 Tristan returned her smile. He hadn’t realised it before, but he had missed her.
“I get the impression that wouldn’t be particularly difficult,” he joked, feeling a little discomforted by the amount of concern on her face. He appreciated it, he really did, but it reminded him of what he had done, and how stupid he had been. Everyone, his father, his uncle, his aunt, his grandmother, they had all very carefully avoided the subject. He had not been told off, he had not been lectured, and they had all acted as if nothing had happened. Tristan thought he saw it in their eyes sometimes, a look of disappointment of ire hidden beneath the surface of their sympathetic concern. He would make it up to them, one way or another. At least Alethea didn’t seem to be hiding anything. He remembered the time after his run in with the raptors of the mash; his father had called him a lucky fool and Thea had told him he was brave. She’d probably say the same thing again, he realised with a surge of affection for his friend. She was wrong, he had been every kind of stupid, but it meant a lot to know that she still didn’t think him a fool.
“You visited in the infirmary?” he asked her curiously. With a groan he sank deeper below the bed covers, taking care to keep his wound away from the fabric. “I bet I looked fantastic” sighed the prince, casting her a playful look, “pale and feverish didn’t work for me, did it?” Why was it so much easier to joke than to just say thank you? There was a twinge of guilt still; she was yet another person he had made worry. The list seemed to grow longer every time he thought about it. They must have been going spare. He remembered what it had been like when Gawain had gone missing and the guards had searched the ice for weeks. Tristan could recall too his concern for his mother when she had run away and the king had sent out new search parties; over time his worry had turned to sadness and then to anger. If he had never left the pirate caves would the people he cared about have gone through the same thing? Returning to his original position Tristan patted the space on the bed next to him.
“Do I get a hug?” the prince asked, throwing his friend his most endearing look, “I bet it’d make me feel loads better.”
Her question caused an immediate shift in Tristan’s mood. In the past he might have been tempted to regale her with a blow-by-blow account of everything that had happened on the island and in the caves. On this occasion however, he couldn’t. He didn’t really have any desire to discuss it at all, but she had been worried; he had been the one who had made her worry. He owed her some kind of explanation. Tristan tried to keep a smile in place as he spoke, hoping she wouldn’t notice anything amiss.
“Just pirates,” he told her, “and no bird cages. Can you imagine a bird cage big enough for Celidon?” The prince sighed. “We went looking for Thoth’s ren. I should never have gone,” Tristan confessed, “I didn’t think. I’m sorry if I scared you – forgive me?”
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