In Which Lonriad Sees Something

October 5, 1179

"Wait, when did this happen?" Lonriad scuffed his boot across the floor and stared downward as Ashe tried and failed to get comfortable on the couch. "Two months ago and you're only telling me now?"

His friend bowed his head, his own knee a sudden point of utmost interest. If ever Lonriad found himself in the position of having to demonstrate tell-tale signs of shame and guilt, he'd have to make sure Ashe was otherwise unoccupied. "I figured you'd think it was stupid."

Well, it wasn't as if there could be any arguing there. "Yes, well... you were writing a letter to Rona. Rona came in. She gave you the slightest hint that she could see it--not that she wanted to read it, mind you, but that she could see it--and you destroy it. If the letter was for Rona in the first place, then why didn't you let her read it?"

Ashe shifted again, squirming with the same anxiety Baby Adonis never failed to demonstrate at bath time. In this case, though, Lonriad doubted that a raspberry to the tummy would be a productive response. "Because it, uh... it wasn't from me."

"Oh." An acceptable explanation in this case, no doubt. Of course, all that resolution had served was to replace one stupid scenario with another. For all he'd never seen the ruined letter and all its lies, it was a clear vision in his mind. Dear Rona: Sorry for not writing earlier. Things were hectic for a while, but they've settled now. I miss you, though. Hope everything is well. All the best. --Aspen. All right, it would have been more elaborate, more personal. But he only needed the gist of it. "Why would you do that?"

"To make her happy?" Ashe let himself look up just long enough for Lonriad to meet his eye. There was always that wavering fear in Ashe's eyes, that barely-contained paranoia that had never lurked in Aspen's. Or had it? Aspen had her secrets too. "She misses her friend and it's my fault she's gone. I just want Rona to know that Aspen didn't forget about her."

Lonriad tried not to groan as he took a step back and dropped to the floor. Meanwhile, Ashe abandoned the hope of settling and slid down the front of the couch. Good. These things were always better said between two parties on the same level. "There's a better way to let her know that. It's called 'telling the truth'."

"You think I haven't thought about that? That I don't lie awake every night watching her sleep and trying to find any way to say it that doesn't make either of us look insane?" He took to fidgeting with his wedding band, for all Lonriad couldn't understand why. It looked to fit perfectly. "I can't tell her, Lonriad. I can't tell her that I only exist because her best friend doesn't. I can't do that to her."

"Of course you can't, because that's a lie." And sometimes, Lonriad just had to wonder if Ashe even knew the difference anymore. "You are her best friend. Sure, you're taller and hairier and I won't even mention the more obvious changes, but you're still the same person deep down. Aren't you?"

The silence was such that had a spider chosen that moment to scurry across the wall, he would have heard it. "Ashe..."

"I don't know." Ashe spun the band up toward his knuckle, a trail of red skin left in its wake. "I was just a kid. I never had a chance to know who I was. I just knew I loved her."

I just knew I loved her. It was a plain phrase, but it was as good as a ballad. It was the saddest and most honest and most heart-wrenchingly pure thing Lonriad had ever heard. "Tell her that."

"No." He pushed the ring back into place and sighed. The fear was still present, but there was a different energy to it--passive, defeated. All his layers of facade had been stripped away and this was his core. Naked, amorphous, not even solid. Pure agony. "I can't lose her. It's a stupid thought because she's not even mine, but I can't lose her. Don't you see it, Lonriad?" Lonriad shook his head. He didn't know what he saw. "She's my only reason for existing. I don't know who the hell I am and the only thing I can define myself by is her. If I lose Rona--if I drive her away--I have nothing. I am nothing."

Lonriad shook his head. He kept studying Ashe and looking past the lies and adaptations, and when that was all gone, there wasn't nothing. He might not have been sure what it was, but he knew it was something--something, biding its time, curled up deep inside just waiting to be realized. "You're not nothing."

"Then what am I?"

If there was an answer to that question, it took a much wiser man than Lonriad to see it. He doubted even his father would know. But he had to say something. It was the only way to keep the hope alive. "You're someone who loves someone else more in a second than most people love in a lifetime, and you have to let her know that. You have to tell her everything you just told me, and you have to believe that she won't push you away."

"And why wouldn't she?"

"Because you wished for her to be happy, and the universe brought you two together. I know it sounds stupid, but that's what happened. It happened because you're meant to be together."

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