❛ anri. ❜ it happens rarely that they address others without title or descriptor. a name, as it is, remains reserved for trusted allies, aquaintances and friends. ❛ today, the firmament sings thine name and praise. i hath heared it. ❜ for once, it is them who bows. almost reverent in motivation. they hold out an open hand. a lighly misshapen trinket, woven into cord of hide, to be hung or worn. an inherent glow, ethereal as the night itself, is the most striking of its qualities. condensed moonlight. a token of luck and protection. ❛ it is not much, in comparison to thine worth. however, may thee remaineth ever-blessed. ❜
Wind moved through Irithyll’s bones, threading the brittle hush of frost and long-ceased prayer – but around the pair gathered something softer, a fugitive warmth, as though an unseen hand had drawn aside a veil she had not known she wore.
Anri.
Spoken unadorned, without rank or title, her name was rendered bare-faced and beautiful on the tongue of so fair a speaker. It echoed within her breast now not as call to arms nor a command of duty, but as something almost indecent in its gentleness. A fracture. A dilation. A petal opening beneath a reluctant, pallid sun.
When they bowed – they, whose bearing carried an unspoken gravity, a poise and composure no mere wanderer ought possess – Anri felt a mercifully short-lived disquiet take root in her chest. Reverence ill suited her. It clung poorly as silk thrown over chainmail.
“Pray, do not – ” she began, the protest low, unsteady, her voice catching against the moment, lacking the refinement to stand beside theirs. Her speech was plain and serviceable, where theirs unfurled like hymn and scripture. It faltered all the same, dying as her gaze fell to the offering.
The trinket lay in their palm like a captive star. Its glow was neither warm nor cold, but something estranged from such mortal reckoning. Moonlight moulded into shape, bound and made to linger. It did not banish the dark but rather softened it, made it intimate.
Her hands, accustomed to sword-hilt and shield, seemed poor instruments for such a thing. She had known talismans before ( tokens of faith, crude charms fashioned in desperation ) but this bore none of the frantic pleading of mortals. No bargain. No fear.
Her throat tightened.
At last, with reverential care, she reached. Uncovered fingers brushing theirs lightly, fleetingly, as the trinket passed into her keeping, its glow settling against her skin like the last breath of dusk.
“You are too kind,” Anri said softly. No protest lingered in the words now, only a quiet, aching humility. “I am not so worthy. My path is stained through with failure… and any grace I bear is borrowed at best.”
She turned the charm between her fingers. Its pale light shifted, alive in some small, inscrutable way. It caught the tremor in her hands, traced the worn lines of her armour, the nicks and scars that told the story of a knight who had endured much and prevailed in little. She lifted her gaze then, meeting theirs with unguarded trust and gratitude.
Beneath the forget-me-not blue, sorrow persisted.
Thoughts of Horace, of the long road yet untravelled, of the devourer who waited at journey’s end. Duty coiled about her heart like a thorned vine, constricting, ever-present, hooking into her sinews. Still, in this narrow interstice of quiet, she felt that same noose loosen, if only by a fraction.
Carefully, she wound the cord about her wrist, setting the charm against the pulse there. It seemed to keep time with her.
“I shall carry it,” she said at last, her voice steadier, though no less quiet. “Not for any worth of my own, but for the kindness in which it was given. I shall endeavour to become deserving.”
A faint smile touched her lips, wan and fleeting as frost in late spring.
“Perhaps, when this sorry quest is done, I shall learn to believe the heavens’ song.”
Anri suspected such a day lay far beyond the horizon, if it lay anywhere at all.
Thus she stood beneath a sky that did not stir, bearing a light that was not her own, turning it over as though it might confess its nature if only she looked long enough – wondering, dimly, without shape, what manner of soul had seen fit to place it in her hands.
“Thank you,” she added. “For this… and for your company. You bring me comfort, give me courage.”
