Elin listened to Elwin as he mourned his brother.
"Even when we fought, we always came through it without any grudges or bad blood forming between us," Elwin said before pausing after taking a deep breath. "Even that time when we tried to actually kill each other because of some stupid argument I don't even remember the cause of, we eventually settled our differences without any real lasting damage."
"Did he have someone he liked?" Elin asked, half wondering if she shouldn't just listen and not ask anything.
Elwin nodded. "Yeah, he had someone he liked and who liked him back, though they hadn't quite gotten to the stage of admitting it." Elwin paused again as he started chuckling. "My love often said her sister was prickly because she didn't trust herself to be anything else. That she'd chase herself off if she could just so she wouldn't have to deal with worrying about showing concern if she got hurt herself."
"You know what you need to do about this, right?" Elin asked, not sure where this was coming from, just that it felt right.
"Make sure to return, right?" Elwin asked, nodding.
"Exactly. You can let them know how he died and what he was able to do at that time."
"Have you lost anyone close to you?" Elwin asked, surprising Elin.
She shook her head. "No, I haven't. Why? Should I have?"
Elwin sighed. "Not necessarily. It just feels like you might have."
Elin opened her mouth to say something else, even though she wasn't sure what she should say, but at that moment something else interrupted her.
"Elwin, we're going to tell them about what happened with the Fire Dragon. I thought you might like to contribute to it. At least if you're up for it. It might be a way you could honor your brother as well," Patricia said, making Elin even forget what the topic was she was going to make her statement about. "Though, we're just getting everyone together now. Not sure how long Owen and Patrick will be."
Elwin looked like he was doing a little better, though she could see that he was pushing his pain and sorrow under his usual serious expression. Elin remembered one of her father's personal guard was like that, so it didn't bother her.
"Well, if needed, I'm sure I can find them quick enough," Elwin answered.
"Even still, I'm sure we'll have one of the others looking instead. We can't risk you'd decide to off yourself, so we'll have to just wait," Patricia remarked. Then, as Elwin gave her an incredulous expression, she quickly added, "Owen's the only one who can read your thoughts, so we can't be sure that you're not just telling us what we want to hear and have you plan on doing something stupid when we're not looking."
"Don't worry about it, Elwin," Elin said cheerfully. "Just think of it as a break so you can figure out how to tell your part of your fight with the fire dragon."
Elwin had opened his mouth, his expression one of outrage, though as Elin's words almost visibly penetrated his mind, he closed his mouth and looked away, looking like he wasn't completely convinced. Although Elin wasn't sure if he wouldn't go off on Patricia anyway.
"Well, how about we start this over dinner," Elwin said, after a minute. "That way Owen and Patrick should be back by then. We won't need to wonder where they are or when they'll return. As it shouldn't be too much longer before we'll need to get a fire started so we can cook something."
"Fair enough," Patricia allowed.
Patricia started walking over the hill and Elwin stood up to follow her. Elin wasn't sure what she should do at that moment. She looked towards where Elm, Jonas, and Kim had gone, but didn't see them. She wasn't sure where they had gone, but she could at least assume they'd gone to the other side of the hill, so she stood up herself in order to follow them.
Glancing back at where she'd talked with Elwin, she felt a little puzzled, as she had thought that was the place where Elwin's and Patricia's camp would be. Like they were where they had planned on camping, rather than having spent time away from there, with all those who weren't collecting firewood together.
Elin sighed as she turned her attention back to Patricia and Elwin. She couldn't help but wonder if there was maybe some other reason she didn't know about their camp being on the other side of the hill. She had to admit she didn't see any of their packs, which meant that maybe they had planned on having their camp where their packs were.
Elin wished she could sleep. She wasn't sure if her being so tired was because of having traveled through the pond or if it was that in addition to all the walking she'd already done earlier. What she was confident about was that her being so tired was the reason why she probably hadn't realized that the camp wasn't where she had been.
As they reached the top of the hill, Elin felt stunned. She stopped walking, letting Patricia and Elwin walk ahead of her. Because they had defeated the fire dragon, Elin had expected a dragon corpse or something to be present. Just like when Kim had dealt the finishing blow to Aquis. Aquis' body had remained after he was killed, but she could see anything that would have been the fire dragon.
What she saw was a large burn scar in the field. There didn't seem to be anything else remarkable about it. Just that the packs of Owen's and Patricia's groups were off to the side of it, but that didn't say anything about what Elin knew had to have happened there recently.
"What happened to the dragon?" she asked, not really sure she expected an answer. Elmo and Jonas were standing near where the packs were, with Kim laying on the ground by them. Kim looked just as asleep as when Elin had last seen her. While it was a relief to see and a weight off her mind, that didn't mean she forgot about the other issues that were still bothering her.
Elwin paused and turned to her. "When it died, it just disappeared. Like it wasn't even there to begin with, or even anything with any substance."
As Elin tried processing what Elwin said, she suddenly realized another issue that didn't make sense to her. Something that should have been there that wasn't. Leon Bell's body.
She looked around again, wondering if maybe it had been moved away from where the battle had clearly been, but she couldn't see anything. While she was willing to accept another person's death, she felt like her surroundings were rather surreal because Leon's body wasn't anywhere.
"What happened to your brother?" Elin asked, starting to feel like a hammer was starting to pound on something inside her head as she heard her voice starting to break. "I don't see his body anywhere."
Elwin sighed and shook his head. "We really don't know. He was crushed by the fire dragon, then nothing. Like he was burned to ash in an instant or absorbed into what fueled the dragon's fire."
Elin wasn't sure how to process that. It was one thing for someone to have been killed, but completely another for there to not even be a trace left of them. She wasn't sure if that might have been part of the problem for Elwin, even though he never said anything about it.
She couldn't imagine how she'd feel if she didn't have anything left of those she cared about to even put somewhere as their final resting place. Somewhere she could visit to at least remember them if nothing else. As she looked at Kim, she had to acknowledge that it was one thing to be separated from them and not knowing what might happen to them, such as when she and Kim would return to their own worlds.
At that time, she wouldn't have a place to remember Kim at, but she could at least hope that shew was still alive somewhere. That she'd have something of Kim's inside her, just as she knew that Kim would have something of Elin inside her, too.
Whether that would be the same way between Elmo and Jonas, Elin wasn't sure, but she knew that all of them would have a difficult time if something happened to any of them before this stupid competition was over. Especially if it was something that happened in front of them too. Rather than merely learning about it on the announcements in the morning and evening.
While Elin was lost in her thoughts, Owen and Patrick returned, with a good amount of firewood. When she started to come back to the real world, she was surprised to see that they had seemingly appeared out of thin air. She wasn't sure what to make of them, but she at least was confident that the story about how they defeated the fire dragon would start soon.
At least once they finished making dinner. Which Elin at least hoped wouldn't be stew again. Even if it was something new that she hadn't tried before, she would be happy to try it as long as she didn't have to deal with the stew. At least for tonight.