Isaac was utterly drenched in sweat as he sat next to Lenna at their dining room table. Margaret, Madeline, and Martha served them and then took their seats. The dining room was frozen in silence until Isaac took his fork and stabbed the slice of ham on his plate and clinked against the ceramic dish on the other side. He didn't bother cutting it and simply brought it up to his mouth and took a large bite out of it like a barbarian who had come down from the mountains and finally ate something that wasn't dried or a stew. Isaac sighed as the tender meat melted into his mouth.

Lenna cracked the slightest smirk from next to him as she understood that he was not so far gone as to forget to taste his food. That simple interaction, combined with the echoes of his feelings in chest, gave her an almost perfectly accurate picture of his internal emotional landscape. He was in pain, probably something akin to an arrow in the chest that had missed his heart and lungs by a hair's breadth, but he was not dying. She could tell that he hardly wanted to eat but his recent workout had consumed so many calories that his body was demanding sustenance. If he had come into dinner wanting to fully enjoy it, then he would have cut the meat before he tried to stuff half of a slice into his mouth at once.

Lenna was glad that her husband was hurting but not drowning in agony. The pain was good. It was proof of the connection that had been severed with their eternal passing. But she also couldn't let it consume him. She wanted to do something but she honestly didn't know what to do. Even if she had known, she hadn't had the energy to do anything. Even with the hope for his future that her feelings and the current interaction had given her, Lenna was still fully aware that Isaac was teetering on the edge of a cliff of depression, agony, and despair. She wasn't entirely sure how he had managed to pull himself out of it, but that was fine as long as she could help him stay on top of that cliff and not at its rock bottom.

"I think it is good." Lenna told Madeline with a smile and reached for her own fork. "Thank you, as always, Madeline."

Madeline gave a seated bow, as deeply as she could without getting her face too close to any foodstuffs. "Thank you for the praise, my Lady." Madeline replied and then all three of the maids started to dig in.

Isaac finished his food far before anyone else. He had practically inhaled most of it and only stopped when he felt like he couldn't take another bite. He wasn't entirely sure how full he really was as all internally focused feelings were a bit dull at the moment. He wanted to jump up and find something else to do but he refrained.

"How are you feeling?" Isaac asked his wife and fate bound companion.

"Like I will recover, soon, but not quickly." She told him with a frown. "I'm sorry that I am not ready to go on a hunt with you."

"How'd you know?" Isaac questioned her. He had been thinking more and more about going on a hunt for the escaped bandits. They were probably close enough and he was physically and magically healed enough to shred through any group of sub platinum level mortals. They simply didn't have the skills and spells at their disposal to lock him down or even severely injure him in one shot.

"You had that look in your eyes." Lenna calmly replied as she took another bite of her food and savored it in a way that made Isaac want to take another bite even though he knew that if he did then it would make him feel sick from over eating.

"That obvious?" Isaac wondered.

"Is that what that look means?" Martha queried. Her little mind was taking in everything like she was planning on compiling a database on the mannerisms of everyone present.

Lenna gave the girl an acknowledging smile. "Yes and no." She informed the little one. "It means that he is on the hunt for something to relieve his tension and that he can take his anger out on." She explained.

"But why a hunt? A hunt for what?" Martha wondered.

Isaac gave Margaret a look that told her that if she didn't want Martha to hear the truth then she had better change the subject. Margaret cleared her throat. "Maybe it is not a good idea to discuss hunts at the dinner table?" She offered Martha and hoped that the girl would have enough tact and conversational awareness to see that her mother was trying to change topics for a good reason.

Martha, for her part, took the word 'maybe' to mean that her mother was not certain. Her little mind then concluded that since the master and mistress of the house had brought it up and been the ones talking about it, then it was fine to talk about. "It seems okay to me." Martha explained to her mother and then completely focused back in on Isaac and Lenna. Margaret sighed in resignation.

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"Mortals." Isaac spoke one word that instantly hit their dining room like a brick the size of a small house.

Martha's eyes got wider and wider until they looked as if they were going to fall out of her little head and onto her plate that she was leaning over. "Why?" She practically whispered.

"Which group are you thinking about?" Lenna asked her mate. She knew that out of all of Isaac's potential mortal targets, only the ones that he was most likely to want to go after were the ones that would lead to their deaths.

"The bandits group between here and Sapphirestone." Isaac explained. "Shamesh and I should be able to find them at night easily enough. We just don't know how many of them there are so the risk of still missing some of them is decently high. We don't know how scattered they are."

"Your shadows?" Lenna wondered.

"If I could bring my full authority and willpower to bear, they would be a great help." He confirmed. "But they aren't smart enough to be able to give me very accurate information. I would have to find a center point and rapidly switch back and forth between their perspectives." He was thinking aloud as much as he was replying to Lenna's inquiries.

"So you don't need me at one hundred percent but able to at least be able to handle myself and travel." Lenna surmised. "It won't be in less than three days." She told him outright. "I think it will take me three days until I can walk a city block without needing breaks. Four or five until I could make it to the orchestra hall. Maybe a week, on the low end, and I could make the journey out that far. The best option would be to wait a few weeks and then take a caravan out to wherever you want to start your search from. The caravan could then continue and we could camp there for a little while, by then I should be able to handle myself."

Isaac nodded in agreement. "I'll keep that in mind." He told her. "I invited Sera over for tea in a week. It would be the day before our usual tea time in her garden. I didn't want to step on her toes by asking her to come here instead of us go there when she has no idea about anything that has happened."

"We don't know very much either." Martha chimed in, which got a quiet admonish from her sister who was seated right next to her and a glare that was a mix of horror, surprise, and admonishment from her mother.

Lenna smiled and looked at little Martha. Her unyielding boldness, directness, and curiosity were things that made the elven paladin want to protect her with all her strength but also to give her every answer she seeked. "Let us say that there are two poems written on different pieces of parchment." Lenna began an explanation that the littlest among them would be able to understand. The explanation was also for Margaret and Madeline who no doubt were also worrying about her and Isaac. "But the poems were meant to be read together. If I was afraid of them being separated, what would I do?"

Martha sat in quiet but serious contemplation for a moment. "Keep them in the same place." She said with total certainty.

"But what if I felt like just keeping them both in the same place was not enough? What if there were other people who came and went from wherever they were stored and I wanted to make sure that no one else would somehow take or move only one of them?" Lenna continued with her simile.

"Tie them together?" Martha wondered.

"A simple wrapping could slip off." Lenna countered.

"Bind them?" Martha offered another option.

"I don't have glue." Lenna replied.

"Bind them without glue." Martha said with a confident nod.

Lenna smiled. She was guiding Martha towards a specific ending, and even though it had taken a bit, they were about to get there. "There aren't any good edges of the parchment for a string only binding." Lenna explained. "They would have to be sewn together. There is enough space so the poems themselves would not be damaged but the parchment would need to be punctured at quite a few points."

Martha nodded sagely. "Is there another way?" She wondered.

Lenna shrugged. "Maybe, but I didn't see any other way." She confided in the little one. "So I asked for them to be sewn together. The needle was wide and because of the mismatched shapes of the pieces of parchment, the one was left in worse shape than the other but the latter had unevenly placed stitching."

"They won't ever be separated though, right?" Martha questioned her mistress.

Lenna smiled. "No. We won't be." She said and placed her hand on Isaac's. "And unlike actual parchment, we will heal over time and our binding will simply become a part of us."

Martha squinted her eyes at Lenna as if she was trying to read something that hadn't been written. "So you are hurt because you were sewn together?" Martha asked with obvious skepticism.

"Our strands of fate were, they are connected to both our souls and bodies. My soul was too hot for Isaac's and his was too large for mine. In the end, mine was stretched and his was tempered." Lenna explained. "Isaac is nearly all better but I will take a while longer to heal."

"I still have a fever but it isn't debilitating, just a bit tiring, so I'm more or less fine unless I am going up against a near equal opponent." Isaac added.

"I was the one who asked for this, so it is only fair that I have the longer recovery time." Lenna told him. "If it was the other way around, I don't know how long it would take for me to forgive myself for making you suffer."

Isaac squeezed her hand. He wasn't sure what to say. If he was being honest, then he would have to tell her that if he had a longer recovery time, it was likely that he would have slept through the entire next season in a depression induced hibernation. "Just focus on healing." Isaac told her. "I am taking care of everything that I can from here. Once you are ready to make the walk to the orchestra hall, we should go there. But I can wait a few days."

"Why?" Lenna wondered. "Why not go tomorrow?" She asked him.

"Without you?" Isaac questioned her sanity.

Lenna shook her head. "Shamesh can fly and no one has to see us come or go. Music soothes the soul. I think it would be good for both of us." She explained.

Isaac only thought about it for a moment before he nodded. She was right. He needed the piano to help him properly express what he was feeling and if she felt like music would help her recover, then he wasn't going to be stubborn and try to keep her at home. She was right, Shamesh could fly and make them invisible. No one had to see them in their weakened state struggling to go a few blocks on foot.

"I don't think I have to remind any of you of this," Isaac began with his gaze panning over the woman, teenager, and child who maintained their manor and assisted them whenever they were able. "but the fact that Lenna and I were injured at all, is something that needs to stay within this manor. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Lenna and I can come back from nearly any injury with only a day or so of rest at the most. I don't want any of our enemies to realize how weak we are right now. The last thing we need is for someone else who hates us to come out of the woodwork prepared for us at our perceived maximum power while we are still crippled."

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