It must be, it should be all that she loves, and accepting it would be so easy, like letting yourself sink back down into a warm and pleasant bath —
except that as the two women and their plucky little charge go toiling their way up the mountain, along the well-trodden path where the augurs have already marched, there is some movement over the adjacent ridge. There’s a haggard-lookingman in simple hide and furs. He’s been trying desperately to follow them, some urgent message to impart, and he’d gotten lost.
This does not look like his idea of a happy ending, and this dream does not exactly know what to do with him. He’s— a visiting augur from another hold, here to study magic with Pike? or a visiting professor, allowed in by special dispensation to interview the Avvar? It’s a square peg in a round hole, a piece that does not fit: this stranger likes civilisation, well-made houses, sophisticated luxuries, and so the dream has been trying to steer him astray and chivvy him out of here as fast as possible. He knows it doesn’t fit. It can’t fit. Try again.
He’s labouring his way up the mountain, slogging through snowdrifts, trying to catch up to the fleet-footed women. It seems he’s finally about to make it, cut them off at the pass,
when there’s the yowl of a mountain lion in the distance, a swift blur of movement, an ignoble yelp-shriek, and it pounces the man off the ridge and they go tumbling back down the snowy slope, out-of-sight.
Astrid and Gwenaëlle and Morgana walk on. They turn a corner, and reach the top of the mountain.
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except that as the two women and their plucky little charge go toiling their way up the mountain, along the well-trodden path where the augurs have already marched, there is some movement over the adjacent ridge. There’s a haggard-looking man in simple hide and furs. He’s been trying desperately to follow them, some urgent message to impart, and he’d gotten lost.
This does not look like his idea of a happy ending, and this dream does not exactly know what to do with him. He’s— a visiting augur from another hold, here to study magic with Pike? or a visiting professor, allowed in by special dispensation to interview the Avvar? It’s a square peg in a round hole, a piece that does not fit: this stranger likes civilisation, well-made houses, sophisticated luxuries, and so the dream has been trying to steer him astray and chivvy him out of here as fast as possible. He knows it doesn’t fit. It can’t fit. Try again.
He’s labouring his way up the mountain, slogging through snowdrifts, trying to catch up to the fleet-footed women. It seems he’s finally about to make it, cut them off at the pass,
when there’s the yowl of a mountain lion in the distance, a swift blur of movement, an ignoble yelp-shriek, and it pounces the man off the ridge and they go tumbling back down the snowy slope, out-of-sight.
Astrid and Gwenaëlle and Morgana walk on. They turn a corner, and reach the top of the mountain.