He walked toward her.
With the pace of someone completing a distance. Deliberate. Present. The leather case at his side, the scholarly frame carrying its years as the enchantments finished fading, the face that had worn a younger man's features for thirty years in Silver Fang now wearing its own.
The wildflowers were open on both sides of the path.
Arvella watched him cover the ground between the treeline and the ley line junction and did not move. The junction was warm under her bare feet — warmer than it had been when she arrived this morning, the vel'athren responding to proximity the way a network responds to any significant harmonic input: by attending. By tuning. The braid running at its doubled frequency and paying close, specific attention to the energy signature in the leather
