The world was saved. Avon was whole once more. Warmth flowed from the revealed sun, spring dug deep its claws of green, prey ran freely from their burrows, and the Goldencourte clan reigned over the kingdom once more where they belonged. Aisling had even returned! Things felt balanced again, and life could finally start to return to normal.

Kaphiri should have been happy.

He was, in some ways: Amrei was at last safe, and he could stop worrying that every time one of them left each others sides they might freeze or starve before they returned. Every day he'd kept waiting for his body to give out on him, and he thought if he'd needed any more sustenance than his small body did, he might not have been so successful at giving his meals to his wife without starving. The world was a scary enough place on its own to fret over without knowing deep in his bones that the very land was trying to expel all from its reaches! His mentor was home, though still recovering more than some of them. Fable and Foxglove were happy together, it seemed: while others hadn't yet returned with them, those who were here only made home feel more like home. When the others caught up, the meadows would be thriving and ready to welcome them with open arms just like they had Aisling and the next coming generation. The young girls surprising condition was like a slap in the face; he and Amrei had been trying so long, and yet by accident - no. He shouldn't even think that way.

And as if Kaphiri needed a reminder of that long, awful, terrifying, bone-thin night, his reward...

Glowing scars.

The fractal pattern on his side glowed like they were burning all over again. Even his eye, he noticed in the darkest part of the night looking into the river, had just a little shine to it. It made him miserable; despite the warming weather, the slight little priest kept a coat over his back to cover himself like it was some indecency. To him, it was just so. Not a reward. Another layer to his unending curse. Some days, he wondered that if he succeeded in starting the family he dreamed of with Amrei, of the child(ren) would simply come to hate him for some reason or another. If one way or another he was doomed to fail and suffer and worry. Had the gods only allowed him a love, a wife, to further torture him by way of all the times he would fail her?

Fateweaver field was a good place to watch the last fading colors of sunset bleed into the navy sky, but Kaphiri wasn't really enjoying what his eye showed him, despite the way his chin tipped skyward and his frame sat slack and near-peacefully. He'd gotten very good, back in the days of the Stormstride Herd, at outwardly displaying calm while inside the storm raged. Now, it was habitual; the way he tugged up walls around his heart like one might a shawl on a chilly winter night, sitting there among the flowers with a fox-pelt covering his saddle, wondering if he was being punished.

At least the garden wasn't his problem anymore.