At spear training, Heriwulf had talked about the deep, steady breathing that helps a warrior maintain both the body and the mind. How you breathe is one of the easiest things to learn, and the hardest things to keep up in the heat of the moment, and most important things that made a good warrior a great one, though no one knew it. You need both air and calm to survive the challenges; and steady, deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth, give both. What he didn't talk about is how that same breathing can be the rhythm of life, and a way to center yourself, not just in battle but in everything. There's a moment in between those breaths that feels like a balance that is off-balance: a moment of nothing, that is about to become something, anything, everything. You cannot say what this moment feels like, because there is nothing that is just like it, until you have so thoroughly mastered the way of breathing that you start to see how so many of life's moment are, in fact, exactly like it.
He, and the whole clan, stood in that moment now, in a nothing wherein was hidden the seed of everything. The most obvious way this was true was in the outcome of the Battle of Chetwood. After months of thinking of little else, the threat had been dealt with, decisively. No sign of orcs in those ruins now, and the company from the Vales had all departed, taking their pandemonium of tents and voices with them.
There had been losses, carried away like air from the lungs, set free. Dalgo, of course. Faron, whose departure carried so tangled a knot of guilt and uncertainty Heriwulf flinched away from even thinking about it, leaving him nothing left but undiluted feeling, the empty pit of failure in his stomach; instead he focused on what this must mean for Gelvira. Hildegund's injury, and the poor woman's struggle now to keep from feeling trapped and useless while she healed. Aelfrida's injuries as well. And biggest of all, perhaps, but woven in so omnipresent a way into everything that one couldn't see it, that looming sense of purpose, focus, and threat, that the orcs had provided, now gone. The exhalation let that slip away into the air, leaving the void that would be filled by the next breath.
And what would be in that next breath? He could tell some things for certain, but mostly for himself, less certainly for the clan. The revelation that he and Leohna were not only bonded to one another (and she was now a full member of the clan), but also that they would be having a child come autumn, was enough to make him want to take the kind of gasping breath that he knew would be his ruin. Things had moved so quickly with her, despite his attempts to slow them, and he had so many fears, hurts in his past that echoed in today, but he had to hold these within, like holding one's breath underwater until the lungs burned with agony. Leohna was so unlike his first wife, who had barely ever spoken, had no wishes save to be given direction, had never even told him if she liked him. This wife was exuberant, full of life and thoughts and preferences and fears and hopes and song, but also a creature of fears and worries; he felt like there was no room for him to let his own fears into his breath, as he needed to be putting hers at ease. Such a thing couldn't be sustained forever, but perhaps it would get through the next breath.
It wasn't just him, though. There were so many things before the clan, old possibilities and new ones all mixed up together. Soon Aelfrida and her team would be building more huts and cabins within the stockade; it seemed the clan would be making this land their home for a long time, so they ought to build as if it were. With all the pups now claimed (how funny that he'd named Song thinking of Leohna before they'd ever so much as touched hands, and now she had claimed and imprinted Song), the breeding of a new litter. Learning how hounds could help with healing; Leohna meant to teach Song to identify illnesses and help find the wounded, and would be working with Byrge on finding whether hounds could help those with falling-sickness, as it seems Beetle had without even being trained to it, once. Long-delayed plans to get kine that Ljota (now Hildegund's wife) would tend, now mingling with the plans of Eydia, one of the company of the Vales who had chosen to stay, to set up farmland, to help feed the clan (especially now that their best hunter had left). Others that had chosen to join the growing clan, including Eathwaru, now Leohna's other lover; what would come of that was a question that Heriwulf couldn't spare the breath to think about. Arastal, the mysterious Elf-healer, who would be instrumental in helping Leohna through her childbirth, as a healer cannot always heal herself so one needs a second. The whole clan was now considering what other skills must be learned so that one person being absent or ill would not leave the clan in a bad way (again, Faron's departure hung over them). To that end, the trapper Jessandra would be staying, and thus help keep them from being too hungry until livestock and crops could feed the clan. Even Beastmother seemed to be staying close to the clan more than he expected, now that they'd built roosts for her raven-friends. New people always meant new possibilities and new challenges. And they still had to resettle those displaced, hungry wolves in the Chetwood, and he still had to try to tame a new wolf to bring new blood to the pack, and there was learning to read and write, and his hope to convince the clan to go back to working without a chieftain, and surely at some point Radagast would call on them to help with his original purpose in these lands…
Staring down this vast list of possibilities and challenges, one wanted to take a big gulp of air, then take them all on, at once. It was an achingly strong temptation. Steady, now. There will be time for a slow, measured breath, soon enough. In this moment between breaths, just be in that moment, and let things be what they are. There is stillness that must not be lost, for it will be gone soon enough on its own.
Let the moment hold. Let it last. Then when the time is right, when the quiet has permeated everything it can, only then, slowly, in through the nose, take the next breath.
Breathe. Just breathe.
