The world felt absurdly ordinary that morning.
Sunlight poured through the leaves in lazy columns, turning the damp forest floor into a patchwork quilt of gold and shadow. The smell of wet earth and moss was sharp and honest, the kind of smell that made lungs work properly again. Somewhere ahead a brook laughed over stones; somewhere else a bird argued with itself. For the first time since they'd met, the three of them walked without the immediate itch of danger pricking at the back of their necks.
Elias fell into step between Daren and Lyra as if the movement itself were a remedy. The bandage on his calf, while still wet and warm at the edge, did its job: it reminded him he was not invincible and that he had something to be careful with, but it did not shout panic. He let the forest be his company and let his companions talk.
Lyra was the first to break the silence—not with heavy words but with something light and ridiculous. "You know," she said, swinging a hand to knock a loose leaf from her hair, "if we ever get rich off these green rocks, I'm opening a salon. 'Lyra's Locks and Lucky Stones.' Free shampoo with every Dianol purchase."
Daren snorted. "I'm not sure Dianol is a good business model if it includes shampoo." He flicked a pebble with the toe of his boot and watched it spin.
"Please," Lyra replied. "You're the kind who would decorate a fortress with useless trinkets and call it taste."
"I would call it 'strategic opulence.'" Daren made a show of adjusting an imaginary cape and surveyed the trees like a lord inspecting his grounds. "I'd name chairs after the men who conspired to build them."
Elias laughed then—a real laugh that came out of the ribs and felt less like a reflex and more like an honest response. "You'd name chairs after conspirators? That's… strangely specific."
"It's symbolic," Daren said solemnly. "Chairs are commitments. You sit in a chair and accept responsibility."
Lyra rolled her eyes. "Then I'll sit on the ground and never accept responsibility again."
"Then you'll have a very sore backside at age sixty," Elias said, teasing as he jabbed her with the butt of his walking stick.
She swatted him with an invisible retort. "Sore, yes. Free of chairs, glad of it."
They walked on, and the conversation opened like a summer book—unplanned, full of nonsense and surprising tenderness. Daren told the kind of story that only a person who had been both foolish and lucky could tell: a tale from his youth about a roof that gave way under him while he was trying to rescue a neighbor's goat. The goat, of course, escaped unscathed and bleated with an air of eternal indignation, while Daren emerged muddy and very proud of his scars.
"Your heroics end in mud," Lyra said, grinning. "Romantic all the same."
"Heroics with a side of pond water," Elias added. "Very cinematic."
Daren frowned in mock offense. "Lay off. I did leap dramatically, and the goat's dramatic bleat was practically operatic."
"At least the goat had better timing than you," Lyra teased. "It knew when drama called."
They argued about the goat for a good ten minutes—whether it had been the goat's fault for dodging, whether Daren had shimmied along the tiles like a druid, whether Elias would have bothered stepping in if it had all been orchestrated. The jokes stacked on each other like kindling until they were all laughing, breath fogging in the cool morning air.
At one point Elias asked Lyra about her childhood, curious in that easy way people are when they are not afraid anymore. Lyra huffed and made an exaggerated face.
"My childhood?" she said, as if the answer were a treasure to be guarded. "I grew up stealing apples, outrunning grumpy farmers, and learning the fine art of not getting caught. You have to be nimble if your stomach is louder than your tread."
"That sounds extremely illegal," Elias said.
"It's extremely effective," Lyra replied. "And very educational. I can climb a tree before I can read a map."
"You can read a map," Daren contradicted, "you just prefer not to. You prefer to be charmingly lost."
Lyra stuck out her tongue. "See? Daren admits I'm charming."
"Sometimes," Daren amended with a small, grudging smile.
They made a game of telling one-liners to each other with increasing absurdity. Each attempt at being funnier than the last produced more mirth than logic. The forest became an audience, and they were willing clowns who needed nothing more than the sound of each other's voices.
At a small clearing, they found a patch of sun-baked stones and sat to rest. Lyra flopped down theatrically and stretched as if she were a cat newly released from a long nap. Daren leaned his back against a smooth boulder, chewing on a stick like a contemplative philosopher. Elias, who'd been walking on auto-pilot, allowed himself the luxury of staring up at the canopy. Leaves cast moving patterns across his face; a bee traced a lazy arc above them. There was nothing urgent in the world for those moments—no alarms, no looming rituals—only the slow heartbeat of the earth.
"You know," Lyra said after a while, softer than her usual jab, "nights like last night make mornings like this feel like a small victory."
Elias watched her profile. In the firelight, she had been a flash of defiant color; in the morning she looked like a person who had chosen to live despite everything. "Yeah," he said quietly. "It's weird how the world doesn't change just because you almost died. But it's also a good thing."
Daren nodded. "Nothing about the world cares if you collapse. It keeps going. You have to decide whether to go with it. We go. We keep moving."
At that they laughed again, but the laughter was steadier now, the edges filed down. It sounded like something that would not be surprised by storms—only inconvenienced.
Food became the next topic, predictably. They scavenged a few wild berries—Lyra sniffed suspiciously until Daren proved their edibility by mouthing one and surviving—and the trio shared a small, improvised breakfast. It wasn't much: a handful of berries, a strip of dried meat, a few sips from a freshwater spring. It tasted abundant.
"Elias," Lyra asked between bites, "what's the weirdest thing you miss from your old world?"
He paused, surprised. The sun felt warm on his scalp. Memory flickered across his features like a slideshow.
"Little things," he said. "Hot showers. Microwave meals. That stupid, stupid comfort of knowing a bus would always, someday, arrive. The quiet problems, not the life-threatening ones."
Daren chuckled. "I doubt you'll miss traffic in this life. But then again, we don't have traffic. We do have wolves and worse, so trade-offs."
Lyra waved a hand. "I miss people who get offended when you nibble their bread. Here everyone's happy you steal an orange."
Elias smiled. "I miss the noise of a city sometimes. The idea that everyone is living through different minor disasters, and that in the middle of all that, you're a small story. It's oddly comforting."
Daren looked thoughtful. "It's good to miss things. Reminds you you were somewhere before this. But also—it makes you appreciate what you have now. Simple things: coffee tastes like holy nectar when you don't have it for a month."
Lyra barked a laugh. "We should find you coffee. Or something close."
"You realize we're in a forest," Elias said. "Coffee trees don't grow every fifty paces."
"Disappointment," Lyra announced. "Then I shall settle for honey and be done with it."
They traded stories, each one more embellished than the last. Daren recounted a childhood prank that involved hay bales and a very indignant pig. Lyra told a tall tale about outwitting a merchant who wanted to tax street performers. Elias told of a late-night snack he'd once crafted that still haunted his dreams—toast smeared with peanut butter and cheese, a culinary abomination that a friend had fed him with the best intentions.
"Your taste buds sound broken," Lyra said, genuinely scandalized.
"They sound creative," Daren said. "He sounds like an artist."
"An artist of regret," Lyra countered, and the three of them dissolved into another fit of laughter.
Time slid by without the pressure of the world's darker edges. The sky brightened until the forest grew bold in its colors; the green of leaves became unmistakable, birdsong more fearless. Children, tradesmen, and townsfolk had worlds and worries; for the moment, these three had nothing more pressing than which path to take next. The conversation shifted to lighter plans—where they might find a small village with a blacksmith, where they might barter a few shards of Dianol for a proper bandage, or who might have a map that didn't insist on sending them into quicksand.
Toward the end of their leisurely breakfast, Daren let his curiosity win out. He studied Lyra with the kind of expression one uses when measuring spoons at a market stall.
"So," he said, eyes flicking to her satchel in that way a man inspects an inventory, "how much did you actually manage to keep?"
Lyra blinked, as if the question were a sudden breeze and she hadn't prepared a response. Then she smiled a sly little smile, the one that meant she'd finessed a good deal.
"About twenty," she said, as casual as if naming the number of apples she'd pilfered from an orchard.
Daren's eyebrows lifted. "Twenty? That's… substantial."
Lyra patted the side of her satchel with obvious pride. "Not bad for someone who moves with the grace of a snoring bear."
Elias leaned forward, interest piqued. "Is that enough to—" He searched for the words and couldn't find the seriousness to match them. "Is that enough to keep us going? Trade for a night in a decent inn, maybe? A roof that doesn't leak and a bed that isn't a pile of hay?"
Daren did a quick mental calculation, the kind of arithmetic practiced by men who had haggled in markets and survived on coin and wit. "Twenty decent shards of Dianol will pay for shelter for a while, yes. Depending on where we are. If we're near a trade route, or a town that deals in gems, you might get more than expected."
Lyra puffed up with mock indignation. "I told you not to underestimate me."
Elias grinned. "Looks like you're our little bank."
"Don't call me that," Lyra said, though the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth betrayed that she liked the sound of being needed.
Daren shrugged. "It gives options. We can pick a safe place tonight if we want. Or we can keep moving until we find a town—somewhere with a proper healer. Your leg will thank you for stitches if you can find them, Elias."
Elias flexed his toes thoughtfully. "I don't know. Part of me wants to put up a small fire and sleep in the open one night. Part of me thinks a real bed would be a very clever investment."
Lyra leaned back and considered the sky. "We could do both. Find a village midday, get our stuff sorted, then go a bit further and camp at the orchard or the hill with the view. Best of both worlds."
Daren rubbed his chin. "It depends on time and risk. If we stop for too long, someone might notice the trail we left; if we move too fast, we could miss opportunities."
Elias looked between them, feeling the pleasant, easy current of their companionship. The morning had given them breathing room. "I like the 'both,'" he said with a small laugh. "It sounds less like choosing and more like stealing moments."
Lyra clapped her hands. "Then it's decided. We'll find a village by midday, treat our wounds properly, then camp under the stars because I want to see the sky without trees getting in the way."
Daren rose, stretching with a warrior's economy. "We'll keep our ears open and our hands on our things. We move in an hour. There's a path ahead that looks used; someone's been through there. Towns tend to sit near paths that people use."
They rose as one, shoulder-to-shoulder, and set off again down the sunlit trail. Lyra tucked the satchel with its twenty or so Dianol pieces away where only she knew; Daren kept his hand near his sword but walked with a lightness that suggested he intended to make a joke at the next convenient moment. Elias felt the ache in his leg but also the spring of decided purpose—plans drawn from the ordinary world felt like armor.
As the trees thinned and the land opened a little, they strode forward into full daylight, voices rising in a easy banter that said, as plainly as anything: for now, they were alive, they were together, and the day ahead was their own.