Page 4 of The Weaver

“Sire…” Rekosh shook his head. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, what he should have said, not due to a lack of words, but an overabundance of them. Years of thoughts he wished he’d voiced fought to get out at once, so numerous and substantial that they formed a lump in his throat.

After taking so many risks, after overcoming so many dangers, this was too difficult for him?

“Your siblings will be thrilled to finally meet you,” Raikarn continued. “All they have had are my old stories, and you were always the better spinner of tales, even as a broodling.”

Your siblings.

Rekosh stilled his fingers before they could squeeze the bundle any tighter. He drew in a slow, steadying breath. “I am not certain that would be for the best.”

Raikarn chittered gently and brought his forearms together in an apologetic gesture. “Forgive me, Rekosh. You have traveled far to return to Takarahl, if the stories are true, and youmust be tired and hungry. We have meat stored. Eat with me.” He skittered across the den to a shelf laden with clay pots and woven baskets.

Releasing a slow breath through his nose holes, Rekosh studied his surroundings. This was a brood den, spacious and lived in. Fluffed silk and woven blankets lay along one wall, where Raikarn slept along with his mate, Eshkhet, and their broodlings. How old were the little ones now? Five years? Six?

Small playthings carved from wood and stone or crafted with cloth and stuffing lay scattered about the chamber. Again, something clenched around Rekosh’s hearts, and a long slumbering pain pierced his chest. The den of his youth had often looked like this, before…

No. Not now, not here.

“Where did she put it?” Raikarn muttered as he rummaged through the containers on the shelf.

Rekosh glanced down at the hide-wrapped bundle in his lower hands. “I have come for a purpose, sire.”

“Of course you have,” replied Raikarn distractedly. “The threads of fate were tangled, but they have finally led you back to where you belong.”

Rekosh’s mandibles nearly snapped together. He did not look away from the bundle, not immediately, and his mind’s eye filled with the image of what it contained.

The dress he’d woven for Ahmya. The finest work he’d ever produced. When it came to this dress, the threads of fate hadn’t been tangled at all. They’d been woven—delicately, intricately, masterfully. And they had guided his hands in this work.

“Oh, they have led me to where I belong. I finally know it,” Rekosh said softly.

Raikarn opened a jar and angled it toward the nearest crystal, eyes narrowing as he peered inside. “We have had our disagreements, but I have ever known you would one day understand.”

When Rekosh looked up, his gaze fell not upon his sire, but the wide stone slab carved into an alcove on the far wall. The tools and materials arranged atop it belonged to a goldworker. Adornments and pieces of jewelry in various states of completion lay there too, many of them displaying elaborate details and designs.

He could not help but notice that many of the tools on the right side were the same as the tools on the left, just larger. Sized for the hands of a female.

Sized for Eshkhet, the goldworker who Raikarn had taken as his mate ten years ago.

Nothing in this den hinted at the life Raikarn had left behind. Nothing in this den suggested that he’d once performed different work, that he’d had a different mate, that he’d been sire to a different brood. No needles and thread, no loom, no tools for sewing or weaving. No chunks of wood being slowly shaped into clubs or spear hafts by the hands of a seasoned warrior, no shards of blackrock to give those weapons their bite. Not a single one of the toys that had been the favorites of Rekosh’s brood siblings held a place of honor upon the many shelves.

Not a single one of Rekosh’s early attempts at adorning fabric were upon the wall, displayed with the pride a parent took in their broodling’s efforts.

It was as though Rekosh’s mother, Loshei, and his brood siblings had never existed.

As if Rekosh had never existed.

“I understand,” Rekosh said.

I only hope that you will also understand, one day.

Rekosh carefully tucked the wrapped dress under his arm. He’d come here to show the work to his sire, but thinking there’d been even the slightest chance of it having a positive effect on Raikarn had been foolish. Nothing could ever be as it had been. His sire had found someone to live and work alongside,someone to fill the hole in his hearts in a way Rekosh never could have.

Raikarn covered a basket with a cloth and straightened, looking at Rekosh. “Perhaps we should await Eshkhet. She should return with the broodlings soon, and we may all eat together.”

Harsh words stung like venom upon the tip of Rekosh’s tongue, but he bit them back. “No, sire.”

“No?” Raikarn tilted his head. “Have you anything else to do?”

“I have far to travel before sunfall.”

---