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It occurs to Fern, one day, that maybe she has presumed herself more important to Frieren than she actually is.
Maybe it’s the gold-hued mornings spent brushing the gleaming quicksilver of Frieren’s hair into smooth twintails. Maybe it’s the dreary, rainy-sky-gray carriage rides spent reading through a dusty old history tome, head dancing with names and diagrams and the subtle realization that Frieren has nuzzled deeper into her lap than ten minutes ago as she drapes the edge of her worn coat a little higher on Frieren’s shoulders. Maybe it’s the way Frieren has begun sharing small, useless, precious facts about herself at the strangest of times.
(Her name means ‘freezing’ in an old tongue. Her master’s name means ‘flame’ in the same language. Her favorite magic is flowerbed making magic. She loves wisteria and lavender.
‘On special occasions, I like eating merkur pudding.’ Frieren casts a smile back at Fern. ‘But you already knew that one, so I guess it doesn’t count.’
It doesn’t. Fern is happy for it all the same.)
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Fern is now seventeen years old. It has been nearly ten years since she met Frieren, picking shrooms across an old forest for an old man nursing old wounds. She has spent nearly a Hero’s Journey with Frieren. And only now, long past the haze of first desperate study and later muted grief, does Fern finally realize that maybe she has been clinging to Frieren more than she has been traveling with her.
It’s an unsettling prospect, the thought that half of her life has been spent chasing where she is not wanted. That she wakes every morning to something like a kind mother and an unruly daughter and a troublesome sister and a patient teacher all wrapped into one, and that maybe all Frieren wakes up to is a promise she must keep.
At the end of the day, though, it’s a simple question. They walk away from the Granz Channel sunrise, cold nipping at their heels and fingers and noses, and Frieren yawns past the ghost of a waning smile, and Fern asks, “Do you love me, Frieren?”
Children fuss and muss crankily as they are carried back home. Shop owners drop wooden crates atop each other as they prepare to stock for the day. Frieren and Fern walk.
The city swallows them in early morning shadow, streets growing emptier as they make their way back to the inn. Frieren does not speak.
Fern’s fingers trail through Frieren’s hair, twintails loosened and unfurled back into waves of faded silver. The butterfly ornament on the back of Fern’s head glints, a sunbeam snaking its way in through the windows.
Frieren’s eyes are a foggy, sleepy gleam of emerald cat’s-eye in the mirror as they meet Fern’s. “I do not know if I would cry for you as much as I did for Himmel.”
Fern pauses. Her hand twitches against the nape of Frieren’s neck. Frieren flinches and whines.
“That is a very mean thing to say, is it not?” Fern whispers, her steps echoing in the empty room as she sits down at the foot of her bed.
Frieren stands, lifting her arms above her head in a stretch. “Is it?”
“It implies that you would not care for me enough to cry.” A pause. Fern tilts her head. Amends, “As much.”
“Does it?”
Fern pauses. Her fingers are cold, and numb, and they are struggling with the clasp on her hair ornament. Frieren smiles.
“Himmel was—is, even now—my greatest regret,” she says, making her way towards Fern, soft-footed. Fern turns to the side, letting Frieren kneel on the edge of the bed and pick at the clasps on the ornament. “I cried for him as much as I did because I realized much too late that I cared for him.”
The weight on the back of Fern’s head lightens. She feels a few stray locks of her hair tumble across Frieren’s fingers. “I see,” Fern accepts the ornament when Frieren hands it to her. It is cool to the touch. “And I am...?”
“You are, by contrast, my greatest pride. I would have much less to mourn.”
The old wood of the inn building creaks. Fern feels a breath rip through her lungs, silent as fog and just as thick. “Oh.”
“Does that answer your question?” Frieren asks, canting her head to the side. There is a sleepy smile plastered across her lips. She reminds Fern of the cats that always seem to find her across every alley in every city they pass by. There is a languid contentedness to her that sets Fern a little more at ease.
“You are rather bad at answering questions plainly,” Fern says, setting her hair ornament down on the bedside table with a clatter of metal on wood. The warmth of another sunbeam melts away the frostbitten feeling on her fingertips. “But I think I understand.”
“Few answers in life come plainly,” Frieren shoots back, a hint of some rare mischief in her voice. “I am glad you are such a gifted practical learner.”
Fern laughs, breathy, soft, fond. “Sleep well, Frieren.”
“Sleep well, Fern.”
The rustle of skin on bedsheets. The thump of footsteps across the lower floor of the inn. A pigeon roosts on the windowsill outside their room. Fern breathes cold air in through her nose, feels it cut down her throat, and lets it settle in her lungs.
She closes her eyes, and sleeps, and waits for a new day to greet her clad in emerald and quicksilver.