Because I’m too lazy to write a real blog post.

We didn’t speak of it again. The days slid past—the Calends of February, then the Nones, then the Ides. I kept track by means of the moon and by notching each day on the underside of the fallen oak tree some distance below the cleft, where I hoped, half-heartedly, Ffion wouldn’t notice. It was as though that morning on the mountain-top hadn’t happened at all—or as though it had been nothing more than a dream, so brief and blurred it didn’t warrant mentioning come daybreak.

By the time the Ides had gone I was afraid Ffion had forgotten.

The Calends of March dawned bright and cool. Ffion went out early from the cleft. I knew she wasn’t going far: she’d taken neither pack nor spear. Even so I entertained the thought, briefly, of slipping away in her absence, because that would be easiest for both of us, and because there was a small, shrinking part of me that was afraid to face her again, because that part of me was sure it would take only a word from her to shatter my resolve, to convince me to turn my back on my father’s world and stay with her forever here in the wood—because that part of me was sure she’d been right.

But I shut away the thought, in the end. She couldn’t understand how I’d been betrayed, how everything else was air and emptiness against the weight of the betrayal. She couldn’t understand the aching need in me for his recognition—not his love nor even his apology. But I wanted to prove myself worthy at least of his recognition, his explanation.

I laced up my sandals and threw my cloak round my shoulders and went out through the cleft-mouth to find her.

She’d gone up on the hill-side to strip bark and dead boughs from the trees for kindling. When I saw her I understood she hadn’t forgotten; we’d no need for more kindling in the cleft. For a while she pretended not to notice my presence and I stood uncertainly, watching her move from tree to tree, my tongue knotted up, words suddenly fled from my mind. Finally she turned her face to me over her shoulder, her hands still busy with the bark. She said, in a flat voice, “Have you not gone already?”

“I wasn’t going to run off like a coward,” I said. And then, conscious of how very near to a lie that had been, I said, “At least—I thought better of it.”

She shook her head. “I do not think you are a coward, dryw. I think you are a fool.”

I said, “Which is worse?”

“You decide,” she said, savagely peeling a strip of bark, “when they find out what you are and kill you for it.”

“They won’t find out,” I said.

She turned her face away. “You had better go,” she said. “For me it is a full morning’s walk from here to the river-mouth. You will be lucky to do it by mid-afternoon.”

“Ffion,” I said, “I won’t forget the kindness you’ve shown me.”

She didn’t look at me. “I pray you do not,” she said, softly. “I pray you remember it before too late.”