49.1 It Always Is

General Summary

The journey overland

  We’re about 3 months into our journey and we’ve made it out of the mountains, resupplied at the outlying city, and made our way into the hills where we anticipate more danger. This is where I was warned of magic getting a little strange, so I am both eager and curious to see what lies ahead of us. At the end of a hard day of travel, I settle down next to No Moon quite a ways away from the campsite. It’s a remarkable night for No Moon especially - both moons are dark and shadowed, and aligned. He seems pensive and lost in thought, but eventually speaks up.    

It’s hard, sometimes…being a creature of the night.

    He tells me new creatures being born seem to cling to light and fear the darkness. Those who live in it become monsters or bogeymen to scare children. He hopes that one day there might be young ones who find comfort in the stillness of night air and the calm of darkness. Even elsewhere in the world, people seem to use the night as a time for deceit and treachery. He seems…wistful, hopeful, a little resigned.   In my own time, there are still precious few people who stick to the darkness. It seem that No Moon will be waiting a long time for there to be ‘young ones’ like him.  

Is it lonely? You don’t seem to keep a large family.

  No Moon sighs - it’s not the right time for that yet. Everything is still too new and unsettled in the world. When I ask his age, he says ‘2’…which means, of course, two millennia. Back when he was hatched, there were only a few groves and everyone of his generation wandered about. But now there are many young ones who can grow up in the blink of an eye - hundreds becomes thousands in a mere century, and the world is still hungry for life to fill it.   Down here in the South, there are more spirits and folk than there are people anywhere else, and it’s why he keeps coming back here. He thinks it is like a window into the future where we will see how the rest of the wold will turn out.   He is silent for a moment, then asks if I will travel with them after we’ve returned to the city. The three of them are still wandering, still trying to find a place that feels like home, and any place would feel more like home if I were with them.   I shake my head and puzzle over how to explain it. I want to stay - I want to see the world and spend time with them. But I’m not in the right time, and there are things waiting for me that I can’t stand to be apart from. No Moon seems disappointed, but accepts that some things are beyond explanation.   He’ll have his family when he finds the place that people like him belong. But that place doesn’t seem to exist yet, and he is choosing to create the conditions for it to come into being rather than building it himself. He knows that he’s powerful enough to be a god and simply dictate how these young ones behave. But that feels hollow; he has no desire to make people in his own image. I nod at this - both the Ancient dragons and the Treeborn seem to relish the process of creating their children. Very few of them seem to have chosen to abstain and wait for kindred spirits to come out of the chaos of other life.   No Moon is patient, and is hopeful that the right young ones will come into being when the conditions are right. He notices the tears leaking out of my eyes despite my best efforts, and I admit that in my first life, I came from a people who love the darkness. I describe how safe and warm it feels, how it’s a place that shelters. I catch the gleam of happiness as I let my own emotions leak out of me and he feels the delight and belonging that I felt when Dal showed me how to Shadow Step again, when Mistress and I swore our oaths together under the cover of night, when I took my heart name surrounded by my family and the cool relief of shade.  

Will you take me to them?

  My heart breaks for this enormous big brother of mine. If I could take him now, I would. If there were elves alive now who would welcome him and his children with open arms, I would take him in an instant. But their lives won’t overlap, and he will never meet the children of fae, of Darkness, and of the Osyr who miss the depths of water where the sun doesn’t reach.  

They’re not ready for you. They won’t be for a long time.

  I cry silently, leaning on his shoulder. I could tell the truth to Starfire, who knows that she will die before I’m born. I could tell the truth to Void, who I know I’ll meet again. I can’t bring myself to tell the whole truth to No Moon, who will die before I have a chance to be there for him again. He will die after losing Starfire, and after losing one of his eggs to the Zephyr.   More and more now, I think I know that he leaves his legacy for me specifically. And that is a weight I can’t share with him yet.  

When they’re ready, you’ll take me?

  I nod silently, and he lets me cry on his massive shoulder until sleep takes us both.   I wake up under his sheltering dark wing, still feeling fragile from the barely-hidden awareness that the boyish young dragon I’ve come to love is waiting for something that won’t happen until he is gone.   As though he senses my turmoil (which he probably does, given my cycle), No Moon tells me he will rejoin the group and to come back to them when I am ready.   No sooner than he leaves does a small tree sprout behind me, arched over yet another door that calls me home. It’s cruel, I tell the door. Why now? Is it seeking the hardest possible time to have me make this decision?  

If it wasn’t hard to choose, all a Drifting Seed would do is drift from easy moment to easy moment.

  I glare at the gently glowing door, speaking with what I imagine must be Asphodeloideae’s voice.  

The first time, you had days. Now you have had months. If you choose to stay again, it will be for yours.

  In an instant, I can see travelling with Void, No Moon, and Starfire. I can see growing together, learning more magic with Starfire, teasing No Moon for his patience and bonding with Void like siblings should. The visions I imagine are all joy, through and through. And whatever moment the door chooses to appear in next will surely be even harder than this.   Bitterly, I think that Temira’s fae might not be the best acquainted with pain after all. Being steeped in agony for an entire sleep makes one appreciate the beauty of life and kindness, but living with the vulnerability of compassion makes this moment even more painful than what I have experience in my first life.   It is time to leave. But as I cross the threshold, I fling back all of energy I can in the hopes that I will leave something behind when they come looking for me. In this moment, I relive saying goodbye to my mother and father as I set out with Mistress for the first time. I remember the last embrace with her before I settled into my dorm room at the Academy. I remember each wartime march as I kissed Doraal’s forehead and told him to keep our home safe, and every time I sent Lyssa, Dal, or Thalien to do something I couldn’t. For the first time in decades, I recall Trillium shadow-stepping out of the Capital and heading for the foothills of the Barrier mountains, carrying all of our hopes with her.   I’m sorry, I think, I want to stay, but I have to leave.   The compassion and dragon magic surges out of me and I glimpse the beginnings of an enormous tree as my view fades. It will be the size of an eldritch tree by the time they find it - an orange tree so far from home, filled with the bittersweet feeling of saying goodbye and hoping that we’ll meet again.   I drift for a while, too desolate to perceive the passage of time until I find myself at the roots of a Grove tree, before a resplendent silvery-haired fae with green and gold wings, reflective eyes.   Asphodeloideae offers a hug, which I refuse. She says ‘thank you’, which I brush off. Whatever she has to say to me can wait, and she can come find me again if she wants to say it.  

Where is my family?

 

Day 1058

  She gestures me through another gate and I emerge into the chaos of the now-Tree of Drifting Seeds, a stump no longer. The core of it is pure magic, as though someone destroyed the core of the old tree and the magic filled it up and connected it again. Around the tree there are people weeping, dancing, clinging to one another. And some who have clearly transformed into actual Fae of Drifting Seeds with elements of their layered four cycles. There is a spark of joy in me - another cycle restored, before Lyssa barrels into me, weeping.   Lyssa met No Moon and Starfire two centuries after I did, when they were having love problems. She met Void too, and he mistook Lyssa for me at first. They asked if she could bring me back to them. My heart twists - two centuries later and family still.   No Moon had been stubborn about not having children, and Starfire had an egg with Darkness - Eclipse. No Moon’s father, apparently, had said that if all she wanted was a child, he would happily give her one.   Lyssa spent her time patching things up between No Moon and Starfire afterwards. It took her two years as Love, and then she stayed for longer as Joy. She and Starfire became close friends, and Lyssa said she could only leave because Starfire already knew what would happen to the Drifting Seed.   Each of them has a piece of jewelry, with frozen sap and a flower from my tree.  

It must have been hard for you to walk away.   It always is.

  Ying Ling finds me next, walking unsteadily and tearful. She thanks me for making her go. And then she turns to Lyssa, with a book in her hand that feels ice cold, brilliant, and familiar.    

It was hard, but she wanted you to have it. She needed hope that a piece of her would still be with all of you.

    Ying Ling said that by the end of her life, Starfire regretted never being able to share her power with Lyssa the way a dragon would share with their rider. As a wizard, she and Ying Ling worked together to create this legacy that could be passed on after her death to her best friend - Lyssa.   Mistress is next, also unsteady. She met Starfire briefly, right at the end, but the rest of her time was with No Moon. They were fleeing from the Zephyr, and Starfire gave Mistress the eggs to take somewhere safe. I have heard this story before; I know that Starfield was saved, and Starfury was lost. But in this past, Mistress was a healer, not a warrior, and she felt the absolute agony of losing Starfury’s egg after it had been entrusted to her.   She stayed with No Moon and the egg as he fought his one-dragon war against the Zephyr and returned to be patched up. He was furious. And it wasn’t until Starfield hatched and was in desperate need of a father that he stopped and settled down again. Even then, it seemed hard for him. When a door appeared, Mistress couldn’t bear to stay any longer.   And finally, Starfield appears on the horizon. As quickly as I can, I turn to the others and tell them that we are going to tell these stories as gently as possible. It was so hard for me to learn that Liliales had grown up in a different time. I will not make Starfield learn about her parents with the same abrupt horror that I learned about Liliales.   As much as we try, it’s clear that we are in rough shape. Starfield takes on her dragon form and carries us all back to the ship to wash up.