46.1 New Things

General Summary

Day 1015

When we return to the origin tree, the smell of my mother’s cooking is wafting out from the open-air treehouse. Lyssa is perched in the branches above, lost in thought and clearly waiting for me. Sure enough, she brings me up to the clifftop beneath the illusion of origin tree where we can see the sun setting.  

What was it like finding out that your teacher was fae?

  It’s a question sort of out of left field. It was jarring, especially because I was just learning about Treeborn when Magdalena revealed herself. But Magdalena’s elf persona was still her, even if it was a crafted personality. Knowing her now, it’s consistent…it’s not like it was a lie. But by the time she told me, fae already felt something like kindred spirits.   This is coming up because Lyssa has been talking to the spirits in the village and some of them noticed her magic - she has a spirit core. One of her ancestors must have been a spirit…maybe her father or someone on his side of the family.  

No part of my relationship was untrue…but there might have been a piece that he just never shared. Maybe if he had been alive when my magic showed up, he would have been able to help me with it. And now, I feel like I’m facing a decision - an artificial decision. I have a good handle on my magic and I keep growing in it. I’m stronger now than I’ve ever been. I could keep going as I have been…or I could seek out spirits and learn from them. I wish I’d heard about this from some of the village spirits before Liliales and Qishali left - I would have talked to her a lot more! She felt familiar in a way that immediately felt like family, but I attributed that to Liliales just having good taste. But now…do I explore it? Ignore it? Just keep going and discover my own path? Spirits seem so strange to me - Qishali said she was born from a lightning strike and never had parents. If my spirit ancestor was like that, there’s no family to seek out, no other connection.

  At this, I tweak her ear. Family isn’t just ancestry, and she should know that. But still, I’m surprised that it’s not a clear-cut choice for her. I ask why she wouldn’t explore - what is she afraid of discovering? She tells me that watching me explore fae magic and fitting it all together just makes sense - it has all worked out and I still feel like me. I’ve become more of myself, not something else. My journey with fae has been about unlocking the best parts of myself.  

Part of me wants that for myself, but I also worry that it might take me further from you. I just want to be by yourself for a while. And it’s not like we have Alder to build us a gate…

  I knock on her head a little bit, laughing. It doesn’t have to happen now, but in 50 years maybe there will be spirits up North to learn from. Maybe in ten years I can come back down with her to learn. Maybe in less than two years, Alder will be back and he can build us a gate! Eventually she laughs as well and things feel better - such an insurmountable choice building up in her mind is really not such a problem after all. She really is remarkably good at problem-solving with everything but her own turmoil.   With the momentous problem fading into laughter and affection, she tells me that some of the spirits here have suggested that she might be descended from a particular spirit - an Iridescent Storm Owl. Perhaps someone in the family will finally end up with feathered wings.   Further updates filter through my letter box as I work through the backlog of letters. Most have been handled by my family.

• Tira is close to the dragon clans but haven’t arrived yet. They’re further East than any elvish scout has ever been, and Haze is helping them navigate properly, though she mentions getting lost in swamps.
• Nothing with Wildfire involving a dragon elder has progressed, though Trillium and Rainbow have strengthened his spirit and she has been able to share a dream with him. He seems stronger.
• Hella has reported that demons have been pulling back - whatever Void is doing has probably worked.
• Camellia has escaped captivity and connected with the many reinforcements I sent. They are all slowly dismantling the trafficking they discovered, carefully tracing things to its roots.
• Dal has gotten the elves to the orchard and he says they have all gone to sleep, but several are sprouting wings after eating fruit from their trees. The trees like Dal and have shared dreams, but he can’t connect to any of them. He has appointed himself the guardian of the trees while all the others sleep.

  Days 1016 - 1026 I spend a week recovering from my long rest, most of which I spend with my mother and Mistress. I get time with mom to tell her about Wayward and the little orange tree I planted there.   And I get a lovely date with Mistress, flying over the River.   I tell her about getting memories of Day and Night - like seeing myself in a series of angled mirrors so that I could recognize myself easily even though they’re not quite my memories. After a few days, they integrated so well that it really does feel like a life I led.   Now Mistress has wings too, and she recalls sitting beneath Plum with another elf, listening to them sing. When the song finished, they could talk, and she could ask them to show her more of a particular thing. She met three elves and learned about the city now called Deldrin - she wanted to know what it was like when there were Osyr and people like the Empress were more abundant. She got to see the elves who once lived in the Weaver’s Village but they seemed hollow even though they had what they needed to survive - they were looking for something even though they didn’t know it.   Uncle Red told her it might not be like that for everyone. Perhaps it was deeper for her because she’s a spirit caller and it was like talking to ancestors she didn’t know she had. From one of the elves, she tells me she learned some sleight of hand and I’m both amazed and apprehensive at the thought of her becoming even more dextrous and mischievous.   She’s the first child of the orchard, the first winged elf. And this is the right term, I think. The elves who bond with trees of the orchard are not Fae of Leaf and Vine, not the originals or the ones Magdalena recreated. They will be the legacy of the unbound elves who created a future where we could reconnect to ourselves rather than an Empress, a dragon, or a fae tree. Thalien and I are fae, but Mistress and all the other elves who bond to the orchard will not be.   Before we depart, I enlist Magdalena’s help to show me how to awaken the spirituality of one of the dusk trees in the boundary forest that calls to me. It is a fairly young tree - 15 metres tall with sprawling roots that crawl out over the ground and has hosted many nests and dens. It doesn’t take much energy to wake it up…maybe it was almost at that point all by itself. As the branches rustle and shake off the creakiness of growing in one shape, it bends as though to try and hug me. It takes a few days for it to learn how to move properly and adjust its size, but when we board our ship, it is riding on my shoulder happily.   Day 1027 It feels strange to leave the Origin Tree village. It feels like I have only been here for a week, but the others have been here for many months…and I have a home here now. With Liliales’ cohort no longer aboard the boat, there is more room and things are a little quieter. Magdalena and Qing Chen are pulling back a little, clearly mentally preparing to depart for demon territory after we reach the stump.   She’s not sure how long she’ll spend in demon territory with Qing Chen, so she draws forth a few books from her library for me to study while she’s gone. They are journals and legends of the philosophy of Day and Night from early members of the cycle, with skills that have been lost to time. There is plenty here for me to learn about my people.   And she tells me that I’m close to being magically able to handle No Moon’s legacy. She and the Heart spoke about it and are confident that not even No Moon could dislodge my legacies or destroy them accidentally. When I took my first steps along the fae legacy, Magdalena warned me that I was on my way to a lifespan as long as hers. After being in Harmony, I have arrived. I may not be Treeborn myself, but in both lifespan and sheer power, I’m among them now.