2.3 A Sword or a Staff

General Summary

Day 9

  I awaken from a better sleep than I can remember since coming here. The feeling of warm darkness clings to me. Hella is already awake and tending to the fire while Bran sleeps, but Rosalia is missing. I assume she must have gone hunting for us.   Hella and I talk softly about her family and her childhood. She likes camping, she says, and she asks if we are going to be a new family now that she’s left her old one. There are many ways of having a family, and no rules against having multiple. A good family won’t keep you if you want to leave.   When Rosalia returns we discuss our next move. Bran has had dreams of being trapped in narrow places - of running down a road only to dash straight into the mouth of a beast. He says this means that following a clear path may lead us towards danger, and he wants us to travel up into the Sleeping Giants to avoid the roads. There are hill folk who live there...mostly humans but some goblins and “half-breeds”. They’re usually unfriendly but Bran and Thalien got through once...they seemed to like Thalien better because he’s also an outsider.   Rosalia doesn’t like this plan and proposes that instead we follow the stream through rocky, difficult terrain. It will be hard travelling but we probably won’t run into any other people. I’m so very torn on which path to take, but in the end it comes down to speed. I think we’ll be safer in Ipth than we are on the road and so we take the stream, which is slightly faster.   While we discuss this, Hella asks why we can’t go back across the mountains. It’s charming to hear it asked so simply! Bran and I explain about the fog and the magic that turns people around, and Bran tells us that Thalien said crossing the mountains was the hardest thing he’s done. That it was expensive magic. Expensive in many ways, I imagine. Whatever it took to cross safely was one price, to be sure, but knowing that you’d never get to return...that you’d probably never see your people and companions ever again...for once I think I might be lucky to not remember that choice. To dwell on it might drive one mad.   This is as good a time as any to tell Hella about the cost of magic...of any power, really. Thalien once taught Bran that the price of spinning fate is that sometimes you will have to see threads of fate that are terrible but unchangeable. Rosalia tells us about the price of choosing the mercenary life, with no permanent home and family. I speak about the energy that I offer when I use my magic...that I don’t always get back.   Along the journey I gather food and prepare meals for it and it brings back memories of Dal and his familiarity with plant life and providing for my former party.    

I’m in a dense, hot, sticky jungle. It’s just me and Dal and we’ve been hacking our way through dense, hot, stickiness for quite a while. We’re both so tired and somehow when we hit the end of the night, he wanders around for a few minutes and comes back with an armload of food: Uprooted flowers, dug-up tubers and roots, a handful of brightly coloured spiny fruits. Out of this armload he produces an actual, plated meal. He gathers herbs and makes sauces and delicious flavours. “Are you sure you’re happier with me and not at home in your restaurant? Are you sure this is the life you really wanted?”   “I did that because it was expected. My father and his father and his father did it. Not because I loved it but because it was the way. You know my talents are elsewhere. But some habits die hard,”

    A chef! Dal was a chef! And...it was me who took him away from his previous life. Once again, I see someone who had a choice and made one that I hope they don’t regret.   And the three of us teach Hella all of our powers, of course. I teach Hella to make marbles from sand. She picks it up so much faster than I did when I was learning Bran tells me the same thing about her fate-spinning When Rosalia teaches her to swordfight, we see her magic fire flow down the sword   I know one other person who fights like Hella does.  

I’m on the field of battle. This time I’m not with Thalien or Dal or Lyssa. I’m with my Mistress, and her sword is wreathed in her own magic as the two of us fight against the horde. It’s not the same as before - they’re different snarling beasts. The two of us were there by coincidence, not because we came prepared for battle. We were travelling together and someone had come into the village where we were staying and warned of this locust-like plague (6’ insect-like creatures). My Mistress is laughing, lost in the exhilaration of doing what she does best. I’m laughing with her. This is not frightening, even though it’s a fight. It’s the two of us doing what we’re best at - together. And helping people. I can feel her magic next to mine and a bond between the two of us.

  Bran imagines that her fate leads towards a sword and carnage...not a staff and not a quiet life in a city. It is up to us to make sure that she is on the right end of the carnage, and that she still has a choice when we get there.   In the meantime, I tell her to focus on being present and not getting lost in her magic . She needs to learn to multitask, which doesn’t come naturally to her.   We leave her practicing with Rosalia and Bran tells me it seems like I’ve done this before. I have, though I don’t remember it. I wonder if my students are safe.