25.4 A Long Sleep

General Summary

Day 410

I do indeed manage to wake up early enough to enjoy the sunrise. Kaidé is waiting with a fresh pot of tea as I crawl out of my bedroll. Alec has produced some eggs for breakfast and it is a rare and delicious treat.   When it comes time to break camp Kaidé vanishes and Alec looks confused but reserves his comments as we hurl ourselves off the cliff and let the wind carry us North. Conversation as we fly is light and effortless as we talk about music, nature, and scenery. Eventually he tells me about his children and his unusual family: He and Rit, his husband, and his sister and her wife. The four of them fit together in a closed arrangement and they have twins together, born to him and his sister's wife. Certainly unusual by fae standards but by elvish ones it makes sense.   In return I tell him about Liliales and the clear-as-stars memories we have of each other. He is amazed at the stark songs and memories that my people recall compared to the hazy songs of the Seasons. For a while I ramble about the lyrics to songs I remember (and the pain of missing a verse when no one else could possible fill it in for me), the instrument that I had someone make for me, and that blasted game of Shent that has changed in the centuries past. It is in the midst of this that we are attacked by three malformed dragonlike creatures spinning out of the sky above us. In an instant, Kaidé is amongst us with her sword swinging upwards at them, deflecting their fiery breath with water.   They are small and strangely shaped with clawed wings, snakelike scales and backswept horns. They are easily dispatched but represent a larger concern that Kaidé voices as we gather on the ground. They're from the mountains and they seem underfed and malnourished, much like the carrion birds. The rings in a cross-section of their horns place them at about 50 years old but in Kaidé's memory a creature that old should be four times their size. Alec doesn't remember any stories or songs of anything larger than this.   In Kaidé's time these wyrmlings were raised by Northern Mountain dwarves, members of the Nation of Hammer and Axe. The eggs would be cared for deep in mountain mines and the younglings would be raised for use as mounts. Their breath should turn sand to glass and they should be strong enough to carry a fully armoured dwarf (as if there was any other kind). These ones, weak and rambunctious, must be feral. Or...wild now, since it must have been centuries since they were domesticated. All of this information travels through my hands to parchment and into my letterbox without a second thought. Lyssa and Tira will both be interested to hear this.   We make our camp on the spot so that Kaidé can regale us further with stories of this time in her life, reassuring Alec that this is just history, not secrets. As she whittles away at a lopped off horn, she tells us of her time with the dwarves. At first I try to illustrate with illusions but after a while I take my hands off the runes, so to speak, and the images she places in my head take on a life of their own above our fire.   She secured an apprenticeship for herself at a jeweller's Hall during a time with Magdalena was off dealing with sibling problems. Thorun was king of the Nation of Hammer and Axe at the time and his daughter was a journeyman in the Hall. She was stuck at her journeyman's test for ages and ages and Thorun had told her that she would have to return home to marry and be a princess if she couldn't achieve mastery in her own right. The two women spent time together helping each other learn and grow as friends.   Thorun had been stridently arguing with other members of the Covenant about something. He came crashing into the workshop one day and told his daughter "Yulé, your wedding is tomorrow!". Of course, she was having none of this. Turns out some visiting prince had expressed an interest and Thorun, fool that he is, said that no one could be worthy of claiming his daughter if they couldn't best him. Thorun is strong, stout, capable, and a brilliant commander who deserved to be king. But this prince, an elf, did not believe in fair fights and brought plenty of magic. He soundly trounced a king who had never even learned to use his own magical gifts.   The elf prince came striding in behind Thorun with a smug smile on his face. Kaidé protested, "You can't take her away from me. If you want to, you have to beat me." The panicked look on the prince's face...but he did actually stand to face Kaidé and she put his head in a sphere of water until he passed out. Thorun was embarrassed, especially when Kaidé told him that she'd do the same to him if he didn't let Yulé choose her own partner. He said that he'd only leave her alone if she'd be regent for him for a decade while he went travelling. Evidently he spent some time amongst elves learning to do something with that magic of his. By the time he got back nobody wanted him to be king anymore, even though Yulé complained. She felt that governance got in her way and dealt with things swiftly and effectively so that she could get back to crafting. Eventually she did earn her mastery - she and Kaidé made a crown befitting of her stature. It had an aura of honesty for 100m so no one could lie to her. She wanted to make a sceptre as well but then Magdalena showed up and took Kaidé away.   Yulé was queen for at least a hundred years. But the real problem was that the elven prince followed Kaidé around for a few hundred years, smitten.   This crown is the Ventarri gift. It was Kaidé's idea. She felt like Yulé would fail to rule effectively if others took advantage of her blunt honesty, and so she made a tool to make others as honest as her, wanting to make the throne as comfortable for her friend as possible. I show her a brief sketch of potential runes that would have powered a crown like that, copied from Afan. From my skeletal magical working she fills in the places where gemstone magic would refract and power the body of the spell. In Afan, and if I were to structure this same thing myself, there would be blood magic filling the same gaps. Clearly she does not have memories of binding the dwarves...I think it will make it a fun project for the two of us to dismantle that work or reshape it in some way.   By the time her story is finished she has carved the horn into a tiny wyrmling and I help her finish it with some transformative magic. It's a gift for Alec - a cloak pin that will ward off flames. It should protect him better if we run into more wyrmlings. And then she retires for the evening and leaves me to finish butchering the remaining beasts. Finally, Alec asks who she is.  

She's someone from a long time ago who has been sleeping for equally as long.

  He nods and begins telling me stories of fae legends that I haven't heard before! They have songs about an ancient brother and sister who took turns sleeping for centuries and protecting the Grove. When one woke, all the trees would bloom to welcome them and call the other back to sleep after sharing a single day together. Legend says they were grandchildren of the Heart of Song and that there were fae like that guarding every grove. Some say they're still there in the thicket, unable to join the other fae. Others say they must have died by now and left the tangle of branches behind to protect the Heart in their stead.   In exchange I tell him about the ancient city of elves that once flourished alongside the Northern Grove. The fae had other people to guard them while they rested! We lived together for centuries like that until it changed. Why, exactly, it changed is still somewhat hard for me to understand but I do my best.   I paint Alder in an illusion, giving him the cloak and then transforming it into his bright Spring wings. I describe the magic that Magdalena taught me (alluding to it only as a legend) that let a fae bond with an elf and live together for the elf's entire life. Whatever happened to their song at the end of their life....I don't know. But I can see Alec's concern that it would rob so many generations of fae of experiencing that song. He is unconvinced that what he and I have already shared of our own songs could possible mean the same thing as hearing it from a tree. It's how the rest of us get by, but I understand that it's different for him. With only the feelings and gentle memories the fae of Seasons receive, it must feel very different from the clear and sharp memories in my mind that I can describe to another as easily as my own.   He is the first fae aside from Camellia to have heard of this magic. And I share more deep into the night - stories of my life as an ancient fae and the elves I knew and loved. The ones I disliked and kept seeing again and again. The friends who chose to be bonded and those that didn't. By the time our eyelids are drooping even I am ready for sleep.