Loran and Ed walked through the city capital several days later. Ed was wearing a black cloak over freshly laundered clothes. He had put on his blue jacket, he was happy to have seen it in the bag and the air blowing through the capital was colder than normal today. Even with the cloak, he felt the chill in his arms and chest.
In the pocket of his jacket, he had two disks, his own and one extra. He occasionally would stop and put his hand on his disk and close his eyes to look for the pinprick of light. Was it getting closer or farther away? With practice, he had learned that he could focus on just one and get a better look at it.
After a few hours of walking, they had determined that the light was in the direction of the Dwarven District. They both took in a late lunch at a stall along the street selling some sort of salted spiced meat on a bed of long wild rice.
Shortly afterward they hailed a carriage and asked to be taken to the gate for the dwarven district. Thankfully their search of the central government district meant they had not had to be stopped at a gate to get a real bearing yet. The stop was never the problem, the bribes sometimes were. Even with Loran's diplomatic pull as a knight, she still occasionally had to grease the wheels of law enforcement.
The gate trip this time was standard, thankfully. The man at the gate was either bored or not interested in his job that day and waved them through when Loran flashed her coat of arms to him from under her cloak.
They walked a few feet inside the door and Ed checked the map. It showed to be directly ahead of them right now. The districts were larger lengthwise than across so their best bet was to walk or take a carriage until the light started to move. Then they could track it down to a single area.
In his mind, Ed thought this should be a relatively simple process. The actual process took much longer. Part of that was because they were tracking a live target. The object kept moving and at one point it switched parts of town. They had focused on the western side of the street when suddenly it moved to the center of the main road.
This setback had cost them because Ed hadn't checked often as they moved. They had to backtrack several times to get far enough away for the method to recenter itself.
Loran was loving this, she was a hunter at heart. She was thrilled to find out where this would go. Ed was trained as a blacksmith and all this walking and hiding seemed to be borderline for someone of Loran's status as a knight.
As the hours wound down, the light in the sky turned a darker shade of blue, and Ed and Loran had tracked the light to the center part of town. It seemed to be nearby but Ed was having a hard time tracking it as it moved around. It never moved far but it seemed to be jetting between buildings. Ed was starting to wonder if this last soul wasn't a sewer rat or something.
"The light seems to be stopped," Ed said as he leaned against a light in the middle of the cobblestone walkway.
Loran nodded. "Do you wish to stop and have supper? Dwarven dishes are supposed to be some of the heartiest around."
Ed nodded and took a deep breath. "I am starving, and something smells really good."
Across the curb from them stood a diner with brightly lit windows and yellow curtains. The sound of singing came from inside. Ed thought if they were tracking a person maybe they would get hungry too, or maybe the light would stop moving for a damn minute.
Either way, he wanted to sit down. He had gotten too used to being at the mansion with Ko'Loss and he wasn't used to this much walking. Even with Rennish and Ashra, they took turns riding in the cart so that no one person walked for more than 4 hours straight.
Inside the building, a waitress took one look at Loran and seated them in the back. Loran stood out among the other clientele and she could tell the woman was a trained hunter of some kind. Having her in the front might shoo off other customers.
At the table, they both ordered the special and a glass of sweet potato mead. The season was in for it and the waitress had promised them that this was what they were smelling.
Ed had pulled his cloak down around his chair and was sitting with the disk in his hands. The dot was moving again in his mind. It was close, no doubt about that, he could see the movements clearer. It was almost as if it was running errands in the neighborhood.
"Have you found it?" Loran asked, she had noticed his closed eyes.
"It's close," Ed muttered. "Really, really close."
Outside the store and around the back a delivery had been made. The runner from the merchant had brought veggies and meat from the Le'Liss trading post several blocks down. When the delivery had been signed for the chef and the delivery person walked to the front of the diner. The chef opened the money box and started taking out cash.
Priya stood with one hand out and one holding up the purchase order. The chef counted out the money and double and triple checked it to make sure he didn't give the wrong amount. This was one of the busiest parts of her night when the local chefs would send word to get deliveries of items they spontaneously ran out of.
Her eyes wandered around the inside as she heard the chef count money for the 4th time. She was used to the stinginess of some dwarves but she was getting bored.
In the back of the room, in a corner as far from the door as you could get and not be working in the kitchen, she saw a skinny woman in a cloak that was obviously hiding armor. Her eye was drawn to the human man sitting next to her though. The woman was obviously partially fay because of the light color of her eyes. Priya's eyes fell on him mostly because humans were rare. The longer she stared she started to notice more of his coat. It was familiar.
Finally, the chef put the money in her hand and nodded, "Thank you for waiting," breaking her concentration.
Priya nodded, "Thank you for your business, please call on Le'Liss for future needs..."
They shook hands and she started to reluctantly walk out the front. She couldn't take her eyes off this blue jacket from the back of the room. It was almost exactly the same pattern she remembered at home. She had never seen the cloth since she left and she was feeling pain in her chest as she thought about her mom.
She made a split decision choice and walked through the crowd, "Pardon, excuse me, sorry about that," she said out of habit as he pushed through the people in the room.
Finally, she stood before Ed and Loran before clearing her throat. "Excuse me, I have to ask you something."
Ed had been deep in thought when the voice interrupted him. He looked up and choked on his spoonful of dinner that he had been chewing on. Loran looked up with curious eyes at the obvious human woman with the gall to disturb a knights dinner.
Ed was trying to breathe. He was suffocating on a half-chewed carrot at the sight of the woman in front of him.
"How can we help you?" Loran said while Ed tried to get his coughing under control.
"Can I the man a question?" Priya said. She pointed at Ed who was taking a drink and clearing his throat.
Ed stood up and walked around the front of the table. He reached out and pulled the seat directly across from him away from the table, he put his hand out and offered the seat to Priya. His mind was running through ideas, what if she was the other soul. They had met at the farm, they had met on the bench, and now they were back again in this restaurant. It was too many coincidences. It would be a cruel cosmic joke if this was right but this was the best way to test it right now. "Please sit," he said before coughing once more. "Excuse me but I forgot I can't breathe dinner. I was too hungry."
As Priya sat down Ed put his hand in his pocket and closed his eyes. The dot was now in front of him. He turned to face the door, pretending to look at the door and in his mind the dot was behind him. If he hadn't been in a restaurant he would have cursed.
Loran watched him turn around and suddenly understood that he was calibrating the compass. When Ed turned back around and looked at her, he gave a tiny nod. This was their target. Loran smiled and put her hands on the table. "So what did you want to ask."
Priya watched as Ed sat himself down before starting. "Where did you get that jacket."
Ed smiled, he hadn't expected to run into Priya here. He had expected her to have gotten a ride back home by now. He thought fondly on the jacket and his time with Priya so long ago. He sighed inside and thought about all the lost time between that sweet young woman he had walked away from on the side of the road and the older woman who sat at the table across from him now.
"Before I tell you that, I need you to do something for me," Ed said and put his hand in his pocket.
"What?" Priya was preparing for some kind of lewd remark to come out. Humans were seen as less deserving and often treated as a novelty to play with by the males of most species of demise.
Ed held out his hand, the copper-colored disk sat in his hand. "Please hold this in your hand and close your eyes. Don't open them until it stops moving if it does move at all. It is completely harmless."
Priya cocked an eyebrow, "Whatever," She said and shook her head as she blinked. "If this thing kills me know I am going to come back and haunt you."
Ed smiled, "It won't. It's a measuring device. It will just confirm something for me first."
That explanation made more sense to her. She took the disk and looked at it before being certain it was just a copper disk. When she laid it flat on her hand she felt it suddenly start to wobble. It glowed very faintly like the setting sun and then fell off her hand onto the table.
The clink of it hitting the table caused Priya to open her eyes, "Damn, dropped it." She reached down to pick it up and looked at it.
Ed sighed and smiled. He could see the P on the front of the disk. As Priya turned it around he saw a house on the back with neatly stacked rows of wood in the yard.
She handed it back to him. "What the hell is that and why does it have a picture of my family farm on it now?" The shock of the picture on it shook her. She hadn't seen home since she had left to search for Erust.
Ed smiled and stood up from the table and reached across. He grabbed the coin and then put it back in his pocket. He felt around for his own coin and closed his eyes when he felt it. The dot was gone. Yes, she was the one he was looking for.
"Okay, to answer this question. I got this from the north in a town called CunStead, from a very lovely woman, a long time ago. Even though it feels like less than a year ago for me." Ed said skirting the truth. He wanted to see what she pieced together.
Priya blinked. It had to be her mom, she thought to herself. That cloth was cheap up there, it was the bag material for almost all farm supplies like sugar and wheat. But, how did this man have a gift like that from her mom? Only one person ever received one that she knew of, and he didn't look anything like this. Her head was full of questions but her heart was starting to ache for home. She had been strong against everything that had happened to her. This was too close to home. Like being able to reach out and touch a part of it after so long away.
"Erust?" She squeaked out. She didn't want to believe that after all the searching he would show up here. She was certain he was dead. But this face was familiar. She had to know if it was true.
"No, my name is Ed. Erust is someone else." He said firmly.
"But how? Only... so many years ago... could it be? Am I wrong in my memories now?" She said to herself. Her eyes were stinging from the pools of tears ready to come out. She had searched all these years. She had felt a connection to that young man who she met on the road years ago. How could she be wrong? It wasn't abnormal for people to be gone years while traveling. But had her memory of him been wrong all along?
Loran saw the sadness in Priya's eyes as her cheeks turned red and her eyes started to show the glints of tears at the edges. "Please, don't cry. Memories are like stained glass. They tell a tale, but they all fade with age. Maybe it's just the fact that it's been a while, that's why he looks different. I am sure you look different too." Loran held out a napkin to the young woman.
Priya started to cry at the table. She looked at Ed, he looked familiar, but she remembered Erust being just a slight bit better looking. She wondered if she had really remembered him as looking better. The man in front of her wasn't bad looking, he just looked younger than she expected for someone she had been looking for after 5 long years.
Ed sighed, he hated seeing girls cry. Many had come to the blacksmith shop to tell him their tales and cry over everything that happened to him. He wanted to say he could handle it, but it always made him uncomfortable to see it. Seeing Priya cry like this hurt more. He had actually liked her. He had seriously considered just living a farm life at home with her. He worried about destroying her life with miracles, but now he had destroyed her memory without even using one power at all.
"Priya, it's me." He had considered lying to help her get past her grief but he changed his mind at the last minute. "But you have my name wrong. My name is Ed, I stayed in your barn. I gave up your room that night so you didn't have to sleep in the barn. I was there when your hair turned from chestnut to gold. I spent days fixing all the broken things your dad couldn't."
Her eyes widened and the tears came forth even more. These were facts that only he could have known. She started to cry harder and fought the urge to crawl over the table and hug him. The other part wanted to crawl over the edge and slug him.