As we eat lunch before Convocation, Shadow Step approaches our table to say “I am looking for folks who can be unobserved for a task later today. If you know of someone, please send them to me.”

“What exactly do you need them to be able to do?” I reply, picturing hours spent silently in a hunter’s blind, barely moving until the time is right to let an arrow fly.

He explains “We need people who can move in the darkness without being seen by guards”

“If I know of someone, I will send them your way” I reply, dismayed at the memory of loud gravel crunching beneath my feet. If only their work was in the forest, or if only I was better suited for more crowded places.

~~~~~~~~

A few days after Forum, I sit alone in a patch of sunlight; hunched over bits of padding and scraps of leather; muttering my thoughts to myself as an armor sleeve slowly takes shape.

“Should we ask our clan for help?” Embla had asked this not long before she left to scout.

My answer tasted bitter on my tongue. “No, we know what their answer would be. They showed it when they sent us away”

An interesting twist of fate, that we find another Snow Lion trying to uncover what happened to the Stone Antlers. If only we could help him. If only they would come when we called. If only we could show them what we have made of ourselves upon their arrival.

~~~~~~~~

Preparing for Disblot

“Why must you be the Speaker for these people we hardly know, and for this place we just arrived at?”

I don’t bother to ask Embla this, because I already know the answer. Lord Rennet’s invitation to his Night Lords Feast the same night as the ceremony proves that no one here has ever felt the gaze of The World while they work. If only I had paid better attention to Mama, then I could be the one to bear the aching hunger and the sting of deception carved into my hands.