10.6 Strong, Already

General Summary

Day 104

I wake to find Knotrael and Alder sparring with Raelli, who seems both confused and annoyed, even when Knotrael explains that we expect him to be able to fight and defend himself (and us) as a prisoner who has given his word.   The boy fights like a human. Aggressive, passionate, and all about his strength. Knotrael is strong and skilled enough to rebuff him easily. All of us watch, some more discreetly than others, for a bit before Bran comes to speak with me.   He sees many threads, and some are clearer than others. For the first time he describes to me what my thread looks like: A bright, strong cable that gathers other threads and doesn’t waver. He sees Zadiyah’s thread, and Raelli’s, drawn towards a thick cable running deeper beneath the tapestry with no clear intentions. Raelli’s is being gathered towards mine, and not this mysterious cable. Still, it’s not a deity and he doesn’t know what it is. Something similar to it was present when I was injured, and he sees that it causes things that have been nurtured or tended to become undone.   Thalien once spoke of another powerful weaver working on this side of the Barrier. Perhaps this unknown cable belongs to them, and it is only a matter of time before we meet.   With this sobering conversation, we break camp and ride towards Deldrin. I pull alongside Raelli to speak with him about his family and his life in the Empire.   He, too, is a child of the Frontier, from the town of Falling Leaves. For all he speaks derisively of his parents, I know they must have been incredibly skilled to work as potters in Falling Leaves. He tells me the Collective destroyed all of their precious work in a day. That bitterness fuels his belief that the elvish way of taking the time for beauty and perfection is silly. Everything is brief and temporary, including his own life. Apparently those with the gift expect to burn up their own lives after their crusade is finished.   I’m furious that this thing that they think has chosen them would make them throw away their lives in such a way. To think that to be chosen means to incinerate yourself in the flames of your cause at the behest of your chooser...And these people are already chosen. They were already claimed by the circumstances of their birth by another god who wants them to live, and not die. I wish her touch had reached across the Barrier before me, if it could have counselled these lost people not to let themselves be claimed so easily by pain and anger.   It is the work of a few hours to dance through this conversation about time, beauty, and reasons for fighting. Every so often I think I’m hearing his own thoughts, and not the steady party line of nonsense about purification and cleansing flame.   Eventually, I ask him to share blood with me, so I can feel what he is feeling. I am braced for the pain, which is different from Nidrae’s. It crashes over me in waves, hotter and brighter, pulsing with intensity.   I was not prepared for the shade of the Empress to wrap around me and protect me from the flames, nor for it to extend through our bond and shield Raelli as well.   For the next few hours, the rest of my family joins me in the dance as we ruminate on the nature of choice, and what it means to be able to choose for yourself. We laugh, and we talk about our own sorrows and what carried us through them.   And finally, he does choose to come home. He chooses us for the laughter, the love, and the happiness. And in his first moment of real strength, he asks us to protect him, to keep him warm and safe, and to find him if he is taken from us.   The monster that comes forth from him is not like the ones that resided in Nidrae and the Severed. It is a glowing creature that looks like Raelli, and it speaks to us in a hissing, angry voice.   “You can’t do this to him. I protect him. I make him strong when you left him cold and wet!”   It rambles, furiously. It sounds like a child grasping at a toy being taken away. All of us, I hope, know that Raelli was strong before this thing took him, and he will be strong afterwards When he gives us the signal that he is through with listening to it, we destroy it, and then we rest.