Sir Aeron’s heart isn’t entirely blackened.
It was a woman who gave him a bit of respite from the gloom of his own making. He’d heard about her through Court, and then began writing to her. Lady Morelli was born up north somewhere as the daughter of a butcher’s assistant and loom repairer and so she shouldn’t have amounted to anything. Somehow she found skill as a hair dresser and came across a generous client of higher standing, and her reputation grew from there. Her advice on hair styling (which she knews a great deal of) and fashion (which she can make up on the spot) meant that she soon came to the attention of the upper classes.
Her next challenge was to befriend Sir Aeron himself, as he was the oldest and most respected member of the Round Table.
With no one arround him to question the peculiar decision, he hands over the keys to Cambridge House which she holds on to and takes as her own. Aeron doesn’t mind all that much – his home is the Barracks.
In this time of relative peace – weeks where hunting for blood is only done as needed – he begins to write down some of his story. Maybe he’ll show it to her one day. For now, he keeps the piece private. Having written down how he came to be the way he is, he folds the pages and hides them in his belongings.
The next time he looks, the front, loose endpaper has been written on. “We Cannot Bear The Dark.”
He didn’t write this title. He has no idea what it means. But the handwriting is his. The quill and ink the same style. His finger print smudges the ink.
Some of this time away from his kin was spent chasing tales that Welles had told him about Dust. It’d be hard to come by – he’d found very little of it for himself. Welles himself has about a coin pouch worth of the stuff; Aeron remembered it well. It stuck in his memory like an itch. This chasing took him well outside of the Realm’s lands, into the unmapped and inhospitible desserts. He found some luck though.
It’s impossible to knew who planted this farm. It doesn’t occur to Aeron to think on it. But it might do him well to consider that it was not an accident that the Dust gathers so well here.