Hey, everybody.

It's been a very long time since I updated this story and I've been getting some feedback on it recently, so I'm here to make an announcement!

I like the idea for the story so I WILL continue it, but not until I finish one of my other stories and have less on my plate. My real life responsibilities are too much too handle right now when I also have three stories in the works and I am updating everything too slowly. However, one of my other stories IS close to being finished, so Evermore should be back on my "to do list" within a few months (wow, is that a short time?)

I appreciate everyone who has maintained an interest in this story.

As a side note, I was inspired to reminisce on this fic because I just finished a short story featuring Belduine. I wrote the story in a hopes of being admitted to an advanced short story class that is competitive and for which I do not have the appropriate perquisite class. Therefore, if anybody is interested in reading a short story about Belduine, I can direct them to my author's file (Zapenstap) on fictionpress and the title The Boardwalk Dancer. I would include a link, but this site does not allow them.

And now, because I hate it when other authors upload "non chapters" I will include the partial part of the "next chapter" that I wrote eons ago and never finished. Be forewarned, this is not edited and not complete, and when I do upload the "real" next chapter, this much of the story will appear again with more added to it and editing, etc.

Everybody clear? Thank you for your patience!

Evermore

Chapter 16 (Part One)

By Zapenstap

Yuki shook the leaves from the soles of his shoes and paused at the front of the line to look over the bedraggled group. Rain had been drizzling for over an hour. The trees weren't dense enough to block the steady downfall and the clothes of those who had escaped from the prisons of Cabadan were soaked through. Trudging through a muddy forest floor with a lack of a clear trail made it feel as if they were wandering in endless circles.

"How much farther is it?" Kyo muttered, stopping after he trudged up the short slope that separated Yuki from the others. He shook mud from his shoes but it didn't do much good. He was splattered with mud from a nasty fall he took just after the sun went down and it became difficult to see. That was hours ago. They had been traveling all day and a good deal of the night.

"Belduine said it wasn't far not too long ago," Kagura said from just ahead of Yuki, her hands clasped behind her and a tired smile on her face. Her brown boots were ruined, but they probably kept her feet dry and the scarf she wore around her neck was now holding her damp hair back from her face. Surprisingly, Kagura seemed to be holding up better than the rest of them. Perhaps mountains and mud were just in her blood, as part of the boar's spirit that cursed her.

"We need to find shelter," Kyo grumbled. "Where the hell is that kid?"

"I think he's just up ahead," Kagura said, peering into the darkness. "I don't know. I haven't seen him for awhile."

Yuki watched Uo and Hana support Tohru as the three of them negotiated a path through one of the larger mud puddles, but his real attention was on Akito, floundering on Ayame's arm. Akito had been silent for hours now, not even bothering to try and appear strong, seemingly on the verge of collapse with every step. Ayame didn't look terrifically better. He was shivering in his robes.

"I probably don't look so good either," Yuki muttered to himself.

"Like a drowned rat," Arisa said as she, Tohru and Hana joined Kyo. "Why are we stopping?"

"We lost Belduine," Yuki replied.

Arisa pushed forward, pulling her shoes out the mud and passing Yuki on the right. "Well, let's not stop. I fear if I stop, I might fall down." She flung a sopping blonde strand of hair out of her face as she kept walking. Tohru and Hana followed behind her. "There had better be feather beds and hot showers at this rest stop."

"I'd settle for a dry floor," Kyo said.

"I think Belduine went this way," Kagura said, and turned on her heel, trotting ahead.

Yuki let Kagura lead the way, waiting for Ayame and Akito to struggle up behind the others before he began moving again himself. Akito's head was bowed, black hair dripping and arms hugging his wet robes tightly around his slender body. Ayame looked worn down, walking by Akito's elbow, helping him—silently—whenever he stumbled. As they passed Yuki, Akito looked up.

Yuki felt a chill creep down in back in the baleful glare of those auger eyes, but he refused to react and Akito was evidently too tired to complain or make any snide, jibing remarks. He merely managed to look wounded, as if this whole affair was Yuki's fault, designed specifically to make Akito miserable. Not long after that, Akito pushed Ayame away again, trudging along behind the others alone, muddy robes wrapped around his slender body.

"Yuki, I can't take much more of this," Ayame complained as soon as Akito was ahead of them and out of earshot. "Not only Akito, but the rain and the mud and the… outdoors." He made a little shudder. "My hair must look like a goat's!"

"At least we're free," Yuki replied.

"Yuki!"

It was Kagura's voice, carrying like that of a piping bird through the rain. She didn't sound panicked, but Yuki hurried anyway, running to catch up with Ayame trotting clumsily behind him. They passed Akito without stopping, not noticing him stop in the mud to watch them race ahead.

Kagura had found Belduine, it seemed, and for the first time since the rain came and light faded, Yuki felt a flare of hope.

Belduine was carrying a lantern, glowing like a golden beacon in the night, and had on a cloak that shielded his entire body and head from the rain. Yet he held the lantern high enough to light his face, and the glitter in his eye was promising.

Belduine waited until everyone had gathered close enough to see him, holding up the lantern to identify each of their faces. They all waited for Akito, who joined them slowly and grudgingly, motivated from the wet and the cold and the false warmth of apathy by the promise of real warmth and a dry place to sleep.

"There's shelter up ahead," Belduine said when they could all hear them, and didn't bother to explain further.

They followed him through another row of trees that gradually came to look like a path. It grew wider as they walked, a dirt road flanked by trees on either side. The trees were tall and forbidding, like walls on either side with knobby, far reaching arms that blotted out the sky and narrowed their path. And the road was all the creepier for being only partially civilized in an otherwise wild territory. But Yuki would have walked through hell's mouth for a bit of dry space.

They walked in the middle of the road huddled in a group, keeping to the center and their eyes straight ahead as much as possible until they saw the welcoming warmth of lighted windows gleaming in the distance. Yuki didn't think he had ever seen a sight more welcoming. Unconsciously, he quickened his pace.

"What kind of a place is this?" Tohru voiced weakly.

Belduine took off his cloak and threw it over Tohru's head, adjusting it around her face to make sure it was keeping the rain off her hair. She seemed to bone weary to react. "It's the home of a monk named Fren. He copies manuscripts out here by himself, but he's opened his chapel to passing travelers and he's given me a break before. Old Fren keeps your business confidential so we should be relatively safe here."

"Should be?" Kyo muttered.

But no one else said anything. Yuki thought only about the availability of some place out of the rain and wind to sleep. There might even be a fire, and maybe something to eat, but he was too exhausted to encourage the others with these possibilities.

As they made their way across the last gasp, the drizzle became a downpour.

The whole group followed Belduine in a clump, straining to see beyond the sudden sheet of rain that slicked their hair to their faces and soaked the remaining dry patches of their clothes. It was as if the sky had waited for some promise of shelter before wringing the last of the water from the clouds upon their heads. The terrain became muddier and muddier, to the point where Yuki stopped noticing the difference between walking through mud and sloshing through puddles. Under Belduine's cloak, Tohru shivered and even the impassive Hana was starting to look drowned.

At length, when he was almost too tired, wet, and blinded by rain to care anymore, he found himself on the doorstep of an A-frame style house. It appeared out of nowhere, looming suddenly out of the trees and beside a dirt path that led to an actual road within eye distance. Yuki stared at the road for a minute, trying to force his mind to think, when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Come on," he heard Belduine whisper, and leaving his thoughts with the rain, Yuki filed with the others through a door.

The absence of rain thundering on his head was only slightly less welcome then the sudden warmth of golden lamp light. Yuki found himself standing on a plain wood floor in an even plainer room. Benches set against the wall and a wooden table in front of a fire place were the only noticeable furnishings, but they looked glorious.

Uo was already walking around, her eyes peering this way and that, before she plopped down on one of the benches and beckoned Hana and Tohru to join her. They did, Hana sitting gracefully and Torhu sinking between her friends still wrapped in Belduine's cloak. Unceremoniously, Uo eased Touru's head to her shoulder and gently patted the girl's hair.

All around him, everyone was sitting, moving over to the benches or slumping on the floor next to the wall. Akito sat by himself against the wall, shivering in his sopping robes, dark hair plastered about his face. Across the room, Yuki had never seen Kyo look so exhausted; so much so that he was haunted momentarily by the lack of the bracelet around his wrist. Everyone else was in varied states of exhaustion, with only Kagura managing to look bright-eyed despite having taken off her boots to stretch mud-caked toes on the wooden floor.

Other than Yuki, Belduine was the only one standing, and he was speaking urgently to an old man in brown robes, the material shapeless except where it was tied around his middle with a simple woven belt. Belduine's eyes shone as he spoke, tripping over his words in order to get them all out, and the old man smiled indulgently at him as he did, putting a hand on the boy's shoulder and easing him to silence. When Belduine stopped speaking, the man raised his eyes to regard the rest of them.

"Welcome. I hope you will all make yourselves at home while you are here. I have some changes in clothes for most of you, I believe, at least for while you're other things are drying. You have a long way to travel yet and I will help you in your journey any way that I can, for this is a charitable house that seeks no sides. In the mean time, would anyone be interested in dinner?"

TBC

please remember my short story! if anyone is interested... Thank you so much!