14.1 Your Own Path

General Summary

Day 159

Morning finds Camellia sleeping peacefully and I’m glad for her. Instead, it is Alder perched by the fire waiting for me to wake. Together, we walk out into the early morning light and he shows me to a beautiful spot - a rock outcropping overlooking a beautiful view. But underneath it is a pool of deep, cool shadows and it’s there that we settle down.   “The world is too big,” he tells me, a little sadly. I have to agree, and I’m sure my world has always felt larger than his. Even I’m struggling to adjust to everything we learned yesterday. He tells me about how Hella has been rambling about the town Harvest Festival and how exciting it is. Just for a moment, he says, he wants a world that feels as small as the light around our campfire at night.   He’s been thinking about Bran and Vaneilli and what it means to be understood by someone. What would it be like to live with someone who gets it. To tend to a farm together, decide who goes to war and who stays home.   It’s the sort of morning where thoughts of misty futures and potential seem to nearly manifest in the air before us. As Alder says - it feels like the barriers between futures are thin at this time of year, and we sit in silence as we imagine things that may or may not come to pass.   When we return to camp, we pack up and move out towards our next destination - Whitewater. As we ride, Bran’s eyes are glowing and he’s carving away at a piece of wood. When Camellia notices a wagon in the distance, he waves off my caution with a brief “It’s fine,” but I cast my ward regardless.   The figure tending to the cart strikes me as unusual - four fingers and grey-green skin beneath well-made but distinctly non-human clothing. I’m about to pull to the side and ask for directions (anything to make conversation) when Hella leaps from her horse and barrels into the figure yelling “Rabiya!”   The person (Rabiya, I assume) greets her happily and recognizes Bran as well. He is a trader, apparently, and the only one who makes the trek out to all of the remote villages at this time of year. We agree to travel together to Whitewater and I hear more of his journeys and trade. When I tell him that we are heading North he offers me a map and journal to take notes. The map is pretty good, considering how uncharted the area is. Many of the places Magdalena told me about are circled with ‘danger’ written on them.   Rabiya tells me of this trades with what humans consider to be ‘lesser races’:

• Goblins - community-based creatures who build settlements and domesticate animals. I’m reminded of the goblin settlement that Hella and I narrowly avoided.
• Hoblins - boar-like nomadic warriors who hunt for survival.
• ‘Muck-dwellers ’ - amphibious creatures who live in the mud of swamps. They weave grass and cultivate massive shellfish.
• Hillfolk - who call themselves ‘Children of the Snow ’. Enormous hunters who live in large communities high in the mountains. He tells me that they sing to the mountains and craft things from all parts of the animal, weaving in charms and magic.
• Atir - Cryptic and tricky to trade with. They believe in prophecies and hand down stories of orders passed down through generations. They seek meaning in dreaming and young Atir go wandering to seek out a dream or quest that gives them meaning. He tells me that it is impossible to reason with the young wanderers and that I should only ever try to speak with the white-bearded males who live in their villages (and never the women). They value books above all else.
• Dragons...and things like dragons - once Rabiya was trapped by an avalanche and The Kindred saved him.

  At my request, he teaches me a few words in each of these languages. Just simple ones - “I mean no harm,” “I’m a friend,” “I don’t speak your language but let’s find a way to communicate,”   I ask him (quite bluntly) what race he is and he shrugs. He was found as an infant in the mountains and has never seen anyone like himself, nor met anyone who knows his people. I can connect the dots here - a wandering trader who interacts with all the races looked down upon by humans. He is seeking who he is.   Slowly the pieces seem to come together for me: His leathery skin and tusks, finlike ears...not dissimilar from beings I’ve seen in the Collective. He himself mentions that he may have come from the other side of the Barrier, considering how deep in the mountains he was found. He’s been here for forty years but he doesn’t feel like a forty year-old human seems to feel...even his lifespan doesn’t fit in amongst his adopted people.   Later in the evening I offer him whatever knowledge I can find for him using the pearl. It’s an intimate offer, considering that I don’t control what I see using its magic. Still, he accepts and says he will be thankful for any information I can give him.   I take his hands as dusk is settling around us, feeling the leather texture of his palms and the strange space where I would expect another finger. Together we look into what the pearl offers us:   A Carthian carrying a small bundle appears. Her markings are clear and visible, but there are signs of abuse all over her slender body. Marks of chains and shackles marr her limbs and neck. I can see that she is deep in Collective territory, perhaps a captured spy or civilian. The bundle she carries is Rabiya, very clearly.   She spends days lost in the mist, tending to infant Rabiya and being repeatedly thrown back from the Barrier and into the Collective lands once again.   Finally she slips and tumbles down a cliff face, losing the bundle as she falls. And then the vision goes dark and we are left hands clasped, deep in thought. I wonder if this Carthian woman stole a child from the Collective...I don’t remember giving such an order, and I have to assume none would do something like that without my command.   Rabiya asks after her race and I tell him everything I know of the Carthians - friends and allies in the Empire, full people in their own right with their deep relationship to the moons, rhythm, and song. I tell him about Riqiqiqik and her dancing, and how much love I have for the Carthian people.   He is quiet for a time, and says that he is grateful for the information. He is hesitant to draw conclusions, to think of this mysterious Carthian woman as a mother, caregiver, thief, or any other relationship...but it is more information than he’s ever had and he is thankful.   I tell him also of the Collective, as neutrally as I can. They may be enemies but he is not, so I try to speak calmly of their strength and the shared perspective and unity of their people in contrast to the Empire’s point of view. And I point out that I had once mused with an apprentice that those born to the Collective never have the opportunity to choose their own path, but he seems to have built a life with nothing but his own choices and paths.   It is not until we are preparing to bed down that I see another missing piece of his heritage - when he disrobes I see the intricate, iridescent Carthian markings scrawled across his shoulders. They are the same as the Carthian woman in the vision (his mother, I assume), and so he must be half Carthian and half...Collective. Unlike Cheena, he truly is halved, and not entirely of one parent.   The tribe he’s from is strange by Carthian standards. Most Carthians are connected more to the red moon but this tribe favours the silver. They’re legendary mystics and well-known for their artistry.   Much like the humans revere the Weaver and protect her mystics, some Carthians believe this particular tribe’s unique magic to be especially holy. They’re strict pacifists and healers; even elves go to them to learn.   And what’s more is that their magic is calming and influential. I wonder if this Carthian was part of negotiations of some kind, trying to use her magic to find peace between the Empire and the Collective despite how the Collective responded to their last attempt. That is what they’re known for - soothing pain and fear and encouraging understanding between factions in conflict. That...and persuading nature itself to serve their cause, binding enemies and dousing warring armies with pollen that sends them into slumber.