I am the nothing you have saved.

[darkenedmoon]

who:  Yotsuyu and...maybe you?
what: The witch has discovered that the knight is missing.
where:  Temple of Raida grounds
when:  Any time during the first week of November really
warnings:   Well, Yotsuyu has a temper, so that's worth a warning...



It was useless scurrying, was it? As if she were some sort of rodent. From one edge of the island to the other, from one end of the campus grounds to the other. Searching, endlessly searching, but not finding. She did not want to admit the truth, Yotsuyu did not, but in the end? The truth was nothing but impossible to dismiss, impossible to ignore.

Hendrik was gone.

She sat in the courtyard of the temple, head bowed, back against a young sapling. In her lap, she cradled a sheathed dagger, one hand clasped on the hilt. And yet, she only held it, eyes downcast.
Yotsuyu had nothing to say...but despite that, a bitter laugh escaped her, and she bowed her head.

Comments

[bearshermark]

Eleven emerged from the temple, shrugging his shoulders and adjusting his baldric. It always felt a touch strange to trade his acolyte garb for his travelling clothes at night. But this night, like the last, failed to greet him with the presence he'd grown so accustomed to. Hendrik didn't always walk him back, but more often than not..

"Yotsuyu," he breathed, stepping more quickly toward her once recognition flashed. She didn't look as though she'd come to walk him back. Rather, her downcast expression and the dagger she cradled spoke of another reason entirely.

"..I'm sorry," he said automatically. "I didn't know how to tell you."

[darkenedmoon]

Yotsuyu glanced up at Eleven, lifting one arm to wipe at her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. Once, perhaps, temper would have flashed and had her snapping at him for the lack, but grief clenched its claws deeper into her heart, and she took a sobbing breath. She would not cry again, damn it...

"I understand, I think. I certainly cannot fault you." After all, how does one explain such a thing? 'Oh, Hendrik's disappeared, just thought you should know.' At least Eleven himself seemed to be taking it...as well as one could expect.

"Are you all right?"

[bearshermark]

Eleven crouched down in the grass- near enough to reach out for, if she wanted.

"I'm all right," he assured with a soft smile. "Hendrik hasn't left me- not really. I know he's back there, protecting me with everything he has. And he might yet return one day."

[darkenedmoon]

"That is a blessing, at least." That Eleven was all right. He'd grown much in the time since he had disappeared--and even that sent a pang through her, as she remembered that time.

She inhaled and let out another breath. "I am not certain I want that--he should not be separated from you once again, unless you are here. And he returns here. If not...no. I cannot ask the gods to be so cruel to him."

They'd been cruel enough to her, and truly, Yotsuyu wondered if they were laughing at her even now.