Brill just remained in that position, staring in the direction of the tree line for a few moments after the Crowbear was gone though "standing" wasn't quite accurate either.
His breathing was raspy, caught high in his throat; each intake like dragging shards within his throat and chest altogether.
He touched his side and felt the evidence of it there; the injury, the ribs protesting even that small movement. If he hadn't been drilled day in and day out by two individuals who viewed survival as mandatory rather than advisable he'd be laying flat where he fell.
He began to laugh, but It wasn't a sound to be proud of.
"I... I got its claw...! I got it!"
He tightened his handle in his other hand; the Crowbear's claw still slick with blood, still warm in a way he couldn't afford to dwell on, which was solid and irrefutable proof of his actions.
"I'll keep it for ten...ten years! I'll show everyone, the whole town and the Divine Beasts at the Gate...that I'm worthy!"
He tried to stand, it was a success, but it hurt like hell, then he took a step, then another.
Each one looked precarious and possibly his last, his body swaying, dragging him along, leaving a trail of broken ground and blood in his wake; It wasn't much further before his legs gave out again.
He fell, hitting the ground with a breath that ended with a broken sound, fingers digging into the ground, but that Crowbear claw still held tight in his hand.
"It hurts…it hurts…."
The word came out roughly followed by a laugh that bore no relationship to it at all, as though he didn't know which one he actually wanted to produce more.
Back in the clearing the Crowbear didn't get much further either. It slowed down, each movement requiring more effort than the last, until the beast finally lowered itself near the cluster of roots erupting from the ground.
Her cubs crowded around her legs, their small bodies bumping against its fur, giving off those rough sounds as they circled. The Crowbear raised its head one last time, and then it started to do something.
She scraped her beak across the ground in a long circle that widened beneath it and pushed loose earth and bits of debris aside, forming a rough circle in the dirt beneath it.
Then its claws gouged trenches within that circle that pointed inward, cutting across the previous lines at odd directions, making markings that were wholly unlike any made by man, instinctively, inherited through some unknown means of Crowbear kin. It moved its dying body, pressing its beak against its own chest, leaving splotches of its own blood smeared across its feathers. It turned its head, touching each of its cubs, leaving the same faint blood mark upon them.
The cubs stayed pressed close as the Crowbear gave a final grinding noise and then lowered its head to the ground within the circle, its breath faltering, ceasing altogether, and its great weight fell still.
The cubs remained for a long moment, and they circled the body once, twice, and then one nudged it. Nothing happened.
Another followed; then another. Then they ate, they followed the instincts that they were shown, consuming what fed them, continuing what never truly stopped with a single death, eating the remains of their mother.
….
Miles away, in the town of Cassady, the people gathered. It wasn't often that such a thing happened without a definitive reason, their voices overlapping, their eyes fixed on Idemay standing rigidly in the center, her face worn smooth with something far beyond lack of sleep.
"So none of you saw him?! You didn't see an 8 year old walking anywhere?!" She yelled.
"What the hell were you doing?! You reek of mead! Probably fell asleep drunk again!" A man piped up from the crowd, and that was enough for Idemay.
She shoved past a few people to get to him, and grabbed him by the face, her fingers closing over his jaw as she lifted him, his feet scrabbling at the dirt.
"Mind... Your business! Have you seen my son or not?"
"N-No! My apologies!"
She dropped him an instant later and turned away as though he had ceased to exist.
Then someone else said, "I... I heard things coming from Grudlen woods! Maybe he's..."
"No!" Idemay roughed back. The word exploded from her mouth, cutting the speculation off immediately. "He wouldn't go in there, not alone, not when there's bastards fighting in there every second of every day! He knows not to go in there by himself without me or his father..!"
She started to pace, back and forth, dragging a hand through her hair and muttering, not really to the people around her.
"He didn't get chosen by a Divine Beast that he wanted and he was pretty damn upset about it, though he didn't let it show... I remember that... I didn't know what the hell to say to him after hyping him up for days and months about the Choosing. Then I just... Got drunk and I forgot about it and then it just kept gnawing at me. It's my fault. If I'd just said something..."
Her thoughts rushed ahead of her speech, jumbling and knotting. 'I hate this so much...I rely on all this stupid, temporary shit that I drink or take to numb my own mind and this world. I'm good at this. So good at fighting on the battlefield but when it comes to my son... My family... Why am I so terrible of a mother?'
"Look!" Someone exclaimed.
A child's voice exploded, breaking through her rambling mind.
"It's Brill!"
Idemay spun around as if yanked by an invisible rope, her eyes finding a small, shambling figure pushing his way through the edges of the crowd on the ground. Blood followed him in a vivid trail; it was impossible to miss.
And It was Brill.
Brill raised a shaking bloody and wounded arm, his hand held the Crowbear's claw aloft, despite everything else that seemed poised to fall apart. And he was still crawling at the same time.
"I did it...! I did it...! I fought the Crowbear!!!"
Idemay was frozen.
Her body had come to a standstill completely antithetical to the chaos surrounding them; her fingers twitching weakly by her sides, as her eyes focused on the line of blood that stained against the dirt floor, following its trail until it led to Brill, struggling forward, a limp arm holding him upright while another hefted a claw as if it weighed absolutely nothing.
Idemay's voice was lower than it had been at any point throughout the day. "Brill...."
Brill kept going, he didn't even look at her, at first.
He kept crawling, knees slipping against the floor, a hand leaving a streak of red with every movement it made, the claw still outstretched like it were more important than anything in the world.
"I... I fought the Crowbear and got its claw...! I'm special, aren't I?! Isn't that cool?!" Brill exclaimed with tears in his eyes.
His words broke apart between gasps as his breath catches, a slight stutter to his voice, but beneath it, something else was pushing through all the pain with much more right to be there.
From their surroundings, whispers began:
"He actually fought a Crowbear...?"
"He's crazy...!"
"Why would he even do that?!"
"He's a bloody mess and scraped up all over!"
Adult voices began to join the din more deliberately but no less obvious:
"He ran out into those godforsaken, dangerous woods on his own to fight a Crowbear and lived through it? You have to hand it to him, but he's too reckless..."
"With parents like his, there's no doubt he thought he was immortal.."
That was enough for Idemay, so she moved. A step, two steps, and she was already there, rushing to Brill's side, pulling him into her arms with no regard for blood or dirt or anything other than the fact that he was here and breathing.
"Brill... What the actual fuck is wrong with you?! I was worried sick!"
Brill slumped against her, still clutching the claw in his hand, refusing to let go as he pressed himself against her.
"I did it mom... I did it... Isn't everyone going to like me more now? Are they going to want to hear about what I did? Then I can tell the Divine Beasts what I've done when they choose someone in ten years, and they'll choose me…right?"
She squeezed him tighter, maybe too tight, with a tear dropping from her eye.
Her mind split into two warring thoughts at the same time.
One part of her was tempted to scream at him for his 8 year old stupidity, to tell him just how reckless that was, how close he came to never returning, how he had no right to throw himself into something like that and assume he would come back.
The other part of her was tempted to praise him, to tell him he had accomplished something incredible, that he had gone head to head with something many grown men wouldn't dream of attacking, that he had not only survived but brought something back to prove it.
Neither felt safe, not here anyway, and not with all eyes on them, all people whispering and waiting for her to say something wrong so that they could immediately condemn her words.
She didn't want to say the wrong thing to Brill, especially when he's in this bloody and messed up state of his. She didn't wanna put any sort of huge condemnation on him while he was hurt.
Her hand closed into a fist against his back as her jaw clenched and she forced out words that fell somewhere in the middle.
"Brill... I'm going to get you inside and put some of that smelly ass healing stuff on you."
Brill clutched her harder, his voice cracking again as he tilted his head up. "Mom, please tell me I did good! I did so much!"
That hurt even more than the previous statements.
She briefly craved a drink more than she'd ever had before, enough to maybe make her laugh at how insane the moment had become, enough to dull the way her thoughts spun endlessly.
But that would be even worse, wouldn't it? She took a breath and stilled herself before adjusting him more securely in her arms, lifting him entirely with his blood that now seeped through to her clothing.
"Hold on." That was all she said.
She turned and started walking through the throng toward their house, ignoring all of the looks and whispers that followed them;
"He's so brave..."
"Or stupid! He could've died!"
"I want to hear about everything he did!"
Idemay said nothing, she didn't even look up. She was too fixated on the weight of her son in her arms, on the way he held onto the claw like it was more important than the blood he was losing, like it was proof of something he wouldn't give up yet.
….
Brill didn't move once Idemay got him into bed.
The minute his body hit the furs whatever it was holding together collapsed; his breathing settling into more of a rumble now. He was still blood coated across his arms and face, dried in some places, cracked along his skin where the dried blood was long gone.
And Idemay worked silently for a while. A wooden bowl at her side was filled with a black gooey substance, it gave off a smell that was pungent enough to be felt in the back of someone's throat and tasted of a bitterness that spoke of earth. She dipped her fingers into it, took some out, and rubbed it into the worst of his wounds, pressing with slow fingers.
The Druid's Tea.
It didn't look like much when she was finished, ground leaves and crushed stems pressed into a sort of paste with boiling water added; it still gave off a scent, like the forest had been pounded and pushed into a single held thing.
Before Velkrund was what it was now, Druids had hammered out this mixture in secluded glades all over the land. They weren't really healers, not like anyone ever saw it anyway, they just wanted to know how life clung to itself when it was being ripped apart and how that strength could be reproduced in their own hands.
It came from that, and this tea was not meant to soothe, regardless if it came from Druids. It dragged the body down, pushing away anything unnecessary and pushing it into forcing it's whole being into healing; it was a forced and heavy sleep that would hit Brill, that could last days depending on how badly one had been beaten and what the mixture was being asked to do; people joked about how it knocked them flat, but that was rarely the full truth, people sometimes didn't wake up if their bodies couldn't keep up with what the tea was asking.
Idemay spread more onto his ribs, pressing more carefully this time as her fingers discovered a series of things that felt distinctly wrong beneath the skin.
"Damn it..."
She readjusted, pressed again, rubbing the paste into place, then wrapped the area in cloth to keep it in position, moving on to his shoulder, and cleaning it first with water before reapplying, hands steady when her thoughts that were not.
By the time she was finished, Brill looked as though he'd been pieced back together enough to keep him from falling apart.
So Idemay slumped back, hands folded in her lap, staring at him.
"I'm sorry...Brill."
She said the words quietly like they might become too real, or at least, too much for her to handle.
She stayed there, her eyes flying over to the corner of the room; the mead bottle half-empty sitting there with its small sweet scent of the night before still clinging to it.
Her hand twitched, she wanted it bad. It would be easy; One drink, just to dull the situation right now, to push the thoughts around until they no longer felt like they were going in circles.
Her hand reached out toward it, but then she stopped; her hand hovered there in front of the bottle for a moment, before pulling back against her leg.
'If only I hadn't gotten fucked up last night, and done something for him, then he wouldn't have gone and been hurt while trying to impress the world, to become a worthy figure to the Divine Beasts! What's wrong with me? Can I not really handle this? All the things that I have wanted to be for so long, having a family to love and to love me back, is it just too much to cope with? I don't want to say the wrong thing to Brill, he's all that I have in this world anymore, everyone pushes him away or moves away from him because he's born with those strange marks on his cheek. And I hate seeing his reaction to it. He'll even stop me from kicking their asses too, haha…he didn't want me embarrassing him.'
She let out a sigh that didn't help at all, and remained still.
Hours went by, then more of them went. She didn't leave his side, didn't eat, barely slept, leaning her head against the edge of the bed when her body finally screamed to rest and jerking up the moment she thought he might want something.
The urge to take a drink didn't leave though, it stayed there, persistent at the back of her mind, a constant lure of what might be an easy out.
She ignored it, and kept on ignoring it, for two days straight.
When she finally got up her legs protested as they refused to be still, her body was stiff from holding one position for so long, and Brill had not woken, his breathing remaining peaceful, the tea doing what it was meant to do and pushing him further into recovery.
She gave him one last look, and walked out.
The western border of Cassady was much quieter than the rest of the town, the buildings sparser until they tapered off to the cliffs beyond. These were known as the Cliffs of Sentras, a jagged tear of rock disappearing down into the darkness below without seeming to end.
They'd been named for a magistrate called Sentras generations ago, who had championed their use as a border after he determined there was nothing beyond that needed regulating, as there was nothing of any value in those lands. Whether he was correct or was just tired of dealing with it was a question that divided the populace, depending on the person you spoke to. A close friend to King Camelot's ancestors who had died.
The sky was grey, filled with just the heavy press of dark clouds, and Idemay approached the edge of the cliff.
Not close enough to fall but close enough that the thought might have crossed her mind as her eyes stared out over the void, a smear of her own blood still dried and cracked along her skin.
She remained still and silent, just standing in the wind that tugged at her clothes as everything that she had held onto for so long was finally letting go….