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Vilya arrived at the Blooming Grove as she often did: briefly rending the pond’s willow in two with a great force and startling the frogs.
Caduceus found himself easily distracted these days, and sure enough, the druid’s grand entrance was enough to make him lose concentration on the Dedication. No matter. He could start again. It’d use more power and another hour of work, but he could do it.
The work had to be done, after all.
The middle of Dualahei was a dead, dour time. The last stubborn drifts of snow were reduced to small, dirt-covered packets of ice; everything was damp and muddy but not yet ready to be green. Caduceus didn’t miss the cold, but warmth was still a hope on the horizon, and in the meantime he had to dodge the half-rotten greens and animal remains that had laid hidden for months under a blanket of snow.
Vilya did not seem to notice or mind. She took in the cottage and her friend, before pausing a second to see Caduceus kneeling in the mud.
“Oh, don’t mind Caduceus, he’s just managing the Dedication. Every day for a year!” his mother said as she started to lead Vilya towards the house. Caduceus gritted his teeth and pretended he couldn’t hear her talking about him as if he wasn’t there.
“How much longer until it’s permanent?” Vilya asked politely.
“Oh, about five months, I think,” his mother said, frowning. “Over the halfway point, which I’m sure is a relief for him. I don’t know how he manages.”
Caduceus managed by not keeping a close count of the days, which was made much harder when people constantly talked about it within hearing distance.
“Is Keyleth going to arrive later? We can save some stew for her, if you’d like,” Constance said.
“I … don’t think her schedule would allow her to celebrate this year.” Vilya was hesitant, careful, trying her best to sound calm.
Despite himself, Caduceus was immediately worried something had happened. Keyleth had other commitments, sure, but other stories from Vilya had made it seem like Keyleth traveled frequently. And as leader of the Ashari, he thought they would want to honor Melora.
“Did something happen? Do you need to go?” Constance stopped and gripped Vilya’s arm. He wasn’t the only one worried, then.
“No, no! It’s - she would not want to come. It is not her way - not anymore,” Vilya said, shaking her head. And then smiled placatingly at Constance. “It is better that I’m celebrating it with you, truly. Some time in the wilderness will do me some good. I’ll spend a few extra days with her after.”
This was all a distraction. He should be working. He didn’t need to hear another mother complaining about how their child had changed while they were gone. Not that his mother would ever complain. Not out loud, at least. Not where he could overhear. Still, he tuned them out and focused on finishing the spell.
When he came back to awareness, Clarabelle was staring at him.
“They’re talking about plans for Wild’s Grandeur. You should come in when you’re ready,” she said, and then flounced indoors, not bothering to wait.
It was still odd to see the kitchen table with so many people. Caduceus had gotten used to taking up the entire table, rotating through the settings throughout the day; a different activity for each setting. Now there was often an extra leaf added, overwhelming the main room of the cottage — a setting for Nila, Kingsley, Reani, Vilya or any of the Nein that might stop in — sometimes with some stray in tow for him to tend to. He had to keep his elbows in while he ate to save space.
It was nice to think he’d get the space to himself again for a couple of days. He supposed that camping with his family would have been nice too, but he wasn’t too put out on missing another night in the outdoors. It wasn’t the wilderness, but some time alone in his garden would do him some good.
As it was, he had gotten used to pretending he was alone while eating. They weren’t much harder to tune out than the Nein.
“So who is taking care of the temple’s renewal spells while you all are gone?” Vilya asked, possibly for the second time.
“That’ll be me,” he said. And then, because everyone was staring at him: “The rest of you can camp, I thought I’d stay here.”
There was a moment of silence, as everyone looked around. Caduceus calmly ate another spoonful of stew.
“Caduceus, I don’t know if you remember us going out into Moleyasmyr? You would have been awful young the last time it was safe. We were all planning on going as a family again, now that we’ve managed to fight a little bit of the corruption.” His mother’s tone grated on him; slow and steady.
As if he had been given any chance to forget. It’s all they’ve been talking about for the last few weeks; talking around him, making decisions for him.
“Oh no, I remember. I can’t leave, though,” he said, just as placid.
“And you didn’t bring this up before?” His mother’s voice was starting to get shrill. Ah. This is what it would take.
Caduceus shrugged. “You never asked.”
He had to admit a sharp thrill filled him at their indignation. But all he did was take another sip of his tea.
“We can camp in the Grove, of course. We did that for years,” Corrin said.
“But we finally don’t have to,” Calliope said, finally getting in on this.
“Don’t feel like you need to stay for me,” he said, because he couldn’t tell them to leave.
“I don’t feel comfortable leaving you alone again.” His mother stated with the force of a final decision. And he knew that she had every right to be worried about him, but it still hurt.
“You didn’t mind leaving me before.” It was meant to be a statement of fact. He knew why they left, didn’t hold it against them, not really. But he could only pretend that those years alone were perfectly fine if everyone else played along. So maybe his voice raised, just a little, and he let a little bit of the hurt show.
Everyone was still staring at him, not sure how to respond. It was suddenly stifling in the main room — too many bodies; too many sets of lungs breathing. Caduceus stood up from the table, chair scraping loudly against the floor, and went outside.
He returned long after dark, and Colton and Clarabelle did him the favor of pretending that they couldn’t hear him pad up the stairs to their bedroom.
Sleeping had been one of the only things that had felt consistently right since his family came back. The four children in the same room, futons spread across the floormats, and large pillowy duvets lending a comforting weight on top. It felt like childhood, and sleeping bunched up in the dome with the Nein. Back when Colton and Clarabelle had left, he’d slept with cloth sacks filled with their leftover clothes to make it feel like he had companions. Still couldn’t sleep otherwise, these days.
Even with the comforting weight and shifting of bodies around him, it took a while for him to fall asleep that night, the not-argument still fresh on his mind, and he woke with the first sniff of smoke wafting from below. He nearly bolted up again — another fire on his mind — when he realized it was something dank and musty. Someone was smoking downstairs.
“I’m still amazed that you’ve managed to rebuild so much this winter. I love the new mural.” That would have been Vilya. Vilya doing the talking, at least. Clarabelle had been the one who made the mural.
“There wasn’t much else to do, all of us cooped up and not one wanting to spend too much time outside,” his mother said. Caduceus winced. It was much nicer now that they could have the windows open from time to time. A very distinctive smell, both stale and ripe, had appeared during the height of winter.
“Lots of personalities in not very much space. And a lot’s happened since you were last under one roof. Can’t be easy if you can’t walk away from each other.”
Or can’t help listening in to each other’s midnight conversations. Caduceus felt some sick combination of guilt and anger — he didn’t want to hear this. He felt like he was prying, and he was going to find out something he didn’t want to know.
“Hmm,” his mother said, and then paused. Whether she was taking another hit or watching her words, he didn’t know. It’s not like she could complain about any fighting — everyone was always so careful to be on their best behavior. “How do you handle it with Keyleth?”
“With her, it’s different. She didn’t remember me, not really. And she had her father.”
His mother laughed, then coughed a little. “You know, when I left, he had the rest of his family. Everyone else thought that they were at least leaving the rest of the family together, until Colton. Not sure what he was thinking.”
“Had the choice of leaving Caduceus to take care of a child or be alone, maybe,” Vilya said, because she had not been around Colton very much.
His mother made one of her indecisive sounds. “You know, Caduceus used to not be much older than Clarabelle. Now I think he might be older than Calliope.”
“Really?”
“Maybe. I don’t want to do the math.”
Caduceus didn’t want to do the math, either. He felt a little strange, as if distanced from himself; or not sure if he was dreaming, just hearing those long years be acknowledged.
“I keep thinking— if I had been around, I would have had the chance to teach her. And maybe she wouldn’t be so angry — maybe she wouldn’t have to be,” Vilya said.
“You had to go.”
Vilya’s snort could be heard through the shut door. “Did I? What difference did it make in the end? I know why I set out, because it was my duty and I could not bear the thought of passing the burden on to someone else. But I got lost — and the burden passed anyway.”
“Would you have ever forgiven yourself if you stayed at home?”
“…No.”
“See, you had to go. I know, because I had to go, too,” his mother said matter-of-factly. That distant sick sour feeling increased. He’d known it was true; known that his mother had chosen their home over their family. He wasn’t even sure it was the wrong choice, but it still caused a dull ache in his stomach.
“Let’s listen to the wind chimes for a bit. It’s nice when the kids are asleep,” said his mother, sounding a little slurred.
Suddenly, a hand was on his shoulder. Caduceus jumped at the pressure.
“Stop listening into other people’s conversations and come outside with me,” Calliope said and motioned towards the window.
They crept around their sleeping siblings. Clarabelle rustled a little as they opened the window and let the cool air in, but they were otherwise silent.
This time of year, dew often threatened to turn into frost overnight, but the ground was soft and wet, the mud giving a little beneath their feet. All of the clover nearest to the house had died during the attack and the rebuilding, and the winter had set in too fast for them to replant. They’d spread seeds a week ago. The state of the outside world made midnight walks altogether unpleasant. If it had been just a little colder, at least there would be some fun iced-over puddles to crack.
Even that hadn’t been all that fun this winter. Caduceus found that he didn’t have much of a cold tolerance anymore.
Calliope cleared her throat. She had her older sibling face on, the one Caduceus doesn’t remember her wearing in forever.
“You really want to camp in this?” he asked, putting his hands in his armpits and trying not to shiver.
Calliope shrugged. “Dealt with a lot worse. Also, Colton’s a furnace. Are you pretending that’s the reason you don’t want to come along?”
She’d led them to the edge of the pond — near the willow, and Caduceus sat on a well placed grave marker to give himself something to do.
“If I don’t establish the temple every single day, I have to start over. It’ll be another year.” In reality, he didn’t think he’d mind having to spend every day casting the same spell. He just didn’t want to have to leave.
Calliope leaned against the willow, facing him. “Maybe. Or maybe we all camp close enough that you can head back and cast the spell, or you could get your friend to do it. Or maybe we just go another year without our house being a temple.”
"Doesn’t seem like the best way of honoring Melora.”
“Yeah, and you can pretend that the other options don’t exist all you like,” she said, and then shot him a look. “You don’t want to go, you don’t have to go. But you can’t then say what you want us to do. Why don’t you want us around?”
There wasn’t a power on Exandria that would make him talk about this to her any more plainly than he already has. “It’s been a long winter. Lots of people cooped up in the house.”
“And that doesn’t make you want to leave?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you reach out to your friends?” Calliope asked, and Caduceus felt a pang, but tried not to show it on his face. “Maybe just the quiet green one, you two get along fine.”
They did, but he couldn’t ask Fjord for help. Might take him a second to figure out why, but there was a good reason for it. His gut said so.
“Why do you care so much?” He asked, to bide time. Might also scare her off, if he tried to force her to talk about her feelings instead.
“Okay, fine. I admit that I was angry when you suggested it. But mostly, because you were able to just break off, and I’d been telling myself that I had to stay here.”
“You want to leave?”
Calliope fidgeted with her hands. “Reani’s been suggesting that having someone who knows their way around the Savalirwood would be a help. She’s not subtle. Colton’s been talking to Nila about something too, but I don’t know what.”
“If you want to go, just go. What’s stopping you?” How was this his problem?
“Because it’s been so long since we’ve all been together? I didn’t think it was going to happen again for a while there. I mean, I don’t think mom and dad want us here forever, but when is it time? But you decided it was time, so okay, it’s time. Only, if you fuck this up, then we’re all going to be stuck here for longer. So are you getting your friends to show up, or no?”
Caduceus was stubbornly silent.
“Fine. I’ll get mom to contact them tomorrow,” said Calliope.
He couldn’t help but make a face at that, and Calliope smiled in triumph.
“You don’t want me to do that, you’ve got to tell me why.”
“I can’t be the one to call on their help first,” Caduceus admitted.
Calliope didn’t look like she was buying it. “The purple one gets teleported here, like once a month just to chat. The green one invites himself half the time the purple one shows up, and the blue one checks in once a week. I think she and Clarabelle are doing some kind of collaboration.”
But he wasn’t asking for a visit, he was asking for help. Calliope didn’t understand their relationship. They depended on him to be the voice of reason. That meant that he always had to have an answer. It was bad enough that…
Oh. Hey. Maybe that would convince Calliope.
“They had a problem. About a month ago. Didn’t tell me about it until after. Everyone else got called in. Some issue at sea,” he said.
Calliope’s face softened. “Would you have been able to go?”
“Probably not.” Maybe if someone was dead, or if he was the only one who could help.
“Would you even have wanted to go? It didn’t seem like you liked the ocean much.”
“No.”
“Do you think it was maybe possible that your friends realized that?”
“Them?” He hadn’t meant to sound so skeptical, but the way that Calliope raised her eyebrows, Caduceus thought she recognized his point.
She reached over and aggressively brushed something off his shoulder; it was the closest she usually got to a hug. “Look. Get some sleep, contact your friends. You’ll be happier if you do.”
“Maybe.” Mostly he didn’t feel like arguing anymore.
Neither of them moved. The wind chimes sang in the distance; the frogs made their presence known closer to them. The last lights inside the house went dark.
“I missed this,” Calliope eventually said.
“Standing around in the mud?”
“Bossing you around and telling you when you’re being a shit.”
“Shouldn’t do that anymore,” Caduceus said, already anticipating the setup for once.
“Big sister privileges.”
“Yeah, but remember what mom said? I might be the older one now.”
Calliope gave him a look that made him give her a shit eating grin in return. He barely ducked out of the way of her hand trying to cuff him, but he lost his balance anyway and fell into the cold mud.
Calliope held out her hand to him, looking smug. “Come on, it’s about time we headed back in.”
Inside, he thought of what he would prepare for the next day. He had been able to prepare Sending for years now, but had never bothered before now. He never wanted confirmation on what was happening outside the grove. It had always been easier when he could lie to himself, or ignore it. Being the one to reach out was better suited to Jester, or other people unused to being left behind.
On the other hand, Calliope would probably make good her threat to have their mother contact them instead.
It was the next morning, soon enough. He woke to Colton ‘accidentally’ stepping on his foot on his way out the door, with some sort of muttering about leaving the window open the night before. He listened to the sounds of metal pots clanging in the kitchen for a few minutes before giving up, folding up his duvet and rolling up the futon. Then he leaned against it, and cast Sending to Fjord.
“Hey. Can you visit? Family’s going camping tomorrow, could use some company. Just a couple days.”
He remembered later that he was supposed to count, but worst comes to worst, the idea probably got through fine.
And sure enough, the response came back a moment later, right into his head. “Sure thing, I’ll have Jester message Caleb. Good to hear from you — didn’t know you could cast this spell.”
Caduceus forced himself to not wait for any more of a reply. No telling how long it would take, but hopefully he could get back to it before he had to cast Dedication again. He didn’t think he’d be able to keep concentration through that.
He had only gotten dressed and to the bedroom door when the response came, stopping him in his tracks like an electric shock.
“Hii Caduceus, it’s Jester! Congrats on learning Sending! I’m going to stay with mama but Fjord can come up and Caleb says he can teleport…” The message quickly cut off there.
“Don’t show up just yet — got to check in with the folks,” he said, trying not to sound too relieved.
Which only required him to wait around for the folks in question to turn up.
His mother and Vilya spent a good amount of the morning dozing. The house continued on around them; Colton looking proud at his ability to heat up porridge for the whole family. The family busied themselves with their chores, and Caduceus forced himself to get to his own work, only keeping one ear out for his mother rustling. When he finally heard her start to shuffle around, he thought it might be a wise idea to let her wake up a little more, first, and continued on.
It was near noon when she found him, finishing up with his Temple Dedication casting for the day.
“Calliope said that you might have a plan?” she asked, trying to keep her face as expressionless as she could.
“I sent a message to one of my - you remember Fjord?” He got up and uselessly tried to wipe some of the mud from his knees.
“The name of your friend who has visited us multiple times and helped save our home does ring a bell, yes,” she said, her tone a little dry.
Caduceus ignored that. “He agreed to stay with me while you are all out. If you agree.”
“Of course I would.” As if it was unreasonable for him to worry. As if she wouldn’t have a reason to want him close. As if there hadn’t been tension, unspoken, growing for weeks. If there was a fight there, he couldn’t get himself to start it.
Caduceus thought of broken bones. Of how sometimes they don’t heal right, and they sometimes need to break again and re-set. He thought maybe they weren’t really good at making sure everything’s set right in this family. It’s hard to get anything fixed if you don’t admit there’s a problem.
Maybe the new break would help. Even if it’s only a couple of days. Just the idea that they can be apart and not crumble.
He nodded, then quietly messaged Jester back. Her response was… exuberant, and he missed his mother slipping away to finish packing.
It wasn’t much longer before Fjord and Caleb arrived and the Clays and Vilya said their goodbyes. Caduceus watched them walk away into the slow-healing forest, then went back to offer his friends some tea.
They’d rested and hid through the long nights, rebuilt what they could. But now, the winter was over. The snows had melted. Time for new growth.