Zephyr
The night before the bonding, tradition splits the household. The bride goes to the women. The grooms are left to themselves, to face, as Maren put it with terrible cheer, "the last night of your small lives."
I went up the mountain.
Not to the cliff. The other path, the shorter one, to the quiet green shelf where the Nightbane dead lie under plain stones, where my father is, and where my mother has been for nine years with a view of the valley she ran.
I go four times a year. Solstices and her birthday and the day. I bring nothing, because she hated cut flowers, they die twice, she said, once in the field and once in the vase. I stand, and I report, like a son and a soldier: the pack is fed, the borders hold, I am well. Nine years of quarterly reports to a stone. It was all I k
