By the standards of any port city, Rogar was a tame fellow. He rarely got drunk, didn't gamble much, and he wasn't one to fight if given a choice in the matter, which he often wasn't, but nevertheless, Rogar did a fine job of staying out of trouble in the city.
On the mountain, things were different. He could only throw axes and smoke the pipe with his brother in law, convince his nephew to skip lessons and go fishing, help his ma untangle her yarn and shape her iron so many times, before he started to get stir crazy.
Dice was his weakness. Cards were too slow, with too much sneak and deception involved. Rogar liked the rattle and roll, fast paced fate of dice. But rolling dice was thirsty work, and once he got in the whiskey...
He knew this, but by his fourth day home, with Rainath tucked securely under his mother's wing, his sister on home-confinement and the stone gray sky making it feel as though the world was a soap bubble only as big as their valley, Rogar was up for some dice.
He had the habit of keeping his hat pulled low and walking as small as he could manage, when he was back. Everyone here knew him, if he showed his face he couldn't get five paces at a time without stopping to tell the next person that no, he wasn't home, just come to visit, aye, someday.
The falling snow legitimized his haste, and a heavy fur cape kept him relatively anonymous as he descended the ridge and followed a well-worn deer track away from the village.
The hunting lodge was just as he remembered it, though the fellow at the door was too young to have reciprocal memory of Rogar. He held him up just long enough to draw attention, and as recognition dawned the room erupted around them.
Rogar endured the shoulder-pounding and battle-crying with good humor and patience, but he was most happy to see a frothy mug of ale and an empty seat at the dice table, which had moved closer to one of the great hearths that dominated each end of the structure.
Given time, the room settled and the gaming got going again. Rogar breathed a massive sigh, feeling the closest he'd been to home since he arrived.
***
"Where's uncle?" Asked Joran, the voice of curiousity. No one answered, perhaps no one knew.
"Cort saw him after tea, headed toward the lodge," said Cathon after a long time, jeopardizing his son's queen with a lowly pawn. The boy tsked in frustration.
Jade was smoking her husband's pipe- the one from his pocket, Rainath noted, apparently she was back in his good graces- and Opal was at work on her knitting. Rainath was taskless, watching the game of chess and the family with rapt fascination and the dulled tact of the very tired.
At the mention of the lodge, Jade had looked to her mother with concern on her face. Opal showed no sign of having heard, though Rainath had noticed no deficiencies in her hearing.
"Beeswax," she'd told Rainath, before sending her to the forge with Mina. She accepted the misshapen lump, and Opal showed her how to warm it in her hands and jam small balls of it into her ears. "a deaf warrior, is a dead warrior," she'd concluded simply.
"Ha," Cathon announced, laying Joran's queen on the board. "Off t'bed with ye, mate." The boy said his goodnights, hugged his grandmother, and disappeared. Like ranks of soldiers fallen in battle, his father and Opal admitted defeat and retired as well, leaving Rainath and Jade alone in the den. The look Cathon gave his wife suggested she didn't have long to dawdle.
"I owe you an apology," Jade told her, businesslike, as soon as their privacy was secured. Rainath started like a spooked rabbit.
"Me?" She stuttered, "um, I don't think-"
"No, I do," Jade assured her wryly, eyebrow lifted in the direction of her husband, "I should have mind my own business, about you and Rogar," Rainath blushed at the mention of their names so.
"It was wrong of me, too, to expect you to want to marry my cod-head of a brother," Jade went on, warming to her subject, "and I don't blame you in the least."
What she wasn't being blamed for, Rainath didn't know.
"And I forgot myself because you are a sister of the mountain, whatever your affiliation to the great lunk," Jade concluded, seeming sincere and as though she'd been told what to say, somehow at once.
"You are welcome at my hearth, sister," Jade inclined her head in loose formality and passed the pipe, streaming smoke, to seal the pact. Rainath accepted it and puffed tentatively, the fragrant heat making her lungs seize at once. Gasping, she almost missed what Jade said next.
"I owe you a forfeit," she told her without shame, accepting the pipe back. Rainath choked again.
"Oh, no. I couldn't," she croaked, shaking her head. Jade laughed at her mortification.
"You will, or Cathon will decide what I'm to do for you," she rolled her eyes, face lit with amusement.
"He won't want to make you uncomfortable, so I'll have to bake you a cake or something," she assured, at Rainath's stricken look. She offered the pipe again and Rainath accepted, taking the tiniest of draws. Once she got past the burn, and the cough, there was a feeling of calm, a kind of separation that Rainath wanted to lean into.
"I don't know what I'd ask," she confessed to Jade, handing it back.
"Well I'll tell you what Cat asks for, but we'll have to modify-" she broke into giggles at Rainath's horrified expression.
"A cake seems nice," Rainath offered. Jade gave her a look of mild disgust. "I'd rather lick your boots and get it over with," she told her. "I hate baking."
"How bad could it be?" Rainath asked, mood lightening.
"He's creative," Jade assured her grimly.
"Well, I'd ask you to make a weapon for me, but that seems an unfair price," she told her, and Jade's face brightened.
"I'd be honored for you to carry my steel," she told Rainath, "but ma will have her say, in that," she added in a knowing tone.
