The entire time, he and Keyleth had barely had time to talk to each other. Today's not the only day where that's been too much the case. Their final days in Whitestone, she spent most of her time badgering Percy, Cassandra, and the city's other leading figures for any advice they could give her and then reading every book in the library they recommended. Vax, for his own part, prioritized spending time with Vex while he still could. Even now, as he walks hand in hand with Keyleth to their new bedchamber, his mind dwells on his last sight of her face before the tree closed up.
But now, at last, the two of them are alone together again. It feels a little strange as they enter the bedroom together, Keyleth looking around at a place that probably in her mind still belongs to her past. She looks at him and smiles shyly. "Hi."
"Hi," he agrees. He takes in her tired face but clouded eyes. "Ready to sleep?" he asks.
She has to think about that one, and even after doing so, her best answer is, "Maybe after I change for it?"
Vax probably isn't as tired as her, but unlike Keyleth, he hasn't spent half a day being bombarded with dozens of different thoughts that all might keep a new Headmaster awake on her first night in Zephrah where she didn't have any immediate plans to immediate go off on some other daring deed. What troubling things he does have to dwell on, missing Vex and the bidding of the Raven Queen still in his future, have settled down in his head, and while there may be nights they might keep him awake, he doesn't think this'll be one of them.
All the clothing he has Vax has brought with him, so he just has to open his pack and fish out his sleepwear. Of course his taking his armor off is nothing new, since he's been constantly sleeping next to Keyleth. But it's still a relief, especially now, when it reminds him that he's now free of the menace he was wearing it against, and even most of the other ones that have kept him looking over his shoulder for so long. He feels more than just the weight of the armor fall off him.
Keyleth, meanwhile, has dug into her old drawers, and donned a nightgown that Vax assumes has just been sitting in them since she first left home. She is now looking down at how it reaches only partway down her calves; it's obviously meant to reach her ankles. "When did I get taller?" she wonders out loud. "I though I'd finished growing already."
"Magic," Vax grins at her, and it might actually be true. Although he hasn't grown out of anything recently, since pledging himself to the Raven Queen and accepting the powers she's given him, he's felt the magic inside him change him physically-it wouldn't be easy to explain, if anyone ever asked, exactly what has changed, but Vax knows and understands it, which is the important part.
Combined they're a little big for the bed, too, having to snuggle up together to fit. That's not something either of them minds, though. Vax slings her arm over Keyleth's chest and lays his head against his neck, the way he often does when they're tired out enough. He focuses on making his breathing slow and steady, which ought to help her sleep.
He wakes some time later from a dream where by the time his eyes are fully open, he can only remember that it was a very unsettling one. Keyleth is exactly where she was, but she's murmuring in her sleep. Vax catches the words, "dangerous," "people," and "Scanlan."
It takes a moment for him to remind himself that the two of them are completely safe, that there isn't even anything after them at the moment, as far as they know. After that, as he gazes around the darkened chamber, he finds himself contemplating everywhere he'd slept in the past, from the hovel in which he lived the first ten years of his life to the grand bedrooms of Whitestone Castle. None of them ever felt quite like Keyleth's childhood bedroom, not even her room in the Keep.
It's partly the design, of course. Most rooms Vax has been in haven't had living plants incorporated into their structure. In the darkness, he can just make out the various vines and even thin shrubs that had been expertly woven against or even into the walls. For all he knows, the thatch that makes up the rest of the walls is also alive; he might ask Keyleth about that.
But it's also the decorations hanging from the window, little handmade beribboned boughs that were put together lopsided, and would probably have fallen apart if they hadn't been literally joined together by obvious magical means. There's a doll on a table in the corner, not the fanciest thing, but still a finer one than the poorer half of Byroden would have seen. The ceiling is decorated with more of the boughs, arranged to form a star, though the lines aren't completely straight.
In some ways, Vax knows, Keyleth actually had less of a childhood than he and Vex did, at least once she started training for her position. He's not going to begrudge her what she did get. But he's left very aware of how different his life has been, how for most of it, he never was in this kind of world, where both love and comfort could be easily had in the same place, where he never had to worry about what would become of him and those he cared for, where he'd neither had one accent mocked and bullied out of him nor had another make people look at him warily, grouping him with the snobs of Syngorn. Where he and Vex had never had to prove themselves to be accepted.
How unlikely it should be, that he and Vex both should come to the places they're now both in. In new homes they already love, consorts to those that rule them, Vex with her own title and role in hers, where they wouldn't have to worry when they woke each day how they were going to get by.
Had he ended up following a different goddess than the one he's pledged himself to, he would be giving thanks to her for this. As it is, Vax silently instead asks the darkness to stay where it is for now, for tomorrow, for as long as it's willing to. Let us both be happy, please, he pleads. For her sake, if not mine. She made no bargain with you; all she has done is love me, and she will have too long a way to go after me no matter what happens. Be kind to her, please.
As if even his thoughts have stirred her, Keyleth murmurs, "That doesn't make sense..." and Vax pulls his head up as her eyes blink open, and while he can only see so much in the darkness, they seem to him to still be moving around too much. "Vax?"
"Kiki?" he whispers. "Bad dream?"
"Not bad, exactly," she sighs. "At least....not like the nightmares I've had in the past. Nothing was trying to kill us, or even do things like possess us or torture us or nasty things like that."
Vax thinks back to nights in the woods with Vex, and the dreams they'd dealt with then, of all the snubs and trouble they'd suffered in Syngorn lurking in their minds. There'd been dreams of their mother's death, too, and certain dreams Vex wouldn't talk about in the weeks after Trinket joined them; Vax can guess what those there about now. But even when they'd slept out in the wild with only themselves and a bear cub to protect them, it was what they'd left behind that haunted them more.
He wonders what kind of dreams he'll be having when they've been here a few months. Or what dreams she'll be having.
For now, he murmurs, "Just because the challenges we'll be facing now don't involve us risking our lives doesn't mean it's not okay to be anxious about them. I mean, right now, my main immediate worry is how your people are going to perceive me, and that terrifies me. And when I genuinely haven't cared about strangers' opinions of me for most of my life. That's not anything near what I know you've got to be worrying about right now-except that one of my biggest worries about it is how I'm going to reflect on you, because I know I'm not exactly the ideal consort for a leader, and I don't even have the kind of useful skills Vex does..."
"Vax!" Keyleth cuts him off, dismayed. The interruption makes Vax fully aware of what's just spilled out of him, as well as the thoughts he hadn't even been consciously aware of before he voiced them. When Keyleth pauses, maybe reconsiders her immediate reaction to his words, he himself takes a moment, and finds himself feeling the need to add, "I think it's because I really do like your people, more than I've liked most."
"Well," that makes Keyleth smile, "that makes you far more suited for being my consort than anyone who doesn't feel that way, right?"
"True," he says, "and I know you won't even make demands of me, but I think you know I'll need to do anything I can think of to make myself useful. Even if it's just spending however many hours it takes to talk you past your nerves and build up your confidence."
"And I don't think anyone's better at that. You're doing a pretty good job right now."
"I wouldn't mind doing it all night," Vax tells her. It's a tempting thought, in fact, to just stay like this for the rest of the night, talking the hours away until dawn. He decides right then they will have nights like that in the future, maybe before mornings when they can sleep in a little.
But tomorrow's not one of those mornings, and they've both had it impressed on them that she and probably him as well will have to be fully there mentally. So Keyleth, with clear reluctance, replies, "Thanks, but we need to sleep a little more tonight if we can. We drifted off once already, right?"
"Right," he says. "But if you want to talk about your dream, surely we can take a few minutes."
Maybe in the end, they remain awake a little longer than they should. Keyleth can't remember more than the basic outline of her dream, and even when prompted she can't remember Scanlan being in it at all. But even the mention of his name brings forward pain and regret they both confess to there, and more words pass between them after that about general insecurities and the future.
Although when Keyleth says, "You might get the most attention at the upcoming midsummer festival, when the people around me won't have more important things to pay attention to," Vax has to grin and say, "I think that might be fun. Before Vex and I left Byroden, we did pick up a thing or two about our town's seasonal festivals. I'll tell you a bit about those if we have some time tomorrow."
"Tell the others, too," she says. "At least some of them must be interested, I think."
Well, if she says so, Vax fully intends to.