It wasn't just the mead that had Heriwulf's head feeling a little too heavy, like his neck couldn't quite keep it up.
He sat in the tiny room, above the cookery, that had been set aside for him. Too small for him and three hounds; getting Aelfrida to build him a small, separate cabin seemed like a good idea, about the same size as Faron's hut.
Faron's hut. Somewhere he never expected to see, let alone drink mead. He had been in some awkward situations before; the sundering of his on-again-off-again relationship with the weapon-crafter back in the clan village in the Vales had certainly been uncomfortable, for one. But this was a new level of awkwardness.
In part because of how much of it had come from lies, or at least half-truths and misleading implications. Deception had never been comfortable to him, but sometimes it was necessary. To help Hildegund get the care she needed, he'd lied over and over about his own need for rest (to let her take a rest without having to ask for one), his need to visit Bree, and so much more. It got done what needed doing. For all he knew, Hildegund realized the lies and just played along. Those particular lies were fairly obvious, but he could never tell which obvious things Hildegund wouldn't realize, and which ones she would see past into things he never glimpsed.
Lying to Faron, though, was particularly difficult because of how earnest he had to be, and how he had just, minutes earlier, spoken thoughts he'd held back for a long time, finally gotten to be honest. His frustrations with her attitude, in particular. Not the fact that she hated him; she was hardly the first to hate him and likely wouldn't be the last, and he could weather that with equanimity. It had nothing to do with that, in fact.
She was, he thought, a perfect example of the cravenness that poisoned a clan. Someone who must, absolutely, have things how she wants them, and will lash out at anyone who doesn't make things exactly her way, punish them with wrath, her cutting words being only the start of her retribution. Yet at the same time, someone who refused to take authority with clarity, take responsibility for her decisions, state them unambiguously. She wanted people to obey her will without her having to exert it. Just what he had hated about his stepfather, and ultimately what led to his falling out with the weapon-crafter. More than that, just what, every time he saw it, gradually destroyed relationships, not just personal ones, but those that knitted a clan together into a formidable force. Trust, reliance, leadership, clarity. All worn down and broken.
He had spoken frankly, truthfully, and it had felt like a weight off his shoulders to finally say what he thought. When he stalked away, though, picking apart her answers, regret followed soon after: not regret for saying what he thought, but regret for the fact that she had clearly heard none of it. Or worse, just whichever two or three sentences fitted neatly into her preconceptions. He doubled back down the rough path, swallowing those truths like bile and mustering a few lies -- well, misleading omissions and true statements that were deceptive in their framing, mostly -- hoping to contain the damage, only to find it was worse damage than he'd expected.
She was already leaving, probably meaning to leave the clan entirely, as she'd threatened. To Bree to start, though the people there called her a witch. (He'd been baffled that she was regularly visiting Bree long before he had, in fact. All his ideas that he could be of use to the clan as an emissary now seemed laughable. Even when he'd later tried to offer to spare her facing their condemnatory assessment went nowhere; she had mysterious business in town he couldn't help with.) Then back to the Vales, most likely. Or perhaps something even stupider than that. She hadn't even bothered to see to the care of the bee-hives she'd set up by her hut; she'd thrown her few possessions into a bag and was already on the footpath towards the villages.
The torrent of half-truths and conciliatory statements that he was forced to pour forth grew so tangled and muddy that he'd lost track of half of it by the time she'd agreed not to leave, and then, rather than asking him to leave (as he'd expected -- perhaps she'd expected too), she'd invited him into her hut to share a mug of mead, that she'd traded for in Bree. And thus the new high-water mark for most awkward situation he'd ever been in. The both of them standing there clumsily holding mugs and grasping for things to say. He'd chugged down the mead hardly even tasting it, so quickly that it went to his head a little, and hurried to leave before he lost track of the webs of deception he'd been compelled to spin.
At least now he was fairly sure he wouldn't need to decide which of them should return to the Vales so the other could stay, at the next clan moot. Only a day before he'd been eager to see that moot, and now he was dreading it, wondering how she would look at him now, whether he'd be caught up in one of his own webs, what new challenges he'd made for himself.
Or, he had to remind himself, that she had forced him to make, by being unwilling to accept the truth. For one brief moment things between them had been rooted entirely in honesty. She brushed aside the truth, and refused to be, herself, truthful about her own wishes; and his deceptions were made necessary by that. How overwrought it all was. How much simpler if people would just say what they wanted, and argue and fight about whose will should prevail if they must, and then just get on with it. Sometimes he thought he was the only one who could see that. Perhaps, if no one else saw it, if no one else could live that way, it was he who should be off on his own, away from the clan.
