I do not own the Inheritance Cycle.
Edited 1/30/22 - all chapters are getting a overhaul. Things might not match until this process is complete

I've thought about posting Selena and Brom's traveling, and decided against it, and then I thought about again. This has been going on for weeks until I believed that this part of the story is needed. I wasn't going to post it yet, not until later, but I've been convinced to post part 1 of a undecided number (I'm thinking 5-7 chapters) now. There will two chapters of their journey now, I will post the next part next week, and then we travel back to the venture in the north

Enjoy,


Journey
Part 1

The letter from Rose was found that morning.

To Selena,
I am very sorry that you should find out in this way. Eragon has chosen to leave and I have chosen to accompany him on this journey. As I do not know how long we shall be gone, please, continue without us, and keep the green treasure safe from its hunters.
I remember what you said to get to your home and we shall take that route.
We will see you before long.
Please trust me,
Rose.

Selena had read the words twice now but she still could not seem to fully understand what had been written. The meaning of the words seemed jumbled; what exactly did 'leave' mean?

She took a breath though it felt as she had not; her chest was too tight to breathe and her head felt as if it were swimming high above her. With shaking hands, she balled the paper up and made to toss it into the fire but found herself smoothing it out and holding onto it. A wave of cold emptiness washed over her and she found that she felt nothing. There was no fury, only a mild disbelief that settled over her like an uncomfortable wet, woolen blanket.

With a great amount of effort, she pushed her panic aside. She would not panic this time.

Selena looked at the trail that her children and their dragons had left behind in complete hopelessness. The prints led away from the camp and then they were gone. Simply gone.

It was path that led to nowhere. Selena had walked the trail more times than she could count but even so she felt the urge to do so again. If she did, perhaps she could find something that she had missed, a clue of some sort, telling her where they might have gone.

At the end of the trail, stood Brom. He was walking around the small clearing in complete silence, looking as lost as she felt. Selena studied him for a moment, not truly thinking of anything, just watching his movements. Slowly she unfroze and unsteadily made her way over to him. She placed her hand on his shoulder and was slightly shocked to see that her hand was shaking. He turned on his heel and stared down at her, his eyes were alit with a strange blue fire and then his arms wrapped around her, pulling her to his chest.

This too came as a shock to Selena. They hadn't had much physical contact. They were working on healing the wounds left unchecked, the wounds they had placed there in their own anger and pain. Even now, after all these years, the arguments they had had stood between them, a chasm neither of them seemed to be able to cross. They talked about it, sometimes late at night, but their conversations never truly seemed to get them where they knew they ought to be.

So much had changed between them, far too much time has come to pass.

Selena had watched couples change, how they fall in love with the other and how over time they are there for the gradual change, so slow that neither one of them took notice, but it wasn't like that for Brom and her. The man she first loved was gone, pieces of him were still there, yes, and of course she still loved him, very much so, but at moments, like this one, he seemed a stranger to her.

She was sure that she seemed a stranger to him, as well.

Suddenly, despite having gotten a decent night of sleep, she felt very tired and leaned in closer to him, resting her head against his chest.

When she had left she knew this journey would be hard though she hadn't expected it to be quite so trying. There had been so many unexpected turns and events during the last months she was not quite sure what she doing any more.

"What are you thinking about?" Selena asked after a time. Her throat was tight and the words sounded thin and forced.

Brom took a sudden breath, she couldn't hear it but she felt his chest rise and fall, then he released her from his hold. She felt very cold, very suddenly. "I'm not sure," he said softly. "I should scry them, and make sure they are alright. There is very little else we can do."

"No. Not Rose. You can scry her though she won't show, and I don't know for certain that Eragon will not be any different so long as he is beside her," Selena said, stepping back. Brom raised an eyebrow, as he pulled his pipe from his cloak and quickly lit it. "I gave her the necklace you had given me. I knew that Galbatorix would be watching out for her and I couldn't have that. I thought it was the right thing to do."

"That causes a problem for us now, doesn't it?" Brom turned away, but not before she caught the look of hurt in his eyes. "We'll have to try to scry them throughout the day, and wait to see if she doesn't move away from him for a time. We might be able to contact them, if fate permits it."

Selena took a deep breath, and again, placed her hand on Brom's shoulder. She waited until he turned to look at her, then she said, "We should continue on our way."

Selena watched as his bushy eyebrows disappeared into his tousled grey hair. It didn't seem so long ago when he had said the very same words to her, but back then she was unreasonable, and would not continue, refusing until she saw the damage for herself. He had given in for her, even came with her as she returned to Gresyni Castle to question the staff herself, and when she walked mindlessly from room to room in search of nothing in particular, he walked beside her. He didn't leave her once. Even now she didn't know what she had been looking for at that place all those years ago. Proof perhaps? Some sort of evidence that the words she had heard were false?

Back in those days, Brom had been her anchor, and at times he still was, now however he looked as lost as she felt. If Brom was at a loss as to what to do- what could they do?

Neither of them were ready to lose the family that just so recently come together. The thought of merely losing one of them was too painful, far too cruel, to even comprehend. Selena prayed to all the gods she could think of that Eragon and Rose would survive unscratched and make it to the Varden unharmed. They would have to, any other outcome to their foolish journey was unconceivable. The prayer didn't lessen her worries or ill thoughts any, but she felt as if she could continue breathing for the moment.

Selena swallowed but the lump in her throat did not go away. "We should continue," she said again.

"And leave them out there on their own?" he grumbled. "They'll get themselves killed or worse. I'm fairly certain that Galbatorix knows of Eragon. I'm willing to bet he has sent someone to investigate those claims…"

A knot formed in her stomach, making her whole body feel like it was twisted up. "How?" she asked. "How would he? You and Eragon have remained rather low in your months of travel." Unlike Rose and Thorn, she thought to say but did not. The events proceeding that particular event were still too raw, and Tornac's death still haunted her- both a regret and a resentment.

"We had an unfortunate run-in with Urgals not long ago," said Brom with a sigh. "Eragon had revealed himself to them. A good number of them had gotten out my reach alive. Where they went and who they talked to once they got there, I can't say."

Selena frowned. Resisting the urge to sit down, she took a deep breath but her chest felt suddenly very tight, she could not get enough air. She pulled her hand up to rest it against her collarbone. "When did this happen?" she asked, forcing herself to calm down.

"Little more than a week before we met." He scratched his beard, and set his lips together. He hands were trembling ever so slightly.

Selena looked at horses with regret. They could not race dragons with horses, nor did she believe that they could. Yet… It was a thought, an unlikely one, but a thought, nonetheless.

"When do you think they left?" she asked.

Brom sighed and looked at the ground, his eyes trailing the dragon's tracks "Sometime in the night," he said after a moment of silence. "They have been gone too long to even hope to find them now." He was silent for a moment. "We can give them a chance to return. We can't stay too long, but hopefully one of them will change their mind and return."

"I highly doubt we will see that. Rose shan't turn back now that she has left, and I doubt Eragon is much different. He is too much like Garrow was at his age; once he set his mind on something, he'd see it through despite the cost," Selena said with a hopeless sigh. "How long do we stay?"

"A day," he said. "Two at most. Any more than that will be foolhardy."

Selena nodded, but remained quiet.

That day was perhaps, the longest that she had ever lived through; it did not seem to have an end. Selena rode out more than once, for the excise, she claimed, but she knew it was to look for any signs of that the dragons were returning.

They did not.

She and Brom talked very little, and when they did it about unimportant matters; what they should have for a midday meal or who would take first watch. When night came, though, neither of them got much sleep, both sat awake by the fire and watched the stars.

When morning came, they were quick to agree to give them until next morning, and when that day too passed without their return, they debated staying another. In the end, however, they did not, soon finding themselves packing the horses, and hesitantly leaving the small paddock.

Selena forced herself to keep her gaze on the trail, but more than twice she searched the skies. As the day pasted she often found herself believing that they should have stayed in the valley in case the children return. But at the same time she that thought this, she knew they could not. She would have to hope that they made to Varden on their own and that Rose would remember the brief directions she had given her.

After Tornac's death, she had told Rose as much as she could about how to get to the Varden's refugee city, though she could not give complete instructions and her directions were vague. Selena knew that if anything happened to her, if she died as Tornac had, Rose would had be left without any sort of direction and no place to go. Giving Rose this information however comforted her very little now, as it did then, if not at all.

Shifting on her saddle, Selena urged Arvid forward. She overlooked the land they were passing, simply watching the rolling land they moved by, wishing at that moment she could be still if only for a short time. Then there where she felt as if they were not moving fast enough. Perhaps this whole thing was a hoax or some horrible dream that she would wake up from and find her children sitting around the fire.

When Brom slowed Snowfire and rode beside her, it was to her great relief. He brought her some form of comfort. At least she was not alone this time.

After a time Brom spoke, "Within a league this road will split off, one goes north, and the other south to Melian but to the west of this route there is a hidden route that will lead south east. Before we reach this point we need to figure out which path we will take."

Selena knew which route she wished to go, but it was not the one they should. When she voiced that they should continue south east into Surda she found the words nearly impossible to get out.

Never before had she been grateful for the past four years she had spent waiting and planning to go to Urû'baen. She found that it something she could now draw some strength from. Those years were the most unbearable; the hardest years she had lived through but she found later that she had gained a strength she wouldn't have otherwise. She held onto that strength now, allowing it become the drive that moved her south.