As the sun peeked above the horizon before it retired for the day, Thadus looked at the bowl before him. The bowl was in porcelain, much like to that which Thadus was used to, with a beautiful, intricate floral decoration on the outside, with a gold band around it halfway down. Only there were the thinnest of lines throughout, reflecting the firelight, the same way as the gold did, only in a different shade.
This bowl had seen much and broken more than once.
But this didn’t seem to matter much to Linden. They held another, that was similar, but with a greater amount of shimmering cracks. They both held a silver spoon. Linden ladled up some soup from the pot that Thadus hadn’t realised they had.
“Why are your bowls broken?” he couldn’t help but ask.
“I dropped them, naturally,” Linden replied matter-of-factly.
Thadus stared at them.
They returned it with a look. “What would I had done with them otherwise?”
He hadn’t exactly thought they had thrown them at rocks, if that was what they were thinking! There was no need to judge his genuine curiosity!
“Would you like some salt? I bought some while in Rockforge as it is more expensive in the further away we get from a salt mine or the sea. I remember having Rockforge salt once while I visited Winterseat with—” They paused for a moment to take a spoonful of stock and blow on it before they drank it up. “—some friends. It is considered a luxury good in the Confederation. But there is sea salt from Bridgetree that I personally find much better and it is far more available, so I never had it again after that until I arrived in Rockforge. I was running low on salt, and such I went for the nearest exporter of salt to have some.”
Thadus narrowed his eyes. Did he hear that correctly?
“You mean to tell me you originally went to Rockforge for several days… to buy a bit of salt?”
Linden shrugged. “It takes a few days to figure out where the black market is.”
The spellcaster had to process that for a moment.
“You looked for the illicit market mortals have for salt?”
“The merchants told me that unless I wanted to pay more than its value, the black market was a better option. I also can’t carry a whole bag of salt. I just needed a little bit, no more than half a pound, and for that I could only find it at the black market.”
Linden smiled. “I could have opted for no salt, but it is the one luxury I allow myself in my travels.”
“So your bowls are broken, your spoons are silver, your salt illegal, the meat hunted… What else is there with this meal that I don’t know? The vegetables fell like fruits of a tree? The water is from the river?”
“The vegetables I bought off the farmer with a gold coin. The water is indeed from the stream — this Lord Thadus is wholly correct about, however.”
This information did nothing to make Thadus more prone to want to eat this meal.
He had washed himself in that stream. It was filthy.
He couldn’t consume water from a place he had bathed in! Who consumed bath water?!
“Please, do not scowl even further than usual. You look rather better when you smile.”
“You don’t know what I look like when I smile!” Thadus snapped back.
Linden smiled at him as a response, then chuckled and looked down at their bowl, ignoring that Thadus was glaring at them.
They had not seen it! He had not smiled even once for two whole days! They had no idea what he looked like. He had done nothing but scowl—
No, wait! That’s not it!
“I don’t scowl!” he added defensively.
“Yes, Lord Thadus has indeed brought up this claim in the past. However, we have no one to judge whether this is true, so let us set aside this difference in opinions and eat.” Linden shifted where they sat on the ground. “We will leave early in the morning, assuming your clothes are fully dry. Eat up now. There will not be a morning meal before we set off.”
“You cooked a whole goat. How can you claim there will be no morning meal? Do you not know how to eat?”
Linden looked toward where they were still roasting some of the meat. While the pot stood upon a rock that was getting heated by the fire. “The Knights do not eat meat in the morn when they travel, so why should I?”
“I don’t understand why you would bring up some knights, and I’m certain some would eat meat before they set off anywhere. You’re unreasonable.”
“Well, if Lord Thadus wishes to travel with a heavy stomach, may he do so, but I plan to keep it light until later when I am tired or truly have no other choice before I eat a meal that slows digestion.”
Before Thadus had time to argue, Linden changed the subject, “I have only one bedroll. Lord Thadus may use it; I can make do without it. I have slept in worse conditions.”
The implication that he had to sleep on the ground, made Thadus bristle. He was not!
He was definitely not!
Or so he told himself as the sun set, but he couldn’t have known that once this mortal was set on something, they would have it no other way.
When he — after great indignity and loud complaints — had eaten, Linden had got the bedroll unrolled. They had shown him the bedding, promised it was free of fleas — he hardly could doubt them — and said that although it wasn’t on par with royal bedding, it certainly was better than both a farm cot and the ground.
He refused, yet had found himself tucked into the bedroll by Linden.
They had done it with such solemnity and patience that it was difficult not to let them, even if it was under great protests. After asking what the earth spirit needed, they had found a clean towel that they surrounded by stones and made a small nest for it to rest in overnight without any direct light from the fire, yet close enough to benefit from the heat. They even placed heated stones inside a bundle and places by his feet. Twice or thrice, they had checked if he was cold. Or hot.
Thadus had felt perfectly fine.
Eventually, against his better judgment and because the warmth was unfairly pleasant, he had fallen asleep from exhaustion as the pot and utensils clattered a lullaby that would have woken even giants.
He vaguely remembered he had woken up once during the night, but before he could fully wake up, he heard Linden say, “Return to your dreams. It is merely a bit capricious weather. You needn’t rise for this.”
He woke up hours later to find that, during his sleep, the camp had rearranged itself somewhat.
The drying clothes had been propped up on sticks instead of the rope, while the pole, which Linden had made to dry them, had been moved to a new location. The rope attached to it was secured to the ground instead of the aspen further away and was used to hold up a canopy. The side with the pole faced the fire, while Linden’s belongings on the opposite end were the rope sloped down, behind Thadus’ back, and had been packed up to take as little space as possible.
He was disoriented by this entire change.
Looking toward the fire, he saw what to his barely awake self looked like a guardian of the earth, deity shining by the entrance and covered in forest.
A moment later he registered that what initially look like a veil of light was long, wavy hair in a fiery hue with curling tips, catching both fire- and sunlight as it cascaded over the shoulders of a sleeping, and rather small, mortal. They had one knee drawn to them to use as support as they had propped their forehead against their palm. The eyes were closed in a serene expression, their lashes casting shadows on their cheeks.
The mortal had changed their golden jacket to a deep forest green wool coat with an embroidered black collar.
When he sat up in the bedroll, Linden blinked their eyes open. They turned to look at the sky and then looked toward Thadus.
“Did I wake you?” they asked softly, their voice slightly hoarse, as if the one who hadn’t woken up from just a little movement hadn’t been Linden themselves. “How are you feeling? Do you feel cold? Or perhaps too warm?”
“I am perfectly fine, thank you,” Thadus responded with an offended sniff. “Now, give me my coat.”
This brought a small smile to Linden’s lips, and the mortal reached for the coat they had washed and which they had most carefully made sure wouldn’t touch the ground while it dried. “It’s not fully dry yet, but it shouldn’t feel too damp. You may be able to dry it with some spell.”
Instead of his coat, however, they gave him his silk shirt and outer trousers. “These are relatively dry, so put them on first.” They stood up as they added, “I’ll give Courage some hay in the meantime.”
They entered the shelter briefly, stepping over the bedroll — and thus Thadus — with ease, and grabbed a couple of bags with absolute certainty before they stepped out, their hair moving in the breeze that the shelter protected Thadus from.
If Thadus pit his clothes on, it certainly wasn’t because Linden told him to.
If he felt offended by the fact that his boots still were damp within, it definitely was because of Linden, and he would blame no one else.
Aside from the horse.
It was all the disgraceful horse’s fault to begin with.
Thadus was seated on the mat with Linden’s indigo cloak over his shoulders — At the obstinate mortal’s insistence! He was not happy about this! — as he drank some soup stock that Linden had heated while they packed up almost everything else. They had poured half a bowl for themself, after putting away the temporary shelter, drunk it in one go and then continued packing up.
He sipped on it while trying to forget where the water came from. He nearly gagged a couple of times as the vine moved within his coat.
Their hair remained loose until they had even sorted everything in some sort of order that Thadus vaguely understood as how they would load the horse’s back.
Only once all that remained to be packed was the bowl Thadus was drinking from, Linden sat down cross-legged on the ground with a small vessel in and a comb with a heavily ornamented body. They then began a slow process of oiling their fiery locks and combing through, removing any knots.
“Spirits are better at hair care,” Thadus said as Linden’s comb got stuck in their hair for the fifth time.
“Then lend me one. Your vine spirit seems like s good candidate,” Linden replied as they removed the comb.
“Absolutely not. How dare you!”
Theh patiently separated the individual strands of hair from the knot. “It was not an offer? Then do not mind me.”
“I certainly won’t!”
And the mortal had the audacity to laugh! To laugh!!
And continued to comb their hair too!
While holding conversation!!
“Is levitation a chilly way to travel?”
“No.”
“So I assume Lord Thadus will levitate the stretch of today?”
Thadus was silent for a moment. “…I plan on walking…”
Linden hummed thoughtfully as they put another drop of fragrant oil onto their fingers to rid themselves of another knot. “Then I shall go by foot as well.”
After finishing with the knot, they got up and picked something out of their saddlebag. They returned with their map and used a couple of rocks to study it with an intense gaze as they continued with their hair.
Even once they had combed it through and began braiding it they still stared at the map.
Thadus remembered he had seen someone with a similar intensity trying to memorise the entire table of enchantment glyphs when he was a youth.
That person had failed the exam most spectacularly.
He wondered what had happened to that person in the end. He couldn’t even really remember what they were named. It must have been a very long time ago. Possibly a whole decade and then some before he found himself in Paradise Tower, while he still had a private tutor hired by his elders in that small room of his.
He hadn’t been in that room in decades, and he would never return there either.
Absentmindedly, he put the bowl to his lips and drank.
He spit it out back into the bowl immediately after.
“Are you all right?” Linden asked in alarm.
He looked into the porcelain vessel. The vine, beginning to turn a colour of wood instead of leaves, slowly pulled away, having used the last of the stock in his bowl to water itself.
He picked a leaf out of the bowl. “…”
No, he was quite definitely all right.
He was just a little miffed his child just stole his morning meal.