We stayed in the clearing for two hours.
Aldric and Cassius moved to the perimeter and gave us the space, which I was grateful for without quite being able to express it.
What happened in those two hours was not strategic, tactical, or meaningful in any way that maps or councils could use.
Alaric asked about the battle — not the details I didn't want to give him, but whether we'd won, whether the people we cared about were okay — and I told him what was true and what he was ready to hear, and skipped what wasn't either.
He told me about the Realm.
About what it felt like from inside the transformation — the way things he'd once had to concentrate on had become simply known, effortless, like the way you stop noticing you're breathing.
He described Cassius's lessons with the particu
