13.2 In My Absence

General Summary

Day 146

In the morning, Tira arrives with breakfast alone. Lately she has been doing an excellent job of having Hella take care of this, and I’m surprised to see her here alone.   I’m not surprised, however, to hear that she has lots of thoughts and wants to discuss them in private. In particular, she has a question: What’s next?   For my core group right now (Hella, Kadia, Alder, Bran, and Camellia), it’s obvious that we’ll be heading to the Grove as soon as possible. It’s a long journey so whatever plans must be laid for the others must be laid now.   Rosalia and Zadiyah will stay here, of course. The Keep is well-managed at the moment but more and more it is growing into a civilian town. They’ll need to have civilian leadership eventually, and I’ll ask Rosalia and Linai to encourage some people towards that role.   For now, Willow, Ishvael, and Lael are staying at Wellspring. I expect that Lael will be an excellent civilian leader when the time comes. I don’t expect us to keep Wellspring, so he’ll rejoin us at the Keep soon enough.   For Tira’s part...she tells me she has been thinking about Lyssa. I have studiously tried to push the thought from my head, because I know there is other work to do first. But now….with another person who can go off on her own to pursue our collective goals...and with a dragon to accompany and protect her…   So Tira and Haze will fly towards the Valley of Storms, and perhaps we will all be united sooner than I’d expected. We decide to send Knotrael with her. It will be good for her to have family with her, and good for the dwarves to see an elf who wears armour and fights like Knotrael does. And moreover, it might be good for Knotrael.   The frenzied planning lapses into more thoughtful silence as we finish the meal. Then, Tira speaks again of all the different races we’re seeing here, and why we’ve been able to bond with them.   “The bonds of Frontiership forged with other races,” she describes it. But why wasn’t this possible with the Collective? And in one question she has summed up a thought that has haunted me. I’ve bonded with humans, and now a fae. We’ve brought sworn Order members back into the shade. With each opponent we have talked them down and changed their mind. If we got one member of the Collective away...would they change their mind? Could they? Tira thinks that the price of their ability-sharing magic is their individuality. She grew up with a path laid out for her but she had the opportunity to know herself and change her path. A member of the Collective never has that opportunity, because it is assigned.   Once, she tells me, Thalien told her that there would need to be a bridge between us for there to ever be peace. The bridge could be built by either elven or Collective hands, but it will be necessary.   This side of the Barrier is rich with our history. The dwarves, with whom we once shared bonds, the humans with whom we never existed, the fae to whom we lost our war, and the trolls whose home we set aflame. Now, 1000 years later, we meet fae and can speak without hatred or anger.   Perhaps what we need with the Collective is simply a Barrier. This, too, is risky. Our war is tenuous enough as it is; I wouldn’t want to face them after a thousand years of them working to fight even more brutally. But with a thousand years apart, maybe we would ally with all the other races on this side and it would leave us both stronger and richer. It’s a possibility we can’t ignore.   With the heavy conversation set aside, we spend the rest of the day in preparations for departure.

• Petaran and Fenir are gardening together, and Petaran seems happy.
• I send Siren to help Wheeler with the small school he is beginning to lead. He has raised an entire tower using transmutation magic and has been teaching elvish to the human.
• In my absence, I tell Zadiyah to tend to the Shadowgate. I write a note for Alwen about my conversation with Tira this morning, and instruct Zadiyah to send word through the gate that I am on a long journey working towards allying ourselves with both fae and trolls.

Day 147

And then….we leave.   It will take us around one moon to travel all the way North to the Grove, which Camellia tells us is near-tropical. Along the way we will pass through Ipth once again, and countless other smaller human settlements.   This time, Bran suggests, we shouldn’t hide. We ought to simply let humans see our strength, and not be afraid. We aren’t serving our people well by letting even the most powerful of us hide from humanity.