Give and Take

Colours and signs were important. Ryheric had experimented with ignoring them. He'd found out what happened when he listened to words, assurances, promises instead. But like fate, nothing good came from this. Consequence led him back again and again to this odd new trust in himself. Seeing himself as a person, not just the fighter, the tool, the weapon, the thankless instigator.

For something to live, something else had to die. He was no longer the impulsive youth with no ties and no obligations. He had come into his prime as a man in more than just the physical ways, now.

He had Gondorian influences, Rohirric accountabilities, Breeish ease and his own fierce and hard-won independence. His pridelessness had cost him in ways others would never see, but it had also been a boon in the end. The low ego of a man who had seen himself as Nothing when he first came to Bree, allowed him to learn much more deeply of others. As such, he had deep perspectives that came from outside of himself. Humility. Slower to form was a certain dignity that had come directly from all this. A pride like what Aerluinil had tried to encourage in him, long ago.

He took the signs. He knew it for what it was, and saw it had been growing like its own tree for a while. One goodbye that would never be said. Accepted long before it came.

Another sign; prime and ripeness. Rich wealth in the form of Eirik and Aeldiet's deeds and words. Not fighters at his call, but men in Ryheric's clan. For Eirik had told them about his own clan, and again and again insisted to Ryheric that this was the same. It was different to Tarsorel's words about status, rank and file, superiority and power. Ry had such a streak of anarchy that those ways were rejected. But notions of family were powerful to him. Something he had never known, yet here and now Eirik told him everything that felt right to Ry from the start with his group, was precisely that.

His family, his clan.

Therein was Winnie's sureness - she had been there from the start, unerring. Ryheric's heart ached as he realised the truth that Winnie would be there for these people, and for him, always, until she couldn't anymore. Until it killed her.

Tarsorel's shortcomings were accepted. And in the same way, Ryheric's own state accepted. He could not marry Cwenawynn, he could not keep the Rohirric widow Brynleigh. He held no grudges, only gratitude and that same allegiance to Rohan despite the circumstances, for how much its people had taught him.

Dandy, the superstitious girl from Bree, Sicarra the Dunlending runaway, Emmawynn the Rohirric fugitive and Bryn - who had always seemed so unsure where he belonged, seemed somehow much more familiar now. Trusted. These were the people Ryheric would need to press now as the season changed, to see where they stood and what they sought.

... Soon would come Harloeg. They all had to be ready.

A meeting was in order.