It was an important passage, one of the central teachings of Elu on the duty of a shaman to counsel, to light the path of truth and let the petitioner walk the rest of the way unaided. Saphir had set me to study how the principle was applied in practice, how to answer the grieving, what to tell them about the afterlife without being tempted to say things no one knew for certain, how to explain suffering and loss. The art of it washelping them find their own answer. One day people would sit across from me, expecting solace, and I would need to know this.
Usually, I would find such a text fascinating, but today I couldn't keep my eyes on the page. They kept sliding off and gazing into the distance, unseeing.
Saphir sat at his giant desk in the center of the office, doing whatever it was he did, reading correspondence and scribbling notes, with Moki curled up in front of him and napping.
Saphir had the strange habit of talking to himself while he worked. It was mostly incomprehensible murmurs, but here and there he would sound out actual words and I would lift my head, thinking that he was speaking to me, but he wasn't.
He must have felt me looking at him. "Do you have any questions for me?" he said.
"I'm making a list of them." I tapped the notebook I used to summarize what I was studying. "I'd rather gather them and ask all at once when I've finished the section. Half the time I write a question down and then find it answered three pages on. I don't want to interrupt you for no good reason."
He lifted his head, and as he shifted his gaze to me, there was approval in his eyes. "That is an excellent habit. You are methodical, and it will serve you well, because there is a lot to learn, and without a method, it could become one big jumble."
I nodded, smiled, and bent back over the book so he wouldn't see my face, because my cheeks were probably showing my embarrassment. It wasn't that the compliment was undeserved, because it was. I was a methodical student, which had always served me well and allowed me to excel academically, but today I wasn't writing down questions out of discipline. I was doing it because it was the only way to drag my mind back to the page. Each note served as a hook to pin down my attention and keep it from wandering to where it kept wanting to go.
Which was to Ravel, and it hadn't been just today. Ever since the fall and our shared experience on top of that shaved-off peak ten days ago, it had been a recurring theme.
It had gotten worse.
I'd thought it would fade once the shock wore off, once I stopped shaking, once the memory of clinging to him on that peak became less vivid, but it hadn't. If anything, the opposite had happened, because Ravel had been glued to my side as if he had nothing better to do than be my personal protector.
He'd appointed himself my shadow. He told me it was the investigation, that until they knew who had tampered with my saddle he wasn't letting me out of his sight, and that was true, and it was also not the whole of it, and we both knew it. He walked me to Saphir's door in the mornings. He was waiting when I came out. And every single time we flew, he checked my harness before he let me mount. He tested every buckle, billet, and strap, going over every centimeter as though the maintenance crew didn't exist, or worse, couldn't be trusted. And I stood there watching those competent fingers and those strong shoulders, and the way his brow creased in concentration, and my mind wandered to places it had no business wandering to.
I'd spent months dismissing it. He was a striking man, and no woman with a pulse could stay unaffected by all that. He'd also saved my life, and that might have been the thing that had finally made me acknowledge that I couldn't pretend it was nothing anymore. It had become too strong a thing to excuse, and the guilt came crashing in.
I loved Alar.
That hadn't changed and wouldn't change no matter what was going on in my confused brain. He was fighting for his brother's position, doing everything he could to restore Arlen tothe man he'd been before the accident or whatever it had been that had brought Arlen to this state.
The letters helped keep the connection, but they couldn't warm my bed at night or wrap an arm around my shoulders when I needed it.
They also couldn't save me from a nearly fatal fall.
I was lonely.
Alar was gone, and so was Morgateth, and I'd lost two of my main anchors.
Thank Elu, Shovia was still here, and Ravel, and Veynathei.
Flying with Alar's dragonia had become as easy as gliding over water.
We'd taken to each other as though we'd always flown together, even though we had no bond. We had no mystical thread connecting us like the one I had with Morgateth, but we didn't need one. I could reach any dragon's mind, and the nearer they were and the better I knew them, the clearer it became.
After weeks of spending time with Veynathei in Alar's absence, I knew her nearly as well as Morgateth, maybe even better because we were both female, and up in the air she was a bright and warm and pleasant presence.
I wondered how she managed to stay so upbeat while her bonded rider was gone, and she answered that the bond wasn't everything, that she'd had a full life before she'd bonded with Alar, and after having him for such a short time, it wasn't difficult to fall back on her old habits.
Flying with me helped, she said.
I felt the same about her.
"Kailin."
I startled and turned to Saphir, who was looking at me again with his smart, knowing eyes, and for a horrible moment I was certain he'd read the whole sorry tangle straight out of my head.
"You are not turning pages," he said. "Do you want to share your pondering with me?"
I let out a breath. "Sorry. I got distracted."
