The villa was quiet after the storm of guests and hunts, the kind of stillness that let every birdsong and orchard rustle carry. Lytavis sat on the terrace with a book propped on her knees, Skye shifting above on the carved perch her father had commissioned. Ginger sprawled in a sunbeam, her once-crooked leg twitching in dreams.
Lucien appeared with his own book and a quill, but he did not open it right away. He studied his daughter for a long moment - the furrow of her brow, the way her fingers absently soothed the fox's ears as though healing were as natural as breathing.
"You change too quickly," he murmured at last, setting quill to empty page. "One day I write of your first arrow finding bark, the next you've dressed a deer with steady hands. I'll run out of pages before I run out of you."
Lytavis flushed, ducking her head. "I only follow what Athelan shows me."
"You follow," Lucien agreed, "but you also leap. That is what I record - not only what you are taught, but what you carry forward." His eyes softened. "That is what lasts."
Later, in the garden, Zoya bent over her beds of herbs, trimming thyme with deft fingers. Lytavis crouched beside her, gathering the cuttings into a basket.
"Your father measures with quills," Zoya said, not looking up, "but I measure with roots. Every poultice you mix, every paw you soothe - it's not just skill. It's grace. Healing is not only mending what is broken, but reminding what still lives that it is worth the effort."
Lytavis frowned, tucking the words away like pressed flowers. "But what if I fail?"
Zoya smiled faintly, binding a sprig of rosemary. "Then you try again. Healing isn't perfection, child - it's persistence."
Tyrande arrived by dusk, and the four of them shared a meal at the long table - bread fresh from the oven, herbs bright with oil, a stew that filled the air with warmth. Tyrande sprawled beside Lytavis, crumbs on her lips, telling some exaggerated story of a novice tripping in the temple hall. Lytavis listened with one ear, the other caught by the rustle of Zoya's garden beyond the windows, by the scratch of her father's quill in the next room.
It was a quiet evening, the kind that did not mark itself in memory with fire or storm, yet left behind a gentler trace - the reminder that even in a house bustling with wounded creatures and laughing friends, there was also space to rest, to gather strength, and to be loved without condition.
Yet when the lamps were dimmed and the villa's halls settled into silence, Tyrande found Lytavis wide awake, staring at the ceiling.
"Can't sleep?" Tyrande whispered.
"Not really."
A grin crept across Tyrande's face, already glinting with mischief. "Want to?"
Lytavis groaned softly, but she was already sitting up. Minutes later they crept barefoot through the corridors, sandals in hand, holding their breath as they eased the door shut behind them. Skye rustled her wings from the perch but stayed, Ginger whipped her tail once and dozed again - silent witnesses to the secret escape.
The streets were cooler than the day, lanternlight pooling on stone, the air rich with spice and smoke. The Night Market waited like a secret only they could share - stalls draped in bright silks and stranger charms, sweets that stuck to their teeth, voices in languages they didn't know.
They laughed softly as they slipped into the crowd, two girls with coin hidden in their sleeves and adventure bright in their eyes - no longer children, not yet women, walking a path somewhere in between.
Notes in the Margin – Lucien Ariakan
Wisdom does not always arrive with thunder. Sometimes it settles in quietly - between a sprig of rosemary and a steady hand, between bread broken at a table and laughter that rings too loud for the size of the room.
She gathers these pieces without knowing it. A glance, a word, a lesson that asks her to try again. None of them grand. All of them lasting.
If I measure by quills and Zoya by roots, then perhaps she measures by something smaller still: the unnoticed weight of days, pressed into her like petals in a book.