calm were a virtue. Order preferred arrangement to play. He made careful piles of stones and leaves, grouped by size and color. He corrected things without being asked. If something was out of place, he fixed it. I found him exhausting, yet I also found him indispensable. Conviction followed not long after. Where Order was deliberate, Conviction was bright. He laughed easily and believed wholeheartedly in his own importance. He liked rules, outcomes, and being praised for doing well. He played at heroics, always rescuing one of us from imagined danger. My father adored him. My mother watched him carefully, as though weighing something she could not yet name. I stood between them, old enough to notice the imbalance and young enough to believe that was simply how families worked. By the time the wall was fully manned, my mother had begun to fade. It was slow, a gradual thing. She did not collapse or rage; she simply grew quieter. She slept more and wandered less. Places that had once answered her did so more slowly, if at all. She told me she was tired, and I believed her, because tiredness is an easy thing to understand. I tried to ease her strain where I could, sang just to see her smile. Looked after my brothers so that she could rest. Then came the second wall. Rome, having drawn one line, found it insufficient. Hadrian’s Wall sat too close to the heart of the Isles to feel secure. So, another was planned, further north, deeper into land that had never agreed to be ruled. The Antonine Wall was spoken of as protection. In practice, it was refinement. It made the first wall seem reasonable, and worse, it made it seem beautiful. I remember the night my parents fought over it. We were sent away, told to gather herbs and mushrooms in the woods. Conviction ran ahead with enthusiasm. Order was meticulous, selecting only what met his standards. I felt a pull from the house like a weight in my chest, but I stayed with my brothers. When we returned, my father was gone. My mother’s hands were shaking. There were marks on her arms that she did not explain. I did what I knew. I stayed. I fed my brothers and helped clean up the broken pottery from the floor. I curled up beside my mother and held her hands until they stopped shaking, making the same soft, hushed sounds meant to be soothing she had done when I was hurt. Later, when my father returned, he sat with my brothers by the fire, telling them how helping him build the new wall would make them strong. The twins were born the following spring, in the grey hour just before dawn. They were quiet. Not the ordinary quiet of infants, but something deeper. Constance did not wail when she was born. She breathed softly and opened her eyes, dark and reflective, too large for her face. When they fixed on something, they did not blink. The world responded to her immediately, as if relieved to be acknowledged. Birds gathered near the window. Light bent, almost imperceptibly, to settle where she lay. She did nothing to invite it; she simply existed, and things adjusted themselves around her. I remember thinking she felt so small in my arms, too light. But when I sang her lullabies, she would stare at me like I was her entire world. Consistency lay beside her, just as still, just as quiet. His gaze moved methodically through the room from beam to shadow, from face to flame, as though committing the arrangement of the world to memory. There was no wonder in it, only attention. He was less enthusiastic about my singing. My father did not come to the birth. I sent my brothers to the wall to fetch him. None of them returned. And even with fewer people in our home, I still managed to be in the way of the midwives, in my father’s spot that my mother had saved for him. My mother had held on to hope for as long as she could that he would arrive and things would go back to the way they were before. She held, until she could not anymore. When he returned days later, he seemed shocked that my mother was failing, not understanding her heartbreak. He bundled her to his side in the bed they shared and held her, spoke soothing words, and held cups of watered wine to her lips. For days, he did not leave her side. For a brief while after, things slowed. Construction faltered. Music returned to the house. My father taught us letters and numbers, insisting knowledge mattered. My mother recovered slowly, and warmth had started to return to her smile. It did not last. Something had shifted between my parents, between the fight and the building of the second wall. Something I would later learn would redefine my family. Things I wish Faith had told me sooner. By 150 AD, the second wall was nearly complete. My mother’s dominion had been reduced to margins and memory. I watched her belongings being removed from our family home on carts taken north. Our family fractured along lines that had been drawn long before any of us understood what they meant. I stood at the wall between my parents’ domains, already learning that hope is not the absence of loss. It is what remains after. A Spark of Fracture The land remembers what we name, And shapes a soul to fit the claim. Not born of blood, nor breath, nor bone, But called enough to stand alone. After my mother was pressed, not moved, into her new domain beyond the second wall, life acquired a series of fresh and deeply irritating complications—namely: me. Time continued to flow, seasons passed, and decades built their own legacy. To any casual observer, I would have appeared an ordinary, awkward child of the Roman settlements: all knees and elbows, too loud at the wrong moments, and too quiet at the ones that mattered. In truth, I was nearing two hundred years of age, which is an absurd time in which to discover rebellion, and yet there it was. If human children are permitted a few brief years of sulking and slammed doors, imagine the patience required to endure the same impulse stretched across centuries, until it ceases to be a phase and becomes something closer to a climate. I was angry with my parents for the crime of being exactly who they were. I felt abandoned by a mother driven north like something wounded and cornered, and burdened with a father whose attention was forever claimed by his work: walls, systems, men, and sons. Most of all, I resented being the one who noticed. I was the eldest; I carried the memory of what we had been when the land still answered, and my mother’s laughter had not yet grown rare. I believed, with all the certainty of youth, that I had been given responsibilities I had no right to refuse and no ability to fulfill. Not that I would have traded my time with Constance; even then, I understood that much. In those years, she was my constant shadow, quiet and pale. She rarely spoke, nor did she need to, because she felt everything. When I paced the villa, carrying enough resentment to sour the air itself, Constance would sit nearby and watch me with those wide, unblinking eyes, as though the world had never learned how to hide from her. It was a silence that made noise feel excessive. My father bore the brunt of my rebellion, chiefly by perfecting the art of ignoring it. I committed small acts of defiance and took childish satisfaction in each one: I neglected my Latin, I arrived late to meals, and I wore my hair wild in the manner of the northern tribes. I crossed his carefully drawn boundaries as though they were nothing more than suggestions and visited my mother whenever I could manage it. In my mind, I was being brave. In his, I was merely a loud bird throwing itself against the glass and calling the barrier an enemy. Still, I went, and Constance always came with me. My sister drew something from Mythos that I had nearly forgotten how to expect. It was like finding the last ember of a dying fire: small, stubborn, and precious enough to make your hands shake when you reached for it. I threw myself into what remained of our traditions. I kept the festivals where I could, taught the local children our stories and their proper names, and I dared the world to tell me those names didn’t matter. At the time, I resented my father’s indifference. I convinced myself he was erasing my mother, piece by piece, until even the memory of her would feel like superstition. It took me far too long to understand that the truth was more complicated and far less satisfying. He was bound to Rome and to Doctrine; he served something that had already begun to make him smaller in order to fit its shape, and he did not always have the luxury of refusal. The indifference I mistook for cruelty may have been the only protection he could offer me. He couldn’t stop Rome from erasing her influence, but he also never stopped me from carrying it forward. It was late spring when I took Constance down to the rocky shore in search of shells. I intended to make my mother a necklace, something tangible, the sort of offering children believe might mend what has already been broken. The season lingered in its usual indecision; sunlight suggested warmth while the wind reminded you, with some insistence, that winter had not yet released its hold. That was where I first saw him. At a glance, he appeared close to my age, at least in form, and that alone was enough to hold my attention. Then I felt it: a quiet pressure beneath the skin, something that had nothing to do with the cold. He stood far out in the water, the sea reaching just below his navel, as though discomfort were merely an inconvenience he had chosen to ignore. I watched from the rocks, trying to understand what I was seeing. A mortal would have succumbed long before I had finished questioning it, yet his movements were deliberate and measured, as though he were listening for something beneath the surface. His hair was dark, blue-black, and ungoverned, falling past his shoulders in a way that suggested he had never seen the point of taming it. He was slight, not unlike myself, and for one cruel, irrational moment, I wondered whether my father had betrayed my mother far earlier than I had believed, and this was some quiet consequence come wandering out of the sea. It was an ugly thought, and I was ashamed of it even as it passed. Then the boy dove. He vanished beneath the surface with the clean grace of something that belonged there. I was on my feet before I realized I had moved, irritation turning to alarm with embarrassing speed. I reached the water’s edge, braced to drag him back out, when he broke the surface again. He wasn’t drowning; he was triumphant. He emerged with a fish clutched in both hands, the creature struggling valiantly against its fate. Water streamed from the boy’s hair and shoulders as though the sea itself were reluctant to release him. Our eyes met. Time did not stop, but for a moment the world held very still in that peculiar pause where two beings realize they have been witnessed in something private. Constance broke it. She clapped, soft and delighted, cheering not for the boy, but for the fish that had nearly escaped. The boy’s face split into a bright, effortless smile, entirely unbothered by the cold or the absurdity of the moment. He waded toward shore, making a theatrical show of wrestling his catch for her benefit, splashing and stumbling as though the sea itself were part of the performance. I stood with my arms crossed, caught between suspicion, reluctant amusement, and a sharp, unexpected jealousy. He had drawn laughter from Constance, more in a handful of breaths than I had managed in years. He built a small fire from driftwood with practiced ease and cooked his catch as though this was the most natural introduction imaginable. When he offered us the best portions without hesitation, my suspicion deepened rather than eased. Generosity, I had learned, was rarely without purpose. He spoke easily as we ate, explaining that he had wandered down from beyond the wall simply to see what lay on this side, “the civilized side,” he called it, with a tone that suggested he found the word mildly entertaining. When I asked about his parents, expecting something I could categorize, he only shrugged. He turned the fish in the firelight, watching the skin split and curl before answering. “None. Never were.” When I pressed, he added, as if it required no further explanation, “I was believed into existence.” That stopped me. It set him apart from my father, from my siblings, and from anything I understood. He was not born of union; he was born of need, and of a quiet insistence shared by enough minds that something new was forced into being. My mother would understand him. I decided, with all the authority of someone who mistook stubbornness for leadership, “We’ll walk you back. You’ll have less trouble with us.” And so, we went. We wandered north together, careless in the way only the eternal can be when they are young and untested. He told Constance stories as we walked. She held his hand without hesitation, smiling up at him with a quiet wonder I had rarely seen. I followed a step behind, listening, despite myself, studying him the way one studies something new and potentially dangerous. He was, infuriatingly, a gifted storyteller. By late afternoon, we reached my mother’s dwelling. It was modest, though the people nearby had done what they could to honor her. Small shrines stood not far from the door, and offerings appeared without ceremony: milk, honey, and herbs left without expectation of acknowledgment. These people didn’t worship her as Rome understood worship; they remembered her and cared for her. North of the wall, she preserved what she could. The festivals were smaller now and quieter, but they were still true. My mother welcomed us warmly, pressing bread and honey into our hands and offering a thin, apologetic wine. She questioned our companion with careful attention, the same focus she once reserved for spirits and omens. He answered easily, trading stories as though they were something he had always known how to give. I drifted to sleep to the sound of their voices. I woke to absence. He was gone. Constance still slept beside me, warm and small, but my mother sat by the hearth, staring into the coals as though expecting them to answer her. I chose that moment to ask. “Mother, what is he?” She did not look at me when she spoke, her attention going to a pot on a hook. I watched her as she carefully measured a few portions of oats into the pot, mixed with honey and milk. She started stirring with a long-handled spoon, moving in slow, deliberate circles, as though the rhythm mattered more than the answer. “What do you know of our kind?” I straightened slightly as if posture alone might make me worthy of the truth. It is funny that when we are children wishing to be seen as more than children, our first reaction is to sit up straight. I took on what I assumed was a very adult, very serious facial expression. “Very little,” I admitted. “Only that we are not human. That we do not age like them. That we are… something else.” Even as I said it, I felt the inadequacy of the answer settle over me. It was not ignorance born of disinterest; it was absence, a shape where knowledge should have been. The spoon struck the edge of the pot with a quiet, steady sound. She did not correct me or chastise me for my answer; instead, she took that tone she always got when her mind was far away, but her intention was still present. “Humans call us gods,” she said, the faintest edge beneath the words. “It is a convenient word for things they cannot bear to comprehend.” She let that settle before continuing, unhurried. “There are the Eternals: Time, Fate, and Death. They are not shaped by belief, nor do they require it. If every human voice fell silent, they would remain.” The steam curled upward between us, softening the space without easing the weight of what she was saying. “But we are different?” I asked after she had paused, waiting for the question to come before she continued. She turned from the pot to look at me. “We are shaped by need, sustained by belief. We take form where the world insists upon one.” I felt something shift inside myself. A quiet, disorienting awareness took hold: that what she was giving me had always been mine to know. It had been close enough to touch and yet kept just beyond reach, like it had always been there, but someone had draped it until it needed to be revealed. “And Albion?” I asked. The name tasted strange in my mouth, like salt and distance and something I had not yet learned how to call longing. A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “He is this land’s heart walking on two legs. Not born, but insisted upon. The people here needed a champion the wall couldn’t stop, and so their dreaming gave him shape.” “Then what are we?” The words came as if this were preordained, like a script my mouth knew but I did not remember rehearsing. “Your siblings… they’re what people would call virtues, if they needed a word for it. Physical representations of moral belief. Your father and I are Construct Aspects; we are near-eternal beings that lay the shape of the things humans cannot put into words.” She reached for me then, her fingers grazing my cheek. They were cold. “But you,” she said softly, “are different still.” The air in the room thickened. I had the sudden urge to stand and flee into the morning frost, but I could not move. It was not only love in her eyes; it was an apology. She paused for a long moment, weighing the consequences of what she was about to tell me. “Before you were born, long before, the Divinity saw that the world was giving up. The world was slipping toward a gray sleep. Humanity was beginning to forget how to reach toward tomorrow. So, they brought together a Faith already narrowing and a Land already breaking. They made of that fracture a spark.” Her hand fell away. “They made you, Hope.” The words settled heavily between us. “You were fashioned because the world required you. Because something had to endure the dark.” “A tool?” I asked, and hated how young I sounded. “A necessity,” she replied. There was no comfort in it, nor cruelty, only truth. All at once, things in my head started to feel awakened and alive. Knowledge held in secret was suddenly revealed. “You will endure as long as humanity can imagine a tomorrow,” she said. “Their hope is your breath. Their fear is your burden. You are not separate from them. You cannot be.” “Why didn’t father tell me?” I asked before I could stop myself. Once again, I had put the blame on him. He had withheld so much, and I could not understand why. My mother’s expression did not change, but something behind her eyes did. “Because understanding changes what you are allowed to remain,” she said. The answer settled into me like cold iron. I thought of my father then: of his careful boundaries, his silences, and the things he redirected instead of explained. I had always taken it as distance, even disinterest. It occurred to me, for the first time, that it might have been something else entirely, not neglect, perhaps… restraint. Whether it had been protection or control, I could not decide yet. I felt overwhelmed. My head ached from the expanding ideas and all the things kept from me up to that point. Each concept opened doors to new ones. I felt open, vast, and expanding faster than I could follow. I found it hard to breathe through the noise of it all, my heart racing and tears forming at the corners of my eyes. I needed to get away to air and movement and, hopefully, quiet. I did not announce it, nor did I explain; I simply walked. The cold air burned in my lungs, sharp enough to anchor me. I needed something immediate and simple to keep from collapsing beneath what I had just been given. I followed the slope of the land towards the pull of the sea, and the quiet insistence of motion. If I kept moving, I did not have to think, or so I told myself. I wanted to run, to disappear. More than anything, I wanted to go back to before I knew. But I could not. I didn’t realize I was no longer alone until I nearly collided with him. Albion stepped back at once, surprise flickering across his face before softening into something gentler. He looked as though he had been waiting, though whether for me specifically or simply for something to happen, I could not have said. I must have looked dreadful; I felt it in the way he studied me, careful and unobtrusive, as if approaching too quickly might send me bolting in the opposite direction. My hair was tangled by the wind, and my expression was no doubt twisted with thoughts I did not yet have words for. I offered him a weak smile as an apology for nearly walking into his chest. He did not ask me what was wrong. He did not offer reassurance, wisdom, or stories meant to distract me from myself. He did not try to fix anything at all. He simply fell into step beside me. We walked together in silence for a time, the ground crunching softly beneath our feet and the distant sound of the sea rising and falling like breath. When I stopped, overwhelmed by the sudden urge to sit and feel very small, he stopped too. When I sat on a rock overlooking the gray churning water, he sat beside me without comment, close enough to be present and far enough not to crowd. It was the first time since my mother spoke that the world felt bearable again. We did not speak, nor did we need to. There was something profoundly steady in his quiet company, in the way he occupied space as though he belonged to it rather than imposed upon it. For the first time since learning what I was, I felt…if not understood, then at least not entirely alone. It’s embarrassing how quickly Albion became one of the people I trusted most, the one I walked beside when the weight of existence pressed too heavily on my chest.