"Truly, she did," Vervain says, and saying it, loses a little of the awestruck boy in favor of the solemn young priest he can sometimes be. "You were the only one around she had to argue with; she'd missed it."

It wasn't something Gram ever said to him outright, but he wasn't unobservant of the woman who'd raised him, nor what the rest of 'Thwaite said of their parson. She was woven too tight in the little town's fabric to be truly an outsider any longer, but they knew even so something in her was separate from them. Refined in a way they weren't. Different, without being wrong.

Much the same way Tuo had been. Was it any wonder the priest and the peregrine ended up at cheerful odds?

Ver clears his throat and gives a little shake of his head, smiling sheepishly to cover for his woolgathering. "I think she'd tell me I have to take up where she left off," he adds, finishing the thought. "Though I don't hold a candle to her and I'd rather listen to your stories anyway. So maybe I don't send word back to her about this."

A joke, that.