POV - Morgana
There is a type of cold that does not assault the body. It assaults conviction. The kind that seeps into the spaces between what you know and what you feel, planting there a small, insistent doubt, like a weed seed in a wall crack. 'You do not belong here,' says the cold. 'This place holds an opinion of you, and it is not a favourable one.'
The memory opened with this cold.
A forest. I would have called it beautiful were its beauty not drenched in something that made every instinct I possessed, even as an observer in another's memory, want to turn tail and never look back.
The trees were black. Not dark, but absolute black. Trunks that swallowed light instead of reflecting it, twisted at angles suggesting the forest had tried to flee from itself at some point and given up halfway. High above, the branches interlaced into a canopy so dense that the sky was mere rumour, a pale suggestion of eternal twilight leaking through fissures like light under a closed door. Upon the ground, damp moss shivered with a faint, bluish luminescence, as though something invisible were conversing in frequencies eyes were not made to capture.
And amidst the roots, thick, exposed, snaking through the soil like the veins of something vast and ancient, things moved. Shadows with weight. Forms that existed on the periphery and vanished when one attempted to look directly at them.
I knew this kind of place. Not this specific forest, but its essence. The territories where darkness is not the absence of light, but the presence of something that prefers not to be seen. In Runeterra, I walked through many such places. Always alone. Always with the sensation that the darkness watched me in return and decided, with a frigid politeness, that it would tolerate me.
And there, upon a trail that seemed less a path and more the forest's reluctant permission, two specks of life moved.
Faruk walked ahead with the serenity of one strolling through a summer garden. Hands clasped behind his back. A long, lazy stride. Unkempt black hair swaying in a breeze I could not feel, but which he seemed to find enchanting. His tunic was worn with the precision of someone who had flung it over his shoulders in the dark and decided that arguing with gravity was a waste of time.
Two paces behind him: my daughter.
Still a teenager. Lupine ears flattened against her skull, a silver tail tense and curled around her waist, blue eyes cutting through the gloom like lanterns on a moonless night. Her blue training garb already bore moss stains on the knees from some stumble she clearly intended never to mention. Her ears twitched in every direction, cataloguing threats I could not see.
At her waist hung a sword.
A wooden Jian.
And my mind halted.
I knew it. Not this version; this one was new. Polished wood, with delicate grain running down the blade like miniature rivers. Smooth. Mar-less. Void of history.
But in Runeterra, that same sword was something else. Covered by time. Chipped. Deep scores where the wood had splintered and been mended, not with glue, but with something golden that filled every wound like scars of liquid gold. Each mark a life. Each fissure a loss.
To see the young version was like finding a painting of someone before a war. The same face. None of the scars. And the knowledge of all those yet to come.
"Master."
Azra'il's voice cut through my thoughts. The tone was carefully calibrated between civility and a veiled threat.
"Hmm?"
"We have been walking for four hours."
"Quite correct."
"In this place that reeks of existential damp and regrettable life choices."
"Precise description. Almost poetic."
"Thank you. I practised it mentally for the last two hours whilst dodging roots that seem personally offended by my presence." Her tail uncurled from her waist and whipped once. "Master Faruk. Where exactly does this herb grow that is so essential it justifies trekking through the most inhospitable territory in this kingdom without an escort, without a map, and apparently with no plan other than 'let's go in that direction and see what happens'?"
"Further ahead."
"You said that two hours ago."
"And it remains true. Consistency is an underrated virtue."
"Not when consistency is 'further ahead' whilst things with teeth watch us from the shadows."
"You're being dramatic."
"That thing in the tree had fourteen eyes, Master. I counted. Fourteen. That isn't drama; that's inventory."
Faruk stopped. He turned. And in his eyes was a sparkle of amusement he didn't try to hide and which Azra'il pretended not to notice.
"Black Lian-Hua," he said. "The Shadow Lotus Flower. It grows only in the fissures between the roots of Mother-Trees, in forests such as this." He gestured toward the black canopy. "It requires near-total darkness, constant moisture, and the proximity of at least three predatory species for the correct enzymes to be released into the soil."
"It needs predators to grow. Similar to that herb in the Manticore's cave."
"Environmental stress activates the flowering. No danger, no flower."
"Master, I'm beginning to think the entire universe was designed by someone with an extremely questionable sense of humour."
"It's one of my favourite theories, in fact."
"And this tea," Azra'il continued, her ears swivelling first in one direction then the other, "when steeped, what does it taste of?"
"Notes of night-dew, wild jasmine, and something poets describe as 'the taste of moonlight, if the moon held an opinion of you'." Faruk paused. "Personally, I think it tastes of hazelnut with a touch of melancholy."
"Hazelnut with melancholy. You've just made that up."
"I did not. I researched it extensively. It took years."
Azra'il looked at him with the expression of one weighing the cost-benefit ratio of committing murder in hostile territory. Faruk was obsessed with tea. He travelled to absurd places for impossible ingredients. This was merely another gastronomic Tuesday for the master who considered 'risking one's life for leaves' a perfectly reasonable hobby.
They continued walking. The forest thickened with the patience of something that was in no rush.
The trail crossed what I would hesitate to call a road, more of a scar in the forest, a corridor of black stone polished by centuries of passage where the trees kept a respectful distance.
And on the road was a patrol.
Three figures. Tall, more so than humans. Elegant in a way that seemed less natural and more curated, each gesture calculated for maximum aesthetic impact with minimum effort. Light armour of dark leather, deep blue cloaks that fluttered in defiance of weight. Everything about them felt rehearsed and spontaneous all at once.
But it was the ears that stayed me. Pointed. Elongated. Stretching beyond their hair like blades carved from flesh. And something inside me shifted, for I have pointed ears. Not like theirs, mine came with my powers, with the transformation. But the resemblance was there. And it carried the same message: 'I am not like you.'
Theirs carried that message with infinitely more arrogance.
The leader, with platinum hair in an elaborate braid and blue eyes of an intensity that seemed intentional, looked at Faruk. At the crooked tunic. The unkempt hair. Then at Azra'il. The lupine ears. The tail. The wooden sword.
"Cultivators." The word sounded as though it had been washed in vinegar and folded in silk before being pronounced. "In the forbidden sector of the Kael-Noth Forest. No escort. No authorisation. And apparently, no instinct for self-preservation."
"Good afternoon," Faruk replied with the cheer of someone greeting a neighbour at the bakery. "A fine twilight. Or is it always like this?"
The pointed-eared being blinked. Once. Slowly.
"Do you have authorisation to be here?"
"Authorisation is a fascinating concept. Who authorises the authorisation? Does an authorisation exist to grant authorisations? And if—"
"Master." Azra'il pinched the bridge of her nose. "For the love of all that is sacred. Do not philosophise with a being armed with pointed ears."
The second figure, a woman with asymmetrically cut black hair and an expression suggesting that someone else's breathing was a personal offence, tilted her head towards Azra'il.
"The wolf-girl has more sense than her master. Curious."
"This wolf-girl lives with him daily," Azra'il shot back without blinking. "My sense is no virtue. It is a survival mechanism developed under constant duress."
The three exchanged a look, the quick reassessment of those who expected easy targets and discovered the prey had teeth. And an opinion.
"We are here for the Black Lian-Hua," Faruk said, adopting something nearing seriousness. "Natural growth, not cultivated. Three flowers with the roots intact."
The leader arched a brow. Just one. The effect was devastatingly condescending.
"Black Lian-Hua grows in the Ur-Soth Cleft. Three hours from here, in the heart of the dead sector. None of our patrols enter there. Three of our finest trackers entered in the last lunar cycle." His violet eyes did not waver. "Only two returned."
"And the third?" Azra'il asked.
"He's becoming part of the local ecosystem. Quite literally." He turned back to Faruk. "If the dishevelled cultivator and his disciple wish to join him, who am I to stand in your way? We respect the individual's right to stupidity."
"I appreciate the courtesy," Faruk said, without a trace of irony.
"It is not courtesy. It is etiquette-laced indifference."
They turned and began to move away, being absorbed by the shadows as though the darkness were reclaiming them.
The woman with asymmetric hair passed by Azra'il. She stopped.
"Wolf-girl." A half-smile that was ninety percent blade. "Try not to become compost. The local flora is already unpleasant enough without organic contributions."
"I'll do my best. But should I become it, at least I shall be compost with personality."
The woman almost smiled. The kind of 'almost' that held more approval than most full smiles.
Then they vanished among the black trees.
"I liked her personality," Azra'il said.
"She would have killed you without a second thought."
"I know. But with style. That counts for something."
The trail died. It didn't end; it died. As though the forest decided the courtesy of allowing passage had been extended far enough.
The trees merged into organic walls of black timber. The luminescent moss vanished. And the sounds changed, creaks became close, snarls shifted from whispers to declarations.
"From here on," Faruk said, and for the first time his tone lost its lightness, not entirely, but enough for Azra'il's ears to prick up, "I need you to stay alert. Not tense. Alert. There is a difference."
"I know the difference."
"I know you do. I'm reminding you because you sometimes forget in the heat of the moment and become tense, and when you're tense—"
"I overcompensate with the shoulder. I know. I'm working on it."
"Grand."
He looked at her. She looked at him. And in that exchange, two seconds, I saw the entire vocabulary of trust that existed between them. No words of care. No promises of readiness. Just two gazes that already knew everything that needed to be said.
The first creature came without warning. It dropped from the canopy, black scales and far too many eyes, a sinuous body with vestigial limbs that gripped the branches. Each eye shone with a cold, calculating light. The thing thought.
It landed between the two of them. Separating master and disciple.
"Sword diagonally. She'll strike from the left."
The creature did indeed attack from the left.
Azra'il blocked, the Jian singing through the air. The impact travelled through her arm, shoulder, and spine. I saw her teeth clench. But she held.
"Elbow."
"I know!"
She adjusted. The next block came clean. She spun, the Jian cutting a trajectory far too precise to be improvised. The wood struck the creature's neck between the jaw and the spine.
The serpent recoiled. And met Faruk.
I did not see what he did. He stood there, hands out as though holding something fragile, and suddenly the creature was on the ground, motionless, with three points along its body where his fingers had touched, like someone snuffing candles.
"You just poked a ten-eyed serpent into a dead faint," Azra'il said.
"Qi meridian pressure. It'll wake in an hour. With a migraine."
"Master. I've trained for years. My technique is hitting things with a bit of wood very fast. You do... that." She gestured to the unconscious serpent. "It's demoralising on levels I lack the vocabulary to describe."
"Your vocabulary is excellent. And the wood is perfectly respectable. Now come. There's more."
More creatures appeared. Deformed canids, hairless, jaws agape with drool trailing from them, working in pairs. And Faruk did not intervene. He stayed back. Arms folded. And the instant Azra'il found her rhythm, he taught.
"When they separate, follow neither. Fall back to the centre. Force them to come to you."
Azra'il fell back. The canids lunged together. A horizontal strike that created distance.
"They're hesitant. Three paces. Lunge."
Three paces. Lunge. After being wounded, the creatures retreated into the shadows.
"Good," Faruk said.
One word. Without ornament. And what it did to Azra'il, ears pricking up, tail flicking involuntarily, the ghost of something on her face that wasn't pride, but its next-door neighbour. Faruk's "good" was worth more than speeches, because he did not give it away for free.
He builds her confidence one "good" at a time, I thought. Patiently. Like someone watering a plant that does not yet believe it deserves water.
The terrain descended into a ravine cloaked in dark mist. Rock walls shimmering with mineral veins that pulsed with a sickly, greenish light. And down below, something massive made the ground tremble at regular intervals. Like the heartbeat of something the entire forest respected enough not to name.
"Down there?" Azra'il looked at the fissure. Every hair on her tail was on end. "The herb grows down there?"
"In the fissures between the roots of the Mother-Tree. At the bottom."
"At the bottom. Of the ravine. Where the thing that makes the ground shake lives."
"Correct."
"Master Faruk, I want you to know, with all the sincerity and affection I have developed over years of living together, that I hate you profoundly."
"Duly noted, with love. Now, let's go."
They descended slowly. The darkness swallowed them in layers, until the only clarity was the mineral veins pulsing on the walls like exposed nerves.
Faruk lit a flame in his palm. No gesture, no ritual, it simply existed. Golden, soft, floating above his skin.
The ground levelled out. The ravine opened into a natural chamber, walls curved like the interior of a ribcage.
And there, in the centre, the source of the tremor.
The Mother-Tree.
To call that thing a tree was like calling a storm a breeze. The trunk had the girth of a tower and rose until it disappeared. The bark was black, but with veins of golden light running across the surface like blood in veins, pulsing in rhythm with the tremors. The tree breathed, not literally, but the expansion and contraction were close enough that the distinction felt academic.
The roots spread across the floor like a giant's fingers. And in the cracks between them: flowers. Small. Black like everything in that forest, but with petals edged by a silvery line that emitted light. Each flower the size of a thumb, nestled in the crevices like secrets the tree told the ground.
That must be the Black Lian-Hua.
Faruk knelt. And the change in him was immediate; the sloppy posture, the humour, everything dissolved. What remained was the man I saw preparing tea. Reverence. Care.
"Observe," he said. Voice low. Not from fear, but respect. "The root must come out whole. If it breaks, the flower loses its essence within hours. Pull from the base, slowly, feeling for the resistance. When it yields, it's come out complete."
Azra'il knelt beside him. All that fierce intensity directed toward a minuscule act of delicacy. A fighter's hands being gentle with something fragile.
She learned that from him, I thought. The same hand that holds the sword is the one that harvests flowers without breaking roots. He taught her that strength and gentleness are not opposites; they are different tools in the same body.
Faruk extracted the first. Perfect. He stored it inside a ceramic container. Azra'il extracted the second, more slowly, ears flattened in concentration, tail still. The root came out whole.
"Good."
The third flower Faruk harvested alone. He tucked the container inside his tunic with the care of one guarding a heart.
And Azra'il, sitting upon a root with moss on her knees and dirt on a cheek she didn't know was there, looked at him.
"Three flowers. This tea must be truly special."
"It is."
"For what sort of occasion?"
"A birthday."
Her ears swivelled. Slowly.
"Whose birthday?"
Faruk did not answer immediately. And the hesitation was no performance. No teasing. It was real. The kind that comes from an ancient, protected place where words cost more.
"This tea wasn't for us, was it?" Azra'il said. Not with accusation, but with the clarity of someone who had pieced the puzzle together and looked at the full image. "It never was."
Faruk looked at her. His green eyes carried something I recognised not because I had seen it in him, but because I had felt it in myself, the weight of keeping someone inside your chest for far too long.
"No," he said. "It is not for us."
The ascent was more silent than the descent.
Not from exhaustion. Another type of silence. The kind that happens when someone asks a question and the answer opens a door that wasn't in the plans.
'Not for us.' Three words. And Azra'il carried them as she carried her sword: visible, present, impossible to ignore.
They emerged from the ravine. The forest received them with the same hostile indifference, but the creatures seemed to have decided that two beings capable of entering the Ur-Soth Cleft and coming out intact weren't worth the effort.
Azra'il endured the silence for twenty minutes. Then she could endure no more.
"Who is it for?"
Faruk didn't stop walking. But his pace slowed a fraction.
"Hmm?"
"Don't you 'hmm' me. You dragged your only disciple through a forbidden forest full of things with too many eyes, went down a ravine that even those elves avoid, and made us pick herbs with hands like we're handling relics. All that for a tea that isn't for us." Her tail whipped. "Who is this tea for, Master?"
The smile that appeared was not the usual one. Something older. More worn. The smile of someone visiting a place within themselves they know by heart, but which never stops aching.
"For a friend. My oldest friend. Her name is Myra."
The way he pronounced the name told me everything before any explanation could. And Azra'il heard it too, her ears pricked up all at once, almost in surprise.
"Myra," she repeated. And the tone wasn't that of one testing a new word; it was someone finding a familiar piece in an unexpected place. "The Matriarch Myra? The Grand-Master's wife?"
Faruk did not reply. Which was answer enough.
"Master. Are you telling me that we risked our lives in a monster-infested forest... to make birthday tea... for the wife of our sect leader?"
"When you put it that way, it sounds irresponsible."
"When I put it that way, it sounds exactly like what it is."
"Hmm. Fair."
"I've heard her name. At ceremonies. In the hallways. The elder disciples speak of her with reverence." Her ears flattened, not with irritation. "But you never mentioned it. In years of mentorship. Not once."
Faruk walked five paces before responding.
"Some things aren't mentioned. They are carried."
And with that sentence, the landscape between the two of them shifted. I felt it, as one feels rain by the scent before the first drop: the moment Azra'il understood she wasn't hearing about a casual friendship. She was hearing about something the master kept in the same place one keeps what matters too much to become conversation.
"Tell me," she said. Without sarcasm. Without provocation. Just: 'Tell me.'
Faruk looked up. At the black canopy. At the twilight leaking through the gaps.
"I was a refugee boy. Nameless. Clan-less. Without anything the world considered valuable. Her clan took me in. We grew up together." He spoke as he walked, unhurried, each word landing in the right spot. "She was the first person who looked at me and didn't see what I lacked. She saw what I was."
"And you fell in love."
"Like falling off a precipice. Without planning and without brakes."
"And she?"
"She as well." A single word. And in it, the echo of something that had once been immense and which time had not diminished, only transformed. "But the world has rules, Little Wolf. And the rules say that boys with nothing don't get to stay with the daughters of prestigious clans. Arranged marriage. The Grand-Master. Power, lineage, duty."
"She accepted?"
"She did what needed to be done. For the clan. For the family." Without bitterness. Without accusation. "And I understood. I never blamed her. What I felt for her didn't give her the right to abandon everything for my sake. Love that demands sacrifice from the other doesn't deserve the name it carries."
"But you stayed. In the sect. Where she is. Where her husband is."
"Leaving would have been admitting that her presence wounded me. And it didn't." He looked forward, at the path through the black trees. "Wounding is different from aching, Little Wolf. A wound needs distance to heal. An ache one learns to carry."
I know that difference, I thought. And the realization came with the precision of one who recognises a familiar face in a crowd. I know the difference between the wound Kayle causes me and the ache her absence gives me. I've carried the second my whole life. And I never wanted enough distance to treat the first.
"And you two...?" Azra'il let the question hang.
"We are friends. The oldest in the sect, probably." And the smile returned, not the teasing one. The one with honey and ground glass mixed together. "Every year, on her birthday, I prepare her favourite teas. We sit in a pagoda in the garden. We have afternoon tea. We talk. We laugh at the same things we did when we were children. For a few hours, time grants us the kindness of returning us to what we were before the world told us who we were supposed to be."
"And does the Grand-Master know?"
"Of course he knows."
"And does he... agree?"
"He is a wise man. He knows my character. He knows the difference between a threat and a tradition."
"And if he didn't agree? If he forbade it?"
Faruk laughed. Not the soft laugh of a contemplative master, a belly-laugh that transformed his entire face, banishing the philosopher and revealing something beneath. Younger. Fiercer.
"Little Wolf, I am no longer that nameless refugee boy." His green eyes shone, not with arrogance, but the quiet certainty of one who knows his own power and chooses not to show it. "If I needed to kick that old man's arse to have tea with my dear friend..." He shrugged. "I would."
"You would face the Sect Grand-Master over an 'afternoon tea'?"
"I would face anyone in any realm for the sake of those I love. The tea is merely the vehicle." He looked at her with something that was almost tenderness. "One day you will understand that."
"Doubt it."
Quick. Automatic. The reflex of one hearing something that threatens a wall and immediately reinforcing the structure.
Faruk did not insist. He kept walking.
But the conversation was merely breathing.
An hour later, as the forest began to lighten, Azra'il spoke again.
"I can't understand it..."
Faruk tilted his head. Listening.
"She's married. She has children. She has a life that moved on without you. You could have found someone else. Could have built something different. You are..." She gestured vaguely, as if trying to capture in a gesture all that he was. "...you. An elder. Powerful. You wouldn't lack options."
"I wouldn't."
"Then why? Why carry this for so long?"
Faruk stopped. He turned. And his face was clear. Maskless. Humourless. Devoid of the studied sloppiness I already knew was as constructed as any armour.
"Because what I feel for her doesn't depend on what she can give me, Little Wolf. It doesn't depend on being near, on being reciprocated, on having a place in her life." He spoke slowly. Picking each word like someone harvesting flowers in the dark, with care, feeling for the resistance, waiting for the one that comes out whole. "I want her life to be good. Full. Replete with things that make her smile. If I'm inside that life, grand. If I'm not..." He touched the ceramic container inside his tunic. "...the tea arrives all the same."
"That is..." Azra'il began.
"Stupid?"
"I was going to say painful."
Faruk's face softened with something that looked like genuine surprise.
"It is," he said. "It really can be painful."
"Then why doesn't it stop?"
"Because pretending she doesn't matter would be the first real lie of my life. And I refuse to give the universe that satisfaction."
Azra'il crossed her arms. Her ears flattened then returned, the cycle of processing. Something that didn't fit in her usual compartments.
"I've never felt that," she said.
That simple sentence. Devoid of her sarcasm, of her dark, acidic humour. Void of the armour of irony. A confession. Small, dry, almost casual.
And I felt the weight of them as if they were mine. My daughter, who had carried so many lives and no love.
Faruk looked at her. A long look. Reading in her something the sarcasm did not protect.
"I know," he said. Softly. Without judgement. "I know you haven't."
"It's not for lack of opportunity. I simply..." Her ears flattened. Her tail curled. Someone closing up. "...I don't function that way. Never have."
"You say that as though it were a defect."
"Isn't it?"
"No."
The word came with the same finality as 'lower your elbow.'
"It's not a defect," Faruk repeated. "It's armour. The finest you've ever built. So good that you forgot it's armour and started thinking it's your skin."
Azra'il opened her mouth. She closed it. The response laden with acidity died before reaching her lips. Because some part of her, the part that trusted this man enough to follow him into the abyss, knew he wasn't attacking. He was showing.
"And if I don't want to? Feel that. What if the armour works?"
"Then it will work. For a time. Perhaps a very long time." Faruk resumed walking. "But one day, Little Wolf, and I speak this not as a master, but as someone who built armours as good as yours, someone will appear."
"Appear."
"Someone who will make everything you built seem insufficient. Not because they are weak. But because that person will make you want more than security. They will make you want what lies on the other side of the wall."
"And what lies on the other side?"
"Everything the armour won't let in. Including the pain. Especially the pain." He touched the ceramic container. "But also the kind of thing that makes a man go to the most dangerous places every year just to see someone smile whilst drinking his tea."
Azra'il did not answer. She walked within the silence. And I saw, in details only a mother notices, the shoulders that gave way half a centimetre, the tail that uncurled without her realising, that something was happening. Not a conversion. Not an epiphany. A crack. A rift so thin no one would notice.
Faruk looked from the corner of his eye and didn't smile. For smiling would draw attention, and attention would make her close the crack.
"Master," Azra'il said after long minutes.
"Hmm?"
"When you say 'someone will appear'... how will I know?"
The smile that returned held within it all he didn't say about Myra and tea and decades of silent love.
"You'll know because it'll be the first time your terrible mood won't be enough."
Her ears pricked up, slightly indignant.
"And when you find that person, Little Wolf, you will move mountains to make them smile. Not out of obligation. Not duty. Because you won't be able not to. It will be as natural as breathing."
"Move mountains," she repeated. Low. Like someone pocketing a coin found on the ground without yet knowing its worth.
"For the simplest reasons. A smile. A cup of tea. The certainty that someone you love is well, even if they're far away. Even if they're never yours."
And I saw Azra'il store those words away. Not on the surface, but in the deep place. The place she protected with entire lifetimes of isolation. Where the important things went when she decided they deserved to survive.
The seed, I thought. It isn't an answer. Not a change. It's a question that didn't exist before. "What if?" The most dangerous and most beautiful of questions. She won't answer it today. Perhaps not tomorrow. But the question exists now. And questions that exist do not die; they sleep. Until the right moment wakes them.
Then memory bent time.
Days of travel compressed in a blink; forests giving way to roads, mountains, valleys. Azra'il's tail flicking. Faruk sleeping propped against a tree. Campfires.
And soon the sect appeared. The pavilions of dark wood and white stone on the mountain slope. Training courtyards. Tiered gardens. But memory did not stop; it led me along a stone path winding through a cherry-blossom grove to a small, octagonal pagoda of dark wood with red lacquer. A spring forming a narrow channel around the base.
A place made for silence and for the conversations that need it.
And in the pagoda, someone was waiting.
Black hair held with jade and silver ornaments that caught the light of the cherry blossoms. Amber eyes, almost gold, the colour of honey when light passes through it. A silk tunic of pearlescent grey. No excess. Every detail in its place.
But it wasn't the elegance that stopped me. It was the calm. The calm of someone who had made peace with the choices they made and those they couldn't make.
This must be Matriarch Myra. And when she saw Faruk ascending the path with Azra'il behind, she smiled. Not the smile of a matriarch. A smile far too quick, far too honest. Coming from the girl who once ran through fields with a nameless boy.
"You're late," she said. Unmistakable informality, not the tone used with elders, but with someone known so well that formality would be an insult.
"Punctually late. There's a difference."
"No, there isn't."
Myra looked behind him. At Azra'il, standing on the last step trying to decide what to do with her hands, ears, tail, and face all at once.
"So this is the 'Little Wolf'." Her smile widened with the joy of one who had waited a long time. "He talks about you constantly. I know more regarding your opinions on ginger tea than any reasonable person ought to."
"It's an honour, Matriarch Myra, I—"
"No 'Matriarch' here." A firm gesture. Innegotiable. "Not in this pagoda. Here, I'm just your master's old friend. Use 'Matriarch' again and I'll ask Faruk to repeat the winter waterfall mission."
"He told you about that?"
"He tells me everything. Including that your ears froze."
"He told you!?" Azra'il spun to Faruk. "I said you weren't to tell anyone!"
Faruk was suddenly profoundly interested in the roof's architecture.
"I'll prepare the tea," he said, and fled inside the pagoda.
Myra laughed, low, musical, with her whole body. And Azra'il's discomfort gave way to something else. Not intimacy. But a suspension of her defences. Because Myra didn't try to be formal, nor maternal. She simply treated her as though she already belonged.
Faruk prepared the tea with the Black Lian-Hua.
The petals met the water and released colour, not black, but silvery. Threads of silver spiralling until the entire liquid shone from the inside out, as though it carried the light the forest refused to have.
He served three cups. Myra's first.
She held it with both hands. Eyes closed. She inhaled. And the matriarch's face fell away, not in pain, but memory.
"Every year," she said softly. "Every year as though it were the first."
"That is why it's worth the effort."
Amber eyes met green ones. And what I saw between them was not longing; it was presence. Two people completely there, one with the other, in a space that time had preserved as a living reliquary.
The afternoon tea unfolded like the silver threads in the water. Faruk and Myra talked of nothing and everything, childhood memories, jokes decades old. They moved around each other with the fluency of those who have shared an orbit for so long that gravity is already automatic.
And Azra'il watched. Quiet. Holding her cup without realising it had emptied. Her ears catching not the sounds, but what existed between them, the comfortable silences, the easy laughter, Myra's hand touching Faruk's arm naturally.
The expression of someone trying to decipher a language she'd never studied, but whose music was starting to make sense.
At a certain point, Myra turned to her.
"He refused them all, you know? Prodigies, heirs, the best of every generation. For decades, I worried he was using solitude as a penance." Her amber eyes sparkled. "But he chose you. And the Faruk I know does not choose based on talent or convenience. He chooses based on soul."
Azra'il didn't answer. But I saw, in the tremor of her ears, the fingers tightening on the cup, that the words had landed. In the deep place. Where the seed already was.
The farewell was silent.
Faruk gathering cups. Myra helping. Their fingers touching for half a second in the space between the table and the tray. Finding one another. Recognising one another. Letting go.
"Until next year," Myra said on the steps.
"Until next year," Faruk replied.
She walked through the cherry-blossom grove. Her silhouette receding among falling petals, elegant, erect, every step that of one who had learned that crumbling is a luxury matriarchs do not permit themselves.
Faruk stood still. Watching her go. Hands clasped behind his back hard enough to turn his knuckles white.
Thirty seconds. Then he took a deep breath, the kind he taught Azra'il. And he turned.
"Come, Little Wolf."
Master and disciple walked along the stone path lined with lanterns. Faruk was quieter than usual. Azra'il at his side, not behind.
"Master."
"Hmm?"
"If one day..." She started. Halted. Her ears flattened. Her ironic persona fighting to retake control. She shoved it back down. "If I find that person. The one you said. The one who will make sarcasm insufficient." She took a breath. "Do you think I'll know? How to do it? To love like you?"
Faruk looked at her for a long time.
"Not like me. You'll be wretched at it. Clumsy, confused; you'll insult the person at least three times before admitting a thing."
"Thank you for the vote of confidence."
"But when you truly love, Little Wolf, it will be the fiercest thing this world has ever seen. Because everything about you is fierce. And when all that ferocity is directed toward making a single person happy..." He ruffled the hair between her ears. "The worlds will tremble."
Azra'il did not dodge.
"The worlds," she repeated softly.
"Every one of them."
The night breeze brought the perfume of cherry blossoms to them.
"When I find that person," Azra'il said finally, almost inaudibly, "I shall make the finest tea they have ever had."
Faruk smiled.
"It is a good start."
The memory dissolved. Lanterns fading. Cherry blossoms diluting. And I, between the last image and the dark that followed, kept it all.
The black forest. The silvery tea. Faruk's face as Myra receded among the petals. And my daughter, a teenager, fierce and with a seed in her chest she didn't know she'd received.
One day, I thought, someone will pierce that armour. And when they do, my daughter will remember this forest. This man in a crooked tunic who dragged her through a place of monsters to harvest flowers for the woman he loved his whole life. And she will understand that the seed was planted here. Not by force. Not by lesson. By the silent example of a man who loved without asking for anything in return.
And perhaps, on that day, she will prepare tea. The best anyone has ever had. And won't even know she is fulfilling a promise made on a trail lined with cherry blossoms. Where she learned that love isn't what one receives; it's what one does.
----------
Author's Note
-----------
Alright… quick pause before I disappear into academic suffering. 😐
First of all, this chapter.
This isn't a battle chapter. No explosions, no gods being punched in the face (tragic, I know).
This is something quieter. More dangerous in a different way.
This is where a seed gets planted.
Faruk didn't teach Azra'il love. He didn't sit her down and explain it like a cultivation manual or some grand philosophy.
He just… lived it.
Quietly. Consistently. For years.
Through tea. Through routine. Through a love that never demanded anything in return.
And Morgana, watching all of this, understands something before Azra'il does:
👉 this moment matters.
Because Azra'il doesn't change here.
She doesn't suddenly "get it".
But now the question exists.
And once that question exists… it never really goes away.
So yeah. No epic fight this time.
Just a man risking his life for tea… and a girl accidentally learning what love looks like without realizing it.
Now, about the not-so-fun part:
Unfortunately, we're going on a short hiatus. 🥲
I've entered exam period at university, which means my current arc is:
👉 "Student vs Academic System (Final Boss: Exams)"
So there probably won't be new chapters for about a week, maybe a week and a half at most. It shouldn't take longer than that.
As soon as I survive this boss fight (hopefully without taking critical damage), I'll be back to posting normally.
Thanks for sticking with the story, and seriously, wish me luck.
Because right now… my real enemies aren't Darkin, gods, or ancient concepts.
It's exams.
And they don't drop loot. 😭