It is very early morning.

By the fireplace, Teja is playing his harp, making his way through several songs that please him, from the future.

The remains of his breakfast are on a table at his side -- some bread, a bowl that contained some last spoonfuls of moretum, and a few small pieces of cured meat, which Count the cat is eyeing.

Very carefully.

It is sunny when Teja steps through his door today, into the snow that covers the slopes of his barrow-hill. It is wet snow, and as he approaches the house (again not leaving tracks in the snow), water is dripping off the eaves on the sun-side.

A boy and a girl (Alaric and Rauthgundis, Teja knows their names to be) are walking out of the door as he comes close, the boy sulking and the girl prodding him, and they pass within inches of him without taking any notice.

There is are noises inside the house, crying babies, and something rather more awful.

They're the twin girls, bawling in unison, and their father, Adalgoth, trying to tune an utterly out-of-tune harp.

Men may have made more beautiful music on random iron garden fences -- that bad a way is that poor instrument in.

Nobody else is in there, in the entire long house; all else have fled the noise, it seems.

The twins, when they see him, stop crying and look at him solemnly; and Adalgoth's hands still on the harp strings as he looks up to see what quietened his children.

"Are you here?" he whispers into the suddenly silent house.

"I am," Teja says, and sits beside him. Adalgoth looks at him, right at him, as if he could feel what he said, and guess where he sits.

"What befell your harp?" Teja asks.

"Snow fell on it from the roof, and it was lost for awhile, only appearing again with today's thaw," Adalgoth says. "One knows not who took it out, and I would not punish all the children until one confesses. I should, though, should I?"

He looks at Teja, who was always so stark and stern.

"You should not," Teja says. "They are but children; and if it is one of the older ones, honour and bad conscience will soon press it to confess on their own. What ails your babes, to make them cry that badly?"

"I know not," Adalgoth says. "They cry more than any of the others did, lately; and when one starts, the other will join in. Gotho is worried doubly: - for them, and for robbing all here of their night's sleep, night after night. I said I would watch them, so she may have a moment's quietness in the baking house."

One of the twins starts making uneasy noises again, and Teja gets up to look at her, and stroke the soft down on her head.

She quietens, looking at him in bemusement; and Teja wonders what it is that she sees, to dazzle her so.

"I shall ask the healer that works in the place serving as my afterlife, whether he may come here, or I may bring them, to find out what ails them, and cure them of it," Teja says. "And look at all the other things healers look at so babes grow up well. They have made quite an art of it."

"Will you come more often now?" Adalgoth asks. "And without dire need calling for you?"

"Yes," Teja says.

Then, the red cat slips in through the door, followed by chattering voices, and Teja knows it is time to leave.

Ghosting past Gotho and Liuta, re-entering into unexpected quiet, he returns into the sunlight, and to his barrow-hill, knowing he will be back.-

The day before yesterday, Teja had found Urquhart lying on his cot, wild masses of blond hair covering back and shoulder, breathing quietly, but not answering to anything Teja said. Teja had left the coffee and gone.

Yesterday, Teja had found Urquhart still lying on his cot, hiding in his hair, with the coffee sitting untouched just inside the barrier in the place where things could be passed through. Teja had exchanged the cold coffee for nice fresh hot coffee, and left.

Today, Teja finds Urquhart still on his cot, unmoving, yesterday's coffee again cold and untouched. He takes away the cold coffee, then opens the barrier and walks inside with the hot coffee in his hands. He puts it down among the mess of books, finds a place to sit beside the cot, pushes his fingers deep into the wild blond hair, shoving it out of the way and taking hold, ungently, to lift up the man's head and force him to turn and face him. "So you are, indeed, still alive," he says, disdainfully.

Lovely WAFF-y Teja/Adalgoth drabble that ceitfianna wrote for me!

When he is asleep, rolled up on the large fur in front of his fireplace (Teja does not hold with spending days in bed), he dreams of rain and fire, explosions in the darkness, blood and black feathers.

When he wakes, he would rather sleep; he looks around blearily, and one of the rats brings him more water, or more tea, or perhaps ciders. They bring him chicken soup with roasted bread, also, but Teja never feels like eating much of it.

And then, he turns over again, Count settles on his feet or in the crook of his arms, and he returns to fire and darkness and a cat named Gabriel, and a tough young girl named Sarah, and the yearning for revenge, and for his beloved...

He is still there.

In the roots of a large tree by the pond in the forest, Teja is hiding; he is rolled together like a cat in a basket, head hidden under an outflung arm; but he is not sleeping.

He is mourning, picking through the contents of his heart, scratching at the parts that hurt most: missing lost loves, regretting decisions that may have robbed him and another of happiness, the simple, physical movement of pushing away Totila, pushing away Adalgoth...

[[Some days after this]]

Witichis had stayed a night longer than all his guests -- only one night, and he was off again, leaving some of his armed men to watch over the womenfolk, along with staunch Wachis and the grooms.

Of which there was one more, now, as Duke Totila had left the Greek groom from Neapolis, also, as a 'gift' to his hostess. All knew how that was meant, and were glad about it, none more than Berenike, the Greek maid from Cyprus.

Little Athalwin was openly cranky: shiny Totila had left, his father had left soon after, and quiet Teja had not played his harp again. He was poking the grass with a stick, quite displeased; and Ursula, spreading the used and washed linen on the lawn, had to keep him from treading upon it.