Please please forgive me

But I won't be home again

I know what you do to yourself

I breathe deep and cry out

Isn't something missing?

He had his own home, on the outskirts of Karaya; his new life was far quieter, lending help around the village and hunting interspersed with taking care of some of the children who were wholly or partially orphaned. Lucia turned to him for council as her father had years ago, and more than one of the Karayan families had adopted him as one of their own.

He lived alone; every so often some of the Karayan girls would take to him, twittering in the background when he was outside, then fall away as he politely, blithely ignored their interest. He wasn't interested anymore, even though sometimes the small wooden house grew almost too quiet; his neighbors apologized constantly for the noise of livestock, for warriors and hunters coming and going at all hours, but he appreciated the background chatter that kept him grounded in the present, in Karaya. When he wasn't outside, he worked at cleaning and dyeing hides, sewing from bolts of cloth he'd trade to the weavers for, the newfound domestic streak forever amusing the village; Jimba Cheeva, warrior, doing menial hand-work normally taken up by civilians.

He heard Luce shouting outside, but couldn't make out what she was yelling; it was likely one or more of the kids getting into trouble again. The yelling came closer, then passed by, and he noticed a draft from the disturbed weaving draped over the window, a "shh!" and stifled laughter from behind the water-jars. Setting down the stitching on the border he'd been working on, he leaned over toward the water jars.

"And what have you been up to now, hmm?"

Three heads and a blue-eyed tuft of white feathers popped up, Hugo putting a finger to his lips. "Shhh! We're not here!" Lulu was still fighting to stifle laughter, and Aila reached around Hugo's shoulder to cuff him for it, Fubar clicking quietly watching the window they'd come in. They all had fruit stains on their faces and hands, crumbs on their clothes, right down to purple smudges on Fubar's beak and feathers.

"Getting into Luce's baking while it cools?" The children squeaked and ducked back behind the water-jars; he glanced sidelong at the door flap and the window, listening to be sure Luce was out of range, then whispered to the jars. "Next time, do it while you're heading out of the village to fetch water, and don't eat it until you're at the river - that way, you can clean up so you won't get caught, and you won't be there when she notices it's gone."

There were squeals of laughter, then all four of them scrambled around the water jars to sit at his feet, Fubar trying to go straight over the jars, missing one rim, and dunking his face and talons in, squalling at the wet while Hugo tugged him out. Aila stuck to the wall, tripping over his old breastplate with a loud metal clang. "Stupid rusty piece of junk!", she snarled, aiming a kick back at it as she untangled from it, and he briefly cringed; he'd worn that with pride once.

"Jimba?" Lulu was tugging on his pant leg; Fubar was shaking the water out of his frizzy mane, drenching Hugo in the process. "Where'd you get that?" Still tugging, he was pointing at the breastplate with one hand.

"Well now, that's a long story..." He start at the old armor pensively, hoping the words "long story" would send them elsewhere; instead, he found three children and a gryphlet sitting in a semicircle at his feet, waiting expectantly.

Mercifully, there was a harsh knock on the doorframe, and Luce calling "Jimba?!" He waved at the kids to keep quiet, and pulled the door panel aside just enough to see out, leaning in the doorframe with Luce and Joe outside. Luce had her arms crossed, glowing, tapping one foot, while Joe stood resignedly behind her, cigar hanging loose, recruited.

"Have you seen the kids?" When she spoke with that glower, it was hard not to guess which kids she was referring to, and he started grinning in spite of himself.

"No, I'm afraid not; haven't seen'em around here at all. I was just working on my sewing."

There was another clatter of the breastplate, an "Eep!" from Aila, two "Shhhh!"'s and a gryphlet-hiss. Luce fixed him with her fiercest glare.

"Scatter, plan B!", he yelled, running past Luce for the edge of town; Lulu and Aila tumbled out the side window they'd come in, racing two separate directions, Hugo and Fubar out the other window, Hugo half-riding and half being drug along by the gryphlet. Luce was paralyzed trying to decide who to chase, and settled for running to the gates of town, waving a fist in the air while Joe marched placidly behind - "Jimba Cheeva, what are you teaching those children?!", she screamed after him.

By the time he reached the bottom of the cairn hill, he was winded; he stopped by one of the rock outcroppings on the southern slope, leaning on the grey stone panting. He was getting soft, if he couldn't make this run without stopping anymore. He had to take to a slower walk that took almost half an hour to scale the hill; the kids had probably beaten him.

He found the four of them all sitting around one of the cairn rocks a few hundred yards from the Water Shrine monolith, watching him climb with the smug joy of kids that'd managed to beat out their elders. He waved a finger at them, warning, "Don't get too cocky, you'll be old and decrepit like me one day."

"Yeah right, you've always been here!", Aila retorted. "You're probably gonna live forever."

He had to give a wry laugh at that; she probably didn't know how accurate her joke was.

"So how'd you get that Zexen armor?", Hugo asked, sitting cross-legged on top of the cairn. Fubar was stretched out at the base of it.

He wasn't going to stand here catching his breath and talk, that was for sure. He held up a hand for pause, found another cairn near them, apologized to it, and sat down. "That's an old, old story...a couple years older than Hugo, in fact." Three giggles at his offhand joke. "There was a Zexen camp of troops right here on this hill, where we're sitting now; the command tent was up that way, just over the crest of the hill, where they could see all the plains without being seen themselves, until they moved. They'd sent a few riders south, over that way, to attract attention - ", He pointed to the south, past Karaya village, where the feint had occurred, "And were going to sweep down and take the village from here, just like that." He lined out the path they'd almost taken down the hill with both hands, the children listening raptly. "Now, the old Chief was a smart fellow, and he caught on to the Zexen's tricks, and brought the warriors back north; the cut around the Zexens there and there-" just south of Duck Village and off the other side of the road, where they'd been flanked - "caught them completely by surprise, drove them back as quick as they'd come, until they hit that little set of cliffs where the road's worn down into the rock there. The Zexen captain himself had taken a few men to hold that road until the rest of the Zexen army had retreated, knowing they had no chance of getting out alive. They fought until they were overwhelmed, dead to a man; the Zexen captain was the last to fall, and that armor belonged to him." Part of him remembered the dust, the hot sun, the sting of his wounds through the evening cool, even as distant as it seemed to speak of it as someone else.

"You defeated the Zexen Captain?", Aila whispered.

"I struck the final blow, but I don't think any one of us can take credit for that. Many Karayans fell in that battle." A ring of bodies around him; he half wondered if any of the warriors he'd killed that day had been related to one of the kids hanging on his every word now. "I only barely walked away from that battle myself; I was in the healer's tents for weeks." The plains never changed; the view from this hill was the same as it'd been back then. "They've never come that close to Karaya since."

"So you were one of the warriors that beat them off?", Lulu said, wide-eyed.

"Wow...you're a hero, Jimba!" He had to hide the wince at Hugo's words. They had no idea which side he'd fought on there, or why he was out there; he was one of the 'Zexen Ironheads' that'd almost taken Karaya that day, and Lucia had respected his choice that while he'd fight alongside the Karayan warriors, he never fought against the Zexen army he'd once led. It went beyond a matter of simple principle; he had no doubts Chris would fight hard to train through even basic prejudices and the roughest masters, and he didn't want to be put in the position of facing his own unknowing daughter on the battlefield one day.

"Jimba? Are you alright?" Hugo snapped him back to reality.

"I'm fine...just...thinking."

"Bout what?" Aila this time; the three of them sometimes seemed to share one mind between them.

"That Zexen captain...he must've had a home and a family...someday, if there's ever peace between Grasslands and Zexen, I'd like to send his things back to his family, and let them know how he died - that he fought to the death so that his men could escape." The old half-lie, to lay the memory of Wyatt Lightfellow to rest so that it would not be pursued.

The children were fidgeting, and even Fubar looked up to them with a worried trill; his brooding was starting to rub off on them.

"Come on, I'll show you something." He jumped to his feet, waving toward the monolith. "You can see all of the Grasslands from this hill, and if you can just - sorry -" He put one foot on the nearest cairn, to where he could catch the lowest overhang of the monolith's roof, pulling himself up awkwardly. "Just get up here...." He gasped, then turned around and held a hand down for the first of them.

A pair of talons wrapped around his bracers, and he found himself pulling up a gryphlet that responded to his look of chagrin with an innocent, "Kueee?", before catching the roof himself and scrabbling up to perch at the highest point. Lulu came next, slipping his grip on Jimba's wrist; Jimba caught the back of his shirt with his other hand, pulling him the rest of the way up. Aila used his wrist as a ladder almost, hopping up easily to sit next to Fubar on the edge, then Hugo came last, letting Jimba pull him most of the way up.

He stood and pointed west. "You can see all the way to Brass Castle - see that brown spot sticking up out of the woods thatway?" The castle keep stood out against the darker green of the ravine it was built over. The kids scrambled over each other to stand as close to him as possible.

"Is that really built out of stone? It's so big!", Hugo marveled.

"They build just about all the buildings in Zexen from stone, sometimes bits of wood or masonry - that's like the plaster the healers buy, only tougher."

"They build out of healer's plaster?" Aila gave him a dubious look, not buying it.

"Go see for yourself some day; honest truth." The children fell quiet, each squinting to try and make out more bits of the castle on the edge of the Grasslands. It didn't seem so long ago anymore that he'd stood on the top of that castle keep, looking out at this very hill, pondering over the Firebringer War and if any of his old comrades ever wondered where he was; Galahad must've become Captain by now, Chris likely a squire. His name was probably written down in records, on monuments, and in a few dim memories as "the hero that covered the Zexen retreat", with students rolling their eyes in history classes that they had to learn some dusty old history like that. Without a body or proof of his death, the bookkeepers would've recorded him as "missing", an empty space in the manor. He wondered how Chris was doing with her training; hard enough without any family at home, harder still for a girl in a society where women didn't become warriors. Had Galahad remembered his promise to let Chris at least try?

Had Chris even cared to try, after he'd never come back?

"How long are you planning on having this little field trip?" Again he was startled back to the present, this time by Lucia, standing below the monolith looking up at them; the kids, gryphlet and all, were hiding behind his ankles. "It's getting dark." She looked amused; that was usually a good sign.

"I think we're about ready; I was just showing them the view." He jumped down, landing off and almost twisting his ankle, then turned around to help each of the kids in turn down. "Go on, you guys; back to the village with you. We'll catch up."

"Race you!", Aila yelled, and all four of them took off running.

"Are you alright, Jimba?"

"Mmm?"

"You were staring at Brass Castle with that distant look...it was like you'd become a ghost." She'd calmed out since she'd had Hugo, and sometimes he wasn't sure how much she knew or noticed. "Do you ever want to go back?"

He stared off west again, at Zexen. "Not really; they've probably all forgotten me anyway." He started walking down the hill, avoiding any further discussion.