PRESUMPTIONS
Written on October 12, 2021 (♎︎)
Author's Notes: Written for Whumptober 2021 for prompt No. 9: Rumors of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated (Presumed Dead).
Wiegraf did not disbelieve the runner who told him his sister had died, and he performed no action that would have betrayed any doubt as to the plain facts of the case. He fought as best as he could to avenge her; he made decisions that could not include her; he ran all the way into Fovoham with the understanding that whatever remained of her would be scattered and devoured by the beasts on the plains and plateaus.
Still, in the days that followed, as he gradually parted from the notion that his own death was imminent, he could not help but think of the world of impossibilities Miluda had already survived. She had not been the only other child born to his parents, yet she had been the only one to make it to the rowdy years of her youth, and when all other elements of their past were reduced by Romanda to ashes, she alone had emerged filthy and starving but unmarked by the fire. There had been the siege at Riovanes, the upset at Viura, the last push toward Limberry from Zarghidas. It seemed an annual occurrence that they should be parted in dire circumstances and give themselves up to mutual mourning.
Wiegraf cut his hair. He grew out the beginnings of a beard. He thanked the farmers who had sheltered him, and left them with his cloak and armor as a parting gift for their charity. In the long week when he started walking south, he realized a slow and subtle change. It fell short of hope, but he moved in gradations from knowing his sister to be dead to merely presuming it.
He thought, as he wandered alone back towards the snowy fields of Gallione, that he had been wrong in his presumptions before. He thought that there must be things that happen to give men some faith in miracles.
In so many moments of waking—when dawn roused him from whatever bed of bark or moss he had found for himself—he even thought his grief to be the dream fading away from him.
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