Part Twenty-Two — How Far We’d Actually Come

　We ended up back in the same border town where all of this had technically started――the one with the general store, the shopkeeper who'd nearly refused Fenrik's coin, the inn where three thugs had learned an expensive lesson about who they were threatening.

　Pure coincidence, or as close to coincidence as our loose circuit ever really allowed.

　The shopkeeper recognized us.

　I want to be clear about how satisfying that was.

"You're――"

　He stopped himself, visibly recalculating whether bringing it up was wise.

"We are," I said, pleasantly. "Don't worry. We're just here for supplies. No hard feelings, so long as the coin's still good."

　He took our business without another word, notably more careful with Fenrik's purchases than his own hands seemed to require.

　Small justice.

　Doesn't fix everything wrong with how the world sorts people.

　Still feels good, watching him remember.

　That evening, back at the same inn, sitting at more or less the same table, Fenrik brought it up unprompted.

"Feels different," he said, looking around the room like he was measuring it against a memory. "Being back here. I was ready to sleep outside that first night. Figured that was just how it'd always be."

"And now?"

"Now I've got a whole list of towns where people actually know my name for reasons that aren't 'the beastkin who got turned away.'"

　He said it lightly, but there was real weight underneath the lightness――the kind of thing you only get to say once you've actually lived your way into believing it.

　That's not nothing.

　That's everything, actually, dressed up as an offhand comment.

"You earned all of that yourself," I said. "I just happened to be standing there the first time."

"You did more than happen to be standing there. But sure. Let's split the credit, if it makes you less insufferable about it."

　Doran, across the table, had been quiet through most of this――not the guarded quiet he'd worn in our early days together, but something more settled, more at ease with simply listening.

"You've changed too, you know," I told him. "Less twitchy about doors than you used to be."

"I still check them."

"Sure. But you don't watch them like you're expecting the worst anymore. Just habit now. Not fear."

　He considered that for a long moment, like he was testing whether it was true before agreeing to it.

"...Maybe," he said finally. "Been a while since I had reason to expect the worst walking through one. That's new. Good new, I think."

　I hope you're right.

　I really do.

　Later, once the two of them had gone up, I stayed downstairs a while longer, nursing a drink I wasn't really drinking, thinking about the distance between the boy who'd collapsed in a forest six years ago and whoever I'd become sitting at this exact table now.

　Six years.

　A trained fighter.

　Actual control over most of what I can do, even if the ceiling's still a mystery.

　Two people who know almost everything about me and stayed anyway.

　A whole list of towns that feel like something closer to home than the mountain ever fully got to be, before it ended.

　I used to wonder, back at the start of all this, whether I'd ever get anything back close to what I lost.

　I think――I actually think the answer's yes.

　I think I already have.

　I sat with that thought a long while, turning it over, half-expecting some old instinct to flag it as too good to be true, the way instincts from my old life sometimes still did.

　Nah.

　Not everything has to be a catch.

　Sometimes good things are just good things, and you're allowed to have them without bracing for the other shoe.

　...I hope that's actually true.

　I really do hope that's actually true.

　I went to bed that night happier than I could remember being in either of my lives, and slept without a single dream to trouble it.

　It would be the last night like that for a very long time.