[This post is from Matt’s point of view.]
He left them by the fire, two women and three infants, and headed back for their room to fetch their weapons—his warhammer, her crescent blades. His heart gave a painful squeeze as he thought back to the moment in her bedroom, when she’d told him she had kept them—the hammer, his axe, the boar-spear. There was a part of him that knew she’d treasured them even as they’d brought her pain.
We should probably go back to the house at some point, get her things, bring them back. She hadn’t mentioned it, but he wasn’t sure if she’d thought much of it, either. How much of that past was something she wanted to leave behind, he wondered idly as he walked down the darkened hallway.
It was a question best left to a someday, though, and that someday wasn’t today.
It all still feels too damn quiet.
He tried to shake the feeling even as he ducked into their room. Her weapons were tucked carefully onto a shelf in one corner, meticulously cleaned after the fight when she’d killed Pluton and wrapped in their sheathes. His warhammer hung next to the door, strategically placed. That had been her doing once she’d been well enough for it. Matt didn’t mind. The spot next to the door was convenient and would make it easier to protect her or anyone else inside—if it ever came to that.
He picked up the harness for the hammer from where it lay on the shelf next to her blades and shrugged into it. Then, after a moment, he took the warhammer off the wall and secured it across his back before picking up her crescent moon blades, the ones that Cíar had forged for her all those centuries ago.
Matt could almost—almost—remember what it was like.
It was one of those memories where he regretted a lack of clarity. It didn’t matter, of course—he knew what he needed to know. They both did. The weapons had been ones crafted out of love, not anything else. They were meant to keep her safe.
He hoped they always would.
