Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They do not build the house.

Even as a daydreaming orphan child—and Fjord was relatively certain that of all children, orphans tended to daydream the most—Fjord had never fantasized about house-building. About sailing, sure. About having enough gold to buy all the food he wanted and a horse to ride far away, certainly. About his parents—all variations, orc and human either way, or both half-orc themselves—coming back crying and looking for him, regretting every second they’d left him alone—more often than he’d ever admit. And he’d fantasized about houses, about having a home, but never about building one. It had always just been, fully-formed, there for him to find.

And so it was with this house—they had been talking about finding a place for some time, at first vaguely and then more concretely as they traveled, and they’d already begun circling in almost subconsciously around the Menagerie Coast by the time that it became an imperative.

And not long after and half a day’s ride north of Nicodranas, they had found the little fishing village of Bluecove, and Caduceus had walked with a strange directiveness up the small path that wound up the cliffside. The cottage had been there at the top, a little forlorn, beautiful somehow even with the paint faded by the salt-wind, the once-garden knotted up with wild sea roses and heather.

So it is as Fjord has always imagined it: there, fully-formed, and Caduceus seems certain that it’s theirs just as he seemed certain that there was something up that cliffside to find, but Fjord doesn’t allow himself to imagine anything more until they’re back down in the seaside town that night and find the woman whose mother once lived there. She’s happy enough to sell it to them—it’s a small town, a little place called Bluecove, inhabited by the sort of people who live by their catch and the whim of the sea and nothing else. Fjord is very aware of the weight of the gold they carry and when she cautiously asks for five hundred gold, hands her ten platinum without a pause.

They do not build the house, but Fjord builds the fence and Caduceus plants the garden and wherever you stand, at the wooden gate Fjord took four tries to hang straight or in the middle of Caduceus’ root vegetables, as long as you turn your head to the west, you can see the ocean.

---

They don’t spend a lot of time in the village, at first. Fjord believes that he’ll find no trouble—none of these people seem bothered by a half-orc, although Caduceus always draws looks—but he doesn’t like the idea of testing them, not yet, and neither of them have grown restive. There are always clothes to wash, a crooked board to mend, soil to till. When there isn’t, or they’ve simply grown tired of the work, they sit together and meditate in the garden, caught between the cool dark earth and the light salt breeze that comes curling upwards from the water.

Fjord gets to know a few people down in the village, which is mostly human with a few elves and half-elves and quarter-elves and smaller denominations of elvish blood that don’t show on their features. Fjord likes Lucy, who sells vegetables sometimes for a man named Sildar who keeps a farm outside the city, and who tells him Sildar will have some seeds to sell when they’re ready to plant. There’s Anders, an older fisherman who complains about his joints and sells fresh cod and crab and tells Fjord about his wife with soft eyes and no prompting. Malia is a sharp-eyed quarter elf who works as a carpenter, mending boats, although Fjord thinks she fishes too.

Most of them fish, even if they don’t call themselves fishermen, Fjord learns. It is the way of things in a place like Bluecove.

Fjord does not fish, with the exception of picking up shelled creatures along the shoreline, which is also the habit of children and therefore a place of free reign. He knows instinctively as someone who grew up along the shore that there is claimed territory among all of the people here. If he wanted to—to buy a boat, to adopt their occupation—he would be allotted his place, deliberately and collectively, but he doesn’t yet.

They don’t need the money, and Fjord will always love the ocean, but he doesn’t like the idea of going too far out. There are still scores being kept.

Caduceus is regarded as more of an oddity than Fjord. None of these people have seen a firbolg before, and Caduceus is tall and a riot of color. When he comes to the market with Fjord, it is the children who tend to approach him, and Fjord often returns to him kneeling among them, explaining something slowly, letting them touch his hair or the staff he uses as much as a cane as a focus, these days.

Fjord knows that Caduceus’ knee bothers him, that the changes in air pressure and humidity don’t help, and so he sometimes makes the trip down the cliffside alone, especially on days when a storm is on the horizon. As a result, the people of Bluecove know Fjord better than Caduceus, at least for a little while. The morning sky is deep red on the day that changes, bleeding pink and then a strange gray haze as the sun rises.

“Red sky at morning…” Caduceus murmurs.

“Sailor take warning,” Fjord agrees, and his hand finds Caduceus’ knee before he can, pressing a thumb into the usual tense place. “You wanted seeds, didn’t you? I can get them.”

“Thanks,” Caduceus says, accepting it easily. “The soil is as good as we’ll get it, and we want them in before it rains.”

“You’ll show me how?” Fjord asks. The garden at the Xhorhouse aside, he’s never had a place to set things in the ground, put down roots. He likes the idea of Caduceus teaching him.

“Of course,” Caduceus says. “I’ll make sure it’s ready.”

So Caduceus settles in the garden, staff close at hand in case he needs to rise, and Fjord takes a little coin and makes his way into town to find Lucy or Sildar. It’s a busy day at the market, with some of the men and women who’d normally be on the sea heeding the odd weather and staying docked; those who do go out are keeping closer to shore, ready to try and beat the storm in.

Sildar is at the stall today, produce laid out in neat baskets, his old horse unhitched from the cart and munching aimlessly on straw. He is involved in a conversation with a young man who Fjord doesn’t recognize, distracted enough that Fjord can get right up to them without catching his attention.

“You’d be quicker sailing in, honestly,” Sildar is saying as Fjord approaches.

“She’ll die,” the man Fjord didn’t recognize says.  His eyes are wild.  It makes Fjord a little nervous; not enough to call the sword to his hand, which he suspects would draw more attention than he wants in this moment or in the village at all.  “It shouldn’t even be happening yet...”

“You won’t make it overland, son,” Sildar says.  His voice is sympathetic, but he has moved between the distraught man and the horse, and has a calming hand against its bridle.  The man has come to beg use of the horse, then; Fjord can’t tell if Sildar truly believes his goal is futile, doesn’t trust the man with the mare, or if it’s a mix of both.  But he suspects it’s the first when Sildar adds, gingerly, “And you’ll want to be with her, Vin.”

The man lets out a little anguished groan.  “Someone else could ride...”

“Sailing would get you there faster,” he says.  “Even with the still.”  The coming storm has left them with an unusually windless day.  Not good for a port city.  Apparently particularly bad for this man.

Sildar looks up then and sees Fjord hovering.  “Hello,” he says.  “Mr.—what was it?  Lucy said she sold you vegetables.”

“Fjord Clay,” Fjord says.  “Call me Fjord.”  Sildar is holding a hand out to shake, and so Fjord steps forward and shakes it, although he doesn’t like getting too close to the distraught younger man.  “Is there a...problem?”

“You’re a sailor, aren’t you?” Sildar asks, before the other man can speak.

“Ahh, used to be,” Fjord says.  “Let’s say—mostly retired, now.”

“Then not one you can fix, son,” Sildar says.  Fjord isn’t sure Sildar’s much older than him, but he doesn’t correct him.  He looks older, with his weatherbeaten features, but Fjord is aware how sea and sun and wind change human skin in a way that his half-orc heritage spares him.

“I need to ride for Nicodranas—“ the man—Vin, apparently—begins.

“Half a day there, then back,” Fjord says, then glances at the horse.  “Riding hard.  And she’s—beautiful,” he says, with a nod to Sildar, “But not made for that, I think.”

“She is not,” Sildar agrees. Then:  “Time was, our village had a healer,” he adds, apropos of nothing.  “She died some years ago.  You bought her place. Her daughter never learned the trade.”

“What’s in Nicodranas?” Fjord asks.  He doesn’t want Vin to hurt Sildar, or his horse, who is a lovely black mare even if she’s clearly getting on in years judging from the grey at her muzzle.

“A midwife,” Vin says.  “My wife—the baby’s coming too soon.  She’s bleeding.”

“Oh,” Fjord says, surprised.  It explains the healer comment, at least.  “I don’t know about—babies, but.  My, uh,” his mouth still feels odd around the word husband, even though he remembers the wedding so vividly, how Jester had insisted on dressing them both, how Caduceus had a garden’s worth of flowers braided into his hair.  “My husband is a healer.”

Vin turns and seems to see Fjord for the first time. “Please, help her, please...”

“Go home, Vin,” Sildar says, with some authority.  “I’ll go back with Fjord and show him the way to your place.”

Vin gives Fjord a fervent look and then practically runs.

Sildar sighs, pats the horse.  “You mean that?”

“About Caduceus?” Fjord asks.  “I—yes.  I don’t know if he’s ever delivered a baby, though.”

“Hope he’s a fast learner,” Sildar says with his eyebrows raised.  He asks the next man, who Fjord doesn’t know, to watch his stall, and then he lets Fjord lead the way towards the cottage.  “If you don’t mind me saying, that’s an odd healer who wouldn’t have delivered a child before.  Where’d you two come from?”

“All over,” Fjord admits.  “We were—I guess you would say adventurers, before.  He’s a cleric,” Fjord says.  “Of the Wildmother.”

Sildar nods approvingly.  “The sea is hers and this town belongs to the sea,” he says.  “Vin and Cara are fisherfolk. They’d be glad to have a priest of the Mother, knowing ‘bout babies or not.”

Fjord nods, not quite trusting his voice. It is still strange to feel so wanted—strange to be welcomed to a place, strange to carry the banner of a God so beloved.

They hurry up the path.  Caduceus is where Fjord left him, in the garden, wrist-deep in the dirt.  He looks up and rises immediately; Fjord gathers he must have a somewhat frantic expression.

“What?” he asks, standing at full height, all calm urgency.  “Do I need my armor?”

“No,” Fjord says.  “Can you deliver a baby?”

“I’ve more experience on the other side of a life,” Caduceus says. “But you wouldn’t be asking if there was someone better, would you?  Let me wash my hands.”  He disappears inside.

“He’s tall,” is Sildar’s only remark.

“Yep,” Fjord says, and they stand in the garden in silence.

Caduceus emerges with clean hands, his hair tied back, and a hastily assembled bundle of herbs. Between that and his staff, his hands are full, so Fjord can’t hold one like he’d really like to. Sildar leads them down the hill and through the village to a small house with a red tile roof.  Without pause, he knocks sharply on the wood door.  “Vin!”

A woman answers, in her mid-thirties, with long hair already going grey.  “Sildar. He’s with Cara.”  Her eyes flicker to the strangers, Fjord and Caduceus.  Fjord shifts uncomfortably.  Caduceus just lets her look, accustomed as he is to drawing eyes.

“Found a healer,” Sildar indicates Caduceus.  To her credit, she immediately steps aside and ushers them in.  The ceiling in the house is lower than their cottage; Caduceus doesn’t quite have to stoop, but it’s a near thing.

The house is small; there is the main room in which they stand, where Fjord can see two rough-hewn wood chairs and a faded woolen rug in front of an unlit fire.  There is a kitchen attached, and Fjord picks out the wood burning stove and small table through the open doorway.  The other open doorway has a rug hanging across it, which has been pushed aside.  It leads to a bedroom, where all the other occupants of the house seem to be congregated.

“You’re back,” Vin looks up through the doorway, only marginally less wild-eyed than he was in the market.  A pretty young woman with dark hair is in the bed he sits beside.  “You,” his eyes light on Caduceus.  “Can you help her?”

“I will try,” Caduceus says. They’re noncommittal words, but they don’t sound noncommittal when Caduceus says them.  They sound resolved, in his steady deep voice. “I need you to boil water.”

“I can do that,” the woman says.

“What’s your name?” Caduceus asks her, eyes flicking back.

“Laurel Keating,” she says. “I was a friend of Cara’s mama. I’m no midwife, but we don’t have one—didn’t have one,” she gives a respectful nod to Caduceus. “And I’ve seen a few babies come into this world, so I came.”

“I may need a pair of hands, Ms. Keating,” Caduceus says. “You had better stay here. Vin can boil water, can’t he?”

“Of course,” Vin says, and practically runs.

Once he is gone out the back door, Caduceus says matter-of-factly, “It’ll be some time yet and he needs something to do besides worry.  How are you doing, Ms. Cara?”

The woman in the bed—Cara—laughs and then gasps in pain.  “Oh—you’re right, though...is it supposed to hurt this much?” she asks. “Vin said you’re a healer?”

“I’m a cleric of the Wildmother,” Caduceus says. “I know some healing.”

Fjord turns to look at Sildar, who has hovered by the door like him.  “I’ll be getting back,” he says. “Come if you need me, Mrs. Keating.” He turns to Fjord. “Were you coming down to the village for something in particular?”

The purpose of Fjord’s visit to Sildar resurrects itself in his mind—the morning, while only maybe an hour prior, feels very distant. “Seeds,” he said.  “I was going to buy vegetable seeds.”  He glances at Caduceus.

It is either Caduceus’ sixth sense for intentions or his supernatural hearing that tips him off, because from the bedroom Caduceus says, “You can go, Fjord. I’ll call if I need you.”

“For what?” Cara asks. “What would you call him for?” She’s probably trying to figure out what Fjord does.  His trousers and boots and red cloak don’t scream ‘healer’, of course.

“Probably for nothing. It will be alright,” Caduceus says, in his steady way. He reaches out and rests a hand on her shoulder and with a murmur, a bright gold glow lights his hand and then flees from his fingertips into her chest.

“What’s that?” Cara asks.  Fjord has seen that spell cast before, but in the moment can’t place it.

“A tether,” Caduceus says, oblique as ever.  “You’ll be fine.  We have time yet.”

So Fjord goes with Sildar.  It’s at once a relief to no longer be hovering uselessly, and uncomfortable to have turned away and left Caduceus by himself.  But of course this is not a battlefield; there is nothing to guard Caduceus from, no fight that Fjord could aid him in.

“Got a good bedside manner,” Sildar says.  “Your husband does.”

“He’s—yes,” Fjord says. “He—has a way of making it seem like everything will be alright.”

“And is it?” Sildar asks.  Fjord can’t tell what he’s asking—if Caduceus can be trusted?  If Fjord thinks Cara and her baby will be okay?  There are uncharitable ways to take the words, but Sildar has been kind enough that Fjord doesn’t jump to them.

“It’s worked out for me,” Fjord says, honestly. They have come out of the little lines of houses into the market square, and Sildar pats the mare on the nose, nods in response.

“Good,” Sildar says.  “What sort of seeds are you looking for?”

Fjord knows only a little about gardening, and so he ends up picking out a mix of what Silas recommends and the vegetables he likes or knows Caduceus likes to cook with.  Caduceus eats no meat, so he starts with more substantial vegetables—carrots, squash, eggplant—and then lettuce and tomatoes and peppers.  He asks about potatoes and Sildar gives him a little bag of potato eyes, cut out from the vegetable.  He laughs at Fjord’s bewildered expression.

“It’s how you plant ‘em,” he swears.

“Well,” Fjord sighs.  “If you’re having me on, Caduceus will know.”

“I wouldn’t,” Sildar says.  “Gardener’s honor.”

Fjord isn’t sure what that’s worth, but he takes it, especially when Sildar refuses to take his coin.  “It’s worth a few copper,” Sildar says. “What your husband is doing for Vin and Cara? Consider the seeds a poor payment for that.”

Fjord knows better than to protest too much—they can more than afford it, of course, but there’s no point in drawing attention to the sheer amount of gold they’ve amassed as they adventured. So he thanks Sildar profusely and walks home.  He lays all the seeds out on the counter for Caduceus’ inspection, and hangs up the spade and hoe Caduceus left in the garden.  He sweeps up.  And then he wanders out into the garden and watches the ocean for a while and waits.

The afternoon is beginning to wane when Caduceus’ voice rings in his head.  “It’s done. They’re both well.  I’ll be home soon.”

“That’s great,” Fjord says.  “That’s—incredible, you’re incredible, Caduceus.”

After that, he finds it impossible to wait.  He walks down to the village, passing Sildar, who is leading the mare to his house on the town outskirts.  “Haven’t seen him leave,” Sildar says.

“It’s done,” Fjord says.  “Just waiting to meet him.”

“How do you know that?”

“Spell,” Fjord says.  “He told me he’d be home soon.”

Sildar grins, knowingly.  “And you came down to meet him?  Newlyweds.”  He shakes his head.

Fjord blushes involuntarily and makes a quick exit. He doesn’t want to intrude, so he stands out on the street and waits, enjoying the fading warmth of the day.

The door opens after another few minutes and Caduceus emerges.  He smiles when he sees Fjord.  A loose white strand of hair has slipped out of the tie and hangs beside his face.

 “All is well?” Fjord asks.

 “They’re both fine,” Caduceus says.  “Yes.  I—they’ll send for me if they need.”  He shakes his head.  “I...yes.  They’re fine.”

 “Give me that,” Fjord says.  He takes the bag from Caduceus to free one of his hands and takes it, as he wanted to that morning.  It is shaking, very slightly.

 “You were amazing,” Fjord says, quietly, as they walk through the village.  “Do you know that?”

 “I had—very little idea what I was doing,” Caduceus says. He pauses. “I asked the Wildmother.”

 “You—what?”

 “She was bleeding and Cure Wounds wouldn’t stop it,” Caduceus sighs. “So I cast Divination.”

 Fjord grins widely. The image is just so endearing. “What did Cara say?”

 “I didn’t tell her,” Caduceus says. “It felt—not encouraging. To watch someone pray to their Goddess so they can save you.”

 “It was smart,” Fjord says. “And you did it, clearly.”

 “She was—“ Caduceus shakes his head. “It’s strange. We spent so long fighting.  It’s strange—outside of battle...”

 He trails off.  They start up the cliff side path, and it is just then that Fjord remembers where he has seen that spell, with the golden light, what Caduceus told Cara was a tether.  “Did you put a Death Ward on her?”

Caduceus nods, and lets out a little laugh. Then it breaks into a sob.  He goes invisible in an embarrassed flash and Fjord turns and catches him in his arms, holds him for the few seconds it takes for him to reappear.  “You are incredible.”

“I was afraid,” Caduceus says, plainly.  He is fully reappeared, but he stands there and lets Fjord steady him.  “When someone puts—their life, their child’s life, in your hands. I want them to be right to do so.”

“We all were,” Fjord says. “You know I wouldn’t be here without you.  None of us would be.”

“This is a different place,” Caduceus says. “The other side of a life.”

“It’s a good place to be,” Fjord says, as gently as he can. They start walking again. Caduceus is right, though. He is accustomed to the line between the wound and the grave, people treading the path between their end and their continuation. Birth is its own sort of liminal space. “Were you—did it make you unhappy?”

 “No—it was so beautiful,” Caduceus says. “He’s so small. I didn’t know humans could be that small.  It was beautiful and I was so terrified, the whole time.”  They are coming up on the house now, and Caduceus’ laugh starts as a laugh and stays a laugh all the way through.  “It will be like fighting, I think. It will get easier.”

 “That’s a better thing,” Fjord says, unthinkingly. “To get used to.”

 “Are you used to this?” Caduceus asks, and Fjord knows he means this—the sun, setting off brilliant gold and orange and violet in the sky over the sea, the earth half dug up for the garden, the little house.  Neither of them has tried to let go of the other’s hand.

 “No,” Fjord says, honestly.  He isn’t.  It still feels like a dream, a beautiful and precious one that will melt into mist upon waking.  “But I want to be.  I could spend a whole lifetime trying, I think.”

 Caduceus nods. “It’s really beautiful,” he says, and Fjord doesn’t know if he means helping Cara, or the sunset they are watching, or this life, or all of it, and he doesn’t need to ask anyway because he would agree to all or any of it as they stand outside and watch the world quietly fold itself into darkness.

 ---

 There are two consequences to the fact that Caduceus delivers Cara and Vin’s baby. The first is that Sildar’s visit to their cottage seems to give the rest of the village tacit permission to visit also, and for the first time since their arrival visitors come knocking on their door.

The second consequence is that most of them come looking for Caduceus. At first it’s mostly pregnant women, but after Caduceus reiterates to the first one or two that he’s really more experienced with other kinds of healing, they show up for anything—chest colds, broken fingers, festering wounds, arthritis. 

“It’s been hard, without a healer,” Delia, five months pregnant, informs them both. She and Caduceus sit at the little table. Fjord is hanging laundry, an awkward task that involves walking through the room half a dozen times and incidentally hearing most of the conversation. “There’s a midwife in Nicodranas, and a doctor up in Eldenton, but they don’t come through very much and we don’t fetch them for most things. And you saved Cara’s life.”

“I don’t know about that,” Caduceus says.

“They had a baby before,” she says, frankly. “It died. The midwife said another one would kill Cara too, probably. But she’s fine and so is the baby and she says it’s because of you. She says you asked the Wildmother and She healed her. Is that true?”

“That’s true enough,” Caduceus says, slowly. “What power I have is a gift from Her. But what I do—or what I can’t do—it can’t be laid at Her feet, either. It is thanks to Her, but…”

Delia nods. “Your service to Her has given you her powers, but it is your work that made Cara live.”

“Well,” Caduceus says, and shakes his head. “I meant to say that if I can’t save someone, it’s not because the Wildmother has failed or abandoned them. There is a limit to what I can channel that is not a limit to Her.”

“Of course,” Delia says. “We don’t expect miracles.”

Fjord is coming back into the house when she says it and he can’t fully stifle the little laugh that comes out. She turns to look over her shoulder at him; Caduceus sighs a little.

“What?” Delia says, interested.

“Nothing,” Caduceus tries to say.

“I don’t know,” Fjord says, smiling at him. “I’ve seen a few.”

Caduceus rolls his eyes but he looks too pleased to really be angry.

The wounds and illnesses come at about the frequency that Fjord would expect for a village of their size. The babies seem to be somehow far more frequent than Fjord ever thought possible. Partially he knows that it’s bias—the broken legs, the blood, Caduceus never bats an eye, but he still seems shaken every time someone comes to ask him to play midwife.

One woman comes from the town of Saulterwauld, what must be a three hour’s ride away—they don’t have a midwife, she explains, and there was no one she knew of nearer, and her wife had to hold her upright in the saddle—and that is the baby that Caduceus delivers on the floor in the kitchen, and it’s a little red-skinned tiefling who sucks on her own tail as Caduceus holds her and that is when Fjord starts dreaming about children.

Half-orcs. Quarter orcs. Tieflings—could Fjord father a tiefling? No, Uk’otoa wasn’t a demon, whatever he was. Firbolgs. He’s never seen a firbolg baby but that doesn’t stop his imagination, because it must be Caduceus but smaller, right, much smaller. It isn’t that Fjord never wanted children. It’s just been one of those things that has never borne thinking about, and he never had much of a parental figure to imagine himself emulating.

Now he imagines, though. Wonders what he would be like as a father—thinks, sometimes, on the nights he lies awake and his wishes for the future slide like soft-boiled eggs against his consciousness, that he might be okay at it. That if he doesn’t know what a father would have been like, at least he knows what he wished a father was there to do. And there’s Caduceus and his big loving family who surely has a better blueprint, and Fjord is well-practiced at learning from him anyway.

“Do you want one, do you think?” Caduceus asks, conversationally, when he comes in late and Fjord wakes and props himself up on an elbow to watch him undress.

“Want what?”

“Children. A child. Start with one, I think.”

“I—“ Fjord shakes his head even though he knows Caduceus can’t see him in the darkness, feeling like his mind’s been read. “Yes. Do you?”

“Well, yes.”

“Now?” Fjord asks, sitting up all the way.

“Are you ready now?”

“I—think so. Do you—are you—“

“I think this is a good place for it,” Caduceus says. “I always thought I’d have a family.”

Fjord didn’t. Fjord never dared to think it. He swallows hard. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want to…”

Caduceus is halfway in bed now but he pauses, and says quietly into the dark, “Wildmother, we’d like to…”

“Start a family,” Fjord suggests, when Caduceus pauses.

“…we have a family. Grow our family a little, if You’ll help us.” Then he finishes getting in bed.

“Did She…ah. Hear?”

Caduceus shrugs, and Fjord laughs, feeling ridiculous and full of nerves and joy, and reaches for him.

---

It is Anders who comes up the hill to bring them down to the beach that first year. “Olivia thought you might want to come down for Hallowtide,” he said.

It takes Fjord a moment to remember Olivia is his wife, and then he’s still staring blankly.

Anders notices his confusion. “Port Damali might be too big for it, come to think. Too many big gods. But we’re still about the little spirits.”

“Sorry,” Fjord says, reaching unconsciously for the symbol pinned to his breast, feeling vaguely guilty that Anders remembers Fjord’s hometown but Fjord can’t even keep Olivia’s name straight. “What is this about?”

“Surprised no one mentioned it,” he says. “A ceremony for the dead. You make a boat, you put a little candle in it. They say the souls that are lost out there can ride their way to the other planes on the little flames.”

“You do this every year?” Fjord asks.

Anders nods. “For all the folks lost at sea,” he says. “And all the folks we lose besides. It’s a good way to remember. Unless you think your god would mind.”

“It’s beautiful,” Caduceus says, shaking his head. “And no grieving—or worship, if it were that—would trouble Her.”

“Glad you think so. Olivia made a boat for each of you,” Anders says. “I told her you may not like it. Like I said, it’s mostly just the fishing villages that do it anymore. People think it’s sad.”

“Grief is,” Caduceus shrugs. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful.”

“The Clay family are gravekeepers,” Fjord says, catching Anders’ expression, a mix between impressed and bemused. “He grew up in a graveyard.”

“Well, in a house, in a graveyard,” Caduceus says. “We didn’t, ahh—the Clay family are keepers of a temple and our duty is to honor those who have lived a good life in the name of the Wildmother.”

“And you decided to become a midwife?”

Anders walks slow down the path in the twilight, which makes Fjord very aware of his night vision, superior to both human and firbolg. He puts a hand on Caduceus’ arm to guide him.

“The midwifery was—incidental?” Caduceus hedges. “I’m a—healer. You all have a lot of babies.”

Anders laughs. “Birth and death, huh?”

“Natural things, both of them,” Caduceus says.

“And what are you two going to do?

“Well, die, eventually,” Caduceus says, bewildered.

Anders stares at him, then laughs, full throated. “About the baby.”

“Oh! No idea,” Caduceus says, cheerfully. “I thought we’d go home. My parents managed it a few times. I have a couple sisters and a brother.”

“Where’s home for you? Port Damali too?”

Caduceus shakes his head. “North,” he says.

“Up the coast?”

“North and east,” Caduceus amends. “The Savalierwood.”

“That’s a long way from here,” Anders says, after a pause. Fjord understands his confusion. A man coming from Port Damali was understandable, if still a little unusual, but most of these people had lived their entire lives in one town. The sort of pilgrimage that had defined Caduceus’ life was out of the realm of Anders’ experience.

“I suppose,” Caduceus says.

“A long way to travel, considering...”

“Oh,” Caduceus says. “Maybe we’ll go see Caleb, then, and go through Uthodurn.”

This fails to enlighten Anders, but Fjord is sort of enjoying his obvious confusion at this point and doesn’t choose to enlighten him—or bemuse him further—with the word “teleport”. Caduceus remains oblivious, or at least feigning it, and the quiet persists all the way down through the village to the shore. The lanterns are lit, but it’s strange and quiet and empty, unusual for the dusk hours.

Olivia comes to meet them, her arms full of wooden boats and candles, as they approach the water. Everyone Fjord has ever met in the village and everyone he hasn’t met yet seems to have congregated along the coastline. Olivia hands him a wooden boat—a rough-hewn version of a sailing ship—and a tall white candle. Fjord thanks her and she waves him off, passing Caduceus what looks like a patterned canoe. “I like to initiate people. Been doing this since I was a girl.”

They light the candles; most of the other people are doing the same, creating a strange little glowing miniature fleet, carried in their arms. The sun is dipping down below the horizon, casting a growing dark upon the water.

“Shall we begin?” a man who Fjord vaguely recognizes from the market asks.

“To the dead!” calls out Mel, the pub owner, in a mock toast.

“We have a priest now,” Olivia says, the wrinkles and angles of her face lit oddly by the flickering candlelight, casting shadows of paper sails across her forehead. She gestures towards Caduceus. “Perhaps he’d like to say a few words?”

At that, everyone turns to look at him and Caduceus—Fjord shifts uncomfortably, gripping the wooden boat. But their eyes are mostly curious or warm. A half-orc is not so troubling for the people of the Menagerie Coast, and a month or two has made them known to most of them. Still, it’s something, to have the eyes of a town on him—or on Caduceus, who is a foot taller and draws looks easily.

Fjord has seen Caduceus panic in crowds before, but this loose gathering of the village doesn’t seem to bother him. He remains perfectly at ease under their attention even without forewarning, even as the crowd breaks apart a little to make a path for him through the sand. He picks his way carefully down towards the water; Fjord moves in his wake only after Olivia nudges him to follow.

Caduceus’ own face is lit by the glow of the boat he holds before him, that little carved canoe; his fingers brush delicately over the detailing on the edge as he regards the gathered crowd before turning out towards the sea.

“Unquiet spirits,” Caduceus says, to the salt-thick air, and his eyes are focused as though he is really seeing ghosts rising from the water before him. “May you use these lights to guide you to the other side. If you have unfinished business, may you make peace with it and give over what you have left undone to the living. May you find peace in returning to the Mother, in Her sea or Her earth or Her air. May you find release from the chains that bind you, and may you find your way home.”

Fjord is used to the effect that Caduceus, at his most holy, has on him—the odd illusory echo of his deep voice, the sense that the wind that curls around him is alive and the world is breathing with him. He never believes more strongly—in the Wildmother or in his husband—as he does in those moments, when Caduceus is bathed in Her light and when Fjord can feel the brilliance of it by proximity alone. It is strange to see the effect ripple through a whole congregation like the surface of water struck by a stone. They echo Caduceus raggedly—“May you find your way home,” rising in dozens of different voices, overlapping in a broken chorus around him.

Fjord can see his intent before Caduceus acts, and reaches out to take his elbow to help him kneel in the wet sand. Caduceus smiles at him, beatific in the strange effect of the candlelight on top of the water. He sets the little boat in the tide, and then everyone is doing it, a little fleet of glowing ships bobbing out into the waves, and Fjord lowers his own boat slowly, hand still on Caduceus’ arm.

They stay there, watching the boats sail out, drawn out and back by the waves, each cycle drawing them slowly further and further away. Olivia and Anders come to join them after a few minutes, and Olivia smiles warmly at them both. “Anders said you’d never heard of Hallowtide. Anyone would think you’d done it before.”

Anders nods and says, gruffly, “A good prayer.”

“Who did you lose?” Caduceus asks, apropos of nothing.

“Our son,” Olivia says, after a startled pause. “Twenty years ago, now. A bad storm.”

“I’m sorry,” Fjord says.

“How did you know?” Anders asks. He has the vague alarm that Fjord recognizes from his own early conversations with Caduceus.

“Oh, you know,” Caduceus says, vaguely, and then his eyes sharpen a little and he adds, looking at them, “The sea was a second home to him. I’m sure he’s found peace within it.”

Olivia and Anders are staring; Caduceus brushes his knees off and then relies on Fjord to stand back up. The four of them pick their way slowly from the beach, back up the sand and into the village, which is starting to become filled again. The older couple walks them back through the handful of streets to the path up the cliff.

“Thank you,” Olivia says to Caduceus, sincerely, who just smiles at her.

“Thank you, for showing us this and for the boats. You’re too kind,” Fjord says.

“No trouble,” says Anders. “Take care, now. Do you need to borrow a lantern?”

“I see alright,” Fjord says, a little uncomfortably. He doesn’t like reminding them of his nonhuman heritage, somehow, still, although they can hardly forget it looking at him.

Caduceus smiles and taps Fjord on the shoulder with a murmur and suddenly his coat is ablaze with Light. “We’ll be fine.”

“I see you’ve got your own light,” Anders laughs.

“Always,” Caduceus says, so sincerely that Fjord can feel his face heat. He bids them a hasty goodbye and they start up the path.

“That was beautiful,” Fjord says, once they’ve gained a little distance.

Caduceus nods. “A good way to remember.”

“And kind of them. Twenty years. I can’t imagine missing someone twenty years.” He glances at Caduceus. “Well, your family—“

“I had faith,” Caduceus says. “A different sort of grief, maybe. You know, we haven’t even met her and I can’t imagine losing her.”

Losing a child. Fjord’s isn’t even born and he can’t imagine it. But grief in general is a difficult thing for him to wrap his head around. He hasn’t truly grieved a terrible loss before; never had anything he couldn’t bear losing before. Now—he can’t imagine losing Caduceus. Can hardly imagine a day without him. Twenty years is near unfathomable. “Do you think it gets easier?”

“Oh,” Caduceus says, “Everything gets easier, I think.”

---

The winter rain is falling hard enough to make the path down to the village slick and treacherous, and the garden is mostly bare—some herbs, of course, and what Caduceus called winter melons are still heavy on the vine, but the rest of the vegetables all were harvested in the summer and fall, so there’s no excuse for tending the garden.  Besides, it’s cold—it may not snow so far south, but the wind off the sea is biting and the raindrops don’t feel too far from ice.

So they stay inside, fire banked up high; some sort of rich mushroom stew simmers, filling the cottage with a delicious earthy scent.  Caduceus sits at the table with his eyes half-lidded while Fjord reads aloud, a book of myths that Caleb had gifted them both.

“...and when the celebrating crowds left the palace they cried out, for the river ran clear again, as the prince had been returned to his rightful place, and the curse laid by his grandfather was broken by their marriage.

“And the new king and queen ruled together and they and the kingdom lived happily ever after.”  Fjord glances up at Caduceus, who blinks slowly back at him.

“Hmm,” Caduceus says.  “That’s a nice story. You have a nice voice.”

Fjord married the man, and still every casually administered compliment throws him, makes blood heat beneath his skin. “I can read another,” Fjord offers.

“Maybe in a moment,” Caduceus smiles at him. “I’ve been meaning to ask. Have you thought about names?”

“Yes,” Fjord admits.  “Have you?”

“Yes,” Caduceus says.  “We’ll want to call her the right thing. Might be worth picking it out. Although maybe when she’s born we’ll realize she should be called something else.  It happens.”

“I suppose,” says Fjord, who knows nothing of naming children except that he wants to do it nothing like the orphanage did.  In which case Caduceus is right about putting thought into it. As he is considering this, his mind catches up to Caduceus’ words. “Did you say ‘her’?”

“Well, she’s not anything yet,” he says.  His eyes are fully open now, looking warmly at Fjord. “And she could end up deciding otherwise—I did—but I dreamed about a girl.”

“You dreamed about her,” Fjord says.

“Sure,” Caduceus says.  “Is that odd? My mother dreamed about all of us. She said her father dreamed about her and Corrin.”

“I don’t know,” Fjord says.  “That’s—I like that.  A girl.  Girl’s names.  Do you know, I don’t have any ideas?” He laughs.  “I’ve thought about it and I don’t know where to begin.  We could call her after your mother.”

Caduceus shakes his head.  “Bad luck.”

“Really? I thought it was respectful.”

“To be named after the dead?  Yes.  But bad luck to call them after the living.”

Fjord nods.  “Alright, fair enough.  Did you have any ideas?”

“A few.  I had thought Coral, maybe.  Or Calypso.”

“Does it have to be a ‘C’ name?” Fjord asks, out of curiosity more than objection.

“A sea name?  No.  I just thought you’d like it.”

“I’d like it?” Fjord blinks, confused.  “I thought it was...”

“I mean,” Caduceus says.  “We live near it, it’s always meant a lot to you, I know it’s how you feel closest to the Wildmother.  So it seemed fitting.”

Understanding arrives like the strike of a match. “Not an ocean name.  A ‘C’ name.”

“Are they different?” Caduceus says, interested.  “I thought they meant the same thing.”

“Are what different?”

“A sea and an ocean.”

“A—no.  C.  The letter ‘C’.  Caduceus.  Clarabelle...”

“Oh!” Caduceus laughs at himself. “No.  Just a little tradition.  We don’t have to if you don’t want.”

“No,” Fjord decides quickly.  He likes tradition—he doesn’t have much of his own on account of not having family, but he loves the tradition of the Wildmother, and that of the Clays, even the little silly ones like giving their children ‘C’ names.  They have taken him in so wholeheartedly—he still takes pleasure in introducing himself in two pieces, how it sounds to be more than just Fjord.  “I like it.  C it is.”

“Alright,” Caduceus says.

Fjord stares around the kitchen for inspiration.  “Chanterelle.  Chamomile. Don’t listen to me, we’re not naming her after food.”

“Chanterelle’s not bad,” Caduceus comments.  “Good nicknames.”

“Elle,” Fjord says.  “Is that important? Nicknames?”

“Well, all of mine are awful,” Caduceus says, frowning.

“Oh—“ Fjord says, a little stricken. “Do you mind it?”

“I‘m old enough not to be bothered,” he says.  “Don’t worry.  But children can be cruel, so—“

“No, you’re right,” Fjord says.  “No cruel nicknames.”

Caduceus nods.  “Tea?” When Fjord nods, he stands up and fills the kettle.  Fjord watches him, thinking.

“I do like—the ocean idea.  She’ll grow up beside it. I like that she might feel connected.”  Fjord knows the ocean isn’t really safe for him anymore, not the middle of it anyway, but he still doesn’t really fear it.  And it would be cruel to deny his child—his daughter, if Caduceus’ dream is to be believed—that connection even as she grows up along a shoreline.  Another thought occurs to him.  “You said—naming after the dead is alright?”

“Yes.  Like you said—it’s respectful.  A good way to preserve memory.  Some people say it can give them a connection, but I’m not sure I believe that.  It’s not bad luck, anyway.”  He sets the kettle on the stove and steps back, leaning against the wall.  The soft grey square of light from the window falls in a patch across his shoulder and cheek.

“I was just thinking about Mollymauk,” Fjord says, after a moment.

“That’s a good name,” Caduceus says.  “They call them albatross here, don’t they?”

Fjord nods.  “Not a C, though.”

“But a seabird,” Caduceus says.  “Well.  How about that?”  He is looking out the window.  After another second, he raises a hand and points.

Fjord gets up and stands beside him.  On the fence post is a bird—black, long necked, probably blown in off the ocean on the winter storm.  When it turns its head he can see a patch of white like snow on its throat and chest.  “Cormorant,” Caduceus says, satisfied.

“Cormorant,” Fjord echoes.  “Mora.  Cory.”

“Cory,” Caduceus says.  The bird has shifted to look at them, and Caduceus raises a hand in a wave.  The way the head bobs almost resembles a nod as it takes off.

“Cory,” Fjord repeats it.  “Cormorant Clay.”

“Cormorant Clay,” Caduceus says back. He smiles as he says it, and Fjord is suddenly overwhelmed. He leans against him, turns from the window so he can tuck his face against Caduceus’ chest, and feels Caduceus’ arms come up to hold him. Fjord thinks he might be trembling a little, not in a bad way but in the way he felt when he first felt the Wildmother, like he’s just seen the world through Her eyes for a split second.  Even a few years ago, Fjord wouldn’t have believed you could feel the divine like that, especially in something so small as a seabird.

Even a few years ago, Fjord was a fool.  He knows that now.

He lets Caduceus hold him, brimming over with strange shattering joy, until the kettle begins to shriek behind them.

---

Fjord’s mind has never been terribly kind to him, so of course he has the dream only a few nights after. He no longer has the same need he once did for imagination. He has traveled half the continent. He has seen battles and death and celebrations; he has been married, surrounded by people who loved him—surrounded! How could there be enough of them, for someone who once was all alone in the world—and he no longer needs fantasy to envision any degree of joy or pain.

He has seen Caduceus fall, long enough ago that he did not know in that moment what he almost lost, but not so long ago the memory does not occasionally slip out from the place it is carefully locked away and into his subconscious.

Caduceus, dead on the stone ground, the way the ear not shredded by the blast lay limp—that is the image that he dreams. But this Caduceus is alive, eyes open and glassy rather than peacefully shut. (At least in death, burned and broken, Caduceus had the decency to look as though he might be sleeping.) In the place of that dark cave under the Well, he is in their back garden, half-crushing the mint. And he is bleeding, steadily, from no place in particular but enough to soak his clothes, stain Fjord’s hands, tinge the light red.

“No,” Fjord chokes on the word. “Caduceus—no, this can’t be happening—“

He says it, but in the dream it doesn’t occur to him that it isn’t actually happening. It is too real. All of the pieces of it are real, after all. His mind has simply jigsawed it into something holistic and monstrous and terrifying. 

Caduceus opens his mouth, but blood drips out instead of words. He isn’t coughing it out or anything—it just comes, like water spilling down over the sides of a roof when it rains.

“What did I do?” Fjord demands of him, of the Wildmother—because he knows, in the same way that you know anything in a dream, that this is his fault. He has overstepped. He has asked for too much, hoped for too much. “Whatever it is I’ll fix it, I take it back, please…”

He remembers, belatedly, that he can heal. He presses his hands to Caduceus, but no warm light comes, no itching fluttering healing. He has practiced it enough that he knows how it works but in the dream it does not come. Instead, water spills out from his hands, like it used to when he had the falchion, except that water too is red.

“No,” he whimpers, and pulls Caduceus to him, but he can’t find a wound to put pressure on, there’s just blood, everywhere, and Caduceus limp in his arms—

“Wildmother,” he gasps, “ Wildmother--!”

He wakes sweating, tangled in the sheets, a wordless shout in his throat. He’s woken Caduceus, who is twisting in his arms, trying to see him. “Fjord,” he says, “What’s wrong?”

“You were—bleeding, you were dying, you had died,” Fjord says in a horrible rush. “Oh, gods.”

“I’m fine,” Caduceus says, soothingly. He reaches a hand out and cups Fjord’s cheek. “See?”

“Now but—” Fjord can’t even articulate the fears swimming in his head, which is probably an indication that they are the foolish panicked threads of someone barely awoken from a nightmare, but he cannot stop them. He pulls back, sits up, tries to unknot himself from the blankets. “What about later?”

“What about later?” Caduceus doesn’t move, blinking at him from his prone position on the mattress.

“With—we’re having a kid , we live right by the ocean, anything could happen …” Fjord knows, he knows that this is foolish. Knows Caduceus will tell him so. Saying the words, at least, feels like an act of exorcism.

“It’ll be fine,” Caduceus says, voice soft.  He sits up and the quilt falls into his lap.

“You don’t know that.”  Fjord grips the sheet with his fingers, absently grateful that his claws are filed down so he doesn’t have to worry about tearing up the fabric.

“I know it’s very likely,” Caduceus says.

“You’re the one who says dreams mean something,” Fjord says.  To his horror, he feels his throat tightening.

“They do,” Caduceus says, and scoots towards him.  Fjord looks away but Caduceus takes his face in his hands.  “Look at me?”

Fjord looks.  Caduceus looks soft, breakable, smiling at him through a curtain of tangled hair.

“They do,” Caduceus repeats.  “But I think this one just means you’re afraid.”

---

Caduceus is right. Everything is fine.

When they go back to Bluecove, Essek drops them off in Nicodranas, because it is the closest he has been and he knows a perfectly clear room to teleport into. None of them suggest that it’s worth the risk of teleporting to an unfamiliar place to get closer—with a month-old child, it absolutely isn’t. Fjord might be willing to risk a twenty-foot plummet but he is not willing to risk that with his newborn daughter.

His daughter. He can’t get over that, not for the month they spent at the Blooming Grove, not now that they are returning home with promises to visit again soon. Can’t get over the miracle of her existence, how small her feet are, the curve of her little ears. Her skin is very soft but she isn’t furry the same way Caduceus is, although her ears are fuzzy like a lamb’s. Her skin is moonstone grey. Her eyes are a golden amber, closer to Fjord’s than Caduceus’. She is a little smaller than your average firbolg baby, Constance tells him, but that doesn’t mean anything because so was Caduceus.

Constance Clay is the first person to hold her. She howls in her grandmother’s arms while someone makes a quip about lung capacity. Then Caduceus gets her, and somehow quiets her to ask for the blessing of the Wildmother on her before giving her to Fjord. So Fjord is the third, and he stares at her perfect little face and then he cries until she starts crying again in some underdeveloped sympathetic response.

“All babies cry a lot, right?” he says, wiping at his face with his sleeve.

“Some more than others,” Constance says.

Fjord doesn’t know what he was like and he wishes he did, just for comparison. “What about Caduceus? Did he cry a lot?”

“Nope,” Calliope answers. “Quietest baby ever. The first night they had him Mom thought he’d died.”

Constance asks her name hours later. Caduceus is asleep then and Fjord is holding her, staring at her face. He can’t stop staring at her.

“Cormorant,” Fjord says. “Cormorant Clay.”

Constance smiles. “That’s a good name,” she says.

Corrin makes a quiet sign of invocation above her. “Clear skies, little bird.”

So it transpires that Essek is the first outside the Clay family to hold her, because when he arrives to bring them home at Caduceus’ request, Fjord offers immediately.

“I—don’t know how,” Essek says, stiffly, like it hurts to admit.

“One arm here,” Fjord says, like he’s become an expert on baby holding—which to be fair, he has.  He shows Essek how to support her head.  She stares up at him. He stares back.

“She looks like you,” Essek says, finally. Fjord half expects him to shove her back at the first opportunity but once she’s in his arms, he holds her for a long time.

They offer for him to come back to Bluecove with them, too, but he declines. He clearly thinks about it, though. If Fjord had known all it took to win Essek over was a baby—well, he probably wouldn’t have had one years ago, but it is a thought.

It is nearly a day’s ride to Bluecove from Nicodranas, and slowed with a baby the sun is dropping down over the horizon by the time they arrive. The market is shutting down, but people are still out, lighting candles, hanging lanterns. Sildar is packing away his goods when they pass through and he greets them loud enough to summon half the street.

It feels like a dream. Cormorant feels like a dream, too precious and perfect a thing to be born of him. His neighbors spilling over, offering congratulations and commenting and giving advice and offering to bring food, some old clothes their child outgrew, looking at her. Surrounded by a crowd of people all looking at him and sensing nothing but sincerity and love is a feeling Fjord suspects he will never get used to.

The cottage is clean and the shelves are stocked. Olivia has left a note on the table— hope you don’t mind the intrusion; I remember wanting it when I had a child —and Fjord feels oddly like he’s going to cry when he reads it. He doesn’t, but it feels like it, like he is a cup spilling over.

Cory sleeps in the crib that night, on and off. She needs a bottle about every four hours; when she doesn’t wake on time, Fjord does anyway, and stands beside her looking at her sleeping face in the perfect spill of moonlight, his own indescribable joy itching underneath his skin.

“Fjord,” Caduceus says, softly. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Fjord says. “You can go to sleep.”

“I woke up since you were gone,” Caduceus says, plainly. “Why are you up? She’s all right.”

“I—“ Fjord shakes his head. “I am very happy.”

“Oh,” Caduceus says. “Me too. Can you be happy in bed with me?”

“Always,” Fjord returns with some emphasis, just to see Caduceus flush a little as the meaning becomes clear. “Alright. Let’s go to bed.”

“She’ll wake us up plenty,” Caduceus says, yawning.  “You’ll see.”

Fjord thinks of her perfect little face as they lie back down and fits Caduceus into his arms. She might keep them up, but when he looks at her he doesn’t think he’ll ever find it in him to mind.

---

“Your turn,” Fjord says, shaking Caduceus’ shoulder when he wakes to the dulcet tones of Cormorant shrieking her lungs out. Caduceus doesn’t stir. “Your turn, Caduceus. Deucey.”

Caduceus groans and sits up. Fjord has grown accustomed to exercising extreme care in bed with Caduceus given how light a sleeper he is, and it would be rewarding to watch him unlearn hypervigilance if it didn’t mean that Fjord had to listen to Cormorant continue to cry.  “Didn’t she just eat?” Caduceus says.

Fjord checks the clock; it’s too soon for another bottle.  “Diaper?” he suggests.

The idea that their baby might be experiencing discomfort does get Caduceus out of bed.  The crying stops shortly thereafter and Fjord slips back into a doze.  He’s most of the way asleep when Caduceus returns, rocking Cory, singing under his breath.

“Get her diaper changed?” Fjord mumbles.

“She’s fine,” Caduceus says.  “Just wants to be held.”

“Put her back to bed.”

“I tried.  She starts crying again.”

Fjord squints at them.  Cormorant does seem perfectly happy now, carefully cradled.

“Maybe she’s asleep,” Fjord suggests.

Caduceus looks long-suffering, but dutifully goes to put her in the crib.  He has barely vanished down the hall when the crying starts again.  Caduceus returns, arms still full of quarter-orc half-firbolg baby.

“What did your parents do?” Fjord asks.

“I don’t know,” Caduceus says.  “Cast Silence and ignore us, maybe.”

“Would that...work?”

“No,” Caduceus says.  “It only lasts ten minutes.”

Fjord’s eyes slip shut again.  “Okay...”

He feels rather than sees the sweep of Caduceus’ hair against his cheek when he bends down and the kiss is pressed to his temple.  “I have her.  Go to sleep.”

Pre-baby, Fjord thinks he would have considered it noble to stay up, to insist on keeping Caduceus company. Now he knows better—he nods blearily and passes out again instantly.

Those first few months are simultaneously the most wonderful and most terrifying time of Fjord’s life. Seeing her grow—her hair turn from dark fuzz to soft black curls, her gaze grow sharper, how she begins to babble what might be halfway words although she still cries for attention more often, the first time Fjord hears her laugh and just bursts into tears in the entryway—it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

On the other hand, he’s nervous the second she’s out of his sight, exhausted half the time she’s in it. When he gets in bed at night he deliberately doesn’t think about how long it will last, staring up at the ceiling.

Soft footsteps. The door opens and Caduceus slips in.

“Cory?” Fjord asks, quietly, as he shuts the door.

“Asleep,” Caduceus says.  “For now.”  He sounds rueful.  For his part, Fjord entertains frequent vivid daydreams about their daughter sleeping through the night.  In the meantime, they alternate.

Exhaustion stands out on Caduceus in a way that Fjord wouldn’t have recognized five years ago.  Now he knows him so well that he can spot every shade darker the bruises under his eyes become, every breath that comes a little bit heavier, the way he walks extra-perfectly when his body is trying to limp on his crippled knee.  Fjord sometimes offers to take over more of it, but Caduceus always refuses, and Fjord doesn’t have any parental advice to back up an objection when Caduceus insists on an even load.

Besides, even through the obvious strain of it, Caduceus is crystal clear, over-flowingly happy. Fjord recognizes that because he is too—it is a life he could not have imagined before and yet somehow it is a perfect match to what he has always wanted.

It is strange to be a parent.  It makes him hate his absent ones, the ones who left him on the steps of an orphanage, in a way that he has never really felt before.  Before, he had always justified it somehow—he was a half-orc.  He was just Fjord.  But it is less comprehensible from the other end of the telescope, the father to the child. He feels his love for Cory so fiercely.  It makes it easier to hate anyone, even the shadowy image of a person, who would not.

Caduceus strips off his shirt to change for bed.  Fjord watches him do it, in the shaft of moonlight through the window.  The glow of it illuminates the myriad lattice of scars on Caduceus’ torso.  Fjord has them too, all the little and big cuts from battle, and the few deeper wounds—the burn scars on Caduceus, and the dual knife marks in his back; the heavy scar that spreads straight across the middle of Fjord’s chest.

“Hard to believe it’s all over,” Fjord says, looking at Caduceus’ back when he turns to retrieve a nightshirt from the drawer.

“What is?”

“The—fighting.  The everything.”

“It’s not over,” Caduceus says.

Fjord’s heart stops. For a second, his heartbeat pounding too loud in his ears, he is convinced he has misheard. “What?”

“We won the battles,” Caduceus says.  “But the war isn’t over, is it?  Uk’otoa is still out there.  That dragon.  Maybe someday Isharnai figures out what Jester did.”

“Do you think they’ll come for us?” Fjord asks, sharply.

“No,” Caduceus says, and then catches the wild look on Fjord’s face.  “Oh, no.  No.  That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean,” Fjord asks, heart hammering.

“We wouldn’t be here if I thought we wouldn’t be safe,” Caduceus says, as usual knowing exactly what Fjord is thinking, although this time he thinks his train of thought may be obvious.  Caduceus drops the shirt on the bed and comes over to Fjord and hugs him.  Fjord’s fingers automatically find the knife scars and cover them, as though stopping some ancient bleed.

“It’s not over, but we’re safe?”

“It’s more like,” Caduceus says, slowly.  “A forest.  It grows, and dies, and grows.  Something is growing now and will be growing still.  The world is a forest.  There was a terrible beast in it, and we drove it away, but someday it will come again.  Maybe that will be a long time from now.  Someone else will pick up the sword.”

Caduceus’ voice is a low rumble in his chest; Fjord can feel it with Caduceus pressed against him.  It makes his frantic heartbeat settle down.  “We’re safe,” Fjord says.

“We’re safe.  Cory is safe.  We have done what we were called to do, and the Wildmother has rewarded us.  Maybe someday there will be more to do.  But I think we have found good work here.”

Fjord nods.  “And as her champion...”

“As her champion, you’ve saved people and slain monsters.  It’s good work.  So is this.”

“Being here?”  Fjord tries to imagine what work the Wildmother could have for him here.  All it conjures is an image of Uk’otoa, lurking out in the ocean for him.

“Putting down roots,” Caduceus says.  “Growing things.”

Fjord nods.  “She’s okay with that?”

“It’s nature,” Caduceus says.  “No one can fight forever.  One way to be a champion is to confront the darkness.”

Fjord has done that.  Uk’otoa.  Obann.  So many monsters.  He has wielded his blade gladly, for her.  “And the other way?”

“To make light,” Caduceus says.

---

Fjord is giving Cory her bottle when Caduceus looks up, all of a sudden, from the herbs he’s carefully tying into bundles at the kitchen table.  “Fjord,” he says.

“Yes?” Fjord looks up from Cory, who is still sucking happily.  A single spot of white pokes through her bottom gumline—a little early for a human, apparently, but Fjord would bet anything it’s a tusk coming in.

He prays she will never have cause to hate them.  His are grown in fully, these days, visible to all.  He’s...not not-proud of them, anyway.  And there was real delight in Caduceus‘ voice when he pointed out that first speck of tusk to Fjord, so—he thinks he’ll be fine with it.  He is fine with it.

The truth is they don’t really know how things will turn out.  Beau and Caleb, to no real surprise, have failed to turn up any information about half-firbolg quarter-orc quarter-human babies—or half-firbolg anything, really.  Firbolg keep to themselves, mostly.  Keep to their own kind.

So they play it by ear.  Fjord is terrified, a little, and sometimes Caduceus smiles when he mentions things about how fast she’ll grow up and when she’ll start talking and all of those little uncertain milestones, and so he knows that Caduceus is terrified too.  At least they’re in it together.

Caduceus says, still very quiet, “When she’s in bed tonight, will you do something with me?”

“Of course,” Fjord says.  He does not ask what it is.  If Caduceus is asking, if Caduceus needs him, it will always be a yes.

Caduceus nods.  He goes back to the herbs, until Cormorant finishes the bottle.  Then he comes with Fjord when he tucks her in.

“Reading to her tonight?” Caduceus asks.  She likes Fjord’s voice, although he’s not really sure how much she understands of the stories.  Some of them are very simple, things she probably could understand if she really had words yet—baby dragon gets bottle, baby dragon plays with toy, baby dragon goes to bed.  Some of her books are well beyond the comprehension of a year-old baby, even of a short-lived species.  Fjord suspects that Caleb understands very little about child development.

“You should sing,” Fjord says, instead, because she likes that too and he thinks it may help settle Caduceus, who still has an odd frightened energy about him.  It feels like a ritual, and Fjord knows how those can bring comfort.

And he would be lying if he said that he didn’t like to listen to it, also.

Caduceus nods.  He comes over to the crib and stands next to Fjord, leans into him.  Fjord recognizes the song he begins without comprehending it—it is in Sylvan, almost like Elven but more musical somehow.  He has sung it to Cory before.  Fjord tucks an arm around him, enjoying the way his deep voice seems to vibrate from his chest, steadying him.

Cormorant goes to sleep easily. Fjord feels relieved, but Caduceus doesn’t look it.

“Okay,” Fjord says, once they’ve stolen quietly out of the bedroom.  “What are we doing?”

“This is,” Caduceus says, instead of answering, “Very selfish of me.”

“Even better,” Fjord says, meaning it.  Caduceus deserves the damn world.  Fjord can’t give it to him so he will give Caduceus everything else he can, particularly the things he tries to deny himself.

Caduceus nods but then just stands there for a moment.  Fjord draws him into a quick, tight hug.  I am with you, he tries to say with it.  It seems to steady Caduceus a little.  When he draws back he walks to the cupboard, comes back with incense.  Goes out to the garden and comes back with a squash, which he cuts swiftly in half.  Lights the incense.  The fragrant smoke swells.  Caduceus lights the gourd and it burns odd but sweet.  An offering.

“Commune?” Fjord asks, quietly.

“Divination,” Caduceus says.  “I need—more than a yes or no.”

Fjord nods.  Caduceus sits up, hands on his knees, palms upward.  Fjord puts his hands in his and lets Caduceus grip his fingers tightly, grounds him.  Slowly, the grip loosens as the trance takes hold.

Fjord knows, somehow, maybe because he feels Her too or maybe because he can see it in the way Caduceus’ posture shifts, when the Wildmother is listening. And Caduceus says, “I want to know about Cormorant.  With what she is—if nothing out of the ordinary happens—no bad illness, or injury or accident or curse.  In a natural life.  How long will she have?”

Fjord hears the Wildmother’s voice when She answers.  It is a woman’s voice, warm, motherly, and at the same time it is the wind, and the wave, and the crackle of the fire.  And she says, “Oh, my Clay.  With what she is, she may live a hundred and twenty summers.”

Fjord is shot through with relief.  His deepest fear was that something about firbolg and half-orc was incompatible, that she would die terribly young.  His second deepest was that she might age so slowly he didn’t live to see her grow up.  A hundred and twenty years—that was good.  Like Jester, like a tiefling or something.  A longer-than-human life but not so long Fjord wouldn’t see her grow up, that she couldn’t marry and have children and see them grow up if that was where her life went.

“Thank you,” Caduceus says.  Fjord feels Her somehow, how the wind seems to embrace Caduceus. The smoke from the incense and burnt offering clear.  Caduceus comes out of the trance looking into Fjord’s eyes.

“Hey,” Fjord says, uncertain.

Caduceus draws his hands back.  Very slowly, he cleans up.  Fjord watches, uncertainly, as he moves the incense to the bucket of things to burn and the cabbage to the pail that will go out to the compost heap.  He washes his hands.  Then he turns back to Fjord.

“Now we know,” Fjord says, very quietly.  He is waiting.  It would be cruel to say it before Caduceus is ready, but worse to ignore it.

A hundred and twenty years is a long time for Fjord.  He will go before Cory does and he will be able to raise her.  Nature has been kind.

She has not been kind to Caduceus, who has always known that he will be young when he buries his husband and now knows he will be young, too, when he buries his daughter.

“We do,” Caduceus says.  For a second Fjord thinks that will be all, that Caduceus will make an excuse and go to bed.  But he stands there for a split second and Fjord, helpless, feeling guilty at his own relief when he knows it only brings Caduceus pain, opens his arms.

Caduceus crosses the room in two even strides and before Fjord has fully embraced him he is weeping.

“I’m sorry,” Fjord says, rubbing slow circles into his back.  “I’m sorry, Deucey.”

“It’s good,” Caduceus says.  He has the uncanny ability to speak clearly through his tears, which Fjord knows are still coming because he can feel them, damp and cold against his neck.  “She’ll have you. She’ll grow up with you. You shouldn’t lose your parents too young.”

“You shouldn’t bury your children,” Fjord says, softly.

“I think I knew,” Caduceus says. “I knew it—it would always be shorter. This isn’t—it’s a good number, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Fjord says. “Enough time.”

“Alright,” Caduceus says. He breathes in, and out. The tears stop. “Alright.”

“You’re allowed to be sad,” Fjord says. “You’re allowed to—mourn.”

“For what?” Caduceus says. “You are here. She is asleep in the next room. All of you—Caleb and Jester and Nott and Beau and Yasha, I have you all still. I’ll grieve when I bury you and not before.”

“I love you,” Fjord says, in quiet awe. He isn’t sure, sometimes, how Caduceus lives with the weight of these things.

“I love you too,” Caduceus says, and as though he is reading Fjord’s mind—which Fjord knows he doesn’t, and merely knows him enough to guess—he adds, “You will go to the Mother, and I will go to Her and you, someday, so—in some ways I am the lucky one.”

“You won’t be alone,” Fjord promises. “Whatever happens—you won’t be alone.  Cory’ll have kids and they’ll have kids, and Luc will grow up and have them at some point.  Hell, we’ll adopt an elf baby.”

Caduceus laughs. “I think one is enough for now.”

As if she has inherited Caduceus’ preternatural hearing—she probably has, and that is a terrifying thought—Cory begins to babble in the other room.

“I’ve got her,” Caduceus says at the same time Fjord does, and so they go together—while they can, now, still—to coax her back to sleep.

---

Cory does, eventually, sleep through the night—the first time, Fjord is convinced she’s died—and start to use words, and crawl about, and that terrifies Fjord too, because she’ll go through any cupboard she can reach and Fjord is terrified she’ll eat something she shouldn’t and apparently he sounds sufficiently panicked about it during a Sending to Jester that Veth comes up from Nicodranas and spends a very pleasant afternoon childproofing their house and viciously mocking him for it.

Veth is a good resource, and Luc a good babysitter, not that they need it when half the village volunteers and there’s Jester, too, who makes books just for Cormorant full of drawings of genitalia that Fjord does not want to explain to her yet, and weirdly Essek comes by every month or so and says oblique things that make it impossible to know whether his and Caleb’s on-again-off-again thing is off or on, but at least Cormorant loves him.

Cormorant is loved. Fjord didn’t realize that this would be his biggest fear, not before he had her, but now that he does all he can think is that his greatest wish in the world is that she will never feel unwanted.

He doesn’t think she will. There are too many people telling her otherwise.

Fjord spends a lot of time with her, and when he does chores or runs errands or helps in the village or at the shore, he brings her often. Caduceus spends time with her, too, but he’s more likely to be called away. He has become the village’s healer and priest and that seems to have spilled out a little into the surrounding countryside, and Fjord knows Caduceus worries about how much people trust him but it hasn’t been misplaced yet and it isn’t, it can’t be with someone as good as Caduceus is.

Even so, he’s a little startled when he brings Cory down to buy fish and comes back up and there’s a teenage girl sitting outside in the garden, a rucksack at her side.

“Hello,” Fjord says. “Do you—need help?”

“I want to learn to be a midwife,” she says, solidly. “I’ll stay here until he says yes.”

“Err,” Fjord says. “Right.” He darts inside; Caduceus is chopping tomatoes with a little more force than necessary. “Caduceus, there’s a—“

“I know,” Caduceus says. Cormorant decides right when she hears his voice to squirm and reach for him, so Fjord hands her over and takes the knife from him.

“I told her to go home,” Caduceus says.  “But she won’t.  I was trying to be nice about it but maybe I should have been scary?  I can be scary.”

Caduceus can be, but he mostly looks a little lost, absently rocking Cory as he paces. Fjord thinks she’s a little big for it now—a year and a half—but she still prefers to nap in someone’s arms and what the hell does he know about child development, anyway?

“Why did you tell her to go?” Fjord is bewildered.  “I know we don’t have much room but I’m sure we could clear some space.  Or find her a room in the village.”

“I don’t mind giving her a place to stay,” Caduceus says.  “But she wants to be an apprentice and she can’t do that here.”

“An apprentice...?”

“Midwife,” he answers.  “One of the woman in Saulterwauld gave her my name.”

“You do that,” Fjord says.  “Don’t you?”  As far as Fjord is concerned a midwife delivers babies, and Fjord thinks that might be a third of the reason people come to their door.

“Sure.  But I’m not a teacher,” Caduceus says.  “Caleb is a teacher.”

“Yes?”  Fjord says.  “Well, you and Caleb would be different sorts of teachers.”  Caleb is a professor, Fjord is pretty sure.

“Caleb is a good teacher,” says Caduceus.

“You—you’re a great healer,” Fjord protests.  “And priest.  Caduceus, you taught me.”

“I brought you to Her,” Caduceus corrects.  “And you found your own way.  I’m not—it wouldn’t be a good idea, I don’t think. To take an apprentice. I wouldn’t know what to tell her.”

“Well,” Fjord says. “What would you tell me?”

“What?”

“If I needed to know how to deliver a baby.”

“We didn’t do that,” Caduceus says, blinking.  “We went all the way back home because you said it was such a terrible idea.”

“Okay,” Fjord says.  “But that was—me, not you. Not her. What’s her name?”

“Didn’t you ask?  You let her in.”

“I don’t remember,” Fjord says.  “Because I’m an idiot, which is also why I can’t deliver a baby.  But you can, and I think you could show someone else how to.  If you wanted.  You don’t have to,” he adds.  “But I know you could.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not even a healer,” he says. “I’m a gravekeeper. The healing is…incidental.”

“You saved all our lives,” Fjord says. “Multiple times. And a lot of the people in this village. And people we ran into all over the continent! If she wants to learn from you, I can’t think of anyone better.”

“I’m just making it up as I go,” he says. “I keep asking the Wildmother for help.”

“Well, if anyone knows, She does,” Fjord says. “Really it’s as much of a direct line as that girl could get.”

Caduceus blinks. “Well. I suppose so.”

“Talk it through with her,” Fjord says. “We can’t leave her sitting in the garden. If you still think it’s a bad idea, we’ll find someone to escort her home.”

“Alright,” Caduceus agrees. “…her name’s Rheada, she said.”

Fjord nods and heads back outside. Rheada hasn’t budged an inch, which Fjord supposes bodes well. “Rheada,” he says. “Come have dinner. I hope you like fish.”

---

Rheada is with them for three years. There isn’t a lot of room, but she makes herself useful—had three siblings herself, she says, which she and Caduceus promptly bond over—and it’s useful to have an extra set of hands with Cormorant, who seems to have developed a keen sense for trouble that sends her veering towards it like magnetism. She beelines for the water every time Fjord brings her down to the shoreline, splashing in the waves, staring out at the sunlight and calling back and forth to the gulls and terns and her namesake cormorants.

When she’s toddling around with no trouble, they go down in the summer afternoons to the shore and let her play in the sand, Rheada spending the afternoon reading or hanging out with the girls in the village as she pleases, enjoying the peace and absence of urgency that sometimes finds them in a place like this.

“She’s going to fall in love with the ocean,” Fjord frets as she splashes in the mud at the edge of the shore.

“And what if she does?” Caduceus is watching her carefully, as always—Fjord is always nervous about Cory getting hurt but he can’t imagine how he’d ever deal with it if Caduceus didn’t always have an eye on her, spotting trouble from miles away.

“What do I say? You can’t go out on a boat because a giant yellow-eyed tentacled sea snake fuck has it out for your dad?”

“Well,” Caduceus frowns, “I probably wouldn’t use the word fuck. And she could go out on a boat a little ways. If she wanted to fish.”

“Would it be a bad idea if she went out on the ocean? All the way, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” Caduceus says. “Only one way to know for sure, I think.”

“Oh, no. God, no.”

“What?” Caduceus blinks. “I was going to say we could ask Her, but—two ways, I suppose.”

“Oh. Gods.” Fjord laughs. “Oh, maybe. Yes. No stupid risks.”

“You used to be all about stupid risks,” Caduceus grins at him.

“I didn’t have a three year old ,” Fjord says, and then jerks his head up in time to see Cormorant pick up a starfish and shove it towards her mouth. “No, drop that!”

He leaps up and lunges across the beach towards her to the sound of Caduceus laughing.

---

Rheada doesn’t have magic, but Caduceus teaches her everything short of that, including how to make healing potions. Fjord is surprised when he walks in—once upon a time the sight was familiar, but they hardly need them anymore, have so many stocked up that even when Caduceus gives them out to patients they never worry about running out.

But of course Rheada may need her own someday, and Fjord takes a lot of joy in watching Caduceus slow the familiar movements, show her what to add and how to stir and check the heat.

Rheada seems strangely amazed, watching how the liquid changes, recognizing the magic in this in ways that the usual things—the stitches and the wound-cleaning and the symptoms of flu—do not seem to reflect so well.

It turns deep red, like cherries, and Caduceus smiles. “Good job,” he tells her.

“You’re a good teacher,” Rheada says, abruptly, and then stands up and darts outside, as though embarrassed.

Caduceus smiles, a half-uncertain hopeful version of his typical expression, like an uncertain reach for what he anticipates will be joy, if it’s real.  “Am I?” he asks Fjord.

“I could have told you that,” Fjord says.  “Yes. A good one to me and to her. The Wildmother,” he elaborates, when he catches confusion in Caduceus’ look. “You taught me about her.”

“Oh,” he says.  “That’s different. Faith is different. Faith is easy to explain. This is...Caleb is a good teacher,” he adds, as though this is an explanation.  He measures the potion into three bottles, pouring slowly to not spill a drop.

“I’ve heard that,” Fjord says hesitantly, because the wizard is certainly beloved as a professor although Fjord hasn’t exactly studied magic with him.  He isn’t sure what Caduceus’s angle is, though.

“Caleb is much smarter than I am,” Caduceus says, bluntly.  He sets the empty pot down and begins stoppering the bottles.

“I think that can make you a worse teacher,” Fjord says. “If things come easy to you it can be hard to explain to others, especially if they’re struggling. If they don’t, you know what it’s like to try to figure it out and can help them more.  Not that you’re not smart,” Fjord tacks on hastily.  “Just that—“

“I know what you meant,” Caduceus interjects gently. “Thank you, Fjord. And thank you, Rheada. That was kind of you to say.”

Fjord turns; Rheada is in the doorway.  Caduceus’ preternatural hearing must have alerted him to her approach, although Fjord hadn’t noticed.

“I mean it,” she says, stepping the rest of the way inside.  She sets down the water pail, although Fjord suspects she only fetched it as an excuse to duck out for a moment.

“It’s still kind of you to say,” Caduceus says, turning to face her. “I would like to thank you too, actually. Thank you for coming here and for insisting. I’ve never taught anyone healing before, and I was afraid to do it wrong. But I know this was the right thing to do, now, and I’m glad you pushed me towards that path and grateful you’re here.”

Rheada looks a little dumbstruck. Fjord can relate. The full force of Caduceus’ utter sincerity is overwhelming.

“I’m—thanks,” she says.  “Yes. Me too.”

He holds out a bottle to her. “Here.”

“I don’t—mine?”

“You made it.”

“It’s real?”

“Yes,” Caduceus says.  “They came out well. You did great.”

“I’m a healer,” she says, in an odd tone.  “This could save someone’s life.”

“You will,” Caduceus says, with the sort of conviction that leaves no room for anyone hearing it to hold their own doubt.

---

It never quite leaves Caduceus, that he will lose Cormorant someday—Fjord sees flashes of it when he watches him watching her, sometimes. There is a terrible sadness that he carries, and Fjord only guesses now that he can see it when Caduceus watches the back of Cormorant that he might have it for Fjord, too. But that sadness, however it lives, he is good at hiding. He has not learned this one yet.

Even so, they don’t talk about it, not until the day at the wharf. Rheada is running errands, trying to prove herself useful, which she is as she’s better with her coppers and silvers than Fjord’s husband has ever been. Cory is leading Fjord around with an iron-grip on his pant leg, tugging him about like an oversized dog. It’s sheer luck that Caduceus is already down on the docks--it’s because one of the fisherwomen, Eleanor, shouts down the pier to him, and he comes to have a look at the stitches he put in her arm where a broken lobster basket sliced through it three weeks ago.

That’s when the shouting starts. There’s commotion, sometimes, and Fjord is far enough down into the market—past not only the boats but the fish stalls, standing by while Cormorant pokes eagerly at the iron wares before the tolerant blacksmith. And then the shouting turns to screaming turns to someone shouting for Fjord, specifically. He has to find Rheada and shove Cory firmly into her arms so she won’t follow, and then figure out what the hell is going on, which is that Caduceus is in the water.

Fjord has it on good authority that Caduceus rarely actually fancies a swim, and certainly not the way he’s done it now, which seems to involve being under the dock. Fjord leans over and swings a hand down, and Caduceus splashes and says, “Water breathing, on the both of us—“ and then Fjord sees the child.

He casts the spell in a panicked haze. He’s seen her before—Sedona, the half-elf, Caduceus delivered her perhaps two summers ago. She slipped off the pier, someone says, and the undertow swept her beneath the wood, and then she was caught beneath it. There are several men on the dock, soaked through, and Fjord guesses they’d tried to pull her free before resorting to sending a healer down there, to—what? Try to keep her alive? Caduceus has some ability to control water, Fjord knows, but he probably didn’t even ask for the spells today. Why would he? Long gone are the days when he might need a wave to shatter the hull of a pirate ship, or to try and slow a dragon turtle in their path.

“They can breathe,” Fjord says, and gets out of the way of the man who has come back with a hatchet and dives in, too, hacking at the wood she has become wedged in to free them.

Caduceus hands her up to him, arms shaking. Sedona is tiny and drenched, ears poking through her soaked mass of hair, and her father is clutching at her and she is sobbing but breathing, her heart beating, alive and whole if badly frightened. Fjord hauls Caduceus up after, with Anders’ help, and that of another man he doesn’t know. Caduceus is shaking. The whole thing is a blur but Sedona is—fine, she’s fine, she’s alive, there is a red wool blanket around her, someone with a house nearby has brought a towel for Caduceus.

Fine. Everyone’s fine, and safe, and none the worse except for some seawater. He tries to calm his breathing, slow his heart rate. It works to an extent.

“Melora,” Fjord murmurs, when everyone has broken apart. He only relaxes the rest of the way when he spots Rheada, arms stubbornly tight around the middle of Cory, who is squirming. “That had to be close. Good job, keeping her head above water.”

“I didn’t,” Caduceus says. “I didn’t—have the spells.”

“You—what?” Rheada lets Cory go when they reach them, and Caduceus accepts the hug she gives even though he’s soaked through. He does slip something into Fjord’s palm, surreptitiously, before hauling her up over his shoulder.

The way he does it compels Fjord to feel the object with his thumb inside his closed fist instead of in the light. It’s a ring—it’s Caduceus’ ring—and he traces the familiar shape and then freezes, when the angled silver of the setting pricks his finger, as it slips into the space where the diamond used to sit.

“Gods,” Fjord says. “Did you—“

“I don’t know if it was the right thing,” Caduceus says, shifting Cory downward—she’s giggling—so he can speak without being directly in her ear. “It was dark and it felt like—holding Cory—and I—”

“She’s a baby,” Fjord says. “It was the right thing.”

“I didn’t ask—“

“You don’t need to ask,” Fjord says, sharply, too sharply, and then softens his tone. “You don’t need to ask. You know Her. You know it’s the right thing.”

Caduceus releases a shuddering breath. Nods. Swings Cory up to ear level again. “We’re both going to need a bath,” he informs her.

“I don’t need a bath!”

“You hugged me and I was all covered in ocean goo, so now you have it too,” Caduceus says.

“Ocean goo,” she repeats, and giggles. Fjord’s thumb worries at the empty setting in the ring and tries to focus on her laughter and nothing else.

“I’m going to lose her,” Caduceus says in bed that night. “Her, and you, and—I understand , but I—”

“You can be sad,” Fjord says. “Or angry. You can understand something and that doesn’t make it easier , Caduceus. It doesn’t make it okay .”

“It’s a natural thing,” Caduceus says.

“So are—volcanos. So are storms. And poisonous plants,” Fjord says. “Just because She watches over it, Caduceus, you don’t have to love it.”

“I think I’m angry,” Caduceus admits. “I think—even if I’d thought She wouldn’t like it—I would have tried to bring Sedona back.”

“I think She understands,” Fjord says. “You said—it’s natural. It’s natural for a father to want his children to outlive him.”

“Melora willing,” Caduceus says, quietly.

“Melora willing, she won’t,” Fjord says. “Melora willing, you’ll both die old and grey and surrounded by so many grandchildren you can’t name them all. And she’ll have lived such a full life you won’t wish to bring her back.”

“When did you get wise?” Caduceus asks, half-joking.

“I was wise before,” Fjord says, and then amends. “Well, maybe not. Wise enough to marry you, I guess.”

Caduceus smiles at him. In this bed is the most gratitude Fjord has ever felt for his orcish heritage, that it lets him better see Caduceus’ expressions in the darkness, and the image stays with him when his eyes close and he sleeps better for it.

---

Eventually, Rheada leaves. She’s gone from teenager to young woman which is almost as much of a shock as the way that little Cormorant has gone from baby to young girl, and she no longer darts back to Caduceus to check everything she does, and half the time the village lets her take care of things without running to fetch her mentor. She and Caduceus talk around it for a couple of months beforehand—that she’s out of things to learn, that she’s a grown woman, that she can always come back if she needs help.

For her part, Rheada fluctuates between resolve and terror—pride that she’s done what she came to do and that Saulterwauld won’t be sending anyone who needs help on a desperate journey, worry that she’s not ready to do it alone.

“We’re not far,” Caduceus says, even though she does not say the latter in so many words. “You won’t be alone.”

“I know,” she says, and hugs them both too tightly.

The house feels empty for a while once she’s gone, but nothing can feel too empty with Cormorant tearing in and out of it, and they have visitors—Veth and Yeza and Luc, frequently, and Jester, and still Essek but sometimes with Caleb which Fjord has taken as definitive proof that their relationship is ‘on’. They get letters more than visits from Beau, as her Expositor duties seem to be taking her all around the continent. From Yasha they will get long periods of silence and then suddenly she’ll arrive in Bluecove and spend the whole season with them, wandering the village, sitting out on the cliff and pointing out all the different stars to Cormorant, flipping through her book of flowers and telling her all the names.

Caduceus is called out more nights than he was when Rheada was there, and even though it’s technically easier since Cory can feed and bathe and entertain herself, she’s also more willing to be vocal about the ways in which she does not want to share her father with the village. Fjord grins at the way she sulks in the doorway when one of Caduceus’ patient’s wives comes to tell him their baby is on the way. She lurks in the corner scowling until he turns around to bid her farewell.

“Be good,” he says, seriously, kneeling to kiss her on the forehead.

She pouts. “Will you come kiss me goodnight?”

“I won’t be home yet. But I will when I get home.”

“Then,” Cory says, slyly, “Maybe I won’t be good. You won’t know.”

“The Wildmother will tell me.” He pauses at the counter to twist his long hair and pin it up out of the way.

“She will not!” But she sneaks a glance at Fjord, as though she isn’t really sure. He shrugs at her; he has an excellent poker face. Cory turns back. “…will she really?”

“She tells me everything,” Caduceus says, with a slight smile. “So be good.”

“ Fiiiiine. ” Long and drawn out, as though it is a terrible inconvenience. “Even though you’re leaving .”

“And then I’m coming back. Such is life. The tide will go and come back. The spring will go and come back. And I will go and come back. And if this baby isn’t too long in coming I might even make it back before the sun does.” He is gathering herbs now, checking labels on jars, rolling them up neatly into the bag.

“Are you going to race it?” Cory demanded.

“No.”

“Why not? I want you to.”

“It’s much faster than I am and going much further. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“To who?”

“To the baby, who would not like to be born while I argue with you,” he answers, closing the satchel and slinging it over his shoulder. “I’ll be home soon.” He’s taking a step from the counter when Fjord moves to meet him, and they kiss, an easy and automatic thing. But there’s nothing perfunctory about it; Caduceus’ arms slip around Fjord’s neck and Fjord’s hand tightens on his upper arm and although they break apart after only a moment there’s a fragment of time when it seems as though they won’t let go at all.

But of course they do, and the only reason Fjord isn’t troubled by it in the slightest is because Caduceus will be home, because this is their place, because they have had years and will have many more years and Fjord can never mind it when Caduceus is out helping others, even when it means feeding dinner to a sulky Cory and reading to her and tucking her in for the evening by himself, and lying in bed waiting until he hears Caduceus’ footsteps and the door of the bedroom and the familiar pattern of him getting ready for bed.

Fjord sits up and Caduceus hears the rustle of sheets.

“You get her to bed okay?”

“I thought the Wildmother was going to tell you all about that,” Fjord teases.

Caduceus pauses to yawn before he returns the teasing smile. “The Wildmother lives beyond the Divine Gate and makes her will known through her followers. Why trouble her when her paladin is already here, doing her work?”

“In that case,” Fjord laughs, “On behalf of the Wildmother, I can tell you she was very good. We read Jester’s Blink Dog book again. Which I’m sure you’ll mention to her in the morning so she remembers you can read minds.”

“It’ll be so much less fun when she gets old enough to realize that her fathers might talk to each other when she’s not in the room,” Caduceus muses, laying down.

Fjord falls back against the pillows as well, frowning. “Or to find all the dicks Jessie painted in that book.”

“Something to look forward to when she’s older,” Caduceus assures him.

“Much older, I hope,” Fjord murmurs, and if he adds that to his next prayer to Melora, well, that’s between them.

---

Fjord dreams that Caduceus is drowning. It’s a strange blur of memory, because he’s seen Caduceus sinking in the water before, trying not to choke on a mouthful of sea, shivering on the deck afterwards—but this is not the Caduceus he knew then, strange and young and naïve. No one could accuse Caduceus of being naïve anymore, and although Fjord thinks there will always be something of the otherworldly about him, something fae and divine, it does not feel strange anymore. It feels beautiful and familiar. He is still young, of course—will be young when Fjord is dead and in the ground, he thinks ruefully, but not young in the way he was then.

And this Caduceus who drowns is not strange and young and naïve. His hair is streaked white, tangling about his face as he struggles in the water. The scars, multitudinous and old, spiderwebbing across his arms where the soaked fabric falls back, are the same ones that Fjord can feel slightly raised above the rest of the skin when he holds Caduceus at night. He is not wearing his green beetle armor, just the green tunic over a linen shirt, the brown coat mottled with embroidered leaves that Fjord had bought him the winter before billowing behind him. The hand that claws upward wears the ring Fjord gave him as he chokes and sinks deeper.

Fjord shouts, but no sound carries—he reaches for him, but it is as though he is looking at a painting that he can’t reach into, and Caduceus drowns, and drowns, and drowns, and Fjord swims through nothing and gets no closer.  Caduceus breathes water, eventually, and Fjord watches in helpless horror as it fills his lungs, as his eyes slip shut, and he wakes gasping as though he were the one drowning.

He sits bolt upright, and the room is still and dark around him, and Caduceus, breathing steadily, stirs only because Fjord has moved.

“Alright?” Caduceus says, blearily, still mostly asleep.

“Fine,” Fjord says, and watches him sink back into sleep, peacefully, not at all like plunging into the water.

I think this one just means you’re afraid, Caduceus says some five years past, and Fjord wonders if part of him always will be.

He’s okay with that, he thinks. If the cost of having something as precious and beautiful as this is always being a fraction afraid that you will lose it, it is the cheapest price he has ever paid.

---

On what Fjord eventually comes to think of as the Last Day, he takes Cormorant down to the shore.  Caduceus is settling down to garden when they leave and mentions plans to bake later; he makes mushroom and moss sandwiches and packages them up for Fjord while Fjord does the breakfast dishes. He and Cory are going to dig for clams; she is impatient, clutching a little spade and a bucket. Partly because Cory is so little-kid overdramatically annoyed about it and partly because his breath still catches a little when Caduceus looks up at him from the vegetables backlit by the rising sun, Fjord stops on the way out the gate and kisses him deeply.  It’s strange to have to bend down to kiss him when he’s used to tilting his head up.

It’s a clear day, although Fjord can see heavy storm clouds gathering to the north. It will drift south towards them soon, if Caduceus’ faint limp is any indication, but not yet.

They find a lot of clams, filling Cory’s little bucket and then Fjord’s larger one.  She gets spectacularly dirty, in a way he thought she might have outgrown at seven, but she only seems to relish it more with the understanding of what it means.  He dunks her in the sea to wash it off and she shrieks with laughter. The afternoon is perfect and golden. Fjord has the thought, I am happy , and that thought folds oddly clear into his memory, with the mud and the clams and the storm clouds and kissing Caduceus in the garden.

The house is empty when Fjord and Cormorant return. This does not particularly trouble Fjord, although it is going into the evening. Caduceus’ coat, staff, and medicine bag are absent.  He has left no note, but he usually does not; Fjord assumes he has been called away by some medical need.  The bread, baked earlier, is on the tray on top of the stove unsliced.  Fjord opens the icebox—the ice block itself enchanted to never melt, a gift from Essek—and finds that Caduceus has already cleaned and dressed the salmon with citrus and rosemary, and it’s all ready to put in the oven.  Fjord does this, and slices the bread, and Cory recounts most of their mutual adventure at the shore back to him even though he also experienced it.  He reads to her the next chapter of the novel Caleb sent without lighting a candle; his orcish darkvision is good enough.

As he reads, the storm drifts south.  The rain is coming down by the time he goes to bed, and he is woken in the night repeatedly by sharp bursts of lightning through the window.  He is vaguely annoyed at his disturbed sleep; he had thought he had ceased to be unsettled by storms, but it still brings back odd memories without Caduceus beside him.

He will sleep better tomorrow, he thinks, when the storm has passed and Caduceus has returned, and it is oddly that thought that lulls him to sleep.  He doesn’t, of course, but that is the beauty of every moment of the Last Day—he doesn’t know it yet.  He is still the dreamer slipping into the beginnings of the nightmare, not yet unnerved, expecting to rest untroubled, anticipating the certainty of the coming dawn.