In due course, the three of them made it to Artem’s home. They snuck around to the back to avoid the elderly woman who lived across the street’s notice. Her husband was out helping train a group of boys, including their grandson, of whom she was very proud. The woman’s husband, Kes and Anara were happy to sense, was gruff, but kind to her. They loved each other, perhaps not with the intensity or passion that she and Anara felt for each other, but there was genuine care and even a sort of friendship between them. That was a bright spot that made Kes feel unaccountably better. Try as she had, the fight between those two boys before had still been bothering her in the back of her mind. This helped, some.

Artem opened the door to his family home. ”Your mother is upstairs… with Vastu.” Anara spoke softly, a certain longing that she was unable to hide in her voice as she’d spoken her son’s name.

”And my sister?” Artem asked, keeping his voice down as well.

”She’s not here.” Kes answered, she and Anara, Kes’s abilities still open wide as they were to keep watch for danger, couldn’t help but see into Miteza and Vastu’s minds. They saw that Thalla was out with friends, two girls around her age. She’d been going out with them for the last few months. Tulk hadn’t bothered to care. Miteza didn’t know what she did with them, and was too shy of her daughter to ask. Thalla had a tendency to speak her mind when confronted, and, the practice having earned her beatings from her father before, Miteza had settled on not questioning or upsetting Thalla at all and just letting her do as she would so there’d be less reason for her to act out at home and risk Tulk taking notice and hurting her again. After Tulk’s death at the hands of Tresit, Thalla had hardly spoken a word to either her or Artem, she’d only comforted Vastu. When Artem had been departing, Thalla had been subtle about taking him aside, but Miteza had overheard her asking her brother, just once, not to go with Lingen. She didn’t say why she didn’t want him to go, she’d just asked, and had only nodded once and turned and left when he’d refused. She’d come back home that night to sleep, but had left in the morning again without a word, without even seeing Vastu. That was what Miteza was thinking about even now, in fact, her daughter, Thalla, and her son, Artem, both gone, both doing she didn’t know what. She was… well, not happy, but actually… she’d looked at her husband’s body, and the first thing she’d felt had been just… relief. Simple, uncomplicated relief. In the beginning, he’d fooled her into thinking he cared for her, but, after he’d married her, he’d lost interest and treated her as an afterthought everywhere but in the bed chamber. He’d struck her exactly twice because she’d said things he hadn’t liked. After that, she’d said as little as possible to him, only answering when he asked something of her, doing as she was told, and laying for him in bed when he was in heat. Her initial relief at his death had, fairly quickly, become a mix or regret, guilt, and worry, for her own future and that of her children. Her thoughts now as she played a simple counting game with Vastu, were easily winnowed down to a single question: What will happen to my family now? Whatever it was, she was almost convinced she’d have no say in it, and that… that hurt to think about. She was thinking about it though. In fact, she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it, no matter that she’d tried to distract herself from it in several ways so far.