Echos

Waking up to an empty bed was a complicated thing, something that he was still trying to navigate in a grief that he did not yet know to cope with. But as the first rays of sunlight began to creep into the bedroom through the open window, Faelyn got up out of bed with a soft sigh and began to press through his morning routine. Though that day was different. Instead of trying to wrangle his hair back into a braid, it was swept up into a messy bun high atop his head, dressing himself into a soft pair of linen pants and a tunic that's sleeves were short, his feet left bare. 

It made him look far younger, a recollection of a younger time with children under foot that needed breakfast on the table, that hair needed brushed, and whatever new wild animal that Crow had brought home needed to be cared for. Such days were long gone, but that did not erase their importance. Nor did it remove the possibility of days like that finding their counterpart in the current days. 

That was a day that had come. Expecting both Cian and Athera home that day brought a lightness about the elf that he had been unable to contain. The night before he'd left the repository at a reasonable hour, having asked a local bakery to prepare him something to take him with him, and those pastries sat on the table, along with juice, and fruit, and cheese. Everything had to be just so. 

With a soft hum, Faelyn set to pulling the curtains back in the cottage, their windows already open to try and stave off the already sweltering heat, just as the door was open to get what cross breeze they could. Maybe, just for a little while, they could all find comfort in the softer things in life. Echos of the past could still be a part of their present, and of their future, if they could only hold on.