Her dreams left Eirian shaken and unwilling to talk to anyone about them. She'd scoured the Histories between her meetings and even asked Finn to stay out of the Vault for a day and look up everything he could about the earliest known humans and Death.
He hadn't found much beyond what most people already knew. Death was usually one of the first gods in all religions across the rock that had gods.
And he was almost always a loner, separate from the rest. Some of the earlier records that had somehow survived frequently described him alongside dragons, but dragons had died out thousands of years ago as far as anybody knew, so Eirian wasn't sure if it was a sign they were real, she'd seen them in the skies in her dreams, or if it was a sign her dreams were just that…dreams.
But they felt real.
She couldn't get past how real it felt. The first experience of sunlight and wet grass beneath her feet. If she thought on it long enough, she could almost remember the first time she'd felt hunger, the sharp pain in her stomach subsiding to a dull ache before they learned how to treat it.
Before they learn how and what to eat.
Who had to learn that? She'd spiraled for a while before she'd realized everyone did, most of them just did it as a baby and never thought about it again. That made her feel like an idiot for a bit while she was playing with Brendan and watching him figure out how to use a fork for anything except eating.
He wasn't exactly struggling, but he hadn't figured it out in the first few seconds either, and it made Eirian wonder how she'd learned.
And who had taught her?
Brendan cooed and made a bunch of garbled sounds that Eirian imagined made sense to him and sounded like nonsense to her, but he had a terribly serious expression as he did it.
He waved the fork at her, face intent.
"I don't know what you want," Eirian told him, vaguely concerned since everyone else was still in meetings or training and she was alone with the toddler until Marian finished getting Eirian's armor sorted.
The Crimson Army was finally ready to deploy en masse into the borderlands, and Chenzhou had decided that instead of the Small Council, he would split the forces into three major commands. The left wing, which Chenzhou himself would lead, and that would take the northern portion of the prairie. The right wing, which would be commanded by Mingzhe and which would deploy to the southern lands.
And the center, commanded by Eirian. It was her first major command of a significant force, and she was excited and wary at the same time.
The overall campaign plan that she, Chenzhou, and Mingzhe had come up with, after reviewing the individual recommendations and plans of the commanders in the court, was a three-pronged attack designed to separate the allied tribes into small groups that would be more easily overwhelmed by the might of the Crimson Army.
The tribes would always have numbers on their side, but unless they came together in one giant force, like they suspect Beng Shai was planning, that advantage could be nullified by the better-trained soldiers of the Camelia.
The terrain still wasn't in their favor, but the Crimson Army was at least familiar enough with it to hold their own at this point, and Eirian was painfully aware she had an uphill battle ahead of her to prove her worth.
"Pah." Brendan toddled closer, falling against Eirian and waving the fork at her.
"What? You want me to have it?"
He waved it harder. "Pah, bha!"
Amusement bubbled up. She wasn't sure if he was supposed to be talking yet. Min and Marian both said he was a little behind, but not so much that it wasn't still within an acceptable range. With so little experience outside the Soliel Manor, despite Min's attempts, it wasn't a surprise to either of them, and he made much more of an effort to talk to Chenzhou and Mingzhe, who talked back to him.
Eirian was always just a little unsure when it came to doing it herself, never certain if she should just make random sounds back or speak to him like an adult and just pretend she knew what he was talking about, but then she worried about saying the wrong thing or teaching him something bad because she didn't understand him and she always ended up tongue tied.
She'd never struggled to communicate with anything before the way she did with the child, and no amount of anyone telling her that was normal made her feel any better about it.
Chenzhou and Mingzhe, even Yuze, made it look so easy that Eirian felt stupid in comparison. Even Finn, but he was still a child himself in her mind, so she didn't always count him. The last time she'd left him alone watching Brendan, they'd gotten into the child-safe paints Finn had requested his family send and ruined so many pieces of furniture that Marian's eye had been twitching for days after, and Finn had pretty much hidden in the Vault until she'd calmed down.
No one had seen Snake yet either, though Yuze had managed to keep up a semi-regular reporting schedule with her that hadn't given away that they knew what she'd done.
Well, that hadn't given away that they knew it was her specifically. Ever since Anna had left, Snake had found a dozen excuses to stay away from the Camelia and the rumors flying about a leak. Keeping herself clear until she had enough plausible deniability.
Yuze was already trying to link the intelligence leaks to Beng Shai's ambushes, and there wasn't a single body in the Court of the Camelia that thought he could have done it without an inside source somewhere.
Eirian wasn't sure if she agreed with that or not, given that Beng Shai had already proven to be so much more than anyone had expected.
Eirian had already decided to send a few of the more experienced scouts under her command out to look for her.
Rock save her if she ended up in Eirian's area of responsibility. She wouldn't make it back to the Camelia for a trial.
"Ouch!" Eirian yelped when Brendan suddenly poked her with the fork in her ribs. The sudden pain was sharp, but she managed not to say something terribly inappropriate in front of the child. "Ow, what was that for?"
Brendan blinked up at her guilelessly.
Then he beamed, "Eei, ohh!"
"You are not cute." She told him, annoyed at the throb in her ribs, but he clearly didn't believe her and she didn't really mean it anyway.
~ tbc