49.2 Over Time

General Summary

Day 1058

We have all been gone for a day, and people have been emerging from the tree steadily for the entire time. Magdalena is still not back, and I can’t imagine what her sister is making her experience. After a bit of rest for all of us, we sit down around our dinner table with finger food, somewhat in shock, with Starfield tending to all of us. She goes to Mistress first:  

I wasn’t sure, because when I first saw you, you didn’t feel quite like you did then. But now I feel that little trace of magic that took care of me. Thank you for keeping me safe.

  Mistress crumples, thinking about Starfury’s lost egg, but Starfield reassures her.  

You took care of father too, and anything not done was not for want of trying. If not for you, it might have been much worse.

  After this revelation (of course Starfield remembers the Drifting Seed who raised her egg), we take it in turns to share our stories, starting with Mistress, who only knew Starfire right at the end. In making her eggs, she spent the last few centuries of her energy ensuring that her children’s magic wouldn’t consume them like hers did. And she didn’t regret anything aside from not being there to see them hatch.  

She told me stories about No Moon and Eclipse, and that even without her, her children would find themselves loved. She also told me that her whole life, she’d found herself receiving help from our family in her greatest moments of need. Heiassa, she mentioned you, and that she carried the hope that you gave her for all those years. She wanted to meet the daughter that you knew. She said she never lost that hope, even when things seemed at their most broken. Lyssa - she said she wishes she got more time with you and that she’d had the chance to see what it was like to have a proper bond with a rider. She asked me to be selfish and that when you’re ready to use the gift she left you, that you help watch over her little one. I told her that we consider Starfield family already. Ying Ling, she asked me to take care of you when I got back. She said that when she met you, you seemed to be hurting more than anyone she’d ever seen. The hope you gave her was different than what Heiassa did, but she knew that a part of her would live on.

  No Moon reminded me of Heiassa. I wondered at how much the No Moon I knew resembled the Heiassa that fought the Collective after Doraal and I fell. He threw himself out there again and again - he would have done anything to bring Starfury home. He never gave up. I don’t know what happened after I left; I just knew I had to keep him from falling until Starfield hatched. Was it like that for anyone else? That door came for me, just as I started to hear the egg cracking. I wanted to stay, and I needed to come home. It was hard, and the door told me it would only get harder. Starfield - I was worried that he was so raw still that you might need help and at the same time, it had been so long and I couldn’t stay away any longer.

    Ying Ling goes next.  

When I got to meet Starfire, there was someone else….someone clever, knowledgeable.

  I smile at this. Oblivion seems to have escaped her.  

We were on an island with a vast library and one of the most amazing magical research facilities I had ever seen. There were samples of gems and arcane alloys and plant life. Even a small zoo with creatures from all over the world. We were trying to find a cure for Starfire’s problem by siphoning off some of her energy. That legacy is the result of making the most out of a failure - when we finally did find a way to extract the power, we realized that we hadn’t succeeded and the damage was already done. It was too late to cure her, and she wanted to spend her last centuries with her husband instead of continuing the research. We thought we might be able to take what we had extracted and give it back to prolong her time, but she refused. She said that research would consume too many precious years on false hope, and she wanted the real hope of something that would last. We spent that last year turning the energy into something that could be absorbed by someone else.

  It hasn’t occurred to me until now that the draconic tradition of passing legacies is…something that was invented. By Starfire, and not some earlier being.  

It wasn’t perfect when I left, but that other person…she said she would keep working on it. I remember thinking that as soon as I got back I would say we need to go visit that person and see if she came up with a solution…but I can’t remember her now.

  I laugh at this. It’s okay, she’s Void’s sister and I can find her. Lyssa gapes at me too, because she is pretty sure she travelled with Void’s sister but she can’t remember her very well either.  

I remember that island - it’s where I appeared too. Void was there, and he thought I was Heiassa at first. He said his auntie must have sent me because I was Love, and that is what he needed. Things had gotten messy between No Moon and Starfire, and he couldn’t take sides so he had gone home. It was his sister…I think…she had magic that connected to places all over the world. I remember her teasing Void about not practicing magic enough. She helped us chase down our wayward dragons; it’s very hard to catch up to a dragon who is running away from you. The hard part was No Moon; he was convinced that anything he did would be getting in the way of Starfire’s chosen partner. He said he’d thought about it a lot, and I told him he thought too much. The heart wants what it wants. I told him about how intimidating Mistress was when I wanted so desperately to be with Heiassa, and who was I to come between that? There were times I wanted to smack him and I was so tiny! I was a duellist, fighting duels with stubborn people and cheating wherever I had too. Do you know how much a dragon has to drink before he’ll agree to play strip poker with his crush? When I finally got them back together again and the door showed up, I was worried that they would fall apart again if I left. I thought if I stayed longer, I could make sure they got to Starfield.

  But I went from Love to Joy, and we travelled. I traded in my toothpick sword for a diminutive giant axe and we left the continent! We crossed the sea and they sealed their dragon forms so we could spend a while adventuring together. I wish I had gotten a chance to be a wizard there - magic ran over the land and rivers. Things there were terrifyingly powerful and I felt like I would get squished sometimes. We met dozens of small tribes and saw cities of different people. We spent time helping folks. When the door came again, I knew I needed to come home and let nature take its course for the rest. I didn’t think it would take so long for the door to come again…if I had known, I might not have stayed. It told me that if I stayed again, it would be for decades or centuries and I knew I couldn’t do that. The last few years, I regretted having stayed because I missed everyone so much. I’m glad to have had them though, even if it kept me away from everyone for longer.

  She has so many stories to parcel out over years of campfire and dinner conversation. Starfield isn’t going to be able to leave until all the stories are finished.   When it is my time, I tell them that I was only there for a few months. It felt like I was hiding their futures from them. And they had never met a Drifting Seed before me - they didn’t know that I would just disappear one day. It seems that I set the stage for the rest of the family to be able to drift in and out of their lives, but Starfield observes that it must have been harder for me to go first, especially because I know their futures the closest in our present time.   Looking back, I imagine that at any pivotal moment in their lives, there was a fae who appeared to help and who knew me. Lyssa speaks up again -  

No Moon asked me if I knew the place where darkness was safe, and if the people there were ready for him yet.

  I’m sobbing again, telling them of how I told No Moon about the Empire on the night before I left. We all agree: the doors always appeared at the most painful moment possible.   And then Magdalena appears in a flutter of wings. She looks calm, and takes her place at the table amidst all our teary, emotional faces. No one else was greeted by Asphodeloideae after their journey - just Magdalena and I.   I must have finished first, because Magdalena said her sister commented on me refusing to talk to her. Magdalena told her that she shouldn’t have even tried, and that I’d come find her when I’m ready.   Just as I had thought, Magdalena got a particularly difficult assignment. She had been sent to the Grotto to look after herself. She realized how different she has become, and managed to give her past self some advice, but she didn’t get to come home until she’d gotten her past self to promise to go find an apprentice.  

  In hindsight, the worst of it is that I couldn’t remember the time I had spent with myself! You would think that there would be a moment where I understood it all and remembered but no - she didn’t let me remember anything.   She told me afterwards that Drifting Seeds have always been like this. They have always drifted through time and move forward, backward, to disconnected places. And she destroyed her own tree in the Pruning by sending it forwards in time - it created a long period where no Drifting Seeds could emerge at all.

  The image I had previously (increasingly skeptically) held of a gentle, healing Treeborn evaporates. This is not a kind life she has patterned for her children. Travelling through time, appearing only when conflict demands help, and ending each cycle with a very hard choice? I was right to think that Temira’s fae are certainly not the most familiar with pain.   She says she smacked Asphodeloideae on behalf of all of us, for how difficult it must be to have had those doors appear when they did.   The tension of the reunion is now fading, and all of us are ready to rest deeply and fully for the night. In the next few days I will write to Void, and pay a visit to the group of ‘luminous stone serpents’ who have come looking for me, according to Magdalena. It seems that Liva and Norcrack worked things out in the end.   Before I sleep, I pen my letter and take a look at No Moon’s legacy for the first time in a long while. The pages are still mysterious and unreadable, save for a note right at the beginning that fills me with warmth and the familiar sheltered sense of being underwing.  

Please take care of the place where darkness and shadows are safe.