*COMPLETE* Allayria promised to do what it takes to stop the Jarles, to make the ugly decision. She thinks, at last, she understands what the dynast meant. The lesson earned from the top of that lonely cliff and given the dark murky water below.
It...
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Thalassa City stinks like rotting fish.
Hiran crinkles his perfect nose against it, wrinkling the handsome line of his mouth in distaste as he picks his way delicately between a minefield of rotting carcasses and cannon fodder. Battle would be so much more appealing if one didn't have to deal with the aftermath.
Tara is a few paces ahead, plopped squarely on the hump of a dead body. She's stringing a thick longbow and her hawk is perched on her shoulder, its narrow, feathered head twitching and turning this way and that. It gives him a long stare as he approaches, one beady eye fixed on him, and its feathers ruffle in a vague, half-formed threat.
He thinks half-heartedly of all the ways to roast feathered game, but this is about as serious as the bird's posturing and he directs his words to its keeper instead:
"What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"
She looks up, through a tangle of frizzed, pale blonde hair, a knowing smile on her face.
"Causing mayhem," she answers in turn, returning to her work. "You look to be all in one piece."
"No thanks to you."
"I didn't know you needed assistance."
"I don't, but the company would have been nice," he grumbles.
She smiles, stretching the gut string taut.
"Have you seen Finn?"
Hiran looks up, around at the crumpling wreckage that, he thinks, might have been a street at some point.
"Nope. Haven't seen the little nutball anywhere."
Plucking the newly-strung bowstring with a satisfying thrum, she vaults to her feet and the hawk takes off, springing up into the gray sky. She throws him a rare smile, one not weaseled out by clever words or feigned archness—a smile made of its own accord.
"Let's go get him," she says.
They pick and weave through the rubble and Hiran satisfied to follow Tara's lead until they come to a widening in the street—the entryway to some desiccated square. They can see the object of their conversation in the distance, the only small, moving thing in the center of this space, balanced precariously on a jut of collapsed bedrock, hands outstretched, reaching—no, pointing, he's definitely pointing—at a flock of seagulls overhead. Hiran turns his gaze to the side and sees, a short distance off and set firmly on solid ground, Ruben, looking on in mild alarm.
Finn sees the hawk first, his head turning in a quick, uncanny way, spotting the soaring bird high above, but it's only when his gaze lands on them that his face splits into a smile.
"You're alive!" he greets cheerfully.
"Such a tone of surprise," Hiran answers, though he smiles too as Tara, reaching the boy first, pulls Finn into a hug. "Have you been enjoying yourself?"
