Chapter 3 — Vera
The village of Ashfeld had a monster problem.
Specifically, a Stonehide Bear had been coming down from the northern tree line for three days in a row, getting progressively closer to the goat pens, and the village elder had knocked on Cidd’s door that morning with the expression of a man who had already mentally rehearsed this conversation several times and still wasn’t comfortable with it.
"We wouldn’t normally ask," Elder Broft had said.
"I know," Cidd had said.
"It’s just that Aldren’s goats —"
"I’ll handle it."
Broft had left looking relieved and slightly guilty about being relieved, which was his natural state whenever he had to ask Cidd for anything.
Cidd had looked at the four faces at the breakfast table watching this exchange.
"Finish eating," he’d said. "All of you."
Three of them had gone back to their food.
Vera had already been standing up.
He hadn’t taken her.
He’d been very clear about this. C tier monster, yes, but a Stonehide Bear was not something a ten year old had any business being near regardless of how that ten year old trained or what that ten year old thought about the matter.
Vera had agreed with complete reasonableness.
She had then followed him anyway at a distance he was meant to not notice, which he noticed immediately because he noticed everything within a significant radius at all times and also because Vera’s version of stealth was, charitably speaking, a work in progress.
He’d chosen not to address it.
The bear had been in the tree line exactly where the tracks indicated. Large, territorial, the particular aggression of an animal that had decided a food source was its food source and was prepared to defend that position. Cidd had handled it in about four minutes — not killing it, just redirecting it firmly northward with a combination of mana pressure and a very specific application of the Roaring Rage skill he’d copied from a Snarlbear three years ago that communicated in terms a Stonehide Bear found completely convincing that this territory was not worth the trouble.
The bear had left.
He’d turned around.
Vera was standing fifteen feet behind him at the tree line with her wooden training sword in both hands and an expression of total focus that he recognized as her battle face — the one that looked nothing like her normal face, controlled and still and very serious, like a completely different person was wearing her features.
They looked at each other.
"I stayed back," she said.
"You did."
"I didn’t interfere."
"You didn’t."
"So technically I followed instructions."
He looked at her for a long moment.
"Technically," he said.
Her battle face held for approximately three more seconds.
Then she exploded.
"THAT WAS AMAZING — the way you used the mana pressure, I felt it from here, it went right through my chest, and the bear just — it just LEFT, it didn’t even think about it, it took one look and decided absolutely not —" she was walking toward him at speed, wooden sword waving, hands gesturing, the controlled stillness of thirty seconds ago completely gone like it had never existed — "can you teach me that, the mana pressure thing, I’ve been trying to figure out how you do it but I can’t feel the edges of it properly, it’s like it comes from everywhere at once —"
"Vera."
"— and also the bear was HUGE, I didn’t realize from the tracks, the tracks made it seem like a big bear but that was a genuinely enormous bear —"
"Vera."
"— I’m just saying I stayed back, which I did, so —"
"You followed me after I told you to finish eating."
She stopped.
Looked at him.
"...The bear is gone though," she said.
He sighed through his nose.
She took this as forgiveness, which it wasn’t, and fell into step beside him as he started back toward Ashfeld with the absolute comfort of someone who had calculated the odds and decided they were acceptable.
The village was twenty minutes from the tree line on foot.
Vera talked for nineteen of them.
He’d learned over ten years that this was simply how she processed things — everything came out, all of it, in no particular order, cross-referencing itself, doubling back, occasionally contradicting itself and then resolving the contradiction mid sentence. It wasn’t noise. There was genuine thought in it. He’d learned to track the thread underneath the volume.
Currently she was talking about the bear, then about the mana pressure technique, then about a sword form she’d been working on in her room at night that she hadn’t shown him yet because it wasn’t ready, then about something Ren had said at breakfast that she disagreed with but couldn’t articulate why yet, then back to the mana pressure technique, then —
"Father."
"Mm."
"Do you think I’m strong."
He glanced at her.
She was looking at the road ahead. Not the question she asked when she wanted reassurance — her voice had a different quality for that, a slight upward tilt. This was genuine inquiry. She actually wanted to know.
"For ten years old," he said, "you’re the best I’ve seen."
"That’s not what I asked."
"I know."
She waited.
"You’re strong," he said. "You’re going to be stronger. The gap between those two things is just time and work and you have no problem with either."
She thought about this for a moment.
Then: "Syla’s magic is better than mine."
"Syla’s magic is better than most adults’."
"Mira’s smarter."
"Mira’s smarter than most adults too."
"Ren is better with people."
"Yes."
She was quiet for a few steps.
"What am I best at," she said.
He looked at her properly then — at her profile, the serious set of her jaw, the way she was genuinely asking because she needed an honest answer not a comfortable one, because Vera had never in her life wanted a comfortable answer when an honest one was available.
"You don’t stop," he said. "Any of them could outperform you in their specific thing on any given day. But when it gets hard — when it’s past the point where most people decide enough — you’re still going. That’s not a small thing Vera. That’s actually the most important thing."
She absorbed this.
Processing. He could almost watch it move through her.
Then she nodded once. Filed it. Done.
"Okay," she said.
And then immediately: "Can we run the third sequence when we get back."
"After you help with the morning chores."
"...After chores."
Ashfeld in the mid morning had a specific quality of light — gold coming through the pine hills at an angle that made everything look slightly warmer than it was, the kind of light that made the weekly market look festive and the vegetable gardens look deliberate and the old stone well in the center of the village look like it had been placed there by someone with an artistic sensibility rather than practical necessity.
Vera waved at three different people before they’d made it ten steps into the village.
This was also something he’d observed over ten years — the complete disconnect between how Vera moved through the world outside and how she moved through it inside Ashfeld. Out there, in the forest, tracking a bear, waiting at the tree line with her training sword and her battle face, she was controlled and focused and very still. In here, among people she knew, she was — this. Waving at people. Stopping to look at a cat on a fence with the full investment of someone who had never seen a cat on a fence before. Calling out to old Brenvar across the square and asking at volume whether the horses were better this morning because they’d seemed unsettled yesterday.
Brenvar called back that they were fine, yes, thank you for asking, and then told her she’d gotten taller which made her stand up very straight and look extremely pleased.
She fell back into step with Cidd.
"I have grown," she confirmed, as though this had been under debate.
"You have," he agreed.
"I’m going to be tall."
"Probably."
"Taller than you eventually."
"Unlikely."
She looked at him assessingly. Looked at herself. Made some internal calculation.
"We’ll see," she said.
The house was at the edge of the village where the last of the built structures gave way to the open space that became the training clearing that became the tree line. He’d built most of it himself over the first winter here — not because he couldn’t afford to pay someone else, he could have paid someone else extremely well, but because he needed something to do with his hands that winter and building a house was as good as anything.
It was a good house. Larger than it looked from outside, which he’d done deliberately. Four individual rooms upstairs for the girls, a large kitchen, a main room with enough space for everyone to exist in simultaneously without anyone feeling compressed, a study that had become progressively more full of books over ten years to the point where it was now primarily a room made of books that also contained a desk.
He was still adding shelves.
They came through the back gate and Vera immediately became a different problem.
The transition happened in the space of the doorstep — battle-focused Vera, then the village Vera, and now home Vera, which was its own specific thing entirely. She dropped her training sword against the wall with a clatter that she genuinely didn’t seem to hear herself making, pulled off her boots in a way that left them pointing in completely different directions, and arrived in the kitchen making an announcement.
"I SAW THE BEAR," she told the kitchen.
The kitchen contained Syla, who was at the table with a book and a cup of tea and looked up with the expression of someone who had been enjoying a quiet morning and was now adjusting expectations.
"Father handled it," Cidd said, coming in behind Vera and moving her boots to a position that was less of a hazard.
"Father handled it AND I SAW IT." Vera pulled out a chair and sat in it sideways, legs over the armrest, in a position that seemed to require more structural flexibility than furniture was designed to accommodate. "It was enormous. The tracks didn’t do it justice at all. I’ve been tracking bears in the forest for two years and I’ve never been that close to one that size —"
"You weren’t supposed to be close to it," Syla said.
"I was at the tree line."
"Father said —"
"I stayed at the tree line." Vera said this with complete conviction. "I was very responsible. I didn’t interfere at all. The bear left because Father did the mana pressure thing and I want to learn the mana pressure thing."
Syla looked at Cidd.
He said nothing.
She looked back at her book with the expression of someone deciding this was not their problem.
"Where are Ren and Mira," Cidd said.
"Ren went to help at the market. Mira is in the study." Syla turned a page. "She’s been in the study since sixth hour this morning. I brought her breakfast and she said thank you without looking up."
"That’s normal."
"I know. I’m just noting it."
Cidd went to the study.
Mira was exactly as described — at the desk, three books open, the particular stillness of someone whose body had stopped mattering to them while their mind was elsewhere. She’d eaten the breakfast Syla brought. He could tell because the plate was empty and pushed to the corner in a way that suggested it had been moved without full conscious attention.
"Morning," he said.
"The bear is gone," she said, without looking up. "I heard Vera."
"The whole village heard Vera."
The corner of her mouth moved. "The merchant who overcharged for lamp oil last month will be at market today. I want to renegotiate the standing price for regular purchases."
"You’re ten."
"You keep saying that like it changes the numbers."
He looked at her for a moment. Then: "Don’t make him feel humiliated. Leave him something."
She looked up at that. Considered it — genuinely considered it, filed it somewhere useful.
"Relationship maintenance," she said.
"He’ll be back next month. And the month after."
She nodded once. Went back to her book. "I’ll be ready before you leave."
He was in the training clearing running the morning forms he hadn’t finished when the back door opened again.
Vera.
She’d changed into training clothes — proper ones this time, not the ones she’d been wearing since before dawn — and she had her actual training sword, not the wooden one, and she was looking at him with the battle face back in place like a switch had been thrown.
Home Vera, gone. Training Vera, present.
He finished his form.
"Third sequence," she said.
"Show me your footwork first."
She ran the footwork. Clean — cleaner than it had been last week, the weight transfer on the fourth step finally doing what it was supposed to do. He watched the details. The way she held her center. The way her breathing stayed even.
"Third sequence," he said.
She ran it.
Twelve connected movements. He watched without expression, tracking everything — the seventh movement still had a hesitation, same as before, but smaller. The ninth was new, something she’d adjusted, and the adjustment was correct in a way she’d arrived at herself.
She finished. Looked at him.
"The seventh," he said.
"I know."
"Show me where you feel it breaking down."
She ran the seventh movement alone. Stopped at the point where the hesitation lived. "Here. When the weight shifts to the back foot I lose something in the hip."
"You’re thinking about the next movement before this one is finished."
She was quiet for a moment. Testing it internally.
"...Yes," she said.
"The sequence doesn’t exist yet. Just the movement you’re in."
She ran it again.
The hesitation was gone.
She stopped. Stood very still for a moment with the expression of someone whose brain was making a connection that would stay with her.
Then she ran the full third sequence again from the beginning.
Clean.
He said nothing. Just nodded once.
She made a sound that was pure uncontained joy and ran it a third time.
Evening came the way it always did in Ashfeld — slow, golden, the pine hills going dark from the top down while the valley held the last of the light a little longer.
They ate dinner together. All five of them, as always, the table slightly too full for the food and the food slightly too much for the table, which was also always.
Ren had cooked. Ren always cooked when she’d been out all day — it was her way of coming back to the house, re-entering it through the kitchen, the act of making something for everyone functioning as her version of a greeting.
Vera told the dinner table about the bear in full detail, including several details he was fairly certain she’d invented, with the investment of someone who understood that a good story required emphasis and was not afraid to provide it. Syla listened with her eyes wide in the way that meant she was genuinely engaged but wouldn’t say so unless directly asked. Mira ate and processed information simultaneously, occasionally asking a precise clarifying question that derailed Vera’s narrative briefly before she found her way back. Ren said "NO" at the appropriate moments and "THEN WHAT" at the others and provided exactly the audience energy that Vera’s storytelling required.
Cidd ate.
He watched them.
This was his favorite time of day. Not the training, not the solitude of the early morning forms, not the satisfaction of a fixed roof or a cleared drainage ditch. This. This specific chaos of a table with too much food and too many voices and four children who had grown from something impossibly small into something impossibly real.
After dinner Ren washed up with her usual cheerful authority. Mira disappeared back to the study. Syla made tea for everyone without announcing it, just placed cups where they needed to be, which was its own kind of language.
Vera found him on the back step.
She sat beside him without preamble in the way she always did — no asking, no hesitation, just sat, because in Vera’s understanding of the world there were places she belonged and this was one of them.
They watched the clearing go dark.
"Father," she said.
"Mm."
"I’m going to be the strongest person in Anastacia someday."
"Alright."
"Stronger than any adventurer. Stronger than any knight." A pause. "Maybe stronger than you eventually."
"You can try."
She looked at him sideways. "You’re not worried."
"Should I be."
She thought about this with genuine seriousness.
"No," she decided. "Because even if I’m stronger than you I’ll still be here. I’m not going anywhere." She pulled her knees up. "Some people get strong and leave. I’m going to get strong and stay."
He looked at her.
"Why," he said.
She said it the way she said everything — directly, without embarrassment, the way Vera had always operated, no walls, no performance, just the thing itself:
"Because you’re here."
He said nothing.
She leaned sideways until her head was against his arm, exactly as she always did, with the ease of something repeated so many times it had become structural.
"Also," she said, to the darkening clearing, in a slightly different voice — still direct, still unashamed, but quieter, "when I’m grown up I’m going to marry you."
He was very still for a moment.
"Vera."
"I’ve decided."
"You’re ten."
"I’m aware." A pause. "I’m just informing you now so you have time to prepare."
He looked down at the top of her head.
He opened his mouth.
"You don’t have to say anything," she said. "I’m not asking. I’m telling."
He closed his mouth.
She was asleep in nine minutes.
He stayed on the step for a while longer, with the weight of her against his arm and the stars doing their slow rotation and Anastacia going on without consulting him in every direction, and somewhere in the study a lamp was still on because Mira never slept before the third hour, and from upstairs he could hear Ren and Syla’s voices in the low murmur of people who had shared a room their whole lives and developed a private frequency for it.
He looked at the stars.
He thought about a salaryman who’d died at his desk with no one waiting.
He thought about a boy of twelve walking alone down a dark road.
He thought about ash and rubble and four small voices.
He looked down at Vera’s sleeping face.
He chose it again, the same thing he chose every evening.
To stay. To be here. To make this, whatever this was, as good as he possibly could for as long as he possibly could.
It wasn’t atonement.
But it was the closest thing he had.