Schedules. Rituals. Order imposed upon the chaos that was Myrken Wood. These were the things that made life bearable. Stability overlaid upon all the madness and darkness and the unknown. That was how Myrkenites coped. Toiling the farm at the same time each day. A lunch meeting that occurred like clockwork. And training, training that would take place each and every morning.
And why? Because without pushing forward, without growing, changing, grasping, there was no point to any of. Stability was enough to make one cope, but to endure? To do anything but sleep and hide through life? To do that, one needed more, and growth, change, something to grasp for, a light to move towards. This was an end in and of itself. Could anyone not from Myrken understand that? The why didn't matter because the act was everything.
Elliot Brown strove to be more than he was. At first, he cared about the cost. Then later, he was aware of it. And finally, he saw it as it passed him by. It passed him by and he no longer cared. He had purpose. he had meaning. He had growth. Skill. Deftness. Security. A meal in his stomach and clothes upon his back. Winter would soon arrive, just a month or two away, and he welcomed it. He'd turn his nose up at the biting cold and for once, he'd bite back. No, this year, for the first year of his life, the cold wouldn't be able to touch him. He danced between rooftops, amidst rafters. What could touch him anymore? What could catch him? What could reach a boy on the verge of manhood when he had passed by all that had defined him.
The superstitions and lessons of his parents? His father was dead and his mother had been a fool. She was preyed upon not by a single person but by the entirety of her life. She toiled the field for survival, to feed her young. Her back was stooped, her hands cut and worn, and what did she have to show for it? Survival. A social acceptance. She spent her life hiding from the truth, from her oppression, from the slavery to her own body and the whelps it had produced.
In leaving, the rogueling had freed her from a bit of that burden, from his portion of it. He understood that now. He understood so much now. It had been a long time in coming. The knights were withered, their own sacrifices whittling their numbers until they were insignificant. They had weathered Myrken through one storm and then could do little against the next or the next or the next. It kept coming, it all kept coming, but now Elliot understood.
In life, you help yourself. In life, you take what you want, because if you don't, someone else will. You do what you want. You choose who to care for. You take nothing for granted. You appreciate every moment. And you stand for no one wronging you, because if you do once, they'll do it again and again and again. Cherny had stood up for himself and had been rewarded for it, but if the boy did it again, Elliot wouldn't hesitate. There was room for compassion, and he had shown it once, but there was never room for weakness. Not in Myrken. Not in this cold, unfair world.
Loyalty mattered though, but so few were deserving of it. Solena had given him so much, everything. She had freed him from his prison upon the ground walking along the other blind fools. She had freed him from his prison of his morals. She had freed him from his prison of his needs. She had taught him to fly in three ways. For that he would do anything for her. He would die. He would maim. He would kill. This was a binding of his own choice. The first that he knowingly made since his eyes were opened.
These were the sort of thoughts that rumbled through the previously ill-used brain of Elliot Brown as he stood beside his teacher, their features framed by the sunrise. There were moments, lapses, where he lost focus, where he wanted something else, companionship, friendship, old connections and new, but that's all the were, lapses. One after the next proved to be a mistake, an error, the ghost of what can no longer be. He felt them less and less now. He had much more practical lessons to replace them.
He knew she had things to speak to him about. His recent action. His recent choice of companions, his recent choice of goals. But when did they ever just sit and talk? Not since she had her child. The teenage boy (fifteen? sixteen?) smiled an honest smiled at the elf. "Today is the day I catch you." They would talk, but amongst motion and danger and thrill. There was no other way to live.