‘Make Do.’

14th of Byrn, the forest of Hrafn, the lands of Hróaldr

(Two days later)

Whether it had been a threat or a promise, Rei wasn’t sure, Fin was true to her word and began training them. It wasn’t that Hal and Rei lacked technique or strength, but they didn’t know how to properly work together, nor were they prepared to take down smarter enemies. For a few hours every day at sundown, after they had made camp, Fin would lecture them on strategies while simultaneously fighting them with her clones. She focused on situations that required careful consideration and planning, such as the golem fight they just had. Given her wealth of knowledge, Hal and Rei assumed she must have either studied the art of war, or she must have lived it.

Hal stood by the fire, after the others had retired for the first part of the night. She’d insisted on taking the first watch, even though she wasn’t sure if that had been a good idea. Her mind replayed the events of the other day, with the golem, and how for the first time she’d used her power in such a destructive way.

In the middle of her wandering, her mother’s face suddenly reflected in her mind. Hal thought back to the days where she would play with the animals at the farm, at how when something went wrong she could go back to her mother’s embrace, and everything would be alright.

“Maybe I’m just homesick,” she tried to reassure herself, knowing full well that wasn’t the case. She’d taken on this responsibility, this journey, because she thought she was ready. Was she?

“If I’m like this just from a golem…”

She shook her head, trying to shake herself out of it. Lost in her own thoughts, Hal almost missed Rei’s slow footsteps behind her.

“Hal, are you alright?” Rei stood next to Hal. Her voice was gentle, soft. Hal heard so much compassion in it she felt her eyes begin to sting, to threaten to fill with water.

“Yeah. I, uh -” Hal cleared her throat as she looked to the side, making sure she was able to speak normally before she continued, “I was just… Thinking,”

“About what?” Rei sat down beside her. She didn’t look at Hal, instead just watching the fire.

“Nothing important. What other things will we get to do on our journey? What other things will we encounter? That sort of thing.” Hal looked over to Rei and smiled.

Rei looked away from the fire to Hal, and could see that her smile was a bit too thin, a little too pronounced. Too forced.

“Okay.” Rei hesitated, then reached out for Hal’s hand. “May I ask something?”

“… No,” Hal forced, trying to joke, but after she felt it fall flat, she added, “Ask away.”

She hoped that Rei couldn’t hear as she felt her voice tremble slightly.

Rei heard it.

“Why did you go out of your way to stop that golem?” Rei’s fingers grasped a little bit tighter onto Hal’s hand.

“Because… I thought- I thought it would hurt someone sooner or later…” she lied. “But perhaps… More than that… I…” The words got stuck in her throat. Hal couldn’t say that she was reminded of herself, nor could she say that she was rattled by Fin’s conviction in her cause.

Because a hero can’t show any weakness. Otherwise, they stop being a hero.

The sounds of crickets filled the chilly air. The moonlight shone throughout the forest, just enough for the shadows of trees to shift around them with every turn of the wind.

“Alright.” Rei took away her hand. “I’ll do my best, too.”

Hal looked at Rei, half-expecting her to be disappointed. She was surprised when it was something different - Rei wasn’t smiling or frowning, but there was an unfamiliar gleam of determination in her eyes, one that Hal couldn’t place.

She kept watching as Rei looked into the fire now, forcing her own smile and shaking her head. Rei looked back to Hal, her smile soft.

“It’s time to change watch. That’s why I came.” Rei smiled as Hal stood up.

“Ah, thanks for that.”

Hal awkwardly removed herself, standing up too hastily, jerkily pivoting on her heels, and speed-walking away from the fire. From the outside, it seemed almost as though she was attempting to run away. Hal didn’t understand why she felt the way that she did, or why her heart was pounding in her chest the way it was, but she knew she felt it.

As Hal walked to her cot, she thought she heard a strange sound coming from Fin’s side of the camp. She made a detour to inspect it, but once she got there, she could only see Fin sleeping, a wide grin on her face.

The next day, things seemed like they were back to normal. They crossed into the mountainous region, the ranges stretching on and on, seemingly without end.

“We’ll be going alongside the mountains for a bit before we reach a proper pass, so be careful.” Fin’s eyes squinted, looking over her shoulder to Hal, grin slowly spreading along her face. “Even for a rock, you’d probably shatter if you fell from a tall enough place.”

She ruffled Hal’s hair, snickering.

“Yeah, yeah.” Hal pushed Fin’s hand away with an eye roll. “I might not be brittle, but I’m not immortal, either.”

On top of her confusion around the golem, Hal had also been on high alert for a while now. She expected more strings to follow them, but there had been none for quite a while now. She wasn’t sure if it was from the lack of people, or if there were some other requirements that she couldn’t possibly know about.

The shapeshifters that Fin was after had also not made an appearance.

“I see that face you’re making. Stop it.” Fin nudged her, trying to help Hal shake out of it. “I told you already: the shapeshifters usually appear near you, but we haven’t been at a settlement in a while now, so there were no opportunities for them to try anything. There should be a little town up ahead,” she said reassuringly. “We’ll see then.”

“I know… But I feel like I’m going to miss something if we keep waiting like this,” Hal sighed.

“Get used to it. You need a lot of patience for these sorts of things, Hero.” Fin took out her notebook and opened it at a blank page. “You’ve got to learn how to deal with your own thoughts somehow.”

Hal only stared down at the page, blinking.

“Are you going to write them out?” Rei asked, looking first at the paper, then at Fin.

“No, I’m going to distract myself from them.”

With a nimble hand, she started sketching the distant mountains with a surprising amount of detail as they kept walking, her shadow clad hand holding onto the notebook with ease.

They continued on the road, Fin drawing for herself the things that they pointed out as they moved. A flower that had multiple sets of differently colored petals. A particularly crooked tree. Hal and Rei taking a break and standing in front of a river.

As they walked along the river bank, looking for a bridge to cross that Fin had mentioned was around here, they noticed a large number of people moving down the mountains. They wore tired expressions, their clothes dirty from the long road. Most of them carried multiple bags. Every now and again, there was a carriage that had furniture or multiple bags’ worth of goods in them.

“They’re refugees,” Fin explained as she saw the question on Rei and Hal’s faces. “I’ve seen it time and time again.”

Her own smile reflected the tiredness on the people’s faces.

“I already received word that war moved up from the east. I thought the towns might be empty by now, but I didn’t expect to run into people evacuating instead,” Fin sighed, murmuring to herself while shaking her head. “This meaningless war over words written in some holy book…”

When they reached the bridge, a sea of people seemed to be awaiting them, all trying to pass as fast as they could.

“There’s no reason to push through,” Hal said, sitting by the side of the road on a patch of grass overlooking the river. “We can let them pass.”

“Good idea. Might as well take a break now.” Rei sat down as well. She watched the people passing them: children clinging desperately to their parents, old men and women being taken by carriage, or helped along by others.

Rei sighed, “‘War,’ huh?”

Surprisingly enough, the word didn’t seem out of place to her, nor did she find it alien to her lips.

“It’s terrible,” Hal said, making Rei start. “People should just learn to live together.”

“That’s true,” Fin laughed. “The world would truly be better if that was all there was to it. But it isn’t, so people make do.”

“‘Make do’…” Rei lingered on those words. It was true that people had to deal with the hand that they were given. However, that shouldn’t be all there is to it - it didn’t seem fair.

Without really thinking, Rei pulled out her flute.

“Oh? A lovely song from the lovely lady?” Fin smiled as she watched Rei stand up, close her eyes, and raise the flute to her lips.

Since the encounter with the wolf, Rei hadn’t played the flute, not even to practice. In a way, it felt like it wasn’t something that she should be doing. It felt like a waste of time and like one more thing that she couldn’t remember. But right now she felt like playing was what she needed to do. To play so that, at least for a little bit, the world would not be so dour. To play so that the world wasn’t just the road and the loss of one’s home.

And so, she played. It wasn’t necessarily a ‘joyful’ song, but it was a song that touched the heart. At the very least, it touched Hal’s heart as she began to hum along. Fin joined her soon after, and before too much more time passed, the refugees marching on did as well.

Soon enough, everyone was humming along to it. To a song that they just heard, from a person that did not remember learning it.

The song itself was not important. What was important was the feeling it contained.

Without her noticing, people slowly gathered around her. As Rei opened her eyes, she saw the people all around her smiling, and once they knew she was done, they began to cheer. To say that she was surprised was putting it mildly. She’d only wanted to help just a little bit, but hadn’t known it was precisely what these people needed.

“Thank you, young lady.” An older man said as he approached them. “Truth be told, I’d all but forgotten about music, what it sounds like, what it feels like. When dread is all you feel, it’s hard to see the beauty in the world. But thanks to you, I wonder if this might not be such a dreadful journey, after all.”

“I, uh- I’m glad.” Rei smiled awkwardly, pink growing in her cheeks, not knowing what to say.

“That’s right, miss! You were a great help!” A few young men cheered from the crowd before continuing on their way.

“It was beautiful!” A little girl said from the shoulders of her mother as they passed.

Rei didn’t think she deserved the attention she was getting, but, one after the other, people kept expressing their appreciation for her and her song.

“It would be rude not to take it to heart,” a familiar voice said, seemingly from out of nowhere. “You are the hero, after all.”

“You’re…” Rei’s eyes widened. She could have been mistaken, she’d only talked with her for a few minutes in a crowded market, after all; but the person in front of her now looked exactly like the old woman that had given her the sword.

Rei shook her head a little. That had to be impossible - they were so far away from Grœnnbýr, and she’d been so old that…

“Beware of fire and darkness my dear, and of what lies therein,” The old woman interrupted her train of thought, patting her on the hand as she had before. “I believe in you.”

With a smile and before Rei could say anything more, the old woman disappeared once more into a sea of people.

“Hmm, what is it, Rei?” Hal looked over, a piece of bread in her mouth, fished out from her bag while Rei was playing. Neither Hal nor Fin had seen the old woman before, so of course they wouldn’t notice anything unusual about one more person amongst the people that were already complimenting and thanking Rei.

“No… It’s nothing.” Rei’s eyes lingered on where the old woman was just standing.

From a few paces down the road, they could hear the people singing a new song.