Minervin’s cabin was nestled away between small hills and overlooked the half-frozen waters of the Calm Ocean. The view provided solace for the aging wizard, and Ava would often find him strolling along the coast and gazing at the watery horizon when he was feeling up to brace the cold. But it was not the only reason why Minervin erected his cabin in this spot. The hills that surrounded the cabin obscured much of it from the views of both The Outpost and Draugr Forest.

Men tend to worry a throbbing sore they can see Ava, more so than one they cannot. Out of their sight, out of their minds.

Throbbing sore it may be to anyone who lived at The Outpost, but Minervin’s cabin had better amenities than the dwellings there. Magic goes a long way here, even if said magic comes from a cursed wizard.

The cabin had three outlying buildings. A barn to house Longhorn, Bluebeard and a cow named Princess, a smaller building they used for storage, and a greenhouse. There was no smoke coming from the cabin’s chimney when Ava finally led the cattle through the meandering path to Minervin’s Nook. Slivers of trepidation slithered down her spine, but she quashed it. Minervin was strong, a wizard, he would never allow himself to die from some silly illness.

Princess looked up from the small stack of feed before her and mooed. She had the same long livid coat as her male counterparts but was slightly smaller with shorter horns. The cow was their main source of milk when she ate well. She greeted Ava by poking her in the belly with her snout but snorted in disgruntlement when she got a whiff of the beast beneath her tunic. Ava gave her a scratch on the head before the cow left the barn to wander off outside, and Longhorn and Bluebeard followed when she untied them. Minervin must not have let the poor cow out for some time if the state of the barn was any indication. Ava cleaned it up, emptied out a bag of feed and refilled the water trough.

Ava skinned and salted her last remaining game and hung them with the fish in the storage shed, leaving their hides to dry outside. Minervin had neglected the greenhouse as well. There was a chill in the air and the plants were wilting as frost nipped at the tips of their leaves.

Maintaining the garden was a huge drain on Minervin’s magical reserves, and yet he would rather expend the reserves on it than use it to regain his health. And now he would not need to sacrifice himself for it any longer. She walked to the centre of the garden and opened the small container. As if sensing its purpose, the Illuminaris floated from it and into the air, stopping midway between the ground and the roof. It burned brighter as it levitated in that spot and the temperature in the greenhouse rose slowly.

Finally satisfied that they might just survive the snowy season without starving, Ava entered the cabin she shared with Minervin.

The air inside the cabin was colder than the greenhouse, the fire pit in the centre was burned down to fine ash and had not been rekindled for quite a while.

“Minervin, I have returned,” she told the big bundle of furs atop Minervin’s bed and set about stacking wood and hay in the fire pit. “Minervin,” Ava called again when only silence greeted her. “Minervin!” Ava’s voice rose in pitch as she rushed to his bed.

She was startled when Minervin burst upright in his bed in an explosion of fur and blankets. He looked around the cabin and then at her in wary confusion. Lines from the bedding were etched onto his cheeks and his normally curly, short grey hair was flattened and mussed on the side. He looked pale and feverish, and his grey eyes held untold pain.

“Ava! Why in Holden’s name are you yelling so? You have disturbed me from a good dream,” he croaked, miserably.

His attention quickly turned to his bed covers and he searched between them with an ill-concealed alarm. Ava reached over to clutch one of Minervin’s unearthed handkerchiefs. He tried to grab it from her but in his weakened state he was no match and gave up.

“Your cough is getting worse,” Ava pointed out when she saw the dried blood on it. She collected the bloodied rags and threw them all into the fire pit. “Here.”

She handed him a water skin.

“You have found it?” he asked, raised a dubious brow and took a drink from it.

“I told you I would.” Ava beamed, but her smile faltered when a coughing fit overcame him. Ava took the skin from him and patted him on the back until his body calmed. “I was sure the waters would cure your ripping cough, maybe I was mistaken about what it was.” Crastius would be in a massive rage if he found out the water was not what I said it was.

“I would not fret about it, child. At the bottom of the world, we are too far south of the mountain for its waters to remain pure. Besides, these waters cannot cleanse a curse from a spirit and my illness is no less than that.”

“Maybe if you tell me what causes it, I could find the proper treatment. You are nobler than all the Outpost combined, yet they remain fine while you are cursed and treated like dirt.” Ava pleaded, her eyes blazing indignantly.

“Bah, it helps them sleep better knowing there is someone out there far worse than them. Pay them no mind. Did – those people say something to you?” he replied, his shoulders drooping as if he carried a great weight upon them.

“No. It’s just not fair,” Ava mumbled sulkily.

“It is, Ava, ladies always use language correctly and do not mutter when speaking. Eloquence is key. Let it rest. I would not tell you if you used your last breath to ask it of me. Now help me up,” he ordered, pushing the rest of his furs from his body. Ava supported his weight as he got to his feet and gave him his walking stick. He waved a hand, twisting it slightly as he did and fire flickered from his fingertips, springing into the pit. The wood and hay she placed in it instantly ignited and calmed in a slow burn. “It is too cold in here.” He said, rubbing his hands. “I must have slept longer than I intended to. Fetch water to fill the tub.”

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“You want to bathe now?”

“No, you want to bathe now. How long since you have washed, child? You smell something fierce.”

Ava’s face heated in mortification. “I cleaned the important bits. There is no place to wash up in the forest unless you want a quick death.”

Minervin clucked and shook his head at her excuse. “You had fire and water, and my charms would have protected your camp under sudden attack. You had no reason not to wash up. Ladies should always keep clean.”

“Well, the people at The Outpost did not find anything wrong with my smell and they certainly do not see me as a lady either. I am barely a girl for them,” Ava pouted, petulant.

“Of course, they would not, all of them smell worse than you do. And I have seen how the men there look at you to know that you are woman aplenty for them. Now stop arguing with me and go get water. And get enough for a separate tub so that I can soak your clothes.”

Ava smiled when she left with a bucket. The Panacean waters must have helped more than she thought if he was willing to soak her clothes.

It took Ava several trips to the stream to fill the tubs to Minervin’s liking. He heated it by dipping his hand into the ice water and leaving her to see what she accomplished around their plot of land.

She was still in the tub, struggling to comb the knots from her hair when he returned a little while later and quickly averted his gaze. His behaviour always amused her, since he had seen her naked more times than she could recall.

He went to sit with his back to her at the fire pit, the few things she left in the wagon floating in the air behind him. He put the chest of arrows and her new leather armour in the cabin’s corner with just a wave of a finger and then called forth a pot filled with bread, meat, and an assortment of crops, setting about making a meal.

“Should you be using that much magic so soon after recovering?”

“Well, I certainly was not going to break my back carrying that chest over here instead, but your concern is duly noted. Your hunt must have gone well if you came back with so much.”

“A little too well, if you ask me,” Ava quipped absent-mindedly, wincing in pain when she came upon a rather troublesome knot.

“What do you mean by that?” Minervin stilled in his work but dared not look at her. And Ava knew he wanted to, Minervin always told her that he could read the truth in a man’s words by watching the way his face moved when he said them.

“Too many creatures are migrating north of the stream, they are living on top of each other. There were even creatures lurking there that I had never seen before.” Ava’s attention shifted to the beast, leaning over the rim of her tub, and dipping a paw into her bath water before licking the wetness off. The creature completely escaped Minervin’s notice when he came back into the cabin. But he squinted and frowned down at it now when he turned to enquire about her meaning. “Do you know what it is?”

Minervin got up, wrapped his brown robe around him and clutched the beast by the scruff of its neck. He inspected it, front and back in the air, then sat down and examined it in his lap more thoroughly. The beast did not appreciate the prodding and probing, and it hissed and spit in disgruntlement the entire time.

“Yes. I know what it is, though they were thought to have gone extinct at the beginning of the third era. It is a sabre cat; their species habited every land known to man until they were hunted to the last. Now here in this long-forgotten wasteland, they re-emerge from the pages of history. This one is a male. The mothers were known to be viciously protective of their cubs, how did you get this one away from her?”

The cub jumped from Minervin’s lap and shook his coat, plodding to her as she got up from the tub and wrapped herself in a drying robe. He watched Minervin warily from behind her leg.

“I did not.”

Ava described the scene she witnessed in the forest to him and how the beast came into her care, while Minervin coaxed the beast out by running the end of his staff along the floor before him.

“There is a threat growing in the southern forest. I know it, Minervin. I felt it breathing down my neck on my last few days there. Have you not felt anything?”

Minervin halted in his play with the beast, sudden fear filling his eyes. “I have always felt a forbidding in that forest, but I have been too weak these past few days to notice any change in that.”

“Maybe I was being silly. That part of the forest has not frightened me before, but then I have never been so deep or so long away in it,” Ava sighed.

“Do not doubt your instincts, Ava. They have never failed you before. I will scrye the southern forest and see if I can view passed the barrier that blocks it from my sight,” Minervin offered before returning to his cooking.

They sat in silence for a time while Ava dressed.

“Do you think the Red Orcs of Blood Rock will accept us if we go there and make a new home?”

Minervin sighed, “I have told you before Ava, we will find no refuge or kinship among any of the races and less so among the orcs. Your existence would be an affront to them, a living symbol of the weakness that now stains their blood. And a cursed wizard brings with him only misery and despair. They can barely tolerate each other, but the only thing the Red Orcs of Blood Rock and Green Orcs of Brown Stone would unite on is how quickly to slaughter us both the minute our feet touch their red sands.”

“What if I were to become the wife of a warlord before he goes to reclaim his stronghold? Would they accept us then?” Ava scratched the beast’s neck, but her full attention was on Minervin.

He turned in surprise at her question and his thick brows dipped with suspicion.

“They will accept you, as long as he lives. If the warlord that comes into power after him does not favour you as well, you will die. Why do you ask?”

She pursed her lip and blurted quickly, “Malgorn has offered to take me as a wife...”

“Ava!”

“He says he is close to having a dwarf build him a ship, so he can sail to Blood Rock and reclaim his stronghold. He will take us with him if I become his wife,” Ava pressed on despite his dismissive tone.

“You are not marrying that deranged orc for his ship, Ava! I will not allow it! You have a far greater destiny than wasting away as a warmonger’s forgotten wife and fighting in pointless battles over filthy water!” Minervin scolded, the skins from the potato he was peeling flew in every direction. He wanted to say more but was overcome by another fit and doubled over. Ava rushed to his side and patted him on the back. He waved away the water from the skin she offered.

“We have to leave this place, Minervin,” Ava whispered once his body calmed. “We have to be on that ship when it sets sail, and I am prepared to do whatever it takes to make that happen.”

“Why are you so insistent on this? Malgorn does not have a ship yet.”

Ava could not explain her sudden desperation to him, its intensity surprised her as well. Yet, she knew it went beyond her wanderlust. Minervin will understand. Minervin always understood. Sometimes he knew her mind better than she did.

“The Whirlwind says I must. I have heard its voice telling me so.”

“The Frost Spirit speaks to you?” Minervin asked.

“Yes,” she replied, growing uncertain under his intense gaze. The surprise she expected of him was not there in his reaction.

Minervin got up and paced the cabin floor, rubbing his lips with his finger whilst deep in thought.

“The spirit speaks to you,” he muttered to himself.

“There are drawings of this ability among the ancient elves in the Age of the Gods. It is theorized that they could converse with the spirits of the land. Many believed this to be the origin of magic, but we could not be certain. This power has been long lost to that time, though many of the modern elves do an excellent job pretending that they possess it.” His voice dripped with bitterness.

“What does it tell you, Ava? When it speaks to you what does it say?” Minervin rushed to her, holding her hands in his spotted ones.

“It wants me to go to it.” Minervin reacted as she expected this time. But he was so still that Ava feared that his heart had stalled.