Keto wasn’t sure why she had awoken, perhaps an already forgotten dream had startled her, or perhaps nature was about to call.  It was also possible that the old Landian had made a noise.  Regardless, when she had awoken and opened her eyes she had first noted that their fire was rekindled, really the embers had just been uncovered, and then that the Landian was sitting besides it.

His hands were clasped together, a rag clutched between him.  His pale gaze fixed on the chaotic swirl of warm colors that danced across the embers.  Sitting there, his form still save for the rise and fall of his shoulders, Keto was struck by the size of him.  Quartes certainly had a large presence, one that only grew when he took up blade and especially the Shards of Lehn.  Watching him now, it struck Keto that he wasn’t that much bigger than her.  That years and wandering the trails of the world had left him lean and tight.  Like a river stone, there was an aspect of being worn smooth to him.

Absently, Keto reached for the parcel that contained her harp and as she moved Quartes gave a blink, his hands separated, and he turned to give her a forced smile.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he whispered across the night.  Keto shook her head, pulling the canvas covered harp towards her.

“Are you ok?”  Quartes’ gaze had drifted back to the fire and she thought he almost started at her voice as his brought his eyes back to her.

“I…,” he fumbled, looking down at the rag in his hands, over to the bracers on the ground besides him.  He took a breath, “I had what I imagine you would call a nightmare.”

Keto sat up now, eyes on the Landian, at the way his gaze kept drifting back to the embers.  “Would it help you if we talked about it?”  Quartes nodded but sat in silence for a moment.  He shook himself and brought his gaze back to her.

“I don’t dream like you have described to me,” Quartes started.  “There’s no new scene, no seeing of something that has not been.  Instead, I go back through memories.  I know that they’re memories but there’s no changing them, they have happened and are what they were.”

Keto had unwrapped her harp as Quartes spoke.  “That would be painful if you were living through something you wished had gone differently.”  Quartes nodded again and as his gaze drifted back towards the embers he took a deep breath and reached down for one of his bracers.  He started rubbing the rag absently across it.  Keto sat thinking some more, idly plucking a toon on her harp.  Ever so slightly the Landian’s shoulders relaxed.  “Will you share with me what you dreamt of?”

Quartes didn’t respond immediately.  “I am afraid of what you will think of me, it was not very heroic.”  He looked back up to her as he spoke, there was pain there.

Keto realized his admission had stopped her playing and she forced her hands to continue.  “You and I are in this together old man.  You’ve lived a long life, I’d be shocked if there wasn’t some shame in it.”

  He nodded, shifted on his bedroll, and took a breath.  “So Lehn had a daughter and her death was a piece of making the first dragon.”  Keto nodded, they had discussed the story of the first Cycle when Lehn himself had slain the Arch Dragon after the Landians had warred amongst themselves.  “In every Cycle then there is some aspect of a Child of Lehn.”

“Your child?”  Keto asked, Quartes was called the Heir of Lehn after all.

Quartes shook his head, “There weren’t Landian children by my cycle, and those of us who were left had decided to not change it.  Instead it’s a child with an innate magical talent, and a calling to dragonkin.”  Quartes looked up, “The Landians who had survived from the Cycle before mine had said the Child of their time powerful but that their death was what brought about the awakening of the Arch Dragon.”  Keto’s mind begin to put the pieces together, his throat tightening as her fingers paused.

“If no one knew of the Child then there couldn’t be a death to awaken the Arch Dragon.”  She whispered.

Quartes nodded, his form shaking with the movement.  “That is what some thought, figured that if anything a new Child would appear but it would give us more time to prepare.  Maybe even a way delay the turn of the Cycle indefinitely.”  He looked to Keto now, the bard’s own gaze unable to look away as her mind work through the implication of that decision.  “I saved that boy, Serijo was his name, and he followed me around like I was the greatest thing he’d ever known.”

“Like you were his father,” Keto whispered.

“I dreamt of the final discussion where I didn’t stop them from taking Serijo away before anyone could begin to know what he was.”  He look back towards the embers, his hands growing still once more.  “In the end, the Cycle was not fooled.  The Arch Dragon awoke and the end began.”  Quartes’ gaze dropped to a whisper as he looked back to the embers.  “If I had disagreed, I could’ve kept the boy alive for maybe a few more years.  It would’ve been more time to prepare, it would’ve…”  He lapsed as his voice broke.

“Been more time for him to have lived,” Keto finished and Quartes nodded, headed dropping.

“I dream of it and now I sit here thinking of all that I could’ve done, reliving it and all the places I could’ve done different.”

“It is the past Quartes,” Keto offered.  He was correct that she had not expected such a tale.  She could see the logic of those who had no doubt been with him in his Cycle.  She couldn’t agree with it but then again if she had survived a Cycle and was trying to avoid another she wondered what atrocities she’d commit in the name of preventing bigger ones.  She wondered what atrocities that meant Quartes was willing to commit now.  A memory from the past days came to her, of a caravan they had saved from a pack of Kercs.  The way Quartes had looked after the care of the group’s children.  What might he need to do that he would be unwilling to do now?

“When there were others of my kind we wondered how it was that our kind died,” Quartes continued, breaking through Keto’s thoughts and pausing when he saw her look.  He gave a shrug in answer.  “We’d not known good times and the only way any of us had seen a fellow Landian die was in violence.  We had all experienced the call of our memories at times and one of us wondered if maybe a Landian dies when they spent too much time in memory and could no longer care for themselves.”

Keto looked at the forgotten bracers and rag, recalling now that he had cleaned them just a few days ago.  The Landian’s stare into the embers.  She fought off a laugh as the ridiculousness of it dawned on her.  “You die by ruminating.”  A hint of her strange mirth brought the Landian’s gaze up, an eyebrow cocked.

“Things seem better in daytime Quartes, even for Landians.  You just need something to occupy your mind until then.”  Keto’s hands began to pluck the strings of her harp, she watched it for a moment as she got settled into the rhythm and then looked back to the Landian.  “Have I sung you the tale of Diff the Daring?”

Just the hint of a smile appeared on the Landian’s face as he leaned forward.  Other thoughts soon to be forgotten like the bracers before them.

“No.”