Chapter 441: I’m Here.

Chapter 441: Chapter 441: I’m Here.

Over the years Khobi has often dreamed of the moment he would come face to face with his aunt and uncle once again.

Dreaming was a luxury afforded to few in Briyagi, but when he dreamed –if he dreamed –he liked to dream of them.

Their faces, their voices, his favourite memories playing back on repeat until the day he could make new ones with them again. Because he knew that that day would come. If not tomorrow, then the next, or the day after that.

He didn’t know how exactly he knew, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he did; that the darkness of Briyagi was not absolute, and that there would come a day when he would be reunited with those most precious to him.

In this life too, not the next.

​He’d wondered how they’d come to meet –would he find them, or would they seek him out, or would they simply converge on a whim of fate? Would it be summer or winter when their paths next crossed, and would it be somewhere peaceful, far from the decay of Briyagi, or amidst a sea of blood?

​(Would they even recognise him?)

​(What would he say?)

​There was simply no knowing, no planning; not with so many different versions of the same dream. And in the moment each one would feel so real.

Each one would feel so much like it was the moment, right up until he was wrenched back to the waking nightmare of his reality, and suddenly Khobi is terrified that it’s going to happen all over again.

That somehow everything that’s happened up until this point has been but one long, meandering dream, and that at any moment he’s going to wake up back in his cell at Briyagi to mourn the loss of a life he never even lived.

​How would he even know? His dreams always feel so real.

​Khobi’s on his feet now, but he doesn’t remember standing. It gets that way with dreams sometimes; things change and you don’t even know they have.

He doesn’t remember hearing the crash as his chair hit the floor either, but there must’ve been one because it’s lying flat on the stone behind him.

​Khojin Frost must’ve heard it too, but he hasn’t moved a muscle. No one has. It’s like they can’t, like some trickster god has snapped his fingers and trapped this room and all it holds in a timeless, soundless void; condemning them to this single moment for eternity.

And maybe this is a dream, because as sometimes happens in his dream Khobi suddenly can’t speak, although that hardly matters when he can’t think of a single thing he would say, even if he could.

​He looks older than Khobi remembers. Older than he should look, even, like somehow since they’ve parted he has lived more years than time has passed.

There are more greys in his hair now, deeper wrinkles around his eyes and brow, and scars he’s never seen. But the face beneath the weathering is still the same that Khobi remembers looking up to, and his eyes the same that used to peer back down. Still soft. Still kind.

Still Khojin Frost.

​And out of the silence, he speaks.

​"It’s been a while, Khobi."

​Wind rushes into Khobi’s lungs, and it tastes like the mountainside. Suddenly, he can feel the summer breeze rolling off the forest, and he can hear the thrum of cicadas and the roar of those waterfalls beyond the castle, and the heavy scent of evergreens fills his senses like at long last he’s finally made his way back home.

​That’s Khojin Frost’s voice and Khojin Frost’s smile creasing at the eyes; just as he remembers.

​"You got so big."

​The tears start to fall even before Khobi begins to move.

It’s not fair how they fall so fast and so fiercely when his limbs feel like he’s bogged down in tar; like there’s some invisible force trying to hold him in place and keep him from going to him.

But all the chains in the world could not hold him in this moment, and Khobi strains against the tethers of shock rooting him in place; struggles like he’s never struggled before in his life, and throws himself towards his family.

​Maybe this is a dream, and just as he reaches out to touch them they’ll vanish like they always vanish, and he’ll wake like he always wakes, but he has to go to them on the off chance that it’s not.

​Khojin Frost’s waiting for him.

​They’re both waiting for him.

​And with every step he takes, he keeps waiting for this moment to come crashing down around him; for someone to bar his way, or for this dream –if it is a dream –to fade.

He waits for the moment when he will wake with a start and see the rafters of his room above him, or worse, wake and realise that he never left Briyagi to begin with. That this has all been some feverish nightmare conjured by a feverish brain as he lies bleeding out with poison in his veins or a knife in his throat.

​But no one stops him. No one else moves, as if this is a moment not meant for those present to intrude upon but merely one they’ve been permitted to bear witness to.

And there is no denying that the moment Khobi Frost embraces his uncle for the first time is a thing of beauty; in the way that those rare instants of uncontainable joy are nothing short of breathtaking.

​A child stolen by war, returning home a man.

​And even though Khobi’s grown now; big enough that he dwarfs his aunt and towers over his uncle, the roots of the Iron Heart run deep and sturdy, and he bears the full force of Khobi’s weight without bending.

But there are tears appearing in his eyes too, like how the snow melts down the cracks in the mountainside in the waning days of winter; heralding long-awaited approach of spring.

​" You’re here ," Khobi chokes out, voice coming out as little more than a hoarse so. Shoulders shaking, fingers quivering, he clutches Khojin Frost tight to him, and nevermind who’s there to see or hear, he lets the tears fall, " You’re really here ."

​He can hardly believe it.

​After all this time.

​He’s here, and he’s real.

​He said would find him, and he did. And above the sound of waterfalls thundering in his ears, the airy timbre of Khojin Frost’s voice breaks through to him.

​"I’m here, Khobi."

​It’s just three little words; his name, spoken just how he remembers. But somehow in that moment, it’s all he needs to say. There’ll be time for more later, for all the words that still need to be said, but for now –

​Everything’s going to be okay .

​–But for now, those three little words mean everything.