[RPG] [BT] Phoebe Anaris ~ Reflections on a Long-Awaited Reunion

[Timothy Collett]

As she finishes packing away her tent, Phoebe looks southeast to the  
silhouette of Athol Margos against the dawnlight in the distance.

Well, looks like today's a good day to go to town... she thinks with  
a smile.  Hefting her pack onto her back, she climbs back up onto the  
road from the copse of trees she spent the night in, and starts  
walking toward the city.

As its towers and spires grow closer, Phoebe tries to imagine what  
Delvin has become like in the time he has been away from her.  They  
had not known each other long yet when he went away, but they had  
grown close in that short time—despite the difference in their  
station, which was really hardly any difference these days, for the  
Anaris family had long ago faded into relative obscurity in Tarimal,  
the Golden Wood, and out on the northern borders, everyone had to  
band together to defend their homes against the raiding bands sent by  
Jilak Darkmoon to the north, in the Wasteland.  Too many had already  
fallen to their evil...including Phoebe's parents, and, she'd heard,  
Delvin and Anton's great-grandparents, who had lived north of the  
forest, when Jilak first began his reign of terror, turning the once  
green and fertile land of rolling wooded hills and babbling brooks  
into a brown, dead place.  So they fought side by side, in numerous  
small battles, against those who would destroy all they knew and  
loved, and burn the forest to the ground...and, in time, they became  
lovers.

Then half of his family, including Delvin and his brother Anton,  
decided that, in order to be better able to defeat Jilak once and for  
all, they should seek other lands, less hemmed-in, with more  
opportunities for training...and they left.  She was left behind, and  
the town left without some of its best defenders.  It wasn't long  
before a raiding party came that was too strong to defeat.  The  
Anarises who remained were slaughtered, along with many of the  
remaining townspeople, and the town burned to the ground—but their  
sacrifice gave a small group of them, led by Phoebe, the chance to  
escape the town with the children.  When the Anarises returned to  
bury their dead, Delvin had barely spoken to her...though he had  
barely spoken at all, from what she heard.

Phoebe pauses, looking up at the tallest tower of the city, sticking  
up into the sky like a pointing finger, and remembers the spire of  
the Temple of Arelien in the town, blackened but still standing,  
sticking up much like that.  Delvin and Anton had held vigil in the  
temple all night for their parents: Delvin had come out still full of  
grief, but Anton's face had held a strange look of peace.  She had  
not dared to try to talk to Delvin that day...but outside the temple,  
one of the other Anarises, an aunt of some kind of Delvin's named  
Salina who had always liked Phoebe, had approached her, tears in her  
eyes.  "Phoebe, dear," she had said, "We heard about your bravery in  
taking the children to safety.  My daughter died in the battle, but I  
would like to adopt you, make you one of us.  We must leave soon, so  
I won't be able to make it all formal and official until we return,  
but I would be honoured to be able to think of you as my daughter..."

Phoebe had agreed, honoured in turn to be thought of so highly, and  
in the town further south, deeper in the forest, where she and the  
children had sought refuge, she waited for them to return.  But time  
went by, and still they remained away...

At last, Phoebe decided to simply follow them.  She had heard of the  
lands they had gone to, and knew that Delvin was in a place called  
"Beluaterra."  She found a ship that would take her there, as long as  
she would work for her passage and wasn't picky about her destination  
port...

But Delvin, she hears, is now a leader, of a nation called  
Riombara...and ahead of her, growing larger, closer, with every step,  
is the capital city, Athol Margos, where she should be able to find  
him...

Won't he be surprised!

--

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart."
  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

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