"Brynleigh." The name was spoken softly in greeting, while heavy footfalls announced the approach of the familiar figure. She had seen him speaking with her mother just moments before, and her chest felt tight.
"Aldwyn," she answered just as quietly. Standing next to a pale, silvery mare, her slender hand was drawing along the horse's neck slowly, over and over, a mindless petting gesture.
Aldwyn watched her for a moment before clearing his throat gruffly and stuffing his large hands into his pockets. "Brynleigh, we need to talk."
She turned to look up at him, and she could feel the wide-eyed fragility that painted her features. She could see the way he hesitated, almost flinching, at the sight of her expression. And she hated it.
He licked his lips, bowed his head, coughed again. "It's time for this to stop." A quick pause before he plunged onward. "He's dead and he's not coming back. You won't bring him back by doing this to yourself. And I don't think he'd be none too pleased to see the woman he loved with all his heart, going into the ground right after him." Once he had finished speaking, he glanced carefully at her.
She felt her lips trembling, her chin wobbling. She stared at him in silence before abruptly turning her face away, though there was no place to hide here in the open meadow. Her hand had gone still on the mare's neck, and the animal turned its head with a gentle nicker to butt a velvety muzzle against the woman's arm.
She felt Aldwyn take a step closer, coming up behind her. "You see?" he murmured, laying a massive, heavy hand on her shoulder. "There's life still to be lived." He reached past her then, giving the horse's nose a rub of his palm. "Friends that love you. Horses to be cared for, and trained, by the girl who can do it better than anyone else. Wouldn't he want that for you? Wouldn't he want you to live, and be happy?"
Hot tears seeped quietly from her eyes now. Words welled up in her throat, objections, insistence that there was no happiness apart from Conrob. Yet Aldwyn's question was burning itself into her brain, bright and painful as a branding iron, and it could not be brushed aside.
Wouldn't he want me to live and be happy?
NO! Not without him...
Don't be absurd. He wouldn't want this. You'd break his heart if he saw you like this.
"I don't want to live without him," she heard herself whispering.
Instead of the expected rebuttal, Aldwyn surprised her. "Course you don't, lass." He placed both hands on her shoulders now, and embraced her gently from behind, his deep voice breezing through her hair. "What kind of mad woman would you be if you wanted to live without him?" He squeezed her lightly. "But he's not here anymore, Brynleigh. You can't have what you want right now. The best you can do is keep loving him. And that doesn't mean killing yourself right alongside the poor man, now does it?" A thick finger brushed a lock of hair behind her ear, while she stared vacantly over the rolling fields. "Love him by remembering him. And by living the life he'd have wanted for you."
The view of the horses and the sunlit landscape grew blurry as tears continued to fill her eyes. She scarcely noticed, so often had her eyes been misty and weepy over the past weeks. A long silence followed Aldwyn's little speech. His hands remained on her shoulders, occasionally rubbing along her arms, trying to comfort her, perhaps to encourage a reply from her lips.
Minutes passed. The sun drifted slowly towards the west. She took long, deep sighs, every now and then, but didn't move or speak. Aldwyn remained where he was, ever patient, a stoic rock. Her mind felt blank, and yet somehow, overflowing at the same time. She couldn't focus on any one thought. Yet something seemed to shift, slowly, deep within, and it was like a fog began to lift from her eyes. The ache was the same, wrenching her gut into knots, filling her chest with pain. But as she gazed towards the horizon, she seemed to see the sunlight for the first time since her beloved had left her side. Its golden light flooded over the rolling landscape, and she could see tiny flecks of yellow and white, peeking up between the tussocks.
Wildflowers. The first wakening of spring. Life seeking to renew itself.
A slow, shuddering breath was drawn into her lungs, and she spoke a single word. A word she'd never spoken before meeting the weathered, balding man of Bree.
"Aye."
