(⚠️) Earth Song | FE Fates

(/\) 18: Repent

Repent

Preparations for the trip took seven days to finalize and complete. According to Elise, that was quite a feat — any supervisor than Leo might've taken at least three weeks to accomplish the same task. Still, it seemed to take its toll on the prince: when Katonah saw him at dinner and in the halls, he always looked tired, the circles under his eyes growing more pronounced every time she saw him. She wondered how much sleep he was getting. Not much, if his more prevalent temper was any indication.

Unfortunately, Katonah didn't get a chance to ask him personally, as he was so busy working with Briarus and Xander on preparations. That greatly disappointed her. Not that she didn't understand; of course she did. Yet, she was incredibly eager to speak with him again, mainly to ask him more about Anankos's War and his legendary sisters. And about Hoshido too, the country on the other side of the Bottomless Canyon. And more about Anankos, and the Twelve, and Garon's demonization...

In fact, she had so many questions for him that her own curiosity startled her. She'd been greatly insulated from the rest of the continent in her quiet life on the Moorland Scythe, she realized, protected from wars and dragons and demons. But she was in a completely different chapter of her own life now, a chapter where she had cause to wonder about the wars that had shaped the country by which she'd been captured.

But with Leo, Briarus, and Xander crammed up in the council chambers for most of those seven long days, she, again, had no opportunity to ask him, and so passed the time by going back to work in the gardens. Elise and the acquaintances she'd made with the castle staff assisted her, of course, and one day, while working with the others to overturn the mulch, she realized that she could probably ask the cheerful princess her overabundance of questions on Anankos's War.

But when Katonah remembered sitting in the prince's room by the fireplace, remembered them bantering, remembered him playfully flicking her nose, she found that she would rather ask Leo.

(/\)

At length, preparations drew to a close. At dinner at the beginning of the second week, Xander announced the establishment of a temporary encampment on the surface, not far from the edge of Krakenburg's chasm. Preparations had been made for it to begin receiving the farming equipment and consolidating it into an organized convoy in three days. Now, the king said, was the time to organize the royal entourage, which would include Leo, Briarus, Katonah, and any staff they needed to make their tour around Nohr as painless as possible.

"Have you worked out a list of who you would have attend to you?" Xander asked Leo.

"Not yet." Leo rubbed at his eyes, whose bruising spoke of too many nights spent staring at parchments by firelight. "I plan to work on that today — tonight. It'll be done by Wednesday."

The king nodded, then directed his gaze towards Katonah, which made her tense.

"General," he said, "you may as well start packing. By how smoothly things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if you departed at the end of the week."

That evening after her bath, Katonah took some time to do just that — ten whole minutes, in fact. She was surprised that it took even that, with the sparse amount of clothing that occupied her wardrobe. She was able to fit all her dresses, shoes, and hair accessories into one trunk, despite the fact that she had three at her disposal. She had to laugh a little at that, especially when she imagined Camilla performing the same task — no doubt the vixen had enough clothing to fill ten trunks of the same size.

She paused, however, when she came to her tribal clothing: her austere, wolf-fur tunic, cloak, and leggings. She wondered why the fur, which had all her life felt like the softest down, now felt to her like the bristles of a porcupine. Why the tunic didn't seem long enough, insulating enough, and why the lack of proper footwear seemed strange.