SPRING
In his memory, Byroden is forever locked in springtime.
Warm light glints off sun-dappled leaves, distracting the eye from even the most vivid of wildflowers that pitch and sway with the wind-blown grasses. He's young, sitting in the dirt and watching his sister methodically pull up strands of grass and release them into the wind to flutter and flicker away. He's thinking about Jerren, the kindly old man next door who'd died last week. He's thinking about his mother leaning in close with tears in her eyes and saying, "I'm so sorry, but he's not coming back," he's thinking about what it means to end and to make other people feel sorry, he's thinking about what it means to go and not come back.
"I never want this to end," he says.
Vex just looks at him, pulling up another handful of grass. "I'm getting hungry. We gotta go in sometime."
"I mean, I'm gonna remember this when I'm two hundred years old," Vax says. "This day, today. The way the sun looks and the grass looks and the sky looks."
She grins. "You'll definitely forget."
"It's not fair that it ends and then it's just over." He pokes her in the shoulder. "Stop pulling up the grass, Stubby."
Without breaking eye contact, Vex grabs a bigger handful, opens her hand palm-up, and lets the wind take it away. "I'm setting it free."
He grabs her arm when she reaches down again. "You're killing it. It's not good for it."
She stops, cocks her head to the side. "Are you crying?"
"No. Shut up." He pulls back from her arm as though burned. "It's just grass."
Vex lets the few remaining strands of grass flutter out of her hand; he looks away, swipes irritably at his eyes, and sits in silence until he feels Vex's shoulder bump up against his. She sighs. "I miss Jerren, too. And if you forget about today when you're old and doddering and still all those long minutes older and dodderier than me, I'll remind you. It's not over yet."
He leans into her shoulder, and this is the image that sticks: sitting in the dirt with his sister's warmth to his side, chasing away the last remnants of chill in the early-spring air, breathing through his mouth so he doesn't sniffle too loudly, watching stray strands of grass flutter and catch amid the waving sea of wildflowers below.
When they run, years later, they don't go straight home; they meander instead, exploring the novelty of isolation together through the end of an unkind winter.
By the time they do find the rubble of their home, exhausted and heartsick, spring has pressed the last of the snow away, and Vax sits for a very long time on the charred stonework and tries to build the place back up in his memory, every misremembered pebble a betrayal. Vex paces, Trinket rumbling his worry at her side, and Vax listens to the soft tread of his sister's boots on the grass, heavier and more sure than the footsteps he remembers.
Another sound, more familiar: a slow wrenching, the snap-snap-snap of strands of grass coming out of the ground. Before he can turn around, she's yanked back the collar of his tunic and dumped a handful of torn-up grass down the back of it.
He yelps, "What the fuck, Vex?" twisting and swatting at her hands, and she backs away with something that's not quite a laugh or a sob, beaming at him with watery eyes above the hand she holds up to hide her smile as he twists and wriggles, cursing vehemently and shaking the grass out of his clothes.
When he's finally given up on the last few itchy strands, he slumps back into the dirt, staring into the sun until his sister steps over him, eclipsing the too-bright light. "Told you I wouldn't forget."
He breathes the unfamiliar scent of ashes and closes his eyes, tries to recapture a bright, sun-dappled field in his memory. "Never wanted it to end."
He hears the new set in her jaw even before he opens his eyes and sees it. "No," she says. "It's not over yet."
SUMMER
Vex fades in Syngorn like the grasses in a drought, color and life and vitality bleeding from her.
Vax remembers studying some of the less boring ancient elven poets, remembers the theory of temperamental balance, and that's what comes to mind whenever he looks at her: strength and rage fading from her and blooming, inevitably, within him.
"I don't like what this city makes of us," he mutters, elbows propped against the windowsill, staring out at the wavering heat of the unimpressive view from their unimpressive room in an unimpressive house in an unimpressive neighborhood in a whole fucking unimpressive town. His hands are still shaking.
"No, it was–" Vex sighs, slumping back onto her bed with such force that the wood creaks alarmingly. "You weren't wrong. Our illustrious father is indeed a fuckwit, a bastard, and a... what was it?"
Vax can feel his ears going pink, thrumming with his too-fast heartbeat. "I don't remember."
"I think it was 'fuckface from fucksville, fuckandria'. Something terribly eloquent, anyway."
"He's not worth the effort of eloquence," Vax says. "Going to limit my vocabulary accordingly."
"Just the one word, then?"
"Even that's a stretch." In spite of himself, he can feel a smirk twisting his lips. "I'll give him the 'f' and the 'u' next time, but that's all."
"Mm," Vex says, noncommittally.
Normally she's about the only person who goes along with his shitty attempts at humor, so he glances over his shoulder, and isn't entirely surprised to see her curled away from him, covering her face with her hands, shoulders shaking. "Hey," he says, and settles cautiously on the edge of the bed next to her.
"No," she says, voice quavering. "You were right. I don't like what this city makes us into. I don't want to think about what we're going to become at the end of it. I don't want to be angry all the time."
Vax pulls his knees up to his chest. "I think that's not something we really get to decide. I mean, we can leave someday, fuck this place, but before that I think Mom will–" He closes on his mouth on that thought so quickly that his teeth clack against each other.
Vex curls back to look at him with puffy eyes. "You think she's coming back for us."
Vax chews at his bottom lip for a moment, then blurts out, "She wouldn't abandon us here. Not if she knew."
"I don't know that it's up to her. Syldor didn't make it sound like it was up to her." Her voice takes on an elaborate, over-the-top snooty air that never fails to make him smile, no matter how shitty he's feeling. "He came back to retrieve his property."
"Yeah, well, shipment damaged in transit," Vax says. "And anyway, if it's not up to her, then maybe it's up to us."
Vex's half-cocked smile fades, and she sits up, scrubbing at her eyes with the palm of her hand. "Yeah," she says. "Maybe it is. You think there's another option?"
There's a sense of the ground shifting beneath him, like just he's set something into motion, something heavy and ponderous that'll only pick up speed the farther it falls. Maybe not temperamental balance, then, but two embers giving off enough heat to keep each other alight in the cold. He squares his shoulders. "I think there's always another option."
That afternoon, when Vex fucks up her arithmetic lesson, their instructor says, "Well, I suppose perhaps we should know by now to manage our expectations."
Vex says, softly, "All right," and only Vax sees the new fire raging behind her eyes, and hears her whispering, under her breath like a prayer, "There's always another option."
It's an ugly fight in the summer heat, years later, as they battle alongside the ragged beginnings of the mercenary band that would become their family.
His sister has already taken a bad hit, the result of one goblin's lucky knife-throw at the start of the melee, and while Vax can still hear the hiss of arrows zipping past, even louder to his ears is the uneven, labored rattle of her breathing. He's not much better off, with no cover from which to strike, and all he can do to ward off the uneven number of attackers is to slash frantically at enemies that are too quick and nimble not to see him coming.
The realization hits him, hard, even as the goliath snarls a surprisingly civil, "Mind if I cut in?" and shoves past him, cleaving three goblin heads with a single swing of his greataxe:
Left to their own devices, he and Vex would never have survived this ambush.
Vax turns, drops one of his knives to clutch at a long gash across his ribs, and stumbles over to his sister. There's blood on her face, but she's still firing into the fray, quickly, mechanically, with the calm her instructors had begrudgingly praised on the training grounds. Wordlessly, he positions himself at her back, scanning the woods until he hears a final arrow, an arcane buzz of energy, and finally an indeterminate splat sound, apparently signalling the end of the fight.
Vex's sigh turns into a coughing fit, and so he sinks with her to the ground, watching as she pulls a vial from her belt and downs it. Another gift, that, courtesy of the little musician. Another without-which-we-don't-survive-this.
"You look terrible, brother," Vex says, when she can speak again, baring her blood-pink teeth at him until he wrinkles his nose in disgust. "Did you get hit on the head?"
Vax rubs his face with both hands, smearing blood that's more goblin than his own. "Fucking tired," he says. "That's all." And then, because she's never bought any of the bullshit he's tried selling her over the years, he adds, "You and me, on our own, right? We'd have been fucking dead."
"Pretty much," she says, and pokes him in the chest. "But we're not dead, Vax. That's what matters."
A pair of hands drifts into his field of view, startlingly close, and Vax jolts back to see the other half-elf, the druid, leaning over them, offering them both a hand up. "Sorry," she says, with an awkward, too-bright smile. He's beginning to realize that a lot of what she does is simultaneously awkward and too bright. "Didn't mean to sneak up on you. Everyone okay here?"
Vax takes one of her hands, Vex takes the other, and he's yanked back to his feet almost before he has time to blink. "Still alive," he says, surreptitiously steadying himself on Vex's shoulder. "So I guess that's a win."
"Still alive," says Keyleth, slapping him on the back hard enough that he stumbles. "Well, okay. Kind of a low bar to hit, but we've all gotta start somewhere. Good for you!" And with that baffling statement, she wanders back over to the others.
Vax glances over to find Vex already looking at him, her vaguely disbelieving expression the mirror of his own. "What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?" he whispers, hoarsely.
Vex, still staring after Keyleth, shakes her head and smiles. "We should've died. We didn't. There's always another option."
FALL
What Vax remembers most about their flight from Syngorn is the cold.
His heartbeat is thrumming so loudly in his ears that he's certain the High Warden must be able to hear it. Vex's hand, clamped vice-like around his wrist, is like ice, and their breath billows into clouds as they press themselves into shadows, waiting for a handful of adults to stroll past their hiding place before slipping once more onto the streets.
"I don't even know why we're bothering to hide," Vex hisses at him, but her would-be serious mien is spoiled by a giddy laugh. "None of these assholes would care if we ran."
"Shut the fuck up, Stubby, they're gonna hear us," he says, but he can't quash the glee in his voice. This is bigger, this is better, this is everything they've wanted, this is a fuck-you to fear and apathy and standing still. He wants to yell at the top of his lungs. He wants to set the whole city alight. He wants to run so fast and so far that his feet sprout wings to carry him away.
He'll wonder, as he learns more about the art of keeping unseen, how many people saw them leave that night and decided to turn a blind eye. He'll wonder, as he watches Velora play, whether Syldor knew, whether Syldor suspected, whether Syldor cared. He'll wonder, but none of it matters as they sprint into the woods, branches tearing at their fine elven clothing and the bulging rucksacks they'd started packing in secret weeks before, hopelessly loud and unsure in their footing and not caring a bit when they inevitably slip and fall and pick themselves back up again.
By the time they're far enough that the lights of the city are distant flickers between wind-caught leaves, indistinguishable from the fireflies that blink slow and comforting in the darkness, they're both laughing, high and fearful, brave and warm.
"I'm so cold," Vax says, still laughing, wiping tears from his streaming eyes. "This was a fucking terrible idea."
Vex is smiling at the sky, at the lights of stars winking through the sparse canopy. "But it was our terrible idea."
The late-afternoon sunlight is warmth on a cold day, drifting orange and red through the changing leaves outside the tavern window.
"Your go, Vax," Pike says, with heavily strained politeness. Obviously not the first time she's said it.
Keyleth taps the tabletop emphatically. "Come on, come on, hurry it up. I thought it was the twins' idea to play in the first place! We're burning daylight, here."
"You've become really quite alarmingly competitive," Percy says, and raises his hands in surrender when she shoots him a glare.
Vax blinks the cobwebs from his brain and glances back at the cards in front of him. Utter shit. Shouldn't matter. "Sure," he says, making sure to set his cards face-down on the table. "I'm in for more."
Grog draws a card, bellows, "Hah!", and slams his fist on the table.
"Ah," says Vax, as cards rain down all around him. "Never would've seen that one coming. What a shame, guess we'll have to start again."
Vex, glaring daggers, kicks him so hard under the table that his vision momentarily goes white.
What follows is five minutes spent picking up cards and splinters of broken wood, three minutes spent arguing with the barkeep over the price of furniture, two minutes spent arguing about how many cards should've been in the deck, ten minutes spent unsuccessfully attempting to counterfeit the missing card by hand, three minutes spent arguing over which spells to burn to create a replacement card, five minutes spent searching for the card, and, finally, Grog drawing the card, apparently from thin air, and asking if it was what all the fuss was about.
They give up on cards after that, settle into a rare companionable silence, and watch the sunset through the window until Grog says, sheepishly, "Sorry about the cards."
"That's how we always used to play at Wilhand's," Pike adds. "Just, you know, cards everywhere. Sometimes you gotta have a cleric around to patch up the minor injuries."
"Right," says Grog. "Didn't account for house rules."
"Not destroying furniture while playing a game of cards," Percy says, cautiously, "should probably not constitute a house rule."
Grog snorts into his goblet of ale. "Sounds like a boring-ass game of cards."
"Well," says Vax, "I for one had a great time."
Vex elbows him, and he winces; her bony elbows are sharper than some of his knives. "That's because you were cheating. Just, the whole time. Blatantly cheating."
"I don't know about you," Vax drawls, "but where I grew up, cheating was an essential part of house rules."
"You dick. I am going to steal back the 250 gold you won off me."
"I'd love to see you try it, Stubby."
Percy, with a long-suffering sigh, stares up at the ceiling and mutters, "This card game was a terrible idea."
"Ah," says Vex, at exactly the same time as Vax chimes in, "but it was our terrible idea."
WINTER
In his memory, Vax is forever locked in a moment (in a moment in a moment). Vax is fading like grasses in a summer drought. What Vax remembers most is the cold.
Snow's falling, he knows. Time's gone strange, he knows, like strands of grass down the back of his shirt, like a hand pulling him up and up and up, like a deck of cards spilling off a table. He thinks the soft-glowing threads around him are binding him, he thinks the soft-glowing threads around him are his to command with a single careful tug, he thinks the soft-glowing threads around him could be twined into a rope to climb to safety.
Vex, beside him under a clear night sky, beside him in a nameless tavern, says, "Ah, but it was our terrible idea."
Vex, beside him in their classes in Syngorn, beside him in the wake of a fight, says, "There's always another option."
Vex, beside him in a field outside Byroden, beside him at the ruins of their home, says, "It's not over yet."
In his memory, Vax is forever locked in a moment (in a moment in a moment). Somewhere, that moment is ending and another is about to begin.