Page 6 of In Your Light

“Yes, of course.” Fyn tilted his head, giving him a curious look. “Don’t you?”

He seemed surprised by the question, and he cast his gaze out to where the river headed toward the sea. “Not for a long time.”

“Perhaps while you are here,” Fyn suggested, “you will learn to listen again.” He handed Hadeom his empty cup. “Thank you for the tea. I will see you in two days.”

Then Fyn took off at a slow run, his feet finding a familiar beat on the forest floor, and Zaq was soon running beside him.

“So? How was he? Old and scary? I was getting worried.”

Fyn laughed. “Not scary at all.”

“Who do you think he is? A friend of Cern’s has to be someone important, right?”

Fyn really wasn’t sure. “I don’t know yet.” He flashed Zaq a grin. “But I look forward to finding out.”

HADEOM

Hadeom stood on the deck for a long moment, holding their two mugs while staring at the forest that Fyn had disappeared into.

He had the strangest feeling about Fyn.

Something he couldn’t quite place. Something he hadn’t felt in an age. Something odd in shape that didn’t exactly fit in place and felt like curiosity...

Overhead, the clouds rolled in quickly, taking the brief warmth of the sun with them. The wind that stole up the river was bitterly cold and sharp.

“Perhaps while you are here, you will learn to listen again,” Fyn had said.

Listen to the wind...

It tousled his hair, and for the briefest moment, he remembered how the wind had felt in a different place. In a different life. In a different time.

A different him.

Before he could listen, before he could feel the shape of those memories take form, he went back inside the hut and closed the door.

He would shut out whatever that was. Close the door so that godawful, clinging feeling couldn’t follow him inside.

He put the mugs in the sink, hung his head, and closed his eyes.

He didn’t want to feel anything. Certainly not something that resembled hope.

The shape it made was all wrong.

It felt like the memory of hope, but it took the form of sunlight, wind, and warmth combined with the smell of earth and eyes the colour of moss.

Chapter

Three

FYN

Running through the forest sang to Fyn like nothing else. It was freedom and peace, stretching the muscles of his faun body to their limits as he pushed his agility, his blood pumping as his hooves trod familiar earth.

Zaq raced behind him, falling farther behind with every step. Fyn was the fastest, it was never a contest, but it didn’t stop them trying.

“Yeah, okay, you win,” Zaq said with a laugh. “You always win.”

Fyn leapt onto a fallen log and snorted victoriously, shaking his head just to feel the weight of his horns as he turned to him. “Not always.”