People did try to stop them. 

It wasn’t malicious. Their arguments were sensible enough. Danya told Duran that these were busy, changing times. That he could go, just not yet. Not until they had a stable foundation beneath themselves and they knew what the future would look like.

Fanner wanted to heal the scars on Duran’s back, but he was too busy and exhausted to do it just yet. Give him a week, or two, or… soon. He would do it soon, he insisted. Duran just needed to wait a little longer.

Hamish got his share of it, too. Simon didn’t want him to go. Many of the mages didn’t want him to, either. They had rebuilding to do, diplomacy that would need to be taken care of that he, as one of the few humans on their side, could be useful for. He dismissed those concerns. There were others to build and Liam was a far better diplomat than he was.

In the end, though, their objections were just words and when Duran was getting ready to leave just a few days later, he found himself with travelling clothes and food and a sleeping bag all packed up and ready to go. Danya and Fanner were waiting at the foot of the road that led up away from The Spire to see him off.

Fanner pulled Duran in for a hug. He had a softness to him that had always calmed Duran somewhere deep inside. “I’m sorry I didn’t fix your back.”

Duran gave him an extra squeeze before letting go. “I didn’t give you time. You’ll do it when I get back.”

“You’d better come back,” Danya said as he gave Duran a hug of his own. He’d never been as delicate as Fanner, but he’d also never been as firm and sure of himself as he was now. “It’s dangerous out there.”

“I’ll have Slone, and Hamish is a trained soldier. And maybe Cookie? I think that one’s still undecided.”

“I think she prefers to just show up when she chooses to,” Fanner said.

Simon had come to see Hamish off as well, though he still seemed unhappy about it. “When do you think you’ll be back?”

“I told you, Simon. I don’t know,” Hamish said as he crouched to double check the contents of his bag. “That’s kind of the point. There is no schedule, just adventure.”

“We need you here.”

“Simon,” Danya said, turning to his husband and shaking his head. “You won’t change his mind. You know that. Just tell him that you’ll miss him and give him a hug.”

Simon pressed his lips together and Duran was sure he would continue being obstinate, but in the end he grabbed Hamish by his arm and pulled him up into a hug. “You know I’ll miss you, right?”

Hamish laughed and hugged him back. “I know. Don’t worry. I know you well enough to take you bitching at me as a form of affection.”

“Ready to go?” Slone asked. Nobody had come to see him off, but he didn’t seem bothered. His comings and goings probably weren’t much of an event to the people in his life anymore.

Duran shouldered his travelling pack. “I think so.”

“Fuck yes,” Hamish said as he picked his bag up as well.

“Right then,” Slone said, arm held out and finger pointing ahead of them. “Onwards.”

“You don’t have any stuff?” Hamish asked Slone as they began the walk up the road.

“Well, normally I go as a wolf. Stuff’s more trouble than it’s worth. This time I got shoes.” He gave a nearby rock a firm kick to demonstrate. “They’re Yore’s, but he let me have ‘em. Guess I didn’t own any before.”

“You definitely had shoes when we were in the military,” Hamish pointed out.

“Ah, yeah, but that was years ago. I lose track of shit or give it away. I mean, my cabin where I kept all my stuff did get burnt down, so there’s that, but I dunno if there were even shoes in there.”

“Minimalism,” Hamish said. “I can respect that.”

“Ain’t a bad thing to have stuff and be prepared, either,” Slone said. “Specially if you can’t eat raw meat or sleep on the bare ground.”

Noel was at the old house when they walked past, sitting as ever in his rocking chair, staring out into space, but Cookie was nowhere in sight.

“Maybe she left before us so it wouldn’t be awkward when we came by,” Hamish said.

“Maybe,” Duran said. “When I was travelling with Fanner and Yore, we’d see no sign of her for hours and then she’d suddenly just be there.”

“Ah, yeah, she did a bit of that before the whole humans coming over the border thing kicked off,” Slone said. “Didn’t see her for days, but guess she ended up finding Fanner when he needed her.”

“I can kind of understand it,” Duran said. “I mean… I don’t mind being around people. I don’t want to sound like I hate the two of you and I’d rather be on my own if I could because that isn’t the case. I guess it’s just the complete opposite of being owned, right? Being accountable to absolutely nobody.”

“I get that,” Slone said. “I reckon there’s a balance there. Freedom’s great, but you go too far and it’s just lonely. Gotta say, I’m looking forward to this trip. You go somewhere with other people and there’s that moment where you look back at the end and go, shit, remember that thing? That was crazy. Can’t do that if you were on your own.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Further up the hill there were small figures hard at work. A group of Taylors had gathered around one of the old houses and a few of them were struggling to haul bricks to a pile. Pixies perched on tree branches and the collapsing remains of the house, watching them work.

“Ah, come here, come here!” one of the Taylors called out, waving them over. “Grab some bricks and put them in the pile.”

The three of them exchange looks, but none of them seemed to have any objections.

Slone shrugged. “Might as well.”

“What are you building?” Hamish asked as he brought a brick back to the pile.

“A house!” one of the Taylor’s who was dressed in a waistcoat and suspenders said. “Or something like that. A place that we live in where we don’t get rained on and predators can’t eat us. Guess that’s a house.”

“How are you going to stick the bricks together?”

“Glass,” the Taylor said. “The pixies make it.”

“Wouldn’t that be fragile?” Hamish asked.

“I don’t know! Do we look like constructionists to you? No, we’re tailors. There’s a great big massive spire over there made of glass and that’s still standing, though, and our house will be mostly bricks.”

“You know, I don’t really know either,” Hamish admitted. “Sounds cool, though.”

Duran crouched down to dig a half buried brick out of the dirt. He’d just about wriggled it free when he felt something tug at his hair.

“Ow,” Duran said, trying to yank his head away from the Taylor who had grabbed a fistful of his hair. “Quit it.”

Hamish stood, a frown on his face. He hadn’t moved yet, but he looked ready to intervene. “Everything okay?”

Duran grabbed the Taylor by the back of their shirt and lifted them up, and finally they let go. He gave the Taylor a little shake. “You’re way too disrespectful for something that would lose a fight to a toddler.”

“I just want some of your hair,” the Taylor said, reaching out to try to grab at it again.

“You can have it, but I’m not a fan of having it ripped out of my scalp. Do you have any scissors?”

One of the Taylor’s scoffed. “We’re tailors! Of course we have scissors.”

Another one of the Taylor’s produced a normal pair of scissors of the size a human would use, which they struggled to even lift properly. 

Duran grabbed them away before they could get any ideas. “I wanted to cut my hair anyway. You’re not doing it, though. Hamish, Slone, are either of you any good at cutting hair?”

“Eh…” Slone said. “I mean, I can hack it off…”

“I’ve been cutting Simon’s hair for years,” Hamish said. “How do you want it?”

“Short,” Duran said. “I don’t really care. I just want it out of the way.”

They found part of the porch stairs that was still sturdy and Duran sat down on the steps with Hamish kneeling on the porch behind him. Hamish swept Duran’s hair up and the bulk of it was removed with a single snip to the delight of the Taylors.

Duran shut his eyes and dipped his head forward as Hamish got stuck into the task. It felt like Hamish knew what he was doing, but if he didn’t, Duran didn’t really care. His looks were no longer the most important thing about him. Though, he wasn’t sure what about him actually was important now. Maybe nothing and maybe that was okay. More than anything, he wanted to just not care about pleasing anybody else anymore.

“Thanks,” Duran said after a while.

“Mm?” Hamish enquired, his attention focussed on snipping the hair around Duran’s ear.

“Thanks for just doing it and not making it a big deal. I wanted to get it cut, but it seemed like every time I mentioned it to someone, they’d start going on about how my hair is so nice and everything and they don’t want me to cut it. I know they probably didn’t mean anything by it, but still…”

“I’m just very confident in my own hair cutting abilities. You’re one of the two handsome men I get to look at on my travels, so don’t think I have no investment in your physical appearance.”

“Oh, so you won’t fuck me, but I’m free eye candy? I see how it is.”

Hamish brushed hair off of the back of Duran’s neck. “I’m still trying to figure out if fucking you is a good idea or not, but I know checking you out is.”

“Right, well, you let me know when you’ve worked it out.”

“Oh, you’ll know,” Hamish said.

Slone was still busy collecting bricks. The Taylors seemed particularly fond of him, praising him and giving him little pats each time he brought a brick back.

By the time Hamish was done cutting Duran’s hair, Slone had gathered all of the loose bricks scattered around the area and piled them up and was sitting chatting with the Taylors. Duran didn’t have a mirror, but he ran his hands over his hair and it felt tidy enough. And short. Definitely short.

“Right, well, we should get going,” Slone said. “Good luck with the house.”

“Good luck walking places,” one of the Taylor’s said. “Don’t get eaten by a fox. Happens to the best of us sometimes.”

“Can’t say I’ve had any problems with ‘em, but things can get weird out in the woods,” Slone said. “I’ll come and see how you’re going on my way back through. Might be a bit, though. Who knows.”

The Taylor nodded. “I’m just gonna assume you got eaten by a fox until I see you again. Bye!”

As they started walking again, Duran used his magic to brush away the short, spikey bits of hair that were all over the back of his neck and down his shirt.

“They seemed to like you,” Hamish said to Slone.

“Ah, yeah,” Slone said. “We go way back. Spent a summer skipping lessons to help them build when I was a kid. Normally it’d be Emity’s job to deal with me being a little rascal, but she was away when I first got into it, so Zunda had to come work things out. Took her a while to find it funny when one of the Taylors wouldn’t stop saying I was their big strong son who they gave birth to a week ago.”

Hamish let out a bark of laughter. “I love them. Such weird little assholes.”

“Yeah, they’re funny,” Slone said. “I’m glad we stopped to help.”

“It’s been like an hour and I can still see where we started, but same,” Hamish said. “This is exactly the kind of adventure I was hoping for.”

“Well, I got a haircut, so I’m not complaining,” Duran said.

Hamish ran his hand over Duran’s hair. “Mm. I did a good job.”