Chapter 41

The gray-white of the clouds and snow pattered gently against the pane in a ceaseless symphony, reminding Narcissa that outside, the elements raged without cares or regards to any one person's needs, or safety. The feeling of helplessness had been so relentless over the last few days that it had left her feeling listless and dull. Sleep seemed to come and go without rhyme or reason. Food had neither taste, nor interest to her, and yet her body failed to complain. Even the book in her lap felt uninteresting and hollow as she glances over the words within its pages.

The aged book was an old tome, musty and beautiful in its regal state, and yet the contents bore no real interest to her. Though she tried, on a few occasions, when she found the continued sight of the oppressive snow storm to prove too tiresome to continue watching. Too depressing, in truth. For out there, somewhere, wandering against the elements, to Gods-knew-where, was the only being in this world for which Narcissa continued to fight, and to love. Her heart ached now more than she had ever known it could, and she was helpless to do anything.

It seemed still that in her malaise, she had acquired an unspoken companion. For there with her, equally brooding and silent, the Lady Ursa Gresham sat just as listlessly, and just as pensively as she herself. Day in, and day out, since the day the snow had started, the two found themselves plodding together every morning back to the sanctuary of the House library. Breakfasts barely touched, and words hardly murmured between them.

Sometimes they would each try to read throughout the day, though they in turn would often gaze out the window at the squall whiteout conditions outside, and thusly ignore what it was they were reading. Other times they would just sit quietly at the same sofa, once in a while one would reach for the other and clasp her hand in a restrained offering of unity in their worry and sorrow.

For outside, the winds howled, and the snow beat against the solid stone of the castle-home of the Gresham family. Its rages spoke of dangers outside, and battles being fought against its unrelenting might.

Today was the first day in the last handful that Narcissa realized, though she could not determine for how long she'd been unaware, that she sat in the large room completely alone. That the lady Ursa had not joined her yet. Or perhaps she had, and Narcissa had been unaware that she had gone? She couldn't be sure. Time, it seemed, and all the occurrences within it, blurred and faded away.

How many days had it been now? She wondered. Had they escaped the storms? Had they hidden away for safety? Her mind, suddenly feeling engaged with her myriad of questions, caused her heart to clench, dangerously close to unleashing a flood of emotions that she wasn't certain she wished to afford herself. Would they make it back?

She closed her eyes with a bitter expression as she closed her book as well, and set it gently to the side on the little table near her. It was only upon hearing a faint clearing of a throat that her eyes flew back open, her attention immediately called towards the interruption of her thoughts that she saw the seated and reading visage of Rune Mora.

The Lady stared hard at the other woman, though she was seated further away towards some of the back shelves with distaste. It was only after several moments that Rune finally looked up from the book she read at Narcissa, and raised an eyebrow in question.

"Good afternoon Lady." She said with a plain tone, though purely confused by the glare that Narcissa cast upon her. Narcissa narrowed her eyes briefly before she spoke.

"What business have you here, Master?" Narcissa's voice was gravelly and low from days of misuse from not speaking at all. Rune betrayed no reaction to the question, but cocked her head to the side calmly as she considered the fellow woman from across the expanse that separated them.

"It seems I am reading, Lady." Rune explained self-assuredly, causing Narcissa to bristle at the arrogance in her tone. She did not care to be mocked, nor burdened by company for that which she did not care. The result was that she found herself unable to compose her self, or her features into any semblances of calmness or detachment, and she let out a scoff as she whipped around, turning her attention to the crackling fire.

The drowsy of a page being turned rent the air behind her, and Narcissa glanced back once more to see that Rune had returned to her volume in complete obliviousness to Narcissa's discomforted state. Her eyes scanned the pages calmly as she read and turned the page once more.

The audacious disregard was strangely intolerable to her in that moment, and with an annoyance she hadn't registered she carried, she stood up so quickly she nearly lost her balance with the lightheaded rush that greeted her.

Grasping her skirts away from her feet, the nodded without looking as though steeling herself in a resolved conclusion. "I shan't bear the company of those who are of questionable preferences." She snarled out, and made to leave as she scooted around the side of the padded chair.

"You didn't object when I came in, I can't imagine why you do now." Rune commented offhandedly, and Narcissa turned herself once more to look at the invader within the space she had been peacefully languishing within.

"I do beg your pardon?" She seethed at Rune, who, for her part, hadn't looked up from her book again, but merely kept reading.

"Why but I've been here hours already." She said. "Asked you if you minded the company. When you spoke nothing but a peep of a grunt, I came to sit and enjoy the literature." She lifted the book in her hands as a gesture, and the Master finally glanced up at Narcissa and back at the sofa from which she had risen from. "You've been mooning at that window for hours now, Lady."

"I have done no such thing." Narcissa said defensively and Rune shrugged with apathy. Had it been so long? Narcissa looked then in earnest at the outside and considered from where the light shone. Was it from the East now, or the West? What time was it?

"As you say then." Her blue gray eyes returned to her book in clear disinterest. The Lady's questions still swimming wildly in her mind, she realized that Rune was right. She'd been in here all day in some kind of catatonia, unaware that the whole of the day had passed away completely. How many days now had it been like this? She wondered briefly, ticking her fingers off silently as she tried to remember.

"Five days." The Master said, and Narcissa glanced at her briefly, and scowled for a moment. No, she thought. Five days? It couldn't have been that many already?

"Aye, five days." Rune assured her, this time glancing up from the pages of her chosen text, casual in her contribution to the conversation. Narcissa found reality sinking in atop her shoulders as the weight of what the other woman had said being to take hold.

Five entire days had passed. Four of them enduring a tempest of a winter storm Narcissa had never known the like of. Five days since she had seen her son, her only son, into the vast and unknown wilderness without knowing when it would return, or what would face him while he journeyed there.

Her knees felt weak and as her blue eyes had widened and her hands clasp together, she slowly sunk back down into her chair once more. All the years of her plans and preparations had all been to bear fruits that she has so desperately hoped to see sewn and bear forth for her, and her son, that she had forgotten what manner of dangers lie along the way to these ends.

From the space which separated the pair, Rune Mora watched as a wash of understanding blossomed across the Lady's face. How it showed her dismay, her fear. It left her looking hallow and lost, sudden weight seemed to be added along the undersides of her eyes, as though her sleeplessness and lack of appetite had finally caught up to her.

The Lady's blue eyes began to glisten as she hunched slowly, placing her head into the palms of her hands and a shuddering occurred all along the bow of her back as she began to weep.

Slowly the Master Necromancer closed the book she had been reading, placing the valuable works beside her as she watched a picture of the Lady as she crumbled before her eyes.

To this point, the Master Rune Mora had –regrettably- seemed to misjudge the regal Lady in more ways than one. First in that she would be in any shape interested in any extracurricular activities for which Rune was, admittedly, very skilled. But that also in the woman's ability to keep herself unfeeling and unmoved in the face of such a terse possibility.

While she could not dial back the sands of time and right her assumptions and overtures, she could in the very least attempt to express some level of compassion for a fellow human. Though, secretly, the very notion left Rune squirming with discomforts of her own. Connecting on an emotional level was not something Rune left herself available for, nor vulnerable to.

Mora rose, and closed the gap between them and sat next to her, placing a hand at the center of Narcissa's back and gently began to stroke. Narcissa's gleaming blond hair, typically bound in braids or coils, and always tidy and succinct, now looked dull and frayed now that Rune really looked at it.

The Master squirmed uncomfortably as Narcissa leaned into the gesture as the trembling had turned into sobs. Her mouth a twisted line of uncertainty that this kind of gesture was either helpful, or even welcomed at that. The Lady's crying was neither gentle, nor soft, for born forth from it was all the pain, frustration, confusion and anger that she had had to endure through the long years that had led up to this point. Countless set-backs and goose-chases she had suffered, only to find that should the fates will it, she should lose her son too.

Lost in the moment of questioning whether or not she should bid the Lady adieu, or continue as she was, Narcissa righted her posture through her whimpering and wiped at her eyes messily, looking first at Rune while her lips trembled and the whites of her eyes were shot through with redness.

Unsure what it was then that she was supposed to do, Rune made to slowly discontinue the comforting action and stood without speaking. It was only as she turned to leave that she came to feel Narcissa's hand in her own, holding her back. She glanced down, and back at Narcissa again with a blank expression.

"Thank you." The Lady managed to break out in a croak. Rune nodded, and quickly made her way out from the library to give Narcissa peace from her presence.

Once free from the room, and the doors closed behind her she stood in the foyer before the library for a moment before looking back over her shoulder, questioning herself and her actions. Rune Mora was not a woman for shows of kindness, nor was she one for gestures of comfort. She was a Master, and a Necromancer, and she understood but a few purposes in her life, and a few minor frivolities besides. She was not one interested in matters of the hearts of others; life was fleeting, and cruel, and filled with injustices at every turn. She was clear on those facts, and had no illusions about what life had in store for someone like her.

Yet here she stood in the wake of a moment that disrupted her carefully-built demeanor right down to the foundation. Naturally it seemed that the most appropriate course of action was to walk away and speak nothing of it ever again, but against her own principles she stepped back to the closed wood of the door, and raised her palms against is as she closed her eyes and reached into the room with the aid of her magic.

There still on the other side, Narcissa wiped away at the flow of tears that continued, as she stared straight to where Rune had exited. Rune could see the Lady in her mind as she sat there still, and taking great care not to reach too far for too long, she pulled away slowly. Her questions answered.

Instead of feeling only the return of her magic as she pulled it back from the room, Rune was shocked back to attention when, from within the room, she felt the warm and lightly tingling sensation of Narcissa's magic as it brushed against that of her own. From where she still sat within the Library, Narcissa reached out just as Rune did, to seek her from the other side of the partition separating them.

Just as all magic was, the feeling of it was warm, and tickled along the edge of her own in an indescribably comforting manner. Though, like the smell of a person's flesh, all magic had a specific feel, a texture, and even a taste just at the person themselves did. And unsurprisingly, the magic of Lady Narcissa Malfoy was potent, and strong. The sensation caused Rune to feel waves of gooseflesh bath over her scalp and arms.

In this moment, Rune wished to pull that feeling closer to herself, to wrap it around her, and feel its unique texture within her fingertips as though it were the water in a stream as she would feel it across her own fingertips. But instead she blinked slowly as she forced back her temptation, and withdrew back around herself the magic she called upon. Though she could feel Narcissa reach further toward her as she backed away, trying still to experience Rune as Rune had experienced her.

Pushing away from the door, the safety of distance once again creating the separation for Rune once more, she turned to leave. The edges of Narcissa's magical outreach still seeking for contact as she walked away completely.

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The bitter, dry cold whipped across Tyt'o's brow as he adjusted the hood of his outer jacket to keep the small patch of skin around his eyes as protected as possible. The winds had woken them as the sun had arisen the day prior and brought with them a steady drop to the temperature with each passing hour.

Miraculously, their mounts had kept plodding along with them, seemingly able to handle the cold as it chased them along their paths. But, the noise and the arduous travel had left any remaining conversation between the travelers unresolved.

With waking the next morning after the fateful night in which his sister, in her infinite wisdom, decided to fill in their companions on some of the finer details that their parents had left unspoken. Particularly, the reason they were to become riders at all.

Tyt'o had fallen asleep that night only once his sister had finally stilled, and yet sleep had alluded him longer yet as he stewed further over the circumstances in which they found themselves. It would have done them no good at all to wake the group and explain, from the beginning of their family's historical involvement, through the current age and political climate, how they came to this event now. But Draco's refusal to even look at Hermione now made it blindingly evident that it was needed.

The dire need for clarification notwithstanding, the wind had put a complete stop to any such possibility only the very next day, and the brooding silence between Draco and Hermione continued. Her inability to speak to him gave way to a succession of pleading looks, and watery smiles when he would look even near her. All of them answered with a face made of stone, and each turning her away in sadness and silence.

Even Theo found himself drowning deeper and deeper into his own conscious in the storming sea of his own questions and doubts. His blue eyes barely raising but for mere moments once in a few hours to see that his horse still remained in step behind Tyt'o's.

The melancholy that lay over the shoulders of the four travelers did nothing but weight them down more and more as they rode the narrow and rocky pathways through the mountains. The wind howling more and more with each passing hour until dark clouds had formed on a far horizon, eking slowly overhead in a dark and foreboding omen.

They reaches the edges of the forests that lined the valleys of the peaks of Morvan Rove, and the pathway opened up as trees grew more and more scares. The air becoming too thin for anything deciduous to thrive as such an altitude, and only bare rock, high mountain grasses, and small hearty pine trees littered the landscape. High above the sheer rock faces of high peaks loomed overhead now, like

Mute sentinels above them; great Gods of the earth come to bear witness to their toilsome journey.

It was here that the winds became their most deadly and fierce, for they whipped over the landscape with no barrier, and the four were exposed to them utterly. And thus, on the sixth day, the four dismounted the animals in turn, and removed their provisions to carry on foot and set the horses to make their way back to the valley alone.

As Hermione watched their four trustworthy steeds made no hesitation in turning back the way that they had come, she felt exposed and vulnerable. The last two days of wind and closer proximity to the higher mountain areas had left them more uneasy, skittish, than they would be normally. For not only were they entering the territory claimed by the Dragon Sires, there were predators about to be certain. It had not escaped notice that there had been several spottings of large paw prints in the snow, and the behaviors of the horses had changed notably in that time as well.

But these were dangers were known, and that was still little comfort to her now. The skies above were blackening and angry, threatening snow and storms overhead of them. And though to this point, they had found themselves just missing the worst of each maelstrom, their luck wouldn't hold forever. She tugged the edges of her hood down and shrugged her shoulders to adjust the straps of her pack, and made to join her brother along the rocky side of the mountain.

Travel by foot was much slower than by horseback, for horses could cover a greater distance than a bipedal human. But the path had become less obvious and infringed upon by boulders and debris fallen from the peak faces down the sloping sides of the mountains. These would be trails too difficult for a wise hoof as often the rocks were loose in the dirt.

By the eve of the seventh day, the walking and the persistently harrowing silence had worn the four of them down to the point where each of them seemed to be wearing thin with lack of energy. Between Tyt'o and Hermione, they had been unable to find the direction they were supposed to 'sense' with their magic, and were exhausted from casting their magic out repeatedly to try to find a connection to their Dragons. Between that, and walking from dawn until sun set, they were all but dead on their feet by the fall of night. The most communication they offered between the pairs were assorted grunts of concurrence, or declination.

While Theo and Draco said little to Tyt'o and Hermione, the siblings still shared a few limited and quiet conversations from time to time. Their voices hushed and subdued over the topic of where to direct themselves, or when to find a place to shelter to sleep.

The morning that marked their eighth day of travel found them waking before the sun had even cleared the tops of the mountains, and brought with it a blanket of soup-like low clouds that had lingered all over the mountainside. The daylight had diffused all through the clouds and added further weight to the melancholy they had all begun to experience.

The walking had begun to feel like a death march into the high mountain passes now. The air was thinning, and their progress slowed as they each tried to keep their breathing steady, and their heart rates conservative, lest they become affected by the altitude, and injure themselves by falling.

Tyt'o lit a fire that morning with a bare amount of kindling they'd gathered the night before. Dried grasses and a few twigs blown in from further distances. Without the trees to protect them, vegetation had grown scarce, as was similarly any source of water as well.

Draco, having rolled up his blankets and taken a conservative pull from his water bladder, looked out into the soup-like mist that surrounded him and straightened his aching back. Days of sleeping on the ground each night were beginning to take a toll on him, as were the days of walking now as well. All four of them had grown weary and tired looking as each day passed. Each of them with bags that had slowly formed under their eyes that deepened and darkened every morning. He wondered if any of his three traveling companions were sleeping as little as he was.

Meals of dried meat, fruit and hard bread left him still hungry and his body aching for the healing sensation of a warm meal as it filled your belly, and left you sated and ready to sleep. His gray eyes felt dry in this high air, and too as though no matter how much he rested at intervals during their march, how he couldn't quite seem to catch his breath.

Swishing his bladder back and forth, he corked the top and set it down. Their water was dwindling, and they were still wandering into the mountains with no certain direction. He hadn't spoken to either Gresham sibling since Hermione had all but told them they weren't welcomed to their family willingly. To her willingly. He was not so dense that he could not have seen how, at the first weeks, none of them had found common ground to find friendship together. But the confession of his father's political motivations had disturbed him greatly. Had the threat of her family's lands and peoples taxation into ruin drive her into his company, and arms, with the motive of sealing the breech between the Houses?

The recent confession of his love for her left him feeling vulnerable and weakened in his position, for she had made no such similar claim. Though he saw here now, silently looking at him with wide and surprised eyes as they had continued on their journey, she had made no real attempt to try to speak to him. He warred with himself over this. Surely Tyt'o knew, categorically, what manner of deceit the two of them had been about whilst they were still under the roof of the Gresham castle? Was Theo then, as well?

As he mutely fed himself around the wilting fire that warmed them but a little, he looked up to the faces of his companions. Theo, for his part, had been disturbingly quiet throughout this time. His blue eyes heavy with a haunted gaze that seemed to stare out from within him, with barely a show of life within. He looked tired, as did they all. Tyt'o, normally comprised well and an easy smile on his face, looked drawn. The lines of his forehead seemed deeper, more intense than they ever had. His eyes looked darker than their vibrant copper color, and the skin at the corners of his mouth turned down.

And Hermione. He looked at her last of all, for his confusion over what to do about her never ended, and never brought him conclusion. Her beautiful brown hair, normally beautiful with its waves and curls, was bound away from her face and frizzing from the combination of moisture in the air, and the nightly sleep on the mountainsides. Her complexion was one of pallor, her features drawn and tight. She hadn't gawped at him since he'd taken note of her, though he was hard pressed to imagine she might at this point. He had done everything he could to ignore her unspoken pleas to connect with her over the past days while he sorted out what it was he felt over all of this. The light given off by the fire danced in the copper color of her eyes as she stared at is catatonically; a shred of dried meat in her hand that she had ignored.

The young man frowned as he watched her, wondering what it was she thought of. A gust of icy air caught him by surprise as it bit at him through a risen edge of his jacket onto his warmer torso beneath, and he felt ire wash over him as the chilled wind caused his body to break out in shivers as he tried to warm himself again.

Without knowing why, exactly, he grew angry then. Angry that they were set adrift in a foreign land to do the puppet-work of their fathers. To further ambitions that were not even their own. Angry that they were given no direction as to where they were going, and the only two people who knew where that was, were barely able to speak to him, as he was similarly disposed unto them as well. Angry that he was outside, exposed to the elements at the end of winter when he should be home, warm and comfortable.

The expression on his face must have changed drastically, for it was Theo who reached out to him in the middle of this silent mental tirade, and touched him gently on the arm. For it brought Draco back to the present, to the look of concern on his friend's tired and worn face. Theo wore a soft smile, unassuming and questioning. Draco's enmity in the presence of a friendly gesture, seemed to fade back as he returned back to this present time and away as he met his friend's eyes for a few solid moments. Neither of them speaking a word as they did.

Just as it brought Draco out from the cloud of anger, it too seemed to lift Theo's spirits slightly. Perhaps it was merely the contact with another human being that brought him comfort. Or even the connection they briefly shared that proved they were here, together, and as friends. As though, perhaps, they had forgotten the closeness that they had forged over the months together as their status as outsiders within an adversarial House to their own had gradually brought them into a deeper fold of friendship.

Draco nodded to Theo, and he in return to his friend. His blue eyes so much more serious than Draco had ever seen them. Warier, perhaps it might have been. But the affirmation of his friendship brought back the feeling a

So, too, had Tyt'o and Hermione glanced to him as well, equally curious as to the exchange that had transpired. In such tight quarters now it was difficult to ignore subtle gestures, and neither sibling was above reproach where it concerned eavesdropping. After all; what else was there to do?

Without provocation or warning, the still of the morning was obliterated with the booming reverberation of a Dragons roar that slashed through the peace of their surroundings. Echoing over the bare expanse of mountain peak it shook them each down to their very bones, and through their skulls.

Even as the bursting of the cry faded away, what replaced it was the sounds of a woman screaming.

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