GOTTA TRASH FOR MY SON WHILE IT’S STILL HIP TO cry about michael at 3 pm
Infallible Creatures (2/?)
They finally get back to Celliwig two weeks later, legs sore and ready to give in.
Celliwig is a small village near the border between Hyland and Rolance, and it’s one tucked into the wilderness so thoroughly that it’s not even weird that sometimes it doesn’t matter if it’s Rolance or Hyland they’re in—either governments don’t really do much to exert their control over them, and they usually can just walk through and back whenever they need to trade with the village over the border. Lately it’s sort of hard to get to Hyland, though—border disputes, the guard tells him, the resident of a village on the border that never really got brought up when talking about border disputes. At least that left them in peace, he supposes. Better forgotten than warred over.
When he stumbles into the premises, everyone looks up.
“Michael! You’re still alive!”
“Oh thank Maotelus, we thought you were dead—”
“—Brother!” And then there’s that patter of feet, and Michael’s eyes feel like they’re five times lighter as he looks up and Muse is running towards him, a stalk of lemongrass in her hand. “You’re back!”
Michael drops to his knees as she hugs him, and he hugs her back, forehead against her stomach. “Yeah. Sorry, I walked.”
Walked is a very innocent way to put it, but he supposes that that is the point. Lailah leaves him and manifests behind him and Muse gasps, letting her grip on his hair go.
“Oh! A lady seraph! Hello, I’m Muse. Were you the one who got Micha home? Thank you very much.”
She takes a step back and brushes her skirt clean, and Lailah giggles. “Such a polite young lady! My name is Lailah, and I’m a fire seraph.”
“Thank you then, Lailah.” Muse does a bit of a bow with one hand gripping her skirt, and huh, where did she learn that? Then she takes a look at him with raised eyebrows and pokes his shoulder with the lemongrass. “Were you lost, Micha? I told you going that far will do that. Good thing Lailah was there, you know, because you probably won’t go tell someone that you’re lost and then you’ll just grow old in Ladylake and be a grilled fish merchant, I bet.”
Michael can’t help but laugh—it sounds a bit helpless, but he can’t help it. “Yeah, me too. I wouldn’t want to be a grilled fish merchant.”
He no longer wants to be the Shepherd now either, but he will see this through anyway—Lailah didn’t save him from the aqueduct dungeon for nothing, after all. They’ve been talking about what to do after he returns to Celliwig, like how they’re going to talk to Valory and Eidhan and eventually Muse. Michael had taken to mulling over the former the entire trip; he’s trying not to think about how he’s going to explain to Muse that he’s going to do something not unlike what Dad did before he died.
He hopes she won’t hate him.
“Michael, good Maotelus, you’re alive, oh seraph—” and Michael looks up to see Eidhan dropping to his knees in front of him, looking ready to cry. “I asked the guards if they’ve seen you, and most of them said they didn’t. There were several who said that you already left with some merchant cart and I thought you’d be back here but—three weeks, Michael. Three weeks. What would your father say, good seraph.”
Michael looks up to Lailah and she shakes her head, an unspoken we’ll talk about it later when Muse isn’t here, and he turns back to Eidhan. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t end up on a merchant cart, but I didn’t know if I could find you either, so I went back after it was clear that I wasn’t going to be able to find you in the crowds. They went on for days…”
“And so you walked,” Muse says, amused. “You’re stupid sometimes, Micha.”
“Muse!” Eidhan says, tapping her cheek. “Don’t call your brother stupid.”
“Whatever,” Michael grumbles, letting go of his hug and getting back to his feet. His knees throb and his limbs suddenly surge with fire as he tries, but Eidhan pulls him up and keeps him steady, and it takes a minute but he can stand again alone, now, though his entire body is shaking. Now that he’s back, he feels like he can sleep another five days—he’s got more bruises than he does whenever Muse gets nightmares, because they share a bed and she’s a restless sleeper and she kicks his back a lot. Lailah’s hand is on his back, next to Eidhan’s, and together they push him forward back home, and Michael can only stumble forward like a newborn calf, Muse leading the way with that lemongrass of hers.
She’s kinda right, honestly. He’s stupid. That’s how he got into this mess.
But sometimes, he can kind of hope that things will turn out fine.
They get back, and Valory feeds him, and he’s pretty sure he’s going to throw up if he’s told to finish his plate, no matter how starving he is. Lailah nestles inside him during the meal, because Valory and Eidhan are there and asking questions and he’s skirting around each of them, because Muse sometimes barges in and out and comes back with things related to her errands. He can’t finish more than the potatoes and bits of chicken—his stomach is too used to the sparse meals during their month on the road, though he eats as much as he physically could. He can feel his arms going limp, after it all. There’s still three fourth of the meat when he’s done.
“What happened, Michael?” Valory asks at last, tapping her ladle on the rim of the metal pot she’s cooking roots for tomorrow’s meals, probably. “You can’t… do that and not tell us.”
He fiddles with his fingers, staring at them and the new stains on the tablecloth and the scratches on the wood. They’ve long been scabbed and lined with dirt underneath his nails, but fighting and things added new marks, pinkish red even after all this time. There was a surprising amount of hellions even out of the way of the main path—no wonder seraphim feel so threatened. “I… can we talk about it when Muse is already asleep?”
They’re both frowning, he can tell. He doesn’t even have to look up to know.
“Michael, what happened?”
Michael pushes the slice of chicken around, saying nothing. “I went to the Sanctuary. There was this… seraph, and I talked to her.”
Eidhan lets out a long sigh. “Michael, you’ve had this conversation before.”
There’s a warm tingle and with a gentle glow Lailah leaves him, manifesting right beside his chair. Her hands are in front of her, all professional and businesslike, but it’s hard to see her expression from down here. Michael hates to admit it, but he’s not exactly tall.
“I know,” he murmurs. “I know.”
His late father told him not to take his gifts for granted, but also not to be too… free with it. There were, are, very few seraphim around, and not all of the ones he met in his father’s trade travels were nice, but some were, and well, they looked lonely, usually. Or angry. In any case, regardless, Father wanted him to be careful about where he was when talking to the seraphim—namely, anywhere outside the public eye is fine. But well, the Sanctuary wasn’t getting emptier considering the festival, and the Lady of the Lake looked ready to be swallowed by malevolence, and…
“We don’t do this because we don’t like you, Michael,” Valory says. “We do this because we care. Though now I guess there’s nothing much to do about it by now.”
“I’m the Shepherd now,” he blurts out. “Lailah she’s—she’s my Prime Lord. She saved me, but I had to. I had to make a Shepherd pact. But it’s okay. I just. I’m the Shepherd, and I.”
Have to leave Celliwig, probably. After there being no Shepherd in so long, or so said Lailah, the world is in desperate need for one; Michael can guess, he supposes, from all those stories they’ve had about what happens at that ruined temple at Aifread’s Hunting Grounds. He’s never been there himself, but he doesn’t know if he wants to. Now he probably has to, though. Sounds like a place with a lot of malevolence.
“Michael,” Eidhan sighs. “Don’t be stupid. You’re young—whatever the Shepherd does, you’re too young to do it. And that means you probably will have to go around the world, leave your home—what would Muse say?”
Eyes widening, he turns to Eidhan. “I—but, but. I. I…”
It was hard enough to even want to leave home like this, and then… Must he really—must they really… Yes, what would Muse say? But at the same time, he’d promised. This isn’t a small promise, and he knows objectively that it’s what he should do, maybe, sort of, but to hear this, to know that in the eyes of others he shouldn’t, it’s. He’s confused. He doesn’t know what to take, in this case, because Lailah’s here too and she’s hearing all this, listening to all of this, and.
“They care for you,” Lailah says, hours later, when he’s back in his room and the sun is setting outside, all yellow and orange through the dingy window pane. He’s sitting on the bed—he wonders if Muse has been sleeping alone these past three weeks. Or maybe not. With a free bed, the others might’ve wanted that extra free space and sleep here instead of the equally crowded other bedroom—at least Muse is smaller than Ilesa, who’s youngest and eleven and lanky. He wonders if they don’t mind her kicks. Sometimes she gets bad dreams, though she rarely remembers it and often shrugs it off moments later, and whenever that happens she’s restless. Whenever he feels particularly patient at midnight after being woken up with a sharp kick to the thigh, he doesn’t restrain her with a hug.
“I know,” Michael sighs. “I just… I don’t know, Lailah. It’s probably most right to go regardless, I guess.”
“Family is important, Michael.” Lailah takes a seat beside him, not minding the fact that she has to bend her knees quite a bit because the bed is low and the room is too small for her extended legs. “I’m not angry or anything. What’s important is that outside of pressures like these, what do you think you should do?”
“I don’t know.”
Why must decisions be this hard? If he leaves, then who’ll be there for Muse? They have Valory and Eidhan and Ilesa and Minea and Dales, but… It’s different, isn’t it? To him it had always been different, in a way—then again, he actually travelled with Father, back when he was. Alive. Muse—Muse grew up with them, he supposes. In her infant years. They’re probably just as family as he is.
“I don’t know…”
“Micha?” As the door creaks open Muse’s head pokes in, and she perks up at seeing him. “Oh, there you are. You really must be tired, huh?”
And with that she enters and closes the door, practically skipping to the bed before taking up the spaces unoccupied—not much, since he’s sitting and Lailah’s sitting and this bed barely fits him and Muse, probably won’t at all once they get older—and leaning against him. Michael leans back against her, too, just a bit; he missed her, and at least she misses him, too. Her arms are around his waist, tight. Lailah politely says nothing as he strokes Muse’s hair, smoothing out the tangles that formed. Her hair is pretty short, but sometimes, when they wake up early enough, she’d make him braid it; it doesn’t get past two or three plaits, but it keeps her hair neat, and she looks a bit less Musetta and more Muse that way.
“Kinda am, yeah,” he says. “Glad to be back again, though. W’re you, Musetta?”
Muse buries her face against the back of his shirt, rubbing her cheek against the fabric. “…Thanks, Lailah.”
Their positions are awkward and his arm is hurting from the strain of reaching back and his waist is locked in a weird position, but he can’t do anything. He doesn’t want to, anyway, because he doesn’t want this moment to ever break.