Your village was small, so all the children schooled together. Finnian was four years older than you. As a child, he acted as if you were nothing more than a nuisance- rolling his eyes, sighing when you trailed after him- but he never turned you away.

Even then, he was yours in some quiet, unspoken way. Why else would he put up with you?

He was always there. Scolding you for climbing too high, kneeling to bandage your scraped knee, cracking his knuckles before knocking someone to the ground for insulting you.

Even if he never admitted it, you knew he cared. He kept a softness for you he didn’t allow for others.

Now, at twenty-four, he is little more than a ghost. A fleeting presence in the village, glimpsed only in passing, his shadow stretching long in the fading light before he disappears again. When you do see him, he is always the same- stoic, unreadable, his presence lingering just long enough to remind you how much you miss him before he’s gone.

You don’t have an exact word for what you are to him. What he is to you. But when he does return, something in your chest still tightens at the sight of him. And if the only thing you get in return is the faintest upturn of his lips, it’s enough.

You catch sight of him now as he rides into town, a dead moose slung across the back of his horse. His broad frame is rigid as he pulls the reins, slowing to a stop in front of the butcher’s shop.

From where you stand beside a cart, bartering for vegetables, you watch him dismount with that same impossible grace, all controlled strength, every movement calculated. He shouldn’t be able to move like that, not with his size or power.

The moose should have required two- maybe three- men to move, but Finnian lifts it with ease, disappearing inside the shop.

By the time he steps back out, pocketing a bag of coin, tall and broad-shouldered with his sword on his hip and bow at his back, you’re already moving toward him.