45.3 Wake Up

General Summary

Day 1014

I wake slowly, even more disoriented than when I was waking from the tree of day and night. Parts of ‘waking’ feels like being at home, safe and welcome in my villa in the Capital, but others feel like waking beneath my grove tree and still others feel completely foreign, like the first time I woke up in a Carthian jungle. I haven’t had the sensation of ‘sleeping’ and ‘waking’ in…an incredible amount of time. Opening my eyes out of the darkness feels strange in itself.   Above me are layers of draped fabric - clearly a fae-style tent over dusk wood. But the surroundings are just a detail that fades into the background as Mistress comes into focus. I’m hardly sitting up before I’m enfolded in an embrace.   When I pull back, the first thing I see are her wings stretching up from her shoulder blades: Rich plum edges fading to pale rosey-purple interior. Plum must be so happy - the suit her beautifully. When I shake out my own wings (a little stiff from disuse, just like the rest of my limbs), my own colours yank my attention back to my own body.   My wings used to be long, swallowtail wings with inky black veins like a butterfly’s. Now…now the veins are a deep iridescent green-purple, like the purple light of sunset has fallen over a particularly glossy leaf. And they grow outwards from my shoulder blades like the veins in a leaf…I suppose I’m part leaf-and-vine now, though the rest of my wings are still distinctly dusk-hued.  

We’ve been watching them change while you’ve been asleep. We knew you’d be waking soon because the changes had stopped.

  Mistress helps me out of my bed and shows me the view from the little bedroom where I’ve been lying in state - we are high in the canopy of the origin tree, overlooking the spirit village. Bran built it, apparently, without any fixtures to the tree itself. It rests gently but securely on the branches. It’s a sprawling home, with space for everyone who has assembled here. She excuses herself for a moment to fetch food (I swallow my protests - it is completely sensible that she would be bringing me food instead of the other way around).   From the little dancing flames in my heart vision, I can see Lyssa nearby, but Bran is up North towards the coast and Liliales is due West, further down the River than even the Red Thorn Grove. And Trillium - Trillium is far to the East, near to Alder. She must have crossed the Barrier to help Wildfire…and I’m glad she did. I didn’t want everyone pinned down waiting for me to recover when there is so much else that needs doing.   When Mistress returns, it is with distinctly Imperial tea (Onyx must have returned) and comes along with scones. Not just any scones - my mother’s scones. Apparently when Onyx went to collect things from my villa, mother marched out and insisted that she would be going with him. I have to laugh at the thought of my mother bullying a dragon into carrying her across the Barrier; I think that if she is willing to settle down in a place I pick out for her, she and Wayla would get along famously.   While I busy myself with wolfing down scones, Mistress tells me some of the goings-on:  

• There has been more back-and-forth with the Empire. Rainbow has taken Trillium across the Barrier to help Wildfire, as I’d hoped. Evidently she was persuaded to go by Mistress pointing out that I have plenty of family around me, but Trillium is all Wildfire has.
• Magdalena returned to the Empire and has come back - evidently she had things to discuss with Kaide.
• Uncle Red is also here, of course.
• Liliales has already been to the Red Thorn grove and got ‘swept up’ in a journey to the coast to find Temira. He’s ended up in the coastal city of Journey’s End, competing for another spiritual treasure with Aestien tagging along to watch his back.
• It seems that Uncle Red has always known where Temira was. After she was betrayed by some of her most powerful children, she asked Uncle Red to hide her somewhere safe. She has been in the Empire, posing as several generations of elves, most recently as an author who has written both excellent fiction and…what can only be described as ‘fan fiction’ of notable Imperial higher-ups, including Mistress and me. She is also a capable warrior, bringing wrath into her fights with the Collective.
• Bran has gone to wait for me in the trolls’ forest and has said that he is ‘preparing the way’ for me. This makes my heart happy…soon enough I’ll finally get to see that forest and set to repairing the wound I have been most worried about.
• Void has apparently gone to ‘stir the pot’ with the demons, and it has reduced the pressure on Hella.

With the essentials out of the way, I emerge from my room to greet the others. Lyssa first - clinging to me and full of both laughter and tears. Where feeling the warmth of Mistress’ arms felt like a familiar, ancient ecstasy, Lyssa is the enervating thrill of someone I haven’t gotten used to missing. Having them both here is overwhelming…I can hardly remember the last time we were all together and it was peaceful…or at least not actively war-time.   Now that I feel the two of them beside me, I have the peace of mind to turn my attention to my own magical structure. My reservoir of power feels deeper, and I’m leaking some of that energy out. The origin tree seems pleased with it, but I can tell that if there were any lesser seeds or sprouts nearby, they would be thriving with the outpouring of my leaf and vine energy. This leakage, I think, can wait for later before I figure out how to contain it.   Finally, we come to a long dining hall and everyone is waiting for me. I hadn’t noticed the return of my connection with Ausha until I see her because it was the being-apart that was strange, not the reunion. And Magdalena and Qing Chen, both wearing high-collared robes with fae runes inscribed on them - clearly we have an identity as a family now.   Uncle Red, watching quietly and roguishly. Onyx happily putting away scone after scone. Starfield watching with quiet amusement as he and Skyen eye some of Lyssa’s more meat-based appetizers.   And my mother, bustling about with all of the no-nonsense hearth witch attitude I grew up with (for the first half-century, at least). It’s charming watching her boss around Onyx and Skyen to get off their butts and help her carry in the trays of food. She is full of news from home - all the minor things that never make it into letters but that make me beam to hear regardless.   Over an enormous breakfast, I am regaled with the story of the rescue and how they couldn’t free the Heart but they did damage the binding and wake her properly. The same magic that had been feeding on her has now been turned on Ankhetla as well and will probably kill the Guardian Wizard unless someone goes back to save her in the next century or so. None among us have decided if that is something we’ll do.   It is as good a welcome into the waking world as I could have hoped for.