4. Come Home

By Apis, it really didn't change here. Grunzford swung his low-slung head from side to side, taking in the village he hadn't called home for ten years.

It wasn't fair, he'd said back then. Grooming a child - practically raising a child to be the vessel for a power they weren't sure they could handle. Good intentions be damned, they had no right to play with her life like that.

"Do you think for a moment," Virtuous had said, her voice as cool as her green eyes, "that anyone who comes here will not be loved?"

She seemed to have made good on that. Grunzford, much as he didn't want to admit it, had been surprised during his travels with Revya, surprised at her desire to return home. "Don't you realize they custom-made you?" he wanted to demand. "Don't you see you're a means to an end?"

He grimaced when Revya talked about mock-fights with Danette during her early years in the village. Didn't she realize it had been training for something far more serious? Revya talked about how Ben used to take her out of the village and teach her meditation; he even abandoned her once, forcing her to live on her own for two days in the wild. Revya confessed she'd been upset at the time, but it had taught her that getting upset accomplished nothing. She still liked to meditate.

"They were priming you," Grunzford wanted to argue. "They were making you self-sufficient so you could cope with their plans for you."

But Grunzford had learned much earlier than Revya that getting upset accomplished nothing. And he'd decided that now Haephnes' and Virtuous' plan had been put in motion, he would do well to help them.

That didn't mean he was eager to return home.

"But, Uncle." Tricia had looked up from stroking Rockum's head (which was in her lap). "Don't you think you're being a bit blockheaded?"

Grunzford raised his shaggy eyebrows. "Excuse me, Trish, I taught you that word, and trust me, it never applies to myself."

She'd smiled, her left cheek dimpling. "Well, why do you think your old friends won't want to see you again?" She gestured around Vangogh's front yard. "You don't need to worry anymore, we're all safe. It's not as though you need to stay away." But then she bent her head and began scratching Rockum's ears in earnest and didn't bother Grunzford any more about it - and that was his defeat.

Now he stepped slowly into the village square, a bit off-put that the guards hadn't recognized him. After a moment, he realized how gingerly he was placing his hooves, as though he didn't dare make any noise. Really. Hadn't he visited the village during the war? Well, yes, but that was different. That was necessity. This was-

"Slinking back, are you?" demanded a familiar voice.

Grunzford turned just in time to headbutt Ben, his fellow Redflank. "Slinking? I don't slink. Doesn't an old hero deserve a better welcome?"

Ben snorted and rolled his eyes. "Danette and Revya have been back nearly a year. What kept you?"

"I was helping Tricia put Vangogh's farm in order," he said precisely. Quite precisely.

"Well that's good." Ben crossed his arms and leaned back on his heels. "Lady Virtuous wants to see you."

Had Grunzford been fifty years younger, he would have stamped a hoof in surprise. "How does she know I'm here?"

Ben shrugged. "Dunno. She's only the most powerful magician in all of Haephnes."

Grunzford made his way to Virtuous' receiving room. The path was somehow much shorter than he remembered it being. Of course she was waiting for him, tall and graceful despite her age. She had only recently reawakened, Virtuous' soul in Layna's body. He sank into a genuflect, then rose, putting his ears back.

Virtuous raised one eyebrow and inclined her head. "I hope you know how happy we are to have you with us again."

Grunzford refused to fidget. "Thank you. That is...generous in light of..."

"Of what you called me back then?" Wrinkles radiated around her mouth as she smiled. "An interfering, amoral iron maiden?" Her eyes twinkled. "Or do you mean the time you called me a shriveled old buzzard?"

Grunzford cleared his throat and neither confirmed nor denied the accusation.