I came down through the trees with my legs not entirely under my control, and I made them go anyway, as my father was waiting for me at the tanning frame, and action, even if it meant walking, was better than dwelling on the nightmares in my mind.
My dad looked up when he heard me on the bank, and the look was the look I remembered, mild and slightly tired.
Knowing his habit, he must have been working before the sun was fully up and was not going to make a fuss about it, but he was going to register that I had not joined him until now.
"Elric."
"Hello, Dad."
"You are late."
I paused for a moment, not knowing how to reply, then I simply said, "I know."
Then my father smiled, "Your sister kept you with the porridge?"
Something about his smile made me smile back at him, and I sighed in frustration, "Mel charred it."
"Mel chars everything." He chuckled, and he looked down at the hide he was working. "Still, I see that you ate it anyway?"
I shrugged, "I ate two bowls."
He paused with the blade in his hand and looked at me properly for the first time, and there was a small flicker in his expression; it was surprise and a bit of suspicion, and then he went back to the hide. After a while, after he had processed what I just said, he muttered aloud,
"Two bowls is generous of you."
Shrugging again, I said, "It tasted better than I remembered."
He glanced at me, "Better than you remembered from what. You ate it yesterday."
I did not answer immediately because the question was the kind of question that the dream did not have a good answer to, and my father was the kind of man who noticed when answers did not arrive.
I crossed the last few steps to the frame and stood beside him and held out the smaller blade I had taken from the chest in the hallway, and he took it with a small nod, his standard acknowledgment of a thing being done correctly.
"Sharp," he said, testing the edge with his thumb.
I nodded and rolled my eyes a bit, "You sharpened it last night."
"I did. Hand me that."
He pointed without looking at the bone scraper sitting on the stone beside the frame, and I handed it to him, and we settled into the work.
The way we usually worked was with me on the smaller tasks, the holding and the handing and the cleaning of the tools as he used them, and him on the cuts that mattered.
The hide was a good one. A young deer, taken cleanly the way my father always asked the hunters to take them, and the flesh had been scraped down already, and the work today was the slow, careful pass with the smaller blade to clean the last of the connective tissue from the inside before the soaking began.
It was patient work. The kind of work my father was best at, because my father had decided long ago that hurrying ruined more things than it saved, and he had tried to always teach me this lesson, sometimes I did not know if he succeeded with me or if he failed.
We worked for some time without speaking, and I appreciated the silence more than he would ever know.
The river ran behind us, and the sun rose higher over the trees. Somewhere upstream, a kingfisher dropped onto something in the water and came up empty and tried again.
My father’s hands moved in the small, precise motions that I had grown up watching, and my own hands did the smaller jobs without me having to think about them because the body remembered the work even when the mind was not entirely present.
After a while, he spoke.
"You are quieter than usual."
I paused, not knowing how to reply to that question, "I had a strange morning." I finally said.
"The dream again?"
"Sort of."
He did not ask further. My father was the kind of man who let questions sit, and trusted that whatever needed to be said would be said when the person was ready to say it. He kept working. I kept handing him the things he needed and cleaning the things he had used.
The work moved on.
The kingfisher caught something on the third try and flew off with it.
My father said, without looking up, "You are different today."
A burst of crazed laughter nearly came out of my mouth, but I suppressed it, "I know."
"You stand differently."
I glanced at him with surprise, "Do I?"
"Yes." He paused with the blade. "You stand as if you are carrying something you want to put down, but have decided to carry it anyway. I have not seen you stand like that before."
I did not have an answer for him, since my brain was going over his words again and again.
He worked for another minute, and then he set the blade down on the frame and turned to me fully. I knew at this moment that he had decided that the conversation was the work, and the hide could wait.
"Elric."
I paused, then answered, "Yes."
"What is it?"
I looked at him. At the lined face I had grown up with.
I saw the apron tied over the work shirt, with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and the hands that had cut leather for thirty years and that had also held me when I was a baby.
I looked at all of him, the entire ordinary man, and I tried to think of what to say.
"Dad."
"Yes."
"What do you do when something is too big?"
My dad did not laugh at my question, nor did he look puzzled; he just waited for me to continue.
"What do you do," I said, "when the thing in front of you is too big to fight, and too big to run from, and you know, you know, that you cannot win, and you are too small, and the only outcomes are giving up or being broken. What do you do then? Do you run? Do you give up? Do you—"
I stopped because the words had run out, and the thing underneath the words had not yet found a shape.
My father looked at me for a long time.