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Aram didn’t know what was wrong with him. He only knew it must be terrible to drive even a father away. Every time he thought about it, he ended up with a big knot in his throat. No, not a knot—he’d be able to untie that. The emotions that always strangled him were a horrific tangle.
But underneath the weight of all that terrible grief, Aram felt another stirring of emotion, one he hadn’t expected: deep inside its great weeping heart, the dragon clung to a piece of knowledge that gave it some measure of comfort. The dragon believed with a certainty that its soul would be reunited with his beloved in the World Beyond, and that together they would continue the bond they had forged down through the great expanse of eternity.
“I do understand,” Esmir barked. “I was Daymar’s husband as well as his Warden. I doubt there were ever two men closer than we were.”
All his life, he’d wished desperately for a best friend, and he had found such a friend in Markus. He couldn’t abandon him—he couldn’t live with himself if he did. Compared to the pain of knowing he’d failed his friend, a plunge into oblivion would be a welcome alternative.
Aram became scrupulous about spending more time with his friends and making sure his clothes were always clean and his face recently shaven. He recognized that, while obsessing over things like knots and books might be a strength, it could also be another weakness. He could learn a lot by applying himself so obsessively—but he could lose a lot of friends doing that too. There was a delicate art to balance that he needed to find, and he vowed to strive for it.
“I don’t have much confidence in myself,” Aram said thoughtfully, remembering all the years he’d spent being told he was different and odd. After you hear something so many times, it starts to define you, and it eventually becomes a prison. He had been confined by that prison all his life, and now he feared the world outside its walls.
“The Auld believe that when a person dies, their soul becomes the wind.” “The wind?” Aram scrunched his brow. “Really?” “Really. Think about it. Think about all that the wind is and all that it does. Where it goes. Where it comes from. The wind knows everything, for it travels everywhere, and it’s with us always. It endures. It feels. It speaks. Sometimes it whispers. Sometimes it rages. Give it a listen sometime. See what it tells you.
